Thirst of Steel

by Ronie Kendig

  She adjusted her chair and took a sip of water. “My rise to power and the ensuing success . . .” Her attractive but aged face was taut with grief. “My path to Parliament was paved before I was old enough to drive. I inherited the position from my father through Nur Abidaoud and the Arrow & Flame Order.”

  The tension in the room ratcheted ten decibels, screaming the objection of every Wraith member.

  Maangi and Thor looked at each other.

  Cell snapped forward, his chair thudding hard against the table. “Sorry, but why are you still alive?” He scowled, then glanced at Iliescu. “Why is there not an extra hole in her head? She’s an enemy.”

  “Mr. Purcell,” Iliescu said, “tone down the rhetoric.”

  “No rhetoric,” Cell bit out. “Our number one priority is hunting these people down. And she’s right here. Still breathing.”

  “Have to admit,” Maangi said slowly, “I’m with Cell on this one. Having one of the key people we’re after, right here—”

  “I am a double agent,” Raison said, quickly and with plenty of stress.

  Leif blinked. “A spy?”

  “Convenient,” Cell groused.

  “Of a sort.” She wagged her head. “I hold a key position within the Order, but a dozen years ago, I was recruited because of my . . . concern about certain endeavors the AFO was undertaking. I’m part of a group called the Camarilla. We are a handful working to overturn the Order. Return it to its roots.”

  “But isn’t that still world domination?” Cell asked, extending a pen at her. “How is this any different?”

  She lifted her hands. “What you need to understand is that within the AFO there are others like me, high in the Order but not loyal—at least, not the way most are loyal.”

  “And how is that?” Thor asked.

  “Many blindly follow Nur and the Sovereign, regardless of what they do or what empty path they take the Order down.”

  “Sovereign?” Leif angled his head, frowning.

  Thor sat forward. “Hold up. Almost two years ago, my team and I took out Kaine in London. He and Nur were the head.”

  “Actually,” Cell corrected, “an arrow boiled Kaine out. Right in front of Tox and Ram.”

  “Two-headed serpent,” Maangi added. “It was a two-headed serpent trying to restructure the political map. That’s what we were told.”

  Raison nodded. “Oui, Kaine and Nur were the serpents.” Her eyes pinched into a smile that gathered her wrinkles. “What do serpents do?”

  “Strike,” Cell said.

  “Deceive.” With an arched eyebrow, she inclined her head. “They were a distraction. The Order has always had serpents, designed to distract and deliberately draw attention so the true leader—the Sovereign—can operate unimpeded.”

  “True leader,” Thor repeated. “Who would that be?”

  “That is unknown,” she said with a sigh, “except to Nur and Kaine.”

  “So, Nur.” Cell grunted. “Since Kaine is dead.”

  “Oui. But again, the point is that you are not alone in your fight against what is happening. Nur and the Sovereign are off course, obsessed with this sword and its curse. But we, the Camarilla, are united with you.”

  “Camarilla.” Leif stared at her with the distinct feeling that she wasn’t telling them everything. He slid his gaze to Cell, who frowned.

  Good, so it wasn’t just him. But what were they missing?

  “How many are in this Camarilla thing?” Thor asked. “Because if we’re talking fifty or a hundred”—he glanced at the others—“maybe we have a shot.”

  “What? With her?” Cell choked out a laugh. “Are you kidding, man?”

  “There are four,” she said definitively.

  The team dropped silent and stared at Raison.

  “Four?” Cell repeated.

  Lifting a hand, Leif sat back, crossing his boots at the ankle. He considered the other SAARC operators. This . . . this could work for them. “I have a question.”

  “Oui,” Raison said.

  “You said you were high up in this order.”

  She nodded.

  “And you said there were others in the same position, both figuratively and literally. High position and in opposition.” He tucked his chin, staring at her. “Right?”

  She frowned—her confidence lessening. “Yes.”

