by Anna Leonard
“What does She say?” Lily put capitals into the word, the same way he had.
“She says you know. You know. You have to tell me! I can’t stay here any longer. Tonight, it’s my last chance. The last chance there will ever be. I have to get it right.”
“I’ll trade you,” she said, finally going back on-script, to the palpable relief of the others in the room. “I’ll tell you what I know…and you give me back what you took. Unharmed.”
There was a silence. “I need…”
“You won’t,” she said as persuasively as she could. He was not going to kill another beast. Not one more. “Not once I tell you what I know.”
Another silence, the weight of his decision hanging over them.
“All right.”
“Where are you? I’ll need to show you…You have to have everything just right.” It was a risk, but based on his use of a specific pattern and the elaborate preparations of his last hiding spot, Jon thought that he would respond well to the suggestion of a ceremony or set-dressing that needed to be done.
The Serpent gave her directions. She didn’t know the area, somewhere out of town proper, but Abraham nodded as though it made perfect sense to him.
“Be there. An hour.”
And then he hung up.
“Wasn’t he supposed to say ‘and come alone’?” Lily wondered, as much to break the grip the tension had on her as to actually wonder.
“He’s too focused on himself, his own needs,” Jon said as Abigail gave Abraham a thumbs-up, indicating whatever they were doing with the tech had worked.
“Selfish,” Lily said, this time out loud. “He’s always been selfish.”
Her lover gave her an odd look, but continued, “Anyway, they only really say that on television shows. Real criminals know that only an idiot goes in alone, without backup.”
“Ms. Malkin?” Abraham approached them. “If we’re to be there on time, we need to get moving. You will drive your car. We will follow at a distance. Try to keep us in your rearview mirror at all times, but don’t be too concerned if we disappear—we will have you on display at all times.”
“Display?”
“We put a tracker in the vest and on your car,” Jon said. “Just in case we get separated by traffic.”
“Oh.” She thought a moment. “You’ll take it out again, after.”
“We have to account for every bug and bite at the end of every mission,” Abraham assured her with a perfectly straight face. He might have been kidding. She didn’t think that he was.
The technician packed up her stuff, and Abraham and Jon went into a huddle off in the corner.
Aggie, who had been watching silently, came up and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. His other hand reached into his pocket and came out with what looked like a small cell phone.
“Take this.”
She did, turning it over in her hands.
“If anything goes wrong, or even feels like it’s going to go wrong, you just press this button here, the green one, and you’ll have half a dozen very cranky cops attached to your hip, k? Don’t you wait on those federal nitwits.”
He didn’t like this; his feelings were clear on his face and in his voice. But he was going to put on a good, confident show for her. She couldn’t do anything less for him.
“I got it, Aggie. Let’s do this thing.” She tried to put a swagger into her voice that she wasn’t feeling at all, and gave a twisted grin in return before the agents came back with a tangle of wires and microphones to attach to her, and Aggie stepped into the background.
Abraham had told her to park at the far end of the lot, away from the other cars and most of the lights. She pulled into a slot and turned off the engine, and an SUV with tinted windows came up beside her.
Five minutes later she had been surrounded by half a dozen federal agents, having her jacket taken off and the electronics that had been attached to her double-and triple-checked, and adjusting the fit of the bulletproof vest under her jacket. They didn’t think he would shoot her, they assured her; it was standard operating procedure, sending anyone into a potentially dangerous situation. Plus, they still weren’t sure what he had used on the guards.
“I really don’t like this thing,” she said, tugging at the confining weight of the vest.
“Leave it alone,” Jon said as he elbowed aside the last tech and adjusted her shirt with almost impersonal hands, letting his fingers linger a bit longer than might be normal at her waist. His touch was loving, but his voice was, barely, all business. “Just forget it’s there, go in and get him talking. All we need is for you to engage him, get him to tell us where he has the cat. We can’t risk it getting loose once we have him.”
Lily nodded. It could have been worse. A tiger, for example. But any big cat was dangerous, if injured, or hungry or frightened. And in the hands of a half-mad, untrained psychopath? It was a disaster waiting to happen. And she was walking right into the den, so to speak.
He couldn’t fiddle any longer, and sighed, stepping away. “It would be simpler to just go in there and take him out. I could have gotten a sniper in position…”
“He’s not worth a sniper,” Lily said, echoing Abraham’s decision. “And you need him alive.”
She wasn’t just talking about the bureau. Jon needed this guy, too. He needed to talk to him, study him. Add that information to how he worked. And, not incidentally, justify his decision to go through all of this to catch him. The feds didn’t need to be involved in all this, the state and city police had made that very clear. But Special Agent Patrick had put his fingerprints all over the case, and now he had his own people running the show.
His reputation was on the line.
She had never been important to anyone before.
Yes, you have. And been discarded once you were no longer useful.
It was different now. Jon Patrick was ambitious, but not a user. He would not abandon her. She had to believe that, or she’d never be able to walk in there.
“Piece of cake, right?” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, picked up her purse, and walked away from him and into the restaurant.
A well-dressed and very handsome young man met her the moment she walked in the door. “Good afternoon. Do you have a reservation?”
