Spencer spun around and ran back the way he’d come, conjuring up a mageglobe against the palm of his hand as he went. He reached the foyer right as the front door was unlocked with a goddamnkey.
He had a personal shield raised as the door swung open. The shock of seeing Alyona standing there in the doorway with black eyes told him exactly how the bastards had got past every damn security system and set of wards Takoma had paid for to keep his Night Court safe during the day and why the threshold wasn’t rising up to defend the home.
He slipped his sight sideways, the brightness of her soul choked to nothing by the demon possessing her. “Alyona.”
The demon used her body to kick the door open wider, revealing a range of people behind her, none of them welcome. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”
“Surprise?”
Spencer released his mageglobe, the dark green sphere ready to take on a spell. The shitty thing about this situation was he couldn’t just arbitrarily attack, not with Alyona in the middle of them all. He needed to separate her, exorcise the demon from her soul, and then tuck her away somewhere safe so she wouldn’t be in the line of fire. For that matter, he couldn’t let Takoma or any of the other vampires sleeping the sleep of the undead be harmed.
The woman who moved to stand beside Alyona was possessed as well, and he remembered her from the gala the other week. She’d been one of the socialites hanging around Caitlin, possibly part of the coven itself, judging by the pendant hanging from her throat that was a match to the one John Adler had worn in his portraits. What hadn’t been obvious back then due to how buried her soul was by the demon she carried became apparent now—she was a magic user. Not a mage, but her focus circles were tattooed neatly around her wrist, probably with white ink, because while Spencer couldn’t see any dark lines, the bracelets of magic encircling them were clear as day.
“Find the master,” the demon in her body snapped.
Spencer couldn’t judge her rank, not until the demon cracked open her soul and used it to tap a ley line. “Shit.”
He cast his mageglobe at the stairs, encasing the way up in a shield he’d hold up with everything he had even as he pitched himself sideways back through the entryway he’d come from. That saved him from taking an explosive blast of magic to his own personal shield, the attack slamming into the foyer wall instead. He raised another shield to block the entryway, buying himself time.
“There’s another way up,” the demon in Alyona said.
Spencer swore again, looking down at Fatima. “Show me where that is.”
He had no doubt that she’d done a thorough search of the place last night while he’d been otherwise occupied. Spencer conjured up a tiny mageglobe, which she snapped out of the air, holding it delicately between her teeth. He filled it with the base of a shield and let her vision overlay his own as she streaked off, untouchable by anyone else. A rapid burst of gunfire filled the air, but Fatima’s sight never wavered over his.
Spencer retreated toward the dining room and kitchen, turning off the lights as he went. He reached the living room that overlooked the backyard from a different angle first. He wished it was the other one because that was where he’d left his pistol, and it would’ve come in handy right about then. All the metal shutters were sealed and locked over the windows, and the darkness in the room was that all-encompassing sort. It matched what Fatima was running through, the flare of his magic the only thing lighting the way.
Her bobbing vision settled as she came to a stop before another set of stairs, releasing the mageglobe. Spencer pushed his senses outward through her, triggering the shield to set around the stairs there and block off the way up.
Spencer let out a relieved breath. “Any other access point?”
Fatima’s vision shook back and forth with her head before it disappeared. Spencer blinked his own vision back to normal, listening hard for any advance toward his position. He hadn’t set a shield over the entryway to the den, wanting to try to separate out the hunters more so he wasn’t facing an entire group of them all at once. He had no doubt that the heavily armed men and women who’d been at the demons’ backs were hunters.
Here, Fatima said from right beside him. He couldn’t see her in the dark, but when he reached out a hand, she nuzzled her face against his fingers.
“Need you to be my eyes,” he whispered.
Always.
“Then let’s build a cage.”
He conjured up a mageglobe, reached through his soul to tap a ley line, and let that magic rush through him. Spencer sent it through the floor, to the ground, pushing it through the earth beyond the anchors of the wards set into the home’s foundation. He didn’t want to interfere with those or trigger them, which was a risk with the cage he was building around the mansion, but he had no choice.
The demons had come here for Takoma, and they weren’t leaving with him if Spencer had anything to say about it.
The demon possessing Alyona had walked them through the gate and the door and the wards, using her knowledge of Takoma’s defenses to take them out. It should have been an easy enough attack, and maybe it would’ve been if Spencer hadn’t spent the night. Except he had, and now he needed to take out a pair of demons and a squad of hunters, all while trying to keep the heart of the Seattle Night Court safe.
No pressure.
The cage that would keep the demons from fleeing rose from the ground outside the mansion, the framework of it meeting over the roof in a dome he could sense beyond the walls. No one would be able to see it unless they had second sight, which meant it wouldn’t alert people to a threat. When it locked into the place, the air erupted with the demons screaming their displeasure through their hosts.
“Someone’s unhappy,” he muttered, opening his eyes.
A swell of magic exploding against the shield defending the stairs in the other room had him jerking back a little on his knees. He shook his head to clear it, strengthening the distant shield with a continuous trickle of magic. The demon’s host might be a mage, but the spells she used lacked the precision attacks of someone from the Mage Corps. Either she’d never enlisted, or the demon didn’t have the best control.
He could work with that.
Spencer got to his feet, slipping his sight sideways again. Hunting in the dark was easier with night-vision goggles, but when one could see souls, that was just as useful. Spencer didn’t need heat sensors to locate someone’s position when their aura flagged them like a flare gun.
