Warrior (Relentless Book 4)

“Nikolas, what a pleasant surprise! How can I be of service to you tonight?”

Adele smiled invitingly up at me from the couch in her office. Wearing a long red dress, she looked more ready to attend a cocktail party than lounge in her club.

Her eyes widened. “And Eldeorin’s little cousin? This is a surprise.”

“Hello, Adele,” Sara said coolly, coming to stand close to my side in a clear display of possessiveness.

Behind me, Jordan snickered and Chris chuckled softly.

“Adele, do you have –?” Adele’s bathroom door opened, and who should emerge but Orias. The warlock did a double take when he saw Sara, and he almost dropped the satchel in his hands.

“You!” he barked at Sara, making me wonder again what had happened when she visited him in New Mexico.

“Nice to see you again, Orias,” she replied in a sweet voice.

He glared at her and held on to the satchel like it held his life savings. “Because of you, I have no home and no business, and every vampire in New Mexico wants me dead. You are a menace!”

She crossed her arms and returned his dark look. “Maybe you should be more careful about the people you do business with.”

“Yeah, and you shouldn’t have tied us up either,” Jordan added irately.

My stare returned to Orias, and he visibly recoiled. He hadn’t mentioned that tidbit when I spoke to him back in December.

Sara touched my arm. “He was going to turn us over to Tristan for the reward money,” she explained.

“And you upset my demon so much that it took me a week to get him to calm down,” Orias whined, stroking the satchel that must hold his demon. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.”

“This is the girl who killed Stefan Price?” Adele looked from Sara to Orias, wearing an expression of disbelief. “You didn’t tell me she was Fae.”

The warlock huffed indignantly. “She’s not Fae. She’s Mohiri. And I couldn’t tell you because she put a gag on me.”

A gag? My eyes went to Sara who merely shrugged. What the hell had happened between these two? And how did she stop a warlock like Orias from doing whatever he wanted?

“But that means you are not Fae as you and Eldeorin led me to believe.” Adele narrowed her eyes at Sara. “What game are you playing?”

“This is not a game to me.”

“Why did you lie to me?” the succubus demanded.

My body tensed. Adele usually kept a cool head about her and stayed out of trouble, but Succubi were known for their tempers. And they were incredibly strong.

Undaunted, Sara strode over and threw several old photos on the coffee table. “I could ask you the same question,” she said coldly as Adele leaned forward to peer at them.

Adele picked them up carefully, handling them like they were valuable heirlooms. “Where did you get these?”

“From a box of things my mother left behind,” Sara told her.

“Your mother? What would your mother be doing with…?” Adele’s mouth fell open, and she stared at Sara. “You are Madeline’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

I looked at Sara. She claimed she didn’t feel anything for her mother, but the trace of bitterness in her voice said otherwise. I wondered if she even knew it was there.

“You look nothing like her,” Adele commented, studying Sara’s face.

“I know.”

“Madeline’s daughter,” Adele breathed, settling back against the couch. “Pardon me for staring, but in all the years I’ve known her, she never once spoke of a daughter. I knew she was married to a human for a few years, but not that there was a child.”

Apparently, that part of Madeline’s life was something she’d kept from everyone, even her closest friends. And judging by the fondness in Adele’s voice, she and Madeline were very close.

“I’m not a child anymore.”

Adele’s shrewd eyes met mine. “So it would seem.”

Now that the introductions were over, it was time to get to the reason for our visit. I pointed to the photos Adele still held. “Tell us about your history with Madeline.”

She stared at the photos then looked at Sara. “The story I told you about Madeline saving my life from a vampire was true. That happened years after we met. It was nineteen seventy-one and I was living in San Diego when I met Madeline at a party. We were the only non-humans there, and we were drawn to each other’s company. We hit it off immediately and spent the next few months partying and having fun. It was the best summer of my life.”

Her story rang true and sounded exactly like the Madeline I knew. She’d always loved the beach and talked about California. San Diego would have been the ideal scene for her.

Adele’s brows drew together. “She surprised me when she said she was enrolling in college in Maine of all places. Madeline was more adventurous than academic, and she liked warm sunny places. It was around that time that I lost touch with her for a few years. She sent a few letters, but she stopped visiting altogether for about four years. One day she reappeared and told me she’d gotten married, but it hadn’t worked out. She never said his name.”

Adele stood and walked over to pour herself some wine. “Would you care for a drink?” she asked us.

