Chapter 15
Gideon’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of someone moving about outside his room.
A single light burned on the bedside table, and Ophelia curled against his flank.
Sometime during the night she’d divested herself of her garb.
He pulled the sheet up over her milky shoulder.
Apparently, his blood supply had been adequately restored.
His body was far too appreciative of the bare stretch of flesh given the circumstances.
What time was it? He blew out a breath, that horrendous dryness gone from his mouth. Beside him, an IV on a rolling stand dripped, the liquid in the bag ruddy.
Gods, he felt like shit, and that was a marked improvement from earlier.
He pushed up to sit, riffling his hair. Someone had managed to get him into clean clothes, though their condition was questionable.
The t-shirt was stained and had a hole by the hem, and the ridiculous mustard and red plaid pajama pants were worn thin from use.
Gideon frowned. He’d have to put a call into the service he used to get his apartment packed up and delivered to Havers. Relying on the castoffs of strangers irked.
He scrubbed at his stubble, attempting to focus his gummy eyes on the small digital clock beneath the lamp.
Two-sixteen a.m. When they’d gotten back to the compound, it’d still been light.
He fumbled for his phone, frowning at the absence of correspondence.
The Vampire Court had definitely cut him out of the loop.
He was going to have to send that note to Judge Carey sooner than not, positive they’d already besmirched his reputation, if not ended his career.
Surprisingly, the prospect did little to faze him. The vast majority of the wealth he’d accrued was safe with his brethren in the City of Light, and Gideon had little attachment to his concrete assets. He now had more important concerns, and keeping Ophelia safe was paramount.
His brow rose at the single email from Thackett. Patrick Montgomery had indeed taken the out and pled not guilty, laying all the blame squarely on Havers’s coven.
Gideon frowned. Not ideal, but it should keep the man alive, and hopefully he could be persuaded to recant that statement when called to the stand.
If it came to that. Given that Gideon had enough evidence to open an inquest into both sidhe and the Vampire Court’s involvement in Havers at the federal level, his gut told him they weren’t going to allow that to happen.
No, this would come to a head long before the government became involved.
Which meant Havers needed to prepare. If the vampires were out for blood, the town was in danger. Hopefully, that was Chase rustling around in the other room, and Gideon could determine where the populace stood defense-wise.
Right, get your ass out of bed, Gideon. Easier said than done.
He grimaced, throwing off the comforter and pocketing his phone.
He gripped the IV stand, steadying himself as he rose and shuffled to the door with it in tow.
In the great room, the fire had burned low, but the lights were on in an adjoining room.
He made it as far as a breakfast bar and sat heavily on one of the wooden stools, huffing as he looked into the kitchen.
Jena stood with her back to him, rummaging inside of an industrial-sized, stainless steel refrigerator.
Ah, even better. He wanted answers about that wash of power he’d felt on the way to the compound earlier.
“Explain to me why I sensed the node so strongly in the center of the pack’s territory,” he said, his voice raspier than he’d like.
She gasped, spinning around with a plated cake clutched in her hands. “Oh my God, don’t do that! What are you even doing out of bed? Tom said you were out cold.”
“Tom was mistaken, and one could ask you the same.” She was pale, her dark hair hanging lankly to her waist. Small cuts stippled her face, and a blood-spotted bandage was wrapped around one of her hands.
Her cheeks flushed. “I was hungry. You want a piece?”
He eyed the gooey chocolate confection, his stomach roiling. “I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged, plopping a generous slice onto a plate. “You felt the node’s power out there because it’s a reserve nexus. My mom created it to anchor the ward across the pack’s territory on this part of the peninsula, and there’s another to the east anchoring the ward there.”
Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose. “And explain to me why you thought this was a good idea?”
“Um…because it was the only way to power the wards?” she asked, licking frosting off her thumb.
No, that was what his kind were for. He supposed they hadn’t had that option, but— His eyelids fluttered.
“You really don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you?
The nodes have a set area of influence for a reason.
The grid of leylines needs to remain in balance for it to function properly.
By giving more room to the spirits it houses here, you’ve inadvertently weakened the grid elsewhere. ”
Jena’s jaw dropped. “Oh.”
