Holy Smokes
Page 60

“What are we going to do about them?” I whispered to Drake. “Are you going to scramble them, too?”
He shook his head. “We could disable the cameras, but that is not a viable solution.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“One might go off-line temporarily without causing concern,” he answered. “But more than that would provide a clear signal to anyone watching that someone was in the house. We have another option, although I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
He nodded to a couple of discreet small, round disks high on each wall. “Smoke detectors. The smoke bombs I’d planned to use will likely set them off before we wish to alert anyone to our presence.”
“Whoever is watching is going to see the smoke anyway—what’s the big deal if the alarms go off?”
“The alarms will do more than bring local firemen. They will likely also summon more dragons. I’d rather we just have to deal with the ones here than cope with additional forces as well.”
“Yeah, but the dragons here will call for help eventually, won’t they?”
He shook his head. “Not if we take care of them quickly enough.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
The four men gathered to have a confab while I eyed the smoke detectors.
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?” Jim asked, making squinty eyes at me.
“Will it work?” I asked it.
The demon shook its head. “Yeah.”
“Then why the Negative Nelly business?”
“I hate it when you call me Nelly! And I’m shaking my head because I know you, and something is bound to go wrong.”
“Meh. Don’t be such a pessimist. Sweetie? I’ve got an idea…”
Twelve minutes later, the upper hallway was full of dense, black smoke—demon smoke, the stuff generated by the summoning circle. It was nasty and oily and left a pesky residue on walls and furniture, but it had one beneficial quality—it didn’t set off smoke detectors.
“I told you that you’d need me,” I said smugly as I dusted off my hands and admired my handiwork. I’d drawn five summoning circles, each completed just enough to generate the vile black smoke that billowed out of the floor and filled the corridors.
Kostya snorted, but looked rather surprised at how well the smoke covered our presence. We waited until it obscured us enough to slip past the video cameras, and hurried downstairs before someone could hit the panic button.
Drake caught the two blue dragons who were patrolling their way up the stairs by surprise, handily disabling them. Although he didn’t flinch at inflicting violence when he had to, he preferred a bloodless lifestyle. I smiled with approval when Pál whipped out a syringe gun and knocked out the two struggling dragons the other men were holding. Two more men stationed in the lower hall were likewise dealt with, Pál wielding his anesthetic with great aplomb.
“How long will they be out?” I asked Pál as Drake pulled a sleeping dragon to the room where we were storing them.
“Two hours minimum. They’ll wake up with a hell of a headache, too,” he answered, grinning.
It took a while for us to work through the more populated ground floors, but with István manning the electronics, Drake and Kostya taking down the guards as we found them, and Pál knocking them out, we cleared all the rooms but the most promising one.
The door to the basement was warded and bore an electronic lock.
“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked.
Drake rubbed his chin while examining the lock. “Possibly. It’s the same sort of lock I have. They are supposed to be the ultimate in security, although in this case, I have to hope the claim is overly confident.”
Jim and I sat down and waited while the boys discussed the situation, pulling out a number of gadgets to try on the lock.
Nothing seemed to work. I was just indulging in a big yawn when Drake growled an oath as he slammed the last electronic gizmo down.
“What about Aisling?” Kostya asked, nodding at me.
I stopped yawning and tried to look perky and attentive. “Hello!”
“She’s a Guardian—maybe she can break the lock.”
“Hmm.” Drake gave me a speculative look and held out his hand for me.
I toddled over and prodded the keypad of the lock a couple of times. “I’m afraid I don’t know a ward for unlocking things, not that I’m sure such a thing exists.”
“Perhaps there is something else you can do to it,” Drake said, frustration evident in his voice.
I knew how important this was to him, so I didn’t answer that Guardians were never meant to be housebreakers, and instead, gave the lock a quick once-over. It was housed in stainless steel, but the main components of it were plastic.
“Is it fireproof?” I asked, thinking maybe the combined dragon fire from four dragons might melt the sucker.
“Not the insides, but the outer casing is. We couldn’t do enough damage to it to get to the sensitive parts.”
“Hmm.” I reached out to poke at it again, but the dry, cold environment caused me to get a static shock when I touched the metal housing. I jumped back, laughing.
“You’ve thought of something?” Drake asked.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a computer at the heart of the lock, right?”
He nodded.
“And what do computers hate?”
The four men just looked at me.
I smiled. “Watch this.”
The little door in my mind swung open as I closed my eyes for a moment and used my enhanced vision to see all the possibilities. Static electricity was thick in the room—I simply gathered it together between my hands, shaping it as I would dragon fire.
“Uh…Ash?”
“Shh. I’m concentrating.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Someone want to put that out before the alarm goes off?”
“Huh?” I opened my eyes and swung around, a glowing blue ball of electricity hovering between my hands. Behind me, the kitchen table that sat in the middle of the room was on fire. “I didn’t do that! I can’t use Drake’s fire anymore, remember? It must be Kostya. He has horrible control over his fire.”
“I do not! I am very controlled!” Kostya fumed as Pál and István used dish towels to slap out the fire.