by Kelly Meding
His voice had risen incrementally during the mini-rant. I put my hand on his arm and shushed him. He continued to glare, but not at me. At himself, maybe, or at his role in life.
“All I meant,” I said, “is that it seems unfair to call Rufus a murderer when he wasn’t the one who went in with guns blazing and set the apartments on fire.”
“No, but it is his job to take responsibility for his people, just like any good captain would. Maybe it doesn’t make him a murderer, but it does make him responsible. Just like it makes me responsible for everything you and the other Hunters under my command have done.”
“How many?”
“How many what?”
“How many Hunters have been under you?” He quirked one eyebrow, and I caught the subtle innuendo in my question. “I mean, how many Hunters have been in your Triad since the program began?”
“Officially? Six, including you.”
My lips parted. “In ten years? Really?”
“Yeah.” He turned and leaned on the wall next to him, his hand slipping into mine. I held it loosely while he spoke, grateful for his warmth. “Before you was Cole Randall, before Jesse was Guy Aldiss, and before Ash was Laurie Messenger. Ash replaced Laurie eight years ago, so she was my longest-surviving Hunter, but after you came, you three were the longest unit to survive intact. Four years is a damned long time for a Triad.”
I grunted, struggling to tamp down the grief that welled up when I thought about Jesse and Ash. Barely two weeks since I lost them, and I’d not given myself much time to grieve. For them or for anyone I’d lost. There just hadn’t been the luxury of time. It was easier to compartmentalize it and store it away.
“It’s funny,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder. “Except for that first night, I never really thought about the Hunter I replaced, or what his rank was in the Triad. Was Cole a good guy?”
He squeezed my hand tighter. “Yeah, he was. Good fighter, quick thinker. One of the few Hunters I’ve ever met who actually liked using a broadsword. Heavy damned thing, but it was his preferred combat weapon. He’d swing it at goblins like a baseball bat and make some impressive splatters.”
“I’m sorry he died.” It was a strange sentiment. A real live person had died a horrible, grisly death at the hand of some murderous Bloods to allow me to take my place in Wyatt’s Triad. Every single Hunter in the city was there because someone else had died. Just as Boot Camp was diligently training the kids who would one day take our places in the ranks.
“I’m sorry, too.” His voice was soft, strangled. “Did the Assembly say anything else useful?”
“Just to investigate Snow’s connection to the Triads and we’d find his motivation. My guess is someone’s team has tangled with him in the past, and all the hints they were dropping pointed to Rufus.”
“Too bad getting access to him now is going to be harder than robbing a bank with a rubber-band gun.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
We stood in silence for several minutes, until my neck started to ache. I straightened up and rolled it, then flexed my knees. Let some circulation back into my muscles.
“Legs okay?” Wyatt asked.
“Fine, I’m just getting tired of standing.”
“We could sit.”
“And tempt them to take longer? No thanks.”
“I don’t suppose they gave you a timetable on their decision?”
“I’d guess not much longer. They made their feelings pretty clear before they kicked me out.”
As if to prove my point, the door swung open and Jenner emerged. The grim line of his mouth told me my answer.
“I’m sorry,” Jenner said as the door fell shut. “But their decision is no.”
I blew a frustrated breath through my teeth. “I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not.”
“It was a close vote, believe it or not. I was impressed by those who supported you.”
“I guess asking who they are is useless.” On Jenner’s nod, I asked, “Were any of the bi-shifters on my side?”
“About half.”
“The man who asked questions, the one with the really deep voice? Which Clan was he from?”
Jenner shifted his weight, his eyes flickering away. Subtle hints to his discomfort. For a lawyer, he had a terrible poker face.
“He’s Kitsune, isn’t he?” I asked. He nodded.
Wyatt grunted, which earned him a strange look from Jenner. Not quite a glare, but certainly not friendly. “Well,” Wyatt said, “this has been a complete waste of time.”
