INVISIBLE POWER BOOK TWO: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS)

by Buckham, Mary

  Receive. Break free.

  “Alex.”

  Ignore him. He only seeks to stop you.

  I was struggling to do just that when Bran clamped his hand across my mouth.

  Noooooooo!

  I thrashed and kicked and tried to bite him, but it did no good. Bran’s hand smothered me. Tears leaked from my eyes and I didn’t care. I was useless.

  Van.

  Then I heard it. Another sound. Another wolf’s growl.

  Twisting my head—I couldn’t lift it very high but I spied the cinnamon coat I knew so well. A black band of fur striped his tail as he raced past me, sparing me only one quick wolf glance.

  Dad? Here?

  It couldn’t be.

  Where I lay, sandwiched between Bran and the gravel biting into my skin, my face, I was powerless but I could listen.

  I heard when the attacking wolf reached the group of men.

  “Merde,” Bran swore. I doubted he even knew he’d said the single word aloud.

  What was happening? I sagged, using my ears to tell me as I couldn’t see. Why wasn’t Bran doing something to help Van?

  Male shouts in French. Some screamed what sounded like an order. Then the last thing I expected. The snarls and thudding of two wolves attacking one another.

  Van would never fight Dad. But was that Dad I saw? Great Goddess what could I do?

  A sudden zzzzzz whir. A quick animal cry.

  Then only Van’s growl. A yelp. Then nothing.

  Bran eased up a smidge as I stopped fighting him, instead focusing on what was happening deep into the park.

  I could finally raise my head. The wolf that had sped past me was on the ground, curled in a fetal position.

  “Dad!” I shouted.

  They’d killed him.

  CHAPTER 36

  “He used a binding spell on me!” I shouted, even though François was only a few feet from where I stood, hands clenched, muscles tensed to fight, back in the warehouse space I’d left only hours ago. A space that seemed larger earlier and now couldn’t contain the anger pulsing through me. “He bound me and he did nothing to help my brother. Not lift one pinky mage finger to stop what was happening.”

  I marched over to where François leaned against one of the partition walls, his arms crossed, his face neutral, though I could tell he was holding on to his temper.

  Willie was hustling up some food in the kitchen area beyond a counter dividing half-wall. Staying out of the direct line of fire no doubt. Or maybe he was a smart charmer. Or just a smart Were.

  Not me. I was livid and looking for a target. But it wasn’t François as much as he wished he were anywhere else.

  No. I knew who I wanted to throttle.

  Back at the park I’d had a quick glimpse of my dad but before I could do anything Bran had cast a spell on me that rendered me speechless and powerless. It was the last part that stuck in my craw. That and his caveman way of yanking me to my feet only to swing me across his shoulder in a fireman’s hold as the wail of emergency response vehicles drew closer and closer. Then he jogged over to a car that François had collected and drawn up to the curb.

  I might as well been a sack of potatoes. Couldn’t move, speak, or help. And how the last part acid etched me from the inside out.

  And now Bran had vanished. Not in a conjuring way but in a drop me off on the couch, say something to François and Willie in French, and walk out, knowing it’d be a good twenty minutes before the spell wore off.

  But not before he left another larger containment spell wrapping the building. This was a warlock who could bring a person back from the dead, so when he didn’t want someone to leave a building, there was no getting out of it. I couldn’t even get cell phone reception. Which meant I’d been cut off from my team.

  Warlocks could try the patience of a saint and I wasn’t a saint by any definition.

  So I faced the next most convenient target and stabbed a finger at his chest. “That was my brother. And my dad. And you. . ,“ I was so angry I couldn’t even find the phrases I was scrambling for. Fear drives anger in me and I don’t know when I’d been more afraid. Not for me but for my dad and Van.

  “You Neanderthals had no right, no right to take me away.” The words were jamming in my throat as I pivoted and strode across the room, not trusting that I wouldn’t do something irrevocable to François.

