There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) (9 page)

“
Well, usually I ask the person seeking the object to join
minds with me while thinking of the object,” Trinity explained,
with no hint of impatience or condescension. “If they can capture
the true essence of the object in their mind, I can usually sense
where it is to within a few hundred metres. Generally speaking, the
seeker needs to have touched or seen the object in reality, not
simply through a photo or video, for example. I can be fairly
precise, but I can’t track over vast distances. About a hundred
kilometres is my outer limit. The most reliable way to track is
also the least common, in my experience. If you have an actual
piece of what you are seeking, I can get the bearings of the rest
of it just by holding it, and usually I can lead you to within a
few metres of it.” She paused to see if the rest of them were
following her; when Gabi nodded, she continued. “Most importantly,
the closer to unique the object is, the better the chances I can
track it.”

Gabi’s
confusion must have shown on her face.

“
I probably couldn’t track your lost black iPhone, because
there are so many of them in the world, but if it was a
blinged-out, pink iPhone, I could probably work with that. A white
Toyota hatchback would be almost impossible, but a licence plate I
could track.”

Gabi nodded her
understanding.

“
My mom’s engagement ring?” Gabi asked after a quick mental
catalogue of the objects her mother might have with her.

“
Yes, that would be a good piece to start with,” Trinity
agreed. “It’s individual and will have meaning to you; that helps
as well.”

“
Do you need anything special before you get started?” Julius
asked in a calm voice. He’d stayed quiet up to now, aware of how
overwhelming most people found his presence.

Trinity’s eyes
flew to him, and her cheeks flooded with colour before she just as
quickly dropped her gaze. “No, no, nothing special,” she said,
hiding her fluster by dipping her head and allowing her long, dark
blonde hair to fall over her face. “Just quiet, no disturbances,
please. Gabi, would you come and sit in front of me?” Her
professionalism took over and she turned her chair so that Gabi
could place another chair in front of her.

“
We’ll leave you; call if you need anything. I’ll make sure a
car is ready for us,” Julius told Gabi, placing a hand on her
shoulder and flooding her mind with warm reassurance.

She nodded,
reaching to squeeze his hand for just a moment, and then sat down
in the chair to face Trinity. A second later the door closed and
the two of them were alone.

“
I know this is hard, Gabrielle.” Trinity spoke with quiet
firmness. “But I need you to utterly clear your mind of all
worries, concerns and fears. Close your eyes and concentrate on my
voice instead.”

Gabi pulled a
long, slow breath into her lungs. Everything she’d thrown into the
back of her mind earlier was now flying around at dizzying speed.
Closing her eyes, she began, one by one, to face each fear and
place it carefully into a box inside her mind, visualising putting
a heavy lid on each one and moving to the next until finally the
frantic buzzing of thoughts inside her head had gone still.
Trinity’s calm voice instructed her to relax each muscle in her
body one by one, and she followed the instructions, slipping into a
semi-meditative state with surprising ease.

“
Now, Gabrielle, I need you to think of your mother’s ring.”
Trinity’s voice was far way but clear in the quiet of her mind. She
allowed a picture of her mother’s hand wearing the dainty white
gold and diamond ring to fill her mind. “Once you have a picture of
it, think of what the ring means to you and what it means to your
mother then allow those emotions to fill you.” The image in her
mind was crystal clear; her mother’s hand betrayed her age, the
first signs of wrinkles as the plumpness of youth receded, and a
few age spots where once pale, unmarred skin had been. Gabi hadn’t
taken the time to think of her mother aging before. And what it
meant. Her father hadn’t reached the age where it had become a
consideration, but now the stark reality of human-speed aging hit
Gabi in the chest. She had grown used to living amongst those who
aged slowly or not at all.

“
Have you got the image in your mind, Gabrielle?” Trinity’s
voice brought a halt to her meandering thoughts and she refocused
on the ring itself. “I need to meld my mind with yours now. I’m
going to take your left hand in mine.”

