Chapter 10 - Almost Home

Big Jacky was standing in the road. Darius, who usually drove well above the speed limit, was driving faster than normal. It was only his keen eyesight and supernaturally quick reflexes that allowed him to slam on the breaks in time to avoid hitting Big Jacky.

The SUV screeched to a stop a yard away, but Jack Noctis didn’t move.

He stood, facing north, staring at something near the ground, his hands tucked in his pants pockets.

Darius got out of the car without bothering to turn off the engine or pull the keys.

As he walked toward the front of the car, he called, “Mr. Noctis?”

Big Jacky didn’t turn, but he did answer.

“I’m glad you’re here, Darius.”

“Why are you standing in the middle of the road?”

“I wanted to be here to meet you.”

“Why?”

“To prevent an accident.”

Darius saw it before he reached Big Jacky, but there was a delay between seeing it and accepting what his eyes were telling him.

Jacky was standing at the edge of an immense hole.

Darius came up to his side and looked down.

The road was gone. The asphalt ended in a perfect cliff edge that went down eight feet to reveal the dirt below. The dirt stretched on and out in a barren, level plain that was as disturbingly perfect as the line where it started. Where the land around it changed elevation, the cliffs surrounding the hole were taller or shorter.

Darius Vasil’s mind reeled as his eyes drifted across the on-going distance of empty ground.

Every tree, every blade of grass, every bit of debris had vanished.

A painful chill seized Darius’s chest.

“The mansion?” he asked, already knowing and dreading the answer.

“It’s disappeared,” Big Jacky said, “along with everyone in it.” He jumped into the hole and started walking.

Darius jumped down beside him. “Are they alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

Big Jacky stopped and turned.

Darius had known Jack Noctis for six months shy of one-hundred years. He knew who Big Jacky was, he had lived and worked with him, and Darius’s vampire senses were always reminding him that Big Jacky wasn’t human.

Had it been fifty years ago that he’d first glimpsed Jacky’s real face? The skull behind the facade. It happened more as the years went by, but it didn’t happen often. There would be moments where Jacky would lift his chin or turn his head, and Darius would see it, like some optical illusion that was gone before he could blink.

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The first time it had happened, it had startled him.

It startled him now.

The black pits of Jacky’s empty eye sockets stared at him.

“I don’t know, Darius.” Jacky’s voice was husky with repressed emotion. It made it sound dark and strained. “Olivia felt the ward go down. When I checked, I couldn’t sense any of them. They didn’t die, but I can’t tell if they’re alive. That’s all I know.” He started to turn, but hesitated. “Mrs. Park is with them,” he added.

He continued walking.

Darius took a deep breath, then followed.

Big Jacky went on, “I arrived shortly before you did. You passed a truck on the way up?”

Darius had been distracted and on-edge as he drove—he almost denied it, but then he remembered having to squint against the painful illumination of the headlights.

“Yes,” he said.

“That was the gas man.”

“The gas man?”

“I’ve already warned the Torr that they’ll have to figure out how to deal with him. The company turned the gas off when they detected the leak and sent someone up to find out what was wrong. He was understandably confused.”

Darius swore under his breath, then raised his voice. “You talked to him?”

“We asked each other questions. Unfortunately, neither of us knew what was going on.”

The cover team is going to enjoy dealing with that one, Darius thought.

A cover team. A containment team. A clean-up team.

The shock and magnitude of the situation had kept Darius from fully realizing what was about to happen, but now his mind clicked into professional gear. The lists and the plans were writing themselves in his head.

He felt a surge of anger well high enough to make his throat feel tight.

This was his home. These were his friends—

His whole chest constricted.

No. They were his family. He’d never had to put the word to it before, but that’s what they were. They were all he had. And they were missing—spirited away by some unknown magic that was powerful enough to confound Jack Noctis. All Darius wanted to do was find them.

He would leave cover and containment to someone else.

“You’ve already called the Torr?” Darius asked.

“Yes. The teams are on their way.”

“Where’s Olivia?”

“If everything has gone according to plan, she should be flying home now. A car will meet her at the airfield and drive her here. I was told that she would be arriving around six this morning, local time.”

Darius checked his watch. It was three. When he traveled, he used his phone to keep track of the time where he was. The watch always showed the time at the mansion.

“Before she arrives,” Jacky said, “we need to look around, to see if we can learn anything, but I recommend moving quickly. We shouldn’t be in this hole any longer than we have to be.”

Darius’s mind hitched. “Why?”

“It makes me nervous.”

A dark, cold thread wound its way around Darius Vasil’s nerves. All of his senses—usually half-ignored, or purposefully dismissed—zeroed in on that moment and that place.

To say that it was hard to intimidate Big Jacky would be a gross understatement. Certainly nothing alive could do it. But Jack Noctis must have been afraid before; he knew what nervousness was and what it felt like.

What scares death? And why is he scared now?

When Darius’s phone rang, his heart skipped and he jumped back. Cursing, he drew the thing from his pocket. He closed the distance between him and Jack Noctis, who’d stopped to wait.

The name on his screen was Jaylen Crook.

His thumb hovered over the reject button, but he cursed again and accepted the call. Frowning, he drew the phone to his ear.

“Good morning, Deputy.”

Vasil tried to keep his voice civil. He didn’t want to harm his already tenuous relationship with the local law enforcement. On any other day, he would’ve appreciated that she had reached out to him, but at that moment, he was too focused on his own, more personal, crisis. He didn’t know what the deputy wanted, but he doubted it could be anything as important as finding out what had happened to the mansion and tracking down the bastard responsible for its disappearance.

“Are you at home?” the deputy demanded.

As far as Darius knew, Jaylen Crook didn’t have a civil voice.

The vampire’s gaze drifted over the vacant dirt field. “In a manner of speaking.”

“I need you in town,” Crook said. “Now.”

“I’m sorry, Deputy, but unless this is an emergency—”

“You specialize in weirdness, Agent Vasil?”

Big Jacky took a step closer.

Darius’s brows pulled together. “Yes.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m at my office, standing in the interview room, talking to a corpse.”