Blade Bound

  “And in case she tries to come into the city some other way, sneak behind us?” Luc asked.

  Jeff nodded. “I’ve tied the wards into a visual monitor, so if she breaches them, we’ll know where and can plan accordingly.”

  “That won’t give us much advance notice,” Ethan said, “but it’s better than nothing.” He leaned back, hands linked in his lap, and closed his eyes. “We’ll know when she arrives. We’ll have six sorcerers on the ground to battle her, plus Mallory and Catcher. At least a few vampires with the SWAT members, all of whom will have weapons. We’ll make sure the House is protected in the interim.” He was quiet for a moment, then opened his eyes, looked around at us. “What are we missing?”

  “Allies?” Luc asked. He’d crossed his arms over his chest, rocked back on his heels. “She might bring someone else.”

  “Is there anyone she hasn’t made an enemy of?” Catcher asked, glancing at my grandfather.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he said. “The fairies might be the best option, simply because their allegiance is always, apparently, for sale. But I don’t think Claudia would allow that here. Not after what she said to you. She may like her new power, but it doesn’t sound like she’s comfortable with the power Sorcha has.”

  “We need escape routes,” Ethan said. “The SWAT team will have mapped out ingress onto and egress off the island, but I don’t think we should take for granted the possibility that they’d help us get away.”

  I thought of Lane’s words. “Not if we’re just ‘supernaturals’ involved in a feud.”

  “And not if they want to leave Sorcha with something to work on while they get away,” my grandfather said. “I don’t like to think of CPD officers as being that cowardly. But their training didn’t prepare them for this. Not for Sorcha and her magic.”

  Ethan nodded. “We’ll want alternate means off the island.” He glanced at my grandfather. “A helicopter would be useful.”

  My grandfather nodded. “I’ll check on that.”

  “I might know someone with a boat,” I said, thinking of Jonah and the speedboat the RG used to get to its HQ—the lighthouse in the marina near Navy Pier. I’d have to give him a call. I wasn’t on the best of terms with the RG right now, as I’d given them a pretty tough lecture about being a little more walk, a little less talk. But maybe we’d finally catch a break—and maybe the ice would break enough to make it useful. “I’ll check.”

  “If we’re separated, get back to the House.” Ethan looked at Luc. “Suggestions for an extraction point downtown?”

  Luc pulled up a map of Chicago, zoomed in to the Museum Campus, looked around, aimed the laser pointer at Soldier Field. “Here,” he said. “Easy foot access, easy car access. And if we run this thing tight to dawn, there’s shade.”

  “Agreed,” Ethan said. “Put Brody there in the SUV. Contact the security company, get a blackout vehicle ready just in case we need a daylight extraction.”

  “Roger that,” Luc said. “If we cut this close, get to the stadium and into some shade. They’ll find you, bring you home.”

  I didn’t like that option—the vulnerability of being carted out of downtown Chicago unconscious during sunlight hours—but there was no help for it, so I nodded. Sorcha had probably done this on purpose, I realized. Made the deadline dawn, to create the possibility the sun would take us out without any effort on her part, and make us more nervous about the entire thing.

  “And we have egress,” Ethan said, looking around. “Me, Catcher, Luc, Lindsey, and Juliet on the ground. Brody in the vehicle. Kelley at the House, in charge of security.”

  “On that,” Kelley called out from her spot across the room at one of the security monitors.

  Ethan looked at Jeff and my grandfather. “You want to be stationed in the van, I assume?”

  “It gives us eyes, ears, and movement,” my grandfather said. “That would be my suggestion.”

  “And quick access to research, information,” Jeff put in. “Just in case we need something.”

  “Google Magic?” I asked with a smile.

  “That’s actually a thing,” Catcher said dourly.

  “But he hates it, and don’t get him started,” Mallory said. “We don’t have near enough time for that conversation right now.”

  I was glad to see the smile on her face, particularly when it was directed at teasing her husband.

  “Anything else?” Ethan asked.

  “We’ll have to be prepared for this to go tits up,” Luc said. “Because I’d say the odds are pretty good of it. I’d suggest our goal is the absence of casualties. Anything beyond that is a blue ribbon.”

  “On a pig,” Lindsey agreed.

  “I’ll suggest again,” Luc said, “that you consider putting your own spin out there. We have a PR staff.”

  “We do,” Ethan said. “And the House will provide a statement as it always does.”

  “Sire, it’s time to do more than that. You need to be out there, out front, the face of the Chicagoland Vampires.” He cleared his throat, as if preparing himself. “Celina did it.”

  Ethan’s jaw worked. “I recall what Celina did. And I appreciate the suggestion. But that’s not the focus I want for the House right now.”

  “Sire,” Luc said, but his tone clearly said that he thought Ethan was making the wrong decision.

  Ethan checked his watch. “We leave here at twenty after three. That gives us time to get to the rendezvous point on the island, do our own look-see before the op.”

  “We’ll get the van,” my grandfather said, looking at Jeff. “Get things set up on our end. We’ll meet you there.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “I’ll keep working on the manuscript,” Mallory said. She glanced up at the clock, which ticked down ominously. “I don’t know if I’ll find anything in a couple of hours, but I’ll try.”

