Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) (5 page)

‘And if he doesn’t recover?’ Katie asked, though her tone wasn’t unkind. I dropped my gaze.

‘Then Cain will… take care of it.’ I put my hands to my eyes, as if I could rub away the sights of the last few weeks. ‘I know we can’t just leave him to have free rein over the city. I get that. But I have to believe we’ve tried everything else first.’

Medea looked at Katie, who nodded, and then turned back to me.

‘OK. Tell me what you need.’

***

A locator spell is fairly simple magic, though you do need a decent level of skill to control it, to block out the background noise of the city and find your target. I’d considered bringing a bottle of wine that Laclos had brought me to use as a focus, but instead, thinking freshness was an issue and recalling Cain’s opinion that ‘blood is life’, I brought one of the pillowcases that had been ruined in the fight. I just hoped it wouldn’t lead us to Cain instead. Katie wrinkled her nose slightly when I pulled it out of my bag.

‘It’s like being back at work,’ she muttered, but Medea was already in concentration mode, all practicality.

‘I haven’t done any magic since…’ she gave me a rueful smile. ‘I’m a bit rusty. It might not work.’

‘I appreciate you even trying,’ I assured her. ‘Any idea of where he’s sleeping during the day will be useful.’

The plan was to catch him when he was vulnerable, in daylight hours. I didn’t fancy a rematch, and I honestly wasn’t sure if Cain would survive one. With a starting point, even a loose one, I could use my Sense to narrow it down. London was a great city, but it was also very big and, we were discovering, one where it was very easy to hide if you wanted to.

As with most skilled practitioners, Medea didn’t need much for the ritual: magic in its truest form is unshowy and comes from within, the bells and whistles mainly there to impress the punters or deter the dabblers. She sat, cross-legged, the blood-soaked cloth in front of her, with a candle and an A-Z I’d picked up on the way, having seen her use one successfully in a previous locator spell. Katie and I sat nearby, quiet and unobtrusive, and I felt my anxiety spike as the tell-tale prickle of magic hit my Sense as Medea started her incantation. But then… nothing.

Katie frowned, as puzzled as I was, and Medea sat back, offering us a slightly sheepish smile.

‘Wow, clearly I really am rusty. OK, let’s ramp this up a bit.’

She unfastened the charm bracelet she usually wore, and dropped it onto the pillowcase. I’d never really paid much attention to it before, but looking closely I could see the symbols weren’t random: they were all related to London. A bus, a Tube sign, an elephant next to a castle, a cross, a crown… she clearly hadn’t just picked this up at Claire’s Accessories because she thought it was pretty. I felt it, this time, a shift in the energy like the air before a storm, and I sat back, relieved. It was working! But barely had that thought formed than a wave of repulsion hit me so forcefully I rocked back, and I Sensed, rather than heard, the word ‘no’, as clear as a bell, although none of us had spoken. There was a crack like a gunshot and Medea was lifted off the ground and flung backwards, hitting the wall behind her with a thud.

‘Meds!’ Katie screamed, rushing to her aid, but I was frozen, sprawled where I was, staring in horror as the pillowcase sparked into flame and burned its way to ashes in a matter of seconds, disappearing into nothingness before my very eyes. I hauled myself up, and went to Medea, who was cradled in Katie’s arms, clinging to her, face streaked with tears.

‘I can’t do it,’ she sobbed, anguished, as Katie looked at me in despair. ‘It’s gone. It’s left me. My magic has gone.’

***

While I was keen to offer my help, it was obvious that there was nothing I could do. Katie was as shocked as I was, but I could tell that she thought the best thing would be for her and Medea to deal with this in private. Close as we’d all become over the last couple of years, there are times when you just want your partner, and so I helped her get a distraught Medea upstairs, and I prepped a hot water bottle and some hot chocolate to take up to her, giving her a big hug and leaving her with assurances that everything would be OK that sounded fake even to me. I’d never seen Medea so shaken – hell, I’d seen her survive a collapsing building and look better than this – but she seemed completely drained, as if something had reached inside her and torn out a part of her soul. She barely managed a nod of acknowledgement to me, though she squeezed my hand tightly as I said my goodbyes. Katie kissed her gently on the top of the head before showing me out.

