Chapter Sixteen #2
“We leave now,” Yrian said, taking my hand as he headed for the door.
“Others are on their way,” Gabriel protested, following. “There aren’t many silver dragons in Europe, but those that are will be in Paris as soon as possible.”
“There are several of my sept nearby. They are en route now,” Drake said with a frown. “It would be folly to make an attempt on Bael without support.”
“The folly would be allowing him to regain the blood moon,” Yrian said without stopping, going straight for the front door. “With it, he can do untold damage. We are a sufficient number to stop him now, before it comes to that.”
All the wyverns followed, although they didn’t look happy ... everyone but Hunter and Archer, who I knew were itching for payback. A few other men came running from another section of the house, guards appointed to the various wyverns, Aisling had told me when Yrian arrived earlier.
“Thaisa has asked if she should take a portal here, but I told her to stay with her grandmother,” Archer told Hunter as they gathered up the two swords that they’d left in the hall.
“No sense in putting her in danger,” Hunter agreed.
To a man, the wyverns all considered the mates.
“Don’t even,” Ysolde told Baltic, sailing out of the open door with a dark-haired man named Pavel on her heels.
“I’m sorry to ruin Jim’s visit with Amelie and Cecile, but this is more important,” Aisling said to no one in particular. “Effrijim, I summon thee.”
The demon dog appeared with a squeaky toy in its mouth.
It immediately dropped it, saying, “Sheesh, Ash! You gotta warn me when you’re going to do that.
I was putting on a squeaky puppet show for Cecile.
Heya, everyone. What’s going on? Why do the dragon hunters have their swords?
Aw, man, you’re going to fight someone, aren’t you? ”
There was a bit of a kerfuffle when everyone burst out onto the sidewalk, what with cars having to be fetched. Yrian was beyond impatient, pacing in front of the door while Drake’s car was being brought around.
“This delay is intolerable,” Yrian said to me as he stalked past before turning around and retracing his steps.
“I know how much you want to find Bael, but you’re setting the sidewalk on fire, and I don’t think the mortals who live next to Drake are going to understand,” I said, stomping on the fiery footprints that trailed him.
“And before you think about running off to tackle him alone, remember that you said you needed the weyr for this.”
He made a sour expression that quickly faded away, his eyes searching my face. “Do you have a glamour?”
“Several. For whom did you want one?” I asked.
“Yourself. I don’t want Kashi to know who you are. Can you look like you did in the Duat?”
“Sure,” I said, my hands already weaving bits of magic into the appearance. “But I doubt if I’m going to be his focus, not with you and the other dragons rolling up.”
“He would mark your appearance, and seek you out to destroy me, just as he did Amice.” He checked himself, saying, “Rather, as he and Tenite did, since she was evidently part of his plot.”
He must have told the wyverns that after I’d been banished from their meeting, because no one appeared surprised by his statement.
The ride to the large sandstone building sitting on the edge of one of Paris’s small parks was relatively short, although fraught with some argument when Drake, again, pointed out that several green dragons were on their way, and the handful that were in Paris had already set off for Suffrage House.
“What sort of protection does the vault have?” Yrian asked Drake.
“A very strong series of electronic locks that will take some time to work through. In addition to that, there are a variety of magics woven into the material.”
“Banes,” Aisling said. “The wards are easy enough to break, but the banes, songs, and prohibitions are going to take some time—and a whole lot of demons—to break.”
“Kashi will have demons at hand,” Yrian said grimly.
“Which is one reason why it is important to have as many members of my sept as can be rallied quickly,” Drake pointed out, clearly annoyed.
“We do not have time to wait for others,” Yrian insisted, his body tense and poised for action. “If Kashi regains Desislav’s relic, it will make him much harder to destroy. The kin who are present are enough.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” Aisling said softly. She sat across from us, pressed into Drake, Jim lying at her feet.
The demon, I noticed, was oddly silent. Before I could ask what that was about, we pulled up to the headquarters of the L’au-dela.
The second we stepped out of the car, Aisling sucked in her breath. “Demons,” she said, rubbing her arms, immediately drawing wards on all of us. The other cars pulled in behind us, with the assorted wyverns, mates, guards, and four of Drake’s sept members adding to the company.