“I’m…supposed to meet someone at the bar.”
“Of course. This way, please.”
It was a nice place. Out of the way, but pretty, and the air smelled of—she sniffed the air, lifting her chin slightly as she did so—it smelled of steak, and fresh herbs, and the tang of wine and spirits.
She suddenly, badly, wanted a drink.
“Can I help you?” the bartender asked. He was also very handsome, if not so well dressed.
“Ginger ale, please?”
The one thing she wasn’t going to have was alcohol. Not until they had this guy, and she was home, and she decided right then and there that as soon as this was all done and settled, she was going to go down to the shelter and adopt a kitten. A gray one. Or maybe one of the tigers.
She felt the cool plastic of the receiver hidden in her collar. They could hear her, and she could hear Jon if he flipped a toggle or some high-tech variation. The weight of the vest was like a tether to the earth, convincing her that this wasn’t all simply some strange hallucination.
She reached into her pocket and felt the cell phone Aggie had given her.
She left it in her pocket. She wouldn’t need it. Everything was going to be fine.
Her ginger ale came and she paid for it, idly twirling the straw to make the ice sink and then rise up again. Was she supposed to ask if there was a reservation under her name? Or maybe Serpent, table for two?
Or would it be more accurate to say it was a table for four?
“Lily Malkin.”
She turned at the voice, and was greeted by a pleasantly bland young man with an open, friendly expression on his face. She started to open her mouth to say that yes, she was Lily, when t
he gentle blue eyes shaded dark, narrowed, his entire face becoming harder, more predatory.
The man from the shadows.
The man who had haunted her un-dreams.
Her lover.
Her killer.
“Lily.” Jon’s voice in her ear. “Lily, is it him? Give us some info!”
The man in front of her raised his hand, drawing her attention away from the facial overlay. Something dangled from his fingers, a dull clay-red and ugly and—
Lily swayed, trapped by the amulet in his hand. Her gaze narrowed, and her vision grayed to black.
“Lily!” Jon’s voice in her ear, unheard. “Lily, talk to me!”
Chapter 17
Lily opened her eyes to a gray haze and aching muscles. She lay very still and tried to remember. Walking into the restaurant, ordering a drink. A man, approaching her. And then…nothing.
As her vision cleared, she realized that she was lying on her back, staring up at a featureless gray ceiling. No, not quite featureless. It had a texture to it that was almost familiar….
Concrete. The ceiling was made of concrete?
She turned her head to the right, and noted that the wall was made of concrete as well. No windows. No lights, except one dim lightbulb hung high up on the ceiling.
The room was, in fact, almost pitch-black. But she could see. Not quite as clear as day, but well enough.
“Your pupils are dilated again,” she said. “You’re using whatever light is available, like a cat….” Like a cat. Her eyes, dilating. Her fingers, flexing as though she was kneading, displaying claws. Her ears, hearing things she could not possibly hear. I’m losing my mind….
She almost convinced herself that she imagined the noise that followed her vocalizing. Her body froze in place, apprehension crawling all over her skin. There was another, similar noise, and Lily moved her head slowly, slowly on the cold—concrete again—floor, forcing herself to look to the left.
One look, and she sprang backward, sliding to her right—or she tried to, until the cold metal cuff around her wrist reached the end of the chain that was bolted to the floor, halting her progress.
What the hell?
The black-rimmed eyes of the great cat lying next to her watched her curiously, as though wondering what strange thing the hairless kitten would do next.
She was chained to the floor. She was—her brain starting to kick in slowly—stripped down to her underwear and bra, and chained to the floor of a windowless room. Made of concrete. Cold concrete. Next to a very large, very-much-not-a-moggy feline.
It blinked, the pale green eyes alert, but the pose unthreatening. A long, narrow tail flicked once, thumping down on the floor, but otherwise the cat didn’t move from its side-sprawled pose next to her.
Literally—even after her attempted bolt, there was barely a foot between the two of them. The cat was grayed out in the non-light, but she could see well enough to tell that it was not quite as long, paw to ears, as she was tall, with lean muscle and a sleek build to go with that lazy tail. A surprisingly small, almost triangular head. Huge paws, with claws that would glint under a desert sun.
And it, unlike herself, was not chained or tied to anything.
“Oh God.” Lily forced herself to start breathing again, and slowly blinked her eyes at it, the way she would a cat in the shelter she was trying to reassure. She had no idea if the gesture would work with a great cat.
It made that noise again. Not a purr, or a meow, or a roar. More like a chirp, like you would expect to hear from something the size of a groundhog, not a big cat. Almost as though…it was saying hello.
It seemed rude not to respond.
“Kurr, kurr,” she ventured, hoping she wasn’t actually saying, “Hello, come eat me while I’m chained up here and you’re not.”
It chirruped at her again, still watching with deceptive laziness, its eyes closing and opening slowly the same way hers had. A cheetah, her memory told her. The great hunting cat of the desert. The royal cat of the pharaohs.
The cheetah from the zoo. They had been right. Fat lot of good it did them now.
“You deserve better than this, swift one,” she told it.
