There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) by Sharon Hannaford Page A

and
around it, absorbing the very essence of the memory and the
emotions it elicited in Gabi.
    She wasn’t sure
how many minutes or hours had passed when a loud growl of
frustration broke her from the meditative state. She straightened
in the chair, instantly alert, scanning the room. Nothing had
changed, but Trinity sagged in the chair opposite her, her face in
her hands.
    “ I’m truly sorry, Gabrielle,” she said, rubbing both hands
across her face. Gabi could see a fine mist of sweat beading on the
Magus’s forehead. “There’s some kind of block or ward around the
ring. I think it’s a magical ward and is probably cast over your
mother, not the ring itself. I cannot pierce through.”
    “ What?” Julius was unusually curt as he swung open the door.
“Can you sense anything, any kind of direction or distance at
all?”
    Trinity shrank
back a little in the chair but answered him. “It’s like being in a
dark forest utterly devoid of light, and all I can hear is the
quiet ringing of a bell. I know it’s there, but I have nothing to
reference it against because I don’t know where I am in relation to
it. I am sorry, I really am.” The weight of her words landed like
bricks in Gabi’s stomach, squelching the hope that had bloomed
again despite her best efforts to the contrary. Where was her
mother, and how in Hell’s name were they going to find
her?
     

CHAPTER
5
     
    Only one thing
was sure in Gabi’s mind. When they found whoever had kidnapped her
mother, there would be hell to pay. She and Julius would come down
so hard on the perpetrators that no one would ever dare to try
something like this again.
    The trip back
to the Estate had been a silent one; Gabi’s anger, fear and
self-recrimination suffused the interior of the car. In the past
year she’d had to rescue Kyle from a crazy human trying to breed
himself a Werewolf army, and then her friend Adriana from a group
of human Vampire Hunters, but this was the final straw.
    “ We need to warn Byron, get him up to speed,” she growled as
they exited the elevator from the basement garage into the main
foyer of the mansion, “and double up the watch on him.”
    “ I’m on it,” Alexander said from just behind her. She was
relieved that he’d volunteered; she wasn’t sure she’d hold it
together if she spoke to Byron right now.
    “ Has there been anything?” She tried to keep the note of
pleading out of her voice when they met Fergus in the corridor, a
phone in his hand. Razor trotted down the sweeping staircase to
their right and purred a worried welcome as he wove between Gabi’s
legs.
    “ Nae,” he rumbled. “Noothin’ frae anyone outside ay th’ Clan. I
was just on th’ phone tae Mac. He’s on his way back; he’ll be here
within th’ hoor.”
    Gabi nodded.
Mac was her right-hand man, an ex-private investigator and someone
she’d called a friend even before he’d been Turned Vampire to save
his life. He was an integral part of the Dhampir Squad, a
bloodhound when it came to following clues, and could teach a
master class on predicting both human and Vampire behaviour
patterns. He’d developed a ‘friends-with-benefits’ relationship
with one of Julius’s close friends, a Vampire loner named Savannah.
She lived only a short distance from the City and spent her nights
inventing things that improved the lives of Vampires, including the
specialised coating that protected Gabi’s cars and infused items of
clothing that enabled Julius to spend brief amounts of time out in
the sun and made combat clothing resistant to the corrosive effects
of demon blood. She’d even made armour for Razor. Between her and
Mac, they’d produced several weapons that were highly effective in
containing or killing both supernaturals and demons. Whenever SID
made it back to the City after an assignment, Mac travelled
directly to Savannah’s place for some downtime or, as Gabi
suspected, some further collaboration on their respective
inventions.
    “