Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,106
one of these girls in her place.” He shrugged. “It’s kind of a classic serial killer mentality thing.”
He showed Ares the phone screen as Ares joined him. “Right about here.”
The location he was indicating was in a residence, most likely a house, on 7th street, somewhere east of I-35. It was a few blocks away as the crow flies, and seconds away as Monsters do.
“Gutsy,” said someone in the crowd. “Staying so close to where he picked them up.”
“Just crazy,” someone else said. “He did mutilate several women.”
There was a general consensus, subdued and quietly angry, but Ares didn’t join in. He was still not feeling quite right. He wanted to rip his own skin off.
Cain nodded and took a deep breath. “Thank you Detective.”
Hendrix James put away his phone and stepped back, allowing Cain the floor once more. “In the meantime, the detectors are ready to do their thing at ten a.m. on the mark” he addressed the large group, his voice magically amplified for the humans among them. “We’ll need to move out the second they’ve narrowed it down to a general vicinity. We can’t afford to waste time, guys. Everyone clear?”
There were affirmatives all around.
Cain turned to Ares then and put a hand on his back. “A word, Mace,” he said, gesturing to an empty spot in the garage where they could talk.
When they were more or less alone, Cain looked Ares in the eyes and asked, “What’s going on? What is it you’re sensing?”
Sensing? Ares wondered. “I’m not –”
“Yeah. You are.” Cain’s gaze narrowed. “Did everything go smoothly with Faith?”
Ares cocked his head to the side, narrowing his gaze. “Yeah – Kane was there, the house was in the middle of nowhere, and the area was heavily warded.”
Cain gave a small nod, but his blue eyes hardened as he turned and began to step away.
A large digital clock on the garage wall beside the nearby exit sign switched from 9:59 to 10:00.
Cain stopped – and Ares experienced an unpleasant sinking feeling. When Cain turned back around and Ares saw the look on his face, the sinking feeling turned to something colder and heavier. And suddenly he knew what was bothering him.
“What was it?” Cain asked point blank.
“It was Lily Kane,” Ares told him numbly, “she didn’t have a comeback.” He’d glibly threatened Daniel Kane, who was actually a good friend of Ares’ because they were both long-time riders. It wasn’t that Ares wouldn’t hurt the werewolf chief of police – or get hurt himself trying – if Daniel had promised to take care of Annaleia and failed. The thing was, Daniel Kane would have healed in minutes if not seconds, and even if Ares had managed to rip off an arm, it would’ve grown back nearly as quickly.
What’s more, before any of that would have happened, Lily Kane would have cut Ares down with words sharp as scythes as she returned Ares’ warning with some kind of witty retort that made him look and feel about ten inches tall. That was her way.
The fear she’d shown him instead? That was not her way.
Cain was probably reading his thoughts because he softly asked, “Exactly how warded did it feel, Mace?”
Ares didn’t answer. The truth was, the shields over the location were so thick, Ares hadn’t been able to penetrate them at casual perusal. He could have tried harder and pushed with all his might, but he hadn’t felt the need to. He’d subconsciously assumed it was extra protection meant to keep Annaleia safe.
That agitated feeling he’d had earlier was hardening into something new now. Like dead certain dread.
Cain drew closer. In a quiet voice that meant all the bad things he could imagine were coming true, the warden leader asked, “Mace, did you walk her into the house?”
Several Monsters members who’d been within earshot nearby now drew closer. Ares could feel them there – Nathan, Crow, and the Gemini twins Rafael and Dante. He knew they were flanking him, supportively drawing in around their clansman like they always did. But he noticed them on a kind of blurred periphery, the type you saw the whole world through when your vision was tunneling because every ounce of your focus was now on the single most important thing in existence.
Behind Cain, in the throng of detectors and wardens, someone eagerly called out, “We’ve got a location on Maze’s magic source!”
But Ares barely heard him. He was already spinning around and simultaneously calling up a portal to somewhere else entirely.