‘We can fix this though, right?’ she asked me, her voice low, as she opened the front door. ‘It can’t be a new spell from Celice, we’ve been so careful…’

I shrugged, not sure I could offer any reassurance. The magic shop where Celice had been based had been closed since our showdown, one of Leon’s people watching it, and there had been no sign of life. We had beaten the witch and her cronies, foiled her plan to revenge herself on what she saw as Medea’s abandonment by delivering Katie to the angry Weres who had wanted to kill her. But in our final confrontation with the Weres and their other ally, the vampire Sebastian, Celice had managed to escape, and we had no idea where she had gone. We had hoped that her defeat would have sent her into exile, but had no proof that was what had happened. Besides, I wasn’t certain which was better; the prospect of an enemy we could find and defeat again, or something else, something organic in Medea that had caused this, some weird side effect that meant we could only wait it out and hope.

‘It’s probably just exhaustion, or stress,’ I offered, slightly uselessly, but Katie seized on the explanation gratefully.

‘I’ll make sure she gets lots of rest,’ she nodded, glad to have a task. I hugged her, tightly, our earlier snippiness forgotten, and kept my doubts to myself. They couldn’t help, and could only make them both more worried. Then I headed back towards the Tube station, and home. I still had a vampire to catch.

‘I hate to say it, but I think she’s screwed.’

This was not the verdict I had been hoping for from Cain, though he sounded genuinely sad when he said it, or at least as sad as a man can sound when he’s mid-way through demolishing a pile of bacon sandwiches between sips of builder’s tea. Clearly he hadn’t been kidding about food being helpful to his recovery. Despite having stuffed my face at Medea’s, the smell of bacon made my mouth water, so I stole a couple of pieces myself. It was delicious, but since my kitchen had been decidedly bacon-free when I left that morning, it was also evidence that Cain had not, as we agreed, stayed home and rested. Somehow I suspected he hadn’t limited his activities to a supplies run to Tesco. But one thing at a time.

‘But you don’t think it’s Celice?’

‘I think she’d pick up on it if it was. Or your Sense would. I suspect it’s a more… internal reaction.’

‘To what, though?’

‘Well, correct me if I’m wrong…’ Exasperated at my picking, he moved his sandwich pile out of my reach and shoved a bacon-slathered wedge of bread at me, because obviously angels don’t understand that it’s OK to eat your boyfriend’s sarnies because food on other people’s plates doesn’t have calories. Then again, I’m pretty sure angels have no concept of calories at all, so I suspected the contents of my fridge after his shopping spree would be heavy on the heart attack fuel. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he repeated, playfully slapping my hand away as I feinted at his plate again. ‘But Wicca is a positive religion, it’s all about life, yeah?’

I nodded, mouth too full of bacon to speak.

‘So Celice corrupted her magic over years – a slow, steady process. But Medea went all gung-ho after the witch/Were conspiracy when Katie got hexed. So maybe she… flipped a switch or something. Overloaded her system, shorted out her abilities. Or she’s suffering some kind of psychic PTSD that’s blocking her without her knowing it.’

‘But she didn’t kill anyone,’ I protested, then realised I wasn’t actually sure if that was true. By the end of the battle there had been an awful lot of bodies, and nobody was keeping score. ‘I don’t think.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t matter. She was willing to kill – and to kill other witches. Perhaps that’s enough.’ Another shrug. ‘Honestly, Cass, I’m just guessing. Magic has been around as long as I have, and humans have harnessed it from the earliest times, but I don’t think even its most skilled practitioners know exactly what it is, or how it works. It could be she’s permanently poisoned the well of her magic, or it could be like Katie’s increased need to shift, something she’ll likely be able to work through with a little time.’

‘So you’re saying we’re in exactly the same position with them as we are with Laclos? Wait and hope?’

‘Well, I think the situation with Laclos is a little more pressing, babe. I feel for Medea, but we’ve got bigger problems right now.’

I almost pointed out that Medea was part of that – that given what we faced, we needed everyone on top form, but I worried that doing so might remind Cain of how very far off his own game he was at the minute. Not that it wasn’t obvious he knew that. I watched him as he made more tea. Although superficially he was dressed as usual, in his hunter garb of jeans, dark t-shirt and thick-soled work boots, a gun tucked into the small of his back even in the house, there were other tell-tale signs he was being careful. A man who usually shunned any sort of adornment, there was a silver chain at his neck – I could see the outline of a sharp-looking pendant under his shirt – the buckle on his belt was silver, and he wore plain silver rings on both hands, a heavy-looking double ring spanning a couple of knuckles of his right hand. It wasn’t quite bling – it would be subtle enough if you didn’t know how plainly he was usually attired – but it was clear, if Laclos was coming after him, he wasn’t planning on being caught literally so naked again.

