“Hit me,” Kraft demanded.
The blond draugr smiled wide. “With pleasure.” He punched Kraft hard in his midsection, and Kraft coughed around the pain. “Again?”
“No, once was enough. I’m not dreaming again, am I?”
Rolf’s teasing expression vanished. “No, because vampires don’t dream.”
“They do if a sorcerer tampers with their bloode.”
Rolf turned around and headed for the stairs leading toward the basement. “Come with me.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Kraft didn’t knowwhat to expect, but once in the basement, Rolf turned left and continued through a wall into a passage Kraft had never entered before.
“What the hell is this?”
“The way to my playroom.” Rolf shot him an amused look over his shoulder.
“What the hell did you... Oh. Why is he here?” Khent asked after appearing in the corridor from a doorway Kraft hadn’t noticed.
“We have a problem.” Rolf pushed past Khent into a room—no, a laboratory.
Kraft goggled at several long tables filled with bodies of dead lycans and sorcerers, a few he recognized from the Olmstead house. And there, one of the magir from the bazaar who’d died.
“What are you doing in here?”
“We’re trying to find out how this sorcerer is tapping into the death magic he’s using,” Khent said. “Sebastian Castle’s ability to control a vampire puts us all at risk, so Hecate asked me to find out how he’s doing it. And I think I just figured it out.”
“No.” Rolf scowled.
“Yes.” Khent sighed. He walked to the partial torso of the non-dead vampire Kraft had fought and killed.
“Where did you get that?”
“We brought it back here right after your fight. We thought it best to bring a tampered vampire to safety, so we could figure out how the sorcerer did it.” Khent looked less than pleased. “He’s managed to somehow use a Bloode Stone to corrupt the bloode of one of us. This one was strigoi, and damaged. Perhaps one of Atanase’s old pets who escaped.”
The previous strigoi master, Atanase had been one of the worst of their kind, but fortunately, Varu had killed him.
“I still don’t understand how anyone not a vampire could manipulate a Bloode Stone.”
“Neither do we,” Rolf said. The always smiling and teasing draugr looked so much different, so serious, that Kraft found it difficult to reconcile this creature with the blond jokester he thought he knew. Khent too acted a lot less arrogant and annoying, and more studious and quiet.
“What the fuck are you two doing? Who are you, really?”
Khent shocked him anew by chuckling. “I told you it’s funny.”
Rolf shrugged. “I guess.”
“What?” Kraft didn’t know what to think.
Khent blew out a breath. “Look, Rolf and I have been working on side projects while the rest of you go out killing things. Because I am a reaper and well-versed in death magic, and Rolf is a draugr and has a deep knowledge of the different types of magic, that beyond what normal magir and witches and warlocks practice, we’ve been looking into alternate ways to stop what’s coming from destroying everything.”
Kraft looked around at glowing objects, test tubes, glass beakers and bobbles, and nodded slowly. “Magical measures to stop the Darkness.”
“Yeah, except it’s slow-going. And we’re running out of time,” Rolf pointed out.
“Everyone keeps saying that,” Kraft said.
