Vampire Mage 3: An Urban Fantasy Harem (The Vampire Mage), page 19
“What is that?” Stephana asked me, glancing into the passenger seat where I had the ledger spread across my lap.
“It belongs to the manager.”
“It was out on the desk last night when we checked in,” Aurora said from the back seat. “He wrote our names down in it.”
“Our names?” Bex asked, sounding alarmed.
“Well, the names I gave him.”
“Exactly,” I said. “He pulled it out as soon as I asked about the rooms. It struck me as really strange when you handed me the key cards because why would a motel use key cards if they weren't going to computerize their guest records, too? It just didn't make sense. Then when Ty and I were sitting out by the pool last night, we caught somebody staring at us through the doors of the lobby. I'm pretty positive it was the manager.”
“Why would he be watching you?” Stephana asked.
“No idea. But he jumped away from the door as soon as he realized we noticed him. It was like he really didn't want us to know he was standing there watching. Now, that could just be because he realized how creepy it was to just stand there watching us.”
“But it could also be because he was watching you for a reason,” Aurora said.
“Right. And he didn't exactly strike me as the fighter type which means if he was watching us on purpose, it was for someone. And think about breakfast this morning. Jaxxim came back here with enough food for far more than just the three of us. We were only in the room for an hour after he came back, if that.”
“So?” Ashe asked.
“When I went into the lobby, there was no sign of the breakfast. It had been completely cleaned up.”
“Like it had been eaten?”
“Like it had been gotten rid of.”
“So, you think the manager put out enough food for more than just us, then got spooked when he saw Jaxxim,” Bex said. “He got rid of it so none of the rest of us would notice it.”
“It's a possibility. But why would it matter to him if we saw it if he didn't care if we knew there were other guests? So, I want to see if anyone else’s name showed up in the ledger.”
The pages felt almost powdery under my fingers like it was an ancient text and scanning back through the entries found some from many years before. When I reached the page of the day we arrived, however, there were only seven names. None of them were ours, but that didn't surprise me. Aurora wasn't going to do something so short-sighted as give our actual names when we were trying to lay low. Reading the ones she had bestowed on us was funny, and I couldn't help but wonder which she imagined connected to which of us.
I flipped back to the day before we checked in and found the pages blank. Another flip found only one entry.
Three nights. 5. Ilswalla. Pool.
Well, that's lovely.
“Anything?” Bex asked.
I shook my head, letting out a heavy breath.
“No. But I don't know if I'm relieved by that or not.”
Just as I was closing the ledger something caught my eye. Holding the page up, I tilted my head to look at it with the sun from the windshield shining through.
“Notice something?” Ashe asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “It looks like something was written on here and erased, or maybe was written on another sheet of paper and the impression from the pen pressed into this page.”
“Or maybe was written on the next page of the ledger and the manager decided he didn't want it seen so he ripped out the page.”
I pushed the two sides of the book open further and ran my finger along the jagged little pieces of paper wedged inside the spine.
“What does it say?”
“I can't read it. But Bex was right. A page was ripped out. Why would he do that?”
“He didn't want anyone knowing who else was at the motel?”
“Then why write it down?”
No one answered, and I lifted the page again to try to decipher the faintly embossed words.
“I don't know. But it's something to think about.”
“Something else to think about,” Stephana said. “Where are we going?”
My eyes lifted from the book to stare through the windshield to the road ahead. The car was headed back toward Solan City, but I didn't know where to go from there.
“I can lead you to one of the black-market portals,” Bex offered. “There's one not too far from here. The woman who controls it is usually fairly easily swayed.”
It was an attractive offer but going through the portal right now didn't seem like the best choice. We didn't know where we were going, so bounding through the nearest black-market transportation to who-knows-where would only put us into further confusion. We had to find a starting place and know where we were trying to get first. A thought flashed into my mind and I closed the ledger so I could turn around to look at Aurora.
“Do you remember the man from Final View? The one who came up to us and grabbed Ty?”
“Why were you at Final View?” Bex asked.
“You don't know?” I asked.
He shook his head and a smile curved my lips.
“I guess your group doesn't know as much about Malakan as they think they do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Final View is how to access the house that burned. You have to go through a door in a rock cliff to get to it. Most people who go in there would only end up at his stone chambers, but if you knew what you're looking for, you could get to his private home.”
“Well, shit,” Bex said.
It was so blunt I couldn't help but laugh.
“What's wrong?” Ashe asked.
“None of us could figure out where the hell he went all the time. We thought it might have something to do with Final View, but it's hard to find out much from those people. They are their own special kind of interesting.”
“We are well aware. And fortunately for us, that's exactly what we're going to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we went there to go back to the spot where Malakan's house had been, a man stumbled up to Ty and grabbed onto him. He was wild, completely out of touch, but whatever bit of him was still aware of what was going on was determined to blame Ty for everything that was happening. We'd seen him a couple times before, but Ty later told us that man's name was Phillip and he had been another of the Shades with him the night he took me. We've established he wasn't the most reliable of narrators of that particular story up until today, but I believe him about that.”
