I couldn’t even say thanks, I just sprinted the remaining distance.
Dad, Mom, my brothers, and both sets of my grandparents were pressed along the backside of an automotive repair shop that was closed for the night.
They were accompanied by a smattering of slayers from the other families, and all of them were gathered around Peri, the Rivera representative, and a Klein slayer. All three were manning drone remote controllers, and the slayers were studying the small screens that displayed what the drone cameras picked up.
Nan looked up at my approach. “Lass!”
“Where is he?” I asked, my fingers shaking.
The Rivera rep hesitated, and the Klein slayer’s face had an ashen look to it.
“Jade,” Peri said, his voice low and soothing—the one he used whenever he had to deliver bad news. “They buried him.”
I paused barely registering when Orrin caught up with me. “Theywhat?”
“They buried him under concrete—he must be in some kind of container because he can move,” Peri said. “That’s how they hid him from us—thermal cameras can’t pick up heat through concrete.”
“There’s an insignia Gisila must have drawn in the concrete while it was still wet, we think it’s a seal that is inhibiting his powers,” the Rivera representative said.
“That would explain why he hasn’t commanded any vampires to come find him,” Orrin said.
“We didn’t notice the seal in the first round of searches we took the drones through,” the Klein slayer said. “We were sloppy. I’m so sorry.” She tightened her grasp on the remote controller until her fingers turned white.
“We never thought they’d literally bury him,” the Rivera representative said. “But that’s no excuse.”
“The guards didn’t know either.” A Patel slayer standing with Pop-pop said. “We grabbed one of them leaving at the end of a shift—a fae, so he can’t lie. He said everyone was hired the morning after Considine was kidnapped. We think Gisila planted your vampire, and then hired an all-new crew so if we attacked, they wouldn’t know he was there, either.”
“The fae?” I asked.
“Your uncles are holding him in a car—he’s unconscious,” Alex said. “He didn’t have anything useful to report, except to confirm there was a patch of wet cement they’d been warned to stay away from.”
“Where is Considine?” I repeated, it was getting harder to stay in control when all I wanted was to rip into the factory, screaming with rage.
“We’ll show you,” Peri said. “We were waiting to do another swing through until you arrived since we didn’t want to put them on alert.”
I picked a spot between Peri and the Klein slayer, and if I stood on my tiptoes and leaned back enough, I could see the Rivera slayer’s screen, too.
Peri looked down the line. “Ready?”
The other slayers nodded.
“We’re going in.” Peri lightly tapped the controller, and his drone jumped to life, zooming down what appeared to be a ventilation shaft.
I could see his drone on the Klein’s remote controller display, so the drones followed one after another until they dropped into the factory where they immediately spread out.
All three families had hashed out some serious money for the drones, so in addition to thermal vision they were fast and quiet, but they still produced enough noise to make the patrolling guards—mostly fae with a smattering of vampires and werewolves—look around the building.
“Going down,” the Rivera slayer said. He directed his drone low, dodging abandoned factory equipment and guards as he zoomed through the building.
“Staying high.” Peri jammed on the controller, flying through the building at a dizzying speed.
The Klein slayer swerved, making her flight pattern wild, but she moved so fast—always pulling away half a second before impact with a wall or support pillar—she kept pace with the other two.
“Here, Jade.” Peri throttled his drone, and it dropped like a rock. He reactivated it about six feet above the ground. It was cement—the same flooring as the rest of the factory.
“Here. You can see this is new cement.” Mom leaned in on Peri’s open side and traced out a rectangular shape of cement that looked less dingy than the cement around it. “And here is what we think is the insignia for the seal.” She pointed to a spot on the screen.
Peri let his drone drop even farther, until I could make out a crude dragon drawn into the hardened cement.
