“Ben the computer guy?” Christian asked. He had looked the geek in the eye and hadn’t seen or sensed a thing. Of course, he hadn’t spent a lot of time at Crimson since Alysia left—he had watched their Challenge because he wanted to know who Adam’s successor would be, but he hadn’t even competed—so it was possible Ben was a recent member of that guild. “He did this to you?”
“No, he’s the one who gave me the heads-up. He doesn’t do live captures,” she answered. The explanation wasn’t hard to believe; a lot of the mercenaries in Bruja would happily kill someone but had no interest in the inconvenience of a living prisoner. Especially in Crimson, it was rare to find someone interested in accepting a job for a capture.
Still, there were enough people who would go for a well-paying capture that it would be a good idea to move on as soon as possible. Christian had specifically chosen his current location so that Alysia could find him. If she could, so could others.
He reached forward again, intending to check on her ribs, but Alysia flinched again.
“One of Maya’s grunts gave me the new decorations,” she said, not meeting his gaze. “Unless she’s changed her ways and is giving her boys free will these days, that means more of them will show up soon. I have my rank-weapons, but no good way to carry most of them. Plus, I’m out of shape. I’ve had two people get the drop on me in less than an hour, and I think I got rescued by a nine-year-old.”
Normally Christian would have laughed and asked for the rest of that story, but Alysia’s jovial tone was too forced.
He hadn’t been a Triste the last time they had hunted together, so it was possible that the chaotic splash of emotions in her aura was normal for her when she was amped up for a fight, but he doubted it. One thing he knew for sure was that there were streaks of pain in there as well, pulsing in time with her breathing.
“Do you want me to check the ribs?” he asked.
Alysia paused, regarding him warily as she asked, “How much power do you burn with that kind of healing?”
“Not enough to compromise my ability to fight if we get in trouble,” he answered.
She didn’t answer immediately, and in the silence, the truth hit him. Alysia had left before he started training. The kind of ground rules they had set in the old days didn’t address situations in which one of them was potentially prey for the other.
“If I ever feed on you,” Christian assured her, “it will be because I need to in order to keep us alive, and I will make very sure you know about it. You trust me more than is normally healthy in our profession, but if I violated that trust by feeding on you, I have absolutely no doubt you would do everything in your power to kill me. Am I right?”
“Yeah.” She cautiously prodded her ribs, her gaze distant. “Nothing’s cracked. I’ll be fine, if I can figure out who’s offering a half-million dollars to kidnap me. It seems unlikely they just want to throw a surprise party.”
It has been two years, he reminded himself. They were both pretending no time had passed, but Alysia’s aura held the twisted shine of panic or even shock. Even if he had read her correctly earlier, even if she did miss Bruja—and, hopefully, him—she wasn’t here of her own free will. She was here because she had nowhere else to go.
But she trusts me enough to come here, to let me know I could earn a lot of quick cash for bringing her in, and to admit that she probably wouldn’t be able to defend herself. She had trusted him enough to let her guard down the instant she recognized him that morning at SingleEarth, too. That meant something, right?
“Let’s move while we talk,” he said. “We can go by the house, get you better equipped, and then I can look up the posting against you.”
Alysia nodded. “Lead the way.”
“Could it be someone at SingleEarth who has it in for you?” Christian asked as he set a hand to the door and focused his power, checking the hall for any sign of movement. “Or did anyone else know where you were?”
“I take it you haven’t started watching the news in my absence,” Alysia remarked, following as he stepped through the door.
Her hand once again drifted to her cheek. Did it feel strange? He probably should have asked before healing it. But he wouldn’t have asked before helping her with a bandage. This was no different, really. Except that it obviously was, to her, and despite his assurances, Alysia had put plenty of space between them.
“What was on the news?” he asked.
“Me. And it was national, so the list of people who potentially know where I am isn’t short.”
They both instinctively quieted as they reached the parking lot. The snow had stopped, and there were people milling about, but it wasn’t the possibility of being overheard that made Christian tense. They were too exposed.