‘So, any thoughts on what we can do?’ I asked, when he handed me a fresh mug of tea.

‘I spoke to Leon and Mariko.’

‘How? Weren’t they sleeping?’

‘Woke ‘em up.’

I boggled slightly at that. I didn’t want to contemplate how an out-of-shape angel – whose blood was catnip to Vampires of a Certain Age – had wandered into one of London’s biggest nests and pulled two of its occupants from their day sleep, something I hadn’t even realised was possible. This is the problem with dealing with races about whom most of your knowledge is learned from fiction. Even now, there were lots of things I didn’t know about vampires, lots of things that I’d assumed were myth and turned out to be true, or vice versa. Maybe I needed to start giving my clients a more thorough questionnaire.

Cain, of course, ignored or was oblivious to my shock.

‘Obviously no one is rushing to tell the folks in Laclos’ clan anything, and they’ve pretty much gone to ground – you can imagine, being Laclos’ people, they’re all pretty hot on the "lover not a fighter" thing. But what you were told ties in with what I’ve heard from those sources who will still –
can
still – talk to me. And now we know Laclos really is off the rails, that changes things.’

I thought of my conversation with Leon, just last night: it seemed an age away, when we had both hoped that this would be OK, that Laclos was just off feeding and fucking and nursing his ego. I was glad Cain had been the one who’d had to tell the bodyguards that wasn’t the case, even as I felt cowardly admitting it.

‘So will they help us?’

‘They don’t know much more than we do. Vampires tend to keep their lairs secret – Laclos is the exception in being so showy – or, like Mallen, they keep fake sites. And even if they want to help, they can hardly stroll into a rival nest and go, "hey, we know our boss is trying to kill you, but we’re on your side!"’ He frowned. ‘I know you think a lot of Leon and Mariko, and I agree they’re pretty handy in a scrap, but they’re very young vampires. They wouldn’t last five minutes against an older crew.’

‘But Laclos’ nest has older vampires, I’ve Sensed them. Surely at least some of them must be more… fighter than lover?’ I sighed. I didn’t want to start a battle here – our primary aim was to stop Laclos and restore peace – but I’d like to be negotiating with a slightly stronger hand.

‘And there we have our next problem.’

‘Oh, good, because I felt like we were running out, there.’

He gave a tight smile then surprised me by pulling me into a brief hug, kissing me lightly on the temple. I let him hold me for a second, unused to this demonstrativeness, before pulling gently away, gesturing for him to continue.

‘I think we would be unwise to assume unconditional loyalty from Laclos’ people.’

‘But I thought they all loved him. I thought they were all fully paid up members of the cult of Laclos the rock star vamp,’ I said, then felt compelled to add, ‘even though he can be a bit of a twat.’ Which rather undermined my point.

‘In my experience, vampires love power and an easy life. They want to be on the winning side. ‘

‘But surely we can trust Leon and Mariko.’

‘They seem loyal enough, yeah, but I’d add a pretty big "for now" to that.’

I sighed. He was right, of course, and I wasn’t sure what even a fully committed cadre of Laclos’ people could do for us, but it still stung to hear it articulated so clearly.

‘So basically, it’s a human, a hyperactive shifter, a knackered angel and a witch whose magic is at least temporarily buggered. That’s our little team to avert a vampire war and an angel apocalypse.’

‘Well, probably not an actual apocalypse. They tend to frown on full-scale smiting these days. Mostly.’

I really could have done without the ‘mostly’.

‘OK.’ I took a bit more of the bacon, chewing thoughtfully. ‘So, if it’s just us, what’s the plan? We hurt Laclos last night, so I’m assuming he’ll want to feed?’

Cain nodded.

‘He’ll be conflicted. He’ll be desperate to feed, but terrified that if he drinks from a human, he’ll further dilute my blood and its effects.’

I stared at him, realising what he was saying. Then I followed his gaze to my kitchen window, where outside I could see the day starting to fade.

‘Roll out your Sense, Cass,’ Cain said, quietly. I nodded, tentatively, and closed my eyes, doing like I’d practised, letting it spread out around me, weave through the flat like a mist, creep out into the streets and the city beyond. I opened my eyes and looked at Cain in alarm. We didn’t have to look for Laclos. He was already here.