Biting Cold (10 page)

Ethan didn’t seem to think it strange. “If he’s here, and you already know it, why doesn’t Paige?”

“I think we need to get back to the house,” I said, and I started running, with Ethan following me.

We’d gone far enough in exploring the property that we’d ended up on the other side of the house and silo, and I nearly tripped crossing uneven ground that wasn’t familiar. I vaulted two fences, my heart pounding, before the back of the house appeared on the horizon again. I ran around to the front door, which stood wide open, the foyer floor littered with books, their pages open and fluttering gently in the breeze.

Ethan stepped behind me and swore softly.

“Paige?” I called out, treading carefully down the hallway. The living room was empty and dark, as was the kitchen. I kept walking, then peeked into the room I assumed was the master bedroom. It was empty, the bed neatly made, the light off.

“Paige!” I called out again, but the house was silent, and there wasn’t even a hint of magic in the air. Nothing but the lingering, cloying scent of lemon and sugar.

“She isn’t here,” I said.

“I don’t suppose we need to ask where she’s gone,” he said.

I didn’t think so, either. “The silo,” I said. “They want the
Maleficium
, and that’s where it is.” And I feared that wasn’t the worst of it. Mallory had disappeared just before I caught Tate’s signature scent on the wind—but she’d been nowhere near the silo or the
Maleficium
. And we’d been so busy handling her that we hadn’t had time to think about Paige or Tate…or the entrance to the silo.

Could Mallory and Tate have been working together?

I looked at Ethan. “I think Mallory may have been a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“Tate and Mallory both want the book. Mallory knows it’s in the silo, and a little Internet research would have shown her where the door was. If finding it was that easy, why did she pop up so far away from it?”

“She was a distraction,” Ethan said. “She was there to draw us away while Tate found Paige and forced her to show them where in the silo the book was. But why would Tate and Mallory work together? How would they even have found each other?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But why not work together? Mallory wants the book, they both want the evil to be released, and there are more of us than there are of them. They both have magic, but so does Paige, and they couldn’t have known what kind of security would be waiting for them.”

I walked back to the front door and glanced outside, but there was no other sign anything was amiss. The farm looked like a farm
at the edge of winter, waiting for snow to fall, and snow to clear, and seed to be planted again.

“The silo?” he asked.

I nodded. “Let’s go.”

We walked quietly to the field that held the missile silo, eyes peeled for any sign of them. As we neared it, the scents grew stronger, like a cookie factory had opened up shop down the road.

The concrete box looked the same as it had when we’d left it. The door was closed, and there weren’t any supernatural lights or sounds that suggested Tate and Mallory were throwing evil around.

Hope blossomed; maybe we weren’t too late.

“They’re here.”

We turned and found Todd behind us, a new patch of crimson on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll heal,” he said. “They went in. I took an orb to the shoulder.”

“Paige?” I asked.

“Paige, the other witch, and the dark one.”

Tate, with his head of dark hair, must have been the dark one.

“While we were fighting Mallory,” Ethan said, “Tate was nabbing Paige and waiting for Mallory to finish us off.”

Maybe Paige had been right. With every action she took, Mallory was sliding closer to friendship in the past tense.

“Thank you for your diligence,” I told Todd. “And thank you for your help earlier.”

He nodded. “We are done with this fight for now. We’ll go to ground. We’ll regroup. It’s the way of our people.”

When he looked up again, he looked pissed. “End this tonight.”

“That’s our every intention,” Ethan promised, holding out a
hand. “My apologies again for my behavior earlier. My comments were shortsighted and naive. We are better for having met you, and we are honored that we shared a field of battle.”

Todd hesitated for a moment, then took Ethan’s hand. “Good luck,” he said, then disappeared across the field. The night was quiet again, stars speeding by overhead.

“I’d feel a lot better if they were going down there with us,” I said.

It took Ethan long enough to answer that I looked over at him. His eyes were squeezed closed, his forehead pinched.

I put a hand on his arm. “Where is she?”

“Nearby,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I can feel her fretting. But this is different from earlier.”

