Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(81)

I winced, remembering Simon’s description of the building where tetanus goes to die. “Then we’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“Probably.”

I blew out a breath and turned to Simon. “How many entrances to the barn?”

The entryway where we were standing wasn’t lit, but there was enough light spilling down from the stairs for me to make out his look of concentration. “Four,” he said at last. “Aside from the big front door there are three more, one in the middle of each side.” He shrugged. “The gable’s boarded up, so there’s no entrance through the hayloft.”

I met Quinn’s eyes. “The hayloft,” I said, and he nodded in agreement. “Is it like yours?” I asked Simon.

He shook his head. “In our barn the hayloft extends the whole length of the building. This one is small, maybe . . . mmm . . . twelve, fifteen feet wide, at the west end of the barn.”

“How do you get up there?” I asked, checking my watch. We’d been in the house for about three minutes, which was forever in an assault scenario. We needed to keep moving, but we couldn’t go in completely blind, either.

“There’s no permanent ladder,” Simon answered me. “He must keep one on the first level somewhere, and he only props it up when he needs to get up there for something.” He glanced at Quinn. “Like in The Ring,” he added.

Quinn tilted his head in acknowledgment, although I had no idea what he was talking about. It didn’t matter, though, because the way he described it, the hayloft would be the perfect place to hide something you didn’t want found.

“I think we have to assume she’s up there,” I told the two men. “Here’s what I think we should do.”



The three of us went straight through the house’s front door—at this point speed was more important than trying to be sneaky—but fanned out as soon as we were outside, so we’d make a more difficult target.

“As soon as we’re close enough, you need to sense out the life in the barn,” Simon had told me before we left.

“What? No, you should do it.” I wasn’t in any hurry to use magic again, tattoos or not.

“You’re stronger than I am,” Simon said simply. “And you have a wider range.”

I did? “Simon . . .” I began uneasily, but he broke in.

“You can do this, Lex,” he encouraged. “It’s just sensing out life. You could do this in your sleep.”

There was no time to argue with him. I swallowed my excuses and bobbed my head.

Once we were in the yard, Quinn broke off to the right. He would go around back and try to get into the barn through the boarded-up gable on the second story, much like he’d done at the farmhouse, but he’d wait for Simon’s signal before trying to break in. Simon and I darted to the left, where an enormous propane tank stood a few feet southeast of the barn’s gaping front door. I just prayed that Kirby and Atwood weren’t stupid enough to shoot the tank.

The most immediate problem was going to be light—there was a fairly bright spotlight attached to the front of the barn, which was probably on some kind of automatic timer, but there were no lights on inside. That gave Kirby a distinct advantage over Simon and me: if we used the flashlights inside the barn we’d be sitting ducks, but if we tried to go without them, we’d cut ourselves on the welding equipment. We had to get the lights on inside the barn before doing anything else.

We crouched in the shadows, and then Simon nodded to me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, visualizing myself putting on thermal imaging goggles. Now I was sort of glad that Simon had made me practice turning my mindset on and off under any circumstances, including when I was terrified. Eyes closed, I pushed my senses toward the barn. I’d been worried the tattoos would limit me, but Simon had reassured me that they would only affect the way I manipulated magic, not the way I sensed it out. Right away, I felt a huge pulse of essence at the southern wall, the one nearest us. It was about midway down the barn’s side, probably next to the door. I hadn’t felt a vampire in my senses yet, but I figured it would be different from a human, and this felt human. “Atwood’s by the southern door,” I murmured to Simon.

“I feel him, too, but that’s as far as I can go. Push farther,” he directed.

So I did. I felt the next presence at the far end of the barn, probably by the west door. This one felt . . . interesting. Simon had told me that my brain interpreted the magic in a way I could understand, and for whatever reason it usually made sparks of life blue. But this spark was a deep, wormy red. It was a different magic from the magic of creation I saw in humans and animals, or from the yellowish death-essence that drifted out of them when they died. A darker magic. “Vampire,” I breathed. To Simon, I said, “Kirby’s at the west door.”

I felt, rather than saw, his nod. “Let’s go,” he whispered, starting to stretch upward.

“Wait,” I said, reaching out to grab his arm. Something was wrong: Tactically, west and south weren’t the right places to guard, not if my niece was in the hayloft. And Charlie was a baby—even if she was restrained in a crib or a car seat, wouldn’t they want someone to be with her? My eyes were still closed, and I pushed my magic harder, feeling past where I’d felt Kirby.