Death Knell

by Hailey Edwards

  “War is paranoid. I doubt anyone suspects the full scope of her endgame. Thanases will be aware of most of the pieces. He’s her mate, she would confide in him, but Sariah can guess them. She knows how her mother operates. She understands how her mind works. Her tactical thinking is an asset worth more to us than any locations she fingers. I expect her to point us toward a few active sites while hiding the ones most likely to be occupied by her mother.”

  “How can you trust her when you just admitted you expect her to balk at handing over the prize?”

  “No, what I expect is further negotiation.” In fact, he sounded resigned to it. “She’ll give us a taste, proof she’s willing to cooperate, and then she’ll barter what we really want to get whatever it is she’s after.”

  “So, you do think she wants more than her freedom.”

  Wu tried looking innocent, but it didn’t fit his face well. “Didn’t I just say as much?”

  Eager to prove two can play the innocence game, I asked, “So are you going to tell me about chala?”

  “She’s Commander of—” He wiped a hand over his mouth, plucking at his upper lip before he lowered it. “She’s in charge of The Hole.”

  “I got that much.” I pressed my luck further. “She works for or with your father?”

  “She’s one of his underlings,” he allowed after a moment’s consideration. “What is it you’re really asking?”

  “No offense, but you lost your shit when she passed on that message from your dad.”

  “Our relationship is strained.” And now so was his voice. “You mustn’t view our bond through the lens of yours with your father. A message from mine means a visit is imminent. It’s a warning, not a greeting.”

  From everything Wu had let slip about his dad, any father/son bonding time would be on par with corporal punishment. But what had Wu done to merit the sudden interest? How had his actions in the past several weeks earned him a slap on the wrist?

  Granted, I hadn’t seen him for a week when he showed up at the bunkhouse, but seven days didn’t give him much room to cause this kind of trouble. And it was trouble. Wu hadn’t lost his cool for no good reason. The worst reaction I had ever seen from him was a clenched jaw or fist. That vocalization technique—that was next level pissedoffedness.

  “Okay,” I said, playing it off like it was no big deal, “so we brace for a visit.”

  The expression Wu turned on me was that of a man grasping for a lifeline. “You would stand with me against him?”

  “Is that how it is?” Honest curiosity had me asking, “I’m either with him or against him?”

  “Yes,” he said, leaving no room for doubt. “Either you’re an ally or an enemy.”

  Proving I can’t leave well enough alone, I had to push one last time. “Which are you?”

  His smile was all teeth, his voice pure silk. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m glad you’re on my side.” I slumped down in my seat, trying and failing to get comfortable. “Your dad can’t be worse than you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Adam watched Luce sleep, an old habit he lacked the willpower to break. She was never more real than when she was awake, her ancient eyes blazing with righteousness. Had any Otillian ever burned brighter? Such a weapon he had forged, and he was lucky to still be here to wield her. Though, if his father had caught wind of them, he might not live to see the final battle. Not much could kill him but . . . his sire would crush him when he discovered his betrayal.

  Their would-be spy was out cold. He had given Sariah twice the amount of sedative the doctor recommended. He was taking no chances with Luce’s safety. Their tableau flummoxed him. It was evidence of Sariah’s subconscious trust in Luce. She had writhed out of his grasp, sensing the threat to her, but she burrowed against Luce and slept as secure as a cub with its mother. Except Sariah had never known a mother’s love, not in the way Luce understood parental affection.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, and the number broke him out in a cold sweat. He rose, strolled to the rear of the cabin, and closed his eyes. “Father.”

  “I sensed your presence today,” he said with polite interest. “Yet you did not come pay your respects.”

  “I had other matters to attend,” he said coolly. “I apologize for not showing you due reverence.”

  “Sarcasm, Adam. Is that the best you have to offer?” A dangerous thread of interest wove through his words. “You are my son, my heir, my will made flesh. You ought to thank me for raising you so high.”

  “I am grateful.” His fist clenched until his knuckles popped. “Your interest in my pursuits honors me.”

  “On that, we agree.” His amusement portended nothing good. “You brought a guest with you. That’s rare. You prefer to work alone.”

  “A partner.” He kept playing bored. “Given the timing, I thought temporary backup might be prudent.”

  “The cadre’s reemergence,” his father supplied. “I had forgotten this was their time.”

  Such things were beneath his notice. His eyes were ever turned skyward. So long as the protections sandwiching Earth held, he had no reason to bother himself with what he considered a nuisance. A minor irritation. An annoyance better left to his son. Father did so enjoy delegation.

  Adam was tired. So tired. Of it all.

  “Three of the four have breached,” Adam informed him, seeing no reason to lie. “The fourth should arrive shortly.”

  Eagerness coated the blade of his voice. “How many have you killed?”

  “None,” he admitted, knowing it would be seen as a failure.

  “Do you require assistance? I am happy to oblige, my son.”

  He would wipe Luce and the others off the face of the planet, along with half the population, human and charun. There was no standing against his father.

  A reminder that came too late.

  “I have matters well in hand,” he echoed Luce’s earlier sentiment. “Famine has been secured as well as War’s second in command.”

