Authors: A.L. Larsen
“Stop!” Augustine cried out. “We don’t have time for this! Alastair has been taken from me, and I need your help to find him.” His voice shook with grief.
Joey stopped struggling and said, “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I believe you?” Joey hissed.
“What would I possibly gain by lying to you?” Augustine sounded exasperated as he let go of Joey and stepped back.
“Who took him?” Joey said as he leapt to his feet.
“I have no idea.”
“And how exactly do you think Lu and I can help?”
“By contacting Bryn Maddock and getting him to work a locator spell with all of us acting as conduits.”
“Why don’t you use your warlock? I assume the kid that attacked Bryn’s house is working for you.”
“He
was
working for me, but not anymore.” Augustine reached into the pocket of his light blue button down shirt and pulled out Alastair’s red cell phone. “Here. Call Bryn. I assume this reaches him since it has his mark all over it, but of course it won’t work for me.” He tossed the phone to Joey, who stealthily pushed a couple buttons on the phone as he caught it.
Joey said, “Is this all some elaborate plan to snare Bryn? Are you starting a warlock collection now? You probably have Alastair stashed somewhere, don’t you?”
“No! I just need Maddock’s help with a spell. It’s the only way to find Alastair.”
“Surely someone else could work a locator spell for you. Hell, you could probably even do it yourself,” Joey said.
“Oh I tried, believe me. I just spent the last forty-eight hours trying to work a locator spell on my own, and failed miserably,” Augustine admitted, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “And if there were any other warlocks of Maddock’s magnitude that I knew of, I would of course have gone to them. But you know as well as I do that almost no one is as powerful as Bryn.”
“Except for that kid. Where did you say he went?”
“I have no idea.”
Lu chimed in then. “When was Alastair taken from you? Assuming you’re telling the truth about that.”
“Three days ago. The morning after I had both of you removed and brought here.”
“Had us removed,” Lu smirked. “Sounds so bloodless when you put it that way.”
Joey held the cell phone in front of his mouth then and said, “Hi Bryn. Hopefully you were able to piece together some of what’s been going on based on what you heard.” He’d already dialed the warlock so that he would overhear the conversation.
Bryn’s alarmed voice came clearly through the speaker. “Joey, why on earth are you in the same room as Augustine? You shouldn’t even be in the same area code!”
“Totally not by choice. So do you think anything Augustine was saying is the truth, Bryn?””
“Absolutely. I completely believe he failed miserably at working a locator spell.” He sounded amused for just a moment, but then grew serious as he said, “What did he mean by
had you removed
?”
“Augustine had Lu and me abducted by werewolves, and up until a few minutes ago we were sealed up in a prison cell.”
A few choice swear words came over the line.
“Will you help me find Allie, Bryn?” Joey asked. “Could you work a locator spell that would tell us where he is?”
“Of course I’ll help you. It’s been ages since I worked that spell, and it’s far from simple. But we have the advantage of several people with ties to the missing person, so that should help considerably.”
“That’s what Augustine said, that he needed us to act as conduits or something,” Joey said. “I suppose that means we need him too, then. He has as strong a tie to Alastair as any of us, so I shouldn’t kill him until after he’s helped us work the spell.”
Augustine laughed at that. “As if you’d be able to kill me! It’s all you can do to hold up that phone at the moment. Whereas I could tear your throat out in less time than it took Lu to draw her next breath.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Joey growled.
Bryn’s voice over the speaker was low and full of quiet authority as he said, “Joey may be weakened, but I can burn you where you stand, Augustine. And lord knows I’ve wanted to for centuries. So you will do nothing further to harm either Joey or Luna, or I will not hesitate to end you.”
Augustine held his head high, as if Bryn could see him. “You’re bluffing. Not even you can kill someone from a distance.”
The warlock’s voice was eerie in its perfect calmness as he said, “Care to find out?”
“Look,” Augustine said, backing down, “We’re wasting time. Alastair’s already been out there with God knows what for three days. Are you going to help us, or not?”
“I’m going to help Joey and Luna, of course. Whether or not I allow you to be involved remains to be seen. Joey, take me off speaker,” Bryn said then, and Joey pushed a button and held the phone to his ear, taking a few steps across the office.
After a couple minutes, Joey clicked the end button and slid the phone into his pocket as he said, “Bryn said he worked a quick spell to make sure you can’t harm Lu and me, but I’m not sure what he did.”
“He’s bluffing again. He can’t work a spell on me from a distance,” Augustine said. “But I’m not planning on harming you anyway.”
“Yeah, and I have every reason to believe you,” Joey said sarcastically as he stared Augustine down.
“So when is Bryn getting here?”
“He’ll meet us in a couple hours,” Joey told him.
“A couple hours? Seriously? He has something better to do this afternoon than save the life of his oldest friend?” Augustine huffed.
“He’s in his car, driving back from a business meeting in Sacramento and stuck in traffic, if you must know,” Joey said. “And he doesn’t want to use magic to get back to San Francisco, because he says he’ll need every bit of his energy to work the locator spell.”
Joey was looking off to the side, and took a couple steps toward a low office partition. “What the hell?” he mumbled, cocking his head. Then he bent to pick something up off the floor.
When he turned toward Lu he was holding the body of a boy in his arms. The boy’s face was bruised, swollen and bloodied, almost to the point of being unrecognizable.
Except to someone who’d spent years loving him.
Lu jumped off the desk she’d been resting on and gasped, “Oh God! Ted!”
“You know him?” Joey asked.
