Vintage Soul (8 page)

The manuscript was not difficult to read.
 
The French was archaic, but the script was clear and clean, and Le Duc had taken great pains to separate the lines evenly and to make no mistakes.
 
Mistakes in such a text could be disastrous, at the one end causing a spell to fail with no result, and at the other sending forces crashing out of control.
 
Le Duc had been meticulous to the end.

The formula itself had been developed over a long period of trial and error, gathered piece by piece from a wide variety of sources.
 
Donovan recognized several of the sources cited, and had to admit that for a fanatic, Le Duc had been very clever.
 
It was unfortunate when such genius coupled itself with a sociopathic disregard for life or the fragile lines of balance that held the world together.

There were six ingredients in all.
 
Two of them were simple powders that anyone could have located.
 
Donovan knew he could assume that these had already been collected. That left three ingredients to go.
 
One of those, Vanessa, had already been scratched off the list.
 
The remaining three might pose more of a problem.

A certain crystal was required for the wand that had to be manufactured for this spell.
 
It was one of the rarest of stones, and Donovan knew the location of the only store of it that was known.
 
It was, coincidentally or not, held in San Valencez – very likely this unknown magician knew this well enough, and had planned his assaults to confine them to the smallest area possible.
 
Either that or it was pure luck.
 
In any case, Donovan did not worry immediately about the theft of the crystal.
 
He turned his concentration on the final ingredient.

Next was an extremely rare item.
 
The spell required a pair of perfectly matched Timeline Crystals.
 
These were used in the creation of certain higher level portals, and were cherished for their rarity, and for the complexity of preserving their potential.
 
There was a pair in San Valencez, but it was not accessible.
 
Not without an army, anyway, and certainly not after Donovan warned their owner of trouble to come.

That left the final ingredient.
 
He frowned.
 
“The dust formed of the marrow of the spinal cord of a priest who has performed both last rites and exorcism.”

This was a truly problematic ingredient.
 
It would only be stockpiled by a necromancer, and there were less than a handful of these unsavory wizards in existence.
  
It was possible to retrieve the powder without the aid of necromancy, but grave digging posed problems of its own, and the circumstances of the priest's life and death needed to be rather singular.
 
Of the existing necromancers,
 
Donovan could think of neither an easy mark for extortion, nor one likely to give this sort of assistance to any other.
 
Necromancers were more comfortable with their once-dead companions.

That left the more direct approach.
 
If he could locate a priest that fit the description in the formula, the thief could extract the powder himself.
 
It wouldn't' be easy.
 
The Last Rites were not rare, but there had been few sanctioned exorcists over the past century, and a crackpot wouldn't do.
 
There was also the fact that relics recovered from such graves were rare, powerful and valuable.
 
That meant that every collector in existence would cherish them and the older graves from days when exorcism was more common, would have been sought out and violated long ago.

In modern times, the ritual was still practiced, though rarely.
 
If he moved quickly enough, Donovan knew he'd be able to localize possible gravesites for a source of the powder.
 
Maybe, with his connections and the additional electronic resources he commanded, he could find such a grave more quickly than their unknown thief could manage it.
  
It was hard to believe that others would band together with anyone proposing to cast such a spell as the
Perpetuum
Vitae
, because it benefited only he or she who cast it.
 
It wasn't the kind of magic one shared, and if he was forced to work on his own, or with secretive mercenary assistance, then Donovan's new enemy was at a disadvantage.
 
No one who heard what was going on would want the spell to succeed.

There was no time to lose.
 
Donovan rose, gathered a few objects from the shelves that he tucked into his pocket, and double-checked the security wards.
 
Before he left, he picked Cleo up unceremoniously and plopped her into the center of the symbol on his desk.
 
The cat meowed at him, possibly in complaint, possibly just in irritation, but he paid no attention.

“I need your help, Cleo,” he said softly.
 
“You need to find Amethyst.
 
Tell her I missed her, and then warn her about what happened here.
 
Tell her I'll be in contact soon.”

Cleo returned his gaze unblinkingly.
 
Donovan closed his eyes and raised one hand.
 
In an intricate and graceful scrawl, he drew symbols in the air.
 
These gathered substance, like silver mist, or smoke, and when he drew his finger down with a final slash and spoke aloud, reciting in ancient Egyptian, the mist whirled in a circular motion around Cleo, who sat very still, never breaking eye contact.
 
The mist spun faster, thickened into a milky white wall, and then, with a sudden release of energy that sounded like the popping of a huge bubble, it was gone.

No trace of Cleo remained on the desktop.
 
Donovan turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the night.
 
The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon, and he knew Club Chaos would soon be opening their doors.

Vanessa swam lazily up through darkness toward consciousness.
 
Her thoughts were a cloudy fog of half-memories and unlikely images.
 
She remembered the party.
 
She remembered the beat of the music, flowing through the walls and the floor and shimmering through the air.
 
She remembered
Preston
's speech before he shared the bottle he'd been so proud of, the wine with Byron's blood.
 
Had it been too strong?
 
Had she taken her share, admittedly larger than the others had received, walked blithely away, and passed out?
 

No.
 