  “That I had not heard.”

  Adam ground his teeth. He hated delivering news to his father. He much preferred to avoid him altogether. “Testing has already commenced.”

  Each species of charun existing on Earth did so at his father’s sufferance. The only reason species aside from theirs were allowed to live at all was because Adam had dedicated his very long life to finding ways to wipe out other breeds if the occasion called for such mass-extinction. Father tolerated no threats to his power. Not even from his son. Especially not his son.

  The only species resistant to their methods were Otillian. Their chameleonic nature made them the charun equivalent of cockroaches. Impossible to kill unless you stomped on each one individually.

  “This will be your second time having a cadre subject. Do have a care with this one. The last one expired before yielding acceptable results.”

  The thing about experimentation was it made allowances for errors, such as the syringe full of a rare venom he had injected into the carotid of the previous incarnation of Conquest to end her suffering. “Yes, Father.”

  What his father had never understood was the only way to maintain balance was for every predator to fall prey. Checks and balances kept an ecosystem healthy. Earth had no such equilibrium. His father had no such rival.

  But his father hadn’t faced off against Luce Boudreau, either.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Even on a private jet, the trip from Montana to Mississippi still lasted eight hours. I slept six of them. When I woke, Wu was in an ugly mood, and I didn’t try pulling him out of his funk. I didn’t know him well enough to trust what I said to make things better and not worse.

  There was no limo waiting for us this time. The White Horse SUV had been reclaimed too.

  Sariah was alert enough to have opened her eyes, but there was no one home behind them yet. Wu dumped her in a wheelchair and pushed her to the curb.

  I didn’t wait for him to make arrangements. I di
aled up Cole. “Can you swing a pickup for three?”

  “I think I can manage,” he rumbled, and it vibrated down my spine.

  Headlights winked to life three rows in front of us in the parking lot, and the vehicle circled, pulling to a stop in front of us. The window lowered, and Cole leaned out, taking in our third wheel. He threw the SUV in park and exited the vehicle with a bounce in his step that had me curious.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I observed. “What’s that in your hand?”

  “I had this made for you.” He held out his palm, and a set of ornate handcuffs plated in rose gold rested on them. I traced the design, reminiscent of the rukav, and I lost the ability to speak. “I wanted to give them to you before you left, but they weren’t finished yet.”

  Beside me, Wu snapped to attention. “Is that rosendium?”

  “Yes,” Cole said, not taking his eyes off me.

  “You didn’t have to do this.” I accepted them, though. Their weight was a familiar comfort, and the fact he had commissioned the piece made them precious. Too valuable to waste on Sariah, who might ding them just to spite me. “Thank you.”

  “She doesn’t understand.” Wu dropped his gaze to Cole’s wrists, one of them exposed, both inflamed. “How could you bear it?”

  “What is he talking about?” The gift took on an uncertain weight in my hands. “Cole?”

  Wu backed off and left Cole to his explanation.

  “Rosendium is a metal produced by Otillians.” He smoothed his thumb over the lowest band on my arm, the one above my wrist, and the resonance made my knees quiver. “They harvest it from their bodies and use it to bind their coterie to them.”

  Understanding struck with the force of a two-by-four to the face. “You let someone pry out your bands?”

  “The moment you captured Famine rather than kill her, I knew the day would come when you required a means of restraining her.” Determination brightened his eyes. “When you took Sariah as well . . . I had to act, to protect you.”

  “But at what cost?” I clasped his hand, the one with a naked wrist, and turned it gently from side to side, inspecting the ridges of skin, years’ worth of scar tissue. His hatred for his bindings had carved a valley in his flesh as he picked them out, over and over. But they regrew. Whatever Conquest had done—whatever I had done—to him, it was permanent. Or it was until I decided otherwise at the very least. “You should have told me. I would have—”

  “No.” He softened his voice. “You can barely set foot inside a hospital because of what those doctors did to you.”

  “That’s different,” I protested. “I was a child then.”

  “Let me do this one thing.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, and this time I kissed each of his wrists, right over the swollen flesh.

  A shuddering exhale gusted through him, and I wondered if he was affected by the gesture or the brush of my lips against his bands. Mine were sensitive. And War had shown me they were more than decorative, more than a means of subduing our coterie. She had struck hers against mine and—I had no words to describe the sensation.

  One day I would work up the courage to ask Cole what else was possible, but not tonight. Not in front of Wu and Sariah. A tiny suspicion was bubbling up in me that a fraction of my previous touch aversion was thanks to humans’ lack of resonance. Contact from them was a screeching discord while my coterie and I vibrated on the same frequency. Other charun were less offensive to my senses, but still discordant.

  Allowing myself to compartmentalize how Cole had brutalized himself for my sake, I focused on what had been worth the sacrifice. “How do they work?”

  “The metal itself is harmless, to humans and charun, unless it completes a circuit.”

  “That explains the design.” I turned the cuffs over in my hands. “These have to connect to be effective?”

  “Yes.” He pointed to the keyholes. “They’re double latched.” He showed me how the tricky second lock functioned. “They’re no more effective than standard cuffs unless you lock them on your target.”

