She shifted position again, slowly. When he didn’t tell her to stop, she moved inch by inch until she was sitting against the wall. “I can’t tell if you’re flirting or trying to kidnap me,” she remarked, noting that he had sidestepped her question in favor of sharing his observations about her.
“I don’t do captures,” Ben answered.
“Did you plant the computer virus?” He seemed to have stopped immediately threatening her, but he hadn’t put down the knife.
“Duh,” he answered. “All I needed to do was intercept the call to tech support and I had an excuse to come look you up. Most of us figured you were rotting in a ditch somewhere, you see, but then you showed up on CNN. Are you by any chance here stalking an Onyx creep with lousy aim? Because if so, I want in.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t stalking anyone until they attacked me. Was the number against me up before the shooting?” She had been so distracted by Christian that she had never taken a good look at the job board at the Onyx guild hall. Had her name been on it?
Ben shook his head. “It just flashed a half hour ago, listing SE Haven Number Four as your location. Hidden client, private posting to all three guilds.”
“If it only happened a half hour ago, then how did you hear about it?” He hadn’t been to any of the guild halls where he might have picked up a message; she was sure of that.
“There’s an app for that,” Ben answered, once again completely straight-faced. “The question is, when will Christian hear about it, and do you think he’ll call?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being honest or just screwing with her. It didn’t really matter, as long as he wasn’t trying to kill or kidnap her. “Fine. Thanks for the heads-up, but I want you gone. Now, or I’m going to have to try to make you gone.”
He grinned. “You’d lose.”
Alysia shrugged. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
She jumped when he leaned in to her, just long enough to kiss her cheek. “That’s what I love about you, babe,” he said as he pushed to his feet, all evidence of a limp gone. “You have the wackiest principles I know. And yeah, I’m out of here.” He quickly packed the laptop back into its case. “I suggest you get out, too.”
He had closed the door behind him before Alysia was able to push herself to her feet. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and insanely, it felt good. She was unarmed, SingleEarth still had some kind of Onyx stalker on the loose, and now someone was offering a very large amount of money to anyone willing to try to abduct her.
She hadn’t felt so alive in two years.
CHAPTER 10
IT WAS HER fifth birthday, and her father had brought her out to a fancy party. She wore a pretty dress and a shiny necklace, and her hair had been put up special with a glittering gold clip shaped like a butterfly.
There were metal detectors and guards at the door. Her father’s cuff links set off the detectors, and the guards made him remove his tuxedo jacket so they could search him thoroughly. Her butterfly made the machines beep, too, but they let her pass.
The party was beautiful, full of dancing people who oohed and aahed over her. Isn’t she lovely? So poised. So sweet. None of them knew there was a dagger hidden in her hair, under the pretty butterfly her father had known would set off the metal detectors.
Her father asked for the knife about half an hour after they arrived. They left shortly after, amid the screaming. He bought her a cupcake at a restaurant on the way home, wished her happy birthday, and thanked her for being a good girl and making him proud.
There was blood on her fancy big-girl shoes. She kicked them off under the table and walked barefoot back to the car. Her father didn’t notice. He never noticed things like that.
Sarik woke with a start, disoriented and sore. The move sent a long-cold coffee sloshing over its rim onto the desk.
She had intended to close her eyes for just a moment. Just a second. She had been on edge for days, her sleep mocked by memories surfacing as nightmares.
It wasn’t even eleven in the morning, and Jason was still sleeping in the next room. The worst part was, she had been happy that day, deliriously pleased, because her father had made time to celebrate her birthday and because she had made him proud. She hadn’t understood that she had been there only because she was useful.
As she grew up, it all became harder. Every moment became a power struggle, an impossible balance, as her father groomed her to be his heir, always demanding perfect obedience. Warning her that she needed to be strong and then beating her so badly she couldn’t walk if she dared try to turn that strength against him.
She jumped when hands descended on her shoulders.
“Sorry,” Jason said. “I said your name, but you were a million miles away.”
“Sorry,” she echoed, pulling away as she stood up.
I can’t do this anymore. If she had to keep running, hiding, doing anything in her power to try to stifle the fear, it was going to destroy her.
“Sarik,” Jason said softly, “I know we’ve had this conversation before, so I won’t push it, but … well, one of the counselors came to me after the attack, to see if I wanted to schedule a time to talk. I think it could be a good idea for you, too.”
“I wasn’t hurt,” she replied. Jason could have been killed, really killed.
“Not physically, but—” He broke off, as if he was going to drop it, then decided to forge ahead. “The last time I felt that kind of pain or had blood on my skin was in Maya’s cell the day I met you.”
The day I met you. He didn’t understand how those words sounded in her ears, not like the empathy he intended but like accusation.
“I’m sure this attack has dredged up just as many traumatic memories for you as it has for me. There’s no shame in needing some help to—”
“No,” she interrupted. “If you want to talk to someone, I’ll love you and support you and hope they can help. But it’s not for me.”