“She’s probably preparing to use dark magic again—the real deal. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Let’s get this over with.”

The snap in his voice convinced me not to push the issue. He was a big boy. If he wanted help from me, he could ask for it.

Carefully, swords drawn, we opened the door to the silo. It was dark even in comparison to the black night outside, and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. I walked carefully forward.

But not carefully enough.

“Stop!” Ethan called out, wrapping an arm around me before I vaulted into the darkness below.

The elevator was gone.

Ethan wrenched me back just as the momentum would have taken me over the edge. An uncontrolled fall into the depths wouldn’t have ended comfortably.

“Jesus,” Ethan said, settling me back from the edge, his hands shaking with nerves.

“I guess they took the lift,” I said, glancing down over the edge. “How are we going to get down there?”

“It’s thirty feet,” Ethan said. “I can jump it, but you don’t have the experience.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

Ethan slowly looked at me.

“While you were gone, I learned how to jump. Well, how to fall, anyway. Jonah taught me.”

“Ah” was all Ethan said. But he looked at me for a moment, an expression of mild curiosity on his face.

“He helped me while you were…gone,” I explained, not that he’d asked for an explanation.

“I’m not jealous, Sentinel.”

“Okay.”

“I have no need of jealousy.”

I was equally amused and aroused by the bravado. This was Ethan in the fast lane, hugging the curves instead of constantly riding the political brakes.

“Back to the point,” I recommended. “Whoever goes first could send the platform back up?”

“Too noisy. We’ll need to be quiet once we’re down there. Between them, they probably already know we’re on our way, but there’s no sense in announcing it.” He looked at me. “You’re sure you can do it?”

I wouldn’t deny that this jump, as all others, scared me, but I didn’t think he needed to hear that now, and my fear certainly wasn’t a very good reason not to do it. If I avoided everything I was afraid of, I’d never leave the House.

“I’ll go first,” he said, and before I could agree, he’d disappeared, leaving a
whoosh
of air in his wake. Two seconds later, I heard his feet hit the ground.

My eyes were finally accustomed to the darkness, and I glanced over the edge. Ethan signaled a thumbs-up. When he’d cleared
the way for me, I resheathed my sword, took a breath, and took a step.

The worst part about jumping as a vampire—and really the only bad part—was that first step. It was as unpleasant for vampires as it was for humans—that sickening lurch of the stomach, the sudden sensation of falling, and the fear you wouldn’t survive the jump.

But then everything changed.

The world slowed down as if to keep up with you. Dozens of feet became a single graceful step, and as long as you kept your knees soft, the landing didn’t pose a problem at all.

I landed in a superheroine crouch, one leg bent, the other extended, a hand on the ground and the other on the pommel of my sword. I looked up at Ethan through my bangs.

His eyes blazed fiercely with pride.

“You can do it,” he whispered.

I stood up and adjusted the belt of my katana and the hem of my jacket. “Did you doubt me?”

“I didn’t doubt,” he said. “I…had reserved judgment.”

I humphed but let it go. God willing, there’d be plenty of time for me to harass him later.

We peeked into the hallway that led away from the elevator shaft. The lights were on, and there was no sign of Tate, Mallory, or Paige.

I glanced over at Ethan, my vampire-proximity alarm. He was wincing against what I assumed was another Mallory-spawned headache, but he was still on his feet.

“Do you think Paige led them directly to the book?” I wondered.

“Depends on the state she left in. And we won’t know that until we see her.”

“Strategy?”

Ethan looked around. “If they want the book, they’ll have to get to the bottom of the silo. But I want a look before we attack them head-on. Let’s check the launch room. We can check the hole and figure out where they are. Radio silence from here on out. You remember your signals?”

I nodded. Luc had taught the Cadogan House guards a series of hand gestures we could use to signal one another during missions. They’d come in handy before and would definitely be handy now, when we were trying to hide our presence from a former mayor and testy witch. Assuming they didn’t already know we were coming, which seemed unlikely.

