by Natalie Grey
She took a breath, “I can help.”
Stoyan froze. His heart was pounding, and he told himself not to be stupid. He’d brought Filip into this, and that was enough. What could this woman find that Filip could not?
“I know people like the ones who run that facility.” She was so fixated on Stoyan that she didn’t notice James Dillon crouch down beside her. She jerked aside when she caught sight of him.
“I mean you no harm,” he said pleasantly. He held out a hand. “My name is Stephen.”
So James Dillon was a fake name. She should have guessed. Wary that this might be a trap, Arisha reached out to shake his hand. “Arisha.”
“You say you know people like the ones who run the facility.” Stephen’s eyes were clear, commanding. “Tell me what that means. How do you know anything about the people running that facility? Even we haven’t been able to trace the owners yet.”
Arisha smiled bitterly. “I don’t have to know who they are to know how they operate. The rumors are enough.” She saw disappointment flash in Stephen’s face.
“Thank you for your time,” he said shortly.
“Wait! You don’t get it.” She scrambled to stand up, heedless of the warning growls from the men by the door. She had nothing to lose right now. “They’re kidnapping your kind, they’re torturing them and doing experiments. Why? It’s power, or money. And most people, most scientists? They won’t stick around for that unless they have to. It means the person who runs all of this is blackmailing them, or keeping them some other way. They don’t care about anyone but themselves. And money … well, there are easier ways to get money. Ways that don’t involve hurting people. This person wants power, wants people to fear them. That means we know some things about them.”
Stephen paused. “Like what?”
“They’ll have people here,” Arisha explained. “They always have informants, and they make sure people know it. They also have people who do their dirty work. I came here because there were rumors of a facility, gunfire and screams. Something went wrong at the facility. That means whoever owns the place will have someone here to deal with that. Someone people are afraid of.”
There was silence.
“We can deal with that,” the woman said finally. Her Bulgarian was heavily accented.
Arisha shrugged. “I can help.”
“We can’t allow you to know any more than you already do,” Stoyan told her.
“I already know almost everything,” Arisha pointed out. “I also know that if they’re doing experiments, they might be able to tell if someone’s a Wechselbalg.” She looked around the room. “And I’m pretty sure I’m the only one here who isn’t.”
Stephen smiled slightly. “Close enough.” He could practically hear Michael’s clipped response to that equivalency. Of course, he was making assumptions his brother was alive.
But in all things, he held his Queen’s truth to be his own.
He looked around the room and came to a decision. “Very well. If you’re willing to accept the danger, and listen to our direction, we would be happy to accept your help. Where do you suggest we begin?”
“Find the enforcer,” Arisha answered promptly.
“And how do you propose to do that?”
She gave him a look. “How did I get Filip to do what I wanted? I didn’t even have to talk to him and he was running off to find me information.”
She frowned when the man began to laugh. What started as a chuckle grew to a full-fledged laugh and it was a good few moments before he recovered enough to speak.
“Poor Filip,” Stephen explained. “He was everyone’s bait.” He looked at Stoyan. “Where is he, by the way?”
“Safe,” Stoyan said shortly. He stole a glance at Arisha, and looked away hastily when he saw her watching him as well. “I’m having him held in a building here. He can be slippery – he always wants more. I need to keep him from leaving until I can explain that the people who run the facility will hurt him, not pay him.”
“And you’re sure you can explain to him?” Jennifer asked. She did not like the look of Filip.
The man was a coward and a liar.
“Filip always looks out for himself,” Stoyan explained. “He will not want to die.” He jerked his head at the stairs. “Come on. We will make a plan, and this woman –“
“Arisha.” She spoke her name, half in defiance of him calling her ‘this woman’ and half to hear him say her name.
He paused. “Arisha,” he said finally. “You will tell us how you plan to get to the enforcer and how to stay safe.”
She spoke without thinking. “There is no safety.”
“If you are with a pack, they protect you.” He was adamant. “That is how it works. We will not let you go unless we have a plan to keep you safe. Do you understand?”
Stephen watched as Arisha struggled with this new knowledge. It was difficult for a human to understand this world, but unlike some, Arisha seemed to understand the concept and perhaps appreciate the way packs cared for one another.
Although her actions spoke of an independent spirit for much of her life – as he could see by the fact that she snuck into the house to eavesdrop, and the fact that she was here alone – it was not because she did not want a pack. It was simply because she had not ever had one.
She nodded. “And I will protect all of you.” Her head looked down at her hands as she flexed her fingers. “I know I don’t have claws,” she said as she raised her head to look them in the eyes, “But I will. As much as I can.”
