Gack. Ewww. Stop.
The answer was there, in my own last thought. Shimon had had access to the mind and memories of Legolas.
It was a feeling,onlya feeling, but that was better than nothing.
Gee could follow my Anzu magic, so I didn’t have to explain. “Gee, check out the Shookers’ place and make sure they aren’t doing something with a time circle. Make sure they aren’t being forced to assist the Flayer in some way. Then find me.” I wheeled and stroked my wings, hard and hard andhard, rising, searching for a thermal that might lift and carry me. I was already so dang tired and so very hungry. But I could rest later. Hopefully.
I reached an altitude with a slightly warmer layer of air, one sandwiched between two colder ones, which was just weird. They were things I could actually see with Anzu eyes, sparkling in warmer and cooler colors. Aching, exhausted, I stretched out and soared.
Hoping the cell and charger were still working, breathless, I said, “Alex.”
“Yes, Janie.”
“Inform Eli to follow my cell as long as it’s safe. If the helo starts icing, set down immediately.”
“Copy. Wanna tell me where you’re going?”
“A place I can’t describe and can’t explain,” I said, stretching out in a long glide. “Tell him it’s near the coordinates where he got to play with his new toy, but maybe... half a mile away? It’s a crevasse in the rock. I’ll get there a lot faster than he will and I’ll take off the cell phone and hang it in the trees if I have time. If I don’t, then he’ll have to figure it out from where my cell signal disappears. Climbing gear might be smart.”
“Climbing gear. Copy.” But Alex didn’t sound happy about it.
The daylight died and night fell. I flew into a rainsquall, warmer winds buffeting me, then directly into a crosswind that froze the rain and cut me with sleet. Shivering, wet, starving, and miserable, I was a hundred twenty pounds of wretchedness. I fought to find warmer air and when I finally did, I aligned my course according to the mountain peaks shrouded in the low-lying clouds and by lights from the city behind me. If I was right about his location, and if Shimon had timewalked, he could have arrived at any time. If he even went where I was guessing. And I was only guessing because he’d had access to Legolas. The lovely white-blond vamp who had been injured near the rift. Whom I had left not-true-dead.
“Tell me about Legolas,” I said, my bird croak almost unrecognizable.
“I had to go back into some of the older files, Reach’s stuff, to find him. He’s of Swedish ancestry, turned in 1602. Until a few months ago, he was the MOC of Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. He decided to make use of the instability among the EuroVamps and attempted to take over Berlin, I’m guessing to get longer periods of night in summer.”
Vamps in the extreme North and South had almost no active time six months out of the year, nights lasting only a few hours. “And?” I asked.
“Berlin had just been defeated by the new upstart, Grégoire, Blood Master of Clan Arceneau, the Master ofthe City of Paris, Berlin, and assorted other hunting territories. Lego was defeated and barely escaped with his undeath. His name is Melker, no surname. Apparently he escaped and came to NOLA. I have confirmed hotel security cam footage of him checking in to the Rose Manor B and B Inn, a five-star hotel near the river. I also have footage of a small group of vamps taking Ronald Roland outside of the clan home. One person in the car seemed to have white hair, and the car was registered to another guest at the inn. I’m guessing ‘borrowed’ for the kidnapping and returned, as it wasn’t reported stolen. I haven’t found any record of the others being taken.”
“Melker. He doesn’t look like a Melker,” I squawked, thinking. What if Legolas had gone back to the place he had been injured, and backtracked Beast’s trail to the rift? I hadn’t looked to see if that had happened. It hadn’t crossed my mind. What if Lego knew where I had been? If Lego had found the rift, and if its location had been clear and bright in his mind when Shimon took him and flayed his body, then Shimon knew about the deep blue pool. Lots of ifs. But I figured the Flayer knew everything Lego did. What if the Flayer guessed that the watery opening into the earth was a rift? What if one of them had seen another arcenciel emerge from the pool of water?