He looked like he wanted to argue once more but said only, “I need to feed, and then I’m going to call Diana. Maya is powerful, but she is still only one mercenary. She wouldn’t dare challenge SingleEarth openly.” He looked away as he added, “But she might send someone to harass us anonymously, if she thought it could scare me away from here and back to her. I’m going to tell Diana everything and let her decide what to do next.”
The words seemed to place a clamp around Sarik’s throat. She wanted to say You don’t need to do that, but she couldn’t.
Jason kissed her cheek. “I love you, Sarik.”
“I love you,” she whispered, but only after he was out the door.
Alysia. It wasn’t too late. Sarik could still make this right. She just needed to talk to the table’s newest mediator and explain everything. Everything, down to the moment when she had peeked inside the trunk in the human’s room, found enough weapons to arm a half-dozen killers, and been sure down to her toes that Alysia was here to finish what Maya’s brood had failed to do six years earlier.
Jason didn’t understand, because Sarik had never told him who Cori was.
For a long time, Sarik had been too afraid to admit anything to Jason. He had been a mercenary, after all; she didn’t want him to realize she could be valuable to anyone. He hadn’t made the connection between the dead girl and Sarik because he had no reason to assume there could be any relationship between a runaway tiger of pure royal blood and a human child.
By the time she trusted him enough to tell him, she was already someone else, and Sarik kuloka Mari had slammed the door on her painful past.
So now, only she had the information necessary to know that the recent bloodshed wasn’t about Jason. It was about Bruja, about Alysia.
Alysia, who had stepped forward to help when the attack happened. Who had been alone with Sarik for hours when they went to Onyx but hadn’t made a single move to threaten her. Who just maybe wasn’t the villian Sarik had thought she was but instead was hiding from the same demons Sarik
was trying to dodge.
Sarik couldn’t talk to a counselor. Couldn’t explain to Diana without putting all of SingleEarth in danger. Couldn’t even really explain to Jason. But if she had the courage, she could tell Alysia, and they could work out what needed to happen next.
Her mind was full of white noise as she crossed the hall in search of the human mediator. As she knocked, though, the door swung open.
The trunk was open, and most of its contents had been dumped onto the bed. The weapons were gone, as was Alysia’s laptop. Sarik couldn’t tell if anything else was missing, except for Alysia herself. The question was, had she left willingly or been taken?
Sarik hurried to the parking lot to see if Alysia’s car was there, and found her in the process of opening the driver’s-side door. She was carrying a backpack, as well as a black case slung over the same shoulder. And someone stood between them, watching his prey.
Alysia was being stalked.
The vampire glanced to the side in response to a door closing at one of the nearby buildings, and Sarik caught a glimpse of the red teardrop decorating his left earlobe.
She recognized the symbol. Jason had an identical piece of jewelry still tucked at the back of his drawer, wrapped in a scrap of fabric. He had worn it for almost a year after he had left Maya, as if it were a symbol of that bit of her he couldn’t quite rip from himself.
Sarik could have called a warning, but Alysia did not have a weapon in her hand.
Bracing herself mentally, she let her vision narrow to a point at the back of the vampire’s spine. She leaned forward, putting her hands on the hood of the nearest car. As she boosted herself up, she shifted shape, so it was a tiger’s paw that landed on the back bumper and a full-grown tiger who bounded over the car and then stretched in an arc, leaping with a roar. By the time the vampire turned, she was already on top of him.
Alysia turned at the sound of the tiger’s weight driving the vampire to the ground, her eyes going wide as the tiger roared and, with one quick shake, broke the vampire’s neck.
Sarik stumbled back, spitting out the too-familiar taste of blood in her mouth, fighting nausea and overwhelming sense-memory. She reverted to human form, seeking a human’s dulled senses.
“Thanks,” Alysia said, sounding dazed. She knelt by the vampire’s side and reached out to tilt his head so she could get a better look at the earring. “He’s a mercenary,” she said, probably assuming Sarik wouldn’t already know that. She drew a slender knife from a makeshift holster at her waist. “I don’t know exactly who’s after me, but it’s me they’re after,” she said. “So I’m leaving. I’m not pitting SingleEarth against the Bruja guilds, not over me. SingleEarth isn’t weak, but Bruja—”
“Don’t,” Sarik protested as she realized Alysia intended to drive the knife into the vampire’s heart. “He …” She trailed off.
The human hesitated and said, “His spine will heal in less than a minute. He was sent to kidnap me, but he’ll want to kill you for hurting him. You do not want him getting back up.”
Sarik didn’t want him getting back up, but she also didn’t want him dead. A few years earlier, it might have been Jason lying there. The ones who had seen Sarik, who might recognize her, were all dead. But Alysia was right—he wasn’t going to get up and just forgive her for breaking his neck.
Alysia moved to drive the knife down, not waiting for any more objections from Sarik, but the hesitation was costly. The vampire jerked his arm, the movement not smooth but sufficient to divert the blade from his heart so it only grazed his opposite shoulder. Even so, he hissed in pain, and Sarik caught the acrid smell of firestone touching vampiric blood.
The vampire threw Alysia to the side and snatched the blade Alysia had tried to end him with.
Move. Help them.
She didn’t know how to help Alysia without getting in the way.
