The Bid

by Jacquelyn Frank

  But he had to try. Hanna’s life depended on it. There was only one way to safely get onto Majum’s property without setting off alarms and alerting guards.

  “Master!” Jhon shouted, surging forward past the guards and shouting into the chamber, his voice booming over the present speaker and making the Chamber of Masters break out into startled, rapid whispers.

  “Hold!” the guards commanded him, throwing their weight against him and seizing him by his arms. But still he fought forward, putting brute power into every step until he had lurched over the threshold of the door.

  “Master Fusut!” he shouted, making it very clear to them all who he wanted. The man in question got to his feet quickly.

  “What is the meaning of this? Why does a slave address me so? Where is your Master?”

  “She is in danger. Deadly danger,” Jhon said, keeping his voice loud and bold so everyone would hear him. “I come to you because you have proven to be wise and fair. I beg you, my Lord, to hear the plight of my Lady and take action before it is too late!”

  “What danger?” he asked, hushing the room fiercely when their speculation threatened to drown out Jhon’s reply.

  “The Baron Majum kidnapped her young sister.” Gasps rang through the room before he could rush to continue. “He sent her a note, taunting her with this fact. My Lady then went to his residence here in the city and put herself into his power in an effort to win her sister’s freedom. He then sent an assassin to kill myself and Najir so that no one would be the wiser and he could then keep her for his twisted pleasure.”

  “You have proof of this? I cannot invade the Baron’s privacy on the word of a slave,” Fusut said, even as he moved forward toward Jhon and eyed his bloodied state.

  “I have the note, which is not signed, and I have the assassin.”

  “Will the assassin name Majum?”

  “No, my Lord. He was very careful to keep his name untouchable. But the assassin was to make a call and tell the person on the other end that we were dead. I forced him to make that call and to do exactly that. I know you see me only as a slave, and that I have very little value in your eyes, but take me at my word, my Lord, when I tell you the voice on the other end of that call was none other than the Baron Majum himself. He speaks with a very distinct cadence, as you have no doubt noticed for yourself, and there was no mistaking this.”

  Jhon had to pause to draw in several deep breaths, trying to soothe the racing of his heart and the pure panic that was threatening to pump through him in an endless cycle.

  “Even if you do not believe me, let me take you to the side of my Lady and if I be wrong you may do with my life what you will.”

  That seemed to give the Master significant pause. He walked up to Jhon, searching his eyes carefully.

  “You would stake your life on this claim? Because believe me, for a slave to call a Master into question like this only to have the accusation be false, it will lead to your death. There will be no question of it.”

  “I am staking my life on my Lady, my Lord. She is all that matters. So long as she is well, nothing else will matter to me.”

  It seemed to be enough for Master Fusut. He turned to the rest of the COM. “I will need four Masters to come with us to bear witness. If what he says is true, Majum must be brought to justice by his peers.” He turned back to Jhon and said more softly. “And I pray you know what you are doing.”

  Jhon could care less about what may or may not become of him. He was soon following Hanna’s scent trail straight to Majum House with five Masters and a contingent of city guards in tow. All he wanted was to get onto that property as quickly as possible and free Hanna. Going to the COM and exposing Majum for what he was had been Najir’s idea. A good idea. They were a force not to be contested as they stormed the property. They started with the main house but Jhon knew they were no longer there.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  The demand was deep and authoritative, despite coming from such a young man. Jhon did not recognize him, but Fusut did and stepped up to where he was rapidly descending the stairs. Jhon felt a sick sinking feeling of dread. Was this going to be an opposition that could sway the Masters to halt their search before it even began?

  “Young Master Kell,” Fusut greeted him. “I am sorry for the intrusion, but your uncle has been accused of committing a high crime by this slave.”

  Kell looked up to meet Jhon’s eyes. He seemed wary and defensive, but did not act as though he had something specific to hide.

  “And what does this slave say about my good uncle? I am certain he is mistaken.”

  “He says your uncle holds Master Drakoulous and her sister captive here on this property. His proof is somewhat compelling. You understand that we cannot ignore the accusation when their lives might be in immediate danger.”

  “Drakoulous.” The young man frowned darkly, clearly biased against the House. “I confess our Houses have never been friends, but this accusation cannot be true. My uncle would not dare endanger this House by disobeying the Feudal sanctions.”

  “Then you have no objections to our continuing the search?”

  Jhon held his breath. Kell could protest the invasion of his privacy and it could ruin the momentum he had earned so far. He knew Hanna’s trail led back behind the house, but he couldn’t explain how he knew exactly where to go. He could not tell them that his senses were ten times keener than theirs.

  “I welcome your search. Just as I will welcome the justice you will deliver to this slave for his lies against my uncle.”

  Good enough. It was good enough. Jhon hurried out of the back of the house, picking up her trail so easily he knew just how fresh it was. He was aware of Kell following close behind him. Since he was trying to lead the search in that direction, he welcomed the other man’s presence. The Masters would be drawn to follow him more than they would be to a slave.

  To his surprise, Kell started to walk in the direction of Hanna’s trail. It was almost as if he, too, could sense it.

