Blood and Blade (Goddess with a Blade #6) - Lauren Dane Page 0,98

no porch lights on.

“Something is wrong here,” Rowan murmured.

Genevieve was deep in her othersight, telling Rowan which way to drive, but she surfaced. “Something is definitely wrong here. I see no signs of human life. There are animals wandering around here and there, but no one is out and about and I can’t see anything from the homes we’ve passed.”

“David, I want you to run a search on this town. See if anything unusual has been reported to law enforcement. Disappearances. Illness. That sort of thing.”

David began to tap on his keyboard as he moved to obey.

“Over there.” Genevieve pointed to a notch against the mountains.

“Should we just drive up or?” Rowan asked.

“There’s nothing in the news, but I just peeked at one of the chatrooms for paranormals in the state and there’s one note about someone’s human cousin who lives in this town. The paranormal, a Vampire apparently, says they came here to check in after hearing nothing for several days but the place was empty. No one at home. No one in town. They said it had a bad feel and haven’t been back. They did drop the dime with the state police but it doesn’t look like anything has happened here so I don’t know.”

“Get with Patience. See if we can’t figure out who this Vampire is.”

“Rowan, this is some sketchy chatroom. Everyone has names like fangbuster400 and Iloveblood. Unless we can get in and find an IP and trace it that way, we can’t make any connection. The whole point is that no one is identified,” Vanessa said.

“Fuck. Okay. What do you want to do, Genevieve?”

“Drive up on him. I’ll keep us obscured as long as we can be. But there’ll be a point when he’s going to sense us, no matter what.”

They’d pulled up to one of the four-way stops and Clive got out, coming to the window.

“There’s no one in this godforsaken place,” he said.

Rowan filled him in quickly on what they’d found out.

She asked Genevieve, “Do you think this is the work of the Fae? Like he drained everyone here?” Humans had some basic magic in their life force. It wasn’t a whole lot, but enough. A Vampire could easily extract what they needed, but who the fuck knew how a Faerie did it.

“I’m thinking that once we killed Lyr he lost his main source of power and perhaps he got a little overzealous here in town,” Genevieve said.

“I really can’t wait to kill this asshole,” Rowan muttered as they all got back into their correct cars and headed away from the town and toward the mountains where their enemy lay.

Chapter Twenty-Four

In twenty minutes on a bumpy dirty road, they approached a house that had been built at the center of a large plot of land. A dry riverbed ran through it and there was a small bridge that looked sturdy enough to drive over.

David said, “This property is owned by a family. Thoroughly human from what I can tell. He went to school here, graduated high school in 1991 and met her on a work trip to Los Angeles fifteen years ago. They have two kids, both of whom go to the school in town.”

Chances were, that nice family was dead now. All Rowan could do was hope it was quick and painless and that the kids didn’t have to see their parents die.

Her gut screamed at her not to drive over that bridge, so Rowan stopped and pulled the car over, trying to keep it out of the line of sight of the house.

“That’s not a safe bridge. I don’t know why. I just know it.”

“Then it’s not a safe bridge. We can walk the rest of the way. He’s in there.” Genevieve tipped her chin toward the house.

“Do we have a clear approach or is it booby-trapped?” Clive asked.

Genevieve spoke under her breath, chanting it sounded like. Some minutes later she turned back to them. “There are some trip wire spells, but it looks as if it’s just a way to set off an alarm that humanoids are there. A rabbit wouldn’t set it off. Just a witch, some Hunters and a few Vampires. I can’t undo them from here, but I should be able to as we get a little closer. We’re not taking the bridge across. It’s not safe.”

The riverbed was deep in spots, but once they managed to get down into it, they didn’t have to go far until they found a place to climb back