Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #11)(67)

The lump slowly sat up, exposing the fairy wings that sparkled in the moonlight.

“I cannot create a portal.”

Roke pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling like he’d cracked open his skull.

“You’ve been popping in and out for days.”

“It was Siljar who was responsible for my . . . unorthodox travels,” he said.

Roke struggled to think. “Then she brought us here?”

“Non.”

“How can you be certain?”

Levet gave a click of his tongue. “Because I recognize a portal when I have been thrust through one.”

“Christ.” With an effort he forced himself to a seated position, his gaze searching the ground beside him. “Sally?” He cursed, jumping to his feet. There was no tiny, autumn-haired witch in sight. “Where is she?” he snapped as Levet waddled toward him.

The gargoyle frowned, his expression concerned. “Do I look like I know?”

Roke muttered a curse, allowing his senses to flow outward. It took less than a second to realize they were at the edge of Styx’s property in Chicago. There was no mistaking the sprawling, manicured lawn and the honking-huge house, not to mention the energy pulse from a dozen powerful vampires.

And then there was the barrier against magic that explained why the portal had come to such an abrupt end and why his skull had nearly been split in two.

So where the hell was Sally?

Leashing his rising panic, Roke closed his eyes and concentrated on the bond that connected him to his mate. A surge of relief rushed through him as he felt the steady pulse of her heart. She was alive. But the sense of her was . . . muffled. As if something or someone was trying to disguise her presence.

“She must not have come through the portal,” he snarled, pulling out his phone and punching in numbers.

Zoe answered on the first ring.

“Do you have my mate?” he demanded, his anger snapping a nearby oak tree in half. “Don’t screw with me on this,” he warned as Zoe denied any knowledge of Sally. “Goddammit.”

Levet’s tail quivered as he impatiently waited for Roke to shove the phone back into his pocket.

“Sally?”

“Zoe claims that she disappeared at the same time we did,” he said, pressing a hand to the empty ache in the center of his heart. “She assumed Sally cast some sort of translocation spell.”

Levet snorted at the vampire’s persistent assumption that a witch could actually transport people from one place to another.

“You trust her?”

Roke grimaced. He didn’t want to. He wanted to believe that Zoe was holding Sally captive and that he had only to return to Nevada to free her.

As much as he hated the thought of his mate alone and terrified in a cell, it was preferable to the fear that she’d been taken by an enemy who intended . . .

Christ, he couldn’t even go there.

“If she had Sally, then Zoe would have used her presence to force my return,” he grimly admitted.

Levet’s wings drooped. “Whoever created the portal must have taken her.”

“The fey,” Roke said. “It has to be.”

The gargoyle nodded. “So how do we retrieve her?”

There was a blast of icy power as a large Aztec warrior stepped through the invisible barrier.

“Roke. Thank the gods,” Styx said, his massive body covered by leather pants and a black tee. His hair was braided and his massive sword was strapped to his back. “I’ve been trying to contact you.”

Roke brushed aside his king’s concern. Nothing mattered but finding Sally.

Nothing in the entire world.

“I need your help,” he rasped.

Instantly realizing something was desperately wrong, Styx was on full alert.

“What happened?”

“We were in Nevada—”

“Being chased by his clansmen,” Levet interjected, his tiny arms folded over his chest.

Roke ignored the ridiculous pest. “When we were sucked into a portal and brought here.”

Styx arched an ebony brow. “You were being chased by your clansmen?”

“Oui,” Levet agreed with a sniff.

“That doesn’t matter,” Roke growled. What kind of fate would steal his beautiful mate and leave him with the stupid gargoyle? “Sally was with us, but she never arrived. We have to find her.”

“Easy, amigo,” Styx soothed as the eight-foot brick fence surrounding his back garden exploded in a shower of rubble. “We’ll find her.”

“We need a fey,” Roke said between gritted fangs.

Levet abruptly snapped his fingers. “Troy.”

Styx scowled. “The imp?”

“He has royal blood,” Levet pointed out. “No one has greater power to trace a portal.”

Roke shoved his hands in his front pockets, struggling to control his power. He could level a city block if he wasn’t careful.

“Can this Troy be trusted?”

“He’s fey, but yes, I think he can be trusted,” Styx said, his too-perceptive gaze studying Roke’s worried expression. “Why?”

“The fey have been chasing Sally since the gargoyle removed the illusions wrapped around her music box.”

Levet lifted his hands. “Hey, do not blame me.”