Blood Magic (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 2) (7 page)

Alex hesitated. After so many years of hiding what she was, it wasn’t an easy habit to break. Telling people grated on her fears. Naomi watched her carefully. She couldn’t sense magic, but she could read body language better than anyone.

“I just had this discussion with Sera,” she said. “She and Kai have been practically glued to each other since she told him, so I think it worked out very well for her.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am. You need to trust me about these things.”

“Yeah, I really should,” Alex laughed. “Ok, I’ll tell Logan the next time we are alone together and not in the heat of battle. Whenever that happens. I can’t say it in front of Marek. He’s really loyal to his family, and his mother is on the Magic Council.”

“Maybe I’ll arrange a way for you and Logan to be alone together. Sharing secrets isn’t the only thing you need to do with him. Alex, hon, you really need to get laid.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And from the looks of your boyfriend, he needs it too. How can you not have slept together yet?”

Alex sighed. “Busy. End of the world and all that jazz.”

“No, no, no. There’s always time,” Naomi said. “End of the world be damned. This is a
dire
emergency.”

Alex laughed. “No kidding, sister. But let’s worry about your dire emergency first. We’re going to find Eva.”

The mischievous buzz in Naomi’s magic settled down. She watched, uncharacteristically silent and still. Alex stopped and closed her eyes, reaching out with her magic. She sensed Naomi beside her, her unique sweet and peppery blend of fairy and mage. Using that magical mixture as a tether, she pushed out further, searching for other similar signatures. Sweat dribbled down her neck, a sticky reminder of her unfamiliarity with exercises in subtlety.

And it was a task that required great subtlety. Subtlety and patience, her other great failing. Luckily, she had stubbornness in droves. She pushed onward, ignoring the painful twinge in her temples. She passed monsters and mages, ghosts and fairies. Vampires came next, packed into clusters of thick, heavy magic; they often came in large groups.

She jumped a little in her boots when she felt the first hybrid. She jumped a little less when she found the second. And the third. And the fourth. By the time she brushed past the eighth, she wasn’t jumping at all. More and more, faster and faster, they came. And not just fairy-mage blends. There were vampire mages and vampire fairies. Tons and tons of them. Many of them were born hybrids, not changed by magic. They felt different than the made hybrids, more harmonious.

“They are everywhere,” Alex said, opening her eyes to meet Naomi’s. “The city is lit up with their magic.”

CHAPTER SIX

The Pirates' Plunder

THEY WALKED BACK to the house to find Logan and Marek standing on opposite sides of the room, their arms folded across their chests, their eyes shooting daggers at each other.

“What have you been fighting about?” Alex asked.

Neither of them said anything.

“Your silence only confirms your guilt,” she told them. Sometimes she wished she had super-hearing. They had obviously shut up as soon as they’d heard her and Naomi enter the house.

“We weren’t arguing. We were having a heated debate,” Logan said. He even said it with a straight face. You had to love assassins.

“A heated debate, you say?” She looked from him to Marek. “Well, at least we didn’t come back to find the house on fire. Now, let’s get back to business.”

Again silence.

“I find your enthusiasm positively riveting,” she said drily.

“Cookie?” Naomi asked Alex, her bright smile cutting through the silence like a katana.

Alex took the cookie. It was chocolate. When the world went to shit, chocolate was basically a no-brainer.

“I’ve sniffed out the city magic,” Alex reported, not even caring that the sentence made her sound like a bloodhound. “There are hybrids everywhere, both born and changed. There are also more vampires in London than I ever cared to know.”

“Can you figure out where the hybrids and vampires are clustered?” Logan asked, stepping up to the laminated map of the city tacked to the wall.

“I can try.”

Alex closed her eyes, spreading out her magic again to feel for supernaturals. She sensed Logan’s unique low hum of magic and Marek’s explosive mixture of the elements with an aftertaste of summoned dragon. She felt Naomi’s blend of fairy and mage, a sweet and salty song.

