“Hmm.” Thom bit his palm and sampled the welling blood. “He hasn’t been poisoned. I don’t smell fresh blood, so he has no new injuries. He doesn’t smell sick.” His nostrils flared in a rapid flutter as he breathed in over Kapoor. “He smells afraid.” A frown gathered across his brow. “Terrified.”
As much as I feared the answer, I had to ask, “Can you identify the blood under his nails?”
“Yes.” He wet his lips, sat back. “It belongs to an Onca.”
This just kept getting better and better. “Great.”
The Oncas were hard-won allies, hardcore Conquest loyalists who followed me out of devotion to her. Their clan had saved our bacon after we blew the enclave bunker, and several Malakhim, sky high to prevent them from locating the enclave’s inhabitants until we could relocate them to safer territory. Their intervention after the fact had quite possibly saved Wu’s life, not to mention Miller’s and Portia’s.
“When Cole gets back, we’ll go check in with Noel and Franklin, make sure everything is okay.”
Dominance fights and interspecies scuffles were common, but an outright attack from one of our people on theirs would be bad news for us. For me, in particular, since I won their allegiance by biting the hand off one of their dissenters. I didn’t enjoy knowing there had been body parts floating in my stomach when I changed back, even if the magic that made it possible also kept fingers, elbows, and other pointy ends from protruding out of my midriff.
I had a recurring nightmare where I woke with an upset stomach and yanked off the covers to find I had fallen asleep nude — and hands were clawing across my abdomen, from the inside, trying to tear their way out of me to freedom.
A shudder rippled through me, but the warm sunlight helped thaw the chill settling over me.
“I’ll help you get Kapoor settled.” I checked to see if Santiago had made an appearance, but he was MIA. That happened a lot when a nontechnical problem reared its ugly head. He was ten times faster to lend a screwdriver than a hand to someone in need. “Do you want him upstairs or down?”
“Down.” Thom gave a decisive nod. “There are a few cots in the dining room.”
The enclave left a few of their supplies behind when they fled across the sea to a more secure safehouse in the event we could put them to use. For that, I was grateful. We wouldn’t have had enough soft places to sleep otherwise.
Before Thom could lift the heavy end, I hooked my hands under Kapoor’s armpits, leaving Thom to hold his legs. I tried for smooth so he wouldn’t notice what I was doing, but he was much older than me, and luckily, he seemed more amused by my coddling than offended. That must be the healer in him.
Together, we carried Kapoor into the dining room turned bunkroom and laid him out on a cot.
“What do you think is wrong with him?” I ducked into the next room and returned with a pair of kitchen scissors to cut him out of his clothes. One thing I had learned about charun was they hated exposing their weaknesses to others. His clothes stank of fear sweat and our allies’ blood. With other factions checking in at regular intervals, we couldn’t risk leaving him in his present condition. The clothes had to go before they lured someone more predatory and less self-controlled than my coterie to him. “I don’t see any marks of any kind on him.”
“Perhaps they aren’t visible.” He helped me strip Kapoor down to his underwear. As it happened, he was a boxer brief kind of guy. “We know Ezra is a terrible power. We have no idea what Kapoor endured at his hands, what lasting effects he might suffer, and Kapoor is in no shape to tell us.”
The whole reason for leaving him behind had been to give him time and space to heal, more in soul than in body, but it must not have done the job for him to show up in this condition. Selfish as it made me, I was grateful the blood hadn’t belonged to anyone at Haven. I only wished I could say the same for our allies and their encampments, who would be calling in with missing persons reports I would have to field. Before they started calling for his head on a pike, I had to get to the bottom of this.
The Oncas had rebelled against me in Virginia City and required a brutal demonstration. Noel and Franklin swore they had culled dissenters from their ranks, but they must have assumed that prior to my arrival as well. Until I spoke with them, and heard Kapoor’s side, I had no way of knowing where to cast the blame.
