“Turns out you don’t have to tell the truth while wearing the bangles unless you’re explicitly ordered to be honest.” She shrugged. “It’s not my fault you missed an opportunity.”
“You’re big on casting blame as long as it doesn’t land on you, huh?”
“You don’t have the stomach to do what it takes,” she shot back. “This is how the game is played, Luce.”
“This isn’t a game,” I snarled. “It’s my life.”
“And it’s pathetic.” She slapped the water in front of her. “You’re ambitionless. You’ve lost sight of our mission.”
Our mission.
Cops had to trust their gut or be willing to pay the price for ignoring it, and it looked like my tab was coming due.
“You led your mother into a trap.” How I mustered surprise, I couldn’t begin to guess. “You killed her.”
“No, Death killed her. Sibling bonds don’t mean much to either of us, but the Drosera are a dim lot. Generations of inbreeding will do that. They wouldn’t have followed me if I killed Mother. Neither would War’s allies on this terrene. I needed her blood on someone else’s hands before I could take the reins.”
“Ezra hates charun,” I said again, firmer. “I don’t believe for a hot minute that he met with you.”
Someone with enough talent not to leave fingerprints for Santiago to track could stick her fingers into all sorts of pies without alerting us. Including our databases. There were files on Ezra, and on Wu. On their familial connection.
Wu, who downright loved humans and had roleplayed Ezra before.
Wu, whose involvement would explain the enclave leak in the worst possible way.
Damn it.
There was no way he would stoop so low. No way. No possible way he would align with her.
Was there?
He was a liar, a good one. A professional one, in fact. But who had he lied to this time? Her? Or me?
I was a sucker for a hard luck story. The human wife, the demi offspring, would appeal to my protective instincts where humans were concerned. Had he invented a wife? His kids? The enclave’s origin story?
No. Well, yes. He would lie if it suited him. But that depth of grief, of guilt couldn’t be faked. I might be taken in, but Cole would have scented Wu’s emotions. It all but made charun lie detectors. He would have suspected Wu was being less than honest instead of offering him solace. That meant — big surprise — Sariah was fibbing to us about her source.
“Not my problem.” She released her grip on the cypress knee and trod water. “I have to go, Auntie. It was nice catching up. I would say it’s good to see you survived, but we both know I wouldn’t mean it.”
“You aren’t cadre.” I balled my fists. “This isn’t your fight.”
In giving her a second chance, I had enabled her to realize her dream of usurping her mother.
Sariah wanted to become the next War, and she was well on her way to declaring it between us.
“You denounced Conquest, and that means you’re not cadre either.” Ripples skated across the murky surface as she sliced her arms. “This ascension is different. We’re different. One way or another, it ends with us.”
As much as I wanted to believe her, I had doubts. Whatever future she imagined wasn’t the one I envisioned. I wanted Ezra’s head on a pike. I wanted a way to seal the breach sites for good. The charun who lived here could be governed and maintained by the NSB, but this constant upheaval? This battle for ownership of an entire ecosystem and its inhabitants? Charun weren’t gods, despite what Ezra might believe, and they shouldn’t play at it. It was time for the fate of this terrene to rest in human hands.
“Give me your source.” I caught Miller’s eye, and he sank lower in the water. “Tell me that, and we’ll let you leave in peace.”
“As tempting as that offer sounds … ” She tilted her head. “I’m going to have to pass.”
Desperate to buy us more time and answers, I threw out a wild card. “What about Bruster?”
“That one wasn’t mine.” She frowned. “I didn’t hear about it until after.”
Meaning there was one more rogue out there killing people only a select few knew I was after. Great.
“Sariah — ”
“I brought you a present. Unwrap it. Maybe the answers you want are inside.” A wiggle of her fingers, and she dove beneath the murky surface.
“Go after her.” I gestured to Miller. “Don’t let her slip away until we nail down who’s feeding her intel.”
