Bastien have taught me about barriers, and I filter through my options as I stare at the coral glow of the obstacle in front of me. I don’t want Silva to know that I was in here, so shattering or overtaking this protective magic—which is usually my go-to—is a definite no go.
I pull on more Defensive magic from my core and direct it to pool in my hands. I crouch down to the base of the barrier and run my index finger in a straight line up the side of the barrier, standing as I move higher. I weave my intention to go unnoticed and leave no trace, with the yellow-orange magic in my hands as I go. My magic coats the magic of Silva’s barrier, and a slit in the side of the dome forms directly in front of me. Silva’s protections aren’t overly strong, and the lack of over the top security measures on the building makes me question whether he’s hiding anything in this place.
I step through the slit in the barrier, and as soon as I’m all the way in, all noise of the forest disappears. It’s quiet in here, and the sound is distorted like I’m underwater. Why would Silva put sound protections on this place? I file that question away and quickly make my way inside the barn. It’s so dark I have to manifest a ball of fire in my hand so I can see through the inky blackness. The fireball lazily floats above my moving palm as I search for a light switch. I spot one just to the left of the door and flip it on, causing the fluorescent lights above me to sluggishly blink to life. The buzz of electricity as it runs through the bulbs fills the quiet of the barn, and I look around, not sure what to expect.
At first glance, the roof is two stories above me, and the inside of the barn has been quartered off. I walk through the room that I’m in and open the door to my left. It swings open with a slight creak and reveals the spells that Silva was talking about, or at least I think that’s what’s in here. I recognize stoppered bottles of the shifter saliva Sabin and I took from his family’s warehouse. I didn’t know how many of the bottles survived the shifter attack, but it looks like a couple of cases arrived here unscathed.
I don’t walk through the doorway or feel the drive to explore this room. I don’t actually know how volatile these spells might be, but it’s not worth the risk of accidentally blowing myself up. I close the door, and that same angry creak voices its displeasure at being disturbed. I move to the doorway on the wall to my right. The one light switch must control the illumination in the back rooms of the barn too, because I walk into a bright room with large maps covering two of the four walls. I move closer to one of the maps and run my gaze over the dark green markings that have been made on them.
If I’m reading this layout of Europe correctly, it seems Lachlan, Keegan, and Silva have been tracking lamia movement in Greece, Portugal, Poland, Romania, and Belarus. There are clusters of green Xs in all of these countries and lines connecting the clusters. Without a key or someone to explain what all the writing means, it’s impossible to decipher for certain, but I don’t miss that the largest cluster of green Xs is just across Belarus’s border with Russia. There’s a small blue star close to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, and something about its presence niggles at my mind.
No matter how I try to reach for whatever it is that’s bugging me, I can’t get my mental fingers around it. Sets of computer screens demand my attention, and with a shake of the mouse, the screens come to life. I have no idea what to make of the images I see on them. One looks like ruins of some kind. There are crumbling piles of old stone, and one stubborn wall with a small cut out for a window still fighting against the elements and refusing to topple over. On another screen is a picture of a man or more likely some kind of supe.
He looks older than Lachlan and his coven, but I’m not sure exactly how much higher up his age range would fall. He’s handsome, has