But that wasn’t her problem, especially not tonight. She jumped a little when the flash drive gave a discreet beep.
“Problem?” Dragan asked.
“No. Just need to switch out the flash drive. I’m copying the whole thing.”
“Make it fast,” he reminded her, then wandered over to a pair of glass-paned doors which looked onto a small balcony. He pushed the doors open.
“Careful,” she cautioned, glancing over.
“There’s a balcony,” he told her. “And Nico’s shut the alarms down.” He stepped outside.
She stared for a moment, uncomfortable with him standing exposed so high up, and on a balcony that couldn’t be all that big. She could see him out there, his back to the room, while he seemed to be studying the surrounding buildings. When he didn’t move, beyond turning his head, she went back to watching her flash drives, urging them silently to go faster.
NICK WAITED UNTIL Dragan and Maeve were beyond the great room before turning to the closed door of Sotiris’s workroom. There was no doubt that this was it. It reeked of magic, despite the obvious shields. He sent out a slow, gentle probe first, his hands gliding a few inches above the breadth and width of the door, paying extra attention to the corners and edges where defensive spells might be lurking. Sotiris had warded this entire penthouse against intrusion, beginning with a light spell over the downstairs lobby and continuing upward. The penthouse’s primary doors had both been more heavily ensorcelled, but nothing Nick couldn’t handle. It was almost as if Sotiris had been confident that he wouldn’t attempt to invade this residence. An odd assumption, if true. Perhaps he’d felt secure in the subterfuge of his several homes to conceal this place. Or maybe he’d assumed Nick was weaker in this world than in the one they’d both been born in, the one where Sotiris had succeeded in casting his brutal curse against Nick’s warriors. The bastard had been right about one thing. Hurting the others had wounded Nick far more deeply and for a much longer time, than any injury to himself could have done.
But he knew Sotiris, too. Most especially his ego. As soon as Maeve had told him about this place, this penthouse on top of one of the world’s great cities, he’d known that the bastard’s workroom would be here. Sotiris had always believed he deserved the best of all things simply because he was who he was. The second greatest sorcerer in the world, he thought, grinning to himself. Though he was certain Sotiris would have phrased it differently.
But first or second, his fellow sorcerer was damn powerful, his magical strength not to be taken lightly. The protections over this workroom would be potent, tricky, and multiple. It would behoove him to pay attention to what he was doing, rather than losing himself in the past.
He located and disarmed several nasty warding spells, then searched again from the very beginning, taking his time, despite the urgency of their mission. Those would have been the obvious traps, intended to disarm any invader, and lull him into false confidence. But even while he searched carefully for the remaining wards, he was mindful of the clock ticking down. He didn’t trust Sotiris to file an accurate flight plan, or even to be on his own plane. He rarely did it, himself. It could be days, could be hours. Hell, it could minutes, though he doubted that.
Like his own, Sotiris’s power was too strong to remain undetected. If he drew within a few blocks of the penthouse, Nick would sense his approach, despite the interference of so many human minds, and even a few minor magic workers.
“Ah,” he said, almost laughing when he found the last ward. It was so simple that most searchers would have overlooked it, assuming any ward set by the great Sotiris would be both complex and deadly. This one was deadly, but not because of any complexity. When triggered, it released an all-too-human creation—a deadly gas that would kill the unwary within seconds. Disabling the ward was a simple matter of draining the small amount of magic used in the trigger.
Satisfied at last, he drew a long breath and turned the knob. The door was locked via non-magical means, but that was no impediment. After a bit of small magic, he let it fall open on its hinges, which it did slowly, only to stop after little more than a foot. Nick tilted his head, studying it. Another neat trap that, to convince an intruder that once the door was safely disarmed, it could be pushed wide open. Or he could be overthinking the problem. With a slight shrug, he performed yet another scan, but found nothing.
Shrugging, he strengthened his personal shields just in case, then pushed the door open and, after a brief hesitation, stepped inside and drew in a deep, satisfied breath. This was most definitely the room he sought, but it wasn’t just success that made his lungs expand with pleasure. The scent of a serious workroom was a balm to his soul in this technological age. It made him homesick for the world of his birth, though that world no longer existed. And the truth was, it had felt utterly alien and empty once his warriors had been taken from him.
Looking around, he saw nothing he hadn’t expected. Sotiris might be an evil bastard, but his workroom was virtually the same as Nick’s own. Sure, the specific projects varied, but the devices on hooks and shelves, the herbs and other ingredients, the books lining the shelves—they were mostly the same.
But enough nostalgia. Time to work. The device itself wasn’t there, of course. Sotiris was probably still off draining vampires to top off its energy, and so had it with him. But the materials used to construct it were there. The wood, which the sorcerer would have cut and shaped himself, lest some stray bit of magic in a long dead genetic line find its way into the material. The remains of tiny ropes of pure gold, smelted and rolled, until Sotiris could fashion them into magical sigils for the box, which were necessary to contain the power once it had been drained from unwitting sources. He understood now why his enemy had thought to use Dragan as his personal power source. The warrior was goddess-blessed, her magic a renewable flow of power, available whenever Dragan needed it. Though no doubt, the goddess hadn’t intended it to function that way. Dragan had been meant to carry her magic until his death in her service, at which time the next unfortunate servant would take over his task, and his magical gift.
But Dragan hadn’t died. He’d survived a nightmare prison, only to emerge with the goddess’s gift still so potent that even the thin magic of this world hadn’t been enough to stop the flow of her blessing. Nick didn’t know what had become of that goddess’s island, or the next generation’s second son who’d been intended to take up Dragan’s burden. Or for that matter, the goddess herself. He only knew that, after all this time, Dragan retained every bit of his magic, including those damn wings. How the hell had the crazy ass goddess come up with that? Maybe she’d simply liked wings. Who the fuck knew what the gods thought?
And he was permitting himself to become distracted yet again. If he wasn’t careful, he’d blow himself up and the whole building with him. No, he’d never let it get that far. He could throw up a shield fast enough, but probably not in time to save Dragan and his woman. And that would be intolerable. After all these centuries, his warrior deserved to live. All of them did.