—
Hsu sank down in the snow. Her legs weren’t even shaking with exhaustion anymore. That had been long ago. Then had come the burning in her muscles, and the cold seeping up through her boots. Now, she was just tired. She hardly noticed the cold anymore. It seemed like it was a part of her. They had been walking for the better part of two days, struggling their way through the rough terrain as they circled Sofia by a wide margin. The wolf seemed to have a plan but she did not tell Hsu what it was.
“Please,” Hsu murmured. “Just a moment?” Her Bulgarian was still accented, even after so long.
The wolf paced in a circle. It growled. The noise sounded more frustrated than anything.
“I can’t … go any farther right now.”
The wolf disappeared into the brush, and Hsu gave a helpless cry as she struggled to stand up. She was being left behind. Of course. Her legs wouldn’t work to lift her up.
She scrabbled at the bark of a tree, ripping her skin, but she was not strong enough to stand any longer. She sank back into the snow, tears seeping through her lashes.
She had never once cried in the long years of her imprisonment at the facility. Tears were a doorway to weakness she could not afford.
Now, in the end, it seemed she could not be strong any longer. Minutes crept by as the tears froze on her cheeks and she watched the blue of the sky. This was not a bad place to die, she decided.
It would not be violent at the end. She had heard that when you froze to death, you felt warm at the end. And she deserved to die.
She knew that.
A rustling in the bushes startled her, and the wolf reappeared, dropping two dead rabbits onto the snow between them. It began to collect branches from around them, and then nosed through her pack and pawed at the wood with its snout. Since they had fled the facility, it had growled at her every time she tried to start a fire. Now, it seemed to have decided the need was great enough.
“Thank you.” Hsu clinched her hands in front of her face and breathed on her fingers until they were mobile, and fumbled to start a fire with the branches the wolf provided.
The snow melted away beneath it, but the chemicals burned merrily. Hsu held out her hands and bit her teeth on cries of pain as the feeling came back. First, it was pins and needles, then unimaginable pain. The wolf lay down in the snow and watched her.
The black eyes were inscrutable.
“What do you want from me?” Hsu asked her.
Then she realized how that sounded. “You’ve … allowed me to live, even after what I did to you.” A possibility occurred to her. “Are you bringing me to your pack?” There was a quaver in her voice, and she hated herself for it. She lifted her chin. “I will accept my fate. You will not have to worry about me pleading for mercy and disgracing myself.”
The wolf stared at her silently.
Hsu opened her mouth to speak. She did not know what she expected to say, but the words that spilled out told the story of how she had come to the facility. An ill-advised mission, no backup and without any supplies reaching her and Tsai. The first, terrifying, meeting with the man who ran the program.
Hugo. He made sure everyone knew his name.
He tried to make sure everyone feared him, too. Hsu hadn’t feared him.
She was accustomed to party officials who pursued their own ends without a thought of whether anyone else got hurt. She listened to Hugo talk about the old ways, and the rules of the world, and she managed to keep an obedient look on her face.
She was also accustomed to party officials who liked to tell themselves their quest for power was somehow noble. She had long ago stopped caring about the lies people told themselves.
The one who terrified her was the man who stood behind Hugo—Gerard Cordova. He liked to hurt people, and there was no staying safe from a person like that. Worse, Hsu knew that she would try. She would try to keep out of his way, even knowing that it was futile, and if he ever decided to hurt her, she would do anything to stop him from hurting her anymore. They would both know he was going to kill her, and he would enjoy her humiliation as much as he enjoyed her pain. When she saw that Hugo held Gerard’s leash, she made it her mission never to earn Hugo’s wrath. That had worked … until two days ago.
Now she was a marked woman.
There was a silence when she finished speaking. The wolf was still watching her.
“Can you understand me?” Hsu asked her. She had never been sure how much humanity remained when the changers turned into their animal forms. The wolf did not answer.
Hsu bowed her head. She felt a sudden peace, and she looked up with a smile.
“I tried for years to stay safe,” she explained. “I’m free now. Gerard will come for me no matter what I do. That means there’s nothing to be lost by trying to get justice. I don’t know if you can understand me right now, but I’m going to make this right—as much as I can. I know where there are some other facilities. I’m going to try to set the experiments free.” She shivered a moment as the small fire crackled, “I’m dead anyway.”
Sleep was claiming her now. She lay back, using her pack as a pillow, and fell asleep with the sky fading to darkness above her.
Irina sank down in the snow to watch the scientist as she slept. It was a good story … if it was true. She didn’t want to believe it, but, she did. She wrestled with her indecision. Once, she would have said the choice was black or white for the scientist: do terrible experiments, or refuse. Wrong, or right.
