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“They’ll keep close enough that they can rescue her if necessary, but far enough so she’ll never know they’re there,” Gabriel assured him.
“Don’t be so confident.” Valen glanced toward his companion. The vampire was already dressed for the day in a white silk shirt with the cuffs rolled to his elbows and a pair of black silk pants. His silver-streaked hair was pulled into a tail at his nape, revealing the thin lines tattooed on the side of his neck. In contrast, Valen was still in the silk robe he’d pulled on after his shower when he’d first arrived at Gabriel’s lair. “Peri Sanguis is unpredictable, with a pathological refusal to use her common sense.”
“Then why allow her to escape?”
“She knows more than she’s willing to admit.”
“Concerning the deaths of the humans?”
Valen shook his head. Peri hadn’t been eager to share what information she had, but she hadn’t deliberately lied to him while they’d searched the Jackalope Station.
“I didn’t sense her deception until the mage arrived,” he said.
“The one who shot you in the ass?”
Valen scowled at his friend, who regarded him with a smoothly innocent expression.
“My back,” he corrected in sharp tones. He was still annoyed he’d allowed the humans to sneak so close to them. It didn’t matter if they’d been hidden by a magical spell or not. It was the principle of the thing. He had a certain image to maintain. “And yes, the gunman was connected to the mage.”
“Could they be working together?”
It was a question that should have gnawed at Valen. It was possible that the mages were secretly using the magic to kill their enemies. Or even that they’d set up a clever ambush to destroy him. How his death would benefit them remained a mystery, but he wasn’t without enemies who might have paid them. But he hadn’t doubted Peri.
“No. She appeared legitimately surprised at the sight of the mage,” he insisted. “I don’t think she was expecting her.”
“Now you’re hoping she’s driving to meet with the mysterious female?”
“That seems the most likely destination.” His attention returned to the dot on the screen that was headed straight for the nearby highway. “If she wanted to go home she would have called for a taxi to take her to the airport. And if she wanted to return to Wyoming and continue her search for the witch she would have bullied your pilot into flying her back to the bar.”
“A woman who knows how to get what she wants.”
Valen’s lips twisted as he recalled Peri’s defiant glare and refusal to back down, no matter how easily he could crush her.
“Without a doubt.”
There was a short silence before Gabriel asked the question that had clearly been on his mind since they’d arrived at his lair earlier that morning.
“And what about you, Valen? What do you want?”
“For now I want to discover what evil the coven released into the world.” Valen smoothly diverted his companion’s attention.
Gabriel grimaced. “No shit.”
They didn’t have to discuss the dangers of allowing the lethal magic to sweep through the world. So far it’d concentrated on witches and humans, but it was more than likely trying to reach the magic of a Gyre. Once that happened, it would begin feasting on demons.
“Have you encountered a miasma in the past?” Valen asked.
“Several centuries ago. I was in Spain during the Inquisition when a pit of the disgusting magic bubbled up and consumed an entire village. The local mages managed to contain the corrosive pool, but not before it spread its toxic evil to the human population.” Gabriel shrugged. “There were some who claimed it was responsible for the plague that swept through Europe.”
Valen thought back to his own brush with the mage’s bane in London. It sounded similar.
“Did you get close enough to sense the magic?”
Gabriel’s elegantly chiseled features settled into grim lines. “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Not sure?”
Gabriel took a moment to consider his answer. “I sensed fear and anger and a vast hunger, but at the time I assumed it was the emotions of the humans in the area. It was a brutal time for mortals. In hindsight, I suspect that the heavy sense of doom was caused by the magic.”
