Page 37

CHAPTER 37

I was introduced to the five mages. None were masters, but all were highly talented and trained in battle magic. Blonde Ariel was water. Brunette Hilda was air. Mountainous Joseph—two meters tall and wide as a door—was earth. And dark-haired, handsome, lithe Santos was fire. All appeared to be in their thirties.

The surprise was Alexander Müller, Nikolas’s brother—he appeared to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. He was a ley line mage. Except for his aura, I might not give him a second glance on the street. Sandy-haired, several inches shorter than me, and slightly built, he was handsome, but not flamboyantly so. I could see the resemblance between him and Nikolas—and Nicola.

“Gertrude is your shadow, your bodyguard, the person who covers your back.” Captain Le Pen said. “She goes to the toilet with you, understand? You do not lose her.”

Hans was Le Pen’s second-in-command. I had fought beside him and trusted him. In addition to them, there were another twenty-eight experienced Enforcers.

“You may not always see us,” Le Pen said, “but we’ll be there. We do ask that you tell us if you decide to adopt a glamor.”

He held out an earbud. I plugged it into my ear and heard Hans say, “You can’t turn it off. It also contains a microphone and a tracker. We can hear you as well.”

“I hope everyone has strong shields,” I said. “I can cover Nicola, and probably Gertrude as well, but beyond that is questionable.”

After a summer studying under Master Adolphus, my abilities were far superior to what they had been, but he was just beginning to reveal what I might be able to do in the future. I wished he was coming along.

I imagined some huge caravan winding its way to the Langstrasse, but Nicola, her bodyguards, and I were bundled into one SUV, and we followed Captain Le Pen and the mages in another SUV. I didn’t see any other vehicles accompanying us.

The building with the nightclub where I had seen Nicola on my previous visits was gone, along with the rest of the block. Some of the stone buildings had collapsed—all were burned out. A nightmare scene. If anyone needed proof that the Knights’ plan was total eradication of the strigoi, it was there to see.

We got out of the car, and Nicola led me to a set of stairs descending into the rubble.

“This was his resting place,” she said when we reached a small room. A narrow bed took up most of the space. The door was smashed but not burned—as though an explosive had been used.

She produced the hand again. I touched it with my fingertips and inhaled its essence. Not its smell, but the taste of its magic.

Nodding, I said, “I have it. I won’t need it again. It’s been—what?—three days?”

“Yes. How much of a problem is that?”

“We shall see.”

I went to the bed and identified the presence of the same essence as the hand, then turned and climbed back up the stairs.

The Knights had loaded Verner—contained in a light-proof box, I assumed—into a vehicle. We followed its trail to a bridge across the river. Then they had turned north, taking the road along the river well past the church Nicola had been concentrating on.

I kept giving the driver directions, but soon we were on a freeway and headed out of the city.

“Where does this go?” I asked.

“A lot of places,” Le Pen answered. “This is the way I would take to go to Munich, but that’s two hundred seventy kilometers away. It could also end up in Berlin or Hamburg, or Prague. Just no telling.”

“I assume there are a lot of Universal Church properties in this direction,” I said.

Nicola barked out a laugh, her face grim. “I think you could safely say that.” She looked uncomfortable for a few miles, then said, “We can’t get caught out when the sun rises.”

We were still about five or six hours away from that, but the question of what we would do with the strigoi needed thinking about.

Le Pen was watching her closely. “You would never have undertaken a search so far away,” he said. She didn’t answer but simply shook her head.

“I think we should give this another hour or so,” I said. Turning to Nicola, I asked, “What time of day was he taken?”

“The only witnesses we have are a couple of human servants and three dhampir. They told us the assault started about two o’clock in the afternoon, and Verner was found and taken away somewhere around five or six.”

I thought about the time frame. “If the Knights have Herr Karlsson in a light-proof box, what happens when the sun sets? I mean, what triggers you to wake up?”

“He would wake up.”

“So, he wakes up and finds himself in a box he can’t get out of. What does he do?”

She chuckled. “He destroys the box and slaughters everyone in sight. He’s twelve hundred years old. You can’t imagine his power.”

Le Pen asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know how to say it in German,” I switched to English. “I think we’re on a wild-goose chase. This is a diversion. I doubt the Knights who took him captive instead of cutting off his head are stupid enough to risk him waking up in a place where he wasn’t secure.”

“They could set wards,” the Captain said.

“True, but I’d bet they wanted to put him someplace permanent first. It’s possible to move him only during the day, but if you dissolve a ward to move him from a vehicle to a dungeon, you risk losing control.”

“Whether he’s awake or not,” Nicola said, “the sun would still kill him. You would have to be inside a garage or something.”

“And he can be awake during the day as long as he’s not outside in the sun,” I said.

“Correct.”

Half an hour later, we passed through a major interchange.

“Wait! Stop! They turned off!”

The driver swore. “We have to wait until the next interchange to turn around. About fifteen minutes.”

I had always hated trying to track someone on a high-speed freeway for just that reason. But we were so far behind at that point, I decided it probably didn’t matter.

It was an antsy, fidgety time until we took the off-ramp and wound our way back onto the freeway going the other way. Kind of comical in a way, as I counted fifteen vehicles in our caravan.

I picked up Verner’s essence as soon as we met the road going south. It appeared the Knights were headed back to Zürich, but there was a lot of territory between us and the city. They could bury him almost anywhere.

“Do we have any food?” I asked.

Gertrude passed me a sack. “Courtesy of Frau Buckner.”

“Want some?” I asked.

“Nope, we all brought our own.”

A roll, a sausage, a chunk of cheese, and an apple. I wolfed everything down.