Weaken the Knees (The Immortal World Book 6)

by Shannon A. Hiner

  “Serena, nothing I did was that bad.”

  Her best friend was silent for too long.

  “Seriously!”

  Finally, Serena spoke, her voice low and irritated. “Rene, you know I love you. You’re like a sister to me. I wasn’t in that room. I don’t know what happened. But I saw the aftermath. And the human is dead. So you tell me how this happened.”

  “I—” Rene faltered.

  “And don’t forget you need to report to Hadrian tonight.”

  Son of a—

  Serena hung up. Didn’t even say goodbye.

  Hand clenching too tight around the phone, Rene took it from her ear and set it down before she could break it. She didn’t have the time to replace it. Again. This month.

  Stephen Smart was dead. Apparently of his injuries. How bloody damned convenient for him. An icy knife of dread shifted in her stomach. He wasn’t the first person she’d tortured. She knew what she was doing. How could this have happened? Did he have some heart defect she didn’t know about? Had she unwittingly nicked an artery? Impossible, she would have known immediately. Hell, Will would have said something.

  Would he have? Again his face flashed through her memory. The flesh behind her eyes felt tight, as if she would cry. Vampires didn’t cry. She took a deep breath, letting the unnecessary but soothing oxygen expand her diaphragm and fill her little used lungs. It helped. A little. Not enough.

  How could that dumb, useless human die now and ruin everything? Even if she was going to have to kill him anyway. It would have been slightly more humane . . . What was she going to tell Hadrian?

  The phone rang again. She didn’t trust her hand to hold it, so she touched the button to answer it and turned on the speaker phone. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Kaplan, this is Sarai Westcott from Hadrian’s office. I am calling to remind you that you have a standing appointment with him in one hour’s time.”

  “I know,” she growled at the phone.

  “Hmph,” Hadrian’s secretary said. “Don’t be late,” she warned and promptly hung up.

  Two hangs-ups in one night. Rene must be in rare form.

  Fine. She’d go to her meeting, then straight afterward she was investigating Stephen Smart’s death a little more closely. Sure, it might be guilt talking, but something just wasn’t sitting right.

  Chapter 11

  How many white suits did Hadrian Catane own? That was the most important question, obviously.

  After the brief run-through of everything her team discovered—far too short to be considered impressive—Rene was forced to conclude with the last thing she wanted to tell Hadrian. “Before coming here I just learned that Smart is dead.” She stared at the shoulders of his white suit, the collar, his bright green tie covered in dozens of converging geometric circles. Anything but his eyes.

  “Dead?” Hadrian repeated.

  “Yes, sir.” Blasted faerie dicks, now she was calling him sir.

  “How did he die?”

  He would ask that. “I don’t know. I intend to investigate after our meeting.”

  Hadrian cleared his throat, leaning forward slightly. “You heard he was dead, but not any word on how he died?”

  Fists clenching in her lap, Rene tried to keep the irritation off her face. “I was told—”

  “Ms. Kaplan, you will do me the honor of looking me in the eye when you speak to me,” he said, voice low and full of authority. “I am unaccustomed to feeling as if I’m not present in my own office.”

  Her knuckles were so white she thought they might burst through her skin. Not the right night for this meeting. Dealing with Hadrian’s unchallengeable authority took more concentration and preparation than Rene could currently claim. This was going to be a disaster. She tried not to breathe, but her body was rapidly regressing toward its human comforts. It craved breaths sucked in through her mouth, deep into the lungs, then let slowly out through her nose.

  She couldn’t do that in front of Hadrian Catane. She had to be in control. Because he was in control. Always perfectly controlled. He would think less of her if she couldn’t be too.

  But she couldn’t be.

  The scraping of her chair against the floor filled the room and caused Hadrian’s light brows to rise. Rene was up and pacing across the room before she could stop herself.

  “It doesn’t make sense.” She made sure to look him in the eye as she paced. “Look, I don’t mean to brag, but this isn’t my first rodeo. I know what I’m about. He shouldn’t have died. Unless he had some previously undiagnosed heart problem, or an unseen injury, or it was completely unrelated to my questioning.”

