Page 82 of Winterfall Destiny

"Nobody's fighting anybody else apart from Gabriella," says Tobias firmly. "Right, Andrei?"

"Yeah. Whatever," he mutters.

I sigh. Some things about Andrei remain exactly the same.

"If Gabriella recruited as many people as Matt and Amelia say, we need to get out there and look for Dominion activity. This isn't just about finding when Gabriella leaves anymore," says Ash.

Tobias nods, and I already sense his mind working on the next move. Ash is right. There's more happening here than stopping Gabriella from boarding a ship away from the country.

Gabriella would never sneak away forever. Not without leaving her mark, that's for sure.

“What if she’s still recruiting?” I say, heart lodging in my throat. “The vamps might be new. How can we be a hundred percent sure that Gabriella didn’t hide some of the First’s blood elsewhere?”

Tobias nods. “I’ve considered this for a while. Gabriella’s shrewd. She wouldn’t risk losing every drop she had. I’d expect her to place some in a separate location.”

“Fuck,” says Jamie. “Then she’s definitely building a bigger army. We have to find Gabriella.”

“Yeah, no wonder she’s running,” says Ash.

"There's a lot to get our heads round," I say wearily. "I've had a long night and don't have the concentration to go through all this right now."

"Yes. You should stay. We can talk tomorrow," says Ash to Matt.

Jamie straightens. "Did you get anything from the dragons? I almost forgot, with the shock of seeing Matt and Amelia."

"Yeah. Plenty for you to go through," says Ash with a smile. He pulls out his phone. "Sending you some pictures now." Then he retrieves the USB from his pocket and places it on the table.

"You know the local dragons?" Amelia sighs and flops back. "Agreed. Too much for one night. We'll stay, Matt."

"Take my bed," says Jamie. "I'll be awake a while yet, so I'll take the sofa."

"Jamie. Leave this until tomorrow," I say.

"You really think I would? How much time do we have, Maeve? There could be dozens out there walking around containing the First’s blood!"

How much time?

Less than Amelia and Matt know, but I don't want them to discover everything that's happening. Otherwise, the pair would face something worse than a vampire attack on Amelia, and I'm not inflicting this danger and chaos on anybody else.

31

MAEVE

One week.

According to the documents we took and the USB that Jamie spent last night decrypting, Gabriella leaves London in a week.

She could be one of two possible shipments, two days apart. The planned ritual will happen on or before one of these dates.

The paperwork we stole reveals mostly cryptic information but also some things of significance. The names of those involved with Zenith Global Exports are coded apart from the company director—Callum Dufour and his secretary Emmett Roberts, who we've already identified as part of this dragon's mafia circle.

The manifests' dates are readable, as are the exports' names, but mixtures of letters and numbers create a code for the precise contents of each shipment. The sums of money involved run into tens of thousands of pounds, which seems excessive for items such as AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY. Two booked shipments stand out as they're hundreds of thousands, and differ to the last year's regular cargo. Innocuously named RAW EXOTICS, one's headed to New York and the other to Rotterdam.

Gabriella on one and the other as a false lead?

We're leaning towards Rotterdam—shorter trip, less chance things could go wrong. Gabriella heading to Europe makes the most sense. Andrei jokes she can revisit her ancestral home and add some realism to Dracula tours—more of his joking to hide his stress. The woman is more likely to bury herself inside Eastern Europe or further afield, where the largest supernatural network still exists after hundreds of years.

We need to divert our attention away from the dragons for now if we want to find information about the ritual Gabriella's planning. She's working with the top echelon of the dragon mafia, but I doubt the lower tiered members have any involvement. We've proved that dragons are helping—what is Gabriella promising them in return? Because I'm betting it's more than money.

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