Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 115860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Now that her usefulness is at an end? I wince. It won’t be pretty.
Duke scowls. “Use your mate bond to locate her.”
“I can’t. I don’t know why. I should be able to…” Bram growls in frustration. “This is bloody confounding.”
“You bedded her, aye?” Marrok asks.
Bram nods emphatically. “Until we both fell into exhausted slumber.”
Ice scoffs. “Or rather, until you did—after thirty whole seconds.”
Bram looks ready to rip his throat out. “Fuck you.”
Marrok forcibly separates them. “Whilst you were bedding her, did you use your powers to read her mind?”
“Yes…and no. I read her body quite easily but not her thoughts. I’ve never encountered a woman who could shield her mind from me.”
“That should have been a fucking clue that something was dodgy, don’t you think?” Ice drawls.
Duke curses under his breath. “We’re off track. We can’t change what happened last night. So we must focus on what the devil we do next.”
Panic?
I keep the thought to myself.
“Precisely.” Bram nods, clearly ready to escape the blaming and finger-pointing.
“Unfortunately, I must add to our problems. Have any of you seen this?” Duke drops a piece of paper onto the table in the middle of the room. It’s a printout of a website I know well.
The bold black headline screams Supernatural forces battle in south London Tunnel.
Bram glances at the paper. “Out of this Realm? It’s a rag. No one takes that rubbish seriously.”
Not true. Back home, some influential Dallas Morning News reporters I work with are addicted to the paper’s imaginative paranormal stories. They take their articles as gospel.
“You will after this issue. The byline belongs to Sydney Blair. She’s disturbingly close to the truth. Most news outlets wrote off the battle with Mathias as a foiled terrorist act, a gang initiation, or the work of a madman. Ms. Blair calls it ‘an ongoing clash between powerful factions within magickind.’”
Bram’s eyes bulge. “How the bloody hell does she know there’s an ongoing battle? Very few witches and wizards even know of Mathias’s return.”
“Indeed. Before I came, I consulted Peers and People of Magickind. I found no mention of her.”
Duke’s words detonate in the room like a bomb.
“You’re saying she’s not even a witch? And she’s not mated to a wizard?” I quiz.
“Precisely.”
“She’s…human?” Ice asks.
His Grace nods grimly. “It appears so.”
Brilliant.
Bram scrubs a hand down his face. “How does she know there’s a magickind?”
Isn’t that an excellent question? Though I disavowed magic long ago, even I know the necessity of keeping magickind’s existence a secret. Witch hunts, trials for heresy, and burnings at the stake aren’t distant memories for a society whose citizens often live to be one thousand. The seventeenth century is, relatively speaking, last year. No one in this room is naïve enough to think that technology is an insurance policy against genocide. People still kill what they don’t understand.
“Mayhap she is one of Mathias’s soulless minions,” Marrok suggests.
“Other humans would notice a walking cadaver, like the Anarki we previously fought, in their office,” Bram points out. “Besides, if Mathias wants to influence humanity, why would he take over a tabloid reporter’s mind—and not some influential world leader’s?”
A valid question. Then again, who can decipher Mathias’s twisted mind?
“So the reporter is seemingly human, and she acted of her own free will.” I don’t understand what’s happening. “Is she trying to get killed?”
Duke raises a brow. “Quite. Or she’s frightfully ignorant of the consequences.”
“Whatever her motives, Ms. Blair is frightfully well informed,” Bram muses.
“Or perhaps”—Ice turns to glare at me—“she’s getting her information from someone who rejects magickind and would celebrate its end.”
“Me? I have no love for magic, but I would never advocate genocide. Besides, ending you all would mean my brother’s death as well. Would I be trying to save him if I intended to expose or end magickind?”
“A fair point.” Duke nods.
Muttering under his breath, Ice backs away. Barely.
Duke focuses on the newspaper again. “Whoever Sydney Blair is, I fear she’s dangerous. The rest of the article reveals even more. ‘The bodies discovered in the tunnel are decomposed far beyond expected, given their recent deaths.’”
“That is no secret.” Marrok waves Duke’s words away. “The media has been scratching over that like a mongrel with fleas.”
“Keep listening,” Duke barks. “‘Out of this Realm has learned that the bodies bear new wounds and fresh traces of gunpowder, suggesting they somehow fought in the battle, rather than merely being left behind as a macabre message. It appears as if they were actually more dead than alive prior to the battle but able to fight due to evil magic.’”
“She’s guessing. She must be,” Bram insists, but he’s gone pale.
I wince.
“There’s more,” Duke reads on. “‘According to an anonymous source, there’s a mad wizard on the loose, allegedly fighting social injustice in the magical world. He’ll stop at nothing to tear down the establishment and replace it with his version of anarchy.’”