  “I’ll help you,” I told her. “We don’t have much time, but maybe our luck will hold.”

  “Do the best you can in the time you’ve got,” Ethan said. “I want everyone wired and downstairs, ready to go by then.” He looked at Luc. “You’ll handle the details.”

  “Always,” Luc said.

  Ethan rose. “In that case, I think we’re done for now.” He began to move toward the door, but turned back. “Relations with humans have improved, undeniably. But they still don’t see us as subject-matter experts on supernaturals. We will hope that is neither their downfall, nor ours. But we should be careful and vigilant. We must be on our toes, and we must take care of each other. Our lives depend on it.”

  • • •

  Portnoy the Ugly could have easily been called Portnoy the Inarticulate. Portnoy the Obfuscating.

  “Portnoy the Jerkface,” Mallory muttered, flipping another page in the manuscript. Since we had only one copy of the document, she sat on my right, reviewing the manuscript’s right-hand pages as I reviewed those on the left.

  With a groan, she rose from the chair, stretched arms and neck. We hadn’t gotten any further in the hour we’d been squinting at the pages, trying to find something that related back to the Egregore, explained how it might be used—or how it might be used against us. We’d found charms, potions, a few recipes (for “Gud Bredde,” among others), ramblings against kings, descriptions of plants and animals. And nothing else about the Egregore.

  Mallory lay down in the middle of the floor, arms and legs spread. “I’m giving up.”

  “You aren’t giving up. You’re just taking a break.”

  I flipped another page, found another recipe, this time for a meat pie heavy on organ meats, rendered fat, and “chicken foot jelly,” which I didn’t want to think too closely about.

  I blew out a breath as I pushed off with a toe and spun the chair around.

  “Maybe we need to go back to the beginning.”

 
“Towerline?”

  “Too far back,” I said, turning back to the table. “Back to the Egregore page.” I paged through the book until I reached the now-familiar globe, spark, and people, and stared at it, willing insight to come.

  I started at the top of the page, working my way line by line toward the bottom. And my gaze nearly passed over what I found there—the pale, faint lines at the bottom of the page.

  “Huh,” I said, and flipped to the page before, and then the page afterward. Nothing on either about the Egregore, or anything else.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “I’m not sure. I need a magnifying glass,” I said, and rose, went to Ethan’s desk. We might have been in a digital age, but Ethan liked his old-fashioned tools. His fountain pens and letter opener—and the large tortoiseshell magnifying glass beside them.

  “Here we go,” I said, moving back and centering the circle of glass over the fuzzy lines I’d seen at the bottom of the page. “What does this look like to you?”

  Mallory leaned in, frowned. “It looks like the bottom of the page was folded up.” Like I’d done, she flipped back and forth. “But I don’t see any continued pages here. Hmm,” she said, and slid over a tablet, pressed keys. She read the information on the screen, then flipped to the front of the book, checked the title page.

  “Damn it,” she said, and looked up at me. “The manuscript has foldout pages—bigger sheets of illustrations that were folded up to fit into the manuscript. Like you might find for advertisements in a magazine. But they were removed from the original manuscript so they could be sold separately. They weren’t found until 1987, which is more than a hundred years after this particular copy of the Danzig was printed.”

  “Which explains why they aren’t in there. Do we know what was on them?”

  She looked at the screen again, shook her head. “They haven’t been digitized.” A slow smile spread across her face. “And you are not going to believe where they are.” She looked up at me. “They’re at the University of freaking Chicago.”

  The U of C was my almost alma mater, the place where I’d been working on my Ph.D. in English literature the night I’d been attacked. The night I’d been made a vampire.

  “Probably in the Special Collections Research Center. It’s where they keep the old stuff.”

  She checked the tablet again, nodded. “You’re right. How do we get a look at it?”

  “Normally,” I said, thinking back to my grad school days, “we’d make a formal request to the center to view the documents. We show up with ID, and a staff member brings it out. But even assuming the library’s still open given the evacuation, that would take time.” And require daylight.

  Mallory swore. “So that’s it? We’re out of luck?”

  No, I thought. Not if I was willing to go back there. Not if I was willing to open the door I’d closed more than a year ago, and hadn’t reopened since then. But what choice did I have?

  “No,” I said, and pushed back my chair. “We’re not out of luck. Not yet.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  TRIPLICATE

  I told Mallory where I was going, asked her to let the others know. I needed to do this, and I was afraid I’d lose my nerve if I talked to Ethan first. If I acknowledged the fear I’d have to face down.

  This would be a homecoming, and not an altogether good one. I’d come face-to-face with Logan Hill only a few months ago. And even though the university was barely a mile from the House, I hadn’t so much as walked into the library where I’d spent so many nights a single time since my attack. I hadn’t talked to my professors, my advisers. Hadn’t talked to my friends in the English department. I’d needed a clean break.

  That didn’t keep guilt from forming a hard, cold weight in my chest.

  The man, tall and thin, with dark skin and short hair, was waiting in front of the library’s entrance, its imposing concrete walls rising on either side of us. “Merit,” he said with a smile. “Long time no see.”

