“Can you do that after you cast the spell for Ben?”
“I can’t cast the spell with the wards on the book.”
“So,” Ryder asked. “How many minutes are we talking between you breaking the wards, and completing the spell casting?”
“One.”
“And how fast can Lavius be on our doorstep?”
“Seconds.”
“Someone else needs to cast the spell,” I said. “We’ll break the wards, you’ll meet Lavius’s attack and someone else casts the spell.”
“No one else can cast this spell.” Rossi’s eyes tightened. “It is…difficult. It is in the blood that flows through his veins. And it takes an ancient, a man of my making.”
“A vampire?” Ryder asked. Behind the word was the hint that there were a lot of vampires in the town.
“The maker who turned Ben.”
Oh. Well, we only had one of those and he was right there on the other side of the table glaring at Ryder.
Goodbye plan A.
“We’ll attack him, keep him occupied while you cast the spell. What do we hit him with first?” Ryder said, quickly moving on to the salient points. I liked that in a man. A knowledge of when to get to the violent stuff.
“There are weapons at our disposal,” Rossi said. “Some we should choose not to use.”
“Like Delaney?” Bathin asked. He’d kept his mouth shut for the last half hour, so I was sort of surprised he’d chimed in now.
“No,” Myra said to the demon. “Delaney is not a weapon and not going to be used as one.” Then to Rossi: “You said the bite wasn’t something we could use to kill Lavius.”
“It isn’t.” Firm. A challenge.
Bathin sighed. “For want of a nail, a kingdom is lost, old one.”
I thought I could hear Ryder’s knuckles crack as he tightened his fist. “You have something to add?” he asked the demon.
“This is not my sad little carnival. You don’t want my opinion.”
“Then keep your mouth shut.”
Right. Growling at the demon was going to shut him up. Why hadn’t I tried that?
“But since you asked so sweetly, Mr. Bailey,” Bathin said with a beatific smile, “that bite and the tie to Lavius it planted in Delaney can absolutely kill him.”
“No,” Rossi said. “It cannot.”
“You’re afraid of shadows, ancient one,” Bathin said. “And you’ll let every person in this town fall just to keep your promise to a man long dead.”
“Be silent,” Rossi snarled, “or I will cut your tongue out before your heart.”
“Whoa.” I stood up, hands extended, as if I could separate the demon and the vampire more than the table between them already did. “There are rules we follow here, Rossi. You know that. There is no killing allowed. Not between creatures, not between humans, not at all.”
Ryder was also standing, his hands loose at his sides like he was ready to pull a gun and start pointing it at someone.
I hoped he wasn’t armed because I was not prepared for this discussion to dissolve into a discharge of weapons.
“The demon is protected under the laws set into the very soil of this town,” Ryder said in that odd drone that happened when Mithra’s power was pushing hard on his willpower. “That we even have laws, rules, tenets to harbor a demon pisses me off. But if you break that law, Rossi, it won’t just be Delaney dishing out the consequences. It will be me, and the god of contracts through me.”