Gabi felt the
cool touch of the Magus’s fingers around her hand. She concentrated
on the ring, thinking of the day her mother had married Evan. It
had been a quiet ceremony with a handful of friends from both
sides. The morning had begun with rain and grey clouds, but by the
time the official ceremony was over and they left the tiny church,
the sun had come out. Her mother had looked radiant, a decade
younger than the grief-burdened woman Gabi remembered from her
teenage years. She allowed the happiness of the day, the relief
that she no longer had to worry about her mother and sense of right
in the world to infuse her, pouring the memories into the image of
three sparkling diamonds in a classic setting.

“
Gabrielle, I need you to lower your mental defences. Your
walls are too strong for me to pierce.” Trinity’s voice sounded
less calm, more like she was under some kind of strain, and the
fingers clasping Gabi’s left hand had gone rigid.

“
Oh, sorry,” Gabi whispered. She’d begun strengthening her
mental defences after Mariska had cast a magic ward against her,
using her own mind to hold her immobile while Dantè tortured her.
She’d honed her walls with Julius’s help until even he couldn’t
break through if she didn’t allow him in. She’d probably surprised
Trinity with the strength of them. Again she used mental imagery to
visualise creating a doorway through her defences. Non-physical
stuff had never been a strength of hers; giving it a sense of
physical presence had been the breakthrough she needed. She opened
the door to the outer edges of her psyche, she didn’t think Trinity
would try to intrude further than Gabi wanted her to, but there
were things in her head that no one else needed to see or
experience.

She felt the
gentle wash of Trinity’s presence flow through her doorway, a vast
difference to the time Athena hacked into her mind to destroy
Mariska’s vile ward. She hadn’t been able to shield Athena from her
own physical agony, so the two of them had suffered together for
the moments it took Athena to unravel the spell. Somehow that
shared pain had been the catalyst that finally abolished the
unspoken animosity between the two of them, but Gabi had been too
far gone in pain and blood loss to realise it at the time. She
focused on a mental image of the ring and felt Trinity flow in and
around it, absorbing the very essence of the memory and the
emotions it elicited in Gabi.

She wasn’t sure
how many minutes or hours had passed when a loud growl of
frustration broke her from the meditative state. She straightened
in the chair, instantly alert, scanning the room. Nothing had
changed, but Trinity sagged in the chair opposite her, her face in
her hands.

“
I’m truly sorry, Gabrielle,” she said, rubbing both hands
across her face. Gabi could see a fine mist of sweat beading on the
Magus’s forehead. “There’s some kind of block or ward around the
ring. I think it’s a magical ward and is probably cast over your
mother, not the ring itself. I cannot pierce through.”

“
What?” Julius was unusually curt as he swung open the door.
“Can you sense anything, any kind of direction or distance at
all?”

Trinity shrank
back a little in the chair but answered him. “It’s like being in a
dark forest utterly devoid of light, and all I can hear is the
quiet ringing of a bell. I know it’s there, but I have nothing to
reference it against because I don’t know where I am in relation to
it. I am sorry, I really am.” The weight of her words landed like
bricks in Gabi’s stomach, squelching the hope that had bloomed
again despite her best efforts to the contrary. Where was her
mother, and how in Hell’s name were they going to find
her?

CHAPTER
5

Only one thing
was sure in Gabi’s mind. When they found whoever had kidnapped her
mother, there would be hell to pay. She and Julius would come down
so hard on the perpetrators that no one would ever dare to try
something like this again.

The trip back
to the Estate had been a silent one; Gabi’s anger, fear and
self-recrimination suffused the interior of the car. In the past
year she’d had to rescue Kyle from a crazy human trying to breed
himself a Werewolf army, and then her friend Adriana from a group
of human Vampire Hunters, but this was the final straw.

“
We need to warn Byron, get him up to speed,” she growled as
they exited the elevator from the basement garage into the main
foyer of the mansion, “and double up the watch on him.”

“
I’m on it,” Alexander said from just behind her. She was
relieved that he’d volunteered; she wasn’t sure she’d hold it
together if she spoke to Byron right now.

“
Has there been anything?” She tried to keep the note of
pleading out of her voice when they met Fergus in the corridor, a
phone in his hand. Razor trotted down the sweeping staircase to
their right and purred a worried welcome as he wove between Gabi’s
legs.

“
Nae,” he rumbled. “Noothin’ frae anyone outside ay th’ Clan. I
was just on th’ phone tae Mac. He’s on his way back; he’ll be here
within th’ hoor.”

