Read Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 for Free Online Page B

that destroys the usurper, all will bow before you.”
    “Now stop that, Kaitlyn,” Jerome began, but I lifted a hand even as Max reached out to me, his reassuring touch on my other hand holding me fast, grounding me.
    “It’s okay,” I said and crouched down to meet the first little girl’s eyes. “What usurper, sweetheart? What are you talking about?”
    But the child simply stared at me, unblinking. I tried a different approach. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I murmured, until she blinked again, rapidly. “Have you seen—specifically—what it is that I must do?”
    “Yes.” And now the child did nod, with the solemnity only a little girl could muster. “You must take up your sword.”

Chapter Four
    It was another hour before Father Jerome, Max, and I left the château, only to repeat a similar scene at another house a few hours away. There the children were not the highest-skilled Connecteds—at least not anymore. But they were more traumatized to be sure. These were the children who had not escaped the demands of the dark practitioners unscathed. Some were missing limbs or were recovering from facial reconstruction surgery. Some were orphaned, their parents considered more important than the children for a particular ritual.
    And some had been enslaved by Gamon.
    “We followed your instructions,” Jerome said as we walked down one hallway and peered through plateglass windows into hospital suites. “Even the local tattoo artists that we called in as reinforcements knew what was required once we gave them the name of Blue.” He glanced at me. “That name opens a lot of doors.”
    “It should,” I said. The incarnation of Death currently sitting on the Arcana Council was a shock blonde with a tattoo gun and a flare for painting hot rods. Known as Blue in the world of auto airbrushing, she ran a tattoo parlor in Vegas and had an international clientele of trainees. Trainees who apparently made house calls under the right circumstances. “She performed a similar job last week for maybe a hundred victims of Gamon. They can’t be tracked now—and these kids you have here, hopefully they weren’t tracked before you had their ink worked on.”
    “If they were, we’re ready,” Jerome said. “This house is not unknown. Our children have never been harmed once we’ve brought them in. Their value to the dark practitioners has already dropped by the time they reach us.”
    “Because they’re tainted with awareness.” I hesitated even as I said the word, a new idea occurring to me. “You know, maybe we should round up all the Connected children, both the ones who’ve been harmed and those that haven’t yet, and let them mingle, so they know the evil waiting for them in the outside world. Once they know that, their magic might be altered enough to make them less appealing to the dark practitioners.”
    “Perhaps,” Father Jerome agreed. “Though it would rob them of their childhood.”
    I grimaced. “Better that than their lives.”
    “As you say.”
    He directed us to an oak-paneled library that had been made over as a conference room, with a long central table and deep-cushioned chairs. Unlike the Arcana Council’s meeting rooms, no electronics bristled from the corners of this chamber. Instead, a large map of Europe hung prominently along one wall, marked with pins in clusters. The white pins were the birthplaces of the Connected children; the black ones were known locations of dark practitioners. But another color had sprouted like wildflowers across the map.
    I moved forward with a frown. “What’s with the purple?”
    “The highest skilled of the children are denoted by that color,” Father Jerome said, and I could feel his gaze on me. “We thought we could identify hotspots of particular concern once we had enough markers.” He chuckled wryly. “We didn’t realize we would soon have far more data than beds. But you see the pattern.” He waved at the map.
    “Ley lines.” I