A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(34)

“See, that’s where we’ve been getting stuck.” Caia shook her head. “If you remove Sienna from this equation, just for a moment, you can see the actual pattern. If you consider her to be an anomaly, it all makes more sense.”

“Meaning?” Jax asked, squinting at the map as he tried to follow her reasoning.

“Look here,” Caia said, circling the gorge with a hand motion. “Two years ago, they started vanishing here, closer to the… let’s call them free lands, since Imen tribes live freely on the other side, according to what we know so far. Right?”

We all nodded. She moved her hand to the other half of the Valley of Screams, the one closer to the city.

“One year ago, they started to disappear from these parts,” Caia continued. “Keep the time periods in mind while I go on… Now, six months ago, the plains. Three months ago, the base of the mountain, the first level.”

“Crap.” Jax scoffed. “It’s systematic.”

“Exactly!” Caia grinned with satisfaction. “It’s not every three or six months, but there is still a clear, mathematical descent, based on both the distance between disappearances and the time passed. If we follow the descent in both time and space, I think it’s safe to assume that tomorrow, the date marking the full three months since the first disappearance from the first level, someone from the second level will be next in line to go poof!”

I stared at the map, and, as Caia had put it, it made sense. By her calculation, tomorrow night was when the daemons would move deeper into Azure Heights and, most likely, start hunting on the second level.

“But how is Sienna an anomaly?” I frowned. “I just don’t get it…”

“This is where House Roho comes in,” Avril said, her eyes twinkling as she put two and two together with what she’d probably learned from Arrah. She patted Caia’s shoulder and put on a satisfied smirk. “Now it does make sense. We spoke to Arrah tonight, and, while we couldn’t get too much out of her, we do suspect three things. One, that Arrah knows more about Sienna’s disappearance, but she is afraid to come forward because her brother is in prison, and we think House Kifo—and probably House Roho, too—are holding him as leverage to keep her from telling us what she knows. Two, she knows Minah personally. And three, she didn’t want to talk about daemons. Emphasis on ‘didn’t want to talk’. Not that she doesn’t know about them.”

“Her brother is in prison?” Jax raised an eyebrow. “What did he do?”

“That’s just it, the accusation was vague,” Avril replied. “They sent her a letter notifying her that he had conspired against the city, but they’ve ignored her appeals.”

“Oh, man, now I understand why she was so wary of coming forward in front of Vincent last night!” Fiona gasped.

“So what you’re saying is that House Roho knows more about Sienna’s disappearance than they’re letting on.” Jax nodded slowly. “Despite their eagerness to help us find her.”

“Yup! It all comes down to the Correction Officers and House Kifo,” Fiona said. “The next question we need to answer is why Arrah’s brother was arrested in the first place. What if the accusations were bogus?”

“Why would the accusations be bogus?” Hansa scratched the back of her head, visibly confused. “I thought they had a very strict rule of law…”

“Well, what if ‘strict rule’ is an Exiled Mara euphemism for ‘dictatorship’?” Avril shrugged.

“This is a lot more complicated than we’d initially thought,” Jax muttered, staring at the map. “On one hand, the disappearances are wreaking havoc here. On the other, a potentially useful witness is being silenced through the imprisonment of her brother.”

“But the single, key unknown variable right now is: was Sienna taken by these daemons, or was she taken by someone else? Caia spotted this right: it is an anomaly!” Fiona replied.

“Well done, Caia.” Jax gave her an appreciative smile. “You’ve correctly identified Sienna as an inconsistency, potentially unrelated to the disappearances. It helped establish a clear pattern for what the daemons are doing.”

“Thanks.” Caia grinned, then pointed at an area on the map, marking the second level of Azure Heights. “As for the disappearances, based on the pattern we mentioned, this is the least populated area, and quite an open space. I don’t think the daemons will go straight for the crowded parts of level two. I think they’ll start nabbing people from this side of the square. The alleys are quite dark and narrow, the perfect hunting ground.”

“We might be able to stop the attacks with a spell,” Patrik interjected. “I put together a strong protective ritual to cover the entire base of the city. I will need the team to go out and plant certain satchels into the north, south, west, and east walls below the first level, though, before I can arm the shield. It’s a combination of several ninetieth-level spells and swamp witch magic, and it also involves painting some symbols throughout the city to further enforce the shield. I can’t guarantee it will work, though. It’s meant to fend off hostiles, but I don’t know what the hostiles look like, so I’ll have to visualize their red eyes when I chant the spell. That was all I could see, and I’m not sure it will be enough.”