Blood Kissed

  Besides, the vibes I was getting from these two had old prejudices resurfacing, and that only inflamed the desire not to help them.

  “Perhaps,” I eventually said. “But psychometry isn’t as reliable as location spells. It might be easier—and quicker—to wait until the Association witch gets here.”

  “I personally agree,” Hart said. “But given the violence appears to be escalating, we need to cover all bases.”

  “Fine.” I crossed my arms. “But whatever you bring me needs to have been in close contact with skin. And in the case of our vampire, I suspect that’s going to be difficult.”

  “Indeed, but if what you’re saying is true, then if we find our zombie, we’ll find our vampire.”

  “In theory, yes, but we are dealing with someone who is a very strong blood witch. It’s more than possible he’ll counter any such attempt with a diversion spell.”

  Blume frowned—something that was evident only by the creasing in his forehead. “I know it’s possible to spell against magical intrusion, but I didn’t think it was possible to do so against psychic powers.”

  “You can spell against anything. All it takes is the knowledge and the power.” I rose again. “If that’s all, gentlemen, I need to get back to work.”

  They stood as one. “Please remain contactable. As we’ve said, the regional witch will want to speak to you.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  This time, Hart seemed to catch my unspoken reluctance. “It is in your best interests to assist our investigation, Ms. Grace. Failure to do so will have unfortunate consequences.”

  “I’ve answered all your questions,” I said, unable to keep the slight tartness out of my voice, “and agreed to do a psychometry reading. How, exactly, am I failing to help your investigation?”

  “Anything you tell the rangers must also be passed on to us,” Blume said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Failure to do so will be seen as noncompliance.”

  “Anything I tell the rangers will surely be passed on as a matter of fact, wouldn’t it?” I asked, feigning innocence.

  “In theory, yes. But just in case—” Hart paused and retrieved a business card from his pocket. “Please call us direct, day or night.”

  I accepted the card without comment and watched them walk out the door.

  “If you do call them,” Belle said, as she stopped beside me, “I suggest you do so at night—the later the better.”

  “A most excellent plan, my friend.”

  As much as I wanted nothing more than to go upstairs with a bottle of alcohol and forget everything, I very much suspected we didn’t have that sort of time to waste. Our vampire would be active again tonight, which meant we only had five more hours of daylight left to try and find our zombie. I also had to unpick whatever spell had been placed on the bloodstone—although it was totally possible that it wouldn’t even be active now that Karen was dead.

  But that was something I could attempt tonight, when I had the strength of the full moon and the protection of a pentagram behind me. I wasn’t even going to go near the thing until then.

  “It might also be wise to use silk gloves with that watch,” Belle said. “It’ll mute some of the foul sensations rolling off the thing.”

  “Good idea.” I got my phone out and sent Aiden a text. I wanted him by my side when I attempted to find Mason, and not just because he’d demanded it. I simply didn’t want the responsibility of having to take the kid down when—if—we found him. His soul might be long gone and his body no longer capable of independent thought, feeling, or memory, but I was witch enough to want to avoid killing if it was at all possible.

  Aiden’s response was almost immediate, and stated he’d be here in ten minutes. I shoved the phone back into my pocket. “How much holy water have we got left?”

  Belle wrinkled her nose. “Only a couple of bottles. I’ve sent out some feelers to see if there’re any priests in the area willing to supply some more.”

  “The association’s representative might be able to point us in the right direction.”

  “If,” Belle said, “said representative hasn’t got his nose stuck as far up his butt as those IIT chaps.”

  I grinned. “It could be just us. We do have a tendency to almost immediately get on people’s wrong sides.”

  “Not everyone,” she said. “Zak was absolutely delighted to see me last night.”

  “That’s because Zak is a sensible werewolf anticipating hot sex.”

  She grinned. “And he’s already rung me a couple of times today—one night was not enough, apparently.”

  I glanced at her as I stepped to one side to allow Penny past. “Meaning it was enough for you?”

  “Hell no, but there’s a whole lot of truth in the old ‘play it lean, keep them keen’ saying.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Since when is that an old saying?”

  She waved a hand airily. “I don’t do mean, so it makes a whole lot more sense my way.”

  I snorted softly. “As if you’re going to resist that man for too long.”

  “Oh, I don’t intend to.” Her smile faded as seriousness touched her expression. “But after last night’s events, I have every intention of being with you when you attempt to unravel the spell on that bloodstone.”

  I nodded. As determined as I might be that Belle have a life outside the confines of being my familiar, I did in truth need her there, just in case the magic on the bloodstone was either far darker than it felt, or triggered an evil beyond the protection of the pentagram.

  “I won’t be doing anything before midnight,” I said. “That does give you a little time with him, if you wanted.”

  “As tempting as that is, I need to rest. One of us needs to be at full strength.”

  Which I certainly wasn’t. I might be ignoring it, but tiredness still rode me and there were niggling aches all over my body. What I needed was twenty-four hours of decent sleep and several large meals of steak and veg, and right now I couldn’t see either in my immediate future.

