Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
The decision was made.
Walter began to countdown in her ear. “Fifteen seconds.”
She turned and fled.
“Ten seconds.”
She reached the door.
“Five seconds.”
Kierse pushed it open.
“Four. Three.”
She twisted the lock from inside.
“Two.”
The door closed behind her, and the hum of the security system came back online inside the room.
“One.”
“It’s done.”
Kierse rushed down the hallway and burst into the bathroom, expecting to find Lyra. Except there was no Lyra, only the two guards groaning faintly as they started to come to. She should have come back in here when the countdown began to prep for her next part.
“Lyra?”
“She’s holding up more guards who came to investigate when the others stopped communicating,” Walter said over comms.
“Fuck.”
“Laz is almost in position.”
Kierse fled the bathroom with the box in hand, pushing through an employee door that led to an empty hallway. She could see a back entrance to the kitchens and a bellhop walking toward her, holding a designer hat box.
“Laz,” she said with a sigh.
He opened the designer box, and Kierse set the cauldron inside. They covered it with fancy fabric, dropped the lid back on top, and Laz nodded.
“Luggage secured.”
Kierse nodded. “See you on the other side.”
“I’m on my way now,” Graves said.
They’d gotten away with it. She’d stolen the cauldron right out from underneath the Curator’s nose. Laz would take the box to a full luggage cart and carry it out to Graves’s awaiting limo, where George would play getaway car. She and Lyra would exit through the back door with the rest of the performers. Already the rest of the crew were reporting in that they’d gotten out of the building.
Kierse took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway.
“Kierse,” a voice said behind her.
She turned in surprise. For a second, she didn’t recognize the man. Then it hit her—this was the person who had known her name at Sansara. The one she couldn’t find in her memories.
“Sorry, I’m not…”
A cloth was put over her nose and mouth from behind. She struggled for a minute before her head went fuzzy, her limbs limp. She stared up into the eyes of one of her attackers, wondering how she knew him and once again coming up blank.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The Curator has been waiting for you.”
Interlude
Laz was more spy than thief.
Infiltrating the Plaza was probably beneath him, but it had brought back joy in the assignment. While he didn’t mind friendly car chases through the city streets, he preferred taking on a new identity and not getting caught. He and Kierse had that in common.
He dropped the designer hat box on top of more designer luggage. He’d already prepped the luggage cart in advance with a pile of expensive luggage, waiting for him to complete the last part of the job.
“All set,” he said to one of his colleagues.
The guy clapped him on the back. “Rich fucks, huh, Andrew?”
Andrew was the name that he’d gotten the job under. It had been relatively easy to become him.
“Tell me about it. Smoke break later?”
“I’m off the fucking clock.”
Laz nodded at him. He’d known that. Which was why he’d asked.
“Next time, then,” Laz told him.
He took the luggage cart and headed toward the Plaza entrance. Ten years of searching. Ten years of undercover work. Ten years, and today it would be all over.
He’d met Graves on a mission in Bucharest. In Romania, the story of Vlad the Impaler and, more specifically, how he inspired the character Dracula some couple hundred years later, was inescapable. While he might have birthed the most famous story about vampires, Laz hadn’t believed a single word of the propaganda that the Ottomans and his other enemies had written about him. Vampires were real, but Vlad certainly hadn’t been one.
Or at least that was what the CIA had drilled into their heads. And Laz had believed them, up until he shipped out on that assignment.
They’d sent him to spy on a potential uprising in the northern reaches of Romania. The details were sketchy, but an underground group was taking up in Vlad’s name and causing distress across the Romanian borders. The last thing they’d needed was problems with Ukraine. It was an election year, after all.
Bucharest had been a bust, except for a rumor Laz had sniffed out claiming the group had some mysterious artifact. They’d called it magic. Laz would believe it when he saw it.
Monsters might exist; magic certainly didn’t.
So he’d followed the trail of whispers. It had taken him into the region of Transylvania, back to Vlad’s original hometown of Sighisoara, a medieval walled citadel. He’d scaled the small wall. He’d entered the compound. He’d found the sacred ceremony. And he hadn’t been the only one.
Even disguised in one of the cult’s ritual costumes, Graves had looked out of place. The group had been too stupid to see the fox in the hen house. Laz hadn’t been stupid.