“We can leave my car,” Alysia said. “It doesn’t have anything in it except a completely legal registration under the surname I’m using at SingleEarth.”
“Good.”
They didn’t speak much more until they had both climbed into his car, a nondescript four-wheel drive—the only two things he much cared about when shopping for a vehicle—and Christian brought them out of town and onto what passed for a highway in this backwater spot.
“Question,” Alysia said as they left behind most signs of civilization. “Bruja allows contracts against anyone, for any reason, except guild leaders. There’s no reason I can think of that someone would want me this badly, but what about you? A capture is up close and has a high likelihood of complications compared to a kill, and much as I hate to admit it, there are a lot of people in Bruja who could have predicted I would go to you in this kind of situation. Do you think someone could be hoping you might get caught in the cross fire?”
The suggestion was not beyond the realm of possibility. Even if Christian hadn’t been a guild leader, most people would not have wanted to cross Pandora by directly targeting her most recent student. On the other hand, those same people would know that a Triste was hard to kill and was unlikely to fall accidentally during a job with another purpose.
“It’s—”
The silver SUV cut into his field of vision and forced him to swing left. He heard Alysia yelp an expletive just before he felt the double concussion of tires exploding. Despite his Triste reflexes on the wheel, two flat tires on the still-slick roads sent the car into a spin.
Before he could even panic, the nose of the car was in the ditch between the road and a state forest.
“Cute,” Christian said dryly as he hastily removed his seat belt and exited the vehicle. Alysia did the same. Neither of them was stupid enough to believe this had been an accident, even before Alysia knelt down and picked up one of the silver stars that had been strewn at the edge of the road, waiting to destroy any tire that crossed them.
Alysia swore loudly, one hand instinctively going to her chest as the tension caused a twinge in her bruised ribs, the other reaching into her backpack, Christian hoped for a knife. Apparently, she had kept the weapons—probably for their sentimental value—but hadn’t kept easily replaced things like concealable sheaths on hand.
He drew his own knife and stretched out his awareness, trying to sense for anything alive or undead nearby. No one had gone to this much trouble to cause the accident without having a trap ready to close on them.
“We need to get away from the road,” Alysia said. “This is too exposed. Good Samaritan, EMT, police, tow company, anyone could pull over and we wouldn’t know if they were for real or the next part of this trap. Can Triste power keep us from freezing to death if we go hiking?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer before two more of Maya’s crew showed up. Like wild dogs, they tended to travel in packs. Two years earlier, he would have put Alysia at his back and they could easily have taken down a half dozen of Maya’s boys, but she was out of practice, and if Alysia was the target, Christian didn’t want to put her directly in the vamps’ line of sight.
While he was looking over his shoulder to check the situatio
n on her side, however, he missed the appearance of the third vampire. He barely caught a glimpse of the crossbow aimed at him before the bolt hit him high in the right side of the chest.
Perversely, Pandora’s training meant he could feel the exact damage done to the soft tissue of his lung, could feel where the edge of a barbed bolt nicked the aorta, a killing injury to almost anyone else.
It took the wind out of his lungs, made him fall, forced him to turn his attention inward to keep his body from bleeding to death.
Alysia will have to hold her own.
CHAPTER 12
TIME AND EVENTS seemed to blur. The fight with the vampire, Alysia, and then Jeht had taken less than a minute, but it seemed to stretch into an hour in Sarik’s memory.
In comparison, all the rest happened in a blink. The hunters arrived. Mark the groundskeeper came running after Quean, who had followed Jeht. The man took a child’s fist to the mouth as he tried to pull Quean away from the bloody scene.
Lynzi ran up next. She started to kneel to check Jeht for wounds, but Sarik shook her head. He was fine. He ordered Quean to calm down. The younger tiger obediently relaxed in Mark’s arms and, sucking his thumb, looked as innocent as any four-year-old.
Jason arrived, but when he first reached for Sarik, she recoiled.
