As Lie the Dead

by Kelly Meding

  “Or he got that connection via his relationship with Snow.”

  “Also possible.”

  “Hopefully Phin managed to get a snapshot somehow, because it’ll make identification a hell of a lot easier. I guess he didn’t give you any clues over the phone?”

  “The conversation was pretty brief, Evy.”

  I picked at a snagged thread on the bed’s coverlet, hoping for inspiration to strike. Twenty minutes felt like an eternity of waiting, and I was not a patient person. Only my mind kept circling back to the same possibility—someone who had every reason to bear a huge grudge against us. “I know you said he wasn’t our guy,” I said, “but I keep going back to the surviving son of the Greek restaurant owner. He makes such perfect, poetic sense.”

  Wyatt pressed his lips into a thin line, eyes sharp. “I told you, it’s not him.”

  “Yeah, you told me, but he still feels relevant, Wyatt. You said you trusted my instincts, and my instincts say that what happened back then has a bearing on what’s happening now.”

  “Of course it does. That event helped shape what the Triads are now, but it doesn’t mean the son of the victims is involved with Call.”

  “Then what’s he do?” I sat up a little straighter, frustrated by his lack of real answers. “You said you know him, so prove it. Prove my instincts just happen to be a little clouded on this, and that I’m grasping at straws out of some deep-seated need to be the one to unmask this asshole.”

  Coiled like a furious spring, Wyatt pushed away from the wall and stalked to the other side of the room, near the door. He reached his farthest point, pivoted, and walked halfway back to me, blazing. “He works in the city, Evy, and he can’t possibly be Call or be working with him. I know he can’t.”

  “But I don’t.” I stood up, planted my hands firmly on my hips, and returned his scowl tenfold. “Come on, Truman. I just bared my soul for you to see, touch, and possibly sneer at. Toss me a fucking bone here. Who did the kid grow up to be?”

  He continued to glare, but his resolve was crumbling. He raked a hand through his short hair, around his neck, and back up to pinch the bridge of his nose. I hadn’t moved; he had to know I wouldn’t, now bound and determined to get this information from him. I wanted to know who he was protecting.

  “Fine,” he snapped. “You want to know whose father was killed by a Halfie and his mother and sister by rogue bounty hunters? He’s the Clan Assembly’s killer, Evy, the one they keep accusing you of protecting.”

  My face went slack as confusion settled in. “Rufus?”

  “No, not Rufus.” Something sinister flashed in his onyx eyes. “Me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  5:24 P.M.

  The phrase “You could cut the tension with a knife” flashed through my mind, because his final statement shut down all activity in the room. He didn’t move. I didn’t move. Even the distant hums of electricity and running water faded out, replaced by numb silence. My brain refused to understand what he’d just admitted. I felt queasy, unbalanced. Seriously confused.

  He blinked and broke the spell.

  “You …” I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat, mouth dry. “You didn’t lead the attack on Sunset Terrace. How—?”

  “That’s not why the Kitsune … It’s not that.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled hard. The queasiness increased as I prepared to learn the real reason the Kitsune Elder had accused me of protecting a killer. It wasn’t for the Coni and Stri; it was something else entirely. When I looked up, Wyatt had slumped into one of the room’s two upholstered chairs. He gazed at the floor, hands folded in his lap. Miserable.

  I’d cut into a festering wound because I couldn’t stop needing to control my environment and everything in it. I couldn’t just accept his word; I had to know the facts for myself. And it had opened up a side of Wyatt I’d never seen or asked about before—his past. He hadn’t sprung, fully formed, out of a hole in the ground. I just hadn’t questioned his life before the Triads; he never talked about it.

  It was lame, but all I could come up with was, “I’m sorry.”

  “You know better than that. You hate pity as much as I do. Don’t do that.” He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees. Still giving the floor his full attention. “I don’t deserve it.”

  “You were seventeen, Wyatt.”

