Page 24 of Anarchy
“How did this happen? My sister can fight off any threat to this library without breaking a sweat.”
“Dorian used some kind of gas human police use. We were both out in almost an instant. We couldn’t do anything to fight it because it was irritating our eyes and lungs before it got us.”
“Dorian Gray has human help too? How many people are in on this, exactly?”
“Not exactly,” Kaine said. “There are websites specifically for humans to purchase those kinds of things. They are usually hidden from search engines but well known among certain groups. They believe they will have to go to war with the government, and then there’s going to be another civil war. So they stockpile food and any weapons they can get their hands on. It wouldn’t be hard for Dorian to find and purchase a gas like that online.”
“No, he didn’t. I’ve been through his computer. He wasn’t even Googling those kinds of sites.”
“Balthazar, that’s not just a human conspiracy theory. Plenty of supernaturals have bought into it too. We’ve raided a few of them with weapons just like this. That’s the whole reason I know about it. We’re having to put protocols in place at the bureau because of it.”
Ravyn threw up her hands and shrieked.
“What the actual fuck is the world coming to when people aren’t relying on their supernatural gifts? I hope you have a plan for getting my sister back.”
“We had nothing to connect Dorian to that warehouse before legally, but murdering a shifter and kidnapping a well-respected librarian puts him on our radar. We can make a legal case that Dorian is technically supernatural since he made a deal with a demon for immortality so that he can’t use the fact that he’s human to get off on the charges. We’ve tapped his cell phone, and Balthazar is watching his online activity. There’s been nothing so far.”
“We need to be figuring out why he took Ripley when he’s been promising everyone Reyson and how exactly he knew we were splitting up,” I said.
“That fucker!” Balthazar yelled.
He zipped off upstairs using his vampire speed, and I could hear things crashing upstairs in Ripley’s apartment. He’d better clean that up before we got Ripley back. Ripley wasn’t the only one who didn’t like living in a messy place.
Balthazar zipped back down and slammed something down on Ripley’s desk.
“Dorian has a secret cell phone I wasn’t able to find in his records. It’s how he was communicating with his demon friend and how he was watching this. I started thinking about that whole night with Ripley where he was shit in bed. He wasn’t trying because he didn’t need Ripley in some sexual spell. I don’t care how pretty you are. No one is going to stick around if you are bad at sex.
“I was also thinking about the page he stole from her grimoire. He couldn’t have made that potion with no magic. He stole the page as a diversion and planted this camera in the living room. Dorian knew damned well Ripley was going to figure out Reyson was a god and which god. She takes her librarian duties seriously and would have made sure he stayed in the library. That fucker has been watching us this entire time. He’s not just making creepy sex tapes in his penthouse.”
That utter plonker. I was creeped out. Most women didn’t secretly record men in the bedroom and use those tapes to exploit them, but that’s exactly how I felt right now. Ripley’s apartment had been my home since she got this job. She brought men back sometimes, and I was okay with that when I was a cat. I had no interest in watching.
Dorian wasn’t just listening to all our plans. He saw plenty of intimate moments between all of us. I liked Reyson. I had a ton of fun introducing him to modern junk food andDoctor Who.Gabriel and Ripley were both helping me reconstruct my lost grimoire when we weren’t figuring out this Dorian mess. I had fun with Balthazar staying up all night giving a running commentary on Dorian’s cocaine party.
Was he watching all that like some creepy pervert?
“So, Dorian Gray is a creeper. Big shocker. Why did he snatch my sister?”
None of us knew. He needed a god, not an insanely powerful librarian.
“We’ll have to treat this like a hostage situation,” Kaine said. “Ripley is pretty high profile in the supernatural community because of her job at the library. She’s also a powerful witch. You don’t snatch someone like that unless you have demands.”
“He can take his demands and shove them up his ass. I’ve beaten the shit out of men in bars for disrespecting my sister. She’s got some pretty powerful boyfriends now. I might not be able to kill him without his painting but give me ten minutes, and he’ll tell me where it is because he wishes for death.”
We all wanted ten minutes alone with Dorian Gray. Reyson would end him for this, and I had a feeling he was going to get creative. We needed to regroup and come up with a better plan. We still had Hell to deal with.
“I have agents digging into every property Dorian owns, but he’s wealthy enough to have a few under shell corporations and not his name. Balthazar, I’m not even remotely saying my agents aren’t capable of finding those, but you have ways of finding them faster. Get on that. We’ll find Ripley.”
“We need to change our game plan when it comes to Hell,” I said. “Dorian needs to die for this. After what he did to Talvath, I don’t think they care how as long as he’s dead, and I think they can appreciate Reyson doing it for hurting his witch. Dorian has the traitor with him. Let’s kill Dorian and give them the traitor.”
“I like this plan. I want to watch,” Ravyn said.
“I’ll dig into his investment properties.”
“None of that is needed,” Reyson said. “I tried to use astral projection to find them, and I can’t.”
“What does that mean?” Killian demanded, wrapping an arm around Ravyn.
“I think they are in Hell. It’s the one place in the cosmos I can’t go because Lilith put it into the spell when she created that realm.”
