My phone dinged as Sunshine sent me a dozen more photos, but looking out at the slayers, I knew I had them.
A Cooper slayer lazily balanced a dagger on the tip of his finger. “Love, wow. I never thought that would be a reason for a slayer stake.”
“That’s not the problem here.” A member of the Klein slayers pinched the bridge of her nose. “A vampireelder. In love with aslayer!” She sat up so she could scowl at my parents. “Just what kind of training regimes are you subjecting your kids to?”
Paddy puffed up with pride. “O’Neils are built different.”
“Yeah,” an Ackermann slayer said. “For seduction, apparently.”
As one the slayers looked up at me, standing in my slayer clothes at attention, armed to the teeth.
They shook their heads, rejecting the idea.
“No, nope. Not seduction,” the Mitchell representative said.
“Considine Maledictus has been alive long enough to go crazy,” a Song slayer said. “That must affect his idea of love.”
“Hey!” Jasper straightened up to his impressive height and stabbed a finger at the crowd. “No one doubts the lovability of my sister!”
Up in the balcony, the task force cheered, which caused some confusion among the slayers for a moment.
Uncle Tim—Mom’s brother—stood up. “I understand this is gonna take a hot minute to accept. I’m Jade’s uncle, and even I questioned the relationship when I heard it, and I know just how cute and sweet my niece is. But their relationship is not important to our mission, which is to find and extract Considine Maledictus—withoutharming him.”
I stood even more at attention if that was possible. “Exactly. The Curia Cloisters are pursuing a different angle on the searchby trying to locate the oracle. I want us to use traditional slayer methods to search for Considine.”
The slayers settled back into seats and returned to taking notes—by hand or computer—as they listened.
It worked. They’re following my lead. The slayers will respect my calls.
“Before we break down into tactics, it’s worth mentioning that Considine must be restrained in some way. He’s capable of issuing very powerful commands over other vampires, and even now the local vampire population has been combing the city for him. Something is wrong, or he would have issued an order,” I said.
“He must be asleep,” a Patel slayer said.
“Maybe,” I said.
I didn’t know if I should hope for that…or be concerned that Gisila had done something horrific to him.
Focus—I need to deploy the slayers as quickly as possible.
I cleared my throat. “The Carters are already reaching out to local, human law enforcement to make them aware of the search, and some of the tools we’ll be using.” I pulled a new screen up on my cellphone—this one containing the notes I’d made on how I wanted the search to be conducted, and the different sections I’d divided the city into.
“For the search portion of the stake, there will be fifteen teams,” I continued. “One will be stationed here, at the command center to receive and send out updates…”
A tendril of hope ignited deep in my heart.Hang on, Considine. We’re coming.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Considine
My entire existence was still limited to darkness.
I could hear muffled sounds even inside my metal coffin, but I couldn’t make out any voices.
Twisting as well as I could, I swatted at the tubing that pumped fresh air into the small space.
A thirst for blood tugged at my stomach, and made a sharp pain in my throat, but it wasn’t yet to a dangerous point.
