Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic Page 21

  “How do you always know where we are?” I asked. I really knew better than to comment about the vampire’s apparent omniscience, but I couldn’t help myself. “Do you have a network of valets and pilots and tech providers that just follows you around?”

  Kett smiled charmingly. “I’ll always find you, Jade.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, exceedingly suspicious of his pretty grin.

  “He texted,” Kandy said. “His one true power is the ability to find and instantly memorize people’s cellphone numbers. I think he also might have GPS tracking enabled … like, on everyone. The pack tech guy couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Warner threw back his head and laughed. His magic rolled through the half-empty concrete parking lot.

  Directly beside him, Blackwell flinched under the tasty magical onslaught. Well, I found it tasty.

  Kett smirked at Kandy. “We’re ready to fly out anytime from Seattle International, but I’ll need a destination. The pilot prefers to be prepared.”

  I glanced at Drake, who was climbing into the back seat of our SUV. “Your map might be the best place to start.”

  The fledgling nodded, reaching over his shoulder to tug the grid point map out of his backpack.

  “I’ll text you,” I said to Kett.

  He chuckled as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the white SUV.

  Warner climbed into the driver’s seat of our vehicle, while Kandy opted for the front passenger seat so I could slide in next to Drake.

  I paused with one foot in the car, eyeing Blackwell over the open door between us. The sorcerer was standing at the side of the white SUV. He had one hand on the passenger door handle and one hand on his amulet.

  “Thinking of leaving?” I asked quietly.

  He flicked his eyes to me. I didn’t know him all that well, but he looked … worn … thin.

  He smiled tightly. “How far do you think I’d get?”

  “Isn’t that my line?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, then turned to open his door.

  “I get it,” I said.

  The sorcerer paused but didn’t look back.

  “Feeling like you’re being swept into something you barely understand, and at the same time, feeling seriously outclassed by the powerful Adepts by your side.”

  Blackwell turned his dark, expressionless gaze back to me. “We are not the same, Jade. I’ve chosen to be here. And not one of you is ‘by my side.’ ”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a real concern for you. You’ll get through it without a scrape. Assholes like you always walk away.”

  Blackwell smirked as if readying some really nasty retort. Then he checked himself and climbed into Kett’s SUV.

  I slid into the back seat of our vehicle, happily embracing its preheated warmth and the comfort of being surrounded by friendly magic.

  Kandy was cranked around in her seat, the green of her magic dancing in her eyes. “Let Blackwell make a wrong step, Jade,” she said, teasing yet serious. “I’ll be happy to correct him.”

  “So he didn’t save you? During the mystery trip you all took to Mississippi where Henry got bitten?”

  Kandy curled her upper lip in derision. “The oracle summoned him. He cleaned up the mess Beau’s family made. But no. He helped get me out of a jam. For Rochelle. But he didn’t save me … or Henry.”

  “Good. The thought of you owing Blackwell anything was making me ill.”

  Kandy nodded, reaching for her seat belt.

  Warner backed the SUV out of its spot, then followed Kett out of the underground parking lot.

  “There’s only one grid point portal in China,” Drake said. His head was bowed over the map in his lap.

  “Have you used it?”

  “No one does. Except maybe Chi Wen,” Warner said, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror. “It’s relatively inaccessible. Not conducive for regular patrolling.”

  “Like Peru?”

  Warner shook his head, focusing his attention on pulling out of the lot and onto the city street. “No. Qiuniu does actually use the Peruvian portal. Which is why the buildings and the vehicles were there.”

  “There’s nothing at this grid point. Even the gatekeeper isn’t on site,” Drake said. “I checked.” He pointed to the series of Chinese characters he’d jotted beside the small rectangle denoting the grid point portal in China. “There’s sort of a shelter. Nothing you could actually stay in for long, though. It’s in the Daxue Mountains, which extend out from the Tibetan Plateau east of the Himalayas. The next nearest grid point is in Japan.”

