The Stone Warriors: Damian (21 page)

Today’s mission demanded more from her than old insecurities. They were about to break into a house full of bad guys who’d have magical protection, to steal an artifact that those same bad guys would kill to protect, and then break back out with the artifact and with everyone—at least the good guys—unharmed.

And then there was Damian. He’d had every opportunity to walk away before this. Hell, she was surprised he hadn’t taken off already. But he was still here. Not because of the adventure, or because it made him look good. And certainly not because of any affection for
her,
not after this morning. He was staying out of duty. Because he’d sworn an oath to Nick, and neither time nor distance could make him walk away from that.

“I trust you,” she said finally.

He nodded. “Then, when we go in there tonight, you will do as I say. I won’t order you around for no reason, but if I tell you to do something, you must do it, Cassandra. Both our lives will depend on it.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Are you like prescient or something?”

“No,” he said soberly. “Only experienced. We should study these plans together, but first I need to go out briefly. You said there was a military store nearby, where you acquired these boots.”

“Army surplus, right. It’s back near the airport, but we have time. What do you need?”

“Communication devices. You and I are likely to be separated tonight.”

“Oh!” she said brightly. “I have those in my truck. Bluetooth. The latest, greatest model. They were on sale online at—Uh, yeah, never mind. Anyway, I have them. Anything else?”

“Ammunition.”

“Also in my truck, though I’m not sure how much I have for the MP 5. We should check that.”

He nodded again. “We can do that now. I’ll just—”

“Wait. I need breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

He frowned at her, clearly not catching the contemporary reference, and not caring enough to ask. She already missed the old Damian. The one who’d joked and teased. The one she’d driven away.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s unimportant. But I do need to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”

His eyes flashed up to meet hers, and for a single second, she thought she saw passion in their depths, a little bit of the warmth that had been there before she’d been such an idiot. But then it was gone, and the new, cool Damian was back. “I am hungry,” he agreed. “Shall I—”

“No, no,” she said immediately. “I’ve got this. But maybe you can print out those floor plans and photos for us to work with later, while I cook. There’s an office upstairs with a printer. Breakfast should be ready in half an hour.”

He gave a brisk nod and closed the laptop as he stood. Casey couldn’t help watching as he rose to his full height. He was such a beautiful man. She flashed back to the previous night when he’d been stretched out above her, all that heat surrounding her, his hips spreading her thighs, pounding . . . She swallowed a sob of grief and turned away, walking over to the refrigerator and pulling the door open, letting the cool air soothe her overheated skin.

She was counting eggs, listening to his departing footsteps, when a sudden thought intruded.

“Hey!” she called, just before he left the kitchen. “What about you?”

“Me?” he asked, confused.

“Well, me, actually. Do you trust
me
now?”

He regarded her in silence for long enough that she worried what he was going to say, but then he gave her a solemn nod. “I never stopped, Cassandra.” And he left the room.

She stared after him. “Damn Casey,” she muttered. “You really fucked that one up.” And then she turned to do the one thing she still knew she was good at . . . scrambling some eggs.

NOT KNOWING WHAT level of sorcery they might encounter, they erred on the side of caution and left her Yukon a mile away. There hadn’t been much in the way of physical security visible on the satellite images Nick had sent them, which was both good news and bad. The good part was obvious—no razor-wire-topped walls to scale, no guards to avoid. But their very absence was bad. It meant Sotiris’s people were depending on arcane defenses, and those were much trickier. Casey’s talent should detect the wards before they were triggered, but knowing they were there and defeating them were two different things. It would take time for her to analyze their structure and shut them down. Assuming she could. She wasn’t a sorcerer. Whatever security they couldn’t defeat, they would avoid. Her talent would definitely enable them to do that much.

Their assault plan involved the two of them splitting up, which would leave Damian vulnerable to whatever magical defenses he encountered. Casey seemed way more worried about that possibility than he did, and she didn’t know how much was alpha male bravado and how much simple experience in dealing with sorcerers. She might have asked him, but while they’d agreed to work together, they were still tiptoeing around each other. Or rather, she was tiptoeing around
him.
He didn’t seem to give a damn one way or the other. Her feelings might have been hurt if she hadn’t been the one responsible for his change in attitude.

