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Leo.
I flicked it on.
“You’re late.”
A statement of disappointment. One Leo would understand.
He didn’t even heave a sigh, just went straight into it. “We found the van and we’re halfway to her location. There’s a car waiting for you outside the lobby of your hotel. We should arrive there ten minutes before you. Do you want us to wait or go in for her on arrival?”
“Where is she?”
From the front passenger-side of the SUV we were riding in, Aiden glanced back at me, his brows raised. Triaten’s eyes flickered to me in the rearview mirror as he drove.
“She’s below ground in a bunker underneath a hospital in the middle of Athens. One of the war bunkers. We have three entrances identified on this one, but you know the subterranean ones are sometimes sealed—the records aren’t up-to-date. I have a five-person force for each entrance, each led by one of your Folottos. Unless Cletus has an army in the bunker with him, the force should be sufficient.”
“Julia is leading one of them?” My third eldest daughter was the best tactical leader I had in my arsenal and Leo’s right-hand person, but I wasn’t sure she was in the area at the moment.
“She is. She got in yesterday.”
Good.
I glanced at Aiden. “You have the other entrances identified yet?”
He shook his head.
Fine. Leo just avoided a browbeating. Identifying the location and rolling out a force in the same amount of time it took us to get in a vehicle and move just notched a few points in my son’s direction. For how scattered most of the malefics were with order and competence, I ran my empire with calculated efficiency. Leo was testament to that.
Maybe I didn’t need to poach Triaten’s tech guy.
“I’m already en route to the city center with Ada’s uncles. Send me the coordinates. Don’t make a move until we get there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fifteen minutes later Triaten, Aiden and I convened with Leo and his team in the lowest level of the parking garage below the hospital.
“I already sent Julia and the other team to the other two entrances.” Dressed in black, Leo strode toward us as we got out of the SUV, trailed by five of our men. “This entrance is open and Cletus was on the video feed entering here, so I believe it is the main artery into the bunker that he is using, unless it veers elsewhere. We won’t know until we’re in there.”
Leo held out a sword and black leather baldric and I shook my head, patting the top of Ada’s sword already strapped to my body. Aiden had offered me tactical gear in the SUV, but I declined changing. I could kill my brother in a button-down dress shirt just as easily I could in tactical gear. “I’m good. Why are you not leading the other team?”
That was the deal for as long as Leo had been leading missions—we never went in anywhere together at the same time. Leo was the future and we couldn’t afford for both of us to get taken out at the same time.
Leo glanced beyond my shoulder at Aiden and Triaten as he handed the extra sword back to one of our men. “I wasn’t about to leave you flanked by two panthenites.” Animosity edged thick in his voice.
I nodded. Now was not the time to argue bad choices in company. I flicked a finger toward the door just beyond the van that had delivered Cletus and Ada here. “Let’s go.”
I led the charge toward the door. There was no jostling for position on this front. I was in the lead, Leo directly behind me to watch my back. Triaten and Aiden followed him, then the rest of my men.
If Triaten and Aiden were at all uncomfortable being in the thick of a horde of malefics like this, they didn’t show it. Nor did they try to take the lead, and for that, I was grateful. There was only one battle I wanted to fight at the moment, and that was with Cletus.
I paused at the entrance that led downward to the bunker, glancing back at Leo. “Cletus is mine.”
Leo nodded.
Silently, we descended the stone corridor that dipped downward in a long slope before turning into a stone stairwell. There was enough commotion behind me that whoever was at the bottom of the stairwell would know we were coming.
Not that it slowed my descent. I went in low and hot, my sword swinging the second I turned the last corner of the stairwell.
A clean slice just below the knees of the malefic that was waiting for us.
