“Fine, your blood-sucking friends can tag along,” Brendan rolled his eyes.
“At least he didn't call us blood-suckingfiends,” Soren murmured to me. “We hate it when people call us fiends.”
“Who wouldn't?” Ainsley asked.
“Lead on, Extinguisher Murdock,” I waved Brendan out towards the street, where a line of SUVs idled, before someone else said something stupid.
What a day. And out of all the strange things that had happened, Brendan Murdock's improved attitude had surprised me the most.
Chapter Forty-Two
The light elf had told Uncle Dylan that Bress was being held in the basement of a building in downtown San Francisco. He was supposedly being restrained in magic-dampening chains, guarded by at least twenty elves, and locked in a cell. So, no biggie.
We parked a few feet away from the building and radioed in for a report from the surveillance team. There had been no activity. I scanned the street, then looked as far up the building as my limited view out the car window would allow. Everything appeared calm and normal. Then I switched to psychic vision. It was like using a pair of paranormal goggles. Everything sharpened, auras flaring to life around me. I knew who was fey and who was human with a single glance. But there was nothing radiating off the building. If Moire had wards in place, they were inside.
“Follow me, and do not go past me,” I said to my group.
My group included my Guard, some of my father's Guard, and Soren's team. They all nodded in understanding. Fairies couldn't see auras, and I assumed witches couldn't either since their magic was derived from the fey. So I needed to go point.
“Ready?” Brendan asked me.
“Let's go,” I nodded.
We piled out of the van and hurried down the street, keeping to the wall. The extinguishers hadn't cleared the area of bystanders, for fear of tipping our hand. So we had lots of curious passersby eyeing us.
“Dangerous criminal on the loose,” Brendan called to the crowd. “Get off the streets!”
Humans hurried away as fast as their legs could take them, a few stopping to take pictures with their cell phones along the way.
“Humans,” Conri growled. “They'll risk their lives for a picture.”
“Focus,” I snapped at him as we headed inside.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The building was quiet and echoingly empty. We paused in the entryway, and I headed forward with only Brendan and Soren.
“You think it's a trap?” Brendan asked me as he peered around the barren entrance.
It was an apartment complex, with stairs to one side, and a little row of metal mailboxes on the other. No sound came from the doors down the hall, nor any from the floors above.
“Perhaps,” I angled my head to peer down the hall. “Looks like another set of stairs back there.”
“To the basement,” Soren surmised.
“Be on your guard,” I whispered back to the others. “This is probably a trap.”
Then we headed down. The steps were cement, not that open-backed kind that someone could grab your ankle through. So that was one thing to be grateful for. The lights worked as well, alleviating most of the itchy sensation that I was that dumb white person in a horror flick, heading down into the basement to investigate strange moaning sounds. Fine. Bress was my cousin, and I'd do stupid things if there was a chance of saving him. But if I heard a disembodied voice telling me to get out, I was outta there.
“I'll go first,” Brendan shocked me further by pivoting in front of me and heading into the basement. “Clear.”
We all rushed in after him, to find a spacious room just as empty as the entrance had been. There was indeed a cage in it, but the door was flung open, and the cot pressed up against the far wall was mussed, as if someone had been sleeping in it till very recently. A table sat to the side of the cage, remnants of a meal on it. The chairs were kicked back, one overturned.
“Someone warned them,” Soren turned grim eyes to me.
“It appears so,” I agreed. I waved everyone else downstairs. “Let's search the room anyway. Quickly. I want to get out of this hole as soon as possible.”
“Agreed,” Brendan's gaze flitted around anxiously. Then he turned to his team, “Search and seizure.”
