Nightfall (Pact Arcanum Integrated Serial Edition) (8 page)

JIAO-LONG FIRSTBORN

CHAPTER 7

August 2020; Seattle, Washington; Four months later

Rory filled his plate from the dinner buffet and returned to the private room of the hotel restaurant.
God, it’s been a long tour,
he thought. Between their stage show and their secret coordination of Sentinel activity in Asia and the western United States, it was no wonder he was tired. So far, no one in the vampire community had figured out who they actually were, thanks to Antonio acting as intermediary between Takeshi and most of the other Sentinels. Both the tour and this phase of the war were ending, however.
Maybe now our lives might go back to being somewhat normal
.

“Mind if I join you?”

Rory’s thoughts were interrupted by a teenager with an infectious grin. Not waiting for an answer, the kid sat down beside him, completely confident of his welcome
.

Rory smiled. “Of course.” He liked Nick Jameson, whose band, Prussian Blue, had joined the tour as an opening act. The young musician was a flirt, though, and as the tour had wound to a close, he had become more aggressive in pursuing Rory. Rory didn’t mind. It was harmless.
If I can’t have Takeshi, why not play along? I’ll probably never get up the courage to tell Take about my feelings, anyway.
Under normal circumstances, his relationship with Take would have been resolved years ago, but while his best friend still gave him mixed signals, neither had time—especially not with their double lives—to make commitments.
It’s just one more way the Gift screwed up everything.
Snapping out of his reverie, he asked, “How are you doing today, Nick?”

“Can’t complain. Tonight’s show went great. I’m looking forward to the end of the tour, though. How about you?” Nick dug into his salad as he waited for an answer.

“It’ll be nice to go home for a while,” admitted Rory. “Less than a month and I can see my family again.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “You guys are the headliners. You couldn’t bring your families on tour with you?”

“Unlike us, they’ve got ‘real’ jobs. They come out when they have time, but it isn’t often.” Rory took a sip of his beer. “Doing anything to celebrate the end of your first national tour?”

“Not yet.” A sly expression crossed Nick’s face. “Would you care to join me for a private party?”

Okay, enough is enough.
“Nick, I like you.” Rory leaned forward. “Really. You’re cool.” He noticed Nick brighten at the unexpected compliment but pressed on. “But you’re seventeen years old, and I’m twenty-seven. Surely you realize nothing’s going to happen between us.”

“I’m not a kid, Rory.” Nick looked away and toyed with his food.

“I never said you were. You’re smart, and you’re mature for your age. But I’m not the one for you. Find someone who can see life from your perspective. You deserve someone who can meet your stride, and that isn’t me.”

Nick mulled over Rory’s words for a moment. “It doesn’t have to be that serious.” He grinned again. “Maybe I just need a little one-on-one coaching.”

Rory laughed. “You never give up, do you?”

Nick propped his head on his hands and smirked. “Not when I see something I want.”

“Nick, I’m kind of taken,” Rory said, smiling at Nick’s enthusiasm.

“Oh. Oh, crap. Sorry.”

“No problem.” He waved away Nick’s discomfort. “I should have mentioned it before, but it was fun to watch you try to hit on me.”

Nick reddened. “Fun?”

Rory grinned. “I liked it.”

Nick sat back in his chair, mollified. “So,” he said finally, picking up his glass of ginger ale and taking a sip, “rain check?”

Rory laughed again. “Definitely.”

“I should get to work on my homework, anyway,” Nick said with a grimace. “What good is getting out of going to school if you still have to do all the work?”

“Are you going to tour through your senior year, as well?”

“Nah. Mom thinks I need to experience it for real, so she’s already enrolled me in a prep school in New England. I had to go there for an interview and everything.” He paused. “The student they detailed to show me around was actually pretty cool, though. We really clicked. He’s a musician, too. We jammed a little when we were supposed to be having lunch. His name’s Scott, and he invited me to start a new band with him and some of his buddies once the school year starts. It might not entirely suck after all.”

