Had he been listening at all? “I just told you that I was a drug addict and allowed a man to control me completely. How on earth does that translate to strong and courageous?”
Gregori lifted one shoulder, as if it should have been obvious. “You got away. You are here now, living life on your own terms, so clearly you found a way to break free of both the man and the drugs. That must have taken strength and courage.”
Ciera shook her head. “I was desperate. And besides, I had help.”
“Could that person have helped you if you had not helped yourself?” he asked in a quiet voice. “I think not. You do not give yourself enough credit.”
She gave him a small smile. “Maybe. Skye used to say that too.”
“Ah, this Skye, she was the one who helped you get away from Victor?”
Ciera’s eyes darted in the direction of the hidden cabinet.She was tempted to show him the picture that was her greatest treasure, but she didn’t trust him quite that much yet.
“She was amazing,” Ciera said instead, remembering the woman who had changed her life. “I bumped into her one day at a grocery store near the apartment. I was in tears because I had to cook dinner for Victor and some of his friends, and I couldn’t think of anything good enough. I suspect I was probably either high or needing to get high, which didn’t make my thought processes any clearer.
“Anyway, out of nowhere, this middle-aged woman with wild blue-streaked blond-gray hair and hippie clothes came and started talking to me. She ended up picking out a menu and putting all the stuff to make it into my cart, all the while smiling and chattering at me like we were old friends.” Ciera grinned at the memory. “I remember feeling comfortable with her because she smelled like pot. It turned out that she used sage smudge sticks all the time; they smell pretty much the same.”
She glanced at the battered Mickey Mouse clock that hung on the wall. Almost time to leave for work, so she’d better wind things up.
“After that I kept seeing her at the store, and one day while we were shopping together I reached for something on a high shelf and she saw the fresh bruises and the track marks on my arm. She told me she could help me get away from Victor, if that was what I wanted. We walked out of that store together and I never went back.”
“You see?” Gregori said, his dark eyes gleaming. “Strong and courageous.”
“I never could have done it if it hadn’t been for Skye. She got me clean, helped me figure out who I was without someone whispering in my ear all the time, kept me safe until I was ready to go out on my own. She saved my life.”
“She sounds remarkable,” Gregori said gravely.
“You have no idea,” Ciera said, the smile slipping away. “What was really remarkable was that I wasn’t the only one she saved. I like to think that we had a special relationship, but that was what she did—saved kids who were on the streets or being abused.
“I found out later that she’d grown up in a life of privilege and security, but she walked away from it and dedicated herself to rescuing others. I’ve never really known what drove her; something to do with a younger brother who committed suicide because of drugs, I think. She never told me the whole story. But she worked in a soup kitchen, and wandered the streets looking for teens who needed her help. And at night, she put on a mask and saved the ones she couldn’t get to in any less dramatic way.”
“Ah,” Gregori said, as if several pieces of a puzzle had fallen into place at once. “She was your teacher.”
Ciera shook her head. “She was my mentor. By the time I was ready to be taught, she was dead. Murdered by one of the men she thwarted. I rebuilt my life using money she left me in a strongbox. Changed my name, got this apartment, went to library school, and then studied martial arts and self-defense so I could continue the work she had done. And so I could find the man who killed her and make sure he paid for what he did.”
CHAPTER 12
CIERA waited for Sun to tell her she was crazy. That she should leave Skye’s killer to the law. That vengeance was not the response of a reasonable person.
Instead, he just looked thoughtful. “You need to learn more effective fighting skills if you are going to achieve your goal. I could help you.”
What?
“What?” she said out loud.
“I could teach you better fighting skills,” Gregori repeated, leaning back in his chair as if he had this kind of conversation over breakfast every day. Hell, she hardly knew the guy. Maybe he did.
“Why would you do that?” she asked.
“You have been of great assistance to me in my search for my mother,” he said. “I would be happy to return the favor. Besides,” he added in a matter-of-fact tone, “I will not always be there to come to your aid when you face overwhelming odds. I would prefer that you not die.” He, too, glanced at the clock. “I should really be getting back to the monastery. I am afraid there are going to be extra chores to make up for missing curfew.”
Ciera blinked at him. As far as she could tell, he was perfectly serious. There was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he might be teasing or making fun of her. What kind of would-be monk was this, that he was more concerned about explaining his absence from the monastery than he was about discovering that his meek library acquaintance turned out to be a vigilante street warrior?
“Yes, well. I’d prefer that I don’t die either.” This whole conversation was insane. Hell, this friendship, or whatever it was, was so far outside of her experience, she had no idea what to make of it. But if there was one thing Skye had taught her, it was to grab a lifeline when someone threw one to you. “So thank you. I’ll take you up on that if you really mean it.”
“I never say anything I do not mean,” Gregori said.
She believed him.
“Okay, then. I guess we’d better get going. Maybe I’ll see you at the library later?” She ignored the way her heart beat a little too fast at the thought. It was probably just the unexpected sensation that came from sharing her secret with another person. It was almost as if the weight she carried had suddenly become a little lighter. An illusion, she knew, but one she was planning to enjoy for as long as it lasted.