“Oh.” Gideon sighed. It would need to be brought into balance, but now wasn’t the time, especially with an unseelie lurking about. “Tell me about your father.”
The plate she was holding clattered onto the counter, and she rested her hands at either side of it.
“He murdered my mother and tried to take me across the veil. I thought I banished him, but I was wrong.” Her expression was tight, her green eyes crackling and leaving him zero doubt that there was no love lost there.
A knot in Gideon’s shoulders loosened, glad he didn’t have a secondary conspiracy to deal with. “Yes, Chase gave me the CliffsNotes. He’s unseelie?”
She deflated and stabbed a fork at her cake. “He’s…something. Everyone here thought he was a warlock, but he racked up way too much bad karma. I asked him if he was unseelie, and he gave me some line about having enough to qualify and the rest being murkier.”
“Well, that’s disturbing,” Gideon muttered. “You don’t happen to know his name or have a picture of him, do you? Any description you can give would be helpful.”
Her eyes narrowed as she chewed. “Why?”
Gideon sighed, unable to believe he was offering this up, but he’d pledged to the blasted thing, damn it. He needed to protect the node to the best of his ability—no matter how painful that might become.
And it would.
“In the old country, we have a repository of knowledge. If I have something to go on, I can make a call and attempt to find out exactly what we’re dealing with.
Those attracted to the nodes’ power rarely fade from the radar after they’ve set their sights on them.
Once we have identifying him set in motion, the next order of business is to destroy the portal he’s utilizing. ”
“Everyone here called him William. He’s tall, black hair, green eyes and is stupid charming,” she frowned at the last bit. “I have a picture back at the Witchery with what’s supposed to be his name written on the back.”
“You don’t remember it?”
“No, every time I try to, it goes fuzzy, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure the portal’s in the circle of birch by the pond where he killed Chambers.”
Her not being able to recall the fiend’s name was concerning, but Gideon’s eyebrows shot up at the location of the portal. “It’s within the node’s boundaries?”
“Yeah.” Jena shrugged, chewing. “Is that weird?”
“Everything about this town is weird.”
“That’s fair.” She popped another bite of cake into her mouth.
“I’m more curious as to why you didn’t feel him breach the veil,” Gideon said, sweeping a finger over his lips. “The node should’ve given you warning. Even I felt its agitation yesterday.”
Jena frowned as she chewed. “There might’ve been something a few months ago. After the dragon thing, I spent two days in Klineville General. I was pretty out of it.”
“If he knew to cross over then, you’re being watched.” Gideon muttered, a pattern of maleficence emerging. It was not uncommon for unseelie to recruit a handful of useful idiots to push their agenda.
“Lovely.” Jena scraped up another forkful of cake. “But I don’t get it. If there’s a mound, what do the vampires get out of it? Wouldn’t it be just as uninhabitable for them as the rest of the supes and normys?”
Gideon scratched his jaw. “One would think, unless the goal was to harvest residents as they were pushed from its confines… Still, that’s rather short sighted, and I have a bad feeling they’ll be here in force long before that occurs.”
She froze. “Why would they want to do that?”
“Because I’ve enough evidence to initiate a federal inquiry which would put the Vampire Court’s existence in jeopardy.
According to Thaddeus, their interest lies in the ability of the node to somehow alter the blood of Havers’s residents.
Imbibing it mutates the virus that causes vampirism, breaking their tribal affiliations.
He refused to explain what that actually means, save that it’s something the vampire queen has been trying to capitalize on for a very long time.
I got the impression he was responsible for rebuffing her efforts, and that this lawsuit was something of a last-ditch effort on her part. ”
“I’m surprised you got that much out of him. Mr. Brock isn’t great at staying on topic.”
“Indeed. I went to ask for further clarification and got a dissertation on bees.”
Jena snorted. “Well, whatever the vampires are trying to accomplish, I can guarantee you my dad’s working a different angle and just using them to get what he wants.” She bit her lips, tapping her fork against her plate. “And honestly, I’m not sure if that’s creating a mound.”
Gideon cocked a brow, skeptical to the extreme. A foothold in this realm was always what the unseelie wanted. “And what makes you say that?”