“We’ve got movement in quadrant four, on camera one.” Santiago had bellied up to the boat and toyed with one of his billion tablets on the deck. Seriously. The things were like rabbits. They bred when you weren’t looking. “Sariah didn’t come alone.”
“Drosera never do.” I twisted the bangles on my wrists, reassuring myself the coterie had chosen the lesser of two evils when they restrained Conquest over Sariah. “You’re fast in the water. Help Miller round up Sariah. We’ll go after her backup.”
Santiago vanished, leaving only a ripple across the surface to betray his direction.
“Portia, can you read that thing?” I pointed to the tablet. “We need coordinates. Quadrant names and camera numbers don’t mean crap to me.”
“On it.” She scooped up the device then settled in with it balanced on her lap. “Got it.”
“Cole.” I touched his shoulder. “Let’s see how much trouble we can get into before the others return.”
A smiled touched his lips, and he kissed me. Hard. “Plenty, I’m sure.”
I sank onto the bench across from Thom, who crouched on the deck, eyes sharp in the growing darkness.
He drew in great lungfuls of air, parsing the scents, and his spine went rigid. Our tracker at work.
“What is it?” I ruffled his hair. “You look ready to hiss and spit.”
“I recognize this scent.” His reflective green irises flashed when the light caught them. “I know it well.”
“You can ID our target?” That ought to be cause for celebration, not sorrow. Meaning one thing. “Who betrayed us?”
Gut tight, I half expected him to name Wu. As certain as I had been a moment ago that his backstory was legit, that his grief and drive for vengeance was honest, I braced for yet another loss. The hits just kept coming.
“I didn’t betray anyone,” a soft voice challenged overhead. “I’m doing this for the enclave.”
“Kimora.” A stone sank in my gut that kept me rooted to my seat. “Does Knox know what you’ve been up to?”
“No.” A stubborn twist of her lips betrayed her age. “Dad doesn’t understand that we can’t hide forever. He thinks we’ll be safe if we keep to ourselves, but he’s wrong. We’ve lost our home, access to our resources, and now we’ve lost lives. This will prove to Dad we can’t hide behind Adam forever. He can’t protect us, not from Ezra. We have to take matters into our own hands.”
“You fed Sariah the intel on Ezra.”
The relief that Wu hadn’t turned on us never arrived. Learning one of his descendants had stabbed him in the back gutted me. He had given so much for them, all in memory of his wife and their daughters. But those figures were historical to the enclave. No one alive had met them, known them, loved them. Only he carried their faces burning in his mind’s eye. Blinded by the past, he might be, but he was also their best chance of survival in the long run. His love might have painted a target on their backs, but it had kept them fed, sheltered, and as safe as he could make them for as long as possible.
“I spotted her on our property during a patrol.” Kimora kept to the skies, sealing her advantage. “She offered me a trade. I briefed her on this terrene’s hierarchy, and she gave me the inside track on the cadre.”
“But your collaboration didn’t stop there.”
“The cadre is different this time. We’ve all heard the whispers. The elders believe this ascension will be the last. Why shouldn’t I everything in my power to help make it true? With
out Otillians battering their way through the seal, the charun population on Earth will stabilize. Ezra won’t have any reason to strike us down.”
“Except his hatred of humans, demis, and basically any charun not of his terrene. Without the cadre distracting him, dividing his forces, he’ll have nothing to do with his endless days except plot how best to exterminate the inferior beings making his paradise imperfect.”
A spark of fury kindled in her eyes, rage vibrating through every wingbeat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Half the time it felt that way, this new world too surreal to be real. “What about Bruster?”
Chin up, defiance clear in the set of her jaw. “What about him?”
“Did you kill him?” I thought it over, frowned. “Sariah knew I was searching for him. She could have let it slip to you. You had to know if we offered him protection in exchange for his cooperation, he might come into contact with you at the enclave, and he would have read the betrayal in your soul. The gig would be up. Your father would cast you out, and all your scheming would have been for nothing.”
