Apostate

by Frankie Robertson

  Tasha swallowed her disappointment. “It’s very similar to something that happened, but jumbled up.”

  Cassie grimaced. “I’m afraid this is the way my visions roll out—as in, not very clearly. By the way, did my last vision come to pass?”

  “Yes and no. I think I should let Kellan tell you the details.”

  “Ah. I take it the outcome involved U’dahmi secrets?”

  More like secrets kept from the U’dahmi. “Something like that.”

  Cassie shrugged, then went to the sideboard. “I’m going to make hot chocolate. Do you want some?”

  “Please.”

  “Speaking of Kellan… Detective Morgan called this morning. The M.E. has released Jasper’s body.”

  Tasha almost asked, Which one? But she knew it had to be his penultimate shell. The one Kellan had known for years. Jasper hadn’t shared Troy’s body for more than a week, and Three would have disposed of that one.

  Kellan had probably had to do this for his partners many times, as they had for him when they transitioned, but this time his partner really was dead.

  Her heart squeezed painfully. She felt small and petty for arguing with him in the midst of his grief. Tears stung in the corners of her eyes.

  She stood and moved to the door. “I have to go to him.”

  Kellan looked up from his phone as Tasha entered Jared’s office and shut the door behind her. Tears tracked her beautiful face. He winced. The last thing he wanted was to bring her pain, and yet he’d done so more than once.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at the same time she spoke.

  “—so sorry.” She hiccupped a small laugh. “I’ve been impatient and unreasonable. What I mean is, while my requests are reasonable, my timing sucks. We can figure all this out after things settle down.”

  Kellan crossed the room to squeeze her shoulders and kiss her forehead. “Thank you. You weren’t wrong. Almost all of my lives have been lived in patriarchal cultures, and my years of experience have made me a bit arrogant. I’ll try to listen more and explain my reasoning when I draw upon my past. Apologies to Will, but in this case, the past isn't prologue. ”

  “Of course it is. It just doesn’t have to be destiny. Even Shakespeare knew that.” Tasha rose on her toes to kiss his lips.

  Peace and relief flooded through him. Being at odds with her had felt physically painful. Her mouth opened and her tongue teased his lips. Heat flared up the back of his neck and down to his groin. This woman knew who and what he was and gave him the same acceptance he’d expect from his own kind. He pulled her close. Her vibrant life force fed his soul as well as his body. She was a gift and a blessing.

  Her heart opened to him. **I love you, too.**

  Those words nourished him even more than her blood would. He lifted her so he could nuzzle her neck and kiss her without bending over.

  She laughed and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her elbows rested on his shoulders while her fingers feathered through his hair. **I hated being mad at you. It felt like I couldn’t breathe.** She visited his eyebrows and eyelids with delicate butterfly kisses.

  **I felt the same.** Kellan nibbled his way along her jaw, enjoying the little bursts of delight they sparked in her.

  She wiggled, pressing herself even closer. **Would it be terrible if we disappeared into your room for a few hours?**

  Kellan laughed ruefully as his desire flared along with hers. **No, but Jared will soon return with the information we need. While I’m sure he’d understand, we shouldn’t make him wait to share the intelligence that he’s gone out of his way to collect for us.**

  He felt her pleasure at his inclusiveness. **I mean it. My first instinct is to protect you, love. It always will be. But I respect your ability, too.**

  Tasha shifted and Kellan let her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor. She hugged him once more before stepping back, but she kept hold of his hands. **I heard Morgan called. With all that’s happened, we never did make plans for a funeral. Would you like some help with that?**

  **It’s all done. He’ll be cremated.**

  **What about a memorial service? You mentioned business associates before. What about friends? Will you scatter his ashes somewhere?**

  Kellan’s thoughts stuttered to a halt. U’dahmi weren’t sentimental about their abandoned bodies. They were just that, a shell no longer needed. His kind didn’t gather to mourn when one of their own died. For one, they didn’t die, unless they were careless and failed to transition. Or two, if they’d gone rogue, no one lamented their execution. The human families they’d lived among grieved and made the plans for the rites according to their culture. The Jasper Bea had mooned over had no family, but he had a number of human friends, and probably a few girlfriends, who’d want to mourn him. He should plan something for them, but he found himself strangely reluctant to do so. Planning for a future beyond this mission was probably a waste of time, anyway.

  **Honoring Jasper’s memory won’t be a waste of time. I’ll arrange something. You were Jasper’s family, and we’re yours.**

  Kellan’s breath stopped in his chest. Her words ripped open emotions he’d kept carefully locked away since he’d chosen to spare Melchior and Athena. Since before that, when he’d allowed Ana and Gideon to save his life instead of dying to protect U’dahmi secrets. He’d made choices that defied U’dahmi Law, and his partner’s death had severed his last tenuous connection to his brethren. He was alone, and that truth had been too painful and frightening to acknowledge. Isolation led to madness.

  But Tasha thought of him as family? She believed Jared and the others did, too?