  “But what you didn’t say is why you’d come to us. If you’re so high up in this Order, don’t you have followers? Don’t you have people to rally, those loyal to you?” Leif leaned forward and set both arms on the table, his hands animated. “What I’m not getting is why you’d risk exposing yourself, exposing the Order, which you’ve said you believe in.” He scratched his jaw. “Unless you were in trouble. Unless you need us to do something you can’t do.”

  Thor nodded. “Or won’t do.”

  “Sacrifice American soldiers, they said,” Cell muttered sarcastically. “It’ll be easy, they said.” He scowled at the team. “I’m not biting. You?”

  “See?” Leif went on, ready to deliver his blow. “What I’m thinking is that you want us to stop this, stop Nur, so that you can find out who the Sovereign is and kill him—then take that power.”

  Her face went hard and cold, a new side of her emerging. “Eliminating Nur is in both of our best interests.”

  “Boom!” Cell said. “We kill him. We take the heat, the bullets. You take the power.” He lifted his palms in a hands-off gesture. “Not touching this one.”

  Her face grew red. “There is so much more than that! The Camarilla is in danger because we have been feeding intelligence to our very adversaries. How do you think you found Didier Makanda?”

  Leif glanced at Iliescu, whose expression remained impassive but hard as ordnance.

  Slapping a hand on the table, Raison spat, “They have killed one of us already!”

  “There.” Thor snapped his fingers. “That’s what this is all about. You do need us—for protection and to bring violence to Nur.”

  She bristled. “Does it not matter to you that if they assemble this sword, they will be unstoppable?”

  “How does a sword make them unstoppable?”

  “The sword is tied to a curse that has long afflicted the line of the mercenaries, which includes most among the Order, as well as the Niph’al, the assassins who devised the curse of the Adama Herev. This sword imprisoned our lines to small numbers. This sword—”

  “No, no, no,” Leif said calmly but forcefully. He motioned around the room. “What’s happening here isn’t about the sword. It’s about you using a situation and us to your benefit.”

  “Since you will not listen, hear reason.” Raison nodded to Iliescu.

  With a long-suffering sigh, the deputy director lifted a remote. “We have footage—grainy, but at least we have it—of a killing we believe is connected to the murders here in the States,” Iliescu said.

  “So this one’s not in the States,” Leif noted. “Same assassin?”

  “Same?” Raison scoffed, glancing at Almstedt. “There are countless assassins! They are the Nizari Ismailis, and more than anyone, they want the sword assembled and their bloodline cleansed.”

  “Why are they killing people, though?” Cell asked. “How does that put the sword back together?”

  “It doesn’t,” Raison said. “It is precautionary in case the sword is not reassembled. Listen,” she growled, “if you want allies, if you want hope of winning this war, protecting your country against Nur and the Sovereign, you must protect Lukas Gath. It will all come back to him, because he is rumored to have a piece of the sword, though none have ever seen him with it.”

  “Who’s Gath?” Leif asked.

  “Let’s watch the video,” Iliescu said, indicating the screen. “It’ll give you eyes on some possible targets.”

  Lights in the command hub dimmed, and the silent video played out.

  “This was taken by one of my people,” Raison said. “It happened near the Yauza River. That�
��s Nur getting out of the car.”

  “The stiffs waiting?” Maangi asked, indicating the seven men lined up, as if for the executioner.

  “Nur’s officers in Russia. Well, some of them,” Raison explained.

  A man was marched to the middle of the group and forced to his knees.

  “That is Girts Zakavij,” Raison said. “One of the Four.”

  Leif shifted noisily, craning for a better view. “Who’s—”

  The room fell silent when a glint flashed through the footage. In a blink, Nur was moving back to his car. And Girts Zakavij had been relieved of his head.

  Cell cursed.

  “Nur knows about the Camarilla.” Accusation laced Raison’s words, which she let hang in the air as she narrowed her gaze.

  “Wait—you’re blaming us?” Cell’s voice pitched. “You serious? After we bail your sorry—”

  “Cell,” Iliescu said, holding up a hand. He then turned to Raison. “What are you suggesting, Grazia?”

  She huffed. “I would think it’s obvious. We have remained hidden for decades. Until . . .”