Heavy footsteps as familiar as my heartbeat set the old floorboards on the porch creaking, and I craned my neck in search of Cole, who must have detoured through the kitchen.
“We’re in here,” I called. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.” He took a long pull from the bottle of water in his hand then flicked a glance at Kapoor. “How is he?”
“Stable.” Thom lifted Kapoor’s hand and bit down hard in the meaty webbing between his thumb and index finger. “That ought to keep him sedated long enough for Wu to arrive.”
Since I had yet to reach out to him, what with Kapoor’s fainting act, I texted him now.
“Where is Santiago?” Their noses would tell them quicker than I could locate him. “Upstairs?”
“He’s taken over your old room,” Thom informed me. “He installed a new lock.”
Claiming territory was a very charun thing to do, so I couldn’t fault him there, but did the instincts he chose to listen to have to be so freaking annoying?
“Of course he did,” I grumbled. “He can stay here with you.”
Cole didn’t hesitate. “Where are we going?”
We. Yeah. I liked the sound of that.
“Kapoor has Onca blood under his nails.” I glanced up the stairs but decided I had had enough Santiago to last me. He could keep my room and the dust bunnies that came with it. “We need to check in with Noel and Franklin, see if they’re missing any people.”
Nodding agreement, he still asked, “Did Santiago mention a disruption in the feed?”
One of Santiago’s pet projects had been wiring the area where each of our allies awaited our signal with video and sound. The leaders of each camp had a tablet with an app that allowed them to video chat with him at the push of a button. It made tracking them, and any moves against us, much easier.
Though I would never tell him out of fear his head would swell to Hindenburg size, Santiago’s skills might very well be what tipped the balance in our favor.
“The tablet he left with Noel and Franklin is for their use in the main encampment. There’s been no action on that front, or we would have seen or heard about it.” I blew out a sigh. “They’ll have scouting parties keeping the area secure. The scouts won’t have any tech on them, except maybe personal cellphones, and we don’t have access to those. That’s my bet.”
“All right.”
“I hope it’s not a wasted trip.” I looked down at Kapoor and couldn’t help seeing the beginning of the end of my human life. “But I think it’s worth a look.”
“I’m not questioning your instincts,” Cole assured me. “I’m considering the angles.”
“That makes two of us.” I crossed to him, breathed in his scent, how it mingled with mine, and settled. “Drive or fly?”
“Fly,” he said without missing a beat. “Both of us.”
I smothered a groan against his chest, my shoulders ready to cry uncle before we even began.
“The Oncas have always responded best to displays of power. They will be soothed by your dragon.”
“They’ll probably line up virgin sacrifices for me to munch on.”
Laughter shook him, but I wasn’t joking. Oncas had weird — no, very charun — ideas about things.
“You’re forgetting something. I can’t manage vertical takeoffs yet.” I felt a smile blooming. “Guess you’re out of luck.” Rearing back, I patted him on the chest. “Good plan, though.”
“Oh, I do have a plan.” His answering smile caused heat to swoop through my middle. “Come with me.”
Unable to resist following him anywhere, I let him lead me to what promised to be my doom.
*
As it turned out, my doom wasn’t all that bad. Cole shifted and let me climb on his back. He shot into the sky, and relief loosened the knots in my shoulders. Guess he changed his mind about the flying thing.
He really does love me.
Basking in the glow of that thought, I didn’t grasp the change in altitude immediately. But I did notice when he executed a series of barrel rolls without any warning whatsoever.
Howling in terror, I clung to him, but the dragon only laughed.
He doesn’t love me.
Not at all.
Not even a little.
I stuck to him like a tick on a hound dog, but he kept going and going until I was dizzy and sick with it and starting to think I had chosen wrong. Maybe Wu was a better alternative to this. Clearly, the dragon was a sadist.
The silk of his mane slipped through my damp fingers, and I didn’t have the same thigh power as Santiago. I couldn’t hold on. One more rotation, and he flung me off screaming into thin air.