“He’s my ex-boyfriend.” Lu wanted to run to him, but fear rooted her to the spot. “Is he…is he dead?”
“No,” said Joey, carrying Ted toward the elevators. “But he will be soon if we don’t help him.”
Augustine had crossed to the bank of elevators as well, and was pushing the call button as Joey asked him, “What do you know about this?”
Without glancing at the boy, Augustine said, “He came by Lu’s house the day after you cleared out, and the werewolves that were watching the house brought him to me in case he proved useful somehow. I had him locked up in the cells. Actually, I forgot he was in there.”
The elevator arrived then and they all boarded. Lu looked down at Ted and touched his bruised cheek as a sob lodged in her throat.
The elevator stopped on the top floor, and the doors opened to a penthouse studio apartment with sweeping views of San Francisco and the bay beyond. Augustine went in ahead of them, and as Joey tried to step out of the elevator Lu grabbed his arm and exclaimed, “What are you doing? What about the sunlight?” Three of the walls were glass, and bright mid-afternoon light spilled into the penthouse from every angle.
“It’s ok,” he told her. “The glass is obviously treated with a special UV filter, or else Augustine would have gone up in flames.”
He carried the boy to a black leather sofa and set him down carefully, and Lu sank to her knees beside the couch, whispering, “I wonder why he came back to my house,” as she gently stroked Ted’s dark blonde hair.
Joey reached down and brushed a tear from Lu’s cheek with his thumb. She was so dazed she hadn’t even noticed she was crying.
“Do you want me to try to help him?” Joey asked. “The same way I helped you?”
“With your blood, you mean? You can’t, you’re too weak,” Lu said, reaching up and touching Joey’s arm.
Joey turned to Augustine, who paced across the room. “So, Satan, do you have anything to eat around here? I need to get my strength back, and fast.”
Augustine waved his hand at the quiet apartment. “Does it
look
like I have anyone to eat around here?”
“Where’s your entourage?”
“Everyone is gone. They all left me.”
“So I guess that means you’ll have to improvise.” Joey looked at Augustine pointedly.
“There’s a food source right beside you. Two of them! Pick either human and drink your fill.”
“Uh, no. Here’s what’s gonna happen: you’re either going to feed me so I can help this guy, or you’re going to feed him directly.”
“You must be kidding,” Augustine frowned.
“That’s the deal if you want us to include you in Bryn’s spell.”
Augustine swore and crossed the room to Joey. His fangs extended like two viciously sharp switchblades and Lu gasped. But then Augustine tore open his own wrist and held it in front of Joey’s face with an annoyed sigh. “Not like I’m going to enjoy this either,” Joey said, before digging his fingers roughly into Augustine’s arm and pressing it to his mouth.
He drank deeply for several minutes before Augustine finally pushed him away. “Why did you let me drink so much?” Joey asked, dragging a hand across his lips.
Augustine sank onto a square black leather armchair. “Because you aren’t going to be of any use to me if you’re unconscious. And you’re about to squander some of your blood on that human, so you needed a lot. I did have to stop you before you drained me, though.” Augustine licked his wrist, then wrapped his arms around himself.
“Yeah, thanks for starving us, by the way,” Joey said as he tilted Ted’s head back and carefully pried open his mouth. Then Joey knelt down and nicked his own wrist and held it over the boy’s lips. The blood trickled slowly. A full minute ticked by. Then Ted swallowed and drew a breath. Joey brought his wrist back to his teeth and tore the wound open before returning it to Ted’s lips.
“I didn’t intend to starve you,” Augustine said as all this was going on.
“Yes you did,” Joey told him.
Augustine paused and then said, “Ok, you’re right. I intended to let you suffer for a few days. I wasn’t going to let you die, though.”
“Is any part of you even vaguely sorry for doing that to us?” Joey asked irritably.
“I actually am sorry, not that I expect you to believe me.”
Joey frowned at Augustine, then raised Ted’s lid to peer at the boy’s unfocused eye. After a minute he asked, “Why were we in an office? What is this place?”
“It’s one of my business investments, a recently foreclosed property. I just bought it a couple weeks ago, through a newly formed holding company. It seemed like a convenient place to construct a quick prison since it’s totally vacant.”
“Why’d you bother UV filtering the windows?” Joey asked idly as he continued to hold his wrist over Ted’s mouth.
“The CEO that owned this apartment previously was a vampire, he did that. And all this 1980’s-modern crap was his doing, too.” Augustine indicated the room’s décor with a flick of his wrist. “He was a forced eviction. Wish I could have evicted his furniture too, it’s horrible having to live with this stuff.”
“And by forced eviction you mean you staked him?”
“I had my men do it, but yes.”
“And now you’re living here?”
Augustine nodded. “It’s currently my only option.”
“You own at least fifteen houses that I know of, Augustine. Are you telling me something happened to all of them?” Joey asked.
“All my properties were seized by the IRS three days ago. And most of my assets were frozen, including ones that shouldn’t have been a part of any public records. This building wasn’t confiscated though, so apparently the IRS was unaware of my new holding company.” Augustine ran a hand over his forehead. It was trembling slightly.
“So you’re broke now?”
“Hardly. If that was meant to ruin me, whoever tipped off the IRS should have saved himself the effort. I’ve built, lost and rebuilt more fortunes than I can count,” Augustine said. “It’s an inconvenience more than anything, a minor distraction. Most annoying is the fact that all of the men in my employ cleared out the moment my cash flow was interrupted.”