Page 20 of Relics of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #2)

20

When I walked into the office, the two magically enhanced men that I’d sensed stood to either side of the door. They wore security uniforms, their muscles practically bursting the seams. One tensed, reaching for me before pausing and glancing toward an ornate mahogany desk across the room.

A wispy-haired man of sixty-ish wore a business suit and sat in the chair, watching me. To his side, between the desk and a huge gun safe against the wall, stood a thin bald man a decade or two older than he and wearing medical scrubs that included rubbery blue gloves. They looked like the kind someone wore to handle corrosive chemicals but pinged my senses as slightly magical.

Duncan growled as he stepped into the office beside me, looking at the security guards. At a nod from the wispy-haired businessman, the one who’d reached toward me continued to do so, taking the handgun from my grip. Since we were outnumbered, the guards also carrying firearms, I let him.

Somewhat surprisingly, Duncan didn’t object to the man taking the weapon from me. His gaze had locked onto the old guy in gloves. Was that… recognition in his eyes? It was hard to tell. Duncan’s face had grown hard and masked.

Interestingly, I didn’t sense magical blood from either of the older men, though the fellow with gloves had something in one of his pockets that gave off the vibe of a strong artifact. The businessmen also wore three rings on one hand, and at least one emanated power.

“Welcome,” he said in a familiar raspy voice. Was this the guy the guards had called Radomir? He looked to his comrade. “Nice of the girl to deliver herself.”

The girl. I almost laughed. It had been a long time since anyone had called me that.

“She is not as powerful as I expected,” Radomir added, lifting the hand with the rings.

Maybe one was the equivalent of Duncan’s magic detector.

“So sorry to disappoint,” I muttered.

“Not standing next to him, no,” the older man said, speaking for the first time. His accent reminded me of Duncan’s, of the Old World. “But that is to be expected.” His voice soft, he looked at Duncan and added, “Isn’t it, Drakon?”

Uh, Drakon?

“It’s Duncan now. I’m not a monster.”

“A dragon isn’t a monster. When they visited this world, they were majestic and powerful. Such a namesake should never have been spurned.”

“Maybe I was spurning the one who gave it to me.”

I scratched my jaw, considering Duncan out of the corner of my eye. “Is this… the scientist you told me about?” I whispered.

“Yes. Lord Abrams.”

“He looks good for a guy who was charred to a crisp.”

The old man—Abrams—looked curiously between us. Surprised Duncan had told me about his past?

“Why do you want her?” Duncan asked coolly. He seemed to be addressing Abrams rather than Radomir, the person I would have guessed was in charge.

“Research,” Abrams said. “Answering the questions of the universe so that we may create solutions for the world.”

Well, that wasn’t vague.

As Duncan glared at Abrams, I scanned the room, hoping to spot the wolf case or my mom’s medallion. I could sense more magical items present—perhaps in the desk?—and there was no doubt these guys had something up their sleeves and believed they could beat us if we turned wolf and started a fight. I couldn’t help but feel that if the stolen artifacts were here, we might be able to come out on top and get them. Duncan hadn’t pulled out his grenades yet.

The boy was crouching in the corner, mostly hidden behind a filing cabinet, but he leaned out enough to reveal curious brown eyes. The mother in me gawked in horror, thinking of my sons when they’d been that age. In the lair of villains was the last place I would have wanted them, especially when a battle might break out. The men had to expect Duncan and me to fight, didn’t they?

“Nobody here has been able to activate the amulet.” Radomir glanced at the boy, then opened a drawer in his desk. “From what my men told me… men who are now dead…” Annoyance flickered in his blue eyes, as if he wasn’t the one who’d started all this. “This amulet glowed, hinting of the power that can be commanded, when the old woman touched it.”

“My mother?” I scowled at him for describing her as an old woman.

“I thought she might be,” Radomir said softly, watching me, as if I’d already given something away. “Come forward, girl.”

He laid Mom’s medallion on his desk, still in its black velvet-covered box, and opened the lid. Unfortunately, it didn’t zap him halfway across the room for his presumptuousness. He pushed the box across the desk toward me, an invitation.

“What else have you got in there?” I nodded to the desk, hoping he had the wolf case too.

Radomir leaned back in his chair and started to fold his arms over his chest, but he paused and touched his chin thoughtfully. “Will you touch anything I draw out?”

“Not if you’ve got venomous snakes in there.”

He smiled, the gesture not reaching his eyes. “I keep those elsewhere.”

Thinking of the weird vats and equipment in the laboratory, I muttered, “I’ll bet.”

“You think she might rouse the embedded sentiences in the other artifacts?” Abrams asked.

“She might. If her blood is as special as you think.”

My blood? Other than having had powerful werewolves for parents, there wasn’t anything unique about my blood.

“She is from an old line, perhaps one of the originals, the first werewolves created long ago by the very visiting dragons that we spoke of,” Abrams said. “Despite the dilution of many, many generations, the magic flows strong through her veins. She is not some inferior spawn of a bite.”

“I didn’t come here to learn about my lineage,” I said, though, another time, I would have found the information interesting. “But to take back what you stole from my mother. And my intern.”

Radomir grunted but delved into the drawer again. He withdrew the wolf-lidded case. “This did not belong to that boy or you. Or the mortal human who acquired it in recent years. It was stolen from the castle of a vampire who held it for centuries. Of course, he was not the rightful owner either, but having had it for hundreds of years, most would consider it his.”