  As she spoke, Hadrian leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. His golden green gaze was sharp on her, but not accusatory. “So it has been posited that your tactics resulted in his death.”

  The speed of her pacing nearly doubled. “Well yes, but it shouldn’t have. It wouldn’t have. I’m telling you, Hadrian. I know what I’m doing. I do. I can’t understand it. Something else has to be going on—”

  “Kaplan,” a short bark, “kindly cease your laps. You are wearing marks in my hardwood.”

  Rene stopped abruptly, fidgeting in place with the effort it required to stay still. An intense longing for Tanner bit into the depths of her stomach. He let her pace. He knew how to soothe her when she got like this. When her mind was too full for her body to be still.

  “Thank you,” Hadrian muttered. “You are right to look deeper into his death. He was a prime hostage, and if something other than your zealous tactics did him in, we need to know. However, do not become consumed by it. He is dead, and that is that. It is unfortunate that Megan and Faber were seen and recognized as vampires. Combined with Smart’s disappearance, you will have your work cut out for you tracking the remaining Venor, and I doubt this Mirsad person will appear again. What is your plan?”

  Plan? She didn’t have a plan. When was she supposed to have developed one? The second after she found out about Smart? Or the second before coming to this disaster of a meeting? They were one and the same, and in that second developing a new plan had been the farthest thing from her mind.

  She gave in and took the breath.

  Gulped it in. It burned going down her esophagus and into her lungs and it burned all the way back out her nostrils. She wouldn’t have been surprised if dust motes had come out with it. She watched for them, but nothing. Feeling considerably more steady, she unfroze her body from where it stood helplessly and crossed back to Hadrian’s desk.

  Rene folded herself deliberately into the chair across from him and placed a hand on each arm rest. No, that wasn’t right. She folded them over each other in her lap. And crossed one leg over the other. She thought of ocean waves rolling in, seagulls crying, the smell of seaweed and salt. All was calm. All was peaceful. Son of a cheap whore, was she about to start singing “Silent Night”?

  “Megan and Faber are going to switch humans. Change perspectives, see if one or both of them notice something new. I’ll have Kendra check all of their backgrounds for any connection to this Mirsad guy. See if he pops up anywhere, track the name and any international cognates. He didn’t have a foreign accent, but he may have learned to change it. I’ll send William back to that meeting place, dig into it and see if anything helpful was left behind. If not, we’ll find out who owns the building and if the space was rented and by whom. I want Kendra looking even deeper into the finances of the main three also. And their families.” Rene looked up from where she’d been counting off fingers on her left hand. “She may break a few laws. Or a lot of them.”

  Hadrian nodded and signaled her to keep going with a negligent wave of his hand. Human laws meant little to their kind, but she figured it would be safest to warn him ahead of time. “What else?”

  “I’m going to personally haunt each human on Kendra’s call list from the meeting tonight. Someone either knows a werewolf, or is a werewolf. And I’m going to find them. I don’t like the idea of th
e wolves being involved in this.”

  “Good,” Hadrian said.

  “But first,” she growled, “I’m getting to the bottom of Smart’s death.”

  He raised his brows with irritating calm.

  Fingers clenching toward fists again, she barely kept her eye from twitching. “I’ll multitask.”

  “Like a pro, I’m sure.”

  No one could be that calm naturally. No one. Unnatural. What if he was a robot? A vampire robot . . .

  “Anything else, Kaplan?”

  She sucked her teeth to keep the curse in. Hairy werewolf balls or some such nonsense. He wouldn’t appreciate it. But Christopher fucking Columbus, he was annoying. “Not unless you’ve got any requests.”

  The side of his mouth twitched. Wait, did it? Had she been staring at that unnaturally still face for so long that she’d just imagined muscle movement? Did vampire robots smile? Maybe . . . if they were programmed that way. She didn’t think the H-Bot was.

  “Then thank you for coming by, and I will see you next week.” Hadrian nodded to the door.

