Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) (6 page)

He was an emotional train wreck; he was twenty-five
years old, a high school dropout, and father of two. His ex-wife wouldn’t let
him see his kids until he got his drug habit under control. He didn’t have the
ambition necessary to pull anything off on his own; he was just a pawn in this.

The next man had ambition— too much of it. He was
here for the thrill of hunting vampires. He also wasn’t in charge, so I moved
to the woman. She was here because she was the girlfriend of the man in charge.
From her thoughts, I could see that they had a base somewhere with lots of
other vampire hunters. Their leader was there.

I watched the hunters make their way through the
woods. The jaguar had apparently gotten over some of his bloodlust and was
mostly just curious now, because he didn’t immediately attack.

We watched the humans surround the mansion, giving it
about a hundred feet or so of distance. Each of them had a black, fist sized
sack, which they buried at their respective positions. I focused on the woman’s
mind again, careful to stay undetected.

I had no idea what it was called, but I saw a video
screen of what looked like a shower stall, except the miniscule concrete room
had a steel door. In the middle of the floor was a black item that resembled a
large roach trap.

After a moment, the door opened, a young female was
tossed in, and the door slammed shut. She appeared to be in her late teens,
with dirty, mangled blond hair and torn clothes. Her hands were restrained
behind her, but the second she was alone, she snapped the metal cuffs.

She was a vampire.

She didn’t even notice the object on the floor. If
she had, she probably would have been trying to break it instead of the door.
There was no warning before it flashed with a blinding white light. The video
cut out for a while. When it came back, the young vampire was burned beyond
recognition.

I pulled away from her mind and opened a connection
between Henry and me. “
We have a problem
.”

There was a lot of time left
before dark and Stephen’s coven wouldn’t be in danger until then. The two immediate
problems were that there were traitors in the coven and that the humans had
experimented on vampires.

Henry appeared beside the car, shifted, picked up his
clothes, and got in without dressing. “A light bomb?” he asked doubtfully. “Are
you sure it isn’t some kind of acid gas bomb? I know you can buy ultraviolet
lights, but it takes a lot to burn a vampire.”

He had a point. Vampires weren’t invincible, but they
didn’t instantly burst into flame when they encountered sunlight. If that were
so, they would be in danger constantly from things other than the sun that put
off ultraviolet radiation. Of course, I had recently learned that all vampires
of Earth were “diluted” descendants of the vampires that came here from the
vampire world. Since the pure vampires burst into smoke when shot with a silver
bullet, it was possible that they would do so when subjected to sunlight.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case with Earth’s
vampires. For them, the sun just burned like a blowtorch. How quickly it took a
vampire to die from direct sunlight was determined by the atmospheric quality
and the vampire’s own blood. Darwin once told me that converted vampires, like
Marcus, were more susceptible than born vampires, like Stephen.

“Maybe it is more than light. Whatever it is, we need
to follow them back to their base and destroy all of it.”

“So you want me to get Marcus?”

“No, this is way too dangerous for him. I’m not
taking a vampire into a vampire-hunter’s lair.”

Although he didn’t say anything, the concern on his
face was obvious. He thought I was being overprotective of Marcus. I didn’t say
anything because he didn’t know Marcus like I did and there was no point in
arguing. Vampire or not, I still saw Marcus as the sixteen-year-old on the run
from his father. I was not going to compromise on the young vampire’s safety.

“You stay here and find out which shifters are
traitors. Get those things out of the ground and away from the vampires, too.
Don’t take out the traitors until you know how many there are and who they are in
case they attack the vampires. I’ll follow the humans.”

“Wouldn’t I be better use to you with the humans? I
can get through any lock.”

I considered it. “I would be able to figure out which
shifters are traitors.”

“I’m not the only one who’s got your back anymore.
Maseré deals with traitors all the time and ridding Stephen of a few of them
would strengthen their alliance. You and I could go after the humans.”

“I don’t know.” I normally didn’t get any more people
involved than I had to.

“This isn’t a matter of asking for help,” Henry said,
putting his clothes on. “In the human world, the rules are simple. You’re
expected to take care of human cases on your own because your clients, allies,
and enemies are all human. In the paranormal world, you’re still just a wizard;
you can’t be expected to deal with vampires, shifters, and fae all at the same
time. No paranormal is. You have me, Darwin, and your familiar, but Darwin’s
off doing something else and so is Rocky.”

“Crap, I forgot to check on Mr. Thomas.”