“It's true,” Ashe said. “He couldn't find another job when he was tossed out of the Shades. People thought he disappeared but it turns out he just went to live in Final View with the rest of the cutting room floor of society.”
“Why do you want to go talk to him?” Bex asked. “Ty already told you what happened that night.”
“He did, but that's only his perspective. Phillip might be able to tell us more. But beyond that, he lives where Malakan used to. Bugs told us the people of Final View didn't really know Malakan well, but they knew of him.”
“Bugs?”
“Both computer and the grave variety. From my understanding, he's more or less the leader of Final View. One shoe. Lots of personality. Also, lots of crazy. If Phillip can't tell us anything more, then we go to Bugs. He's important enough to the community I wouldn't put it past him to know a lot more about Malakan than the rest. He might be a good start.”
We drove in silence the rest of the way to the side of the road we had adopted as our official Final View parking spot. Grabbing a bow just for good measure, I headed toward the bridge. We hadn't even gotten there yet when the frantic voices got to us. Breaking into a run, I got to the community and found it in chaos. The people were rushing around, shouting at each other before splintering off and running to the next group. I tried to catch their attention, but they were totally oblivious to our presence. Finally, I saw Bugs and dove through the crowd to get to him. His eyes widened when they locked on mine.
“Hayden! You're back.”
“Bugs, what's going on? What's wrong with everybody?”
“Things are bad, Hayden. There was a raid yesterday. We got through it and were able to fight them off, but it shook us up good.”
“A raid? Why would there be a raid?”
“It's happened before. The Prime sees us as a nuisance. He always hated having to come through here on his way to see Malakan. They try to scare us away, but it's not happening. This is our home. Besides, who else is going to welcome the newbies and scoop them up out of the water?”
“Have you seen Malakan? Heard from him?”
“Only people who die hitting the water get scooped up, Hayden. We don't deal with the toasted ones.”
“Of course, not.”
“His tunnels did change, though.”
Bug said it casually like he was commenting on the weather.
“His tunnels? The one leading to his chambers? What do you mean it changed?”
“Sealed up now. During the raid the Shades tried to go in there. When they opened the door, there was nothing but stone.”
“Like a wall?”
“Like the tunnel had never been there at all.”
I glanced at the door and then at the rest of my group.
“Do you know where we can find Phillip?” I asked.
Bugs wandered away without saying anything, but a few moments later returned with a sputtering, flailing Phillip. The wild flickering of his eyes and unruly spike of his hair made his appearance and behavior the last time we saw him seem downright elegant. As soon as his eyes stopped dancing around in his head long enough to process us standing in front of him, Phillip launched at me. His bony hands clutched my shirt and he dragged himself toward me to give me a bloodshot stare.
“Where is he? Where's Ty?”
“He's not here. He didn't come with us.”
“This is all his fault. All of it. He did this. All is going to come to an end. Everything is going to burn.”
Prying his hands away from me, I guided him to take a step back.
“No. Everything's going to be fine. That's why we're here. We want to help.”
His head shook almost violently back and forth.
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Going to burn. All of it. Everything. Everyone. Going to burn.”
Bugs took Phillip by the shoulders and led him away from us. Nodding toward the door to Malakan's chambers, I walked toward it with the three women and Bex close behind. The bow held out in front of me deterred the distraught people from getting too close, which was especially reassuring when I noticed some were beginning to fashion crude weapons out of whatever they had found sitting around the ground under the bridge. I hoped Bugs had been wrong about the tunnel. Maybe he hadn't looked at it right or the Shades had lied about what they saw. There was no real explanation for either, but they were preferable to what we saw when the door opened. It looked like the hinges were embedded in the cliff and then attached to the door for no more purpose than to hang there decoratively. My fingers dug into the side of the doorframe, trying to fit between the wood and the stones. There was no gap, no give at all to the stone.
It was just as Bugs had said, like the tunnel had never been there at all.
27
“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked. “Everything we can find out about Malakan would be in there. Now we can't even get into his stone chambers, much less to where the house was. We would be able to if we knew how to access the other tunnel, but we have no idea where it led.”
A look flickered across Aurora's face that told me she thought of something. Turning to me, she leaned close so she could lower her voice. The others stepped up closer to create a tight cluster that kept our conversation away from the frantic inhabitants of Final View.
“There’s somewhere else we can go,” she whispered. “I can't believe I didn't think of it before.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“It's a hidden meeting place Malakan and I used to go to together when I didn't want anyone else to know we were meeting. Not even my father knows about it. Like I said, Malakan was my confidant. I told him things no one else knew, and he helped me through decisions I wouldn't want to discuss with anyone else in my life. Especially during the times when I was really questioning my father and didn't want him involved in my life, I would go to Malakan and we'd meet away from everything else so no one would be able to detect it. There are enough vampires who were uncomfortable with the idea of the Prime family keeping such close company with a warlock, especially a banished warlock, so I didn't want to advertise how much time I was spending with him.”