  Yep. She’d imagined it. There was nothing on that face but supercilious serenity. Standing, Rene saw herself out before she could mutter aloud any of the awful words driving around like bumper cars in her brain, battling to see which combination would make it to her tongue first.

  ∞∞∞

  “Bat shit-faced, muzzle-humping piece of faerie by-blow, I swear—”

  William looked up as the door of the conference room crashed open, hitting the opposite wall while simultaneously admitting Rene to the room. He cleared his throat, trying—unsuccessfully—to hide his smile. He covered the lower half of his face with a hand instead. “Yes, you do.”

  She glanced up, eyes ablaze like violet fire. Oh, she was mad. Not frustrated or irritated. Livid.

  He swallowed back any other words that might have threatened to break the now taut silence. Will hadn’t seen Rene this mad since . . . since . . . Glory, he didn’t think he’d ever seen her quite this mad. Not even the time Melchior Mendel took her booth at Fletcher’s. Fletch banned both of the Fraccas vampires from the premises a full ten years after that row.

  Her head swiveled, taking in each face of her team with a coldness that burned. Her gaze was like dry ice dragged across bare skin. Even Megan was hushed by it, looking down at the table moodily rather than meeting Rene Kaplan’s stare. Faber twitched beside Will and that broke the spell.

  “What in the bloody blazing depths of hell are you all doing here?” It wasn’t one of her best. In fact, that one she’d been in the middle of when she walked in had been far more impressive . . . even if Will really didn’t know what “muzzle-humping” meant. He didn’t want to, in all honesty.

  Kendra’s eyes were wide and she shrank back in her seat. Easy to forget how young she was, until she did something like that. The other vampires in the room were old enough to have seen a few showdowns. Faber was young, still under one hundred, but he’d been turned by Garran and kept close to Venaygo leadership for years. He’d probably seen more than one vampire throw a tantrum. It wasn’t pretty. The older ones tended to bottle it up until there was nothing to do but explode.

  Not that Rene bottled anything up. Ever. And not that she wasn’t incredibly attractive in her rage. That fire in her eyes, the lethal grace of her movements . . . Will flexed his shoulders and was about to look away when she caught his eye.

  It was a stare-down with a wild animal. One that would go for the throat the moment you showed an ounce of weakness.

  He let go of the urge to look away, meeting her gaze evenly and without expression. Not a blink. Not a flinch. Or he’d be dead. (Well, more dead . . .)

  “Well?” Rene said finally, when no one volunteered to speak.

  “Awaiting your orders, Captain,” Will replied without lowering his eyes.

  If he’d still been a religious man, he would have said a prayer just then. He very much doubted the Great One listened to the prayers of his kind though, and even if He did, would that be enough to stay the unrelenting rage of Rene Kaplan?

  Blasphemy? Probably. But was he wrong?

  Rene started barking orders at the lot of them, sending Faber and Megan off after the remaining Venor leaders, though switching their assignments, and giving Kendra a laundry list of research. She didn’t forget Will, of course, ordering him back to Salt Lake City to run down more leads. The others didn’t question or waste a minute. They all wanted out of that room and away from her rage as fast as possible. Kendra had moved her equipment into one of the smaller offices down the hall, and didn’t hesitate to shimmer directly out of the room as soon as Rene’s attention was off her. Megan and Faber were out two seconds later.

  Only Will remained in his seat.

  “Did I stutter or are you deaf?” Rene spat at him. His eye caught on the fingers of her left hand though. They trembled. Just a twitch really. Telling, that. She was on a precipice. Of what?

  Will stood slowly, making a show of tucking his chair and the others back under the table as he made his way around it and closer to her. She wasn’t a petite woman; he could just barely see over the crown of her dark-haired head. She was still staring at him, trying to hold his gaze in her power. It took all his strength to resist the pull. To approach deliberately and not let the rage rolling off her in icy waves dissuade him. He didn’t reach for her hand, much as he ached to.