When we declined, she went back to her couch. “Madeline was different after that, quieter. Sometimes she got a sad look in her eyes, but when I questioned her she never wanted to talk about it. I figured she still cared for her human ex-husband and I left it at that. She continued to travel and return here three or four times a year, until about ten years ago. I barely see her these days.”

“What did she tell you about the Master she was running from?” Sara asked in a hard voice.

Hearing about her parents had obviously upset her, though she was trying not to show it. I would have taken her hand, but I sensed she needed to be strong in front of Adele.

“Madeline told me she’d had a run-in with a Master, but she didn’t say more than that.” Adele’s eye twitched, belying her fear. No demon, not even a powerful succubus, wanted to talk about a Master, lest he find out and come asking questions.

“Were you selling Madeline glamours to hide her from the vampires?” Sara asked Orias.

Why hadn’t I made that connection? I’d known Adele and Orias were friends, and he was the one who’d sent Sara to Adele to look for Madeline. Which raised yet another question. Why would he help Sara if she’d upset him so much during her visit?

“My glamours are the best,” he replied haughtily. “Only Fae magic is better.”

I looked at Adele. “Our sources tell us that Madeline was on her way here to Los Angeles in December, around the time Sara paid you a visit.”

“She came to see me at my home that same night. I told her there was a faerie youngling asking after her on behalf of her daughter, and she asked me if I was joking. She left the next morning, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

Adele set her glass down and stood. “This has been lovely, but I’m afraid I must beg you to excuse me. I have a lot of work to do before the club opens in a few hours.”

I nodded. “Thank you for your time.”

“Anytime,” she replied smoothly.

Taking Sara’s arm, I turned her toward the door. My eyes met Chris’s, and he gave me a tiny nod.

“But…”

Sara started to protest, but I led her outside before she could call Adele out for lying to us.

We left the office, and Chris shut the door. I let go of Sara, and she spun to face me.

“What are you doing? She knows exactly where Madeline is.”

“Yes, and we are the last people she is going to tell,” I replied evenly. “It’s clear she and Madeline are very close, and she is not going to betray her friend.”

Sara’s face fell. “But she’s our only connection to Madeline.”

“I didn’t say we were giving up.”

I smiled as I took her arm, and we started down the stairs. It was time to show her there was more to being a warrior than killing vampires.

“Adele’s probably on the phone with Madeline right now, warning her about us,” Sara grumbled once we hit the street.

“And that is exactly what we want her to do.”

I opened the back door of the SUV for her. Jordan jumped in on the other side, and Chris and I took the front with me behind the wheel.

Behind us, Elijah’s team sat in two more SUVs as backup. Los Angeles was still a very dangerous place, even with the extra teams of warriors, including Hamid and Ammon, working to clean it up. I’d spent an hour this morning explaining that to Sara and trying to convince her to stay behind today.

She was quick to remind me that not only did she have vampire radar, but she could crisp one of them faster than I could say toast. It was hard to argue with that, having seen the results of her vigilante work, but it was going to take me a while to get used to it.

“Are we good, Chris?” I asked.

He pulled out the phone Raj had given him before we left the command center. When he turned it on, I could see Raj’s surveillance app was already running.

He grinned at me. “We’re in.”

“What is that?” Sara asked, peering over his shoulder.

He tapped the screen. “That is the signal from the transmitter I left in Adele’s office.”

Jordan leaned forward. “Wait. Didn’t you guys say you couldn’t bug her place because she uses warlock magic to detect them and short them out?”

I started the engine. “These aren’t normal transmitters. Raj loaned us one of his prototypes to test out. So far it appears to be working.” Raj was going to be thrilled when he heard his project was a success.

“How do you know?” Sara asked.

Chris held up the phone. “Green means the transmitter is working and the signal is good.”

“What do the dots mean?”

He pointed to the screen. “That blue dot tells us that someone is using the land line in Adele’s office. The red dot means that my receiver is recording it.”

“Recording it?” Sara repeated breathlessly.

He waved the phone at her. “Why don’t we see who the lovely Adele was in such a hurry to call?”

Sara squealed and hugged his neck. “You are a genius!”

“I have my moments.”

He pressed a button, and we all quieted as Adele’s voice filled the car.

“Orias, would you be a dear and make sure our Mohiri friends didn’t leave a little gift for me?”

“Your wards should take care of that,” the warlock answered.

“It never hurts to be thorough.”

I knew by the static that poured from the speaker that Orias was using his magic to do a sweep of the office. A minute later he said, “If they did leave something, it’s no longer working.”

I heard Adele pick up her phone, her long nails tapping against the buttons as she dialed. I enhanced my hearing so I was just able to pick out a voice on the other end.