“How do we get there?”
“We're going to have to be really careful. Getting there means having to go near the palace. Malakan made sure it was easy to access from there, so I could get to him anytime I needed to. When I was younger, I thought that was just him encouraging me and wanting to be there for me when I felt alone. Now I can't help but think it was something much more than that. If he's known about what my father has been doing, his befriending me and acting as guidance wasn't just about helping me make decisions and giving me advice when I needed it. He was trying to stand in the way of my father's plans for me. Making it easy for me to get to a secret meeting place meant I always had somewhere safe to hide if the situation presented itself.”
The emotion was heavy in her voice and I reached my arm around her to hold her close, pressing a kiss to her hair.
“Let's go,” I said.
We made our way back through the small settlement and were about to step out from under the bridge when Bugs ran up to me.
“Everything's going to work out fine, isn't it, Hayden?”
It felt more like a confirmation than a question, and I nodded.
“Of course.”
“If there's anything I can do for you. You know where to find me.”
After our first few interactions with the one-shoed man, I wouldn't have taken the offer seriously. Now, though, there was something more to it. His past and what had led up to him leading the piecework group of people beneath the bridge was still a total question mark, but every time we encountered him, more of Bugs showed through, giving me a glimpse of an ally I might one day be very glad to have. Extending my hand to him, I offered Bugs a smile.
“Thank you. I will keep that in mind. “
“Oh, no,” he said. “I don't do the handshaking thing. Pass microchips right through the palm of your hand, make it so everyone can track my movements and scan me at the grocery store like a bag of taters.”
He clicked his heels together and shot me a salute.
Yep. There was Bugs. Bringing it back to reality.
“We'll be seeing you, Bugs,” I said and led the group back to the car. “We may need to park somewhere and walk if we’re going to be close to the palace. We don't want any of the guards to see the car. Where is it that we're going that's near the palace?”
“The woods,” Aurora told me.
Stephana's sharp intake of breath made the words more impactful than I thought they would be.
“What's wrong with the woods?”
“There's nothing wrong with them,” Aurora reassured me. “They're just not somewhere most people go casually.”
“What do you mean?”
“The woods can be a very dangerous place. They aren't part of Solan City. This area wasn't affected by the mirroring of the warlocks, and it is a very separate area. There aren't just trees there. Those woods are where many species live, and a lot of them aren't friendly to strangers. Or to anyone, really. Navigating them can be confusing and you never know when you're going to encounter one of the inhabitants. That's what made it so perfect for the meeting place with Malakan. Not many believed I would voluntarily go in there, especially by myself. And if anyone decided to look for me, they would likely look anywhere else to avoid having to go in there.”
For the rest of the drive, I tried to envision what the woods might hold. They hadn't given me any details about what types of species lived among the trees, which made it impossible for me to really prepare myself for what we might find there. We stashed the car a distance from the palace, gathered as many of the weapons as we could carry, and started toward the woods. The tension in this area was palpable. The air seemed to crackle with energy and I could feel the presence of unseen people around us. It kept me on guard and standing as close to the women as I could, so I'd be ready to protect them if there was an ambush.
“We have a choice to make,” Aurora said. “We could either get closer to the palace and risk getting caught by the Shade guards so we could have a straighter, easier path to the meeting place, or we could stay further from the palace but have to go through a longer stretch of the woods.”
“I'm not familiar with the woods,” I pointed out. “That puts us at a disadvantage. The palace and its surrounding areas are more familiar. We have a better shot of being able to avoid the Shade guards and spending more time in the woods where the variables are more unknown. I say we get closer to the palace and take the shortest route to the meeting place possible.”
They nodded their agreement and we continued along the way, faster. As we approached the palace, each of us swept the area with scrutinizing gaze, trying to detect any movement or anomaly in the surrounding areas that could indicate the guard getting close. We ran along the edge of the grounds, then Aurora suddenly cut further into the grass. She was running through an open, fully exposed area, but the rest of us had no choice but to follow her. Soon I could see she was headed toward the maze we'd looked at from the balcony.
“What are you doing?” Ashe hissed at her.
“The fastest way to get there,” Aurora snapped back.
We ran up to the side of the hedge maze and ducked down to catch our breaths.
“Where next?” Bex asked. “We don't have to go through the maze, do we?”
“No,” Aurora answered.
“Good. I'm not good at mazes.”
“Well, that's another puzzle piece.”
We'd only been crouched down there for a few seconds before Aurora bounded to her feet again and ran toward the back of the Maze. We chased after her when out of the corner of my eye I saw a guard walking along the stone path leading from the back of the palace. Reaching forward, I grabbed her by her shirt and yanked down. We all hit the ground and I covered her mouth of my hands, narrowly catching the stream of expletives in my palm.