From there, she reached out beyond the house, breezing past the mages in the neighboring houses. The city’s magical auras flipped past faster and faster, galloping through her head, building into a crescendo. The combined magic slammed into her, frying her nerves. It was like being struck by a lightning battering ram. London was not a small city, and the magic density was simply staggering. Alex gritted her teeth against the full force of many thousand supernatural beings. Swimming upstream on a river of fire and ice—against the wind, of course—she sorted through the auras, grouping them. The subtlety of the task was giving her one hell of a migraine. Her body was shaking like an earthquake was going off inside of it.

“Vampires,” she said, tapping a spot on the map. “Hybrids. Vampires. Lots of vampires. Lots of hybrids.”

One by one, she pointed to different spots on the map where supernaturals were clustered, and Logan circled them with a marker. By the time she was done, the map was filled with more red and blue circles than a piece of modern art. She let her magic loose. It snapped, shooting out of her in a shockwave that rocked the furniture.

“Bloody hell,” Marek said, righting himself. “You really need to control that, Alex.”

“Sorry.” The vibrations in her body faded, taking her headache with it. Thank goodness for small victories. She turned to Logan and the map. “You color-coded the clusters,” she said with a smirk. He’d also drawn larger circles over the spots with more vampires or hybrids. Talk about dotting your ‘i’s and crossing your ‘t’s.

“I thought it would be useful.”

“Sometimes you’re such a nerd,” she chuckled.

“I’d be careful with who you’re calling a nerd, love,” he said.

“Nerd.” She smirked at him.

“Mercenary,” he shot back, stepping closer.

“Assassin.” She poked his chest with her finger.

He caught her arm, twisting it behind her back. “Reckless.” His breath hissed, hot and deep, into her ear.

Somewhere outside Alex’s fog of euphoria, Marek cleared his throat.

“Right,” she said, snapping out of it.

She broke Logan’s hold. Ok, so he let her break his hold. The man was too damn strong. If he’d wanted to, he could have held her. She’d have been forced to resort to more extreme measures. Like magic. Or biting. Heat flushed her face as the memory of tasting his blood flooded her mind. She shook herself. That was weeks ago. She didn’t crave blood. Not anymore. Or maybe she was just fooling herself.

“Ok,” she said, pushing those thoughts deep down, where they’d hopefully remain until at least next Tuesday. “We should scout out all these locations, the clusters of hybrids and vampires. Some of them might be Convictionite bases. From a distance, the Blood Orb feels just like a cluster of vampires.” She looked at Logan. “Is your program done going through the Convictionite files?”

He swiped his tablet off the desk, checking the screen quickly before putting it back down. “Yes. It mentions two locations. Here.” He pointed to a spot on the map with both a red and a blue circle. “And here.” He pointed to another with both vampires and hybrids represented. “The files only list those locations. They don’t elaborate on what’s going on there. There is also mention of something called ‘the Sultan’, a sort of weapon from the sound of it.”

“I think the Sultan is a person,” she told him. “The Convictionites at Purge mentioned him. Or her? They said he was your mother’s pet.”

“A mage?”

“Maybe. What else do the files you stole say about the Sultan?”

“Nothing.”

Typical. “The Evil Queen is paranoid.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Or this could all be a trap.”

Alex looked at the map. There were several more locations with overlapping circles. The Convictionites could be keeping the Blood Orb and the hybrids at any one of them.

“Those two spots are still our best bet,” Logan said, as though he’d read her mind. “Two locations. We could check them out faster if we split into pairs.”

“I’m going there.” Naomi pointed at Hyde Park, a big hybrid circle beside a smaller vampire circle. Her choice was no surprise.

Marek’s next words were surprising, though. “As am I.”

“Why, Marek, I had no idea you liked Naomi so much,” Alex teased him.

“That is the largest hybrid circle,” he said. “Eva’s most probable location.”

Naomi spun around to face him. “You know my cousin?”

“Yes.” He sure wasn’t wasting words today.

“And?” Alex prompted him.

“And she is the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

Surprise wasn’t a common shade on Naomi, but she was wearing it right now like it was this season’s color. It hardened on her lips. “So you’re the douchebag who broke her heart.”

“Yes.”

Naomi glowered at him.

“I was stupid,” he said, pain dripping every word. “An idiot.” The pain hardened into stone-faced resolve. “I will save her.”

“No.” She punched him in the arm. “
We
will save her.”