  “Or Pakistan,” Warner said. “Or Thailand.”

  “But you walk Chi Wen’s territory sometimes,” I said.

  “Starting in Shanghai, where the nexus is anchored. Then through portals constructed by Pulou in the major city centers.”

  I shimmied the strap of my satchel over my shoulder and dumped the bag between my feet. “Last time, when we got near enough, the map … Pulou’s map … led us the rest of the way. I thought I had it working, but I’m not sure now. And I really don’t want Blackwell getting a look at it.”

  “I thought you weren’t hunting the …” Warner began. Then he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and didn’t finish his question.

  I knew what he was asking, though. “I wasn’t. Not before. I was just … playing with it. Just practicing.”

  I tugged the dragonskin tattoo out of my satchel, keeping my eyes on the rearview mirror and waiting for Warner to look back at me. When we pulled to a stop at a red light, the sentinel lifted his gaze to the mirror.

  I smiled. “I wouldn’t have gone hunting for it alone.”

  “Yeah,” Kandy said. “That’s why I’m around … usually.”

  Warner snorted, offering me a twitch of his lips and a nod in the mirror before returning his attention to following Kett’s SUV through the relatively quiet streets. During the week, Seattle’s morning rush hour was epic compared to Vancouver’s. Not that I really knew much about it. I was exceedingly fortunate that my grandparents had a thing for collecting property years before the real estate market in Vancouver went nuts. I currently lived a dozen steps away from work as a result. Above work, specifically.

  I opened the dragonskin map across my knees.

  Drake leaned over to peer at it.

  “Don’t touch it.”

  “You always say that.”

  I laughed. “With technology.”

  “And cupcakes and chocolate.”

  Kandy chortled. “Well, that’s just good sense.”

  “It actually won’t work if you touch it,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  Drake looked surprised, then brushed his fingers against the edge of the tattoo. “It didn’t just have these flowers on it before, did it? In the library? I saw it on your desk.”

  “No,” I said. “It still had the sections of the centipede on it then.”

  An ornately detailed block of lettering, which I’d mistaken for runes the first time Warner touched the tattoo, slowly appeared along the top edge of the map.

  “Where dragons dare not tread,” Drake said, reading.

  “Apparently Shailaja doesn’t agree,” Kandy murmured.

  “She just tried to play the odds,” Warner said. “Bring in servants to navigate the difficult sections. The sorcerers, then the shadow demons, and now Jade.”

  He lifted his gaze to the rearview mirror again, but I refused to acknowledge his concern. We’d had the conversation too many times already.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Drake said. “Whether or not the sorcerer lays eyes on anything, I mean. We’re taking him to the temple, if that’s where the door the oracle sees leads. Or he’s taking us, whichever way that works out.”

  The letters faded from the dragonskin tattoo. I sighed. “What’s the nearest major city to the portal?”

  “Just beyond the eastern edge of the Himalayas …” Warner said. “Sichuan Province?”

  Drake nodded. “Nearest city is
Chengdu.”

  “Then I guess we head there until the sorcerer tells us differently.”

  Kandy dug her cellphone out of the pocket of her jeans and opened her messaging app to text Kett. And the pack, I presumed.

  “The portal is just west of a mountain summit, but I’m not sure which mountain it is …” Drake was peering at his map again.

  “We also need to know what kind of magic we’re facing.” I leaned down to blow lightly across the blossoms on the dragonskin tattoo. “The braids were some kind of sorcerer-based magic, and the centipedes were metallurgy. So what are these flowers and leaves? Witch magic? Like herbalism?”

  “That would be good for us, yes?” Drake asked. “Since you’re half-witch?”

  “I’m not that kind of witch.” I muttered the words, defaulting to my rote response before continuing. “The puzzles magically tattooed into the map were also clues to collecting the instruments, right?”

  “I’m not sure I’d call the centipede in Peru a puzzle,” Warner said wryly.

  “Sure it was … we just managed to turn it into a really dangerous one.”

