Ravensblood by Shawna Reppert

Author:Shawna Reppert [Reppert, Shawna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

XVIII

The empty apartment they had procured was just that— empty, devoid of furniture, decoration, even curtains. Footsteps echoed through the rooms any time one of them crossed from side to side. The hardwood floors— rare pecan-wood, laid out in narrow boards— would have been gorgeous, had anyone bothered to refinish or even properly maintain them. As it was, they were stained in places, warped in others, and stank of dog.

Carefully ignoring Zack, who hovered nearby, Cass sat in the window seat and watched with binoculars through the open blinds of the house across the street. The windows in the top storey were dark. Cass might have imagined the black-on-black movement of shadows shifting in darkness. The lower storey windows were bright and full of dancing, talking, laughing Goths.

Eric strode into the dingy living room with the grace and panache of a prince entering a feast hall. The crowd parted, then reformed around him like planets around the sun.

“He’s there,” Cass called back to the rest of the team.

They went into action. Rob and John, together with four others from their unit, stepped out the back, heading down the fire escape to work their way through the network of alleyways to the back of the Goth house.

After the agreed-upon count, the lieutenant, along with Sam, the remaining member of Rob’s unit, headed out the front door. They were flanked by Cass and Zack. Four was the minimum to spring the trap with a believable arrest attempt, and the maximum that the Goths were likely to open the door for. If they kept things as calm as possible, they minimized the chance of injury to property or civilians. Once the soul-stealers showed up, all bets were off. Hopefully, the students’ basic survival instincts would get them out of the way.

They crossed the narrow, one-way street, originally laid out with horse-and-buggy traffic in mind. They walked up the wooden stairs (creaking and in need of paint) and onto the wide wooden porch (likewise in need of paint, and cluttered with rusty bikes and worn 50’s vintage living-room furniture exuding a moldy scent that made Cass’ sinuses clog from a full three feet away). Several overflowing ashtrays, reeking of tobacco and cloves, balanced on the broad railing.

The young man who answered the door when the lieutenant knocked bore a passing resemblance to vintage pictures she’d seen of a young Bob Dylan, if the original vagabond had dressed all in black and wore a tongue stud. The smoke that rolled out the door did not come from clove cigarettes or any other tobacco product.

The lieutenant introduced them and explained that they were there to serve a warrant on a dangerous dark mage. The Dylan-doppelganger made a slurred, incoherent, impassioned speech about citizens’ rights and civil liberties. Cass wondered if he fully grasped that he was talking to Guardians and not Mundane law enforcement. Judging by the size of his pupils, he was very lucky that they were not Mundane law enforcement and had no interest in the use of non-magical recreational pharmaceuticals.

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