Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,105

to be – with anything or anyone – for at least the next few hours.

Chapter Thirty-four – Portal, then Austin Texas

Ares did the same thing now that Annaleia had done minutes earlier, and paced like a caged lion between the boundaries of the transportation portal. He was agitated. There was something uncomfortable buzzing just beneath his skin. He couldn’t touch it, couldn’t even exactly locate it, but it made him feel anxious, like a panic was rising and he really needed a Xanax or ten or a beer or fifty.

It was to be expected, probably. He was about to face off with a literal god who wanted to destroy the woman he loved. In the end, someone was going to die or get hurt. That was probably worth a little panic. Right?

You’ve been through shit before, Ares, he told himself. This was no different.

Except that it was.

The portal re-opened on an early December morning on Sixth Street. The sun had just come up, the streets were wet and sticky with spilled margarita and colada, and the tourist venue was more or less deserted. What homeless hadn’t managed to find space in a shelter were either standing around burning fire bins in back alleys, or they were under old sleeping bags and tarps and newspapers, and they were long dead.

Ares let the portal close behind him and raised his chin, slowly breathing in. He took in the scents carefully, trying to separate them not unlike a werewolf would do. Then he listened. He was far better at that.

He knew where his clan was. Their voices, their heartbeats he would know anywhere. And of course there was that heavy spot among them that felt so massive with magic, it was a black hole amidst twelve neutron stars. Or at the moment, eleven.

Ares walked fast, his eyes scanning the area carefully as he made his way to his clan’s location. When he spotted the motorcycles, some different from the night before, he realized that his clansmen had met in an above-ground parking garage that was actually highly warded territory in Texas that had automatically been allotted to the Monsters clan. There were plots of land or property like this in every city and in most countries. Ares and his brothers-in-arms were the only warden clan that moved from place to place; the others were stationary. In exchange for the help Cain and his men lent on tougher jobs, the Monsters were gifted large pieces of land such as everything from parks, storage facilities, garages, motor parks, cafes or restaurants, and even abandoned skyscrapers.

When Ares entered the Monsters property, which was two streets off Sixth and hidden by various illusions so it appeared to be nothing more than well-maintained parking – which Cain made sure to leave open to the public because, as he put it, parking was a bitch – he found the others grouped together on an extra level of the garage, one humans wouldn’t be able to get to and wouldn’t even know was there. As was expected, the Monsters were not alone.

As good as sixty other men were massed as closely together as possible in the concrete haven. He recognized most of them as detectors, wardens whose main job it was to trace the source of a spell, usually a transport. Many of the wardens were Texas’s Rigel clan – and one of the people there was a werewolf detective, rather renowned because he worked personally for Lady Katrielle.

Cain was at the center of them all, but he looked up when Ares approached. “We think we have a lead,” he told him. The clan leader turned and nodded at Detective James.

James said, “I was able to put a few things together from Randall Price’s crime scenes and the meeting I had with him and Victor Maze.” He held up his phone, tapped a few things on it, and said, “If my reasoning is anywhere near right, Maze and Price are probably hiding the girls close by. It’s Price’s MO to keep his victims close to where he picks them up, and I have a feeling he’ll want to do the same with these two for several reasons. One, it makes it easier for Faith to find him, and that’s the whole point of this situation. Two, even if it’s unconscious, he’ll want to plan a second option if things don’t pan out with Faith. In which case, he’ll want to follow the same rules he’s followed so far and use