• • •
AS Gregori walked briskly back to the monastery, he mulled over the story Ciera had told him. He found himself somewhat bemused to discover that Ciera was not at all who he had assumed she was. He didn’t know why he was so surprised—after all, he wasn’t who she thought he was either.
He had been tempted, after she opened herself to him so freely, to confess his own unusual nature, and the truth about how he had healed her. Thankfully, they had run out of time, so he had not had to test the depths of her ability to believe the unbelievable.
He would have hated to have her think him mad, and refuse to be in his company. If he could not be around her, he could not teach her to better defend herself, and without additional training, he thought it entirely likely that she would end up in another situation akin to the one she had faced the night before. She would get herself killed, and he could not allow that, if for no better reason than that she was the first new friend he had made in decades. Not to mention her beauty and goodness.
Besides, now he really wanted to meet her former boyfriend Victor. Preferably in a dark alley somewhere, with no witnesses.
• • •
VICTOR paced back and forth across the bar floor, barely noticing the stink of rancid beer or how his two-hundred-dollar shoes stuck to the splintering wooden surface. Fury bubbled under his breastbone like acid, distracting him from everything but the group of men arrayed in front of him. A motley, unattractive crew, made even less appealing by their current attitudes, which ranged from indignant bluster to cringingly apologetic.
Victor was not impressed. Not by them. Especially not by their failure to carry out what he had been assured was a simple task, easily fulfilled.
“Would so
meone like to explain to me how it was that the six of you could not subdue a masked troublemaker half the size of any one of you?” he asked. It was clearly a rhetorical question, since the leader of the gang, a hulking giant of a man with a tattoo of a pit bull on the left side of his bald head and the unlikely name of Seymour, had already told Victor in excruciating detail exactly what had gone wrong with the ambush he had planned so carefully.
“No?” Victor said into the ensuing silence. “Then perhaps one of you would like to explain why, when I gave you explicit instructions”—this part was said through gritted teeth—“not to injure your target severely, but merely to give this person enough of a scare to make him think twice”—they didn’t need to know that the person they’d been confronting was a woman, or just who that woman was—“you got so carried away that you might well have killed him?”
The puddle of blood in the alley had been alarming in scope and size, as had the trail leading through the murky snow away from the scene. Victor still had an uncharacteristic soft spot for Ciera, and he would rather not have her death on his hands. Unless, of course, it proved to be absolutely necessary.
“It wasn’t our fault, Mr. Mendoza,” Seymour blustered. “That second guy, he came outta nowhere, and he was like Jackie Chan or something. I mean, I never saw anybody fight like that.”
“It seems to me,” Victor said slowly, enunciating each word carefully, “that you should have been prepared for the unexpected. Perhaps a gun would have been helpful. You do own guns, I assume.”
“Of course we do, Mr. Mendoza,” another one of the men said, sweat visible on his low forehead. “But you said not to kill this guy, so we just brought the knives and baseball bats and stuff out with us.”
Victor suppressed a sigh. Idiots. They were all idiots. This is why he rarely delegated the important tasks. It really was true: if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. “I don’t suppose any of you noticed anything about this mystery man who appeared out of nowhere. Something that might help me to track him down?”
“He was Asian,” Seymour’s second in command put in helpfully. “And really freaking fast.”
“That ought to narrow it down,” Victor said in a dry tone. “I’ll be sure to make a note of that.” He gazed at Seymour through narrowed eyes.
The man took an involuntary step backward, the way you would if you suddenly found a poisonous snake coiled in your path. “Hey, don’t look at me like that!” Seymour said. “It’s not my fault the damned ambush went down the crapper. You gave us bad intel. You told us it was going to be just one guy, and it was two. And one of ’em was a real hot-shit fighter. If we’d known what we was getting into, we woulda been better prepared.”
Victor pressed his lips together. This was getting him nowhere, and he had a meeting with a prominent city councilman in an hour. As far as most people were concerned, he was simply a very successful businessman.
“When I give you an assignment, I expect you to be prepared to deal with whatever comes up. If you are not capable of doing that, perhaps you are no longer suited to remain in my employ.”
Seymour opened his mouth to protest, and Victor casually took a Glock out of the pocket of his overcoat and shot him in the head. The huge man dropped to the floor with a thump that rattled the entire bar. For a moment, there was silence as the echo of the gunshot died away.
Victor turned to the gang’s second in command. “Consider yourself in charge,” he said. “Try not to screw it up.”
He walked out of the place without a backward glance and slid into the heated seat of his Hummer, popping open the glove box and putting the gun inside.
He pulled out into traffic smoothly, his attention only half on the difficulties of navigating the snowy streets. The other half was occupied with the question of Suzy and her mysterious savior. One of them must have been badly hurt in the attack last night, but his men had checked on Suzy—Ciera—and she had apparently shown up for work that morning looking none the worse for wear. And all of the gang members involved in the fight had sworn they’d never been able to lay a finger on the man who’d shown up so unexpectedly.