The copper-rot taste of blood was still thick in Sarik’s mouth, but the fluid itself had gone dry, leaving a sticky, ashy texture like talcum powder on her tongue. She had more blood on her hands from the knife Jeht had handed her. She couldn’t stand for Jason to touch her.
He knelt beside the body instead and told them all, “His name is Liam. He works for a mercenary named Maya. He—”
“He was after Alysia,” Sarik said before Jason could blame himself. “I saw him stalking her. I needed to warn her. Alysia said this is about her. She says she didn’t mean to bring danger here. She’s leaving until it’s sorted out. She’s gone now.”
“Sarik, I think you should come inside and sit down,” Lynzi said. “You’re in shock.”
“We can clean this up,” one of the hunters offered.
Lynzi nodded to them and ushered all the rest inside to the conference room in the administration building.
Jeht and Quean wouldn’t leave Sarik’s side, insisting on sitting on the floor next to her chair.
Jeht seemed to have decided that he was her protector. He accepted her as a figure with authority over him only because she was Mistari, an adult queen, and he had seen others at SingleEarth defer to her due to her position as a mediator. He seemed to have decided that, if he could not return to the Mistari homeland, he would create his world here instead, and sit by her side as her enforcer. Quean simply watched, wide-eyed, taking his lead from Sarik and Jeht but never even asking what had happened. Blood was nothing new to him.
Sarik wished they could visit one of the tribes that ran more peacefully so that the boys could see that it was possible to live without violence. It was unlikely that any such tribe would be willing to welcome him into their midst—Jeht especially was too much of a threat, a miniature prince who had been raised as a warrior—but seeing how such tribes existed might make him realize that there was value in something other than brute strength.
“Sarik?” People had been talking to her while her mind was so far away.
“Sorry,” she said, trying to focus. “I’m being stupid. I wasn’t even the one who was attacked. I shouldn’t be this disturbed.”
It was the taste of blood in her mouth that had done it. That, and Jeht’s smile after he’d made the kill. She remembered what that childlike pride felt like.
“That’s your father talking, not you,” Jason whispered to her. He sat beside her and took one of her hands in both of his. “You shouted to warn Alysia, right?”
“I attacked the vampire,” she admitted. “I saw the earring. Recognized it. I knew shouting would warn both of them. I didn’t know who would win, so I didn’t give him a chance to hurt her. Or to run.”
“Thank God you didn’t,” Jason answered. “Liam wouldn’t have dared return to Maya without having accomplished his mission. If you had shouted, he would have fought. You did the right thing.”
“Was I still doing the right thing when I told Alysia to stop?” she snapped. “When she was about to kill him, I froze. Jeht is the one who threw himself into the fight without hesitation.”
“If my impression is correct, Alysia is a trained fighter,” Lynzi said, joining the conversation. “So is Jeht, as much as we hate in our culture to admit such a thing about a child. You’re not, Sarik. Never be ashamed that your instinct doesn’t tell you to go for the kill.”
I used to be a fighter, Sarik thought. Now I’m just a victim who needs to be protected.
No, not a victim, she corrected herself. A survivor. Pull it together, Sarik.
She took a deep breath and looked up. She could tell that Jeht, sitting near her feet, had sensed her drawing up her strength. He sat a little straighter.
“I know you’re still shaken,” Lynzi said from across the room, “but if you’re ready, we need to know exactly what happened. We cannot afford to assume that Alysia was the only target or that these attacks will stop just because she left. I have been doing research into the Bruja guilds since the first attack, and, well, let’s just say I hope we can avoid a direct conflict.”
The words echoed something Alysia had said: I’m not pitting SingleEarth against the Bruja guilds, not over me. SingleEarth isn’t weak, but–
Sarik had interrupted Alysia there, but she knew what the rest would have been: Neither is Bruja. And Bruja had more trained, ruthless mercenaries.
In as much detail as she could manage, Sarik recounted everything she had seen, from the moment she noticed the vampire behind Alysia in the parking lot to when everyone else started to arrive.