They paused when the house came in sight, both drawing up at the same time without the need to say anything. Casey scanned the property in the physical realm first, noting the few dim lights burning on the first floor, and the complete absence of exterior lights. That might have seemed like a good thing, but there was a huge expanse of lawn with a gravel driveway cutting through it. Walking up the driveway was out of the question when every step would announce their presence. But it was a dark night, with the moon a bare sliver of light behind unexpectedly heavy clouds. Damian wouldn’t have a problem, but she’d have to be careful crossing the lawn or end up with a twisted ankle. How ignominious would that be? All of her bragging about skills, only to be taken down by a gopher hole in the grass.

She glanced up at the clouds and hoped they didn’t mean rain, or worse. This time of year, the weather could go either way. Maybe she should have included a weather map among all of the research they’d done on this damn house.

“Comm check,” she murmured and tapped the nearly invisible bud in her right ear.

“Check,” Damian responded quietly, and she heard the corresponding electronic click from his device. But her thoughts were already several steps ahead in their plan, as she stared intently at the house.

“Cassandra,” he said, as if pulling her back to the here and now. “Are you ready?”

His shoulder was warm where it touched hers. They were crouching side by side beneath the trees across from the house. That brush of heat
bothered
her, and she wanted to move away. She couldn’t afford any distractions tonight, especially not ones that made her want things she couldn’t have.

“Ready,” she said, shoving everything else aside and keeping her eye on their target. “We’ll rendezvous in the library.”

When he didn’t respond, she turned and caught the clench of his jaw before he said, “Be safe.” Then, without a glance, he was gone, moving so swiftly that if she hadn’t been looking for him, she’d have dismissed his passage as nothing more than the moonlight playing with shadows.

She tried to catch sight of him anyway, staring until her eyes burned before giving up. That was a handy talent to have. She wondered if it was some spell, or if he was just that much superior physically. She sighed. Whatever it was, she didn’t have it.

They’d agreed that Damian would enter through the kitchen in the back of the house, while she’d aim for the sun porch that stuck out from the front on the left. She was hoping for a door, but she could break a window just as easily. Damian might not appreciate it, but she really did have skills other than her ability to sense magic. Most of her recoveries involved quiet thievery, not running gun battles. What had happened the other night was unique, to say the least. More often, she slipped in and out with no one the wiser. Damian might be able to move like a shadow, but she was a damn fine cat burglar.

She waited until the clouds shifted enough to cast a bit of moonlight on the front lawn, and then she took off, running low to the ground, her steps landing lightly until she was certain of her footing and then moving to the next. In only a few minutes, she was crouched next to the sun porch.

Dead shrubs surrounded by the detritus of a long winter huddled next to the solid half of the wall, while the windowed uppers were mostly bare, with one or two covered by crooked blinds. Overall, the sun porch had a vacant feeling, as if it hadn’t been used in years rather than months. Creeping over to the door, she was surprised to find nothing but a rather flimsy lock. It was suspicious enough that she took a few minutes to scan for magical defenses and found none. The lock barely challenged her lock-picking skills, but once she was in, the reason for the crappy security became apparent. The only thing getting through that door got her was access to the porch itself. The lock on the door from the sun porch into the house proper was first class.

She knelt before that door, too, a little rush from the challenge making her hands tingle. Shaking her hands out, she went to work and wanted to crow with pride when the complex deadbolt gave way to her skills in just a few minutes. She found herself wishing Damian had been there in that moment, so he could appreciate her talent. She shut that thought down cold. She didn’t need pats on the back from him or anyone else. She knew her own worth, and that was all that mattered.

Taking another minute to scan for magical influence, she opened the door slowly, expecting lights and shouting at any moment. But once she stepped fully into the house, the reason for the lack of a security response became obvious. The Talisman wasn’t here.