“Not entirely,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t get what I came here for, but I did learn a few things I hadn’t otherwise known.” My pointed look was just for Wyatt. He held my gaze for a few seconds, then nodded.
“What is your next step?” Jenner asked.
“We wait for Phin to give us an update,” I said. “And we keep digging into who this Call guy is and, likewise, Snow’s connection to the Triads. Mr. Jenner, I hate to inconvenience you, but—”
“You require transportation.”
“Yes.”
“I can help you acquire a car, but after that my involvement must end. I cannot jeopardize my position with the Assembly by continuing to assist you.”
“I understand. And thank you.”
Chapter Nineteen
5:15 P.M.
Jenner helped us get a rental car, late-model, very discreet—something with wheels to get us around town for the next few days. After handing over the keys in the parking lot of the rental place, he extended his hand. I thought he meant to shake mine.
Instead, I pulled back to find an electronic motel room key and a business card for the All-Nite Inn. I stared at them, then at Jenner. “What’s this for?”
“In case you need a place to rest,” he said. “I keep a room there for business meetings, or nights when I just don’t feel like making the drive home. You may use it for the week.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jenner. That’s very generous.” It was a canned response, but it was genuine. A car and a place to stay. For a lawyer, I was really starting to like the guy.
“I wish I could do more. For what it’s worth, I think they’re fools for voting against you, and time will prove that.”
Part of me hoped he was wrong. “You know, I never did ask which Clan you’re from. You are Therian, right?”
He smiled. “You’re right, you never asked. And yes, I am.” With that nonanswer, he strode back to his Cadillac and climbed in.
Wyatt and I stood next to our dusky blue rental until Jenner had driven off, leaving us alone in a mostly empty parking lot. “Well, you got any bright ideas?” I asked.
“You still want to hear what Gina has to say about that Neutralize order she got five weeks ago?”
I nodded. “If we’re lucky, it has something to do with Snow and why he’s so pissed at us. It’ll waste time until Phin calls, right?”
“Right.”
I unlocked the rental and climbed into the driver’s seat. Wyatt slid in next to me. The engine shuddered and grumbled when I first started it, then smoothed out. I pulled out into a quiet side street and began looking for signs to take us back west.
“Where are you going?” he asked, cell phone out and open.
“That motel. It’s not too far from here. I can leave the bag somewhere safer than this car, and besides, I have to pee.” Something I hadn’t quite realized until I said it. All that broth I’d sipped down for lunch was ready to vacate the premises.
He put the phone on speaker without my having to ask—nothing more frustrating than a one-sided conversation you wanted in on. On the fourth ring, Kismet picked up with a terse “Joe’s Pizza.”
“It’s Truman.”
“Is there a reason the phone you’re calling from is blocked?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate; I smiled, turning us back toward the Axelrod Bridge and Uptown. “Any movement at Park Place?”
“Nothing so far. We’re kee
ping our distance, but I have to tell you, it’s starting to feel like a huge long shot. Not to mention a waste of resources.” Her side of the line crackled. She spoke to someone, words muffled. “Sorry. Nothing new on Call, either. We’re trying everything we’ve got, but with no luck.”
“Yeah, look,” Wyatt said, his tone as rude as I’ve ever heard him, “I may have another lead, but I need to ask you about something from last month.”
She hesitated. “Okay.”
“Second week of April, you got a Neutralize order. Who was the target?”
“You know we aren’t supposed—”
“Fuck what we’re supposed to do, Gina. You owe me.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant she owed him for my “death” or something else. Didn’t matter much, because while I navigated bridge traffic, she answered him. “The target was a vampire named Orlan, from the Emai Family. Mid-rank member, not royalty. The charge was willfully infecting humans.”
Damn. Nothing there painted a motive for Snow.
“Anything else?” Her tone said there had better not be.
“No, thanks.”
“Wyatt, where are you?”
“Around.”