  “Meaning you’re in need of another potion boost.” Belle paused, and a somewhat devilish smile touched her lips. “I think I’ll make one for our ranger, too. He was looking a little ragged around the edges.”

  “Don’t make it too foul-tasting,” I warned. “He’ll probably think you’re trying to poison him.”

  “He’ll think that anyway. He’s not the most trusting werewolf on the reservation right now, but we can work on that.”

  “No, we can’t. Leave the man alone.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me, the amusement on her lips growing. “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”

  “Belle,” I warned.

  She laughed and slapped me lightly on the shoulder. “I’m just joking. I mean, when have I ever interfered with your social life?”

  “There was that time in Nerang—”

  “You would have been old and gray before that man got up the nerve to ask you out.”

  “And then there was Jake, in Coolangatta—”

  “The surfer.” She sighed. “He was absolutely delicious, I agree, but he unfortunately had a stable of at least six others, and he never had any intention of getting serious.”

  “Too bad if unserious was all I actually wanted.”

  “The day you do casual is the day your father comes groveling on his hands and knees to beg forgiveness for his treatment of you.” She moved past me. “In many respects, you and Karen have similar issues.”

  I hadn’t really thought about that, but it was—rather sadly—true. Like her, I was ultimately seeking the love I’d never really had as a child. But for me, it didn’t come in the form of a father figure, but rather someone who would accept me as I was, with all my faults, and love me regardless.

  It was, apparently, a very large ask.

  I walked into the reading room, collected the backpack, and began gathering a selection of potions and salt mixtures, one of the remaining bottles of holy water, and Belle’s silver kni
fe. While I risked Aiden confiscating it as he had mine, it was better that than being without some form of physical weapon. Sometimes, evil simply didn’t give you the time to develop a spell or use a potion.

  With everything gathered, I grabbed a pair of silk gloves from of one of the drawers and pulled them on. While the foul vibes of wrongness rolling off the watch still made my skin crawl, the sensation was muted enough that I could hold it without my stomach rolling too alarmingly.

  By the time I returned to the café, Aiden was waiting for me—and he had one of Belle’s potions in hand.

  “She wants me to drink this.” He was studying the concoction with a whole lot of trepidation. “And she won’t say what’s in it.”

  “Sometimes it’s best not to ask.” I accepted mine with a nod of thanks and tried to ignore the awful smell coming from it. “It’s also best to drink it quickly, without drawing in the scent.”

  Which was what I did. He watched me with narrowed eyes, as if waiting for me to keel over. I smiled. “If Belle’s intention was to either poison or spell you, Aiden, she wouldn’t need a noxious-smelling drink to do so. It really is just a potion to boost your strength, as she said.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then downed it in several quick gulps. A shudder ran through him. “God, that stuff is as foul as it smells.”

  “She does it deliberately, I’m sure.” I glanced at her. “I’ll be back by sunset.”

  She nodded. “Be careful. Both of you.”

  We left the café. Once on the pavement, I paused and cracked open my psi senses just enough to get some hint of location. It tugged me left again.

  “Are we walking or driving?” Aiden fell in step beside me. “Because my truck is nearby.”

  I hesitated. “Walking, I think. I am getting a signal from the watch, but I risk overwhelming my senses if I open the gate too much.”

  “So the hellish feel of the thing remains very much present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means I should be able to scent him as we get closer.”

  “Possibly. It would depend on where he’s being kept and what sort of spells surround the area.”

  “Ah.”

  The watch tugged me left again, this time down Hargraves Street rather than Barker. Aiden silently followed, his hands in his pockets and his stride matching mine. He was close enough that his scent teased my nostrils but not so close that our shoulders brushed. I wasn’t entirely sure whether to be glad about that or not.

  We moved out of Castle Rock’s retail area and into residential. The watch continued to lead us farther away, until we reached an area where there were no sidewalks and housing blocks gave way to acreage.

  “If we continue down this road,” Aiden said. “We’ll end up on Stephenson’s Track.”

  I glanced at him. “Is that a good thing or bad?”

  “Neither, really. It simply skirts a large area of bush.”

  “Are there roads through the area?”

  “Calling them roads would be rather generous.” His gaze met mine, amusement creasing the corners of his eyes. “In fact, the back track to the O’Connor compound you were on would be a major highway by comparison.”

  “I’m glad I have decent walking shoes on, then.”

  The watch continued to pull me on, but the sensations rolling off it were stronger, suggesting we were getting closer to our target. We eventually reached a three-track intersection, and I paused. The pulse of foulness was now so strong my stomach was twisting, but I couldn’t see a building of any sort. Surely our vampire wouldn’t risk keeping his creature out in the open? This area might be wild, but the tracks weren’t overgrown, and that meant people still used them.

  “Have you lost the signal?” Aiden asked.

  “No. Quite the opposite.” I swept my gaze across the scrub again. “Are there any buildings near here?”

  “Not really. Not in this area. But there are quite a number of old mine workings scattered about.”

  “Ones that run horizontally into the mountain or down?”

