Page 6

L achlan woke with Valentine standing over him. The eldest Greatdrakes raised a dark brow.

"Oh, good. You're awake at last. Where the fuck is my brother?' he asked.

"Let him wake up before you start interrogating him, bro," Reeve chided.

Lachlan's brain was scrambled as he tried to remember how he got into the infirmary. The car, the crash... Apollo .

"Apollo!" he groaned and sat up. "They took him."

"Easy, Lachie. You are pretty bashed up," Charlotte said from where she stood at the end of the bed. Lachlan had been stripped down to his boxer briefs and had Charlotte's healing bandages over his shins and another on his side.

"They hit us hard but with precision. They didn't want to kill Apollo.

They injected him with something. Left me to die," Lachlan rambled and rubbed at his face.

He rattled off the registration number of the van.

"It was a white van. Same make and model as the one last night. Fuck. I need my phone."

"You need to drink this," Charlotte said primly, handing him a vial. His heart clenched when he saw it was one of Apollo's 'Ouch No More' specials. He downed it and gagged before chasing it with a glass of water.

"Layla is already pulling footage from the traffic cameras and is tracing the van," Charlotte told him. "Take a breath and then tell us everything."

"Especially the part about Apollo nearly getting kidnapped last night and no one fucking telling his family," Valentine snarled softly.

"He didn't want to go home. It's why I brought him here," Lachlan snapped back. He quickly told them everything about the club, the kidnapping attempt, and trying to locate whatever the fuck Sanguis Vitae was.

"They are meant to have disbanded after Catherine Medici's death," Valentine said, recognizing the name immediately. "What? I'm a magician, and I went through a period of being interested in Nostradamus and how legitimate he was."

"' Meant to have disbanded' doesn't mean they did. They clearly have funding, and they weren't going to stop until they had your brother," Lachlan said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed so he could sit up properly.

Reeve ran a hand through his messy brown hair. "How did they know to hit you here?"

Lachlan pinched the bridge of his nose and swore. "The van. I had some recruits tow it here so I could go over it. I have the body in it of the guy who tried to kidnap Apollo the first time."

Valentine clapped his hands, making Lachlan wince. "Get your pants on, Lachie. I need to see this van. If the magic signature is still fresh on the suicide spell, I might be able to figure out what we are dealing with."

"Apollo..."

"Layla is still tracing the van from the highway. Until then, we follow our own leads. If Layla can't find him, we have some of Apollo's hair that we can use to track him," Valentine replied, handing Lachlan a pair of clean jeans.

"Why do you have his hair?"

"Are you kidding me? He has four different hairbrushes.

I will take some from one of those," Valentine replied with a shrug.

"That is, of course, if Apollo doesn't talk his way out of the situation and they end up giving him back.

He will probably annoy them so much that they dump him in sheer frustration. "

"Really funny," Lachlan replied, pulling on his jeans. "These fuckers aren't amateurs."

"Neither is Apollo. I know you see him as some delicate unicorn, but he can be a right fucker himself. He knows this kind of magic, especially if the Sanguis Vitae are still primarily interested in alchemy. He will find a way to escape, or we will rescue him."

"Gods, you're so cold about this." Lachlan found a shirt and put it on, his ribs barking in pain.

Valentine gave him a scathing smile. "One of us needs to be. You can't see past the hearts in your eyes. My brother isn't a fool. He will handle the situation until we find him. Now, show me this van."

Charlotte caught Lachlan by the arm. "Please be gentle with yourself for the next few hours. Let the patches work, and I'll prepare others to take with you wherever you end up going."

"Thanks, cousin," Lachlan said and hugged her. "And thank you for getting me off the road."

"That was Valentine, but I helped clean you up. Passing out on asphalt is never a good idea."

Lachlan looked at Valentine. "Thanks."

"You called me, and I tracked your phone. I was in the area," Valentine replied and made a hurry-up gesture. "Reeve? Call Dad and update him. Get him to find some of Apollo's hair, just in case. Ask him to check the archives about the Sanguis Vitae."

"Will do," Reeve said, already reaching for his phone.

Lachlan hobbled down to the elevator and tried to swallow the panic bubbling up his throat.

"You need to breathe, Lachie. You are no use to him if you panic," Valentine said, getting in beside him.

"I can't help it. I got the van brought here. I had a bad feeling about moving him from the estate, but he insisted on leaving. I shouldn't have let him go," Lachlan replied.

Valentine laughed softly. "You really are naive if you think you could stop Apollo from leaving if he wanted to. This isn't your fault, Lachlan. We will find him. Don't you worry about that."

Lachlan nodded, but he didn't feel any better. He should never have let Apollo out of his bed.

"I'm concerned about what they want with him. If they want his opinion as an alchemist, why not approach him through conventional means? Why go through the drama of kidnapping if they didn't mean to hurt him? They know who our families are and still thought it was worth the risk."

"Which tells us what?" Valentine pushed as they stepped out of the elevator.

"That they are idiots or powerful enough to think they could stand against the family."

"They could be desperate."