  Kandy snorted.

  “But what does a tree … possibly a fruit tree … have to do with the Himalayas … or China?” I said. “And with magic that can kill a guardian?”

  No one answered me.

  I watched the magic swirl across the tattoo for a moment, thinking. “Maybe it’s too soon to figure out that level of detail. But since the far seer is ahead of us on this —”

  “What do you mean?” Drake asked. “He knew this was going to happen? But he couldn’t have seen his own kidnapping … or even the attack on Pulou or Yazi. Guardian magic doesn’t work like that. Even Rochelle can’t see her own future. She can only piece events together. Same with the far seer, though he sees on a different level.”

  “But he sees Jade,” Warner said curtly.

  I swallowed back the spike of fear that always rose when the subject of my future being tracked by the far seer was brought up. It was easier this time — which unfortunately meant I was becoming accustomed to the idea of being completely out of control of my own destiny. “He was leaving the nexus when I arrived,” I said. “But then he chose to stay. When Shailaja grabbed him, he said something about today being the day, like he was slightly surprised. But not completely.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Drake said, becoming agitated. “He can’t see like that.”

  “I’m just talking about what sort of magic we’re seeking,” I said. “Trying to be prepared. I just wondered if Chi Wen being connected to it all had anything to do with it. Whether we’re about to confront something from Asian magical practices, or seer magic. That’s all.”

  “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Drake said sullenly. “You say it happens to you all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Kandy said. “But he’s the far seer of the guardian nine.”

  Drake pointedly ignored the werewolf. Not that she cared. She was carefully slicing open one of the take-out boxes of waffles with a wolf claw she’d manifested on the tip of her right forefinger. She’d been refining her control over her shapeshifter abilities ever since we met.

  “Show me?” the fledgling asked, indicating the tattoo draped across my lap.

  The dragonskin map had reverted to its resting state of muddled greens and blobs of blue. I obligingly stirred the pollen within the white blossoms to trigger it again.

  Using the knowledge that we were looking at China, combined with Drake’s grid point portal map and Kandy’s Google-fu, we attempted to decipher the tattoo all the way to the airport.

  We came up with zilch.

  If the dragonskin tattoo was going to be at all helpful in collecting the third instrument of assassination, it was certainly biding its time.

  ∞

  Sleeping in shifts and huddled in small groups in hushed conversation, we flew from Seattle to Hokkiado, Japan, to refuel, then to Chengdu, China. Initially, no one had wanted to nap or talk around Blackwell, but thirteen hours was a long time to sit around doing nothing.

  Kett had switched out the jet. The plane we boarded in Seattle was larger and had orange and gray stripes on its side, as if the vampire hadn’t had time to order a custom paint job. The interior of the jet was huge, including a cushy off-white leather couch in the aft stateroom and a glass walk-in shower in the bathroom. Muted grays and dark woods dominated the decor. I presumed the switch was primarily for the longer distance of a flight across the Pacific, but a larger plane would probably also have an easier time compensating for the magical toll that carrying us was about to take on the engines and the electronics.

  Either that, or Kett just wanted to be able to sit as far away from the sorcerer as possible.

  Blackwell was seated at the front of the plane, alone. He spent the entire flight translating his ancestor’s rune-written journal. It was slow going. He occasionally consulted other texts, pulling leather-bound chronicles and handwritten tomes reeking of sorcerer magic out of his always-empty-looking suit pockets.

  I was relieved that he was holding up his end. I was also seriously pleased that I wasn’t the one attempting to translate the journal. Magically imbued books were not my friends for some reason, and not because I didn’t try. Friendly was my default mode. My penchant for stabbing things with my jade knife almost always came much, much later.

  We touched down at the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, then started slowly trundling toward the private hangars. Blackwell was still working. We had no new information.

  I gazed out the windows at the gray-shrouded day and the could-be-any-other-airport-in-the-world, torn between wanting to fret and wanting to wring the sorcerer’s neck to see if that would speed up the translation process.