“Look, I know you’re angry, and I know you’re hurting, but we need you. We’ve got rookies who need field training and—”
“No.” His entire face hardened into a scary mask of anger. I was glad I was driving and not being crushed under the weight of that look.
“Six other Hunters died at Olsmill, Wyatt. You aren’t the only one suffering.”
I hazarded a peek at his face. Fury melted into shame in the space of a heartbeat. We were outside of the loop now, beyond the internal problems the Triads were facing, but we could still feel their impact. Mounting odds and dwindling numbers, and their two most experienced Handlers were out of the field. Kismet was trying to keep a dam together with gum and duct tape.
“You still there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said, tone softer. “Look, we’re waiting on some information. When I get it, I’ll pass it along, okay? I just can’t come back in right now.”
“We?”
“Okay?”
“Yeah … okay.”
He hung up without further discussion and pocketed the phone. I let out a breath, glad she wasn’t pursuing the tongue slip. Not that Wyatt couldn’t have handled it. White lies were easy. I made a left one block past the bridge, the motel looming in the distance.
“Something tells me,” Wyatt said, “the Blood kill didn’t set this off.”
“I’d believe it if he were higher up in the Family,” I said. “But not mid-level, and not with the guy orchestrating all of this being human himself. Plus, I have no reason to doubt Isleen’s word that the Bloods are pretty well satisfied with the status quo.”
“So much for that lead.”
The All-Nite Inn was a few steps up from the last couple of motels I’d stayed in—clean parking lot, no graffiti on the walls or bars on the windows, modern paint choices. It was two levels, with a single balcony connecting all of the rooms, accessible at intervals by internal stairwells. It wasn’t a by-the-hour kind of place, but it was still a far cry from the Hilton.
Jenner’s room was number 224. I parked as close to our stairwell as I could, backing in just in case we had to make a quick getaway. With no luggage except my canvas tote of belongings, we probably looked like a couple sneaking in for an illicit rendezvous.
I put my bag on the floor near the bed and spun in a slow circle. It had a single king-sized bed and sensibly colored linens, polished fake walnut furniture, an acceptably understated painting on the wall, and modern electronics. Nothing kitschy or outdated. The mini-fridge looked new, and the tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion were from a decent retail chain. Not a bad place for a hideout.
Or whatever Jenner really used it for.
The bathroom was the type with the counter and mirror inside. I did my business, then checked my appearance. More color had come back to my cheeks, but even tied up, my hair looked like a dead animal had been glued to my head. Definitely needed a good shampoo. Or a fast chop with sharp scissors.
When I emerged, Wyatt was perched on the far corner of the bed, staring at the wall and seeming lost in thought.
“This is probably a terrible idea,” I said.
He snapped his head toward me, eyebrows arched. “Why?”
“Lately, motels seem to herald my imminent demise.”
For several seconds, he just stared dumbly. Then the joke sank in, and he cracked a smile. “That’s really not funny, Evy.”
“Then why are you trying hard to not laugh?”
His smile widened, and amusement made his eyes sparkle. “I remember something more pleasant than imminent death from our last motel stay.”
My stomach flipped. I remembered that night, too—slightly out of focus and fuzzy from the distance of death and time. Our only time together before my death. The way he’d held me. The brush of his mouth on my skin. I had craved sensation that night—one last electrifying moment before it was all ripped away, as though I’d known I was about to experience the worst agony of my life and would have to see Wyatt break as I lay dying.
A moment in time I both treasured and regretted.
“Evy, I’m sorry.”
I blinked. “For what?”
“For whatever I said that made you look so sad.”
“Wyatt, don’t.” I sat next to him, letting the squishy mattress sink under my weight. I was weary of the constant battle between my emotions and my memories. Between the things I wanted and the things lodged firmly in my subconscious that kept me from them. I was sick to death of fighting with myself.
“I shouldn’t have joked about that night,” he said.
