“I’ve been reassured I’m safe here. Remote location, armed guards, weresomethings down the hall.”
A laugh snuck up on me. “Weresomethings?”
“One turns into a duck/wolf/spider combo I still see in my nightmares. Another looks like a kitten half eaten by a snake. The third one — ” A flush warmed his cheeks. “She’s the next best thing to a mermaid. I, ah, found that out by stumbling across her in the saltwater pool.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I chuckled at his embarrassment. “I’m guessing she forgot to wear her seashells?”
“Well … I … ” His blush darkened, giving lobsters a run for their money. “I didn’t check.”
Except he must have caught a glimpse of something to be this mortified. Worried about his stress levels, and not at all interested in learning my dad had not-dad thoughts, I got us back on track. “You want to stay here?”
“I do.” He tapped his fingers on his knee. “As much as I hate the idea of sending you out there alone, I’m too old to fight. I don’t want to be another burden on your conscience. Staying put means you know I’m safe, and you don’t have to worry about me. It might be boring as hell, but there are perks.”
Perks that involved tails, scales, and the lack of seashell bras.
“You’re being very rational about all this,” I pointed out, still amazed by how well he was coping.
A soft knock on the door drew my attention, and I called out, “Come in.”
Too late I realized the knock had come from a different door than the one I entered through, and the petite female with silvery hair edging toward lavender who stuck her head in the room was not looking for me.
“You must be Luce,” she said, her voice soft as the robe she wore. “I’m Miranda.”
“You’re the mermaid Dad mentioned.” I stood to shake her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Mermaid?” Her cheeks pinkened. “Oh, you.” She crossed to Dad and kissed his cheek. “Flatterer.”
Before I discovered whether she was wearing anything beneath the robe trying hard to slip off her shoulder, I made my excuses. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to rush away.” Miranda glanced between us. “Please, don’t let me run you off. He’s been so worried. I didn’t realize he had company, or I wouldn’t have bothered him.”
“It’s no bother,” Dad grumbled. “Luce, are you sure you can’t stay?”
“The longer I’m here, the more dangerous it is for you all.” I managed to keep a straight face and not tease him when he stood and came in for a hug. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” I kissed his cheek. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, baby girl.” He squeezed me one last time and held on tight. “Be safe out there.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised. “Miranda, it was nice meeting you. Keep an eye on this guy for me, will you?”
“It would be my pleasure.” She beamed at me. “Edward is such good company.”
Edward.
I blinked.
Over the years, I had heard Dad called a lot of things, not all of them complimentary, but Edward was not one of them. Most folks called him Eddie or Boudreau. Hearing his entire first name used as a form of address struck me as weirder than the fact he was cozying up to a woman, let alone a charun, at all.
Waving goodbye, I exited the room to find Cole wearing a grin. “You heard all that?”
“I did.” His wide shoulders jostled with laughter. “Your father has made interesting friends.”
“Seashells,” I grumbled. “She’s nothing to worry about, right?”
“Her kind are harmless. They aren’t mermaids, but their lower bodies are fishlike.”
“As long as she won’t eat him, or mate him.” I frowned. “Or mate him then eat him. We’re good.”
“Charun can’t mate humans,” he reminded me. “As to the other, given your father’s love of fishing, I would say she’s in greater danger from him than the reverse.”
“You’re a funny guy.” I elbowed him in the side then winced. “You’re also made out of poured concrete or something. Seriously. Ouch.”
Wry humor glinted in his eyes. “You don’t like my body?”
There was nothing wrong with his body, and we both knew it. But now he had me thinking about our sprint through the woods, the splash of our bodies hitting the water then crashing together on the bank. And all the times that came after that first one.
Chewing my bottom lip saved me from answering long enough for Wu to come fetch us.
“I thought I heard voices.” Wu flared his nostrils. “Am I interrupting?”
“Sadly, no.” I heaved a sigh. “Five more minutes, and maybe.”
“I could leave and then come back.”
I caught him by the arm before he could make good on his offer. “Why didn’t you tell me Dad had been briefed?”
“I wasn’t aware until we arrived. Miranda informed me the group made the decision to bring him into their inner circle to help him adapt to his situation.”
“Miranda has the hots for my dad.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “She’s way too young for him.”
Wu’s smile was slow to spread, but it stretched from ear to ear. “She’s two hundred and three.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t factored charun biology into the equation. “I guess that’s okay then.”
Cole was working hard to keep the amusement off his face, but I wasn’t buying into the innocent act.
“He’s my dad. I’m entitled to vet the people he dates.” I huffed out a laugh. “God knows he’s done the same to me.” I jabbed Cole with a finger. “He did the same to you.”
“I wouldn’t call what they’re doing dating.” Cole captured my hand. “They’re too isolated for that.”
“Ugh.” I stuck my fingers in my ears. “Why would you imply that? Dads don’t have sex. They just don’t.”
Whatever he said next made Wu laugh, but I couldn’t hear either of them, and I liked it that way.
The look on Wu’s face had me lowering my arms. “What?”
“Can I have a moment of your time before we go?”