But she would have said the same thing about herself. She would have said that she would rather defy them and be killed than go along with anything … and she had learned that wasn’t true.
She had obeyed sometimes, too beaten down and hungry and alone to do anything more than hope for survival. She obeyed them, even knowing that her obedience helped whatever horrible purpose they were serving.
It was one of the reasons she could never go home. She could not bear for them to know what had happened to her. Better they thought she had died quickly than see what she had become. Irina laid her snout on her paws and stared into the dark forest.
This form was her refuge—it scared the scientists, and no one knew whether she could understand them or not. This form was the reason she had been taken, but it was still the one thing they couldn’t really break.
She blew out her breath in a long chuff and curled herself into a tight ball, draping her tail over her nose to warm it.
She did not want to pity Hsu, but the scientist was far from home, too. She had done what they asked sometimes, but Irina had also seen evidence of disobedience.
The woman was not cruel to the experiments like the other man had been, the one Irina had killed. Some part of her, the old part, argued that the sins were unforgivable. She should kill this woman and be done with it.
But when they got to the other facility in Bulgaria—Irina’s target—she would want another person there with her.
She told herself that the woman would make a good distraction, if nothing else. She could not afford to get soft.
—
“I’m so sorry!”
Gerard cursed. He looked down at his shirt and tie, now stained with red wine, and then looked up at the waitress who was about to lose her job. Except, it wasn’t a waitress. Pale blue eyes stared at him, the pretty face horrified, pale brown hair curling softly around a heart-shaped face.
“I am … so sorry.” She spoke English with a pronounced accent. “I am such a fool. I will make it up to you, sir. I swear. I will buy you a new shirt—I know a tailor in town. Your tie….”
“Think nothing of it.” Gerard swept out a chair for her. “How about you share a drink with me?”
Women who wanted to apologize were his favorite sort.
“What can I get you to drink?”
“No, no.” She gave a delightful laugh. “First I spill wine on you, and then you buy me a drink? No, it is too much. I will—”
“I insist.” He flagged the waiter over and gave an order. “Will you be in town long?”
“A few days.” She dimpled. “I am a travel writer. I came to see Sofia—the nightlife, the markets.”
“Is there much to see?” Gerard could not stop himself from frowning.
She laughed again. “No. That is why they sent me. I must write that it is terrible here since they left the Soviet Union.”
“Ah. So it does not matter what you see?” he confirmed, an eyebrow raised.
“No.” She looked sad. “I thought maybe I would look around anyway. But….” She shrugged. “Who goes to a nightclub alone? It will be late, and…. really, there is no reason to go. I can make something up.” She smiled. “I am sure your visit is more useful.”
Very much so. Gerard allowed himself a true smile. “Yes. But I am also looking for some diversion.” If he found himself unsatisfied after he spoke to the researchers at the facility, he could always take out his frustrations here—and she would only be another sad story, a tourist tragically slain on vacation. It would probably serve her newspaper’s purpose better than any column she could write.
She blushed as he looked her over. “Mister….”
“Cordova.”
“Mister Cordova, I hope you have a lovely trip.”
“Are you staying in the hotel?”
“Yes. Room 214.”
“I will be occupied late tonight, but perhaps when I am done, I will call you.”
She blushed harder, but like every foolish woman, she was taken in by a tailored suit and a handsome smile. “Yes, uh…” She seemed to win an argument she was having in her own mind. “I would like that.”
“Good.” He stood, buttoning his coat. He hoped that she could not see either his satisfaction … or his contempt. “Enjoy your wine. And—I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Arisha.”
“Exquisite—just like you.” He gave her a half bow and a charming smile, and strode away.
He had preparations to make.
Arisha watched him go, her eyes narrowed slightly as the practiced smile faded from her face.
Yes. This man was the enforcer, and she would bet that his business tonight was a surprise inspection of the facility. She typed out a quick text to Stoyan and stared after Gerard for another moment before sipping the wine.
If he was going to pay for it, she might as well enjoy it.
But she shivered as she thought of his eyes. Oh, he was charming. He had a stunning s
mile and very good manners, and he was careful to broadcast his wealth and generosity. Still, something about the way he looked at her made her feel like she was prey.
—
“Arisha says that a man named Gerard Cordova will be going to the facility tonight.” Stoyan set down his phone. He smiled. He had doubted Arisha could find anything, but she had struck gold within only a few hours, asking around in town for any rich new arrivals and then waiting in the hotel lobby for her target to arrive. His phone buzzed again and he picked it up. He scowled.