  He was being split in two by the divergent needs of his mind and heart. Mind told him to get out of that room. Rene was a funnel cloud swirling closer and closer to the ground. Heart—and body along with it—was screaming at him to take hold of her. Let that tornado touch down on his soul and utterly wreck him if need be. But never let go.

  Stopping less than a foot away from her, Will looked down at Rene and waited. She wouldn’t be cowed by him, never had been. Everything he did seemed to be perceived as a direct challenge. She didn’t treat anyone else that way, he noticed. The few people she cared for were treated with a fond tolerance, like that of a child toward an aging parent or a younger sibling. Everyone else she treated as a joke. She was impervious to their cares, worries, and insults.

  But with Will—with Will everything was a direct challenge. An opposition that must be met with force of will and a good offense. The longer he knew her, the more hope he felt in that reaction. Rene was the kind of person that, if she didn’t care about you, you didn’t exist. More than one person had said he was dreaming, it was hopeless, but he couldn’t let himself believe that. Would never believe it. She could drive a wooden stake through his heart and he’d die the final death believing there was hope.

  And that might happen sooner rather than later. She’d been a loose cannon since Tanner’s death, and hunting vampire hunters seemed to be making it worse.

  Rene looked up at him, shoulders squared and eyes still ablaze. If he’d had breath, it would have been taken away. Something must have shown in his eyes because she stiffened. Some of the fire in her gaze dimmed. She wanted to look away, he could feel it, but now Will had her trapped.

  “Rene,” he said. “Talk to me.”

  Her eyes flicked to the left without warning, then back to him. Guilt and frustration warred over her expression before hardening back into rage. “I have nothing to say to you.” She stood even taller then and swung back around, making it one step through the door before disappearing.

  Her momentary lapse told him what he needed though. Her glance in the direction of the interrogation room where they’d held Stephen Smart shamed Will. Smart hadn’t said much of any use. It wasn’t clear if he was really that good under the pressure of torture, or if his knowledge was just that limited. They would have had to kill him eventually, in accordance with Hadrian’s Laws, but he supposed the fact that the human went as a direct result of Rene’s methods weighed on her. Never did it occur to Will she would feel guilt over the wannabe vampire-killer’s death. In his defense, the way in which she questioned Smart the night before had b
een merciless and coldly professional.

  The realization that Will didn’t know Rene as well as he thought was startling, and, considering the dark turn it took, alarming. But this was war, and there were no good guys in war. Only casualties.

  ∞∞∞

  Smart’s body was no longer in the interrogation room. That probably shouldn’t have been a shock, but for some reason she’d expected him to be left where he fell until she arrived. Texting Wade Elliot, (she was avoiding Serena at the moment), Rene examined the room while waiting to find out where the vampire hunter’s body had been stowed. The blood spattering the white floor was no more than it had been when she left the room the morning before. Not enough to kill a human. Bending over, she examined the chair he’d sat in. Similarly spattered in Smart’s blood, it gave no further indication as to how or why he died.

  Rene closed her eyes and pictured the room as it had been. Heard his labored breathing, thudding heart, repressed whimpers. Unbidden, Will’s face also flashed through her mind. As he was the night before, and as he’d been just minutes ago. No doubt he’d seen the monster within. And he wanted her to talk? She snorted. He wanted an opening. For some sort of intervention, most likely. Between their worried looks and obvious maneuvering, Rene wouldn’t be surprised if he and Serena put one together one of these days soon.

  Her phone finally buzzed and she looked down to find Wade Elliot’s answer. Taking one last look about the room, Rene tucked the phone in her pocket and shimmered to Genocide. Straight into Errin Kaye’s shop. Appearing outside his exam room door, she was surprised to find him sitting at the desk right in front of her.

  Kaye didn’t even look up as he continued writing. “It is considered polite even in our society to knock on the door, or better yet, call ahead.”

  “Where is Smart?”

  He frowned and looked up. “Is that a proper sentence? Shouldn’t you say, ‘Who is smart?’ Or, perhaps more existential, ‘What is smart?’”

  “The human,” she ground out. “Where is his body?”