  My brothers always said never piss off a witch.

  But François hadn’t grown up in the Noziak family. “You ever think Bran did what he did to protect you?”

  I whirled on him like a dervish on speed. “I never asked for his protection. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.”

  François’ brows slashed upward. “There are bigger issues at stake here than what you want.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was angrier at his calm tone, or his comment as I stormed back across to look him in the eye even as I had to stand on my tippy toes to do so. I growled through gritted teeth. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. But he was there. Doing nothing. Van was right in front of me. Alive. And now?” I threw my hands wide, when what I wanted to do was pound them into the walls. “Where is he now? I don’t even know if he’s still alive. Or if my dad is. Because of you three.”

  My gaze included Willie in my condemnation. He had moved to the dining bar but stepped back with a who-me expression on his face as I paced toward him. “You’re a Were for cripes sake. You could have stopped those men. But what did you do? Nothing. A big squat nothing.”

  He opened his mouth but I gave him my no-bullshit glare. “And don’t try to tell me you’re a recovering Were so were doing the whole non-violence thing.”

  “Even if I was?” he mumbled around a large bite of a ham sandwich.

  “Bullpuckey!” I snarled, pivoting and walking across the room to give myself some breathing space. How could someone even think of eating at a time like this?

  He waited until I was as far as I could get before saying, “Did you have any idea of the power of the Weres in that park?”

  “Says you.”

  He glanced at François who gave a what-can-we-do shake of his head.

  “And what about you?” I snapped at François. “You’re supposed to be here to help me. Why weren’t you doing anything back there?”

  He stepped away from the wall, his nostrils flaring. “And who said I wasn’t?”

  “So what did you accomplish? Shoo a few pigeons away?”

  “Didn’t have to with you wailing like a banshee. No doubt you scared a few birds from Trafalgar Square you were making such a ruckus.”

  I swear the man was cruising for a bruising. I took a step toward him, fists clenched. “At least I was doing something, Fido. Not cowering in the background.”

  Willie might be a recovering Were but he was still lightning fast as he appeared in front of François, acting as a barrier between me and the MI-6 agent.

  François smashed into Willie’s broader chest as the Were pressed the Brit back toward the wall. Both men might look lanky rather than bulky but I could see the strain in François’ face as he pushed back.

  Just then the front door opened and like a balloon suddenly popped, all of us turned our attention to Bran strolling in before coming to a sudden stop. “What the bloody hell is going on here?” he growled, looking at me.

  Oh, that was choice. As if I were the one at fault. He left me with a wus Were and dog who was as helpful as tits on a bull and thought I was the one causing all the problems.

  He had no idea what problems I could cause.

  Raising to my full height, which wasn’t anywhere near as tall as any of them, I still managed to look down my nose at them all. “Look what the dog drug in,” I snipped, before glancing at François. “Oh, wait, the dog’s already inside.”

  The British agent gave me a payback-is-going-to-be-hell look before speaking to Bran. “She’s all yours and you’re welcome to her.”

  He then stomped out of the room, brushing past Bran, b
efore he could say a word.

  “Have your panties in a twist, Alex?” Bran closed the door behind him as he strolled over to where Willie remained frozen, his gaze sling-shotting between Bran and I as if trying to time the explosion.

  As if I’d stoop so low.

  I crossed to one of three bar stools set near an arched window and shoved myself up on the nearest one, surprised the flimsy wood didn’t splinter beneath my grip.

  “You want me to leave?” Willie asked Bran.

  “Might be safer for you.”

  Oh, that was ripe. I was the least powerful of anyone in the room, the one who’d been trussed up like a turkey, and had no say in being caged in the warehouse, and now everyone was acting like I was the threat?

  But I held my tongue, waiting till the Were scooted out the door, leaving his sandwich behind. That showed how wary he was.

  And he should be. Bran had a lot to answer for.

  But as I turned my full focus on him I noticed what I’d missed before. He looked drained, the kind of weight-of-the-world-on-your-shoulders spent, with strain bracketing his killer-blue eyes.