Victor tapped his gloved fingers against the steering wheel as he sat waiting for a light to change. Was it possible that the masked figure last night hadn’t been Ciera after all? What were the odds of there being more than one foolhardy bleeding-heart nutcase going around the city taking out drug dealers and rescuing teenagers? It didn’t seem likely.
But then, he had thought he’d put a stop to all that when he’d killed Skye Blue, all those years ago. The woman had been annoying enough, but then she’d made the mistake of stealing away something that belonged to him. There was no way he could have let her get away with that. She’d been becoming a nuisance anyway.
Ciera had no idea that he was behind her mentor’s death, of course. Or how high up he was in the cartel’s organization. Her poking around was beginning to bring her dangerously close to the truth, however, which was why he had arranged last night’s ambush in the hope of putting a good scare into her and making her back off.
Now, instead of accomplishing that goal, it would appear that he had a new problem to deal with on top of the old one: in short, this mysterious stranger. Still, it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He would just have his people find out if Ciera was hanging around with someone new, and then he would make sure that they both learned to keep their noses out of his business.
Soft spot or no soft spot, Ciera was either going to back off or end up being very, very sorry she hadn’t.
CHAPTER 13
SUN sat in lotus position on his mat, seemingly at ease in a room full of others doing exactly the same. His breathing was perfectly controlled, his posture straight. To an observer, he would appear to be deep in a meditative state.
In point of fact, he was brooding.
Calmly. Meditatively, even. But definitely brooding.
The lecture he had gotten from his teacher earlier still stung, although he could not, in all honesty, say that the man had been wrong.
When he had returned from Ciera’s apartment, still tired and wrung out from the involuntary healing episode, there had been a note on his door telling him to report to the lama who was his teacher and supervisor.
Lama Tenzin had been both understanding and stern about Gregori’s unauthorized overnight absence. They sat opposite each other on cushions in the lama’s room, which, unlike the standard monk’s smaller quarters, had a space set aside for teaching and meeting with a few students at a time. The walls were hung with colorful inspirational scrolls and pictures, and the single window overlooked a snowy yard that in the summer would be the garden. A single bright red cardinal pecked at a birdfeeder hung in a nearby tree.
“I am very sorry, Lama Tenzin,” Gregori had said. “I was helping someone in need and I fell asleep afterward. It will not happen again.”
Brown eyes gazed at him steadily. “Good intentions do not excuse bad actions, Gregori Sun. We have rules for a reason. You chose to be here, and in so choosing, you also chose to bow to these rules. You are free to leave at any time if you feel that this is no longer the right place for you.”
Sun had not been sure if the lama thought he had been out all night carousing—based on the haggard face he had seen in the mirror when he had washed up, the monk could hardly have been blamed for making such an assumption—or if he was simply reminding Gregori that no matter how limited the expectations of a novice were, there were a few rules that all were expected to follow.
Gregori bowed his head so low it almost touched the floor in front of him—a gesture of respect, not subservience.
“I understand,” he said. When he straightened up, he said with as much sincerity as he could muster, “I do wish to be here, Lama Tenzin. I need to be here. I shall strive to do better.”
The monk bowed in return. “I have every faith th
at you will succeed, if your destiny truly lies within these walls. I only wish I was sure that it does.”
Now, sitting in the meditation room, trying to calm what the Buddhists called “monkey mind,” and failing miserably, Gregori thought about how ironic it was that for centuries he had successfully meditated without a problem in the midst of storms and war zones and occasionally even bar fights, and yet now, in the very place dedicated to the activity, he still could not seem to maintain the focus he needed.
If Brenna was not already dead, he would happily kill her for what she had done to him.
He gave an internal sigh, recognizing the un-Buddhist nature of the thought, and let it go, floating away with all the other superficial noise that filled his head. Instead, he focused on his breathing, in and out, deep into the diaphragm. He could feel his body settle at last into the almost-boneless state of alert relaxation that signaled the brain beginning to generate alpha waves. For a moment, he was there, right where he wanted to be—focused and at peace.
Then a wash of vivid red and glaring white signaled the return of his bizarre vision of blood on snow. This time, there was also swirling gray, as a cityscape burned behind it, the smoke floating up to fracture a moonlit sky, the crimson of the flames meeting the bright scarlet of the blood as it ran down the middle of the streets, turning the snow to pink-tinged slush.
The people in his vision were all gray as well, barely visible, as though their presence lay over the scene as an afterthought. As in previous versions, there was no sound, an absence that somehow made the impact worse instead of better. He could see a woman clutching a terrified child, their mouths stretched open in silent screams that still seemed to somehow echo in his ears.
Snow fell from the sky in sheets, as if the full moon overhead were somehow shedding its skin. The flakes flew faster, the storm growing stronger and thicker until it obscured even the burning buildings, the whiteness blocking out the gray and then the red until nothing was left but snow. Snow and cold that sank into the marrow of his bones, freezing him in his tracks until he became a statue, carved out of ice, incapable of helping anyone escape the carnage and fury of the storm. Powerless. Useless. And destined to die with the rest in this unnatural hell of white and red, red and white.
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