Gabi nodded.
Mac was her right-hand man, an ex-private investigator and someone
she’d called a friend even before he’d been Turned Vampire to save
his life. He was an integral part of the Dhampir Squad, a
bloodhound when it came to following clues, and could teach a
master class on predicting both human and Vampire behaviour
patterns. He’d developed a ‘friends-with-benefits’ relationship
with one of Julius’s close friends, a Vampire loner named Savannah.
She lived only a short distance from the City and spent her nights
inventing things that improved the lives of Vampires, including the
specialised coating that protected Gabi’s cars and infused items of
clothing that enabled Julius to spend brief amounts of time out in
the sun and made combat clothing resistant to the corrosive effects
of demon blood. She’d even made armour for Razor. Between her and
Mac, they’d produced several weapons that were highly effective in
containing or killing both supernaturals and demons. Whenever SID
made it back to the City after an assignment, Mac travelled
directly to Savannah’s place for some downtime or, as Gabi
suspected, some further collaboration on their respective
inventions.

“
Murphy is waitin’ fur us in th’ war room,” Fergus told
them.

Gabi changed
direction and headed down a secondary corridor towards the
windowless room in the heart of the mansion. SID’s resident
computer tamer, Murphy, had been co-leader of the group of Vampire
Hunters who had kidnapped Adriana; they had called themselves the
Kresniks. They’d been mind-fucked into what they thought was their
true calling by a Vampire working for the Decuria, in an attempt to
destabilise the City and send Julius running for help. Both Murphy,
who’d gone by the handle of Darkstalker, and his co-leader, Lady
Helsing, had been underhandedly fed Vampire blood, making it
impossible to wipe their memories of all things supernatural. While
most in the Community considered the operation to expose the
Kresniks and free Adriana a success, Gabi was intensely
disappointed that Julius hadn’t been able to extract any
information from the Lieutenant, the Vampire responsible for all
the trouble. He’d been killed by a highly skilled sniper while
Julius was interrogating him. Gabi was also very concerned by how
close Julius had come to losing his own life. She was fully aware
of how easily the sniper could’ve aimed for Julius instead of the
Lieutenant.

Faced with the
option of working for Julius or being relocated to some remote part
of Alaska, the two ex-leaders of the Kresniks had wisely chosen to
take up employment with the Master of the City. Gabi barely slowed
as she threw open a door and strode into the large, but mostly
airless room they’d dubbed the war room. A dark figure in a
high-back leather executive’s chair spun towards them, his face
silhouetted against the bank of computer screens behind him.
Darkstalker, real name David Murphy, had tried to get them to call
him David, but the team had chosen Murphy instead—David just didn’t
fit the athletic, tattooed, pierced and head-shaved parkour
enthusiast. While his little Vampire Hunting group had enlisted the
services of a computer and electronics expert who called himself
Mastermind, Murphy had been the real black hat in the group. He
preferred the physical stuff—running, jumping and climbing walls
like Spider-Man—but had redirected his attention back to the
keyboard to become a solid and reliable member of the Dhampir
Squad.

“
You’ve been filled in?” Gabi asked him, and he nodded, rising
from the chair to take his empty coffee mug to the small
well-stocked coffee station in one corner of the room.

“
Trish sent me everything she has. You want some?” He raised
his coffee mug towards Gabi, and she was relieved that he was
treating the issue like any other case instead of looking at her
with sympathy and wariness.

She nodded and
watched silently as he set to work pouring two cups from the coffee
maker. In the brighter light at the coffee station, one of the
characters inked onto the side of his neck seemed to leer at her.
Less than twenty percent of his skin was free of tattoo ink, he
sported more piercings than the average college intake put
together, thick scars scored his arms from his early years of drug
abuse and self-mutilation, and his particular brand of expertise
had proved indispensable on more than one case. When seeking the
dark and the dangerous, you didn’t ask the clean and upright
citizens of the world where to look, you asked those living in the
shadows themselves. Murphy was a consummate professional at gaining
the trust of underground groups in towns and cities across the
globe; he’d garnered vital information on almost every case they’d
pursued so far.