  This was not the Bran I knew. The take the world on and then some, king of his universe, mover and shaker. This was a man fighting on one too many fronts and bracing himself.

  What had he been doing? Where had he gone?

  Even his tone sounded different, less in-your-face and more give-it-your-best shot as he picked at the sandwich before looking me in the eye. “Well, Alex, I’m here now. You want a piece of me? Take it.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Jeb lifted the cool washcloth to his head while sitting on the edge of the bathtub in Philippe’s black and white tiled bathroom. His cuts had mostly healed now, one of the boons of being a shifter, but the gash along his head had bled for a good long while.

  “Feeling better?” Pádraig said from the doorway.

  Jeb nodded though he wanted to growl, what do you think? His son had attacked him. Van, his firstborn, lunged at Jeb as if his father was a pesky coyote needing to be taken down.

  And Van had damn near done just that. Jeb couldn’t seriously fight back, not without harming his boy.

  He’d seen the crazed, vacant look in Van’s eyes. If he didn’t know his son, his scent, the markings of his wolf, Jeb would have said that hadn’t been Van. But it was. While at the same time it wasn’t.

  Raising his head to eye Pádraig who’d dragged Jeb’s wolf form away after one of the assailants had tasered him, he knew he owed the young man. “Thank you. For what you did back there.”

  The Irishman ran a hand through his ruffled hair. “It was close. Another few minutes and the feukeu would have collected you before I could.”

  “Feukeu?”

  Pádraig cantered one shoulder. “Police.”

  Jeb nodded then wished he hadn’t. His head felt like it had in his old rodeo days, after he’d been tossed from a bronc and landed hard.

  “Do you know why your son was there?” Pádraig asked.

  “No idea.”

  Jeb hadn’t mentioned that Alex had been there, too, but he was going to find out why. He knew who the man was who tackled her. Bran, the dress designer and the man who was supposed to have been brought before the Council less than an hour ago for suspected involvement in a scheme to drug preternaturals against their will. But the meeting had been put off now.

  The charges against this Bran were serious, with two of the Council members already agitating for a death penalty based on the man’s cousin’s involvement in using a similar drug against humans. If the Council had a full body, and hadn’t been dealing with the ramifications of a reported shifter attack against humans in broad daylight, the designer might not have been given another forty-eight hours to prove he was not involved in the drug issue.

  None of the Council members knew Jeb and Pádraig had been present at the park. Not yet at least. Nor did they know that the shifter who had broken the basic tenet of the last three hundred years; don’t show, don’t tell and never, under any reason, reveal yourself to a human had been Jeb’s son.

  The last time the Council had assembled in a full quorum, and even with Philippe’s calm guidance, the chamber had been crowded with several Weres agitating for representation on the Council. They’d always been angry that shifters were represented with a Council seat but not Weres.

  Jeb had been willing to listen to their complaints, which held some legitimacy. Wei Pei, the shifter who stood for both shifters and Were interests was older, the oldest of the members now that Philippe was gone. And the Chinese man was sometimes lax in his enforcement of balance among his constituents. He tended to favor shifter needs over Were needs, but not enough to bring the other Council members into the agitation between the two species. Until now. Especially with this shifter exposure.

  Now finding out why Van had acted as he did took precedence. The Weres held long grudges, and short of abdication of Wei, or allowing a pure-bred Were on the board, they would never be appeased by the elimination of one shifter as a punishment. The Weres could easily feel the shifters deserved to be removed from the board and Weres allowed species representation. As if that would solve what was behind Van’s actions.

  And even then Jeb knew the Weres would find something else to be unhappy about.

  The truth was they really were angry at the whole Council for not giving them what they really wanted—freedom to reveal themselves to the humans—as a more superior and dangerous race.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not and risk all the other preternatural beings.