  I pulled out my phone instead, checking to see if the time had reset. I swiped down on my screen and noted it was cloudy, six degrees Celsius, and twelve o’clock in the afternoon. Monday, January twenty-fifth.

  Drake’s birthday.

  I swiveled in my seat, grinning at the fledgling, who was sprawled out on the couch and staring miserably at the ceiling. My birthday greeting died on my lips. Now wasn’t the time. I’d have to make it up to him with triple the cupcakes when we got through it all.

  Drake tugged an earphone out of his ear, sitting up to peer out the window. We’d shoved him at the very back of the plane and given him a box of waffles and a set of earphones so he could watch movies. He accepted the gesture, but he’d kept one ear unplugged the entire flight so as not to miss any conversation.

  The steward, Mark, crossed through from the nose of the plane, stopping beside Kett, who was one seat ahead and across from me. “We’ll be just a few more minutes,” he said quietly. “There’s a bit of a queue ahead of us.”

  Kett nodded. “The items I requested?”

  “On location, but waiting on our hangar assignment.”

  “I don’t want to wait any longer than necessary.”

  Mark nodded, then took off up the aisle, collecting an empty can of Coke from Kandy as he passed.

  The mood in the jet was heavy with unreleased tension. I wanted to rally and rage — except I couldn’t think of anything that might inspire either of those options. Waiting wasn’t a strong suit for any of us. Except maybe Kett.

  The jet lurched forward, turning left toward a maze of crisscrossed cement tributaries.

  “The shrine of the phoenix,” Blackwell said. It was the first time I’d heard his voice in half a day.

  Warner, who I’d thought was napping across from me a moment before, snorted. “Myth. A bedtime story, I believe you call it in this century.”

  I gave him a look. Warner rarely mentioned his age, but maybe Blackwell was putting him on edge. Or maybe the entire situation was. “I hate that ‘myth’ thing,” I said.

  “Yes,” Drake said. “However, myths only arise when their stories age beyond the mortality of the participants and their ancestors. Storytelling
is simply a way of conveying a truth … or what was believed to be true in the time that the actual event occurred.”

  “We all thought dragons were myths,” Kandy said.

  “Not all of us were quite that sheltered,” Blackwell muttered.

  “Not all of us are power-hungry bloodsuckers!” The green-haired werewolf practically spat in the sorcerer’s direction. Then she glanced toward Kett, somewhat chagrined.

  The vampire merely raised an eyebrow in response.

  “The shrine of the phoenix?” I said, prompting the sorcerer for more.

  “The phoenix is a mythical immortal who is the antithesis of the dragons,” Blackwell said.

  Warner shook his head. “Get your stories straight, sorcerer. Or at least your Chinese mythology. The phoenix and the dragon are yin and yang.”

  “Exactly. Opposites.”

  “No,” Warner said. “I don’t know the word in English. Two halves of a perfect unity.”

  The jet slowed, then stopped. I glanced out the window. Outside, a figure was directing us toward a large hangar. The jet lurched again, turning sharply into the open building.

  “Why would this phoenix be associated with one of the instruments of assassination?” I asked.

  Warner and Drake remained silent. I wasn’t sure if that meant they didn’t know — or if they just didn’t want to say.

  Blackwell shook his head. “As far as I’ve been able to transcribe the journal, the phoenix is a figure of peace and tranquility … healing, even. While the dragons are warriors, the phoenix is considered to be a benign, benevolent force.”

  “Some Adepts require deadly rule,” Warner growled.

  I hid my grin by unbuckling my seat belt and grabbing my satchel. I loved it when Warner got feisty, but I was pretty sure this was the wrong place and time for any mooning or make-out sessions.

  “So, same plan,” I said, after reminding myself that I was supposed to be the leader of this expedition. “We assume the shrine is near the grid point like the other two.”

  Kett, Kandy, and Blackwell climbed out of their seats without responding, moving toward the exit. Everyone was in just-keep-going mode.