  “Hey, Pax.”

  Paxton Leonard hadn’t been a colleague; not exactly. He’d been a gatekeeper, one of the few men and women trusted with the literal keys to the most precious documents at the University of Chicago. I’d spent enough time in the center reviewing manuscripts for my dissertation that we’d become friendly.

  He reached out, and we exchanged an awkward hug. “You don’t call. You don’t write.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not that we did any better.” He paused. “We felt . . . awkward about it.”

  I nodded. “Me, too.”

  “But we’ve kept up with you—watched the news. You’ve come quite a long way. From books to swords.”

  “It wasn’t a transition I figured I’d ever have to make,” I said, and let a smile touch my lips. “But it kind of worked out.”

  He smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “How’s your family?”

  “Good!” he said with a bright smile. “Mom and Howard finally tied the knot.”

  “Oh my God! When?”

  “In June,” he said with a grin. “He kept asking, and she finally said yes.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Said she went to Dad’s grave, talked to him about it, finally got his approval, so she felt okay about it again. And Amanda finished her first year of medical school.”

  “That’s great, Pax.”

  “Thanks, Merit.” Then he waved it away. “I know you’re in a rush, so let’s get going.” He fished keys from his pocket. “Hell of a lot easier to get into a library when you’re the only person left in Chicago.”

  He unlocked the door, and I slipped inside behind him. The library smelled, as it always had, of paper. Books, maps, notebooks, manuscripts. Including the one I needed to see.

  “You want to tell me why we’re doing this?” he asked, when he’d pressed buttons on the alarm and we’d moved into the elevator.

  “I want to look at the Danzig Manuscript foldouts.”

  His dark eyebrows lifted. “The Danzig Manuscript? Why? That’s just mumbo jumbo.”

  “It’s not mumbo jumbo. It’s real, and it’s encrypted. Magic rearranges the letters.”

  He blinked. “You’re serious?”

  I nodded. “I absolutely am. Long story short, we think Sorcha’s using the Danzig Manuscript as a kind of magical guidebook. And if you can help me get it, I can introduce you to the woman who figured it out.” I grinned at him. “And you two can write up her groundbreaking discovery.”

  The light in his eyes was very familiar—the excitement of academic discovery.

  “Merit, you have a deal,” he said, and swept out a regal hand when the elevator door opened again.

  Unfortunately, the deal had limits. He didn’t allow me into the space where the documents were kept. So I waited impatiently, pacing the center’s hallway while he found the pages.

  Finally, he came back with a large box of cream paperboard, which he carried to a table. He pulled cotton gloves from his pocket, slid them on, and lifted the box’s lid.

  Inside, nestled in undoubtedly archival tissue paper, were several folded sheaths of cream paper. “The Danzig Manuscript foldouts,” he said. “As you requested.”

  I smiled. He’d said those words—or words like them—many times during my tenure here, and probably many times since.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll let me copy these.”

  “Hell no,” he said. “Don’t want to expose them to that kind of light.” But he smiled and pointed to a small room. “But we can digitize and print them. They’re in line anyway, so I’m really doing the university a favor.”

  That was good enough for me.

  • • •

  Ethan was pacing the office when I walked in, the rest of the crew settled around the conference table, looking through manuscript pages. He t
urned toward the doorway at the sight of me, and relief flooded him.

  He strode toward me. You should have told me where you were going.

  I nodded. I know. But I was afraid I’d lose my nerve.

  He smiled, pushed hair behind my ear. And did you?

  I held up the folder, smiled cockily. I did not.

  “You got them?” Mallory asked, coming toward me.

  “All forty, just in case.” I handed her the folder. “I haven’t even looked at them yet—just rushed there and back. And when this is all said and done, you have a rendezvous with a research librarian.”

  She smiled. “Did you set me up on an academic date?”

  “I did. You’ll like Pax.”

  “Just don’t like him too much,” Catcher said from the conference table.

  She clutched the folder to her chest. “Never fear, Mr. Bell,” she said, squeezing my arm before heading back to the table. “Good job, vampire.”

  “Thank you, witch.” I looked back at Ethan. “I should probably go get dressed.” I was still in jeans, and I’d need something a lot more substantial for tonight’s events.

  Ethan checked his watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

  Immortals with so little time. Wasn’t that ironic?

  • • •

  I opted for my leathers. Good boots. Hair in a ponytail, to keep it out of my face. My dagger tucked into my boot, my katana belted around my waist. My wedding ring was a new weight on my hand, and I looked down at it in the mirror, smiled at the gleam of metal, the reminder of my grandmother. The reminder of family, and things worth protecting. It was time to do a little protecting of my own, and this time with my family by my side. Or the supernatural members of it, anyway.

  I walked downstairs, found Ethan at his desk, Mallory and Catcher at the table. There was a faint buzz of magic in the room, which I hoped was a good sign.

  Ethan was on his phone, nodding. “Thank you,” he said after a moment, and put it down again. He looked up, looked me over. “Well, Sentinel. You look fierce.”