Swords drawn, we moved down the hallway. Ethan skirted the right side, and I skirted the left a bit behind him. We listened at each door we passed, trying to detect sound, but there was no sign of it, even with vampire senses in full operation.

It probably didn’t help that the place was loaded with concrete to protect the missile from attack. I wasn’t really sure how that would affect the loosing of an ancient evil, but I had a sense we’d soon be finding out.

We’d nearly reached the giant sliding door to the silo room when I spotted a glistening drop of crimson on the floor. The droplet was small, but the smell of fresh blood was undeniably pungent.

I crouched down and dabbed it with a fingertip, then sniffed it delicately. Definitely blood, and spicy with magic. Whether Paige or Mallory I couldn’t tell, but that really wasn’t important. One of our sorceresses had shed blood.

I stood up again and wiped my hand on my pants, then gestured toward the sliding door. Ethan pointed me toward the handle, then took point at the door, sword at the ready. When he nodded, I pulled.

The door slid open, and Ethan slid inside. I followed. The room was empty and mostly dark. But the silo glowed from below, the spot where the
Maleficium
had been located.

Ethan motioned me forward. Swallowing down a burst of fear that tightened my chest, I crept to the silo and peeked down.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, the
Maleficium
was gone.

But the drama had only just started. The building suddenly shook with a pulse of magic that screamed through the building. If we weren’t too late already, we were going to be in a minute.

I didn’t waste any time.

“Merit!” Ethan yelled, but I was already in the air and on my way into the missile shaft. I landed in a crouch on the pedestal the
Maleficium
had once rested on.

In front of me, in a large circular room, were the enemies I’d sought. Mallory was hunched over the
Maleficium
, which was open on the ground. Tate stood between me and Mallory, and Paige lay injured on the ground beside him, bloody and unconscious. She wasn’t wearing her jacket or cap; Tate must have conned—or dragged—her out of the house.

“Hello, Ballerina,” Tate said.

Tonight he wore a dark suit over a dark shirt and tie. Death in a beautiful package, except that he, too, looked exhausted—worn out and gaunt, and not any better than Mallory did. Perhaps he wasn’t immune to the effects of black magic, either.

“I suppose I could say I’m pleased you survived your trip, although that would probably sound hypocritical.”

I heard footfalls behind me and knew Ethan had landed in the shaft.

“And him as well,” Tate flatly said. “But that would just be dishonest.”

“Move away from the book,” I told them, crouching a bit and readying for action.

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

Another pulse of magic lit through the room, the book its obvious origin point. The floor and walls shook with it.

I’d be damned if I was going to end up crushed beneath the concrete and steel of a forty-year-old missile silo in Nebraska.

“Ethan,” I said, “I’m going low.”

“Then I’ve got high,” he said, stepping forward, sword outstretched.

I stepped back, then ran full speed toward Tate. His eyes widened as I moved, but Ethan distracted him with a slash of his sword.

I dropped to my knees and let the momentum push me along the slick, painted concrete floor to Mallory’s spot on the other side of the room.

I popped back up again, leaving Ethan to deal with Tate, and pointed my sword at her.

“This is the last time I will tell you this, witch. Back off!”

She looked up from the
Maleficium
, her fingers bloody and hovering over the text, nothing but pain in her eyes.

I might have been able to talk her out of anger or fear or exhaustion, but pain was its own kind of demon, and I wasn’t sure talking would have any effect.

I heard the crack of flesh and bone and glanced back at Ethan. He’d gone the old-fashioned route and attempted to give Tate another right hook across the jaw, probably as a thank-you for the damage to his Mercedes.

But this time, Tate knew the shot was coming, and he was fast enough to avoid it. He’d put out a hand to catch Ethan’s fist, and held him there for a moment, Ethan’s eyes wild.

“I’d have thought my prior warnings would have had some effect.”

“I’m a slow learner.”

“I suppose wisdom doesn’t come with age, eh?” With barely a brush of Tate’s hand, Ethan flew across the room and landed against a steel support column.

The column buckled and Ethan hit the ground.