Chapter 49 #2
Thinking back to his lessons on breaking through security, I attempt to wriggle my way through this barrier like I did the one guarding Groove Garden’s basement.
But this time, the energies shift before me more like a drifting haze than a solid wall.
Wherever I focus my attention, any nook I catch is filled in a moment later.
Sweat trickles down my back. I glance around at my matches and my aunt to see just as much frustration on their faces.
Asher grimaces at the warehouse. “Something important must be happening in there, or they wouldn’t be protecting it so much.”
“Fucking twisted magic.” Salvatore glowers at the invisible barrier. “I can’t get enough of a grip on it to break it.”
Cole backs up a step, his posture rigid. He stares at the road ahead with a pained expression that turns increasingly resigned. “I might be able to get us through.”
Byron gives him a surprised glance. “How? Can you read something in the ephemera that shows a weakness?”
The professor offers a grim smile. “No. But if the people responsible for creating this barrier are nearby… I think my glim can alter the outcome of their efforts.”
My throat tightens with a jolt of understanding. “You’re going to look for a fate where their magic falters.”
He inclines his head without looking at me. “Please stand back, everyone. I don’t want there to be any chance that my power latches on to any of you.”
None of my other matches have seen his glim in action before—or the shift that comes with it. It’s obvious he doesn’t really want to go this far.
But he’s doing it, because it’s the only way through. Because it matters to me.
We all ease back several steps. Cole crouches down.
Salvatore cocks his head while he watches. “What kind of glim—”
He cuts off his own question with a grunt of surprise. Because Cole’s body has just spasmed with the initial force of his transformation.
As his clothes meld into spurting fur and his limbs slide into their new configurations, my other matches simply stare.
Aunt Daphne clicks her tongue, her eyes wide but her tone still laced with amusement. “Quite the matches you got, Ellie. Quite the matches.”
In the space of a few thuds of my pulse, Cole’s huge wolf form stands poised where he once crouched. His lips draw back from his teeth with a snarl.
He lifts his stormy gaze to glare at the warehouse—and whoever’s inside it?
I don’t know how much he can sense about them. He braces his canine body, perfectly still, the breeze ruffling the thick fur along his back. A shudder passes through his sturdy frame.
Then he pads forward, one step and then another until it’s a full-out prowl. On along the sidewalk, claws tapping against the pavement… past the point that repelled us up until now.
I hesitate for a few seconds before creeping after him. The others stir and trail after me.
We walk through fragmented traces of collected ephemera, the energy nipping at my face but not blocking me. Three steps, four steps, five…
Byron sucks in a breath, and my head jerks up. Lights have glimmered into view in a few of the second-floor windows, dim but obvious.
The magical barrier must have been hiding all signs of occupation too.
Salvatore studies the building with a soft guffaw. “All right. Now all we have to do is take a peek inside, right? I can get us up there.”
Without waiting for our agreement, he holds out his hands toward the pavement at the base of the building. Fragments of the crumbling cement and the earth beneath mingle into bricks, stacking and rising in a steep staircase that leads up the side of the structure to the nearest of the lit windows.
Cole straightens up back in his human form, rolling his shoulders and avoiding all our eyes as if he thinks he’ll see horror there. My gut twists at his discomfort.
I move to his side and twine my fingers with his. I half expect him to pull away. But he only freezes, his stance going stiff, before tugging my hand a little deeper into his hold.
That’s enough of a welcome that I let myself push up on my toes to kiss his cheek.
Cole’s arm comes right around me. He holds me close for one beat of my heart and another, his piney scent wrapping around me with the fraught embrace.
Then, with a flex of his jaw, he pushes himself away. “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”
Salvatore insists on climbing his stairs first, expanding his creation as he goes so there’s a platform just below the level of the window long enough for all six of us to stand. Girding myself, I hurry after him with Cole at my heels. Our concealing spells prickle around us.
As I reach the grimy window, I rest my hands gingerly on the outer ledge. My gaze roves over the figures gathered beyond the smudged pane.
Uncle Nik stands with his profile to me, but he’s far from alone. Several other men and women stand in a circle with him like they’re having a group discussion.
I don’t recognize any of the others—the maintenance worker from Luminary isn’t in the bunch.
The plain room holds no furnishings, not even chairs or a table. Just a scuffed wooden floor and beige walls.
Various mouths in the group are moving, but I can’t make out any sound through the thick glass. Or maybe it’s not the glass at all.
Cole glares at the scene and speaks under his breath. “There’s more magic shielding that specific room. We’d have to break through it to funnel their voices out… and I think, this close, they’d notice.”
Screw a strigoi. My jaw clenches with my frustration.
I pull out my phone. “We can at least get a visual record of who Nik met with.”
At least, that’s the idea. I snap one picture, take a look at it, and stifle a groan. “The magic is also blurring their features if recorded.”
Salvatore cracks his knuckles. “I say we blast right in there and bust some skulls. I bet we can get one of them talking.”
“I don’t think—” I start to say, and my voice snags in my throat.
Because the people on the other side of the window… don’t look entirely like people anymore.
In the space of a blink, a shimmer has come over their bodies. The edges of their forms no longer look solid but as if they’re blending into the lit space around them.
A brighter glow shines from their eyes. Other hazy shapes form around their figures—something that looks almost like a halo on one, filmy wings from the back of another…
“What the hell?” Byron murmurs.
Aunt Daphne’s face has gone sallow in the dim light that reaches this far. Her mouth falls open. “Oh. I wondered about… but I never really thought… Is it actually feasible…?”
Her fractured questions crack something loose in my head. A possibility so vast and wild it shocks the breath from my throat.
Those people don’t look like people. They look like beings of pure magic. Maybe even gods.
The question tumbles out of me before I can catch it. “Are they radiants?”
Cole looks even paler than my aunt. “They certainly fit the name.”
Radiants, the purely paranormal beings whose intimate relations with humanity led to lucents like us… Radiants, who supposedly vanished centuries ago. No one’s seen or heard of them in centuries.
Because they actually died out, or because they got very good at hiding?
Is that why their magic feels slightly strange? And not just the energies here, but also—
The memory of the woman in the club basement dying with a flare of light blazes behind my eyes. My stomach plummets with an even worse realization.
“Wonderful,” I say, barely managing to commit to the sarcasm. “Then I think it’s also radiants who want me dead.”
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