Six a.m. Cross-legged on the king-sized bed, Mike meditated.
When he’d been young, he’d surrounded himself in circles and arcane symbols, lit candles, arranged crystals. Crutches, every one. The only key to power was power. It took a long time to understand that. Some voiders never did.
Will was the only thing that mattered. Faith in your own power. In the beginning, it was easier to believe in the circles and symbols, but the true masters of the art, at some point in their career, experienced that ABC-Saturday-morning-special moment and discovered the magic had been inside them all along. Mike hated when he came up against voiders like that. Those guys, you had to fight. The others, you just had to take their toys away and they were helpless.
Mike was pretty sure things would come to fighting here in St. Petersburg. Some psycho was out there; Rose had made herself a target. Stubborn, idiot child, determined to put herself in danger.
In the hidden corners of his heart, Mike knew he would have done the same at her age. Now he was old enough to know better. Well, probably.
Would he honestly have packed up and left if he weren’t under orders? Could he have walked away? Something very bad was happening in St. Petersburg—could he turn his back on that?
Mike didn’t know the answer to those questions. Didn’t want to know the answer to those questions.
Too damn old. Maybe fifty-one was nothing out in the normal world, but when over thirty of those years had been spent fighting demons, you felt the weight of every minute. The invisible war had a high body count. Not just because it was dangerous, but because, over time, you got tired.
Mike was very, very tired, and that was usually when they got you.
Mike closed his eyes and reached out with his awareness. He wasn’t a sensitive—no magicker was. The act of opening yourself to the other side cut out some vital part of a person and disconnected you from the real world. But where Rose could feel the living, breathing essence of every creature in her presence, Mike was in tune with something much more elemental.
Power hummed all around him. The complex grid of the hotel’s electrical system, a wood-fire in the kitchen, tiny floating sparks of cellphones and laptops. Mike saw it all and frowned. There was no way he could make this place secure. If those rogue voiders came after Rose again….
Once upon a time, Mike’s duty would have been clear. When he had first joined the Templar order, the Church had offered up no compromise. The supernatural presented a danger to the world, one the Church was there to stop. Mike had hunted voiders like the ones who attacked Rose. Mike had hunted vampires. A dinner like last night’s would never have happened; neither Rutledge nor Nazeem would have dared sit in a room with him.
In those days, the attack on Rose would have justified him calling in a whole team of battle-hardened priests like himself to go through the city and purge the dangerous elements. Now Mike knew better than to ask. The Church’s stance had softened. Even if the resources were available, Rome wouldn’t interfere in what they would call “a local matter.” These days, they brought out the big guns for demons and nothing less.
Mike sank into the power grid and traced through line after line, but there were simply too many ins and outs to build a proper security ward. Not unless he wanted to melt the electrical system entirely. Much as he hated trusting to luck and more vampire ex machina, he didn’t have an immediate better solution. It had been years since he’d been in the field with anyone who wasn’t a fellow voider, years since he’d had to protect a civilian.
The best protection he could offer was to learn the territory fast. If Mike had to stay, and if Rose was determined to do the same, ignorance was their worst enemy.
With that in mind, he opened his eyes and fumbled for the phone on the nightstand next to his bed.
Rutledge answered on the second ring. “Hello?” Mike had to give the kid props for sounding awake and alert at this time of morning.
“We need to talk.”
“Mike? Is that you?” The sound of sheets rustling. Rutledge must still be in bed. “Does this mean you’re taking the job?”
“I think we both know I never had a choice.”
A brief silence spoke volumes, and Mike wondered just how much Rutledge knew—about everything. When Rutledge spoke again, his smooth Southern voice was cautious. “How about breakfast? The hotel restaurant is quite good. And we’ve still got a few hours till sunrise.”
If Mike was going to be in this game, he was going to use every advantage he had. “I don’t want to wake Rose up too early. She had a rough night. Let’s say ten o’clock, and we can catch the vampire up later.”
“Sure, that’s no problem.” Rutledge, it seemed, knew when to pick his battles. “Did you need anything else?”
Mike took another stab to see just how much information Rutledge had. “Tell me about the murder that happened in St. Isaac’s.”
Rutledge paused for a long moment. Then, “We’ll talk at breakfast.” A click, and he was gone.
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