The change was instinctive. Within seconds, I embraced my inner dragon. But I was still too drunk to tell up from down, and I was falling too fast to open my wings.
A guttural trumpeting cut through the whistling noise in my ears, and I grunted on impact. Not with the ground, as expected, but with Cole.
While saving me was a nice gesture and all, it meant he couldn’t operate his wings. He was gliding, but we were going down unless I got my scaly butt in gear.
A rumbled apology from him vibrated through my chest where it rested against his back, and I was tempted, so tempted, to change and give him an earful. But he was only pushing a baby bird from its comfy nest. It no doubt made sense to him. Just like it would make sense to me to never have sex with him again. Pretty sure this little stunt had shriveled my lady bits beyond reviving.
With a groaned prayer, I stretched my wings to their fullest, then rolled off his left side.
I yelped when I dropped faster than anticipated, instinctively searching out Cole, but a few slow wingbeats steadied me.
After a good ten minutes where I didn’t fall out of the sky, I couldn’t help the teasing call I yelled to Cole, who followed behind me like a parent ready to catch their kid riding a bike without training wheels for the first time.
I was maintaining altitude, gaining even. This wasn’t gliding. I was flying.
Flying.
Now that I wasn’t in danger of going splat, I could embrace the thrill of riding the winds.
Driving was so much better than playing passenger. I could get used to this.
About the time I was ready to forgive Cole, he tapped my shoulder with his tail.
Oh crap.
The thing about flying, or even gliding, is you have to land sometime. And while I was decent at it when coming down from a solid glide, I had never tried it from this height or this speed.
Whatever Cole hoped to show the Oncas, I worried might get undermined if I landed in a tangled heap of wings and tail that required immediate medical attention.
No one wanted to follow a general into battle who might fall out of the sky and smush you at any given moment.
Surging ahead of me, Cole stopped pumping his wings and eased into a simple glide. I did the same, watching him for instruction. He made graceful circles I struggled to mimic, dipping lower and lower, slower and slower, until I felt confident if I bungled this I wouldn’t die on impact.
Our arrival was drawing attention, and the Oncas were gathering, which gave me performance anxiety. I wished harder than ever that the invisibility trick worked for me, but I hadn’t figured out how to trigger it yet. And thanks to the bangles, Conquest couldn’t give me any tips.
Cole cut his current loop short, flared his wings behind him, and sailed into a gentle landing.
I mimicked him as best I could, but the ground rose up crazy fast, and I was trying to put on the brakes, but there were no brakes, and oh God I was going to faceplant or flip ass over teakettle.
A cool flavor hit the back of my tongue, and my body corrected itself in time to give me one of my top five best landings.
An inquisitive rumble filled Cole’s chest, and my victory high sank to an all-time low.
The coterie could scent Conquest on me when she rose to the surface, and he must have caught a whiff, no matter how faint. The bangles had been a stopgap measure at a time when I needed to be leashed, but it was never meant to last forever. Though I had hoped it would last longer than this.
We shifted in tandem, which was a cool trick, and Noel and Franklin shoved through the crowd to greet us.
“Mistress.” Noel bowed. “What an unexpected delight.”
“How may we be of service?” Her mate, Franklin, hit his knees. “You have only to ask, and it will be done.”
Their adoration made my skin crawl, but I was getting used to it. No, that’s not exactly true. I was growing more accepting of it. Tolerant even. I don’t think I would ever get used to people so willing to follow me to their deaths. As a former cop, I got the serve your community mentality, and that’s how I had started thinking of our charun allies. The alternatives were too grim for me to stomach.
Offering them each a hand up, I asked them both, “How many patrols do you have in the field?”
“Two,” Noel said. “There’s been no trouble in the area. We didn’t see the need to increase our presence.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I was quick to assure them. “I was just curious if you’re missing any people.” Hope threatened to surface, but I crushed it before it took root. “But if there’s been no trouble, I apologize for alarming you.”