  “I wasn’t there. I couldn’t try to stop it or save them, because I wasn’t even there that night. I should have been. We promised we’d be there by eight to help inventory the food, but we went to a friend’s house instead.”

  “We?” I tried to recall what he’d told me about that story—what I’d thought was simply a brief history of the Triads’ birth. What had, in fact, been a snapshot of his own life. “You and your brother?” It felt so odd to say those words.

  Even odder to see him nod. “Nicky … Nicandro hated that restaurant. Hated working there after school. His revulsion made sense afterward.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he was Gifted, too, Evy. He had precognitive abilities, but he had no control over them. Usually he couldn’t figure out what the hell he was seeing or why. He told me he thought his visions about the restaurant involved us, that he was saving our lives by keeping me away that night.”

  Being born Gifted is extremely rare. It requires that the birth take place over a Break—a magical hot spot. They exist all over the city, but none of them in hospital delivery rooms. The odds of two people in the same family being born … Wait. “Wyatt, were you and Nicky twins?” I asked.

  He scrubbed both hands across his face, then looked at me with red eyes. “I was six minutes older, but he was always trying to protect me. I guess he did, since we lived and our family died.”

  A hundred questions whirled through my mind, all eager for answers. But Wyatt seemed willing to tell the story at his own pace. I turned to face him more directly and just listened.

  “I know the Fey came to us because they sensed our Gifts,” he said, speaking as much to me as to himself. “Nicky and I were three months from eighteen, so no one objected when our supposed aunt showed up to take temporary custody. She offered us help with our Gifts and opened up the entire Dreg world to us.”

  “Amalie?”

  “In her avatar form, yes. She and her sprites were a driving force from the start. I fell headfirst into training and never looked back. There were seven of us those first couple of months, learning to track and to fight—how to turn a specific Dreg’s strength into their weakness. All of the things we teach. Then we started hunting.”

  “Rufus?”

  “He was there—the last of the first seven to be recruited. We couldn’t stand each other, actually, not for a long time.”

  My mouth twitched. Rufus had admitted the same thing two days ago. Funny how that hatred had grown into a solid friendship over the course of a decade.

  Wyatt inhaled deeply, held it, then exhaled hard. “Nicky hated it, every minute, and for a while I hated him. I thought he was weak. I was so angry at everything we’d lost and at the people who’d done it, I couldn’t see straight. Killing goblins and Halfies and anything else we were sent after … it let me feel something, when the rest of the time all I felt was numb.”

  Boy, could I commiserate with that state of mind. “What happened to the bounty hunters who killed your family?”

  His expression became thunderous. Deadly. “Eight months after the fire, we were really no better than those bounty hunters. Amalie fed us information through her sprite aides, and some of her other Fey contacts tried to guide us in the field, but we had no chain of command. Nothing that really worked, so we did what we wanted.”

  Hearing the tumultuous beginnings of an organization I’d always seen as rigid and uncompromising was as disturbing to me as it was a relief. It was difficult to imagine Wyatt ten years ago, his fury at life driving him away from his own brother, blinded by vengeance for the dead. So unlike the man I knew—and yet, still
so much the same.

  “It was ten years ago last month. By sheer luck, I found out who one of the bounty hunters was. I wanted to rip his lungs out through his throat and wear them like wings. Nicky tried to stop me, wouldn’t let me leave our apartment. He said if I went after this guy, I’d be killed, too. I was so angry, I didn’t care, and I told him so. We fought, and I pushed him.”

  Although Wyatt’s voice remained calm, he looked lost, caught up in the memory of such awful pain. I could guess how his story ended, and I wanted to stop him from saying anything else. Wanted to save him the emotional agony. But something thick and heavy clogged my throat and stole my voice.

  After a deep exhalation, Wyatt said it: “Nicky tripped and hit his head on the corner of the dining table. It fractured his skull and killed him instantly.”

