Page 61 of A Fury Of Shadows

He felt something give deep inside his head as the Sorcerer King cursed and raged. Pain assailed him from within, drawing a tortured grunt from his lips. Alastair screeched.

Dizzying images flickered across Nikolai’s inner vision. He clutched his temples and shuddered as more memories scorched his mind.

CHAPTER23

It was rainingwhen they reached the final address Serena had procured from her contact, a little after midnight. The SUV beams cut through tightly packed trees as they took a sharp corner up a mountain, a few miles west of Budapest.

The light glanced off a moss-covered stone marker mostly hidden by the undergrowth overhanging the side of the road.

Serena braked. “This is it.”

Headlights brightened the rearview mirror as the other SUVs pulled up behind them. Vlad studied the dark forest with a frown. The last village they had passed was a good three miles away.

“Are you sure? This looks like the middle of nowhere.”

“The other locations turned out to be duds,” Cortes pointed out.

Vlad shared the Columbian’s reservations. They hadn’t found any sign of Oscar nor the Dark Council at the other addresses they had checked out that afternoon and evening.

“All that means is they did a good job of going to ground and covering their tracks,” Serena said. “Besides, this is the oldest tip-off on the list. My source said he learned about this place years ago, from a former Dark Council sorcerer.”

“I thought sorcerers and witches weren’t allowed to leave the Dark Council once they joined up,” Mae muttered. “Like, once a scout, always a scout kinda stuff.”

Serena’s expression turned dry. “I said former, but I really meant defunct.”

“If I were a bad guy, this would be the perfect location for a secret base.” Lou unclipped his seat belt. “It ticks all the requirements.”

Mae made a face. “You mean, isolated, creepy, and ideal for burying bodies?”

“Exactly.”

Lou opened the door and dashed over to the marker. Tom joined him from the second SUV. They examined the bushes for a moment before entering the forest.

Rain pounded the roof of the vehicle while they waited for the super soldiers’ return.

“Can they see in the dark?” Cortes hazarded after a minute.

“To a degree,” Serena replied. “We have nanorobots in our retinae.”

A short hush followed.

“Did it hurt?” Mae said quietly. “What was done to you to make you into super soldiers?”

“Most of us don’t recall the details.” Serena met her awkward stare steadily. “We were children at the time and we’d spent most of our lives floating inside life pods, attached to feeding tubes.”

Mae’s face tightened at that.

Lou and Tom emerged from the woods. Lou jogged over to their SUV and climbed in while Tom returned to his vehicle.

“Go straight through. There’s an overgrown road fifty feet in.”

Tension knotted Vlad’s stomach when Serena aimed the SUV at the undergrowth. He hoped they weren’t about to embark on yet another wild goose chase.

Vegetation thumped and scraped the doors as they rode over bumps and dips. The ground leveled out after they hit the track. Serena turned west and headed deeper into the forest, the other vehicles in her wake.

A gully appeared. They skirted its lip for half a mile and came to a shallow stream. The rain eased as they crossed over to the other side. The clouds parted, revealing a gibbous moon.

Mae tensed. “There!”

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