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“Do you have a map? I wouldn’t want to go back to her with an accusation without cause. We need to know whose land it is, and who could harbor them.”
His brows pulled, but I could see the wheels in his head turning. “We have one. But it might cross a line to take you to see it.” He shifted then, nodding for me to follow him.
We returned to the center of their little town, and he made no secret of opening the doors to a vacant building. He walked into the large space that must have been a meeting place or a town hall. But he didn’t turn on the lights. Instead, he went to the back and collected a handful of pegs from some hidden compartment. I watched silently as he walked around the room, placing them in matching holes in the floor and walls, giving him a questioning look when he finished.
“Just wait.” He returned to the back and the same hidden cubby. Inside it, he flipped a couple of switches, which seemed to have no rhyme or reason, but when he finished, a glow began at the baseboards and spread toward the center of the room. It looked almost wet, and had I not been in the middle of it, I would have believed I was standing in a lake.
“What is this?”
“Our land and landmarks. All our fallback shelters and escape routes.” Dominic looked tired. “It used to be set up with torches and candles, but we decided that was a fire hazard, and Gabriel figured out how to do it with LEDs. Much safer.”
“Oh.” It occurred to me this was a closely guarded secret, but Rafael must know all the places, especially with his place in the pack. I turned around, orienting myself, and then moved to the edge they shared with the witches. “I think we were right but wrong. It might not be the priestess and Rayne, but they know who else among them shares the knowledge.”
“And is jealous the priestess is tying her bloodline to ours. If blood enhances their magic…” He didn’t have to finish. We both knew. “And we’ll become a new type of packaged goods. With help from the bloodsuckers, I imagine they think they could get strong enough to take us over and use us as either breeding stock or living blood donors.”
“Precisely, and I’m not blaming the priestess, but it can’t be a secret if she knows. They likely sussed it out after she began her attempts at a child.” I traced the lines of the rivers and the places they met with the border crossings.
Dominic rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Are we to be at war with everyone?”
“Magic blood makes you a target, my love.” I pointed to a pass through the mountains with a river running through it. “What’s here?”
“I don’t know. We don’t go onto witch land without permission. We have a treaty with them. I’m sure you felt the wards and had an uneasy feeling when we went before, and that was through a visitor’s entrance where some people are welcomed. If you think my land is dangerous, theirs is treacherous.” He squatted at the map to study it closer. “So how do we go in without pissing off all the witches while also not alerting them that we’ve figured it out?”
“Good fucking question.”
FORTY
DOMINIC
We had another meeting with the priestess, and while she was sympathetic to our concern, she wasn’t about to accuse one of her clan without evidence. I understood, but it didn’t get us any closer to finding the nest.
Vin snarled as we got back in his DB9. “Goddammit.”
“I wouldn’t have given away any of my own without evidence, either.” I slumped into the passenger seat.
“You pack creatures. I will never understand it.” He took off in the opposite direction of the pack lands.
“Where are we going?” I asked when he wasn’t forthcoming.
“To my office.”
“Are you trying to be short, or is your mind elsewhere?” I asked, careful not to take my frustration out on him. We were both known for our short tempers, and with everything else falling down around us, I needed to be a united front with him.
A slight shake of his head, then he put his hand on my thigh, glancing in my direction. “Not at all, dearest. I was trying to remember what the maps I have of the area look like. I sourced a few after I discovered what you were, but it’s been ages since I’ve looked at them, and because none have been drawn since the land was settled, there are very few, and they are quite outdated.”
“But you have some?”
“A couple. I had to know what I was dealing with.” He kept his hand on my thigh, and I put my hand over his.
“Are they detailed?”
“Not that I recall. Because most of them weren’t your land but the surrounding areas as they were settled. Some are rough markings or old myths. But the full details escape me.” His brows pulled, and I could tell it bothered him that he couldn’t bring forth the information on command.
“How closely did you study them?” I asked, trying to ease his mind.
“Not very closely once I realized none of them gave me insight into your life.” He shot me another look.
I smiled. He probably didn’t know it, but these things endeared him to me. I loved hearing about how I’d been on his mind as much as he was on mine. “So why would you remember the details? You barely looked at them.”