A grinding noise drew both their attention: a door was opening in the far wall. Light from outside came in, making Lily squint in pain.
“You brought others with you,” he said in accusation. “You were wearing police gear. A wire.”
The Night Serpent; backlit, she couldn’t see his face. A haze surrounded him, making it difficult to focus. She didn’t need to. She had known his face once better than she knew her own. Dark, handsome. Like Jon. But nothing like him.
“You didn’t say to come alone.” A joke, she wasn’t sure how she managed it.
The foot that hit her ribs was a shock, and the cat growled but didn’t move.
“You can eat him if you want,” she said to the cat, refusing to let the man see her in pain. She didn’t know where these wisecracks were coming from; it wasn’t like her to mouth off. But it wasn’t like her to be stalked by a lunatic, to become an FBI-approved piece of bait, to be drugged and stripped and chained to a floor, either. She was, she discovered, royally pissed. She glared up at her captor. “Or was that what he was supposed to do to me? Eat me?” How hungry did a cheetah have to be to make human flesh smell good?
He shrugged, less indifferent than refusing responsibility. “If the beast harms you, it is Her will.”
A voice came out of her throat, her jaws moving, but not her words. “She cast me off long ago. Your doing.”
A blade, a dark shadow, a searing cold pain in her side…Nothing compared to the pain of Her eyes turning away, refusing her….
Lily forced the memory down. She could not afford this, not now. Whatever was happening, she had to keep her mind clear. No confusion, no dizziness, no anything other than logical, rational thinking.
He came forward, allowing her night vision to see him more clearly, but the haze remained. It wasn’t a trick of the light, but rather her vision. The flesh was ordinary: a man of regular build, shaggy blond hair and mild features. Underneath, or over: the man she remembered in her nightmares. The face she saw outside the hospital, then again in the restaurant. The man from her past, her very first past. Had he been there in the others, too? The times between, where nothing had gone right, dooming her to repeat, over and over again…
“She cast us both off,” he said. “Promised us everything, and delivered nothing. The power you gave me, it should have taken me to the next level, given me the abilities I craved, the abilities you have.”
“You deserved nothing!”
His leg swung out again, crashing into her ribs. “All I needed was to turn the key in the lock you provided. All power and glory would have been mine then, with Her power at my disposal. But the key would not turn!”
The pain allowed the memories to sweep back over her, filling the spaces in her brain. “And they found you,” she gasped, glaring at him. “Found what you had done. And you were judged…and found wanting.”
“They stripped me of my status. Cast me out, cast me from power.”
“They didn’t kill you. A mercy you didn’t show to me.”
It was insane. Lily knew it, even as the words came out of her mouth. Talking to this man as if they were entirely different people.
She was Lily Malkin, damn it. She was an American. She lived in the twenty-first century. She was a bank teller, for God’s sake! She was not an ancient Egyptian priestess of some cat-headed god she didn’t even believe in. And he was not an Egyptian high-caste noble with a thirst for power that overrode all other considerations and morals. It was impossible.
She would not accept it. She would not.
“You will tell me what I need to do. This time the key will turn, and I will be able to call forth the powers of the underworld. Be as one with the gods.”
Real or unreal, both bank teller and priestess spoke with one unified voice: “You’re insane.”
>
He smiled at her. “Yes. Of course I am.”
Lily blinked. Oh.
He spoke a word that resonated of command, and the cat rose to its feet slowly, almost as though moving against its will. “You see, it would love to attack me. It would love to rend me apart. And yet it cannot. I spent the years since awakening attaining the charm that protects me from claws and teeth.” He touched his chest, and she saw a thin silver chain around his neck, dropping down below the collar of his shirt. The same thing he had used to—distract? Hypnotize? Control her, back in the bar. “She hungers for worship, in this cold world…but Her beasts do not trust me.”
“Imagine that,” Lily said dryly. He bent and tugged on the chain at her wrist. It came free from the floor with a flicker of sparks, and Lily tensed, wondering if she could rush him, knock him over….
Her ribs twinged where he had kicked her, and she relaxed her muscles. Even if she could take him by surprise, all he had to do was release the control he had over the cheetah, and she’d have about as much chance as a wounded gazelle of escaping. And where would she go, half-naked and shoeless? She didn’t even know where they were, or how long…
Jon. How long had she been missing? Why hadn’t he found her yet? Damn it, what use was backup if they didn’t back you up?
Lily eyed the chain that now rested in his grip. “I have no idea what the key is, or how to turn it. She lied to you. She will not give you anything.” The gods did not share, willingly or otherwise.
“She never lies. You know how to make Her lock turn. You just don’t remember that you know. Yet. Get up.” He yanked on the chain, and she had no choice but to obey.
They made an odd little parade: the cheetah walking ahead of them, tail slung low, ears flicking first forward then back as it led the way along the narrow hallway, then the Night Serpent, looking like a refugee from the suburbs in his khakis and button-down shirt, leading a half-naked woman by the arm—by means of a foot-long metal chain.
She was cold. Wherever they were, there wasn’t much by way of heating. The floor was smooth and cool under the soles of her feet, and goose bumps were rising on her arms and legs.