  “What’s with the chain?” I gave it a tug, and the links held firm, but there was something odd in the way they had been anchored to each cuff.

  “The cuffs also function as bangles,” a soft voice murmured from the shadows. “They will give you limited control over whoever wears them.” The small woman from the hall stepped forward and drifted into Cole’s shadow. Her gaze fell to his wrists, and she winced. “Handcuffs to subdue, bangles to subjugate.”

  A warning growl pumped through Cole, but the woman didn’t shy from him.

  No, I was the one who terrified her.

  Jealousy failed to rouse this time, and I was glad for the reprieve. “You designed these?”

  “Yes.” Self-loathing made her choke on the admission. “I owed him a favor. This clears our debt.”

  The woman’s reappearance captured Wu’s interest, and he sidled up to me. “The craftsmanship is exquisite. Could you forge another pair?”

  “No,” she spat. “Never again.” She made a sweeping gesture over her chest that came across as Catholic but couldn’t be. “I have never used my talent for evil, but that—that is cursed.” Her gaze latched onto mine. “He promised me you were different. He vowed you were here to save us. Please. Please. Destroy the cuffs after. Let them serve your purpose. Wield them with my blessing. But do not force me to live with the knowledge such a foul thing exists, and that I birthed it into this world. No one deserves to have their will stripped. These cuffs are an abomination.”

  “I give you my word,” I said before Wu finished voicing his protest. “I will destroy them the second I don’t need them anymore.”

  “That’s not good enough.” Resolve starched her spine, and she inched away from the safety Cole provided. “When the fate of this world is decided, I want them gone.”

  “All right.” I allowed a smile at her ferocity to bend my lips. “When the fate of this world has been decided, I will destroy the cuffs myself. Failing that, I will entrust them to someone who will carry out my wishes. You have my word.”

  The woman wilted on the spot as the head of steam she’d built up evaporated. “Go then, with my blessing.”

  Cole offered the woman a formal bow then kissed the back of her hand. “You have my gratitude.”

  “You can keep it.” She flushed at his praise but paled when she caught me watching. “I like you well enough, Nicodemus, but not so much that I would step between you and your—”

  His cold stare froze her on the spot, the terror she exuded when staring at me now leaking out in front of him.

  I had taken a half step forward to diffuse the situation when what she said registered. Nicodemus. Not Cole. Not Heaton. Not any combination of the two. But Nicodemus. A name I had never heard applied to him. And yet she had known. How had she known?

  “Forgive me,” she whispered. “I misspoke.”

  “You got your assurances,” Cole snarled. “Now go.”

  The woman crumpled in on herself but nodded and backed into the darkness until it absorbed her.

  Cole rubbed a hand over his face, sighed in my direction, then went after her.

  I let him go without a word.

  “He never told you his name,” Wu surmised, touching his knuckles to the side of my neck.

  “No.” I cleared my throat. “His secrets are his own.”

  “Trust will come in time,” he assured me, and a knife to the heart would have hurt less.

  For all that I trusted Cole, he didn’t return the favor. I couldn’t blame him. But forgiving him was hard.

  Conquest shared history with him, and its depth and breadth had formed a chasm between us I was still bridging, plank by plank. But this woman leapt the divide with a single bound, a single word.

  His name.

  Nicodemus.

  “Thish ish better—” Sariah slurred, “—than televishion.”

  The handcuffs had lost their shine by the time I cl
amped them around her wrists and hauled her to her feet. We gave Cole fifteen minutes to return, and when he didn’t, we took his SUV back to the hotel.

  Wu kept his own counsel, and I returned the favor. Some burdens weren’t lessened by sharing them.

  Up in our suite, Maggie curled against the arm of the couch with a book in her hands. Miller sat on the floor, his shoulder almost touching her ankle, a manual pulled up on his phone if the array of components fanning around him were any indication. The quiet week I spent at the bunkhouse, surrounded by books, felt like it happened years ago, to someone else.

  Armageddon was hell on a TBR pile.

  They glanced up in unison, but the first snarl shot from the far corner of the room, where Santiago hunched over a table scattered with circuits and wires.

  “What the hell is she doing here?” He shot to his feet, brandishing a Phillips screwdriver like a sword. “Are you insane?”

  “You bartered with her.” Miller figured it out first. “Do you trust her to keep her word?”

  “We do,” Wu answered for me when it turned out I was still having trouble finding my voice.

  “What does Cole think about this?” Portia, who set aside Maggie’s book, stood and joined Santiago. They stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to bar Sariah from our rooms. “Does he know?”

  “He picked us up,” I rasped. “He knows.”

  “Luce?” Portia’s voice wavered, teetering on the edge between personalities. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Worst lie in history. No one believed anyone who claimed to be fine because they never were. “He gave me these.” I lifted Sariah’s linked arms and let them catch the glint off her wrists. “She won’t be a problem. If she breaks her word to us—” and I had no doubt she would attempt to wriggle out of our deal now that she was free, “—these will keep her in line.”

  Or so I hoped until Cole explained how they worked in full detail.