  “Until we pulled Makanda out,” Leif said.

  “In doing so, it brought attention to the Camarilla, made Nur more suspicious. Now that I am gone, it’s clear he knows we are working against him.” She nodded to the screen. “That would not have happened without someone feeding him intelligence.”

  Leif rolled his gaze to Thor. “You saying we have a mole?”

  “Worse than a mole,” Raison said. “An agent of the Arrow & Flame embedded in the American government.”

  40

  — MOSCOW, RUSSIA —

  “Is it him?”

  At the voice crackling through the phone, Ram came up out of his chair, heart crashing against his ribs. “Tzivia?” Mind exploding with impossibilities, he tried to harness them. “What—How—”

  “Is it him?” she demanded, each word ground between her teeth and apparent anger.

  Lifting his head from the disbelief that weighted it, he stared across the room at Mercy, who slowly rose from the rickety chair she’d been perched on, eyes rife with the same surprise that smothered him. “You know better,” he chided his sister. She’d pegged Tox.

  “Than to ask? Or better than to think he would be here, that you would do this—with him. With our friend!”

  “Why are you calling?” It was not merely to lecture him, to chastise him for allowing Tox into this game she’d started when she leapt off the cliff of reason. He pushed his gaze from Mercy as she drew closer, his mind bouncing between the two women.

  “You are going to do me a favor,” Tzivia said.

  Anger sweltered through his muscles at what he heard in her voice. This was not a request. “You threaten him?” When Mercy came close, Ram reached for her without thinking. “‘Our friend,’ as you called him. You would use him—”

  “Who is using him?” Tzivia hissed. “Who is putting him in harm’s way? You are! He’s an idiot to think he won’t be found out. They will kill him!”

  “That man felt it was worth the risk to help you. Save you.”

  “I do not need saving! Already one of my friends is dead.” Grief burgeoned through her words. Dr. Cathey. “Is that worth the cost of you sending them after me?”

  “Yes, Tzivia. They both feel you are worth it.” Ram knew she had never seen herself as worth anything, all because their father had vanished. “I do, too, but Dr. Cathey—for you, he would have gone to the ends of the earth. You know that’s true. And you didn’t even attend his memorial after leaving him to die.”

  “And what did your friend do but watch him die! He is useless if he can’t even save an old man.”

  “Isn’t the same true of you, then? You have skills,” he shouted, extricating himself from Mercy and going to the far side of the room. “I trained you! Give it up. Give up this foolish quest for the—”

  “Foolish? You suffer the curse of the Adama Herev. I saw all those times you gave yourself injections, the ones you hid from everyone. But I saw,” she said, her voice raw. “All those bruises when there shouldn’t have been any. The time as a teen you missed an injection and ended up in the hospital—”

  “This is not about me,” he spat.

  “It is! And Father, and every other innocent suffering beneath the weight of the curse. Especially Father—he’s alive, Ach.”

  Her use of the Hebrew word for brother twisted a knot in his gut.

  “Abba is alive! I have seen him.” Tzivia sounded like she was five years old again. “So, no. I will not stop. Not until I have freed him.”

  “At what cost, Tzi? Dr. Cathey is dead. How many more must die?”

  “Shut up,” she ground out. “Our friend has the photograph. Find out where it is and who is in it.”

  So that was her favor—make him unearth the clue and give it to her. “No.”

  “Do this, or I will expose him.”

  Ram stilled. Felt the cold wash of dread in his veins. “Tzivia—”

  “You have connections and access. Find out—”

  “No.”

  “Just tell me who is in the photograph—you’ve seen it before. It was in Dr. Cathey’s office. On his mantel. For years.”

  His mind jogged through the dusty halls of his memory. He’d been in that flat a few times, but hadn’t paid a lot of attention. Yet . . . somehow it was familiar. Somehow it loomed before his mental eye. “Stop this, and nobody else will die.”

  “Except Abba!”

  Ram flinched, realizing Mercy was once more at his side. Touching his arm.

  “Two men in the picture,” Tzivia insisted. “Dr. Cathey and someone else. I just need his name.”

