Chapter 45
forty-five
Gentry
One hour before…
When Gentry first opened the files, she hadn’t been sure what she’d been expecting. Perhaps a neat list of coven members with their death dates, or dossiers on each member along with their capabilities. The stacks of wartime plans, strategies, maps, and casualties had surprised her.
She bit back a groan. These would be hard to parse through, particularly as she couldn’t just search for keywords the way she could on a computer.
For a second, she considered scanning the papers in using OCR, but thought better of it.
Digital proof that she had, uh, borrowed the Weavers’ historical documents would be a dumb way to go about it.
The old-fashioned way it is, then. She started at the top, with the final battle that had finished off the Cobalts.
It had been the siege that had ended them, a brutal wait-out of resources, although they’d managed to push back a little by sending their vampyres on suicide missions against the Weavers.
The final page of the battle document said as follows:
The following prominent Cobalts were taken into custody at the end of siege: Freya Mormont, Enid Wintersbane, Colt Eisen, Frederick Dunesbane, Sundrid T’gas, Willow Botstone, Noah Johannes, Mable Friecks, and Sutherland Walkes.
All remaining members were burned at the stake with their vampyres.
Gentry flipped through the rest, her heart growing heavy as she realized that these documents were depicting a far more gruesome war than the newspaper articles had.
Both sides had burned each other at the stake, but only the Weavers had had the power to perform public executions; each time the Cobalts lost, their most well-known members would suffer humiliation in downtown Skadra as their remains hung out for days.
It broadened Gentry’s list from ten potential suspects to thirty.
There has to be some way to distinguish them.
She thought back on all the details she had about Drayer.
The only thing that came to mind was the sister.
Drayer had a sister whom she’d been waiting for as the birds had eaten her.
She’d even thought of her a few times when Gentry had eavesdropped on her.
But I don’t have a name for the sister. She needed that final detail, and then she’d have the bitch.
Gentry glanced at the clock on her laptop. She had about twenty minutes before Kit returned, which would give her enough time to tune into whatever wrongdoing Drayer was up to. It was time she stopped shirking from the dirty work that needed done if she wanted the excision to happen soon.
That decided, she sat on her makeshift mat on the floor and closed her eyes. With far more ease than when she’d first started, she cleared her thoughts and emotions and listened. The connection snapped into place.
Unlike the other times Gentry saw the world through Drayer’s eyes, it wasn't in the clean meeting rooms or extravagant bedrooms Gentry had grown accustomed to.
No, this time it was the open desert lit by moonlight.
She recognized the whipping of the wind on a broom, the coolness of the breeze rushing across their bodies and the fact that her eyes were moving over the horizon looking for shapes just the way she knew Kit had.
Her eyes stopped on a flat expanse of earth and then Drayer was lowering herself in the air, far slower than Kit would have.
When she landed, it was at the base of a steep rock face and on the ground, she saw that some of those rocks jutted out enough to serve as small rooms facing the open desert.
Drayer strode into a crevasse illuminated by torches and decorated with tables and chairs.
A fire pit lay in the center. Several men and women were lined up in greeting and they only went back to their activities after Drayer waved a hand.
"Everything is ready?" Drayer asked and a middle-aged woman with dark braids nodded her head and spoke up.
"Yes. The children have been cuffed and are ready to transport," she said. "A few of them are a little small for their age. I suggest you set up the rendezvous so we can get them off our hands quickly."
"Excellent," Drayer said and Gentry felt how bored she was at the news. This wasn't the real reason why she’d asked or why she was visiting. "Can I see them?" she asked.
"You can see them," an old crackly voice said and Gentry was surprised to see a hobbling old woman. "But be sure to cover your face while you pick one out," she said. "We can't afford to be making stupid mistakes at this stage."
As always, Drayer felt a swell of affection for Lydia and nodded her head. "Consider it done. Lead the way, old woman."
A grumbling Lydia took them further back into a cave system that Gentry hoped would crumble on top of their heads.
Unfortunately, it didn't. Rather, cool, humid air met them and she could hear the distant drip drops of water.
They took a left, then a right, went straight until the tunnel widened into a room with several cages in it.
"Have you had a look at them yet?" Drayer asked Lydia.
Lydia snorted. "Of course I did. You should've just let me pick the best candidate to take to the mansion."
"We can't afford to trial and error right now," Drayer murmured. "The gambler's brat is getting stronger and if I have to pull off a fucking excision just to make this whole mess go away, I will."
Alarm went through Gentry at that news, but she dampened her emotions as best she could. So she wasn’t the only one trying to cut loose of their bond, although if Drayer was successful, then Gentry would be the one to die.
"It's a risky move," Lydia said. "We still haven't exhausted all of our resources, but nonetheless..." The old woman hobbled forward. "I put the most promising candidates over here. They were making a ruckus while I was examining them, so I went ahead and cursed them all with a lockjaw spell."
Drayer felt amusement at that. "How long will it last? Our clients might appreciate quiet cargo to the flight."
"Two or three days. I'm not quite as precise with my magic as I used to be. Getting old."
A flare of annoyance. "You better keep that needle of yours steady, Lydia.”
The old woman waved that comment off. “Take your pick of girls and I’ll have her separated from the rest.” Lydia moved her witchlight with an impatient flick and Gentry watched as small, round faces peered out from the bars of those cages, their eyes wide but their faces otherwise expressionless from what she guessed had to be the lockjaw curse.
The womb then stopped at the side of the room where Gentry couldn't see any little faces peering back out.
Drayer stepped forward and murmured a spell that would obscure her face, that would make it appear more like a coolish illusion than anything else.
She then bent over and peered into the cage.
Four little girls looked back, their faces dirtied with reddish desert dirt.
Drayer put her hand through the bar and they shrank back against the jagged rock wall.
She felt her hand get hot as Drayer manipulated strands of magic to drag across each one of the girls' faces. The little girl's magic seemed to respond in kind, tinging like delicate pieces of glass and giving off a certain type of vibration for each. It was only at the last that Drayer smiled.
"That one," she announced triumphantly. "She'll be perfect."
Lydia grunted. "She's a bit strong on the magic for you to try something so experimental on."
"There's nothing experimental about it," Drayer scoffed.
"I combed through the Netherton libraries. A soul as strong as mine should be able to handle a magic user — especially a child’s.
Me and her"—Drayer extended another piece of magic to caress the girl's cheek—"bonding me to that weak magic-less girl has only caused problems, but this one will make a fine replacement. "
Drayer then summoned her own witchlight to illuminate the girl's face and Gentry gasped internally. She knew that girl underneath the grime of the dirt and her tangled hair, and recognized those eyes. It was the same girl who'd healed her on the bus to Skadra, one of Nona's kids.
Amelia.