  I don’t know when I’d started to cry—tears skimmed my cheeks. His story broke my heart—his tone of voice as much as the content. He’d spoken with a matter-of-fact clarity usually reserved for unemotional topics while still loading each word with fury and humiliation. Admitting to the tragic consequences of his temper had to have been as hard to verbalize as my own earlier monologue had been for me.

  “I think he knew it was him or me,” Wyatt said, his voice almost a whisper. “He knew one of us was going to die that night, so he did what he always did, and he protected me.”

  “Because he loved you.” I almost choked on the words, the perfect echo of Wyatt’s own death. Taking a bullet meant for me, risking permanent death to make sure I wasn’t the one to die.

  “Yeah.”

  Ten years last month.

  A memory returned with a sudden rush of clarity. I was barely a week over the flu and home alone when I found him in front of the apartment door with a bottle in his hand. It was the only time in my life I’d seen Wyatt drunk. And not just a little drunk—totally and utterly hammered. He’d muttered something about an anniversary but never elaborated. I hadn’t asked, and he eventually passed out in my room. But not before he kissed me—something I’d written off and filed away as a liquor-induced Bad Idea. We’d never spoken of the uncomfortable encounter. Hell, I hadn’t even thought of it again until today. I’d put myself to sleep with a couple of Jesse’s lagers and convinced myself I’d dreamed the kiss.

  Did Wyatt remember it—or anything he’d said that night? Would things have been different between us if I’d pried the information out of him then? If I’d kissed him back?

  It didn’t fucking matter. Not anymore.

  I stood and crossed the room, unsure if he’d want me or turn away. He leaned back in his chair, arms open, eyes sparkling. I curled into his lap, and it should have been awkward. I should have been embarrassed by the position. I wasn’t. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, while he looped one around my waist and the other around my knees. We hugged each other, speaking volumes in the silent embrace.

  “I went out and killed the guy anyway.” Wyatt’s voice rumbled through his chest and into mine, breath hot on my neck. “I hated that I could do it only once. We never did find the second one.”

  Drawing back a bit, I met his gaze. “After ten years?”

  “After ten years.”

  “What would you do now if you did find him?”

  His eyes unfocused as he went somewhere internal. Considered what I’d asked. It gave me hope that he hadn’t answered right away. “I honestly don’t know, Evy. I’m not Andreas Petros, son of a Greek immigrant, anymore. I buried him with Nicandro and the rest of his family.”

  I touched his face, featherlight, tracing features I knew by heart. Strong jaw, straight nose, perpetual stubble, thick eyebrows. The man I knew and cared for was right there, a man named Wyatt Truman. I believed him when he said Andreas was gone. I also knew what it was like to carry the anger of another lifetime. It would always simmer beneath the surface, waiting for the right spark to be struck and ignite an inferno.

  Wyatt tilted his head to the side. “Are you sorry you asked?”

  “I wish I’d asked sooner. It’s amazing the things we don’t know, even about people we consider our closest friends.”

  “We’re both private people, Evy. Most people wouldn’t understand our kinds of pain anyway.”

  “True, but some will try if given half a chance.” I put my head on his shoulder, and we held each other for a while. I listened to the thrum of his pulse and the gentle rasp of his breathing. Let the minutes tick away in companionable quiet, until my curiosity got the better of me. “It took three years to come up with the system we have in place now?”

  “Give or take, yeah.” His fingers drew light lines up and down my arm, tickling. “You put six strong, angry personalities into one room and no one likes to give in and take orders. Plus our antics were getting noticed by the real police, so we needed protection from them. Someone to make the right reports disappear or to turn a blind eye to certain activities.”

  “The brass.”

  “Right. We needed to have people on the inside.”

  “Wyatt, are any of the original six—?”

  “No. Two of them are dead; two are trainers at Boot Camp.”

  I pictured the four trainers who’d tortured us through Boot Camp. They were all Wyatt’s age, maybe up to ten years older. Any of them could be the original Hunters, but I couldn’t bring myself to intrude further into Wyatt’s memories by asking. “And the other two are you and Rufus,” I finished for him.