Crap. Crap, crap,crap.
I crossed hills and dipped out of the near-balmy rain, into ravines, the colors of night vivid in Anzu eyes. The mountain ridge I was looking for came into view in my Anzu eyes, the crests shrouded in clouds below me. I dipped my flight into the cloud cover. The roads in were unplowed and now buried beneath more snow, showing no tracks. To follow the road, I soared lower, into the layer of freezing rain and sleet. It struck my eyes and buried sharp-edged barbs in my down, gathering and freezing on my wings and the feathers of my face.
“He has thesenza onore?” I asked.
“That’s my best guess,” Alex said.
I dropped even lower, skimming the tops of pine and dead fir, and lower again until I was angling along the roadway. The turnoff came up quickly and I whipped left,over the small clearing where we had parked, back what seemed a long time ago. My wings stroked the air higher, now climbing hard to my right, searching for the rift. But tired. So very tired.
The rift had been left unprotected—not that I could think of a way to keep it safe—when I carried Eli back for healing. I had left Legolas arrow-staked and bleeding in the snow, but any vamp, once the arrow was removed and he was healed by drinking lots of blood, would have been able to trace Beast’s scent or tracks back to the crevasse. I had been so focused on the Flayer that I hadn’t considered where Lego-Melker fit in. I was an idiot.
He had challenged me when he ripped out Shiloh’s throat, but before that, he had bled and read her. He had known all about the witches in Asheville from her. He’d had thesenza onore, the pyro, and somehow he got her to work with him and burned down Molly’s house, and yet, even with all he knew, all the alliances he had made, he had still ended up in a circle, flayed and true-dead. Once I took care of the Flayer, I’d track down the woman, thesenza onore, but first things first.
Ice was building up on my wings. Feathered birds are not built to fly in snow and sleet. The part of me that would have been shoulders had I been human ached with exhaustion, burned with overuse. I was growing clumsy. If I was wrong about my interpretation of events, I wouldn’t have time or energy to regroup and search for EJ anywhere else. I needed water and food and—
I glimpsed a glow that disappeared just as fast. I circled that way, the tops of trees brushing along my chest and belly. The glow didn’t reappear. But the chasm in the ground materialized below me, black in the snow, as if a huge blade had ripped into the earth.
I folded my wings and plummeted, a heart-wrenching nosedive between branches, to spread my wings just above the earth and align myself above the narrow cleft, looking for the best entry point. Wings providing a slight draft, I slowed and dived into the crevasse.
The air instantly warmed, heated by the earth itself. Little snow or ice clung to the rock face as I dropped intothe dark, green ferns clinging to the cracks between rocks, moss in a dozen different shades of green cleaving to the rock itself. Even partially folded, my wings brushed the rock faces to either side. I dodged downed trees that braced across the chasm. Dove beneath fallen rock that spanned the width of the cleft. Gaining speed, too fast. Not easily able to brake and slow.
The air seemed to brighten. The glow reappeared and intensified. Grew closer. The chasm widened and I spread my wings, the temps still rising, the change giving me lift. I was silent, eyes on the bend ahead, the curve where the glow originated. I back-winged. Reached out with my claws. Gripped and settled onto a stub of rock.
The temperature was probably fifty degrees in the microclimate of the rift, but it felt like a sauna after the hours aloft in frozen air. I fluttered my feathers, shook my wings, sending droplets in fine sprays. Another outcropping was just ahead and I hopped, robin-like, to it and perched. I held my wings wide, letting the ice melt and drip off, giving myself a whole minute to thaw. I fluttered my plumage, shaking water off of me, breathing and dripping and trying to gather myself. I ached all over. With all my senses, I searched for Shimon. For EJ. My nose and eyes found nothing except the mineral scent of heated water and the life scents of birds, lizards, mice, and rats, hibernating. Not another thing. No scent of my godchild. No scent of vampire. Nothing new or different from my earlier visit to the crevasse.
