A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)(2)

“What are the odds?” Emilian shook his head. “I… I don’t know. I’m honestly baffled. And terrified, because that means the daemons are far more powerful than we thought. Although, to be fair, we know a lot more about our enemy today than we did four nights ago, thanks to you.”

He gave us an appreciative nod—a gesture we all briefly returned.

“They targeted Darius, but used enough explosive to kill as many of us as possible,” Emilian continued, gazing at the remains of House Xunn. Sadness drew his eyebrows into a frown. “They must have known about the dinner party at his place. Maybe they were looking to send us a message after your performance in the Valley of Screams.”

“Retaliation, you mean,” I replied, while mentally going over the events. The timeline didn’t exactly work, since this had all happened in the same day. “They would’ve needed time to plan. To come here and plant the explosive, not long after we returned. They would’ve had to know about the dinner party, too, if they were going for maximum casualties. I’m not sure that works…”

“What if they didn’t know? What if they just wanted to strike us hard and fast, and Darius’s house was the most convenient target?” Jax offered an opposing argument that actually made more sense.

“That would be swift retribution,” Rowan said, gazing out into the distance, where the gorges rose over the plain, black giants beneath the night sky through which the three moons traveled lazily. “Either way, this was meant to send us a message. To break us down.”

“Like that will ever happen,” Farrah scoffed, then glanced over her shoulder, a pained expression turning the corners of her mouth downward as she analyzed from afar what was left of her mansion.

“We cannot let them divide us,” Emilian concluded. “We cannot let them keep hurting us and taking our loved ones. They’ve become far too brazen. This must stop.”

“We should keep our Correction Officers focused on the city’s protection,” Caspian interjected. “I’m not comfortable with sending them out to fight these fiends, not when there aren’t that many of us to begin with.”

“I hate it!” Farrah grumbled. “It makes me feel so powerless, when all I want to do is go out there and show them what we’re made of!”

“Lord Kifo has a point. And we’re doing our best here, too,” Jax replied, “but until more GASP teams arrive, there isn’t much we can do in terms of retaliation, since we don’t know exactly how many daemons there are. But what we can do is increase the protections on the city and make sure that these horned monsters don’t get away with so many murders. We’ve already taken many of them down. We’ll keep doing it until Calliope sends us backup.”

Jax was right. We didn’t have enough supernatural power to tackle an entire nation of these fiends. I mean, sure, we had one dragon, but that didn’t suffice before thousands of daemons. We needed the rest of Blaze’s clan. Hell, we could use some ice dragons, too. More Druids, and some witches. Perhaps even Viola, if the Daughters of Eritopia found themselves willing to lend Neraka a hand.

But we didn’t have them, for the time being. We only had ourselves, and a city full of innocent people to protect.





Avril





(Daughter of Lucas & Marion)





I left the conversation to sniff out any clues around the remains of the mansions, as the Lords and Jax were already moving on to logistical details that I could be briefed on later. To me it was more important to uncover any evidence that could be traced back to the culprits behind this attack, and the rest of my team agreed.

The houses had been mostly torn down, with fragments of walls and support pillars still standing here and there. The bodies had all been recovered, and I was left with a large number of piles consisting mostly of burnt wood, ashes, and rubble. My olfactory sense was bombarded with a base note of death and charred flesh, something akin to a barbecue gone wrong, and it broke my heart.

Nevertheless, I had to focus. Closing my eyes as I stood in the middle of what had, until earlier, been the residence of House Xunn, I homed in on the other, more elusive scents. Heron was somewhere nearby, looking through the rubble near the center of the first explosion for anything that could help us understand what kind of explosives were used.

I caught a whiff of something sharp and heavy, and it scratched at the back of my throat like charcoal powder. It was different from everything else I’d identified so far as common household items, including soaps and cooking oils. I followed the trail and found myself standing in front of Heron. He pulled out a thin stick of what looked like melted plastic.

He noticed my gaze fixated on the object in question, and handed it over. I brought it up to my nose and took a deep breath.

“This is it,” I murmured, then coughed as the smell invaded my airways like sticky dust. It reminded me of gunpowder, but it seemed more potent and intense. It was a foreign chemical, and I had no way of ascertaining what it was, exactly, but there was one thing I could do while Heron continued to dig through the pile. “Do you have a lighter?”

Heron gave me one of the two he always kept with him—it was team policy to always carry a source of fire for Caia to have handy, in case she ever lost hers. Mine had been destroyed during my attempt to leave the planet. I flicked it open and produced a small flame, then placed the flame against one end of the melted stick.