"They didn't seem desperate." Lachlan's voice hardened. "The guy who killed himself said Apollo was a prize. Like they were big game hunters or some shit."

"Troubling. Let me have a look at what I can find on the body. Have you searched it yet?"

Lachlan shook his head. "No. Apollo was a mess, vomiting up whatever they had dosed him with. I didn't want to leave him. I was going to call you or Cosimo in because the magic was fucked up, Val. I've never seen anything like it. He used his own blood to kill himself rather than be taken."

Valentine was silent as they walked through the house and outside toward the van parked behind the estate.

"Blood magic is dark magic, but it has its uses," he finally said. "He was a true believer if he was willing to kill himself rather than be questioned."

"A true believer in what?"

Valentine shrugged. "It's what we need to find out.

What I remember about them is too old to be really useful.

Back then, alchemy was an art being practiced all over Europe.

Catherine was fascinated by it, and that makes sense, considering she was a Medici.

The Sanguis Vitae was focused on what all the alchemists were chasing at that time. "

"Turning lead into gold?" Lachlan asked, reaching for his limited knowledge of alchemy.

"Among other things. Primarily, they wanted the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. No one really knows what it is. The lead-into-gold thing was generally told to their rich patrons because the rich always want more gold," Valentine explained.

They opened the back doors of the van, and Lachlan straightened the body out. It hadn't begun to smell yet, but they would have to cremate it soon enough. Valentine wasted no time going through the guy's pockets.

They found a burner phone, the empty syringe used on Apollo, and a wallet containing a handful of Euros and a fake ID. A high-quality fake ID only reinforced that they had money backing them, whoever they were.

Valentine lifted the dead man's shirt. On his chest were various tattoos. "Interesting," was all Valentine said, and took photos of the swirls, sigils, and snakes. "He was definitely a practitioner. I can feel the magic in these sigils."

The blood that he used to kill himself was still over his mouth and nose.

Valentine pulled a fine-bladed stiletto from inside his leather jacket and used the tip to poke at the seal.

"The spell thickened it almost like a silicone, and it still hasn't softened, even though the caster is dead.

Usually, spells die with their creator, which tells us? "

"It wasn't originally his spell?" Lachlan guessed.

Valentine grinned. "Very good. This is advanced work. He might have been taught the trigger words to set it off, but he didn't create it. He's not qualified enough."

"How do you know that?"

"He's too young."

"He looks as young as you," Lachlan pointed out.

Valentine looked up at him. "Yes, but if he were as good as me, I would know of him. Our paths would have crossed."

Lachlan remembered Reeve mentioning that Valentine was the most gifted magician of their generation in Europe, maybe the world.

He did a lot to hide how good he really was, but he studied all kinds of magic, not just one discipline.

Even the fucked-up kinds of magic no one else would touch.

It was why he was the most dangerous of all the Greatdrakes, except maybe Cosimo.

Lachlan suspected Cosimo was just better at hiding it than Valentine.

Valentine took more photos of the blood seal and answered his phone when it rang.

"Hello, Dad. You get the photos?" Valentine asked and put the phone on speaker.

"I did. Sanguis Vitae was obsessed with bloodlines back in the day.

They thought magical talent could be traced through different families, and they would recruit from them.

There isn't much in our records, but I have reached out to another Medici expert I know.

He might have some idea of what happened to Catherine's society after she died," Cosimo said.

"We need to find Apollo as fast as we can. "

"We are trying to," Lachlan pointed out.

"Why?" Valentine asked at the same time. "What do you think they want with him?"

"I can't help but think of their obsession with recreating the Philosopher's Stone," Cosimo said, and his voice cracked. It betrayed just how worried he was.

"Why does the stone matter?" Lachlan pressed, not understanding.

"Dragon blood is mentioned a lot in alchemy as an ingredient.

In some of the experiments, it's referring to the red tree resin.

There were schools of thought that meant it literally ," Cosimo continued.

"The Sanguis Vitae were also obsessed with blood magic.

They could still believe that they need real dragon blood as a transformative substance to make the stone. "

"But Apollo hasn't even shifted yet. If they were after a dragon, the world knows Taranis has returned. Why not go after one of the knights?" Lachlan demanded, crossing his arms so Valentine wouldn't see how much his hands were shaking.

"Too hard of a target," Valentine answered immediately. "And Apollo is a famous alchemist. A prodigy. They might have thought he would be more sympathetic to their cause and want him to work with them."

"Yeah, Apollo doesn't exactly strike me as the team player type," Lachlan grunted.

"Hence the kidnapping. This is good news," Valentine said and stepped away from the body, done with his examination.

Lachlan's fists clenched. " How is this good news?"

"It means they won't want to kill him straight away," Cosimo said, sounding tired. "Not unless he gives them no other choice."

Valentine and Lachlan shared a look. Apollo was going to be furious when he woke up, which wouldn't put him in a listening mood.

"Find some of his hair, Cosimo. Do whatever tracking spell you need to do. We need to find him," Lachlan said and prayed to whatever gods would listen that Apollo didn't piss off his kidnappers until they got there.