And that seemed to be that. Naomi appeared satisfied that he would do whatever he could to save her cousin. Alex had certainly never seen that look in his eyes before—the look that said he’d tear apart the whole city to find Eva. Wow.

Naomi and Marek grabbed some weapons from what had once been a supply closet. It had since been remodeled and now resembled Van Helsing’s armory more than a convenient place to stow brooms and mops. Equipped with steel and channeling the spirit of vengeance, they left the house.

“I’m going to change into my official ass-kicking outfit,” Alex told Logan, then headed up to her room.

* * *

Their mark was in Clerkenwell. Whereas Naomi and Marek were headed to the highest concentration of hybrid magic in London, Alex and Logan had the spot of greatest vampire density. In theory. She was still trying to get the hang of this whole magic-sniffing thing. But that location was listed in the Convictionite file, so it had to be significant. The file probably wasn’t a compilation of the Evil Queen’s favorite curry restaurants.

Their mark turned out to be an old brick building that was pretty much indistinguishable from all the other surrounding brick buildings. The only thing that told Alex they’d reached their spot was the cluster of vampires just beyond the front door. There were four of them, hardly the deluge of vampire magic she’d felt earlier.

She opened up her senses further—and that’s when she felt them. Hundreds of them, spreading out in every direction, all around them. Either the Convictionites were revving up the Blood Orb to full power, or she and Logan were surrounded by an army of vampires. She turned in place, looking for the army. There wasn’t a vampire in sight.

“This is weird,” she told Logan, then described the odd vibes she was getting.

“I can’t hear any vampire besides those four,” he said, his voice so low that she could barely hear him.

“Convictionite puppets?” she asked, trying to whisper just as quietly.

“I don’t think so. They’re playing poker. And drinking ale.” He rolled his eyes. “I doubt the Convictionites would waste the Blood Orb’s power on either pastime.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We do it like we did in Amsterdam.”

“Oh, good.” She grinned. “My favorite way.”

She followed him to the house, trailing his footsteps, following in his shadow. They glided silently up to the door and kicked it down—not so silently. As the door came crashing down, flooding Alex’s nose with the stench of blood and demon, the four vampires seated around the poker table jumped out of their chairs. They didn’t make it far.

Alex aimed for the two on the right. Her volley of knives split through the air like a flock of steel birds, swallowing the vampires in a silver shower. At the same time, Logan’s knives met their marks. The vampires roared as the blades stapled them to the table, their chairs, the floor…

One of them pulled at the knives, trying to yank himself free. Logan crossed the room with supernatural speed and pressed his sword to Mr. Wiggly’s neck.

“I wouldn’t,” he warned, his voice chilled to arctic temperatures. “Even vampires can’t regrow a severed head.”

“Slayer,” the vampire hissed. “And the Black Plague,” he added as Alex pointed her sword at his companions. The vampires all stopped wiggling.

Logan gave them a cursory glance. “Pirates.”

“I got that,” Alex replied. “The leather and eyeliner kind of gave them away. Geez, can’t you guys ever come up with something original?”

“You have some nice leather and eyeliner yourself,” said the vampire with the ponytail, his eyes panning up her black leather ensemble.

“You’re hitting on me? Really?”

He licked his lips in response. Bah, vampires. They only cared about two things: blood and sex.

“Word on the street is the Black Plague’s a mage,” another of the vampires said. This one had ruby-red dreadlocks. It just kept getting better and better.

“Yep.” She grinned at him. “Wanna see one of my fire spells?”

“Fire doesn’t kill us. Wrong kind of vampire, love.”

Thank you, Mr. Smarty Pants.
“I’m well aware of your weaknesses. And how to exploit them.” Fire flared to life on her hand. She allowed it to pour down her arm in sparkling spirals. “Fire might not kill you right away. But it hurts like hell.”

“That doesn’t look like normal fire.” Ponytail’s eyes grew wide.

“She doesn’t smell like a normal mage either,” said the fourth vampire. He inhaled deeply, then cleared his throat, as though her scent had stung it.

“What can I say? I’m a freak.” She shrugged. “Now that the pleasantries are over, let’s get down to business.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Ponytail said quickly.