“Hello.”

I couldn’t identify the voice, but Adele’s next words left no doubt about who it was.

“Darling, you will never believe who just left my office. Nikolas Danshov…and your daughter.”

There was a pause. “My daughter?”

“Yes, your daughter, Sara.” Adele sounded a little hurt. “Why did you never tell me you had a child?”

“You know I don’t like to talk about that time in my life.”

“I understand wanting to leave the past behind, but you could have told your oldest friend. God knows we’ve shared everything else.”

“What…is she like?” Madeline asked.

Adele laughed. “She doesn’t look like you, but she certainly has your fire. And she is an inquisitive little thing. She wanted to know all about my friendship with you.”

“Did you tell them you knew me?”

A sigh. “I didn’t have much choice. She showed up with pictures of us from that summer in San Diego. I could hardly lie about them.”

Madeline’s voice rose. “You didn’t tell them about –”

“Of course, I didn’t tell them about that. How can you even ask?”

“If they found out we’re friends they’ll find me next. I need to move again,” Madeline said.

“No, I think you should stay where you are for now,” Adele argued. “No one knows I own that place, and they’d never expect you to go there.”

“Maybe I should go see Orias again,” Madeline suggested.

“Orias’s glamour is good for another month at least. Here, talk to him yourself.”

“Madeline, stop worrying,” Orias said confidently. “None but a faerie could see through my magic.”

The voice on the other end grew so faint I couldn’t make out the words. It had to be his magic interfering with the connection.

“Haven’t my glamours kept you hidden all these years?” he said.

Madeline said something I couldn’t hear.

“As I’ve told you many times, no one’s magic is strong enough to undo that. I’m the strongest warlock I know, and I’ve been trying for years. No, I’m not giving up. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

He handed the phone back to Adele.

“Stop worrying, darling,” she crooned. “Orias and I have your back as always. Now I have to go and open the club. I’ll catch up with you in a few days. Night.”

Chris turned off the recording when Adele began discussing club business with her bartender. He looked at me. “What do you think?”

“I think we need to take a closer look into Adele’s real estate holdings.”

I put the vehicle in drive, wishing Adele or Madeline had given us some hint about where Madeline was. I glanced at Sara in the rearview mirror to see how she was after hearing Adele talk to her mother. But Sara appeared to be more thoughtful than upset.

“Why would Adele say that no one would expect Madeline to be wherever she is?” she asked. “Is there a place Madeline would not want to go?”

“Wherever the Master is would be my first guess,” Jordan said.

Chris shook his head. “Madeline wouldn’t be foolish enough to hide near the Master. She’s evaded him this long by being smarter than that.”

“She doesn’t want us to find her either, so maybe she’s hiding near one of our strongholds,” Jordan said. “Hell, maybe she’s in Boise.”

I nodded. “That is a possibility.”

Perhaps that was how Madeline had hidden from everyone all this time. The Master wouldn’t want to get too near one of our strongholds, and we wouldn’t think to look that close to home.

“We should narrow our search to places near our compounds, see if Adele has property in any of them.”

Chris called Raoul and told him to dig around more in Adele’s holdings. Raoul worked closely with Dax, so I knew I didn’t have to call the security guy. If anyone could find something, it was Dax.

As soon as Chris hung up, Sara took out her phone and called her friend David, who had also been privy to her vigilante activities. She’d assured me that David had not been happy about it, and he had asked her more than once to stop.

I didn’t need my Mori hearing to pick out what David was saying. I listened to them talk about Adele’s properties in New York, Miami, and San Diego, places we already knew about. Sara told him Madeline might be hiding out at a property we didn’t know about. David said he’d see what he could find and get back to us. I had to admit, the guy was dedicated to finding Madeline.

“Something else I’d like to know is what Orias has been trying to undo for years for Madeline,” Chris said almost to himself.

“I’d like to know that myself. Orias is a powerful warlock. If he can’t undo something, it must be very strong magic.”

I thought back to the exchange between Sara and the warlock. “By the way, what was he talking about back there when he said you put a gag on him? And what did you do to his demon?”

She gave me a sheepish smile. “Oh, that. I might have made him take a binding oath that prevented him from telling anyone we were there.”

I frowned. “What kind of oath?”

“You ever hear of the White Oath?” she asked.

I shook my head, not sure I wanted to know.

“When a warlock takes the White Oath, he can’t break it, even if you torture him. It’s the only oath that can hold them to their word. It’s something I learned from Remy.”