“He would never cast me out,” she snarled. “I’m his daughter.”
As far as confessions went, it was hardly a noose by which to hang her, but the rest was damning enough.
Cole brushed his fingers along mine, and I gave a nod. We had found our leak. Now we had to plug it through any means necessary.
“Think of her father,” I said under my breath, barely an exhale. “Take her down easy.”
With as much effort as I expended sneezing, Cole transformed into his dragon and lunged for the spot where Kimora had gotten comfortable. The boat rocked, water sloshing over the sides, and I held on to the rail until it stilled. By the time I looked up, it was over. Cole had lashed out with his tail, wrapped her up tight, binding her arms to her sides and her wings to her back. She hung limp in his hold, unable to do more than kick her legs.
“Take her to the bunkhouse.” I reclaimed my seat. “I’ll wait on Santiago and Miller. We’ll meet you there.”
After he left, and Portia and I were alone, she ceded the body to Maggie.
Mags looped an arm around me, resting her chin on my shoulder. “I’m sorry it was someone you knew.”
“Her dad isn’t going to take this well. Her father is fiercely protective of her. He’s going to fight us.” I exhaled. “There will be an internal trial, I’m sure. The enclave is an insular society.”
“Can we trust it to be a fair trial when Knox is the leader of the enclave?”
“I don’t know, and I hope I’m never in his position and have to find out.”
We sat there, listening to frog song, waiting for the others to report back. I had no doubt Sariah had escaped. The guys were good, but she had been planning this. She wouldn’t have tripped one of the sensors if she hadn’t been anticipating a confrontation and had her route plotted in advance.
A present.
Kimora had been a present. What did you call a peace offering exchanged before going to war?
“I have to give Wu a heads up.” I found my phone in my pocket, the screen cracked but the device functional. I punched in his number and waited for him to answer. “Adam.”
“You called me Adam.” Suspicion clouded his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“We found the enclave leak, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Who?” He bit off the word. “Did you handle them?”
“Uh, no. Cole has her secured at the bunkhouse, which we have to evacuate ASAP.” I wet my lips. “It’s Kimora. She confessed it all. Sariah must have invited her here for a private meeting then sent us to greet her instead. They’ve been sharing intel about both sides of the conflict. Any safehouses or plans she knows, we have to assume she told Sariah.”
The line went silent, and I rushed to fill it to avoid hearing his grief.
“Sariah hacked the cameras the night Death took out War. She planned and executed a coup to gain control of her mother’s coterie and allies. She intercepted a text we sent Santiago and Portia to direct them away from the farmhouse. That means she left fingerprints on our equipment and programs while she was our guest. There’s no telling how deep she dug, or what she’s done with the information.”
“She got what she wanted, or she wouldn’t have outed herself.”
As much as I hated to throw my family in his face in light of our circumstances, I had to ask, “Is Haven secure? Does Kimora — or Knox — have any reason to suspect it exists? Would it show up in a title search? Tax records? Any official paperwork?”
“Haven was always meant as a gift,” he said softly, brokenly. “I kept the details private. No one except my staff, who has no ties to the enclave, are aware it exists. The architect and builders have long since died. Its secret is safe with us.”
Sweet relief swept through me, and I sagged against Maggie. “What about the castle?”
“Heri meant it as a sanctuary, for me.” His voice roughened over the endearment. “No one knows it’s mine. I’ve never seen it. Never taken the vacation she wished for me. There was no time.” He went quiet. “I had all the time in the world, and it wasn’t enough. Vengeance takes precedent. You’re always one step away, one move away from realizing your goal, and you can’t relent, or you lose traction. You lose … everything. All over again.”
Because he was my partner, and he was in this up to his neck, I confessed. “I worried you might be the leak. You’re a double agent. I wasn’t sure how many times you would double back.”
