AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turned the corner and saw their clubhouse.
That would be a problem.
An entire web of magical spells ringed their clubhouse and buildings, with no break. These were more serious spells. They weren’t the kind that could be slipped past. If some of them didn’t cause instant death, it would sap strength from the person until they did die.
Fuck.
So this was where they’d been.
The pattern didn’t look complete either. In the distance, a couple of the club members were visible in one of their alleys. Not casting, but unloading stuff from a truck. So they were getting deliveries. That, too, was valuable information.
But that was about as much as I would be able to get without notifying them I was snooping. They might already know when I stepped on the sigils.
I retrieved my bike and hauled ass back to the compound. Rocketman was in the plaza, and he nodded toward the clubhouse. Silver rarely used the office in the clubhouse, but sometimes it was a necessity. If we wanted to shield Skyla from the preparations, it was the best option.
We weren’t hiding anything from her, but we also didn’t want to cause her to worry. She was already filled with more anxiety than we liked.
Silver and Comet looked up when I entered. “You were gone a while.”
I fell into one of the chairs. “Good information takes time.”
“Did you get what you need?” Comet asked.
“I did. And more.”
Silver face hardened. “Why does that sound like it’s going to piss me off?”
“Because it is.”
He shook his head. “We’ll get there in a second. We were just talking about if there’s any way to triggerathanasíaearly.”
My eyebrows rose. “You think of anything?”
“No.”
Not surprising. “It’s not like there are many cases we could observe.” If hybrids made it to their twenty-fifth birthday it was a fucking miracle. I’d be surprised if there were more than ten hybrids alive who’d triggeredathanasía.
“It just seems arbitrary,” Silver said. “Why then?”
Comet snorted. “Because so much of magic makes sense.”
Standing, Silver looked out the window toward the plaza. “I can’t go to the other Courts and ask them for information about it. It won’t matter that I’ve claimed Skyla for the Court of Shadows. They won’t care. And then we’re in even deeper shit.”
“I agree.” Wraith stood at the door, Delta behind him. “And I’d really love to avoid a fight on more than one front.”
Silver nodded. “If we can’t get it triggered early,” Silver said, “which I admit was a long shot, do we take the fight to them? I know what I said. But privately, I’m wondering if we can save damage if we just do it. We’d likely be justified.”
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
Everyone looked at me, and Silver frowned. “This is the part that’s going to piss me off?”
“They’re laying down sigils. I stepped on one when I went to recon. The ones on the edges are easy to avoid. But around their place? A tangle of spells so dense there’s no way to avoid them. Shadows don’t erase them, and the ones in the mess are serious shit. Death level. We’ll lose people. Probably quite a few.
“Not to mention I saw them unloading a truck while I was there. No idea what was in it, but I’ll venture a guess it wasn’t candy.”
Silver leaned on his desk heavily. Here, with us, he could let us see the weight on his shoulders. In a way, it was a curse to be a king. If he were only a president, we would have wiped the Legion out a long time ago. The tangled relationships of the Courts and human politics made this a nightmare when we should be enjoying every second with ourâmmelune.
“Fine, then they have to be drawn out.”
