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“You intend to follow her to the hideout?”
“Hopefully.”
“Couldn’t you just peek into her mind and get the location?”
Valen shook his head, his expression becoming downright grim. “It was odd.”
Peri’s humorless laugh echoed through the office. “Everything about this is odd, including Stella Pascal Hansen.”
A portion of his tension eased. “True.”
“What was so odd?”
“I could see clearly into her mind until she thought about her brother’s hideout.”
“What happened?”
“There was a shroud over it.” He glared at Peri as if it was somehow her fault. “As if it’s being hidden by magic, even in her mind. Is that possible?”
Peri sympathized with his frustration. He was an ancient, powerful male who assumed he possessed the skill to deal with whatever situation might pop up. He didn’t have to worry aboutthe future because he was the uber alpha Cabal leader who bent the world to his rules.
It wasn’t easy for him to accept that the threat they were facing was a mysterious magic that was blatantly taunting them with their inability to track it down.
Peri wrinkled her nose, considering the question. “A mage could strip a human’s mind, and they can erase certain memories, but it should look like a hole, not as if it’d been shrouded. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to hide specific thoughts.”
“Perhaps the hideaway itself has the magic to prevent it from being located,” he suggested.
“There are spells to conceal locations, but they only work for a short period of time. And as far as I know they don’t keep people from thinking about them. I can’t imagine the power it would take to create such a spell.”
“Tonight, we’ll discover for ourselves,” he said, giving up the futile attempt to figure out the strange shroud as he stepped toward her. “Unless you’d rather wait here.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“I assumed you’d say that. You should rest and recover your strength.” His hands gently cupped her face, his gaze searing her features with a silver fire. “Unless you had some other plans for spending our day together?”
The memory of her dream scorched through Peri, setting off sparks of anticipation. She wanted this male naked and in her bed. She wanted to straddle that lean body and feel him plunging deep inside her, his fangs buried in her throat as he drank her blood.
She wanted…
Valen.
But they were in a strange safehouse with no guarantee there weren’t a dozen cameras watching their every move. Now was not the time or place to fulfill her fantasies.
A damned shame, really.
“Nope, no plans.”
Easily reading her mind, Valen lowered his head to sweep a soft kiss over her lips. “I can wait.” He straightened to gaze down at her with a possessive expression. “Forever.”
Chapter 24
Valen slid out of the Jeep that had been delivered to the safehouse by Micha. Peri quickly joined him, along with the two demon guards who had parked their vehicle behind them.
Together they threaded their way through the towering cypress trees, the ground spongy beneath their feet. The marshy landscape allowed them to move in silence, but it hid thick roots and rotting branches that could trip the unwary. He kept his movements slow as they approached the small opening that had been hacked into the dense foliage.
“This must be the place,” he murmured softly.
The Jeep had come complete with heavily tinted windows, allowing them to be stationed outside Stella Pascal Hansen’s townhouse when she’d climbed into her car and drove through the narrow streets. Valen had expected her to stop at one of the hotels that had sprouted around the French Quarter and along the streets heading toward the stadium. Instead, she drove out of New Orleans and into the wetlands that surrounded the city.