Rory smiled at him. “I’m happy for you then.”

* * *

“So you’re sure this is Jiao-long’s stronghold?” asked Takeshi once Rory had rejoined the other Sentinels in their hotel suite. A holographic map was projected across the table in front of them, and although Ana and Antonio had looked up when Rory entered, Take was so intent on studying it he hadn’t even acknowledged Rory’s entrance.

“As sure as we can be,” Antonio said. “We’ve hit all of his bases in Asia and the Western U.S., but we don’t know the exact location of the last fortress. So far, Jiao-long’s spells have prevented us from locating his personal sanctum, but from past experience we think those protections are tied directly to his physical presence. If we find him, we find the base.”

“What makes you think it’s in Colorado?” Ana asked.

Antonio smiled. “Negative space. It has the usual density of vampires in the major cities, but we haven’t yet located any large nests. We think they’re all based at a central location. And then there’s Liang—there must be a reason he surfaced in Denver.”

“He went down like all the rest,” Take said belligerently. “If that’s the best Jiao-long can do, he won’t be as hard to take out as I thought.”

Antonio frowned his disapproval. “Don’t get overconfident, Takeshi. Jiao-long is the only one of the Firstborn left, other than Luscian himself. He didn’t survive for tens of thousands of years by being a pushover. You may be the strongest fighter I’ve met in my career, but your best weapon is that they don’t know you well enough to predict your movements or attacks.” He glanced at the map then tapped the projector on the table to shut it off. “In any case, we’ve got Air and Fire Sentinels canvassing the state remotely to see if we can narrow down our search area. I’ll let you know what we find out.”

Take nodded. “Keep me informed.” He turned to Rory, finally, and smiled.

Over the link, Rory could tell it was an honest smile: just the smile of a friend pushing the war to the back of his mind. Sometimes it seemed like Jiao-long meant more to Takeshi than Rory did, but Rory wasn’t jealous. He knew Take well enough to know his friend worried they would never be safe while the threat of a Nightwalker attack hung over their heads. Rory understood, and he could wait until Take thought it was safe to live their lives. In the meantime, he lived for the stolen moments of normality in their public and secret worlds. In the end, those moments might be all they had.

PART II:  THE GAUNTLET

CHAPTER 8

September 2020, Portland, Oregon

Antonio went over the information provided by the Denver quads. Something was up. Vampire attacks in the past month had dropped to zero everywhere in the western states except for Colorado. Clearly, the remains of House Jiao-long had retreated to their hidden base somewhere in the state. It was the only explanation that made sense.
The question was whether they were going to ground long enough for them to rebuild their strength, or if there was a major offensive in the making.

A faint rustle caught his attention, and he looked to the front of his hotel room in time to see a white envelope slide under the door. He got up from his desk and went to the door, extending his senses through the wood to probe the hallway beyond.
Nothing.

He picked up the unmarked envelope and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper wrapped around a photograph. He unfolded the letter and read the short message in Arcolin pictograms.

Ten minutes. Come alone and tell no one, or he dies. Cooperate and he goes free and unharmed.

Under the message was a set of teleport parameters. Numbly, he looked at the photograph and saw an image of Nick on stage, playing his guitar.

Immediately, he tapped the line of the tracking spell he maintained on Nick. It dead-ended, the trace severed. He cast a scrying spell and sent his perceptions flying across the city, stopping within a bar at the last recorded location. Inside, he saw the other members of Nick’s band, laughing and drinking, but Nick wasn’t there.
Taken.
By the blockade of his tracking spell, he knew he wasn’t dealing with human kidnappers.
They could have jumped him anywhere by now.

Antonio weighed his options.
The boy is probably still alive, or they wouldn’t have offered to let him go. Vampire honor wouldn’t allow them to lie about killing him.
Antonio knew his best course of action was to do nothing.
The boy doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The only thing holding me to protect him is my word.

He memorized the jump coordinates, then filled his hands with mystic flames that burned the letter and photograph to ashes.
My word is enough.

