Perry struggled to a sitting position. “Fido’s balls, not again.”
The last time he had described the evil, Perry had teased him. Now his friend sat white-faced with pain, a hard expression in his eyes that Lore hadn’t seen before. Perry gave a bitter smile. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not really up to running.”
“It’s Belenos,” Darak said, understanding sparking in his eyes. “Now I understand. He has a scrying ball. He’s using it to spy on his enemies.”
“That’s why he’s been a step ahead of us all along.” Lore looked at Perry. “If you used a spell to locate his image on surveillance video, that’s how he found you.”
“Shortcuts,” Perry said sourly. “I should know better than that.”
Darak pulled a carved wooden amulet from his pocket. He turned it over in his hand and shook it. “Nia, my second, made me take this to hide from the evil eye. Maybe its battery’s dead.”
“How do we block Belenos out?” Lore asked.
“You don’t. I do,” said Perry.
“You can’t,” Errata shot back. “You’re full of holes.”
Perry flushed with temper. “Are there any other sorcerers in the room?”
Errata folded her arms, her expression hurt and angry at once. “Just don’t complain to me when you bleed to death, okay?”
Perry shook his head, as if shaking off her words. “Cats, always with the big drama. Hand me that red stone on the bookcase.”
With his good arm, Perry pointed to a sphere of red jasper about the size of a man’s fist. Lore did as he asked, finding the sphere was heavier than he expected. He passed it over carefully, afraid that one of them would drop it. Perry braced his hand on his knee, cupping the stone.
“Drama my hind paw,” Errata muttered. “You’re just another macho idiot.”
“Better that than an idiot in that evil entity’s crosshairs.”
Errata clamped her mouth into a thin line.
Lore shot her a look he hoped was sympathetic. He didn’t blame her for worrying. Perry was reciting something in a low voice. The wolf stared hard at the ball of jasper, a deep furrow creasing his brow. A faint glow was gathering around the ball, but it was obviously coming at a price. His face was falling into hard, tired lines, his skin draining of any remaining color.
Then, as suddenly as if a switch had turned on, the ball of red jasper began to radiate a thick, ruddy glow. Perry’s shoulders sagged. At first the light spilled over his hands, heavy as syrup, but with a single word from him, it feathered into the air, fanning out like a drop of ink in a pan of water. It crept farther and farther in every direction, a splash in slow motion. As it thinned to cover every inch of space, the color grew so thin it was barely noticeable.
Lore and the others watched, looking up, down, and to every corner as the room filled with the faint light. “What’s it doing?” Lore demanded.
“Call it magical anti-spyware,” Perry said softly. “It’ll scrub any unwanted spells within a city block.”
He set the ball on the coffee table and sank back against the couch cushions, closing his eyes again. “We’re safe enough for the moment, but we’ve got to fix this, quick. I can’t shield the whole town.”
“If you attack the tunnels, expect resistance,” Darak said grimly. “Chances are, Belenos will see you coming.”
Lore’s phone chose that moment to ring. He flipped it open. “Hello?”
“It’s Baines.”
The phone line crackled as if the connection was breaking up.
“Detective.” Lore’s heart leaped. “Thanks for returning my messages. Is Talia with you?”
“She’s gone. I need your help. I’m willing to bet she does, too.”
“What happened?”
“The only clue I’ve got is a pair of fang marks in my neck.”
There was static on the line.
“What did you say?” Lore demanded. There was another burst of static that made Lore growl at the phone.
Finally, a clear sentence came through. “I can’t get through to the station. I’m underground. I don’t have a clue where I am. It’s freezing cold. Someone bit me and then dumped me down here.”
The call went dead.
Chapter 28
Friday, December 31, 10:00 p.m.
Spookytown
They were going into the tunnels.
They’d gathered in the alley outside the Castle door. It was cold and it was snowing again, a steady drift of fat, white flakes that made the crowd around the open manhole cover look like a scene from a demented Christmas card.
For the last ten minutes, Lore had been giving everyone their instructions, the logical part of his brain still working even if the rest was MIA. At the moment, Lore didn’t care about evil bubbling up through the storm drains—he wanted Talia in his bed, and the rest of the world could line dance its way to hell. But she was missing and probably underground with Belenos, so down the manhole Lore and his makeshift army would go.
There were wolves and hounds, both in beast and man form. Joe had spread the word to some of the local vampires, too. They stood at the back, lounging against the brick wall and smoking, flashing fang as they laughed at their own jokes.
Darak had left to meet the other members of Clan Thanatos. Besides the two that Lore had met, a handful of others had just arrived from down the coast by private boat. They would carry out their part of the plan separately. Clan Thanatos would cover the operations aboveground, Lore and his friends below. As they’d expected, Belenos had given his assassins the word to set Omara’s doom in motion. Lore hoped Darak was as good as he claimed, because at a rough estimate Belenos’s welcome party for the queen, not counting the Hunters, outnumbered Clan Thanatos ten to one.
Mavritte stood across from Lore, on the other side of the sewer entrance. She’d planted her feet as if she were braced for another attack, her hands fisted on her hips. The strappy leather outfit she wore showed the deep scars in her skin, reminding him of the sacrifices she had made fighting for her people. It was good to have her on his side. It meant something that, despite their differences, she’d brought the Redbones when he asked.
Time was their enemy. Hurrying through his instructions, Lore forced himself to look calm and in charge. “Any questions?” he concluded, scanning the crowd.
“Go over the bit again about how we’re not going to be made into throw rugs by the Hunters,” said Joe, who had left his bar to support Lore in the fight. “Just for me.”
Joe was carrying a weapon called a bardiche, which looked like a thin, curved ax on a long pole. The blade was almost as long as his arm, but Joe handled it with the ease of long familiarity. No villain in his right mind was coming near that thing.
A camera flashed. Errata was there, documenting everything. Lore wanted to snap at her. Sure this was news and she was a journalist, but the constant retinal assault was getting old.
Perry wasn’t there, and that left a hole. Since coming to Fairview, they’d been friends, always together in a fight—against the demon Geneva; against their foes in the Castle; and in a dozen bars in Fairview and surrounds. Perry’s absence was the marker of just how serious this was. He was the first casualty. There could be more.
Talia might be tied up and at the mercy of her sire. A sick lurch jolted Lore’s stomach.
And where the hell was Detective Baines?
With his heart in his throat, he gave the order to move. He’d prepared his people as best he could but,
