Chapter 25 Flicker of Movement
Koa
Since Sebastian hadn’t been able to leave the vampire court without leadership while a traitor was at large, he’d missed Seri’s party. To make up for it, he’d sent the royal helicopter to whisk her away this afternoon for an evening with him in New York City.
Neither my brothers nor I liked it. It wasn’t because we didn’t trust him; we trusted Seb more than anyone else in the world except each other. But our beloved was out of our sight, out of our range of protection, and out of our arms.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that Seb was more than capable of protecting her.
Even more than we were, to be honest. Dhampirs were fast and strong and healed most injuries in minutes.
Born vampires were faster and stronger and healed instantly.
He could also go in and out of primal state—full vampire mode with red eyes and everything—as easily as I buttoned a shirt.
And the prince of bats could move. Without making a sound, even when running at high speeds or leaping through buildings.
No scuff of boot, no gust of displaced air.
He could pass through an entire hallway without rattling a curtain.
So while we missed Seri and hated to be separated from her, we knew she was safe with him. And he’d show her a great time. He knew all the best spots in the city and would probably pamper her with lavish gifts. And she would love it. She’d have the time of her life.
We just wished she was having it with us.
Yes, we were selfish bastards like that, but given that we had her all day every day, I begrudgingly admitted we could spare our lonely eldest brother one evening of her company.
I still moped while she was gone.
To give myself something to do, I went looking for Foster, hoping he’d want to spar or something, and found him in the security room surrounded by holographic projections of our recent hunts.
His brow was furrowed in concentration, his eyes tracking something across the multiple displays as he played the same sequence over and over.
When he noticed me in the doorway, he didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“You’ve got a spy problem.” He paused the recording and pointed to a shadow at the edge of the frame.
“What am I looking at?” I moved closer.
It seemed Foster had been reviewing footage from our most recent hunts, starting with the ghost of Ondine Filcher in the Pine Barrens to the disaster with the Dark-corrupted shadows at the camp.
“Watch the tree line.” He replayed the Pine Barrens footage. “Ten seconds in. Upper right corner.”
I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the area he indicated. At first, I saw nothing unusual, just foliage and night shadows. Then a flicker of movement caught my attention. Something perched on a branch, its outline too rigid and still to be natural.
“Now watch this.” He switched to the summer camp footage. “Different location, different hunt, same object.”
Again, at the periphery of our vision, the same silhouette lurked, unmistakable now that I knew to look for it.
“What is it?” I leaned closer, now on high alert.
Foster manipulated the controls, zooming in and enhancing the image. The pixelation cleared enough to reveal a taxidermied mechanical raven with cameras where its eyes should be, glowing dull red in the darkness.
“A construct.” I scowled, recognizing the blend of mechanics, organic elements, and magic.
“And it’s the same damn bird in every recording.”
“You’re certain?” A chill ran down my spine.
“Positive.” He pulled up five more hunting sequences side by side, highlighting the raven in each one. “Same construct, different locations. Always watching, always recording. Always focused on you three and whatever you’re hunting.”
I pinched my lips together, connecting dots that should have been obvious.
“The raven Zane shot when he found you—”
“Same model, if not the exact same construct,” he confirmed.
I was right. Arabesque had been using our hunts to gather information. The realization sent a surge of anger through me. Not just at the witch, but at myself for not being more vigilant. How could I have missed something so fundamental to our security?
“She’s collecting data on our fighting patterns,” I said, thinking out loud. “Our strengths, weaknesses, how we coordinate—”
“Not just you three,” Foster interrupted. “I think she’s primarily interested in Seri.”
“Explain.”
“Think about it.” He pulled up footage of Seri during training sessions at Evermere.
“Arabesque was so busy siphoning from Seri that she never bothered to learn what talents your mate actually had. Now Seri’s safely behind your wards, protected by three dhampir husbands, and Arabesque is playing catch-up, trying to determine the full extent of her skills and how strongly developed they are. ”
“The Pine Barrens,” I said, connecting more dots. “When we captured Ondine Filcher’s ghost—”
“Arabesque might have realized that Seri possessed Spectral Sight,” he finished.
“And at the summer camp with the corrupted shadows—”
“She might have discovered Seri’s shadow traveling.”