  “No, Tziv—”

  “I’ll call you in two hours. Tell me his name, or I go to Nur.”

  When the line went dead, Ram roared. Reared and slammed the phone against the table. Again and again, rage bleeding through his restraint. Palms on the table, he clenched his eyes, breathing hard.

  Cool hands touched his back.

  What had happened to the sister he loved, the brat who’d annoyed the tar out of him but always somehow also made him proud? How could he keep Nur from winning and still survive this blasted curse and keep Tzivia and Abba alive?

  No, he didn’t care about Abba. He was a traitor. Tzivia had gone over the edge, but so had he. The entirety of life seemed to be imploding.

  Soft, teasing fingers traced the arch of his back.

  Annoyed, Ram straightened, shifted away from Mercy’s touch. He looked at the broken phone. The cuts he’d inflicted on himself.

  Mercy pried away the phone and blotted his cuts with a paper towel. She’d probably lecture him. Or tell him he’d done the right thing with his sister. But so help him, if she did—

  “That burst of anger was nothing.” Auburn hair hung in her face as she dabbed an antiseptic wipe along his palm. “Banner has you beat by a mile. You’ll have to try harder if you want to win my affection.”

  He blew through the laugh that dared him to shed this dark mood. Instead, he noticed things he shouldn’t. Like the dusting of freckles along her nose and cheeks that taunted him. Lips perpetually pink. Soft. He remembered how they tasted. How she tasted. How she felt in his arms. The way life fell away and it was just them. He ached for that. To have all this insanity gone and—

  Ram drew his hand back. “Thanks.”

  His mind suddenly pitched to an image. Taking a photo years back with Tzivia in Dr. C’s office. Could . . . was it possible they’d captured the professor’s photo in the background?

  He dug into his personal computer and skimmed through the gallery. Finally, he found the one he was thinking of from a Christmas event. Him and Tzi. Tox. He opened it. Maximized it. Zoomed. Breath trapped in his throat, he stared. Squinted past their likenesses to the framed photo on the mantel behind them. He muttered an oath.

  “What?”

  He tapped the screen. “That’s the picture my sister is after.” />
  Mercy learned forward, her hair spilling over her shoulder and whispering against his cheek. “Who’s in it?”

  “Dr. Cathey and one of my father’s oldest friends, Lukas Gath.” Settling into his chair and mindless of the cuts on his hand, he typed the name into the system and pulled up a number. He dialed using the sat phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Shalom,” Ram greeted.

  “Gut Shabbes, Ram,” Lukas said with a smile in his voice. “It has been too long.”

  “Indeed,” Ram replied. “You know why I’m calling?”

  “With Joseph dead, I suspected it might be coming.”

  “My sister has a photograph, Lukas. Of you and the professor.”

  Silence ensued, then was punctuated by a sigh.

  “Do you know why she thinks it’s important? Why she’s after you?”

  “It is not me she is after. It is the scrollwork.”

  “Scrollwork.”

  “You have the photograph?”

  Ram’s gaze hit the computer screen again. “No, just a grainy picture of a picture. I can’t make out much.”

  “Ah,” Lukas said as he cleared his throat. “The photo was taken in my study. Behind us is a display made for the scrollwork of the Adama Herev.”

  Shock rolled through Ram. “Lukas, you’re in danger. If—when she figures out who you are and what you have, she’s coming. I do not believe she intends you harm, but she is blinded by this pursuit. And there are others. They’ll be coming, too.”

  Another long sigh. “It has been coming for centuries, Ram. Neither you nor I can stop this. Not even the Camarilla, who are vastly more effective.”

  “I fear for them. I have a report that one is dead. If they reach you—”

  “‘He was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”’”

  Ram hesitated. “Sorry?”

  “That was Judges 15:18. ‘Thirst, like newly-born infants, for pure milk for the soul, that by it you may grow up to salvation’ First Peter 2:2.”

  Awareness swelled inside Ram of something bigger than himself. Something powerful. Something that quenched the anger flowing through him.