Page 81 of Bought for Blood

Chapter 27

Bastien

The wards on this building are built to hold things in. I feel them at the door. They sit against my skin the whole way down the corridor. Whoever laid them wasn’t worried about what might come up the mountain. They were worried about what might already be inside.

Crowe walks half a step behind me.

He’s the reason I’m on this mountain. When the invitation came from Vasile’s people, I took it to him. He took it to Faine. Faine decided the Court wasn’t walking into this part alone.

They bring us to a briefing room three floors down in the Aurora Collective’s headquarters, screens on two walls, a table long enough for fourteen. The heat in here is bad. The room is full of shifters, and shifters run warm. Under the coffee I can smell every one of them. Wet wool. Wolf. Bear. Something dry and scorched at the far end that’s dragon.

The man at the head of the table stands when we come in. Tall, weathered, one eye gone pale and blind. An ancient. I pick it up immediately; I just don’t know what he is.

“Seigneur de Val-Serein. Viktor Parlance. I run Aurora.” He doesn’t offer his hand, which I appreciate. “Thank you for coming to us. I know it isn’t how you usually work.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then I’ll keep it short and introduce everyone, and we’ll get on with it.” He nods around the table as he goes. “Nadia Frost leads our field teams. Jericho Allon handles security communications. Vanya Arrowvane runs our intelligence. Caleb Craven speaks for the dragon clans.” The dragon at the end of the room is the only one on his feet. Charcoal suit, no coffee, arms folded. He tips his chin and stays where he is. “Decker is our tracker, and beside him—”

I lose the end of the sentence. The bear takes up a third of that side of the table, and by the time I’ve finished measuring him, Viktor has moved on. There’s a small fair woman next to the bear. I don’t catch her name, and I assume that’s my own fault.

Faine takes the middle of the long side, the way she does at her own table. I sit at her right. Crowe stays on his feet against the wall behind us, which is where he stands in any room filled with strangers.

“Crowe tells me you’ve been inside this trade,” Viktor says. “That makes you closer to it than anyone we have.”

“Close enough to end it. That’s why I’m here.”

“That’s what we’re here to decide.”

I take the folded map out of my coat and lay it on the table.

Nobody moves. Then Viktor draws it toward himself and opens it, tracks down the page and stops.

“This is the compound where they process their…product?”

“Yes.”

“You have the location.”

“I’ve been driving to it since the fall.”

The room changes. Chairs come forward. Nadia already has her hand out for the map.

“How far is the building off the public road?” she asks.

“Two miles of private track. One gate. There’s a second track on the north side that deliveries use at night.”

“What’s around it?”

“Double fence, floodlights on poles every twenty feet. Six men on the front doors and four on the vehicle gate.”

“Are they armed?”

“Yes. With what, I can’t tell you. I’ve never been stopped. My guess is that it’s human caliber, but they’d probably be ready for anything.”

Viktor looks up from the map. “Lady Faine gave us transport corridors. Timings. A delivery schedule. She never mentioned a building.”

“Because I asked her not to. The Court has heard everything that comes out of that place, but I didn’t want the location shared until there were people ready to act on it. The more rooms that information gets said in, the better the odds it reaches the wrong ears.”