“That’s exactly my point. You’re used to dealing with
human cases all on your own. Now you’re still doing human cases, but you’re
also taking on vampire, shifter, and wizard cases. I’m sure there’s a fae
breaking some law out there somewhere, too. You can’t do five times the work on
your own if you expect to keep up the quality, no matter how powerful you get.”

The humans were heading back to their Jeeps.

I nodded. “Alright.” I called Maseré. Henry didn’t
look snide or approving, not that I had expected him to. Henry was ideal to
work with because he could have a plan or opinion without trying to take over.

“Since you all started your summer break, I’ve talked
to you more than my own boy,” Maseré groused.

“Well, you shouldn’t have let him off the leash
then.”

He sighed. “I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

I could hear Anya yelling in the background and
realized that she was probably driving him up the wall with her worrying.
Darwin got a lot of his unruliness from his mother. “Okay, when I’m done
dealing with the vampire hunters, I’ll figure out where Darwin is and make sure
he at least checks in with you.”

“Vampire hunters?”

“Yes. That shifter I showed you earlier is in league
with a pack of humans trying to take down Stephen’s coven. They have some sort
of light bomb. The humans are leaving now for their base and I’m going to
follow them. I need you to go to Stephen’s coven and figure out if there are
any more traitors. Also, the light bombs are buried around the mansion and they
need to be removed. Can you handle it?”

“I’ve been dealing with this kind of thing for longer
than you’ve been alive.” His voice was all business now.

“Then I will leave Stephen to you and go after the
humans.”

“Do you want some of my pack as backup? Vampire
hunters tend to break like twigs when they see a badge.”

“For now I don’t, but I’ll let you know if I change
my mind.” I hung up. “Switch with me. I’m going to try something new.”

We swapped seats and Henry put the car into drive, as
he started down the path to get on the road, I checked in with my gargoyle. He
was sitting on the roof of a building, looking into the window of another
building. I could barely make out Mr. Thomas.

“
I got another job for you
,” I told him.
“
I
need you to follow some vehicles without being seen
.” I visualized the
three Jeeps leaving the coven grounds.

An instant later, the gargoyle’s vision went black
for a few seconds. When his vision returned, he was flying high over trees. I
saw us in Henry’s truck before he flew past us and focused on three Jeeps,
driving in a perfect line, all with perfectly matched speeds.

“Henry, slow down. Rocky is tracking them, so we
don’t need to be right behind them.”

“What about Mr. Thomas?”

“He’s not cheating on his wife.”

*          *          *

We drove for two hours where the only spoken words
were me giving him directions. When Rocky observed the humans parking in front
of what looked like a decaying shack in the middle of the woods, I reached out
blindly to tap Henry’s arm. The truck stopped and I pulled my mind away from
Rocky.

“About two hundred feet ahead, there’s a right turn
onto a dirt path. It’s another quarter mile in. It looks like a shack.” He put
the truck into drive again. “We can’t just drive up to it.”

“I know, but we can’t leave my truck out in the open,
either. If more hunters come, my truck would give us away.” He then drove off
the road, into the ditch, and right through to the forest. My car sure as hell
couldn’t have done that.

Once the truck was adequately hidden, we got out.
Unfortunately, maroon wasn’t the easiest color to hide in the woods.

We approached the compound cautiously, relying both
on my instincts and his jaguar senses. Right before we reached the shack, I
felt Rocky press against my consciousness questioningly. “
Stay alert and
don’t let anyone leave
,” I told him.

Henry held out his hand to stop me from continuing
and then sniffed a couple of trees. “There’s a perimeter. It smells like
electricity. It’s not enough to be dangerous, but it’s definitely some kind of
sensor. I bet you can confuse it with magic.”

“Possibly, but I have no idea how. Can’t we just walk
over it?”

“I don’t know how thorough it is. I’ll shift and go
invisible. If you can create a storm, blow some leaves around or something, it
should be enough to serve as a decoy. I’ll tell you when I know the entrance is
clear.”

I nodded, just about to open a mental link between
us, when a small explosion went off inside. Henry looked at me and I just shrugged.
My instincts fired up, urging me forward. “I think that was our distraction.”

We approached the shack easily without encountering
anyone. Inside, it was exactly what I expected an abandoned shack to look like.
There was just a bed and a kitchenette, and every surface was covered in dust.
An animal had been in there from the looks of the cabinets, which were
scratched and open.

“Over here,” Henry said, opening what appeared to be
an empty pantry. He then lifted the floor of the pantry, which was no more than
a section of plywood, to reveal a ladder. “I can’t see anything. Someone has
been here in the last couple of minutes, but I don’t hear anyone at the moment.
There’s running water, though.”