  “My uncle’s workrooms are in this house back here. He is probably there even now. He will want to face these charges,” Kell announced.

  Ah, so that was where they were! And Kell was leading them right to her! Jhon had the urge to grab the boy and hug him, but knew it had to be resisted. He was more interested in finding Hanna anyway. He and Kell hurried to the smaller house together. When they entered, it looked like a craftsman’s workshop, with benches and tools lining the walls and a partially carved wooden creature, like some kind of wolf, had been scraped out of a huge chunk of wood. It was almost surreal to see the beauty of the piece, to see an artistic side to a creature so rotted with corruption.

  But there was no visible sign of Hanna.

  However, he wasn’t following his eyesight. He was following her scent trail and she had definitely been in this room. Searching carefully, he came to the end of the trail just as Master Fusut was saying, “He’s not here.” And then to Jhon, “And neither is your mistress.”

  “Wait,” he said, forgetting to add proper address as he stared at the workbench where her scent seemed to have gone right through it. What was more, he thought he could smell the sharper tang of blood now. They were close! So close! But the smell of blood made his stomach sicken. Were they too late?

  “Behind here,” he said with all confidence, trying to pull at the bench. There had to be some kind of trick to it. Some kind of lever.

  “How do you know that?” Kell asked, his eyes narrowing as he seemed to study the bench carefully. Then, after a moment, Jhon could swear he saw the boy pale under his dark blue skin coloring. “He’s right. There’s something back there.” He looked up and seemed to realize what he had said. “I can feel a draft.”

  Plausible explanation, but Jhon was starting to get just as suspicious of Kell as Kell was becoming of him. He put it aside and started pulling at tools. It didn’t take long to find the lever, making the bench swing away from the wall. The Masters behin
d them gasped, but Kell grabbed a working light from the bench and wasted no time pushing ahead into the stairwell.

  Jhon had overtaken him and run ahead of him by the time they hit the second flight. With his extraordinary eyesight he could see just fine in the dark, and he wasn’t about to waste a single second getting to Hanna.

  He burst into the room, the surprise in his barreling action causing several frightened screams from within. Then he just stood there a moment, trying to take in the horror of what he was seeing. The children. Asha. Blood everywhere. A dead man and a mauled beast of some kind.

  And Hanna.

  “Hanna!”

  Jhon was on his knees by her side in a heartbeat. He ignored everything else, Asha’s cries for help where she was lashed to the wall, the shocked gasps of the Masters and even Kell’s heartfelt curse. All he could see, all he could feel was Hanna. She lay naked in a pool of blood, most of which was her own. She was slumped forward over herself and the floor, her long hair barely concealing the speckling along her spine. He saw her dress on the floor and scooped it up, pulling it over her as carefully and as swiftly as he could. Let them think he did it for the sake of her modesty. Let them think whatever they wanted. Let them know the truth of it. Jhon did not care. All he cared about was that her skin was cold to the touch and her breathing was hardly discernable. She had a vicious wound in her side and something had raked her down the front. He held her close as tears of fear and impotence burned in his eyes. He had to get her home. She needed to be safe and cared for. He needed to get her out of this disgusting pit Majum had brought her to. It enraged him to think that Majum wasn’t there…but only for a moment because as he gathered Hanna close to his chest he realized he could smell Majum all over the place. Most specifically, where the dead wolf lay.

  Understanding dawned and he looked to meet the eyes of the young man Kell, who had taken a knee beside the thing’s mutilated carcass. By the expression on Kell’s face, Jhon could see that he knew it was his uncle.

  So. It appeared Hanna’s House was not the only one with secrets.

  Kell met Jhon’s starkly knowing eyes and gave him a little nod before saying aloud, “It appears this slave’s accusations are all too true. This is a sad day for my House. Masters, I assure you that as soon as I find my uncle he will be delivered to you for justice. You may search the entire property until you find him.” Kell rose to full height and looked down into Jhon’s eyes from above. “Bring her to the house. I will see she gets the very best of care. I…I thought I knew my uncle. I do not know how I could have been so very wrong.”

  Jhon heard the bitterness and anger in his young voice and felt compelled to say, “Men such as this have always had their ways of keeping their depraved secrets. Even from those closest to them.”

  Kell nodded, and then turned to the communications panel. “Release the restraints,” he told it.

  On command, the computer released Asha’s restraints, exposing how raw she was at all contact points. Despite obvious weakness, she managed to keep her back against the wall, hiding the spots down her spine until she requested one of the Master’s robes to wear and had herself safely concealed. Then she hurried to Jhon, who was carrying her sister out.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Barely,” he replied.

  “Young man, can you tell us who did this to you? Can you tell us what happened here?” one of the Masters was asking one of the male children. Jhon stopped and turned, looking at how the boy cowered away from anyone trying to touch him. He hesitated, knowing by the look of the place what the children must have seen. He could only hope that if the child started ranting about a woman who could become a bellcat, they would put it down to the ravings of a damaged and fragile mind.

  But the boy did speak up.

  “The man came in with the firewolf. It attacked her.”

