Page 84 of The Shade of Things
“How do you know it’s Ohrists?” Eli said. “Could be vamps or demons.”
“Doubtful. Whoever set this game up went to a lot of effort. Vamps are allowed to turn Sapiens, and the new vamps are reliant on their sires. Why bother with unpredictable dybbuks? As for demons, they can do a ton of damage without exerting a fraction of that energy required for the game logistics. Plus, there’s the whole betting angle. From what we saw in the final room, this was a private party for high rollers.”
“Blood Alley runs games like that,” Jude said. “But yeah, vampires have their own territories and don’t need to be secretive.”
Eli shook the last of the wine into his glass. “From what Nav’s told me, demons don’t care about accumulating cash like humans do.”
Jude’s eyebrows rose up. “Who’s Nav?”
Eli shot her a flat look. “Like Mir hasn’t filled you in.”
She laughed. “Yeah, totally. Plus, I’ve met Daya.” Jude patted his arm when he groaned. “Yes, sugar. Be very afraid.”
“Trust me, I will.” Eli turned to me. “We’ve got a Consortium of magic humans. Ohrists and Banim Shovavim?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t rule out my kind being part of it.” Or did they want one of my kind to join them? Me, specifically?
“How do you find them and stop them?” Jude said.
“We might not be able to,” Eli said. He held up a hand at my protest. “First, there may not be a ‘we.’ I was put on this case to find Teresa. It’s highly unlikely that Esposito will sanction me to continue investigating a magic Consortium. On the books, I was helping out with a missing person case. There is absolutely no way to justify this when most of the department doesn’t know about magic.”
“Shit.” I hadn’t thought about that, but Eli was right. “It’ll get turned over to the Lonestars. This is enough to prove that someone is violating the prime directive.”
I was perfectly fine with that. Let it be someone else’s problem. I’d fill Ryann in on everything and then her people could run with it.
“Well,” Eli said, “I hope they throw all their resources at finding them because the people in that Consortium are monsters.”
I jostled my wineglass, sloshing alcohol onto my hand.
Jude grabbed a napkin to mop up the spill. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Just tired.”
And terrified. The connection between the Ascendant, Arlo’s admonishment, and what the vamp in the game had said had just dropped into my brain.
The dybbuks were the monsters that Arlo warned me should stay in the dark. The same ones that the vamp said don’t stay when I’d asked why the Consortium was doing this. That alone was horrific, but it wasn’t my new deduction.
One meaning of “ascendant” was dominant power or importance. Arlo intended to fly with the angels, but he hadn’t meant it literally. He wanted to be in their league, and how had he done it? He’d shown the angels “the cracks in the seams”—a portal to Gehenna.
What was the tear in the room where the dybbuk had enthralled Laurent if not a crack in the seam between our reality and another very dangerous one that I was all too familiar with?
The Ascendant opened a door or doors to Gehenna to let out dybbuks. And Zev BatKian wanted it.