  “Yes. I don’t know how she recruited the cops who help us, but she did, and their identities are one of the most guarded secrets in the Triads.”

  “She?”

  “Amalie set that up for us.”

  My entire body jerked. Amalie knew the brass, and I felt like an absolute idiot for not thinking of her sooner. She’d had a hand in the Triads since their conception. Would she really be party to tearing them down from the top?

  “Don’t even think it, Evy. If Amalie had any idea of the deal you made with Phin, she’d—”

  “What? Use her supersprite abilities and have me killed?”

  “She’d probably use all of her vast influence and power to prevent you from succeeding. She believes completely in the mission of the Triads. She helped create us, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Because she didn’t want to see humans overpowered by the other species?”

  “Yes. If we lose control of this city, then First Break becomes more vulnerable to others. We saw what almost happened with Tovin. If we hadn’t been there to stop him, the city would be crawling with demons.”

  “I know, okay?”

  He squeezed my knee. “Phineas said he wouldn’t ask for Rufus’s life if we helped him. We’re doing that. What’s the point in exposing the brass now? Wasn’t the point to save Rufus?”

  I hated that he was right. Exposing the brass had been a means to an end. Now that the end was met, the path was no longer viable. Only, once I had an idea in my head, I had a hard time letting go. If orders like the Neutralization on Sunset Terrace and on me—orders that came with no proof and no positive results—could make it through unchecked, the system needed an overhaul.

  Phin wanted Therians included in the Triads. The races wanted more influence in governing themselves without living under the constant threat of human smack-down. It wasn’t a completely unreasonable request. Maybe it would have prevented all the conflict with Call and his militia. Saved everyone a lot of heartache.

  “Do you still believe in this system?” I asked.

  “You mean the system that tried to kill you twice, wiped out an entire were-Clan, and puts all the blame for what you kill on the shoulders of your Handler?” He sighed. “Yeah, I do. It’s flawed, sure, but our intentions are right. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “And if you could change it?”

  “I think it would be an uphill battle the entire way. Some people embrace change, others resist it. Still others resist violently.”

  “Which one are you?”

  He wa
s quiet for a moment. “I think the only thing I’ve got to lose is right here, and that we make one hell of a team.”

  I considered that, head comfortably nestled against his shoulder. We were on the precipice of a war—one the rest of the city would never see coming. But they’d see it when the violence spilled out into the streets. Fear had kept the rogue vampires and Halfies in line—fear of swift death at a Hunter’s hands. Only now they were organizing. The choreographed attack that had left my two Triad partners dead was well planned and better executed. Even if someone was pulling their strings, they were listening. Call’s militia stood to destroy everything.

  If we didn’t rip apart from the inside first.

  “So …” I let the single syllable drag out into three. “You know how you said the Assembly was calling you a killer?”

  “Not tonight, Evy, please? I’ll tell you about it, but ripping open one wound a night is my limit.”

  “They said I should ask the killer I protect about Snow and his connection to the Triads. If you’re who they were talking about—”

  “I don’t know who Snow is.” His voice hinted at truth, but the hard tension thrumming through his body told otherwise.

  “Then why would the Kitsune Elder call you a killer and seem not terribly surprised at what Snow’s planning?”

  Someone knocked on the door. Annoyed at the interruption, I almost told whoever it was to fuck off. But Phin was due in, so I regretfully left the warmth of Wyatt’s lap.

  “Don’t think this conversation is over, Truman,” I said as I trotted to the door. Sure enough, Phin stood back far enough to be fully visible through the peephole. I unlocked the door, and he breezed inside without waiting for an invitation.

  “Jenner called me,” he said. “I’m sorry about the Assembly. You deserved that information.”

  I shrugged as I closed the door and relocked it. “The more I talk about it, Phin, the less sure I am that they’re in danger. I just …”