“What else has she seen?” I ran a hand through my hair, disturbed by how much Arabesque might already know. “What else might she know about Seri’s capabilities?”
“Hard to say without knowing exactly how long these ravens have been watching, but from what I can tell reviewing these recordings, the bird always appears after you’ve engaged with whatever you’re hunting.
It’s never present during the planning or approach.
My guess is she’s only seeing the combat phase, which limits what she can deduce. ”
“At this point, the only one of Seri’s abilities I can say for sure that Arabesque doesn’t know about is Gravitational Pull. Seri only figured it out last month.”
“Well, now that Zane’s blown up her spy bird, Arabesque’s information gathering has hit a roadblock. At least until she develops a new method or device.”
“In the meantime, I’ll tell Cas to go through our job offers and turn down anything that might link back to Arabesque in any way.”
I was specifically thinking of three: A haunted mirror in Rochester, a suspected skinwalker in the Adirondacks, and an abandoned mine with reports of strange gravitational anomalies near Lake Placid. That last one would definitely be declined. Too risky, too specific to a lunar witch’s skill set.
“Smart,” Foster agreed. “I can help develop some counter-surveillance measures, too. Maybe even find a way to feed her misinformation if she does manage to spy on you again. Make her think Seri has powers she doesn’t actually possess. Could be fun to mess with her head.”
Arabesque was intelligent, but her arrogance often blinded her to subtler deceptions. If we could control what information she received about Seri’s abilities, we might be able to lead her into underestimating our beloved. Or better yet, planning for capabilities Seri didn’t actually possess.
“Good work on this, Foster. Not many would have caught it. I sure as hell didn’t.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise.
“When you’ve spent as much time watching your back as I have, you develop an eye for this sort of thing.”
“You good working with Z on those counter-surveillance measures? He loves getting creative with that sort of thing.”
“I know,” he snorted. “Yesterday he was trying to convince me to help him build what he called decoy daughters, and I quote, ‘just to fuck with the Dark bitch.’ ”
That was Zane. Always finding a way to turn even our most dangerous problems into opportunities for creative chaos.
“Let him run with it,” I advised. “Just review whatever he comes up with before it actually gets deployed. Last time he built a decoy without supervision, it ended up exploding in the garage.”
“Sounds like my boy, all right,” Foster chuckled.
#
The security room at Evermere hummed with that particular tension that always preceded violence. I felt it in my bones as the screens before us flickered with static.
Behind me, Zane paced like a caged tiger, his footsteps a staccato rhythm against the floor, while Cas stood completely still against the far wall and I fiddled with my equipment.
Foster leaned back in Zane’s gaming chair, cleaning his fingernails with a throwing star.
And our precious Seri sat in the center of the room on the floor, petting Brumous, who had his head in her lap.
I leaned forward, adjusting the microphone one final time as the connection stabilized. Two windows appeared on the main monitor, King Julian’s sharp blue eyes on one side, Kaori’s face on the other.
“It’s finished,” the vampire queen said without preamble. “We’ve confirmed the meaning of the glyphs. Both King Julian’s scholars and mine came to the same conclusion, separately.”
“It’s the spell Foster overheard Arabesque mention,” King Julian confirmed. “The Hollowing Rite. A ritual designed to use all the stolen magic Arabesque has stored and funnel it directly into her rogue army.”
“On the full moon, no less,” Kaori added. “She’s timed it perfectly. Lunar amplification—”
“She’s going to supercharge them,” I said, the words settling like lead in my gut. “Make them nearly unstoppable.”
For a beat, no one spoke.
“Now that’s just unfair,” Zane grumbled. “Fucking cheater.”
“Koa’s right. The rogues who survive will be stronger than most alphas,” Kaori confirmed.
“The ones who survive?” Seri tilted her head to the side.
“The spell is a gamble,” Kaori explained. “Either it takes or it doesn’t, and for those it doesn’t, it’s a most painful death.”
“If she has that large of an army, she can afford the pre-battle attrition,” King Julian pointed out.
“Foster, what was the last head count you heard?” I asked.
“Just over eleven hundred, but unless she’s found another dominant alpha at least as powerful as me to be her enforcer, I’d be surprised if she was on the plus side of a thousand by now.”