“The druids and werewolves who made it didn’t believe that, right?” I asked, curious about the true provenance of the case. The medallion I wanted to return to Mom, but, if I could get the case, I would feel obligated to find its proper owner. As I’d assumed, it didn’t sound like Chad had any right to it. But a vampire ? I’d heard stories that a few existed in the world, but I’d never encountered one.

“No,” Radomir said. “Their descendants would consider it theirs, most likely.”

I almost said that Bolin might be one of the legitimate descendants, but I didn’t want to give these guys a reason to hunt him down.

Watching me as he did so, Radomir withdrew a few more items from his drawer. A chalice with a jeweled wolf on the side came to rest by the case—was that the item Jasmine’s dad had looked up? After that, he added a dagger with a wolf-headed grip, an Old West revolver with a wolf carved into the ivory handle, and finally a silver platter. Engraved in the center, a wolf showed all its teeth, the image identical to that on the case. It had an inscription that might have been in the same language as the words on the case, but I was too far away to tell. Too bad. I wanted to copy it for translating. I wanted to know if any of these artifacts had the secret to the bite, and I caught myself drifting a couple of steps closer to the desk.

Duncan grunted in warning and stopped me with a hand to my arm. Shit, I hadn’t meant to move. I was drawn by the magic, but the last thing I wanted was to obey these guys’ wishes.

The two security guards shifted, their hands drifting to their firearms as they watched us. Radomir slid a hand along the inner edge of his desk. I thought he might draw out more artifacts, but he merely folded his arms afterward.

Lord Abrams lifted a hand of his own in a quelling gesture toward the guards as he looked at Duncan. “Do not stop her, Drakon. Her touch may be revealing. We already know yours will not be.”

He looked toward the boy, which also prompted Duncan to consider him. The kid ducked fully behind the filing cabinet to dodge the scrutiny.

“You have power, Drakon,” Abrams continued, “but are not, I believe, the correct sex. For all time, it has mostly been the wolf wise women who’ve handled artifacts and retained power for the pack.” He nodded toward me and continued softly. “Come forward and touch it, girl. Luna.”

His using my name creeped me out. Not only because he’d researched me— spied on me—from afar but because he was creepy. Though Duncan was fully dressed, his clothes hiding the shackle scars on his wrists, they came to my mind.

“Touch it,” Radomir said in a more stern tone. “We don’t have all night.”

“Expecting a hot date?” I muttered.

“I do have a companion waiting. We can’t all be dedicated twenty-four-seven to our research.” He gave Abrams an arch look.

Duncan still gripped my arm, not hard but firmly.

I looked over my shoulder at him. “I’ll touch them. I want to see too.” With my back fully to the men, and shifting to block my face from the guards by the door, I mouthed, “Be ready.”

If I could grab the artifacts, and we could fight our way out of here, we could escape. In the tractor if not in that awful car with a mind of its own.

Duncan hesitated, not looking like he wanted to let me get close to those guys, but he did release me.

I walked slowly to the desk. Since I already knew the medallion would respond to me, and the case hadn’t done anything except zap me when I’d handled it, I touched the chalice first.

It tingled warmly under my finger, and an image came to me of a furry werewolf that had taken the in-between form. On two legs, it stood on a rocky bank and held the chalice up to capture the spray of a waterfall. A glow came from within the cup, and the werewolf drank the water before dropping the chalice and roaring at the moon.

The two men exchanged looks. I drew my hand back, not certain if they had been able to tell that anything had happened. I didn’t know the significance of what the chalice had shared.

I touched the platter, and it zapped me the same way the case had. I jerked my hand back.

“Different creator,” Radomir said with a laugh.

He shook his hand, and I wondered if it had zapped him too. The case probably had. It hadn’t even allowed Duncan to touch it until he’d rubbed some special goo on his hand.

“Same as the case, possibly,” Abrams said.

I touched the revolver, though it didn’t emanate as much magic as the other artifacts. Since it looked like something from the 1800s gunslinger era, I doubted druids had been involved in its creation. The faintest of warm hums emanated from it.

“That one was supposedly made with Navajo magic,” Radomir said. “I didn’t pay that much for it. I’m not sure it has anything to do with werewolves. We were arguing earlier if that’s even a wolf on the grip. It looks coyote-ish.”

Abrams lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “A coyote skinwalker is their term, their legend, for those with werewolf magic. There were few real werewolves roaming those inhospitably dry lands, but one or two may have passed through over the years, lending their power to the creation of an artifact.” He nodded to the gun.

“The medallion, girl.” Radomir pointed his chin toward it, sounding impatient. No doubt because of the hot date we were keeping him from. “That’s from your own pack. I want to know what it can do.” He lowered his arms and leaned forward intently in his chair. “What you can do with it.”

“I merely wish more data for my project.” Abrams withdrew a phone and started recording me.

“Great,” I muttered, imagining a viral video of me being zapped across the room to land on my ass.

“I know what you want,” Radomir replied to Abrams. “You can keep researching all you like. Touch it, girl.”

His insistence made me want to do the opposite. I looked back at Duncan, and he nodded, a hand in his pocket. Gripping one of the grenades?

I might have been reassured, but then he glanced back through the open door. Movement on the wide stairs drew my eye too.

More of the hulking, magically enhanced men were striding up. They came in pairs, walking side by side, and there had to be twenty total. Some had guns while some were merely flexing their powerful arms. Jaws set and eyes determined, they all looked to be itching for a fight. Further, they wore camo flak vests as well as neck guards. To fend off wolf bites at their throats.

I slumped. Even with Duncan’s two grenades and our combined fighting power, we were in over our heads.