  “Both.”

  “We might be looking at the former, then.” I took the left fork and the ground began to rise. My still-bruised legs didn’t appreciate this development and began to ache in protest.

  I really, really wanted to stop. But that annoying inner voice—the one that had dreamed of bloody rivers and bodies ripped apart—suggested that would be a bad idea.

  My skin began to twitch and shudder under the sheer force of wrongness coming from the broken watch. I tugged the right glove over my hand, folded the watch inside of it, and then held it out to Aiden. “You take this. Otherwise, I’m going to vomit.”

  He took it without comment and tucked it into his pocket. The sense of wrongness immediately eased, but didn’t entirely go away.

  “Can you smell anything?”

  Aiden’s nostrils flared as he took a deeper breath, and then he shook his head. “Nothing that shouldn’t be here, at least.”

  “The strength of the vibes coming from the watch suggests we’re close, so you should be able to smell him if he’s near.” I paused, gaze sweeping the area and my other senses on high alert. “I’m not seeing or sensing any sort of magic that would explain the lack of scent, though.”

  “There’s an old mine not too far away. Maybe he’s so deeply underground it’s simply impossible to smell him.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “But if he’s not there, I’ll try with the watch again.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stepped past me and led the way up the steepening slope. I followed, suddenly aware of the rustle of eucalyptus leaves, the crunch of twigs under my feet, and the melodious chatter of the various birds. They were normal, everyday sounds for an area like this, and should have set my mind at ease.

  But they didn’t.

  I might not be touching the watch, but I didn’t need to. The sensation of wrongness—of death—was so strong it felt as if every breath was filled with its foulness.

  After another ten minutes of walking through spindly trees and mounds of mine waste, Aiden stopped on the edge of a small clearing. Ahead, cut horizontally into the steep hillside, was an old shaft. The entrance was little more than five feet wide, and what looked to be old sleepers shored up the roof and the sides. There was no immediate indication that anything or anyone had been near this place for some time, although the rough, stony ground wouldn’t have held footprints even if someone had been. If it weren’t for the foul waves that continued to batter my senses, it would be easy to presume no one had entered this clearing for a very long time.

  “Anything?” Aiden asked.

  “He’s here.”

  “I’m sensing an unspoken but in that statement,” Aiden said.

  “That’s because I don’t trust the fact that there doesn’t appear to be anything else.”

  His gaze scanned the area then came back to mine. “Surely a vampire capable of magic could very easily erase any indication of movement to or from that shaft?”

  “Yes, but there should still be some indication of magic having been used, even if it is little more than an echo.”

  I squatted and studied the ground between the mine and us. There was absolutely nothing to indicate magic had ever been used here, and unease crawled through me. Our vampire had meticulously planned every step so far, so it was very unlikely he’d leave his zombie unprotected.

  Unless, of course, he was also here—but I very much doubted the man who owned the dapper shoes I’d seen in the dream would willingly rough it at a place like this.

  “What do you want to do?” Aiden asked. “It’ll be dark in a couple more hours.”

  And our vampire would be active. He didn’t actually add that, but that was nevertheless what he meant.

  “Follow me,” I said. “If I say stop or run, do so.”

  He nodded. I stepped into the clearing, every sense alert for the tiniest hint of trouble. My skin twitched and burned as we drew closer to the min
e’s entrance, but if there was any sort of spell here, it was very well concealed.

  “Stop,” Aiden said, even as he grabbed my arm in warning.

  I did so, my heart seeming to lodge somewhere in my throat. “What?”

  “Trip wire.”

  He pointed to the ground several feet in front of us; after a moment, I spotted what looked to be fishing line strung across the width of the clearing.

  “A trip wire would explain the lack of magical protection.”

  “Maybe he simply ran out of magical strength after everything that had happened last night,” Aiden said.

  “That would depend on whether he fed on that old couple before or after he came here.”

  “I guess it would.” He touched my back lightly, as if in reassurance. “Wait here while I go investigate.”

  He followed the line to the right and disappeared into the trees and scrub. I shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly uneasy about being left alone in this place.

  “It’s connected to a goddamn shotgun,” he said. “And it’s primed to fire.”

  It was a trap that sounded almost too mundane for our vampire. I rubbed my arms against the rising chill in my body. The tripwire went limp and, a moment later, Aiden reappeared, the shotgun held in one hand.

  “It’s loaded with cheap shot,” he added. “Which means more deformation and a wider spread pattern.”

  “I’m guessing that’s a bad thing?”

  “It ensures coverage over the widest possible area to cause as much damage as possible,” he said. “It might not be the only trap, either, especially if you’re not sensing any magic.”

  He made the gun safe then leaned it against an old log.

  “You’re not bringing it with us?” I asked, surprised.

  “We dare not use it in that mine—not when we have no idea how sturdy it is. A shotgun blast might not be powerful enough to bring anything down, but I certainly don’t want to take the risk.”

  “What about your gun? Won’t that present the same problem?”

  “Maybe, but I’m not about to leave it behind.”