Free Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance Page A

a smackdown if he felt like it. But it looked like he wanted the info more than he wanted to bitch about security.
    “Now,” Radu said complacently, “you’ve been working with us on a task force to destroy a network of illegal portals—”
    “I know that. I lost a day, not a month, ’Du.”
    “Hush.” He leaned over to swat my knee. And thenproceeded to tell me a lot of other things I already knew, because the Great Portal Hunt, as I had started to think of it, was the biggest thing in otherworldly vice at the moment.
    All sorts of dangerous crap from Faerie was being smuggled through portals that weren’t supposed to exist. Only they did, and a bunch of fat cats had been getting noticeably fatter as a result. The fattest of them all had been a douche named Geminus, who had used his portals to smuggle in Dark Fey for a series of underground fights that had gotten him a lot of money and them a lot of dead. This had continued until he recently met his own maker, and not in the vampire sense of the word. Who was probably as skeeved out as the rest of us who had known him.
    But as bad as Geminus had been, things weren’t any better with him dead. In fact, the reverse was true, as would-be successors popped out of the woodwork to divvy up the very large pie he had left. Lately, the infighting had been getting pretty vicious, as every crook with delusions of grandeur struggled to become the new king of the hill.
    There was just one problem, namely that Geminus hadn’t been the trusting type, and had failed to share the location of his portals with the riffraff. And it wasn’t like they could just go out and replace them. Even the few smugglers with money and connections enough to manage it had to contend with the fact that every time a new portal was brought into existence, it lit up the metaphysical skyline like a searchlight. Which tends to be bad for businesses that run on secrecy.
    So, the criminal element was trying to find Geminus’s portals in order to beat each other out in the smuggling game. The Black Circle, a group of dark mages, was trying to find them to bring in more weapons for the war they were waging on the Vampire Senate. And the Senate was trying to find them to shut them down before either of the other groups got lucky. But the only person who actually knew where they were was Geminus’slieutenant, who had been smart enough to guess how much fun life would be with everybody breathing down his neck.
    “Varus,” I said, interrupting Radu as my memory coughed up a name.
    “Yes, well, I was getting there,” ’Du said.
    “What about him?” Mircea asked softly.
    “He agreed to give the Senate the location of the portal system in return for immunity,” I said, trying to focus on slippery-soft memories that slid out of reach every time I grabbed for one.
    “But that did not occur.”
    “No. Because he was kidnapped last night.”
    “Yes!” Radu looked smugly at Marlowe. “Yes, he was. And naturally, as soon as we found out, we put together a task force to go after him. But our enemies had expected that and laid a trail full of red herrings in all directions, requiring us to field numerous teams. Like the one you were on.”
    “I was on a team?” I asked, because I usually work alone. And because I didn’t recall that at all.
    Radu nodded. “You know how it is these days. No one is allowed to go anywhere alone, particularly not for something like this. And Lawrence was assigned to you.”
    “Then why not ask him what happened?” I asked, afraid that I already knew the answer.
    “Because he’s dead,” Marlowe said savagely. “They’re all dead. Eleven fucking senior masters were sent out and exactly none came back. We found them hacked to pieces, those we got to before the sun took care of them. Butchered—every single one.” Brown eyes bored into mine. “Everyone except you.”

Chapter Six
     
    I just sat there, stunned, while Claire lit into the chief spy. “What are you