A black and golden blur shot past her. It was smaller than her own tiger form, immature, but fearless as it leapt into the fray, first on paws and then coalescing into the form of a young boy who was small and lithe enough to put himself between the two combatants, carrying his own knife.
“Jeht!” Sarik shrieked, running forward. He must have heard her roar, an instinctive sound of fury that could be heard for miles around.
The fight was over in another instant as the triumphant nine-year-old let out a hoot and turned to Sarik with blood on his hands and a dagger in his fist.
Alysia scrambled back from the vampire’s corpse and the exultant child. “You all right, kid?” Alysia asked as she snatched the firestone knife off the ground.
Jeht didn’t answer her but hurried back to Sarik’s side, looking proud. He had defended his territory, killed an intruder. He hadn’t hesitated like Sarik had.
“You hurt him,” Jeht said. “He would have wanted to kill you. You can’t let people live who want to kill you.”
That’s why you’re here, Sarik wanted to say. Because your tribe had the same twisted principles that my father’s has, and the new leader knew you would try to kill him for killing your father.
She said, “Jeht, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Are more coming?” he asked.
Sarik looked up at Alysia, who was leaning against the side of her car, staring at Jeht as if he had grown a second head. She said, “Tell me you’ll get that kid some therapy.” She opened her car door. “And thank him for helping me out. And let Lynzi know I didn’t mean to bring this down on you all. Really, I didn’t. I won’t be back before I sort it out.”
She tossed her backpack and the weapons case onto the passenger seat and closed the door without another word. As Sarik watched Alysia drive away, she said to Jeht, “Give me the knife.”
He handed her the weapon, which looked like it had been made with sharpened flatware from the cafeteria. As she took it, she realized there was blood on her hands as well.
“Let’s go clean up,” she said.
It’s over. Not the way she wanted it to be over, but what else could she do?
CHAPTER 11
CHRISTIAN WAS STILL sleeping when he heard a knock on his hotel room door. He opened his eyes, shut them against the glare of midday sun streaming in his window, and then forced them open once more as he stood up and crossed to the door.
Before he reached it or leaned down to look through the peephole, Alysia said, “It’s me. Can I come in?”
He couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t told her where he was staying, or even the name he had used to register at this hotel, but he had used a name she would recognize from past exploits. It had probably taken Alysia ten minutes, at most, to hack into and scan through local hotel registries in order to track him down.
Christian remembered the day that Alysia had tried to explain to him why she had worked so hard to digitalize Frost, and why the Bruja guilds needed to move “out of the Stone Age and into the Silicon Age.” Piracy isn’t done with a ship and a sword anymore, she had told him, pacing back and forth, frustrated by his lack of interest. A Crimson or Onyx member might take a contract to kill some wealthy businessman, probably because his heirs want to inherit his money, but it ends there. In the digital world, it’s possible to assassinate a man’s character, steal his identity, turn his world upside down without ever spilling a drop of blood. Bruja was big and powerful two centuries ago, but these days, they’re earning penny candy to engage in little local scuffles. They’re going to fade into obscurity if they don’t realize the world has upgraded from a blade to binary.
Christian didn’t understand half the words Alysia used when she went on one of her tech rants—Onyx had never been big on computer work, so he knew little about them—but her passion on the subject never failed to make him grin, especially when it made the leaders of Crimson, Onyx, and the Bruja guilds gnash their teeth because they knew she was right but refused to admit it.
His smile disappeared when he opened the door and saw the blood on her face. She glanced over her shoulder as h
e pulled her inside, and that was enough warning for him to shut, lock, and bolt the door behind her.
“Someone following you?” he asked, his eyes lingering on a cut down her cheek. It was too neat to be the result of someone’s fist splitting the skin; that wound had been made by a blade.
“Could be,” she answered. “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” She flinched as he reached toward the wound, which had started to scab in places but was still seeping blood in others. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Not too bad,” she said. “If you have bandages—”
“I have better,” he replied, gently brushing his fingertips over the edges of the wound. The lingering aura of firestone told him why the injury wasn’t worse: firestone drained vampiric power and wasn’t too good for shapeshifters, but it was less dangerous for humans than pure steel would be. The witch power embedded in the stone had helped her body staunch the bleeding.
Alysia stayed tensed, but she didn’t pull away again as he focused his power on the way her flesh had been cut and gently nudged it back into its proper form. If it hadn’t been on her face, he might have stopped as soon as the wound was closed, but he didn’t want to leave a scar, so he put a little extra power into erasing all evidence of the blade.
Alysia wasn’t vain, but scars drew attention. They looked suspicious.
Plus, he didn’t want to leave a mark on her face. But he knew she would accept the first explanation more than the second one. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Some bruised ribs,” she answered, “but that’s all. It could have been a lot worse. There’s a number up for my capture, apparently.”
“Since when?” he asked. He had checked all three guild boards before meeting Alysia that morning, to confirm that there wasn’t anything up about an attack on SingleEarth. He would have noticed a posting calling for Alysia’s abduction.
“Since about an hour ago, according to Ben,” she said. “It even included my location. Someone probably called him because he was already there.”