  **Of course you’re family! I don’t know if they’d use that word, but that’s effectively what you are. Dave, Cam, Jared and Cassie, Ana and Gideon, they’ve all helped us, just as you helped rescue me and Ana, and we helped Dave and Julie. That’s what family does.** She hugged him again.

  He had a family. One that included Celestials, Progeny, Fey, and a human. They knew what he was and accepted him—mostly.

  His U’dahmi brethren would be shocked if they knew—and maybe a little bit jealous.

  He blinked back tears. **Thank you.**

  The door opened after a brief knock. Jared paused, taking in their embrace and Kellan’s expression. “Should I come back?”

  Kellan cleared his throat and waved Jared in. “It’s your office.”

  Jared shrugged and entered, followed by Gideon and Cassie. “My people took the information you gave me, and narrowed down Three’s location to four possibilities: Quebec, D.C., Rio de Janeiro, and Sedona.”

  “Jasper found him and got close enough to be killed within eighteen hours of leaving us in Irvine. He’d need time for research, recon, and planning,” Kellan said.

  Jared nodded. “We found no plane, train, or bus ticket purchased by Troy Ling in that timeframe, so that means he drove, limiting the target area to places he could reach in twelve hours or less to leave him time for prep. That cuts out Quebec, Rio, and D.C. unless he used a fake I.D.to travel. So we concentrated on Sedona and found a record of an abandoned vehicle registered to Ling being towed and impounded by Coconino County.”

  “Do you have a name and address for Three? We can’t knock on every door in the city,” Kellan said.

  Jared’s lip curled up in half a smile. “Yes. That’s where Jasper’s information was really useful. We looked for rich people sending a lot of encrypted files to IPs in cities that are known hubs of the Golden Path. The most likely identity for Three, by a wide margin, is Thomas Brown.”

  Gideon chuckled. “A name like that would certainly make it easier to hide in plain sight.”

  “Doesn’t he get whatever name comes with the body he assumes?” Cassie settled on the leather sofa, tucking her feet underneath her.

  “Kellan doesn’t go by Antoine,” Tasha pointed out.

  “Touché.” Cassie grimaced.

  Jared lifted a brow at Kellan as he sat behind his desk. “I assume you c
hanged your name when you moved to the States to avoid entanglements with Antoine’s family.”

  “Yes. I imagine you’ve done much the same over the years you’ve been on the Terrestrial Plane.”

  Jared tipped head acknowledging the point.

  “You told us that Antoine gave you his body,” Gideon said. “Does that mean he knew what you are?”

  “He did. I was careless, and when he recognized what I was, I bent the rules.”

  “What happened?” Cassie asked softly.

  Kellan’s habitual secrecy made him hesitate, but Tasha’s words overrode it. These people had become family. “Antoine had cancer. He’d been through several rounds of chemotherapy but it hadn’t worked. He was dying. My body was wearing out so an U’dahmi working in the hospital alerted me to be ready.

  “I visited him every day. He seemed barely aware of me; the medication they gave him for the pain made him sleep most of the time. I needed to feed before the transition so one day I took a sip from the nurse that came in to check his I.V. After I clouded her memory of the event and she left, I saw Antoine staring at me.”

  “You could have clouded his memory, too,” Tasha said, “but you didn’t, did you?”

  Kellan shook his head, chagrined to realize his defiance of U’dahmi rules was part of a pattern that went back decades, or perhaps even further. “No. I didn’t. He was a young man, in what should have been the prime of his life, and he looked at me with such clarity I hated to take any more from him.” Kellan chuckled, remembering. “He asked me if I could turn him into a vampire, too.

  “I told him I couldn’t, because I wasn’t a vampire, of course. I spent his last few days with him, telling him stories from history, and sometimes playing cards, though he often didn’t have the strength to hold them. We told his sister that I was a friend from university. She called me Professor because my body was so old. And when Antoine felt his time was near, he asked her to bring him an apple crepe from the café down the street. He was so gaunt, and she was so thrilled he was showing any interest in food, that she didn’t question it. As soon as she left he told me, ‘You’ve made me feel almost normal these last few days. I’m grateful. I can’t imagine why you want it, but I’m happy to give my wreck of a body to you. Take it now, please, while Giselle is gone, and set me free.’

  “I couldn’t release him from his pain by hurrying his death directly, but I called in the U’dahmi that worked in the hospital and suggested Antoine needed more morphine. I make no excuses. All three of us understood what we were doing. Antoine thanked us as he fell asleep. By the time Giselle returned, ‘Antoine’ was feeling much better, but his old friend from university had passed away.”

  The only person he’d told that story to was Jasper. Kellan searched the faces of the Celestials and found no censure there.

  Cassie and Tasha both blinked back tears. “You did him a kindness.”

  “You did,” Gideon agreed.

  Kellan shrugged, but their approval warmed him.

