BROKEN BLADE (29 page)

Still holding my blade, I approached the ward, taking in the feel of it. Strong, yeah. Designed to stand against those who presented a threat. Okay. That left me wiggle room. I wasn’t going to threaten Justin, and I wasn’t a threat to the sleek little creature crouched across from him—she wasn’t hurt. At all. Probably went in after the injured one and that was why the barrier hadn’t hurt her. She was a delicate little thing. Judging by her coloring and body type, she looked like a serval. I’d seen a few of them before.

The serval opened her mouth and screamed at Justin but didn’t move. I frowned as I noticed the big golden cat she was standing guard over.

His blood pooled around her feet.

I tapped the tip of my blade against the ward.

Justin didn’t look at me.

“Heya, Kit.” A wild, reckless grin split his face. Magic danced in the air and his dreads were drifting around him, caught in that field of energy. I wanted to tell him to suck it in, but that wasn’t smart. Not here. Not now. “I have news for you. Just wanted to talk to you and these asses weren’t letting me in the door.”

“I see.” I nodded and looked around the barrier. So far, the only injured party was the unconscious cat the female was guarding. “So what did you do?”

“Since they wouldn’t let me through the door, I made my own.”

Feeling the heat along my spine, I dodged forward. The ward didn’t fight me. I felt it sting my flesh and that lasted about twenty seconds, but I tolerated it and glanced back at Damon in time to see him curl his hand into a fist, staring at me through the ward’s glimmering presence. I suspected he could see some echo of it. Some shifters were more sensitive to magic than others. Damon was one of them. He didn’t like it, but he could still pick up on it.

For a second, he just stared at me and then he laid a hand just above where the ward began. “It’s going to hurt,” I warned him.

Then I gave him my back.

Telling him not to try and muscle in would be a waste of breath.

The ward started to spark.

Justin’s grin took on a meaner slant as he slid me a look. “I wasn’t going to cause any problems, but they were in my way.”

“Did it occur to you to call?”

“I did.” He shrugged. A grim look entered his eyes as his gaze lingered on my face. “You didn’t answer.”

Then he looked away, but not before I caught an echo coming from him. A twist of nightmare and darkness—memories. I knew him too well not to understand. The last time he’d tried to call me and hadn’t gotten a hold of me, I’d disappeared and he’d had to help track me across a continent. Swallowing, I looked away. This wasn’t the time or place for either of us to have those sorts of bad moments.

Magic groaned, screamed and I shifted my attention upward, staring at the domed ceiling of the ward as it sparked again. There was an ominous little shriek, something jagged and biting, like claws drawing down metal.

I reached into my pocket for my phone only to stop as I realized I didn’t have it with me. Well, hell. “I think I left it in the car.”

“Yeah.” Justin didn’t look worried about the ward, but there was still a world of tension gathered inside him. If we didn’t get him leveled out soon, somebody would get hurt. “You’re out of practice, Kitty-kitty.”

“Tell me about it.” I eyed the two cats, the fallen one and the female serval standing guard over him.

“He’s fine. Just a headache.” Justin looked past my shoulder and that wicked light in his eyes made him look almost demonic. “Your boy over there is sweating a bit, Kit.”

I looked back.

Damon was indeed sweating, a fine sheen of it breaking out along his forehead as he continued to push against the ward. “You think it’s going to do you any good to have him break through? He doesn’t want to come in and discuss the weather or the stock market. He’s pissed—you hurt one of his cats.”

“No.”

Arching my brows, I swung my head back around and waited.

“I hurt
three
of them.” Justin shrugged. “The other two are out on the grounds. Don’t worry. They’ll all be fine.” He rolled his head back and forth, cracking his neck and I saw the shimmer of silver dancing over his sleeves as he readied the magic. “And I didn’t hurt the little serval over there either. I just fucked up the ones who got my way.”

“That’s typical.” This could get so ugly, so fast. “Will you behave, please?”

I had visions in my head of him wrapping all that silver around Damon—he could shred the flesh from a shifter’s bones with that much. He and Damon might be a match in a fight, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to see this.