Suffrage House looked perfectly normal from the outside, but I could feel that something was wrong. It was as if the air was thicker, somehow tainted.
There was a brief discussion of who would do what—May slipped into the Beyond to reconnoiter, with Gabriel parking his body in Drake’s car so he could follow her in an incorporeal state—while the guards and Drake’s green dragons would surround the building and dispatch any demonic beings who attempted to escape.
The wyverns assigned themselves to tackling Bael, while the mates were instructed to remain in positions of safety.
“You know us,” Ysolde told the men when they appeared to close ranks in order to boss us around. “Do you really think we’re going to just stand back and do nothing?”
Baltic’s martyred expression was mirrored by Drake, but Yrian, I was pleased to see, looked thoughtful.
“Do you have more of those frog glamours?” he asked.
Archer and Hunter both glared at me.
I refused to look at them. I was still annoyed at how they had blamed Yrian for doing exactly what they’d asked him to do.
“No, but I can whip up a few other transformation glamours. They won’t last long, but it should give you up to a minute to disable or destroy the demon. You’re sure I can’t glamour Bael?”
“Not in the mortal world. He has too much power here,” he answered, then, taking me by the hand, marched up the stone stairs to the entrance. Behind us, Aisling was still arguing with Drake about helping with the takedown, but in the end, we all piled into the building.
Straight into chaos. Literally.
“Asfet!” Yrian snarled, catching sight of a woman who looked almost identical to Maat, although she was surrounded by little tendrils of dark power that moved around her like she was a Gorgon.
She screamed, and a dozen or so demons poured down a staircase and into the foyer.
“Give me your sword,” Yrian said when Baltic hefted a massive two-handed sword that he’d had stashed in his car.
Baltic frowned, but the second Yrian pulled the light-sword crystal from an inner pocket, his eyes lit up. “You took the mage sword from Bael?”
“From Xavier pretending to be Kashi, yes. No doubt he gave it to Xavier for safekeeping. You appear to have an affinity to it, and will wield it better than me.”
“And you just earned a friend for life,” Ysolde murmured, smiling when Baltic accepted the crystal in trade for the sword, his expression almost joyous.
They had just enough time to prepare before the demons hit the marble floor, Yrian going straight for Asfet, while the others tackled the demons.
I stood back next to Aisling, who was casting wards on everyone, both protective and prohibitive depending on the target, while Jim darted in and out, leaping on demons in an attempt to send them into the path of the wyverns.
All were equipped with bladed weapons, although the swords belonging to Archer and Hunter were spelled and runed, making them glow with power.
More demons appeared, throwing themselves down the stairs to tackle the semicircle of dragons.
“I just hope Dr. Kostich—dammit! That was my best arcane ball! I really have to figure out how to fix my magic so it doesn’t keep turning into tropical fruit—I hope he’s doing something other than calling people and demanding they take care of his problems,” Ysolde said as she continued to fling small balls of blue-white arcany at the demons.
May popped up suddenly next to me, making me squawk and half turn to throw the glamour I was weaving.
“Sorry,” she said, giving me a little pat on the arm just as Gabriel burst into the foyer, a very pointy mace in his hand.
“Didn’t mean to startle you. No one is in the vault that we could tell, but Bael is downstairs, working on the vault lock. ”
“Yrian!” Gabriel bellowed as he swung the mace, taking down two demons that had headed straight for May. “He’s downstairs with the fury.”
May pulled out two daggers from somewhere within her leather vest, immediately disappearing as she obviously went into the Beyond.
Yrian stopped fighting his way toward Asfet, who was cowering behind a pillar with a shield of demons in front of her, and yelled, “Dragon hunters! Keep them up here, and capture Asfet. Baltic and I will deal with Bael.”
“Not without me, you’re not,” I said, running after him when he dashed toward a sign that pointed to the lower level.
“And me!” Ysolde waited for Baltic to finish destroying the form of a particularly large demon before following us.
I had expected the basement of such an important building to be full of high-tech security devices, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The hallway stretched the entire length of the building, various doors opening off the corridor, each bearing not only electronic locks but what looked like retinal scanners.
But there was one set of double doors halfway down, and it was there a knot of demons stood next to two people.
Around them, littering the floor, were crumpled bodies of demons that periodically poofed into a nasty black smoke, leaving nothing behind but a stain on the floor.