The Dark City Chronicles ⁓ Book Three
The apocalypse looms ever closer! Steamy romance, heart-stopping action, seductive vampires, magic that defies nature, sprinkles of dark-humor, and, as always, the everlasting bonds of friendship.
Hannah's strug...
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Milton frowned, deeply disturbed. "Are you claiming the Bureau has spells that can manipulate time?"
"No," Sterling replied, snorting. "But they exist. The Tome of Valeria. Lost during the purge of dark magic tomes in the early 1800s."
"Where?" Milton asked casually, but his brown eyes sparkled with excitement.
"Rome."
"And we're supposed to believe you?" Kane interjected. He glanced at Axel, and the vampire shook his head. Kiernan was coming, just not quickly enough to derail this conversation.
Sterling shrugged. "Believe me, or don't. I don't care. But I'm telling the truth. My superiors sent me to Rome a few years ago. I was supposed to follow the rumour threads to find the tome. I stumbled upon a dark cult of mages in the catacombs, planning to use a thin place to destroy the city."
"What's a thin place?" Presley asked softly.
Seeming to come back to life, Lucas blinked away the distance that had taken his gaze. "It's a place where magic fluctuates beyond what should be possible. The Bureau has been interested in them for a while. Weird shit happens when you stay in one for too long."
Sterling nodded.
"What happened to the mages?" Rowan asked Sterling, searching for her next story.
"I caught them in the middle of invoking their spell. The thin place made their magic more potent." Sterling glanced around the table, suddenly unsure. He sighed, looking down. "I could've killed them all without effort, but..." He knocked his fist against the side of his head. "I started hearing everything because of the thin place, which threw me off. The city. The rats. The birds. The bugs." His gaze rose. "They think stuff, you know, simple things. Some people think less if you believe it."
"Why are you working alone?" Lucas asked, his copper gaze flickering over Sterling's face, reading the agent more profoundly than any of them could.
Sterling glared. "Why do you care?"
"You shouldn't be alone," Lucas replied, "not as a seer."
"My partners kept dying," Sterling revealed casually. "They got sick of losing agents and let me off my leash. It's worked perfectly—until those vampires got the jump on me."
Kane asked, "I thought you said Lucas was your only partner?"
Sterling stared at Kane evenly until the realization of what he wordlessly claimed settled over the table.
Oh. Oh! Oh shit.
Hannah's gaze darted to Lucas. He was rubbing his mouth with a palm, but it didn't hide the horror on his face, shifting to anger when Sterling began laughing.
"He was my only partner to survive." Sterling grinned at their troubled expressions and leaned closer to Lucas. "You may have been the first, but you weren't the last." There was a flicker of emotion in his hazel-green eyes. Was he lying? "You don't get to take that from me, too. Don't look so guilty."