There was more, she knew there was more, but she couldn't bring it to the surface of her mind.
 
She opened her eyes and the room before her spun.
 
She blinked, tried again, and managed to focus weakly.
 
The walls were dark and gray; cold polished stone where there should have been deep, rich paneling.
 
The air was dank, and she was hungry – hungry like she hadn't been in years.
 
She was also alone.
 

Vanessa drew on the strength of centuries and focused her mind.
 
When she moved, there was a clink of metal.
 
She glanced down and found that her wrists, and her ankles, were manacled.
 
The chains that were attached to these bonds disappeared into small recesses in the stone wall to the left of the cot she lay upon.
 
She sat up, sending the chains rippling over the side of the hard, thin mattress pool on the floor.

The room was empty.
 
Other than the cot a long, empty table, and a massive wooden door on the far wall, nothing broke the stark emptiness of the cell.
 
That was what it was.
 
For all its size – the walls stretched what must have been twenty feet to an arched ceiling.
 
Was she in a tower?
 
It seemed so, but she hadn't seen such a tower since castles had been in vogue.

As she sat, taking in her surroundings, the last of the cobwebs cleared from her mind.
 
Whatever had happened, it wasn't because of the effect of a mixture of blood and wine.
 
She vaguely remembered having stepped into the kitchen.
  
There had been a younger guest, perhaps a century, though for some reason it had been difficult to be certain.
 
He had asked to see more of the house, and though she knew he was only flirting, and that she would have to extricate herself fairly quickly, the urge to tease him had been impossible to ignore.
 
She'd stepped through the kitchen and into the hall.
 
Kline was there, standing beside the elevator, and she'd been about to speak to him when something hit her from behind.

The blow wasn't a physical one.
 
Her mind had simply blanked.
 
She had no idea what had happened to Kline.
 
She vaguely recalled the face of the young one she'd been with, but she couldn't remember who he was, or why he'd been invited.
 
She knew that she'd never seen this tower before.

The chains clinked again, and Vanessa stared down at them contemptuously.
 
Whoever had put her in this room was a fool.
 
She rose, gripped the chain where it snapped onto a ring on one manacle, and yanked at it with incredible strength.
 
The metal, rather than snapping, gave slightly under the pressure.
 
Vanessa frowned.
 
She tried again, twisting this time to break the link closest to her wrist, but again the chain proved flexible.
 
It spun with her twist, and when it snapped back into place the jolt threw her across the cot and into the stone wall.

Real fear stole through her for the first time.
 
She tore frantically at the chains, pressed her feet into the wall and dragged at them, but they did nothing more than flex slightly.
  
They were enchanted, and whatever effort she made to remove or snap them reversed painfully, until she was crying out with rage and pain.

The door opened and a man stepped into the room.
 
He stayed carefully out of reach near the door, and smiled at her.
 
Vanessa stopped struggling, slid off the cot in a single fluid motion and stood.
 
She returned his gaze evenly.
 
She was frightened, but she wasn't going to give her captor the satisfaction of seeing it in her expression.

She still wore the evening gown she'd turned heads with at
Preston
's party, and the seemingly impossibly high heels were still strapped around her slender ankles.
  
She stood very still and gauged the distance between them against the length of her chains.

He was not undead.
 
She knew this the second he entered the room.
 
His blood pumped hot and inviting through veins very much alive.
 
It was rich blood, and old.
 
She scented power and tasted strength.

Vanessa took advantage of the silence to study him.
 
He was at least six feet tall, had long, silver blonde hair and gray eyes.
 
He was slender and moved with casual grace.
 
She thought he was used to giving orders and being obeyed.
 
She'd seen the same haughty arrogance in others.
 
Most of them were dead.
 
She saw just the hint of the guise he'd worn when he tricked her into the hallway.
 
Whoever he was, he'd slipped past Kline's defenses and spirited her right out of Johndrow's supposedly secure penthouse.

“So,” he said at last, stepping a bit closer, “you are awake at last.
 
It's a pity we have to meet under such circumstances.
 
I've heard stories for years of your beauty, but never had the opportunity to verify it for myself.
 
The rumors did you little justice.”

“You brought me here to admire me?” she asked, turning toward him, but making no move to approach.
 
“Surely it would have been easier to contact my husband and arrange to meet.
 
He is a very social creature.”

“And not,” the man countered, “overly bright.
 
He should check his guest lists more carefully.”

“You weren't on that list,” she replied with certainty.

“No,” he admitted with a slow smile, “I was not.
 
However, appearances can be deceiving.
 
Your lover's security was quite good – the best in the business, I'm told, but they were not looking for your guests, were they?
 
They were looking for something, or someone, unexpected.”

Vanessa remained silent.

“No guesses?
 
Well, I'll tell you then.
 
That old friend of yours, Margot, is that her name?
 
She took a new lover recently.
 
But of course, you knew that – the two of them were invited to the party.
 
He wasn't long ‘in the blood,' but he was certainly good for her ego.
 
I believe that's how she put it, anyway.
 
It was a shame to end his existence so soon – so early in his second life.
 
Less than a hundred years since his death, and now he's gone.
 
Margot never knew the difference.