The blood was collected on a thin slide that had a USB port and fit into his laptop. August rustled around in another of his bags and withdrew a box of small, half-dollar size disks.

“Quartz, you think?” August asked Deven. “Or jade?”

“What?”

“What stone works better for Aztaw magic?”

Deven shrugged. “Jade is everywhere in Aztaw and used in nearly every spell. Obsidian is predominantly for weapons, although it does have reflective properties.”

August selected a several small green disks and fed them one by one into his hard drive, burning the spell onto them. Deven found the entire process fascinating. They truly had distilled the ethereal qualities of magic into a universal form.

“Nice gizmos,” August mused.

“Housekeeping!” A loud knock at the door startled all three of them. Deven tensed, holding his knife.

“We’re busy!” Klakow shouted back. “Come back later!”

“¿Qué?”

“Volver mas tarde,” August called out. All three of them froze, as if waiting for the door to break down.

After a moment of silence, the woman said, “Sí, señor,” and they heard a cart squeak as it rolled away.

Deven felt the tension drain from him. “This is the busiest hotel room I’ve ever been in.”

August still looked panicked, even after the woman had left. “Let’s get these on.” He fumbled through his belongings once more.

“What are they?” Deven asked.

“Spell projectors. They work with special glasses, adding visual spectrums to what your eyes naturally see.” August held a small plastic device, no bigger than a credit card, and slipped one of the green jade disks into a thin slit at the top.

“Put it in your pocket, then put these on,” August ordered, handing Deven the device and a pair of sunglasses.

“Why do you carry two projectors?” Klakow asked, shaking his head. He had his own device in his hands and snapped another of the jade disks inside, clipping it to the side of his sunglasses.

“This one’s Carlos’,s” August said softly, holding a pair of sunglasses in his hands. “He’d left it in my car.” August shook his head. “He always left behind the most important equipment.”

“Well, he was on vacation,” Klakow countered, but there was no bite to the comment.

Deven put on the shades and looked around the room. Nothing noticeably changed at first, although his eye muscles strained as they adjusted. He caught the faint whiff of ozone.

As he turned his head he saw something trailing out the closed window like a maroon streamer. As the image solidified, he saw it was a thicker than ribbon, circular, and it pulsed. It went straight through the closed window and into the room. Liquid surged through it.

Deven moved closer but didn’t touch it. The texture looked rubbery. He realized he was looking at a blood vessel, which stretched out down the road as far as he could see.

His eyes followed the artery to August’s chest and understood that it was connected to the agent about the same time August did. But August’s reaction was quite different.

A look of revulsion crossed August’s face and he gripped the artery in both hands and pulled.

“Get this off of me!” His hands grappled with the floating artery, yanking. His face went deathly white as he did so, but he didn’t stop pulling. “Pull it out!”

August’s panicked breaths were shallow as he twisted the blood vessel stretching from his heart.

“Stop—don’t tug on it!” Deven gripped August’s hands, pinning them down to the carpet. “Just relax. Breathe!”

August’s head fell back against the foot of the bed. A sheen of sweat covered his features. “Oh God.” He look down at his chest again and shuddered. “I’m fucking attached to him, aren’t I?” His arms tensed, but Deven kept hold of his wrists.

“We’ll figure this out,” Deven told him.

“God,” August said again. He licked his lips and swallowed, clearly trying to bring moisture to his dry throat. “This is what happened to Carlos and Bea.” His voice was cracked. “They were feeding their blood to Night Axe. They were fucking sacrifices.”

Klakow had ripped off his glasses and dialed someone on his phone. Deven wanted to examine August’s chest and assure himself he wasn’t bleeding out, but he was afraid of letting go of August’s wrists. “If I look at your chest, will you stop trying to pull yourself free?”

August breathed through clenched teeth but didn’t answer.

“You can’t rip loose. You could bleed to death,” Deven said, sounding far more calm than he actually was. “Night Axe’s house power made this connection, so it can also disconnect it. We’ll figure out how.”

“Disconnect it?”

“House powers change the world around us but can also reverse those changes,” Deven said. He wasn’t exactly lying—he was, however, simplifying, since it would have to be Night Axe himself who would reverse his own spells. Deven didn’t think that level of detail would be welcome at this moment. “Until we figure this out, you need to not hurt yourself. All right?”

After a moment, August nodded. Deven slowly let go of August’s wrists. August didn’t try and grab the artery again.

“I promise we’ll cut you loose,” Deven said, although he had no idea how he would keep that promise.

Fury rushed through Deven at the thought of Night Axe doing this. It should have been him laying there, bleeding into Night Axe’s body. He had been Night Axe’s target. August had saved Deven and this was what he got in return.

“We’ll cut you loose,” Deven repeated. He unbuttoned August’s shirt.

With the spell projector glasses on, Deven saw how the circular bruise was the location where the artery connected August’s body to Night Axe. The rhythmic pulse of August’s blood flowed through the semi-transparent surface of the blood vessel, but none leaked, and the flow seemed small enough not to kill August outright.

August grimaced.

“Like it or not, this does give us an advantage,” Klakow said. “Now that you are linked to him, we can find him.”

August didn’t respond. Deven carefully buttoned August’s shirt for him.

“We need to find out more about Night Axe’s arrival,” Deven told Klakow. “We must know how long he’s been here, how much time he’s had to develop his network of sacrifices.”

“Network of sacrifices?”

“Night Axe apparently has replaced killing human victims on sacrificial altars with bleeding them slowly, consuming their blood through a network of these.” Deven motioned to the throbbing artery, pumping August’s blood out the window and down the street beyond. “But this requires great effort—it must take half the power he harvests to fuel the spell alone. At some point he’d have to have first fueled his mutation with murder. If we can trace how long ago he came here, we can start to estimate how connected he is through the city and understand how hard it’ll be to kill him.”

Klakow scowled. “Deven, NIAD doesn’t condone the killing of individuals, even if they’re from fucked-up realms. We police movement and goods but we don’t execute—”

“Shut up, Klakow,” August said. “You can lecture Deven on the rules later.”

Klakow looked ready to argue, but then his expression softened and he knelt beside them, pocketing his phone. “They’re waiting for you at the clinic. I’ll take you there, then go back to the office and see what I can find out about Night Axe’s recent history.”

August nodded. When Deven handed him back his sunglasses, August gripped them tightly but didn’t put them back on.

Deven and Klakow both helped him stand, although after a few steps he shoved them both off and walked on his own. “I’m not a fucking invalid,” August complained.

Deven considered disagreeing but kept his mouth shut as they made their way to the elevators. August’s complexion was deathly white and the surges of blood that drained out of the artery were clearly taking their toll. Even though he walked on his own, August leaned against Deven for support and didn’t stray far once they reached the lobby.