  Pádraig cleared his throat as if searching for the right words. “If the Council finds that your son was the shifter responsible for the incident today, then you’ll have to excuse yourself from trying his case.”

  Jeb glanced up at the Irishman, wondering if Pádraig was being obtuse or politically sensitive. “If that knowledge is revealed, the Council itself will be destabilized with Philippe being gone, Wei Pei’s position compromised as having failed his species, both of them— “

  “Why both?”

  “The Weres currently feel underrepresented. If they receive what they want, which is a solid position on the Council, replacing or in addition to the shifter’s position, then the shifters will feel that the Council and Wei Pei in particular used the actions of one shifter to discredit the whole race.”

  Paraig nodded as Jeb continued. “If the Weres are given a seat over the shifters, there will be even more open animosity.”

  “And Wei Pei cannot be removed unless he dies.”

  “Correct. Discrediting Wei Pei publically by having him abdicate his position will mean he, and thus the shifters will lose credibility.”

  “Which will anger the shifters.”

  “And if Philippe’s seat is given to a Were, meaning both Weres and shifters are represented, then the other beings, including druids who would lose their seat, will be up in arms.”

  “Right ol’ mess isn’t it,” Pádraig stroked his chin as if finally seeing the whole picture. “So what do we do?”

  Jeb stood up, feeling the morning’s change into shifter form and back, in the stiffness of his muscles now. “We have forty-eight hours to find a way to downplay the event in the park to the human population.”

  “You mean the whole “It was a rabid dog” story?”

  Jeb nodded. “For the time being, yes. We need to discover why Van shifted in the first place, who those individuals with him were, and why Van didn’t stop his attack the moment he discovered I was there.”

  “You think he knew you?” Pádraig’s tone was diffident.

  “Of course he did.” That’s the part that had Jeb worried the most. That and Alex’s involvement.

  “What if there’s another incident?” Pádraig asked eying Jeb.

  “We have to make sure there isn’t one.”

  “Because even humans are not likely to believe there are two rabid dogs the size of overgrown wolves running through the streets of Par
is.”

  “Exactly. One attack we can contain. Two attacks and . . .” Jeb couldn’t even voice the next words. Two attacks and the Council, and thus all preternaturals, could be at risk.

  Pádraig resumed stroking his chin. “And the warlock?”

  Jeb caught himself. He’d forgotten, somewhat about the warlock. But not totally. “Leave him to me.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Van came to slowly, as if kicking and crawling up a very deep well. Struggling to orient himself. What day was it? Where was he? Why did he feel as if he’d been pummeled for hours? All of these questions slid away as awareness slammed into him with the sound of a familiar voice.

  The power broker screaming, “The experiment failed and I want heads.”

  “Sir, I beg to disagree.” Jean-Claude, the doctor’s voice, rumbled somewhere to Van’s right. “The drug was effective, as were the autosuggestions.”

  “He was to have done far more. Only one dead. And his sister still out of our reach. I’d say that was a failure.”

  The words dripped like vinegar in an open wound, one painful splash at a time. Who was dead? What had happened? And what about Alex?Van lifted his head that felt like it weighed more than his whole body and bit back a groan when he recognized where he was. Back in the cell. Still shackled against the stone wall, only with heavier chain now, more silver. But why? What had happened?

  “He’s coming around,” Jean-Claude murmured. “Bonne.” The doctor stepped closer, examining Van as if looking for something. “How do you feel Mister Noziak? Any after effects?”

  Van said nothing until the Were stepped close enough and Van lunged. There was no way he could have reached the Were but it damn well felt good to have the other jumping back.

  “He’s obviously fine,” the power broker snarled. “We need him ready for another trial. A bigger one this time. So there will be no doubt that shifters are unpredictable, dangerous creatures.”

  The doctor glanced toward where the power broker stood, out of Van’s line of sight. “But that may kill him,” he stuttered.

  “Not my problem,” the other said, and Van could hear the smug smile in his voice. “He’ll have served his purpose.”