Figuring he wanted to discuss Dad or security details further, I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Let’s use my office.”
How he could tell one room from another was beyond me. The doors were all identical, as was their spacing. “How many rooms does this joint have?”
“Thirty bedrooms,” he said without missing a beat. “Fifty rooms total.”
Stunned, I pinned him with a stare. “Who needs thirty bedrooms?”
“This place was built on hope.” He touched his fingers to his chest. “For the day I could bring the enclave here to live with me, as a family.”
A dream made reality. I almost tasted the bittersweetness of his longing. “Who are the others?”
“Staff.” He lowered his hand to his side. “There are more of them, but your father hasn’t met them yet.”
“He thinks they’re all guests.” And that didn’t sit right with me. “They want to tell him the truth, fine. Tell him the whole truth. I don’t want him getting hurt later when he finds out his new friends are on your payroll.”
Learning Miranda was paid to do a job, even if that job wasn’t playing maybe-girlfriend, should be disclosed before he got any un-dadlike ideas about her.
“I’ll leave word that total transparency is a requirement when dealing with your father.”
Nodding my thanks, I pressed my luck. “How would you feel about more house guests?”
“I’m willing to accommodate a select few others. The more we bring in, the more these are at risk. Currently your father is the only human, the only civilian, in residence. I assume you’re wanting to add to that number.”
Thinking of Sherry and Nettie, and Phoebe, I admitted, “Yes.”
“Make your arrangements,” he said after a time, “and I’ll see to the rest.”
“Wu?” I wasn’t sure how to frame the question without insulting
him. “Why didn’t you bring the enclave here if this is the home you built for them?”
“We made an even trade. My people are at your home, and your father is in one of mine.”
“That’s not an answer,” I pointed out, but he was right. We had balanced the scales without me knowing it.
“I want this to be their sanctuary. I want them to be free to come and go as they please, do as they wish, and live their lives in the open.”
“You don’t want to tarnish this place.” Death always left a mark, and no battles were fought without casualties. “This is your Eden.”
Biblical references ruffled his feathers, but having a godlike father who named him Adam was just asking for it. This was his ideal, his wish for his descendants. It was, perhaps, more for him than he realized. It was a gift he wanted to give them, a symbol of the future he envisioned for them, and he didn’t want to pass off the latter until the former had been realized.
At the door to his office, he asked Cole to wait outside.
He agreed, without a fuss, since we had just established he could hear through the door just fine.
“Ezra is ready to meet with you.”
“Are you serious?” Tingles swept across my skin. “You located him?”
“I’ve always known where he was,” Wu admitted, moving to stand behind his desk, like a hunk of oak would stop me from throttling him. “I never intended for you two to meet. I’m still not convinced it’s the right thing to do, but I have to tell you before you find out some other way, and it gets you killed.”
Fury rolled through me, hot and fast, that he would keep this from me. “Where is he?”
Wu rolled an elegant shoulder. “He’s right here.”
As quick as my temper had ignited, it snuffed even faster, replaced by an icy shock that paralyzed.
“W-w-what?” I would have hit the ground if I hadn’t backed into the door. “You? You? You can’t be him.”
“I’m not, really.”
Shoving off the wood, I demanded, “What the hell does that mean?”
“All those years ago, you begged me for a name. I gave you one, but it wasn’t mine. It was my father’s.”
A tremble started in my calves, the muscles turning to water. The higher it rose, the more I wobbled, until my knees gave, and I hit the floor. “No.”
“Yes.” Wu rounded the desk, but he kept a safe distance from me.
“Why tell me now?”
“Sooner or later, you’re going to encounter my father. Sooner, at the rate he’s going. Father is going to introduce himself as Ezra. Do you really want that to happen when you’re feeling indebted to him? Do you want to keep wasting your hope on answers he can’t give?” Wu tucked his hands into his pockets. “I don’t.” He shifted his weight. “I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“All this time … ” I couldn’t make the pieces fit in my head, could barely look at Wu. “You lied to me from the start.”
“I did.” He didn’t sound sorry about it, either. “I wanted to gain your trust on my own merits. I didn’t want you to look at me the way you are now, and I didn’t want you viewing me through the idyllic lens of your childhood relationship with me either.”
Doing what I do best, I packed away the sharpest hurts and locked them in the back of my mind, allowing the cold place to numb the sting and clear my head. Once the haze thinned, my cop brain kicked in, and I sat upright, ready to grill him. “How did you stop the pain?”
“All you needed was to hear my voice. Trial and error made it hard on you during the first few years, but I conditioned you to only need feedback from me once a year in order to function.”
A steady vibration rumbled through my chest as I processed what Wu meant.
“Why you?” I made fists at my sides. “Would any charun have sufficed, or did it have to be you in particular? Would contact with the coterie have cured me?”
The NSB had been watching me since the first headlines splashed front pages. They had tracked my life, my development, my loyalties. I figured that meant Wu had paid closer attention to me than he let on, but I didn’t peg him for this. I never could have imagined subterfuge on this level.
“No.” Wu paid the buttons on his shirt particular attention. “It had to be me.”