“You take all the fun out of my life, Kit.” Then he sighed. “As long as no more of them come gunning for me, I’m fine. I’m here on official business, after all.”

I frowned and glanced at him. He smiled and tapped the badge he’d affixed to the pocket of his jeans.

Perfect.

He had his Assembly ID with him. He’d kept up his investigator status—either that, or it was one hell of a forgery. Damon’s people really hadn’t had any excuse to deny him the right to speak with me. Maybe they didn’t have to show him inside, but they could have used the phone.

And I could have mine with me
, I thought sourly.

“Let the damn ward down.”

He sighed. A split second later, my ears and my skin buzzed as he sucked all that magic back inside him.

The angry, crawling presence of a dozen shifters made my head ache. “He’s on official business.” I turned to face Damon, folding my arms over my chest and putting on the best bitch face I could muster. “Any reason why he was turned away when he asked to speak with me?”

“You going to hide behind that fucking budge?” Damon asked, his voice silky, his gaze locked on Justin.

“Nah.” Justin tugged it off and tossed it in the air, spinning it with his magic. “I’d be happy to toss in the dirt and go a round with you. But…well. Priorities and shit.”

Then he looked at me, his grass-green eyes glowing. “I got news on the vase, Kit.”

“What?”

He leaned in, his voice low. It didn’t matter. Everybody there would hear, even if he spoke in a whisper. “It was stolen by a couple of witches teamed up with a vampire house. Most of them are dead now.” He glanced past me, his gaze landing on Damon for just a fraction of a second. “But the vase was in the possession of Samuel Allerton before he died. He had it in under lock and key. When he died, it passed to the next in line of his house. A vamp by the name Amadeus.”

“Amadeus.” Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on something other than the fact that I now had to contend with vampires, not just crazy ancient magic hell-beasts. “A vampire named Amadeus.”

My gut cramped. Fear started to scream inside my head.

A hand, hard and brutal, closed around my arm. Dimly, as Justin’s magic jolted through me, I heard deep, guttural growls coming from all around. Not from Damon, though. He was silent as stone. I feel his gaze boring into us, although I didn’t dare look at him.

“Maybe we’ll find a Beethoven, too,” I said, forcing the words out of my tight throat.

Justin stared at me. Then, because he probably knew I needed it, he said, “If ya want, we’ll round up a whole damn symphony of them. They can play us a dirge while we fry their asses.”

* * * *

Damon’s quarters seemed a hell of a lot smaller now.

Doyle persistently remained at my side, although he kept giving Justin the evil eye.

Justin ignored him. Sitting in the chair across from mine, he had his deck of cards out and he played one of his crazy games of Solitaire while he answered some of the same questions that I’d had to. Alisdair looked more worried with each passing minute.

Chang didn’t look too happy.

Doyle stared at the cards like he was half-mesmerized.

And Damon looked like he wanted to start ripping Justin apart, piece by piece.

Yeah, that would be an easy feat.

“And what’s
your
take on this…
Pandora
?” Alisdair said. He had a look in his eyes like he wanted Justin to say anything but what I’d said.

Justin shrugged and flipped the ace of spades into the air. It hung there, spinning around and around as he met Alisdair’s eyes. “MacDonold, my take is that is she’s crazy old, crazy powerful and she has more high magic in her than I’ve seen in a while. The last time I felt anything even
close
to her was when I had to help go after a two-thousand-year-old Druid.”

The card slammed down, arrowing itself into place with unerring accuracy. Justin continued to look at Alisdair. “It took twenty witches to take him down…and he
wanted
to die.”

“Enough,” Damon said, knocking his knuckles on the table. “Pandora. Got it. Big problem. Let’s move on. What else do we need to know?”

“What, other than the fact that if she snaps her fingers, you all might go and hump her leg?” Justin grinned. “I think that about covers it.”

Silence dropped down like an anvil and for a second, nobody moved, nobody breathed. They all stared at Justin and then, one by one, their attention shifted to me.