Not all Oncas were aligned with us or even willing to participate. The largest clan, yes. But there must be outliers. Kapoor could have come across a hostile clan. Somewhere. Somehow. It was possible, right?
“One of our patrols hasn’t checked in yet,” Noel said slowly. “They aren’t scheduled to return until tomorrow.”
“Do you know the area where they were assigned?” The smidgen of hope curled up and died. “A general direction works.”
“They were southeast of here,” Franklin said, “about ten miles out.”
“Get a headcount of your people.” I exchanged a look with Cole. “We’ll check in with the scouts and then report back.”
The couple bowed low and stayed that way, which made our exit easier, if more uncomfortable.
“Cole,” I said softly, “you are evil and cruel.”
“And you can fly.”
“Try that stunt again, mister, and I will tie your tail in so many knots, you’ll never unwind it again.”
“Fair enough.” Amusement tickled the corner of his mouth. “Do you want to fly or be flown?”
“It depends.” I gave him room to shift. “Can you behave?”
Without answering, he traded one skin for another and stood before me in all his majestic glory.
“You didn’t win this argument just because you can no longer speak.”
He nudged me with his muzzle, lipping my shirt until his teeth made purchase. He hauled me closer and rubbed his head against my chest, asking for scratches behind his adorably round ears.
“Payment comes after services rendered,” I informed him in my best hard ass cop voice.
Grumbling amiably, he let me climb on, the perfect gentleman, and launched us in the direction Franklin had indicated. We didn’t have to go the full ten miles before the dragon went stiff beneath me, and a rumble of caution rolled through him.
The bad feeling I hadn’t been able to shake since Kapoor collapsed in the driveway kicked up several notches.
I didn’t have a charun sense of smell, but the rank odor hit me not long after Cole veered off to do a circuit of the area, and I tasted bile.
Eyes on the horizon, I kept watch in the event whatever took down Kapoor was responsible for what awaited us, but nothing materialized, and it made the anticipation that much worse.
Once certa
in the site was secure, Cole angled toward the strongest concentration of rancidness and set down on the grass near a copse of trees in a wedge formation that blended into the wider forest.
“This isn’t going to be good.” I hopped off his back and started walking. “Bodies get ripe fast in the heat, but not this fast.”
Kapoor couldn’t have left this massacre and come straight to the farmhouse. Either he hadn’t been here, and we had a whole host of new problems on our hands, or he had flown around dazed for a least a day afterward before stumbling back to the farmhouse.
“Look there.” Cole, back on two legs, caught up to me within a few strides. “Bodies.”
I adjusted my course and headed for what had appeared to be gnarled roots to my weaker vision, but I didn’t have to get much closer to smell he was right. “Can you tell if they belong to Noel and Franklin?”
“They share the clan scent marker.”
So much for hoping these weren’t the scouts due in tomorrow.
“Two here.” I tipped back my head. “Three more still in the trees.”
I squatted next to the first corpse and examined it for cause of death, not that I had to look hard to tell.
“Her throat was slit.” I closed her eyes with a grimace. “The blade was long, at least a foot.” For charun, that generally meant a sword. “It was wicked sharp too. There’s no tearing. She wasn’t hacked open. This was done in one smooth arc with a weapon sharp enough to cut flesh like butter.”
“Kapoor didn’t have a scratch on him,” Cole said what I was thinking.
This was a massacre, but Kapoor hadn’t gotten a scratch on him.
“He was also the janitor for the NSB for God only knows how long.” I stood and moved to the next body. “He’s a killer, and a damn good one, or he wouldn’t have kept his job long.”
The argument didn’t settle my nerves. That strand of logic might tie Kapoor to this scene, but it would also form a noose of guilt to hang him. I preferred to hope he had witnessed a skirmish in progress and thrown his weight in with the Oncas. That fit more with his personality. For him to swoop down on the Oncas and do this … without provocation … Ezra would have had to well and truly break him.
End Game (The Foundling Series) Page 4
