Xander, lurking at the periphery, sidled up and added, “Put me on graveyard. I don’t sleep anyway.” He grinned at the portal, then at me. “Don’t worry, Philly’s still here when you get back.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Ransom’s posture never relaxed, not once. He stood, shoulders squared, jaw clenched. A twinge of guilt hit, knowing how much he hated being left out. Worse, how much he hated not being able to protect his people.
“Is there anything you need?” he said, voice softer than I expected.
I looked at Jax, then at Adalinda, who had resumed her dragon form and now loomed over us like a benevolent cryptid.
“There is,” I said. “I think we may need the dragon daggers. Both of them. They’re the only leverage we have against Vaelog.”
Luke nodded, already moving to fetch the case. He returned in a minute with both blades, each sheathed in a custom wrap of leather and etched steel. “Should I toss them through?” he asked.
“Hand them to us,” said Jax. “Gently.”
Luke climbed a ladder and held the daggers up toward the portal. The surface rippled, but when the blades touched it, they didn’t pass through. They bounced, gently, almost politely, and dropped back down to the earth-side grass with a pair of dull, definitive thuds.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Corvus, watching from his vantage, was unsurprised.“I’m not surprised. The blades know where they were born.”
I relayed this to the earth-side, which prompted a chorus of “What does that even mean?” from half the team. Izora just grinned wider.
“The blademaker lives in Ayrathys,”said Solenne, her mind-voice clear and resonant.“If the originals will not cross, then we must seek him out. He may be able to give you something that will.”
“Where?” asked Jax, wiping sweat from his brow.
Solenne pointed with her snout toward a distant range of mountains, their peaks hidden by roiling clouds.“The Pale Smith resides in the Forge of Silence. We will take you there.”She straightened, her scales shimmering.“Then we should not delay. Every hour there is a day here.”
That explained how Vaelog had been gone a matter of hours from Earth but somehow had time to terrorize the countryside here. I turned to the portal one last time. Ransom’s face, usually so composed, now held a rare note of uncertainty. “We’ll be okay,” I said.
Luke, standing beside him, nodded. “You better be.”
“Ready?” asked Jax as he looked over at me. Love pulsed through our bond.
I nodded. “Always.”
6
LUKE
Since she became a vampire,Hailey had been a lightning rod for supernatural drama, and my job as her brother was to remain the stable, grounded one. But the universe, like every other member of our family, rejected the concept of boundaries. The day after the Ayrathys portal opened, and hours after my sister, her mate, and the queen of dragons went through the portal, I found myself nominated as Acting Vampire Dad, a title I had neither sought nor, if we’re being honest, earned.
The portal had stabilized in the backyard, but only in the sense that it was no longer threatening to announce to the neighborhood that paranormal creatures and other worlds existed. It just hovered there, a vertical pane of glassy nothing. Jax, Adalinda, Hailey, and Flint had crossed over, and now their side of the universe ticked at a different rate.
We held a “portal watch” rotation, while Janice spent most of her time glued to the phone, arguing with Pearl Walker’s people about jurisdiction and who, exactly, would be responsible if the portal decided to eat Philadelphia.
For the record, I thought she was being a little too dramatic. But what did I know about these things? I was still learning to control my new vampire powers since completing the mating bond with Ransom.
Xander, who was the retired vampire leader of New York, maintained a silent vigil beside Janice, arms folded, his eyes never straying more than a centimeter from the portal’s shivering surface. I found it oddly comforting. If anything came through that wasn’t supposed to, Xander would eviscerate it before it could recite an evil monologue.
Ransom had left about an hour ago, dragging Grim and Nash to Baltimore to “teach a lesson” to a nest of rogue vampires who’d started feeding on EMTs. This was, as far as I could tell, both a legitimate crisis and a thinly veiled excuse for Ransom to punch someone. I couldn’t blame him. The last twenty-four hours had left everyone on edge.
Claudia and Paige had gone home with Emily. Ivy and Goldie were at the Academy.
Which left me as the only adult in the bond agency’s “headquarters”, which was a converted bedroom in Jax’s house. That was fine with me since my mate wasn’t at home, I didn’t want to be there alone. I considered painting to help me relax, but my creativity was scattered due to worrying about Hailey, Jax, and Flint. Logically, I knew Adalinda wouldn’t let anything happen to them. My anxiety never listened to logic though.
I sorted the latest batch of case files, most of which had nothing to do with supernatural emergencies. Our bread and butter remained skip-tracing. Finding people who’d jumped bail. It was honest work, even if the clients were occasionally monsters.