“You couldn’t have found a better way to put that, could you?” I said sourly.

* * * *

Well, if nothing else, Justin had cut through to the heart of the matter.

She’ll make you her furry little bitches, boys, whether you want it or not…oh, and she’s going to go after one of your babies. Fun, right?

A manic glint had lit his eyes as he delivered that coup de grâce and after we’d managed to calm the sheer chaos down, everybody had leaped into action. Even Alisdair finally got on board.

Megan was rounding up all the females and trying to figure out who could or couldn’t be pregnant. I didn’t tell her that I already knew who the chosen target was, because if Pandora failed with Clara, she might try to find another one. Getting them all safe would be ideal.

Alisdair had called his warriors into action and anybody who had experience with high magic was being put on alert. Some had a natural affinity for resisting high magic—Damon was one of them. It was how he had managed to kill the witches months ago, and anybody else who had those abilities would be the ones best equipped to face off with a crazy ancient bitch.

They hoped.

My gut said they were right.

But my gut also said it wouldn’t be enough.

She’d cut them all down if they got in her way and she wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Why would she? She lacked the empathy, I suspected to feel anything if she killed one of them, or a dozen,or a hundred. The entire clan wouldn’t even bother her.

She could just create more.

The only thing that would affect her would be if she couldn’t find her next host.

What we needed to do was protect that baby. Keep the baby alive. Keep Clara away from Pandora.

That was the goal.

Why not kill the girl?

That voice murmured in the back of my mind and sent a shiver down my spine. Cool, cold and practical.

I had no idea where that thought had come from, but
no
.

The cats could protect Clara for the short term. Long term, get Clara to Green Road and let them figure out the best option. They’d handled Pandora once, maybe they could figure out the best route if I failed.

When
I failed.

Not that I’d include that bit when I told Damon. I’d just suggest that Clara might be best protected by people who could hide who and what she was. I had to head out, but before I did, I needed to pass that info on to Damon first—I already knew he’d follow me out to my car. I’d give him the info, get out of here and get my gear. Meet up with Justin.

And get ready to get my ass kicked.

Probably killed.

But there was no way I was going to kill some poor girl just because she had the bad luck to be born with the wrong blood.

I knew what that was like.

Heading out, I tried to ignore the weight that rested on my shoulders. And Damon’s dark, brooding presence, hot at my back.

* * * *

“Is he serious?”

I met Damon’s eyes over the roof of my car.

“I think so.”

A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “So…she can, what? Control us? Enslave us?”

“You’re asking me questions I can’t answer.”

“Try.” His voice was rigid.

Justin had left twenty minutes earlier, out to round up some
unsavory types
, as he’d called them. I suspected he was reaching out to various Banner contacts and independents. I had no idea how deep his network went now, but I suspected it was pretty extensive.

Edgy tension came off Damon in waves. I’d thought he might settle once Justin had left. Clearly, I was expecting too much. I opened the door and blew out a breath, trying to think through what to say.

There was still a
lot
to say. And oddly, only half of it related to Pandora. That was all we had time for, though.

Tucking my sword behind the seat, I thought through this possible explanation, that possible scenario…

“You realize that I don’t
know
what I’m talking about, right?” I finally said, turning to look at him.

Dark turbulent eyes met mine.

“You never seem to know, and you always end up almost right on target.” He crossed his arms over his chest. The muscles under his shirt bulged and the tattoos on his right arm, just barely visible under the sleeve, caught my eye. Memories of the times I’d stroked my fingers across those thick, dark lines of ink rolled through my mind…along with so many others.

I pushed it all aside.

“You familiar with the coercion spells some of the independents use?” I asked him, dragging my attention away from the mesmerizing lines and swirls of those tattoos.

A black brow rose and then he shrugged. “More or less. I’ve seen them in action, had a few try to use them on me. They didn’t take.”

“Not surprising. Success of those spells is dependent on a number of factors…but namely your strength against the strength of the witch. A witch of Es’s caliber could have a chance.”