“You’re the one Bruster meant,” I realized. “You’re the one he said owned Conquest.”
I had been right all along. Ezra did own me. I just hadn’t realized he and Wu were one and the same.
“You are owned. Conquest is owned.”
That’s what Bruster told us while in his meditative fugue.
“I know a lot of things, Wu.” Bruster rasped out a chuckle. “More every day. Soon your daddy’s going to know them too.”
A wink and a nod to Wu. I hadn’t picked up on either.
“I am, but it’s not what you think.” He glanced up then. “It’s worse.”
“Explain,” I barked, patience wearing thin. “What have you done to me?”
“I established a mate bond with you.” Quick to cut off my horror, he pressed on. “It was nothing physical. I wouldn’t have abused a child.”
No matter how many times I played it back in my head, it didn’t get any better. “You mated me?”
As the wheels in my head spun, a vicious snarl eclipsed their whirring, and the door behind me thumped hard, and then again, and then again.
“When you breached, I was there. Waiting. As I had been so many times before, with so many other Conquests. I had experimented on them all to one degree or another, but I never got it right. They never changed enough. They all retained their Otillian sensibilities.”
The spit dried from my mouth, and I couldn’t even think of another question to hurl at him.
The fact talons had pierced the door and begun prying it from its hinges didn’t help matters. It might have been forged with charun in mind, but it wouldn’t hold against a pissed-off dragon for long.
“But this last time,” he pressed on through my shock, “I made more headway than ever before, and I brought the previous Conquest to The Hole for monitoring.”
The frequency trick that had cost me my humanity … That had been his doing. Maybe not personally, but he had employed the scientists responsible and provided them with test subjects. Then again, so had I. I was the reason Famine was in The Hole in the first place, and she was the reason Daddy Wu — no, Ezra — had blown it to kingdom come.
Metal screeched, bent. Wood groaned, splintered. And the dragon … roared as it flung the door skittering down the hall.
The serpentine curve of his head and neck shoved into the room first, darting straight for Wu, teeth snapping an inch from the tip of his nose.
“Luce is every bit as much my mate as she is yours.” A ghost of a smile flickered on Wu’s lips. “Maybe more since I claimed her first as this person, in this body.”
“Are you trying to get him to kill you?” I rushed over, braced my hands on the dragon’s chest to keep him from advancing. “He’ll do it, and he won’t feel bad about it. I bet you taste just like chicken.”
Tongue darting between his teeth, the dragon growled his agreement.
“Talk fast, Wu. I can’t hold him long when he’s like this.”
And honestly, I didn’t want to. Learning I was a thing Wu had hand-crafted made me sick. Watching Cole eat him wouldn’t help, but it would be satisfying in its own way.
“There’s a moment when Otillians breach where their essence is … flexible.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Tangible.”
How many previous cadres had been sacrificed to learn that much? I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.
“When Conquest breached, I was waiting in Cypress Swamp for her with the body of a ten-year-old girl who had died six hours earlier.”
“Conquest isn’t viscarre,” I protested. “Even if she was, they require living hosts to feed on.”
“There was no soul in the body,” Wu continued like I hadn’t interrupted
him. “When Conquest began her transformation, when she was essence waiting to be given form, I coated my hands in healing power, balled up as much of her as I could hold, and shoved her into that little girl.” Wu wet his lips. “And then I performed CPR until she revived.” He looked at me then, the wonder of the moment cutting through all the rest. “You went mad when you woke. You screamed and scratched and bit me to escape, and then you ran into the swamp. I thought I had failed. I left you there, thinking you would die or that the swamp would kill you.”
Truth. Brutal truth. Nothing else would hurt like this.
“But fishermen spotted the Wild Child and called it in,” I finished for him. “That’s how the cops ended up out there searching for a girl without a name or a family. That’s how Dad found me.”
Telling him this, if I ever worked up the courage, would lay any lingering guilt to rest. He had been right to keep me for his own. I had been dead to them, and it was right that I stay that way.
“I thought about killing you before he discovered your true nature. It would have been easy.” His voice took on an almost philosophical tone. “Any one of the visits to the hospital could have been your last.”
“Why let me live then?” I demanded. “Why risk exposure?”
“I was there the night Officer Boudreau marched into the OR and decked the head surgeon. He brought a nurse with him. The same female a member of War’s coterie later claimed as a host.”
Ida Bell. I remembered her. All too well. And it hurt knowing she had been the one to risk her job, to rush in with Dad, probably at Uncle Harold’s request, and unhook me from all those machines so he could take me home.
“He was so fiercely protective of you,” he said, “it made me curious what might come of letting him raise this thing I had created.”
This thing I had created. Yep. Daddy Wu’s god complex was genetic.
The hit landed with the force of a fist to the gut, knocked the breath out of me, and made it clear he viewed me, my life, my struggles — not with his own eyes, but through the lens of a microscope.
“I was an experiment start to finish for you.” I unlocked my jaw, forced myself to stop grinding my teeth. “I get that. What I don’t understand is how or why you think you’re my mate.”
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 20