I pulled a penlight out of my pocket, clicked it on,
and aimed it into the dark. It looked like a concrete basement. “This is going
to suck,” I said before climbing down. Henry followed.

The room at the bottom was only eight by eight and
there were two doors leading out of it. Henry ignored the door to our left and
opened the one to our right. It led to another concrete hallway.

There was a drainpipe in the ceiling that was
spilling a small stream of water in front of us, which flowed down the hallway.
Since no one came running to investigate, I assumed the explosion had
successfully distracted the humans.

Henry kept sniffing. “Are your instincts giving you
anything?” he asked.

“No. Why? Are you picking something up?”

“Not in this form. My cat thinks I’m missing
something, though.”

Another explosion came from somewhere in front of us,
through at least two walls from the sound of it. “One explosion tells me they
had an accident. Two tells me they’re either in the middle of a series of
experiments, or they’re under attack.”

There was a right turn with a metal gate and a
straight tunnel that turned left in fifty feet. I indicated the gate and
started looking for a lever. “I think it’s this way.”

“The scent is stronger the other way.”

“They’re hiding from
vampires
; they know about
disguising their scent. I bet they’re using the water to throw it off.”

He grabbed the bars of the gate to push or pull it,
only to jerk his hands back with a pained growl. I couldn’t see what the wounds
looked like, only that blood was dripping into the water.

“Is it silver?” I asked shining my light on the
metal.

“It’s sharp
and
silver.”

I had to look very closely to see the silver, razor
edges on the sides of the bars. It was meant to injure anyone trying to lift
them. I pulled off my outer shirt and handed it to Henry. He would easily heal,
but the silver was going to slow down the process quite a bit.

I remembered watching Flagstone use Hunt’s magic. “I
might have an idea.” From the few martial arts classes I took at Quintessence,
I knew it didn’t have a chance of working. Fortunately, I wasn’t going to let
that stop me from doing it anyway.

I drew on the connection between Rocky and me, felt
his strength, and pulled it into me. The gargoyle let me do it, but he didn’t
make it easy for me. He could have stopped me if he wanted to. Despite the fact
that
he
was the familiar and I was the wizard, he was far older than me.
Since it was also his heart keeping me alive, our partnership was backwards in
a lot of ways.

Nevertheless, I was pulling my weight. I felt the
gargoyle’s magic join mine. Like when I killed John and took his magic, it was
a smooth interaction. Of course, John’s magic made me sick for a long time
afterwards. I pushed that out of my mind and focused on the pure strength of
stone that my familiar gave me.

Adrenaline surged through me, reacting with the
gargoyle’s strength. I felt the gargoyle’s presence grow stronger inside me and
my own energy geared up for a fight. I didn’t visualize what was going to
happen, I just did it. I kicked the gate, expelling all that strength into the
bars. It wasn’t as smooth as I had expected; it was almost like an explosion
inside me. Still, I was uninjured and standing, whereas the gate was on the
ground.

Henry gaped at me. “When did you become the kung fu
wizard?”

“Do not ever tell Darwin that I did that.”

“Obviously. I feel out of practice now.”

We continued without any banter. Unlike Darwin, Henry
didn’t ramble or crack jokes when he was nervous. Then again, the jaguar
shifter didn’t usually have anything to be nervous about. We quickly came to a
room with three other doors, but it was what was in the room that made me stop
and gape.

Every inch of the walls were covered in racks of
weapons. Some of them, like arrows, didn’t seem very high-tech, but there were
also bullets that were clear and filled with blood, specially designed plastic
guns, and more light bombs. I picked up one of the blood-filled bullets.

“Vampires can dig bullets out of their bodies,” Henry
explained. “However, if the bullets explode and fill them with liquid silver,
they can’t get it out before it poisons them. Furthermore, if the bullets
explode with silver-spiked blood in them, their bodies will absorb the blood
automatically and spread the silver to his heart.”

“That’s sick. How do you know that?”

“I listen to my classes at Quintessence. Before
vampires became the outcasts of the paranormals, they used to have very strong
alliances with the shifters. Similarly, fae and wizards used to be allies.
Sometimes they even exchanged mates or babies. Anyway, since vampires and
shifters are both poisoned by silver, they got pretty good at learning to avoid
it. Once the vampires became more ostracized, pack shifters like wolves and
lions began to expose their children to silver to weaken its effect on them.”

“Did it work?”

He held up his bloody hands. “Obviously.” When I just
gave him a blank stare, he nodded. “We’re not nearly as susceptible as
vampires, and pack shifters are even less affected.”