Page 49 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

One of the bookcases let out an offended creak, and I raised a placating hand. “Chanel did an excellent job of protecting you, obviously.” I sounded more tired than I’d expected, but the pain of the slash over my ribs was starting to get to me. Vampires healed quickly but not painlessly.

A faint gurgle came from the floor. One of the vampires—the one whose eyes the apartment had scalded—was stirring faintly. I stood, giving Evangeline’s hand one last squeeze before dropping it and moving over to him.

The floor was slick with blood, but I knelt anyway. I pressed a hand to the vampire’s throat and shoved my mind against his ruthlessly. Whatever protection had been on his mind was gone, and I broke through his defenses as if it had never been there at all. He was barely conscious, too groggy to hide anything from me, but also too groggy for his memories to make much sense.

I caught snippets of images and words flowing together in an overwhelming jumble. A map, someone barking orders, a chart of the sewer system, a knife, a chair… I struggled to make sense of it, but slowly, I began to fit the pieces together.

Evangeline let out another wheezing moan, and I straightened. There would be time to puzzle out our enemy’s plan later, once she was safe.

“We should go,” she said tensely. “This is getting worse. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to get around easily. There’s a go-bag in the closet. Can you grab it?”

“I should make sure the intruders are?—”

“Chanel’ll take care of it,” Evangeline said.

I considered the wreckage that was the vampire whose head the apartment had obliterated with the cast iron skillet, then nodded.

I found the bag in her bedroom closet easily enough. When I walked back out into the living room, Evangeline had hauled herself to her feet and was using her sword as a makeshift cane. She looked incredibly unsteady on her feet.

“You’re not walking anywhere,” I told her firmly.

“What, do you have a secret vampire car stashed somewhere?” she asked, glaring half-heartedly at me.

“We can get a ride,” I pointed out dryly, hefting her bag over my shoulder.

“Right,” she said thinly. “Cabs and stuff.” She whistled and patted her leg. Pothos, still streaked with gore, trotted over happily. He hunkered down, then leaped up onto her shoulders and flopped across them like a particularly murderous scarf.

I propped Evangeline up as we went down the stairs. For all her usual bluster, it was clear her reserves of strength were flagging. By the time we reached the front door, I was practically carrying her.

It was late enough that the cabs were few and far between, but as soon as I managed to get us into one, I snapped out my address and slid the partition closed.

“That was rude,” Evangeline murmured.

“I’m not focused on politeness at the moment,” I told her. “How do you feel?”

“I mean, pretty bad. But it’s not like there’s anything you can do until we get where we’re going, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Just… Can you talk to me? Distract me?” she asked, sounding painfully small. Pothos butted his firm little head against her jaw, and she petted his cheek absently.

“The vampire whose mind I examined knew the guards we dealt with when we were searching for the first piece of the ascendancy array,” I told her, keeping my voice low and even. I had limited faith in the efficacy of the partition to stop the driver from eavesdropping, and it wasn’t like Evangeline was in any state to doublecheck the soundproofing spell that should’ve been on it. “He was following orders, but I couldn’t glean anything about the person in charge. There might be some sort of magical disguise at play, although I’ve never encountered anything like that.”

“I have,” Evangeline said grimly but didn’t elaborate.

“I got a few glimpses of some sort of war room,” I continued when it was clear that the injured witch at my side wasn’t going to offer anything else. “I saw a table covered with blueprints, but not for any sort of building I recognized.”

Evangeline frowned. She’d closed her eyes and was leaning her head back against the worn vinyl of the cab’s headrest. “Were any of the blueprints labeled?”

I frowned, casting my mind back to the blurry images I’d managed to see. “Most of the words were too small for me to read from his angle,” I said. “But one of the charts said Arcane Quarter Main.”

Next to me, Evangeline scrunched her nose up, frowning in thought. “Lots of long narrow shapes on the blueprints?” she asked.

“Yes. Almost exclusively. With a great deal of branching off.”

She huffed out a quiet, humorless laugh. “One piece found in a foe’s abode,” she murmured to herself.

“You know where they were trying to look.”

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