“I wish I were to blame.” His exhale blasted the speaker. “I’ll pick up Knox and meet you at the bunkhouse.”
“Adam.” Using his name twice in one conversation gave it weight. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I haven’t been okay in a long time, Luce.” His voice warmed a few precarious degrees. “But I’ll manage. I always do.”
He ended the call before I could think of what else to say.
“He’s walking a thin line,” Maggie said, stating the obvious. “His balance must be spectacular.”
“I worry about him,” I confessed. “He was cocky and sure when we first met. Full of himself. The Hole hit him hard. Losing the general wounded him. I don’t think he realized he could still hurt that much. All his careful plans are unraveling, and he can’t get a grip on any of the strings.”
“He does seem to have set himself on a collision course of some kind.” She frowned. “I worry more that he’s dragging you along for the ride.”
“Kimora wants to seal the Otillian breach site. How is what we’re doing any different?”
“You want to seize control of this terrene then hand it back to humans, not some deranged all-powerful icon so caught up in his own myth he can’t tell fact from fiction. That’s a noble thing, Luce. This world is a battleground, and we never had a clue. All the wars and famine and plague — We have a chance to end the worst of them by wiping out their cause.”
“Ezra is only the first step.” I spotted movement and rose. “We still have to figure out how to seal this terrene off from the others, assuming it’s possible.”
Santiago broke the surface first and slung his head like a dog to shake off water, splattering us. At Maggie’s squeal, he looked chagrined. “Sorry,” he grumbled. “I thought you were Portia.”
“No problem.” She wiped her face dry. “Where’s Miller?”
“Definitely Maggie,” he muttered under his breath. Louder, he said, “Right behind me.”
Wishing he was in range for me to thump him on the head, I pressed, “Any luck?”
“She got away.” He hoisted himself onto the deck. “She set traps. Simple ones, but too many to diffuse and still catch her. She was prepared for this. She had it all planned out ahead of time.”
Moments later, Miller came into view, his arms slicing through the water. He reached the boat, and I offered him a hand. Content to drip dry, he raked his gaze over Maggie first then turned his attention to m
e. “We lost her. She was smart keeping her host body. It got her in places her Drosera form — and I — couldn’t go. She’s spent a lot of time out here to know the place so well.”
“Her primary job for War was to gather information,” I reminded him. “I’m not surprised she mapped out a place as critical as the breach site.”
“True,” he allowed. “Usually, she’s more thorough on points regarding a new terrene’s native population, societal hierarchy, and information gathering.”
What he meant was, “She had a particular interest in this breach site.”
“It looks that way.”
“How about you?” Santiago glanced around. “Have any luck?”
“Sariah served up her source on a silver platter.” I couldn’t get Knox’s craggy face out of my mind, and I was grateful not to be there when Wu broke the news. “Kimora was the leak.”
“How did Wu take the news?” Miller twisted to face me. “Is Cole with her?”
“Wu is close to Knox, Kimora too. This will hit them both hard.” The entire enclave would be rocked. “And yeah. Cole apprehended her. They’re at the bunkhouse.” I sat back. “Actually, we should head there now that you two are back.”
Once the guys settled in, Thom cranked the boat and pointed it toward what used to be home for them.
Talking over the motor was wasted breath, and none of us had much to say in any case.
Wu and Knox stood on the pier, awaiting our arrival. Cole and Kimora were nowhere in sight. Rixton was MIA as well.
Thom guided the boat close then killed the engine. Gliding in, it bumped off the nearest post, and we stepped onto the pier. Knox was on me a second later, his metal teeth bared, his mechanical hand crushing my airway when it closed around my throat.
“We invited you into our home, provided for and protected one of yours, and this is how you repay us?” A vein bulged in his forehead. “You implicated my daughter — my daughter. You’re forcing me to bring this infraction to the attention of the enclave. Her reputation will be ruined. She’ll be banned from scouting missions and stripped of her security clearance.”
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 25
