“What now?” Reese asked, but before any of them could answer he continued, “You hear that?”
The three of them stood on the stairs in silence. Drakon hearing, like all their other senses, was heightened and some with sonic power could actually hear through walls as thick as steel. They didn’t have to be that powerful to hear the soft footfalls coming toward them. Reese stood at the bottom of the stairs, bracing his body for whatever was coming toward them. In his human form his power of indestructibility was like a force field. As a dragon it was a lethal weapon that allowed him to get closer to any enemy than anyone else.
Magnum always carried a gun. He reached behind his back and pulled the long-nozzle silver-plated weapon and held it in front of him. Steele preferred hand-to-hand combat first and foremost, but he also had a gun. He didn’t get a chance to draw it because a woman came around the small turn from the stairs on the twenty-first floor to the stairs on the twenty-second. Simultaneously a door on the twenty-second floor going to the twenty-third opened.
Steele spun around and grabbed the arm of the guy coming through the twenty-third-floor door, pulling him hard and then releasing, so that the gun the guy carried bounced off the opposite wall. Reese only had to reach out a hand, grabbing the woman by her neck. The man knocked his head on the wall a bit too hard and slumped to the ground, out cold. The woman on the other hand, bared her sharp fangs and hissed at Reese.
He dropped her instantly, but stood over her, daring her to move.
“You can kill me but then you won’t learn who’s really after that dagger,” she said.
Steele and Magnum both recognized the woman who’d been sucked down a storm drain in an alley a few months ago. Her hair was lighter now, almost white, but still cut low to her head and her eyes flashed a brilliant gold, two distinct contrasts to her golden-brown hue.
She was also the woman Ziva had been involved with at some point.
“Let her up,” Magnum told Reese.
“Your name’s Enes,” Steele said, coming down the steps behind Magnum.
Reese stepped away from her but only far enough so she could get up off the floor. She rubbed her neck as she cut her eye at him, then turned her attention to Magnum and Steele.
“You were at Twilight a couple weeks ago,” she said, looking directly at Steele.
He’d been there several nights, looking for her or the other vamp who’d disappeared with her, but on the last night he’d been distracted the moment Ravyn walked in. “Yeah. And?”
Enes shook her head. She was no more than five feet even, with a small compact build, and according to Ziva, she hadn’t been a vampire for very long.
“That woman you couldn’t keep your eyes off was told where to get the dagger,” she said before crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the wall. “I bet you wanna know why.”
“I wanna know why you’re here right now claiming to have information and acting like you want to share it with us. Were you following us?” Reese asked. He took another step closer to her, but Enes just glanced at him and rolled her eyes.
“That’s a good question,” Magnum said, while Enes returned her gaze to Steele.
“Who told her where to find it and why?” Steele asked. “And don’t even think about striking some type of bargain. You’re outnumbered here and things definitely won’t go well for you if you do.”
She seemed to consider his words for a second, but then shrugged. “I wasn’t following you. I was waiting for you because after I saw this on the news I knew it was your handiwork. She can’t know that I told you.”
“If you’re scared of someone finding out, then why’re you snitching?” Reese pressed her.
“I’m not scared of anybody or anything, just not trying to get in the middle of this war that’s already brewing between you dragonfolk and the Royal Blood,” Enes said.
“It’s a little late for that,” Steele added.
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t know what Warrick was doing. In fact, I tried to keep him away from that woman because I knew she was trouble the minute the blue-eyed dragon walked her into that hall. But he wouldn’t listen and look where that landed him.”
“Yeah, turned to ashes in the Far Realm by the sick spirit that he decided to join forces with,” Magnum replied.
Steele recalled all that had happened four months ago when Shola had been brought to Burgess to marry Warrick, an outcast of the Royal Blood. But they’d already conquered that demon and killed the idiot Warrick who’d brought him to town. What he was more concerned with now, was how any of this involved Ravyn.
“Look, just tell us what you know and we’ll go from there,” Steele said.
She pushed away from the wall and walked toward the steps behind them. Reese followed her, sneering when she turned to give him an impatient look.
“Alright, well, all I know is Vertis was paid to track her down.”
“Paid by who?” Steele asked.
Enes looked up at him. “Temptra, the Dhampir.”
“Dhampir.” Magnum whispered the word while Steele’s fingers clenched into fists.
“Go on,” he told her.
“I’ve never met her, just read about her in the old tombs Warrick kept sealed in a vault. Once he was gone, Hikeen sent a bunch of his knights to clean out Warrick’s townhouse. They didn’t know about the apartment he had in the Luxe building. That’s where the vault was,” she said.
“What does Temptra want?” Steele asked.
“You remember that army of vampires Warrick wanted to use his rule over Mobo to resurrect? Well, Temptra’s on a much bigger scale. There’s more than one vampire army buried in that region and Temptra wants to command them all. To do that she must raise the Royal Guild, and they’re in the Congo territory