Jason supplemented the story with what he knew about Maya. “She specializes in captures—kidnapping, extortion, that sort of thing,” he said. “If that’s the goal, it would explain why the first attack wasn’t meant to be fatal. The Onyx attacker could have followed Alysia when she left her room, then lost track of her in the snow and thought she was with our group. They realized they hadn’t hit their target and split, and their employer hired Maya next.”
“You said before that Christian has some pretty close ties to the leader of Onyx. If the original shooter was from that guild, he also might have balked once Christian got involved,” Lynzi suggested, “so the client probably called in a new mercenary from outside the guilds. This might actually work for us. The Bruja guilds are too powerful for us to go against directly, but if this Maya is an independent mercenary, she can probably be bought. Jason, what do you think?”
He nodded. “With SingleEarth’s resources, absolutely.”
“Then we can—”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Lynzi called. For most people, it would have been reckless to call out without even looking through the peephole, but Lynzi’s magic would have alerted her if someone approached who was powerful enough to be a threat.
Mary opened the door and peeked her head inside.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but I have a young woman in the lobby looking for Alysia. She seems very upset but won’t tell me what’s going on. Is anyone available to speak to her?”
“Please bring her in,” Lynzi said. After the secretary walked away, Lynzi added, “I hope you all have your seat belts buckled. This Haven hasn’t even had a chance to adjust to losing Joseph. Losing Alysia after she has barely had a chance to walk in the door is going to put a strain on our residents.”
Their guest, who arrived a minute later, was wearing worn blue jeans and a sand-colored peasant blouse. Her hair, which was a rich burgundy color, was pulled back, which put more emphasis on her dark, cinnamon-colored eyes. Sarik found herself staring at the woman, wondering, What now?
“Come in,” Lynzi said. “What can we do for you?”
“The secretary told me Alysia is gone,” the woman said, her eyes wide.
“I’m sorry to say she left SingleEarth just recently,” Lynzi answered. “Were you working with her?”
The woman drew a breath and nodded. “My little sister,” the woman said. “She’s been … ill, I guess? Or something? You see, our father left when she was very young. We didn’t know he was … I’m standing here and I’m sorry but it still sounds crazy. I mean, shapeshifters? Seriously?”
“Sarik, why don’t you speak to our guest?” Lynzi suggested.
“Who the hell are you, the babysitter?” the newcomer demanded, looking at Sarik and the two boys.
Jeht started to stand when the woman turned on Sarik with obvious anger, but Sarik put a hand on his shoulder to calm him and tried to explain. “I can—”
“What are you?” their guest asked bluntly.
“I’m a shapeshifter,” Sarik answered. “Like your sister.”
“You’re a snake?”
“No,” Sarik answered. “I’m a tiger, actually. But—”
“Then what good are you?” the woman asked waspishly, before dropping her gaze and looking chastised. “I’m sorry. This is all just too much for me.” She turned to go, saying, “I’ll come back when I can talk to another human being.”
She stormed out, not leaving any contact information.
Sarik and the other mediators exchanged glances, and after a few moments, Lynzi said, “That was odd.” The Triste frowned, shaking her head before saying, “Well, it wasn’t odd for this place, but it seemed off somehow.”
Sarik didn’t attempt to make a judgment on the woman’s behavior. She doubted her own could be trusted just then.
“Family members of serpiente who have been raised human tend to go through a particularly difficult process,” Lynzi reminded them all. “Seeking help was probably difficult for her—only possible at all because she could convince herself that she could trust another human.”
Serpiente were not just shapeshifters; even in human form, their bodies functioned differently from humans’. Among other things, their slow metabolisms made them nearly cold-blooded. When raised human, they tended to start changing during adolescence, a painful process that often triggered many series of tests and hospitalizations before they came to SingleEarth’s attention. Family members often had to transition from mourning for a loved one they thought was dying to coping with the knowledge that there was an entire world they had previously thought of as the provenance of myth and campfire stories.