I stared at her. It was one thing to know about such an oath, but to make a warlock like Orias take it was a gutsy move. Most people wouldn’t dare try to coerce someone who got his power from an upper demon.

“And what did you do to upset his demon?” I asked her.

Jordan made a sound of disgust. “That bastard had the rest of us tied up, so Sara took his demon hostage until he let us go.”

Chris’s expression of disbelief mirrored mine as he turned to look at Sara. “You took an upper demon hostage? This I have to hear.”

So did I.

“It wasn’t like I actually saw the demon. Orias already had it trapped in a lamp. I took the lamp and shook it up a little.” She smiled mischievously. “Demons really don’t like Fae magic.”

“No, I would guess not,” I said dryly as a cold tingle ran down my spine. I’d had a small taste of her power, and that had been before her liannan. I could only imagine how it would feel to a demon trapped in a lamp.

I didn’t want to think about what might have happened if the demon had escaped its prison. Mori demons were strong, but upper demons were the most powerful of demon kind, which was why warlocks wanted them.

“How do you fit a demon in a lamp anyway?” Jordan mused out loud.

“It takes a spell cast by a very crafty and powerful warlock.”

I’d witnessed the ritual, and it was complicated and dangerous. More than once I’d been called to deal with a demon summoning gone bad. Those never ended well for the warlock. It was almost impossible to kill summoned demons in their non-corporeal form, so you had to send them back to their dimension. Not an easy feat, and one that only an experienced warlock or shaman could handle. In fact, we’d called on Orias many times over the years to assist in that area.

“If Madeline is using his glamours, how was Sara’s friend David able to get that picture of her in Vancouver?” Chris asked.

“Orias told us his spells only last a month because they are so strong,” Sara replied. “Maybe we were able to catch her as one was wearing off.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. Let’s hope she is between glamours when we find her or we’ll never be able to recognize her.”

“No problem. I can see through his magic.”

What? I stared at Sara over my shoulder. “You can?”

“I can see through all glamours,” she said as if it was no big deal. “I thought you knew that.”

I turned my attention back to the road. “You forgot to share that piece of information with us.”

“She saw right through the glamour Orias had on his place in New Mexico,” Jordan told us. “The rest of us couldn’t see a thing, and we thought she was nuts when she said there was a building there.”

I shook my head, not sure why I was still surprised by her revelations.

“Sara, when we get home, we’re going to have a long talk about all the things you’ve forgotten to mention.”

She and Jordan shared a laugh. Chris snickered, and I gave him a pained look.

He held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. You’re the one who told Tristan it was okay for the two of them to stay together.”

Sara’s phone rang. She spoke to David for a minute then put him on speaker so the rest of us could hear their conversation.

“So here is what we found. In the last year, Adele has flown to Las Vegas twice by private charter. She stayed there for three days on one trip and five on another.”

“Maybe she just likes to gamble,” Jordan said.

“Maybe. What I do know is she didn’t stay at any of the big hotels during her trips, and she doesn’t strike me as a person who would charter a jet only to stay in a cheap hotel.”

“She’s not.” Sara replied. “Where do you think she stayed?”

“We think she has a residence there,” David said. “If anyone can find it, Kelvan can. You can’t hide much from him once he’s on your trail.”

Las Vegas? It made sense. The place was crawling with vampires and Mohiri. No one would think to look for Madeline there, as long as she stayed out of sight.

“How long do you think it will take?” Chris asked him.

“Oh yeah!” David hooted. “I think this is a new record for him.”

“He found something?” Sara asked breathlessly.

David typed something. “Adele owns a luxury condo in Las Vegas, overlooking the Strip. She bought it three years ago under the name Elizabeth Cummings.”

“What makes you think this woman and Adele are the same person?” I asked.

“Elizabeth Cummings is one of the identities Adele used before she took her current one,” he said. “Succubi have to create a new identity every few decades, especially if they are a businesswoman like Adele. She went by Elizabeth Cummings back in the forties.”

“How the hell did you find that?” Chris asked. “Even our records on her don’t go back that far.”

David chuckled. “Yours don’t, but demons have their own archives.”

I’d been impressed by Sara and her friends when they found Madeline in Vancouver, but this gave me a whole new level of respect for them. It wasn’t lost on me that we wouldn’t have found this information without the help of a demon Sara had befriended. No demon would have come forth and offered to help us otherwise.

Sara laughed. “You guys are scary sometimes, you know that? I’m really glad you’re on my side.”

“We decided it was more fun to use our power for good instead of evil,” he retorted.

Jordan leaned forward and grabbed the back of my seat.

“So, are we going to Vegas?”