“Damn it,” she whispered. She needed to let Damian know she was in, but should she tell him about the missing Talisman? This was the problem with working with a partner. They probably should have agreed on stuff like this ahead of time. How much talking was usual for an operation like this one? She decided to wait until he confirmed his own entry, just in case. She didn’t want to overload him with information at the wrong time.

She touched her ear bud. “I’m in,” she said simply, and then proceeded the way she would have if she’d been alone. The Talisman was gone, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything worthwhile to be found here. If the house was a regular hideout for Sotiris or his people, there could be other artifacts concealed within, or valuable information left behind. This was still their best lead on the Talisman, and she worked in the same way she’d always conducted her hunts. Step by step. Anything she found here would tell her where they’d gone, and the information would be more than what she had now.

She came to her feet slowly, aware of every small movement around her, every shift of her clothing and backpack. Despite the absence of the Talisman, her magical senses were blaring a nearly constant warning, making her want to jump out of her skin. On top of that, she felt a persistent feeling of unease that spoke to the level of malevolence left over from whatever magic had been used here. This house fairly reeked of it. No question now. She needed to warn Damian.

A quick scan told her she was in a sitting room of some sort. It had one door to the sun porch, which she’d come through, and another door on the opposite wall, leading into the rest of the house. Antique-looking chairs and a sofa were gathered around a cold fireplace, and the coffee table in front of them was adorned with curlicues and elaborate carvings. Very expensive, she was sure, but not to her taste. Rather than huddle in the doorway, she slid farther into the room, sticking to the edges where the shadows were deepest. She hadn’t heard even a whisper to indicate there was anyone in the house except her and Damian, but the stink of evil was too strong to be nothing more than an echo of old magic. There was an active malevolence in this house, but whether it was from a person or an artifact, she didn’t know.

She paused before entering the main part of the house and listened with all her senses. When nothing came back at her, she put her hand on the wooden panel first, and then the knob. Still nothing. With a light twist, the knob turned and the door opened. She paused again and heard nothing, not even Damian, which didn’t surprise her all that much. He moved like a ghost.

Reaching up, she clicked her ear bud and waited for a response. When none came, she clicked again. She didn’t use these things often. Maybe they sometimes malfunctioned. She tried a third time, and when there was still no response, her perception of danger soared. There was no way Damian wouldn’t have responded if he could have, even if it was nothing but a return click.

Stepping back into the sitting room, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, letting her magical senses tell her where to go. It was a big house, but mostly empty. If they’d really wanted to confuse her, they should have filled it with people. Human life force was so loud and distracting, it took effort to weed it out. But this house was a tomb. Big and echoing and deserted, except for that cold touch of very bad magic. It was everywhere, but spread thin. She’d never encountered an arcane security field that covered an entire house the way an electronic system would, but knew instinctively that this was what she was feeling. There was no other explanation, because the magic was too thin to be doing anything active.

Still, that wasn’t what she was looking for. Pulling in her senses, she filtered out the weaker signatures and looked for hot spots. She and Damian had decided to meet at the library, only because it was central to the house. For all they knew, the room wasn’t even used for books anymore; it was just a name on a floor plan. But in this eerily empty house, she was abruptly struck with the urge to find him as soon as possible. Picturing the floor plan in her head, she looked around, trying to figure out where the library was located relative to her current position. Damian might not be there yet, but like her, he’d be headed in that direction.

She started walking, moving quickly and quietly from room to room, all vacant, until suddenly, with no warning, magic flared so cold and bright in her mind’s eye that she was temporarily blinded and had to cling to the heavy armoire that she’d practically run into. Fingers pressed against the hard wood, she kept her eyes closed, trying to minimize the sensory input while she reasoned out what must have happened. The library, or a room very close to it, had some heavy-duty shielding. Enough to block her senses, which was saying something, because she was
strong
. The existence of shielding wasn’t the alarming part, though. No, it was the sheer, overwhelming force of magic that had suddenly blared from within the room, as if a door had opened. It wasn’t the Talisman. She knew that for a fact. But it was something big.