  And that was all. He wasn’t willing to say more, and probably wouldn’t for some time…if ever. But his gesture had been clear even before his dark, haunted eyes looked up to unsteadily look at Jhon’s.

  They would keep her secret.

  21

  Hanna’s eyes fluttered open, her lashes sticking together at first. Long enough for her to realize her mouth was equally gluey and she was very thirsty. Then, she felt two large hands swallow the whole of her face between them and, as if pouring water on a desert, a wondrous sensation of lips pressing to hers. She’d know those lips anywhere, and those hands as well. She unstuck her lashes by opening her eyes wide and then cringed when the light seemed suddenly too bright.

  “Shh, shh, shh,” Jhon soothed her softly when she tried to move. It was a good thing, too. Just gearing up to make movement had tensed her muscles enough to send alarming pain rocketing up and down her body. Her entire torso lit up as if it were on fire and she groaned against his mouth.

  “Jhon, w-what—?”

  “Easy. You’re home and both you and Asha are safe.”

  Her eyes widened at the mention of Asha’s name. Instantly she tried to sit up, but he was having none of that and blocked her with the low bridge of his body over hers.

  “Asha?” She looked around her bed to see if her sister was there.

  “She’s been here for two days, right by your side, waiting for you to wake up,” he told her just as her eyes fell on her sister, who lay curled up in bed beside her, fast asleep. She had both of her hands clasped around one of Hanna’s, and the purplish coloring under her eyes spoke of the truth in Jhon’s words. She had not had much in the way of rest recently. Her young face looked strained in a way Hanna had never seen before. She wore no makeup, her hair was left to simply fall where it would, and she wore such a plain little dress that Hanna hardly recognized her. She looked younger than usual, and vulnerable in a way she wasn’t used to seeing.

  “Did he hurt her?” she blurted out, squeezing her sister’s hand where it rested in hers. “Jhon, did he hurt her?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said, gently stroking his fingers over her cheek. “But I am not certain I am the one she would tell.”

  “I’m not certain I’m the one she would tell either,” Hanna said, her voice tight with emotion all of a sudden. “To be honest, I know very little about her. It used to be different. We used to be closer. But then…then our parents died.”

  “Trauma like that changes people,” he noted, reaching for her free hand so he could bring it up to the press of his lips. “Trauma like this changes people.”

  “Then I want her to be just as stubborn and willful as ever. I want there to be no trauma. I want to take it back for her.” She swallowed as tears swam over her eyes, blurring the image of her sister.

  “We can’t do that. No more than we can change the damage that was done to you.”

  That got her attention and she looked at him. “Is it bad? Am I badly hurt?”

  “If you were anyone else, you’d probably be dead, Hanna,” he said, his voice very stark as he did so. “I just thank the gods for those very special genetics of yours. The doctor is completely baffled by you, I’ll have you know. He has no idea how you managed to pull through. Don’t worry,” he assured her as she geared up to say what he knew she was going to ask. “I made certain I was with you every moment. No one saw anything about you that you wouldn’t want them to see. They stitched you up right here in the house and I made a big stink about being the only one to take care of you. To bathe away the blood on you. To change the bandages. With Asha’s help, they had to listen.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “But did the children say anything? Oh Jhon, are they all right? I saw them locked away down there and all I could think about was that someone was probably as worried sick for them as I was for Ashanna.”

  “Someone was. That someone was one of your guards. He tried to kill Najir and myself as a way of getting them back.” She gasped and immediately tried to look him over, to check him for injury. “No, no. Not me,” he said softly.

  Her eyes shot up to his and he saw th
em widen with fear. She bit her bottom lip so hard she was sure to puncture it. He knew what she would ask him, if she could only find the courage to do so, so he took the initiative for her.

  “He’s badly injured. He was shot. And unlike you and I, he doesn’t have the benefit of an advanced immune system. An infection has set in. His fever has been pretty high and the doctors are worried. But,” he tendered, “they do not know Najir like you and I do. He is far too strong and much too loyal to you to simply let you go so easily.”

  “Oh Jhon. If he dies it will be all my—”

  “All Majum’s fault,” he interjected. “Do not take responsibility for the acts of that madman. I won’t have it, Hanna.”

  “Jhon, Majum was like me,” she said. But she hastily corrected herself when she saw the glare he gave her. “I mean, he was from the Otherside. One of the other breeds. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. And that means his whole family is from the Otherside. Kell…all his cousins and more. They are the firewolf. It’s a fierce fighter, a pack animal. Very different from the bellcat.”

  “And yet very much the same,” Jhon noted. “It makes me wonder if there are other families who were able to survive the Apocalypse who could travel to the Otherside.”

  “Believe me, it is shocking that even one has survived this long, and highly improbable that there are two. I do not have those types of illusions.”

  “Perhaps it is at the root of this feud between your families,” Jhon speculated. “You said yourself that you don’t know what started it all. It seems to me that the lupine and the feline would be very natural enemies.”

  “More than you know. In the wild they prey on one another. You are not at all wrong about the possibility.” Hanna pushed him back a little so she could feel the bandages wrapped around her chest and belly. “The scars may fade,” she said hesitantly, peeking up at him through her lashes.