“Of course, it could be a coincidence.” Andrea shrugged. “We don’t know anything about the woman who fainted, except that she was supposedly pregnant. We don’t know what relationship she and Ghastek had prior to this mess. Maybe they went to breakfast together and ordered a bad omelet.”
“That would be a hell of an omelet.”
“I don’t know, have you eaten at the Grease Trap lately? Their omelets are gray.”
Technically the place was called the Greek Wrap, but nobody called it by its real name. The Grease Trap served breakfast 24/7, offered token wraps that had nothing to do with Greek cuisine, and openly admitted to having rat meat on the menu. It was the kind of place you went when your earthly troubles became too much for you and you were looking for a creative way to commit suicide.
“Why the hell would anyone be eating at the Grease Trap? I’ve seen flies die from buzzing by that place.”
Andrea crossed her arms. “Oh, I don’t know, probably because your career just ended and you are depressed and don’t feel like breathing, let alone going out, but your body still needs food and that’s the closest place to your apartment and they don’t mind if you bring a giant dog with you.”
“What, you couldn’t find a Dumpster that was closer?”
Andrea glared at me. “What are you implying?”
“The Dumpster would have better food in it.”
“Well, excuse me, Miss Fine Dining.”
“Ghastek wouldn’t be caught dead at the Grease Trap.”
Andrea waved her arms. “It was just an example.”
I glanced into the rearview mirror at Grendel. “What kind of brave canine companion lets his human eat at the Grease Trap? You are so fired.”
Grendel waved his tail. Whatever horrors happened in his canine life, Grendel always bounced back with easy enthusiasm whenever some food made an appearance. A treat, a blanket in a nice warm house, an occasional pat on the head, and Grendel would be as happy as he could be.
If only people were so easy.
“Could you take a vampire away from its navigator?” Andrea asked.
I paused, thinking about it. “I could.”
I could do a hell of a lot more than that. In the raw-power department, I blew even Ghastek off the scale. I could walk into the Casino right now and empty their stables, and all of the Masters of the Dead combined wouldn’t be able to wrest control of their undead away from me. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with my vampire horde except make it run around in 48 ILONA ANDREWS a herd, but it would be a very impressive herd. Nobody except Andrea and Julie knew I could even pilot the undead, and if I had any hope of hiding, I had to keep it that way.
Of course, after the death of my aunt, hiding was a moot point.
“If I did that, the vamp would be under my control. It wouldn’t be loose. I’d asked the journeymen and both of them said they couldn’t get a lock on the vamp’s mind. As if they had lost their ability to navigate. I have no idea how to make a vampire’s mind disappear.”
Andrea frowned. “Can Roland do it?”
“I don’t know.” Considering that my biological father had brought the vampires into being, nothing was out of the realm of possibility.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why isn’t he here?”
I glanced at Andrea. “Who, Roland?”
“Yes. It’s been two months since someone killed his near-immortal sister. You’d think he’d send someone in to investigate by now.”
“He’s five thousand years old. To him two months is more like a couple of minutes.” I grimaced. “Erra attacked the Guild, the Order, the Pack, the civilian businesses, the Temple, basically anything she ran across, which constitutes an act of terrorism of federal proportions. Right now nothing officially ties Erra to Roland. If he claimed responsibility for her behavior, the United States would feel compelled to do something about it. I have a feeling he doesn’t want a full-blown conflict, not yet. He’ll send someone down once the city cools off a bit, but when is anybody’s guess. It might be tomorrow, although I doubt it, or it might be in a year. Hugh’s absence bothers me more.”
Hugh d’Ambray was my stepfather’s successor and Roland’s Warlord. Hugh had also developed an unhealthy interest in me after witnessing me break one of Roland’s indestructible swords.
“I can solve that mystery for you,” Andrea said. “I asked some very careful questions while in Virginia. Hugh is in South America.”
“Why?”
“Nobody knows. He was seen leaving Miami with some of his Order of Iron Dogs goons in early January. The ship was bound for Argentina.”
What the hell did Hugh want in Argentina?
“Any luck on the blood armor?” Andrea asked.
“No.” My father possessed the ability to mold his own blood. He fashioned it into impenetrable armor and devastating weapons. I’d been able to control my blood a couple of times, but every time I’d done so, I was near death. “I’ve been practicing.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I can feel the magic. I know it’s there. It wants to be used. But I can’t reach it. It’s like there is a wall between me and the blood. If I’m really pissed off, I can make it spike into needles, but they only last a second or two.”
“That sucks.”
Control over blood was Roland’s greatest power. Either I mastered it, or I needed to start working on my own gravestone. Except I hadn’t the foggiest idea of how to go about learning the power, and nobody could teach me. Roland could do it; my aunt had done it; I had to learn to do it. There was some sort of trick to it, some secret that I didn’t know.
“Hugh will come back eventually,” Andrea said.
“When he does, I’ll deal with it,” I told her.
Hugh d’Ambray, preceptor of the Order of Iron Dogs, trained by Voron, enhanced by my father’s magic.
Killing him without blood armor and blood weapons of my own would be a bitch.
We turned onto Johnson Ferry Road. After the Chattahoochee River decided to swell into a deep-water magic monster paradise, the bridge at Johnson Ferry became the fastest way to the west bank. Except today: carts and vehicles clogged the road. Donkeys brayed, horses whipped themselves with their tails, and a variety of odd vehicles belched, sneezed, and rattled, polluting the air with noise and gasoline fumes.
“What the hell?”
“Maybe the bridge is out.” Andrea released her seat belt and slipped out. “I’ll check.”
She took off, breaking into an easy jog. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. If the bridge was out, we were screwed. The closest crossing was at the old Interstate 285, five miles away, and given that I-285 and most of the area directly surrounding it lay in ruins and required mountain-climbing equipment to conquer, it would take us at least half an hour 50 ILONA ANDREWS to get there. Add another hour to wait for the ferry to carry us across the river and the morning was down the drain.
The cars roared; the beasts of burden neighed and snorted. Nobody moved an inch. I shifted the car into park and turned off the engine. Gas was expensive.
The driver of the cart in front of me leaned to the left, and I saw Andrea sprinting along the shoulder. She dashed to the car and jerked the door open. “Get your sword!”
I didn’t have to get my sword—it was on my back. I pulled the keys out of the ignition, jumped out, and slapped the door shut, aborting Grendel’s desperate lunge for freedom. “What’s going on?”
“The Bridge Troll is out! It’s rampaging on the road!”
“What happened?” Three years ago the Bridge Troll had wandered out of Sibley and onto the Johnson Ferry Bridge in an attempt to prove that the Universe indeed possessed a sense of humor. It’d proved really hard to kill and the mages had lured it under the bridge and put it under a sleep spell. The troll required magic to wake up, so during the tech he hibernated on his own, and during the magic waves the spell kept him in dreamland. The city had built a concrete bunker around him and he’d been impersonating Sleeping Beauty for years now. Unless the wards around the bunker failed somehow, he should’ve stayed sleeping.