“Usually they do, according to intel,” Katie answered, scrolling through her tablet. “But they must not have taken their time with clean up since the witch escaped. They probably had to cut and run.”
Dimitri sniffed. “There’s blood. Small amounts. Mostly here.”
I moved toward him, squinting at the blood droplets as I focused on the magical essence within it. Faint edges of the aura showed the different species of supernaturals with their emotion. Fear-drenched emotion from the fear demon, anger from the vampire, and a mixture of both from the werewolf.
“It’s definitely theirs,” I murmured.
“I know that,” he scoffed.
I rolled my eyes and stepped around a cluster of rocks when something shiny caught my eye.
I knelt down and found splintered black plastic and twisted electrical components half-buried in pine needles. A tiny rotor blade glinted.
“Slater,” I called out. “Come look at this.”
“I love it when you call my name, venom baby.” He sauntered over, expression turning from flirty to serious the second he saw what I was looking at. “What do you have there?”
“Broken drone.” I grabbed and held up the broken piece. “Definitely a human-made one.”
His red eyes twinkled with excitement. “Gimme that!”
“Here you go, Havoc baby.” I handed it over, and his fingers brushed mine intentionally.
He winked, sending desire down the bond before he turned the broken piece of the drone between his fingers. His red brows drew together in focus as Snakey uncoiled from his neck and hissed at it.
“Snakey,” he murmured. “Let’s see what we can find.”
Snakey slipped into the damaged drone, vanishing into its broken plastic shell in a whoosh of chaos magic.
Slater’s eyes started to glow a brighter red as he linked with Snakey. Chaos magic crackled faintly around his hands, glitching with static in the air.
He tilted his head, brow furrowing. “Encrypted feed…old school scrambling…ugh, humans are messier than certain villages in Briesia. Okay, wait. We are in the memory.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Industrial building in the Human Territory,” he said while seeing through Snakey. “There’s a facility that seems to be off-grid, and it’s too close to the border for my taste.”
“Coordinates?” Katie asked.
Slater rattled them off.
Katie tapped them in, eyes narrowing. “That matches an off-record research division flagged from intel. Unverified rumors state that they’re exploring weaponized magic for human-use.”
“What a fun theme for the day,” I grunted.
“Tourmalyke,” Sylver called from across the clearing.
Everyone looked toward her, but I wasn’t surprised.
Ever since the humans figured out that Tourmalyke could disable our magic and make us weak, they used it fully to their advantage.
She held up a syringe in one hand, the glass catching the dim evening light. Her blonde hair shimmered faintly with her magic as she frowned. “They left these behind. There’s residue on the needle. It’s definitely tourmalyke.”
My skin crawled. Tourmalyke didn’t affect me any more, but just the name gave me the ick.
“The blood spatter over here is minimal,” Dimitri told us. “At least we know it wasn’t violent.”
A broken sob cut across the clearing, and we all whirled toward the noise.