* * *

Antonio looked around as the teleport matrix faded. He was in a large open space that looked industrial.
Probably a warehouse.
There was no one in view but Nick and a tall African woman, but there could be any number of Nightwalkers present if they were shielding their auras and hiding behind shrouds of invisibility. Nick was sitting quietly in a chair, his expression slack and vacant. The woman stood next to him, dressed formally in a dark blue gown. She watched him with casual interest, unconcerned for her own safety.

Antonio, of course, recognized her immediately: Layla Magister Curallorn, leader of the vampires that infested the eastern United States. From what intelligence he’d been able to gather on her over the years, she was known for her skill at Court intrigue. “Why did you take Nick and not someone else?”

She raised an eyebrow at his bluntness but answered anyway. “I learned of your debt of honor to Sentinel Edgar Jameson quite some time ago. We were originally going to use him as the bait, but an active Sentinel would be difficult prey under any circumstances. Nicholas was simply an expedient choice.”

Antonio folded his arms. “Well, I’m here, so let him go.”

She tossed a set of charmed restraints on the floor between them. “Put those on.”

“If I do, you’ll kill him anyway.”

“We are not animals, Sentinel. I have given you my word that he will go free and unharmed if you cooperate. Put on the restraints, and my people will return him to his celebration before his friends even notice his absence. He will remember nothing. My people have even maintained their shields around him, so that his Gift would remain dormant. He is a pawn whose part is played out. I see no reason to prevent him from retiring from the board in peace.”

Antonio looked at the restraints on the ground.
I’m dead the moment I put them on.
A fragment of conversation came back to him, from the night before the assault in Alexandria.
“Someday, he’ll break his mother’s heart and get himself killed for the cause, just like I will.”

Antonio picked up the restraints and locked them around his wrists.
But not today.

CHAPTER 9

September 2020; Portland, Oregon

Takeshi woke to a pounding at the door. He climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of track pants before stumbling toward the front door of their suite. As he passed her room, Ana darted into the hall, her crystal staff out and ready. She hid behind a bend in the wall, watching Take extend a psychic probe beyond the door to see who it was.

“Shit!” He immediately unlocked the door and disarmed the perimeter ward. “What happened?” he asked, nodding at Antonio’s disheveled appearance.

Antonio snorted and entered the suite. “Some of the new teams in Denver refused to believe I was acting under your orders when I asked them to send reconnaissance parties into the areas where we believe Jiao-long’s base of operations are situated.” He indicated the fading bruise on his face. “They expressed themselves quite eloquently.”

Takeshi sighed, closed and locked the door, and reactivated the ward. “We need those scouts, Antonio. How do we convince them?”

Ana emerged from behind the wall and took a seat next to Antonio on the couch.

“It’s the price of keeping your identities secret,” Antonio said. “We’ll need to break cover for this to work. All Sentinels can recognize one of the Winds as soon as the Gift is kindled. You’ll have to speak to them in person to secure their cooperation. As soon as they realize who you are, their natural instinct will be to obey.” He looked at Ana. “The two of you are first and third in rank among the Winds. If both of you go, they’ll be sure to fall in line.”

“Tonight was the last show anyway,” Rory said, walking into the room, his sword loose in his hand. “There’s no harm in a road trip, as long as we’re back in time to check out of the hotel with the rest of the crew.”

Antonio frowned. “Actually, I’d prefer if you stayed behind, Rory. You’re fourth in rank, so you won’t add much more weight to Takeshi’s orders. I don’t think they’ll view my presence well, if the warmth of their welcome was anything to go by. But you can pass my advice on to Takeshi over the link while he meets with them.”

Rory opened his mouth to protest but realized there was nothing to be gained by his going. “Fine. I’ll wait here then.”

Take grabbed a pen and paper from the hall table next to the phone. “We’ll need an address.”

“Here are the coordinates.” Antonio scrawled a series of Arcolin symbols. “You should go immediately.”

Rory dropped onto the couch next to Antonio. “Know any good card games?”