“I think you’ve earned the right to be honest with me.”
He turned his hand palm up. I threaded my fingers around his and held tight. “And I think you have, too,” he said.
“This isn’t me being honest?”
Shifting to face me more directly, he reached for my other hand and I let him take it. “Evy, I think if you were being truly honest right now, you’d be beating me into a bloody pulp. Or screaming obscenities out of sheer frustration. Maybe both.”
I searched his face for hints of teasing. A glimmer of self-deprecation that belied the honesty I sensed in his words. I found none. Why the hell did I think I could run around and prevent a citywide Dreg meltdown when I couldn’t even sort out my own feelings? Or my relationship with my … what? I couldn’t even put a label on what Wyatt was to me. More than a boyfriend, less than a lover. A best friend I’d die for in a second, and someone I’d rather punch in the face than be gut-wrenchingly honest with. The confusing dichotomy had me tied in knots.
Four years of professional give-and-take between Hunter and Handler had been complicated by one moment of weakness on my old self’s part—the culmination of immediate grief impacted by two months of behavioral changes and undefined tension between us. Add to it the physical attraction to Wyatt from a woman who’d been so lonely and depressed that she’d given up and killed herself rather than deal with life. Season it all with the fact that every wound I’d ever inflicted on a Dreg—deserving or not—had been paid back in spades by a goblin Queen and her horny henchman. Then roll it all up in my own bruised, orphaned psyche, and I was a psychiatrist’s wet dream.
“I don’t blame you” was poised on the tip of my tongue. But if I was being honest, I did blame him. Not for anything that had led up to my death but for everything that had happened since. For waking up alone and frozen on a morgue table, for dragging Alex Forrester into my life and getting him killed, for the battle at Olsmill that left six Hunters dead. And especially for the goddamned quiver I felt in my belly when he smiled at me; the way just holding his hand calmed me down, and the constant, warm memory of his kisses. All things I wanted to feel over and over again.
I’d been running around in a constant state of agitation
ever since my resurrection, solving one problem after another. The closest Wyatt and I had come to figuring us out was four days ago in First Break. Surrounded by the peace and serenity of the Fair Ones and sure of our protection from everything hunting us, we’d finally been honest with each other. Or as honest as we’d been able when I was still only borrowing Chalice and I was convinced one or both of us would be dead in a day.
But now? We’d both survived that battle, only to be thrust headlong into a new fight—one that had been boiling beneath the surface for longer than we’d anticipated, with no downtime to think about us. Waiting for Phin’s phone call, we had time. And now that I had it, I wanted to do anything except think about us. Or me. All I wanted to think about was the next mission.
It was a hell of a lot easier to handle.
“I don’t want to beat you up, Wyatt,” I said, forcing a smile. “You’re less useful when you’re bleeding and unconscious.”
His eyes narrowed. “Will you be serious, please?”
“I am being serious!” I launched off the bed and stalked to the other side of the room, rounding to face him when I reached the door. “Getting pissed at you doesn’t help. Hell, getting pissed at me doesn’t even help, and quite frankly? The only fucking person I want to be pissed at right now is this Call asshole, because he’s the one creating all our problems.”
“Call isn’t the one affecting us, Evy.”
“Oh no? Without the Park Place tangent he led me on, I probably would have found the information I needed in time to save Rufus from the Assembly, and maybe even have had time for a daylong nap that didn’t come as a result of two broken legs and chemical inhalation.”
“Are you being intentionally dense?”
“Excuse me?” I took three steps toward him, hands balled by my sides, fuming. He stood up, shoulders back, fists loose, anticipating an assault and making no move to protect himself from it. “What the fuck—?”
“I’m talking about us,” he snapped.
No, no, no. We are not talking about us.
He continued. “You and me, Evy, not you and me and anyone else. I love you. I’ve made no bones about that, because it is what it is. I also know you have feelings for me, and I know why those feelings scare you.”
