Ruby Fever (Hidden Legacy, #6)(12)

Leon stalked left, while Alessandro started right, toward the study. I followed Alessandro. We passed through the doorway, through the short hallway, and Alessandro walked into the study. He stopped, blocking my view, moved to the left, and motioned me in. I entered.

On the right, Pete, Linus’ bodyguard, sprawled on the antique Persian rug. He’d fallen on his side in a crumpled heap with his face turned toward us. His lips were black. His eyes were open wide, milky and dead. A dark pattern of jagged lines marked his face, spreading from his eyes across his skin to his hairline.

Shock splashed me in an icy wave.

I’d known Pete for almost a year. He picked me up when Linus wanted to see me, he drove me around to my assignments when I needed it, and he would have put himself between me and any threat without hesitation. I just saw him last week. I’d brought him and Linus a cranberry tart I made. They’d shared it, and Pete told me I had to stop wasting my life on trivial things like being a Warden Deputy and dedicate myself to my true calling, which was making delicious desserts. And now he was dead.

I crouched by him. It felt like someone else was moving my body for me. Slowly, I pushed his right shoulder. Full rigor. He’d been dead longer than a few hours, but less than a day.

The network of lines on his face bulged from his skin. It looked like blood, old blood, somehow forced into a pattern and darkened to near black.

Alessandro moved next to me. His hand rested on my shoulder, the warm strength of his fingers reassuring.

Funny, protective Pete was dead. There was nothing I could do. But Linus was still missing. Until we found his body, there was still hope.

I got up.

Alessandro met my gaze. We talked without saying a word.

Okay?

Yes.

We moved across the study to the corner. I pushed my hand against the wooden panel decorating the wall and waited for the sensor to pick up my presence. A motor purred inside the walls and the wooden panel slid aside, revealing a stone shaft twelve feet across. Stone stairs wound down along the wall, wrapping around a fireman’s pole that stretched to the bottom floor. A dark red smear stained the metal of the pole.

Alessandro descended the stairs, quiet as a ghost. I followed.

We went down and around, three floors deep. The stairs terminated in a wide hallway. On the left, a wire cage guarded access to the freight elevator. On the right, a massive steel door barred the way to the workshop and weapon vault. A trail of blood drops led to it. Red smudges marred the control panel on the wall to the left.

My heart was beating out of my chest. If I never saw another damn control panel again, it would be too soon.

I wiped the blood off the keys with my sleeve, punched in the code, and pressed my thumb against the fingerprint scanner.

Seconds ticked by. One, two . . .

Come on.

Three, four, five . . .

Something thudded beyond the door.

Come on!

The vault door slid aside with a heavy groan, revealing the workshop hidden behind it. The stench of old urine hit me. In front, on the floor littered with first aid supplies, Linus slumped against his workbench. A trail of dark blood stretched from his nose, staining his lips and his shirt. His eyes were shut. He looked dead.





Chapter 3




I dropped to my knees by Linus and clamped my hand on his neck. A pulse. Faint but there. I slapped his face lightly. “Linus! Linus, wake up!”

“Don’t bother.” Alessandro plucked a wrapper from the medical refuse on the floor and showed it to me. It was about the size of my cell phone with a label that showed a black river with an outline of a boat and a hooded boatman on it.

“What is that?”

“Styxine.” Alessandro rummaged through the contents of the first aid kit that had been dumped on the floor and pulled an empty syringe out. “Last line of defense against a mental assault. You inject it, and you’re dead to the world. A mental mage can’t attack a mind that’s not there.”

“How long does it last?”

“That depends. This shit is very bad for you. Sometimes you wake up after six hours. Sometimes you wake up after three days and don’t know who you are. Sometimes it lasts forever.”

“What do you mean ‘forever’?”

“You don’t wake up. You become a vegetable. No brain functions. This packet is double the recommended dose.” He frowned and held up an identical syringe. Also empty. “’Sto vecchio rimbambito took two of these.”

Oh my God. “Is there any way to reverse this? Can we give him something to snap him out of it?”

“If such a thing exists, I don’t know about it.”

Whatever I did next would determine if Linus lived or died.

The fear and anxiety that gnawed on me shattered like a glass bowl dropped on the ground, exploding into sharp shards. They sliced into me in an instant of pain, and I snapped into a calm place where only logic ruled.

To Alessandro and me, Linus Duncan was the Warden of Texas. To almost everyone else in Houston, he was the former Speaker of the Assembly, a man of impeccable reputation, who despite pretending to be retired, wielded a massive amount of political influence.

The current Speaker of the Assembly had been murdered, and now the former Speaker of the Assembly was attacked in his own home and found in a catatonic state. We had to contain this at all costs, or Houston would panic.