  “Getting back to Three, or rather, Thomas Brown.” Jared cleared his throat and tapped a few keys. “Huh. So much for keeping a low profile. He lives in the Palisades, a multi-million-dollar subdivision that backs onto National Forest land.” He pulled up first a street view next to a satellite view of the property and turned the screen so the rest of them could see. The front and back of the house were walls of glass to take in the stunning views of red rock palisades from one side and the forest from the other. “Not very defensible.”

  “Actually, it’s not bad,” Gideon countered, pointing at the screen. “Look there. He’s got rolling metal shutters on all the windows and the terrain is so open it will be nearly impossible to sneak up on him.”

  “I’m sure Jasper was more subtle than trying to shoot his way in,” Kellan said.

  “Whatever he tried, it got him killed,” Jared said. “Brown has top of the line security and a bodyguard that doubles as a driver who lives in an apartment over the garage.”

  “Jasper was wearing a new face,” Gideon pointed out. “Brown shouldn’t have recognized him.”

  “He’s a former Lightbringer, right?” Jared asked. “We work spells. Brown might well have numerous magical protections in place to prevent his perimeter from being breached by any intruder. Sedona is a reservoir of undifferentiated power that he could draw upon.”

  “I’m not planning an armed assault,” Kellan protested.

  “Too bad,” Gideon quipped. “Jared has guys who could help you with that.”

  “What are you planning?” Tasha asked. “Because I have a few ideas.”

  Kellan winced inwardly as he saw her expression. She expected him to resist whatever she suggested. “Tell me. I’m open to anything.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  No. Absolutely not!

  Tasha could see that’s what Kellan wanted to say, but he swallowed the words before they could escape.

  “It could work,” Jared mused. “Provided you can keep from alerting the bodyguard and Kellan can pull off his end.”

  Kellan didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be carefully considering his reply. Whether she liked what he said or not, she appreciated that he wasn’t shouting a knee-jerk rejection. Finally, in a measured tone he asked, “How are you feeling? What you’re proposing will be demanding and you’ve only just recovered from a profound effort.”

  Irritation flared. Of course he’d comment on her exhaustion. He didn’t want her doing this, so he called her ability into question.

  Then Ana’s advice whispered in her head. She wasn’t being fair. Kellan couldn’t not want to protect her. She owed him the same consideration he’d shown her. She thought about his question for a moment and answered honestly.

  “I’m still tired. I could use a couple more days to get back to a hundred percent.”

  “There’s no rush is there?” Gideon asked. “That would give us more time to plan.”

  “What is Brown most likely to do?” Cassie asked. “He killed Jasper about a day ago. He must suspect you know by now. What does he think your reaction will be?”

  Kellan ran a hand over the top of his head to the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I’ve been a good soldier for the Council with only a few lapses in judgment.” His smile twisted with wry humor. Until he decided to let Melchior and Athena go, his most egregious “lapse” had been letting Ana and Gideon save his life by disabling the failsafe spell planted in his mind. He should have died instead of letting any of these people learn about the U’dahmi. Despite that, the Council had let him live.

  “Brown already believes Jasper was ready to go rogue. That’s why he thought my partner would be receptive to an offer from the Golden Path. He put Jasper in an untenable position: accept the offer and become a rogue, or refuse and know that at any moment Three might label him a rogue anyway and call for his execution.”

  “That’s why Jasper faked his death,” Tasha said. “To throw Brown off his trail.”

  “Yes. And because of some of my own choices, Brown might well think I’d be open to working with the Golden Path. I might be able to walk in the front door.”

  “Or he might think you’re as stiff-necked and angry as Jasper was and kill you, too, before you have a chance to open your mouth,” Tasha said. “Especially if Ezra blabs what you told him.”

  Gideon hiked one hip up to sit on Jared’s desk. “Even if this Ezra has kept your concerns to himself, wouldn’t Brown think it odd that you’re at his house? You have no legitimate reason to know his true identity or location do you?”

  “That may be the same mistake Jasper made,” Jared warned. “The Golden Path approached him through an intermediary. Brown kept his distance and his anonymity.”

  “And which front door? Will he stay where he probably has protections in place? Or will he leave and assume a new identity? Is it already too late to beard the lion in his den?” Cassie asked.

  “They did that already,” Jared said with a straight face
.

  Cassie narrowed her eyes. “You know what I meant.”

  “If he believes his identity is still secret,” Kellan said, “he’ll stay put.”

  “So it comes down to this Ezra dude,” Gideon said. “Will he have tipped off Brown, or not?”

  “Not. He’s supremely ethical. He might think Jasper was delusional, but he won’t ignore a potential threat to the U’dahmi. He can’t. Ezra might not investigate, but now that the seed is planted, he’ll keep his eyes open. Informing Three won’t facilitate that.”

  “But you still can’t approach Brown directly.” Tasha objected. “You need the element of surprise. You need me.”

  “It’s your call,” Jared said, including both Kellan and Tasha. “I’ll make available whatever resources you need.”

  Kellan lifted his head and gazed at the ceiling, his fingers laced on the top of his head. He remained silent for a long moment and Tasha held her breath.

  “Tasha’s plan has the best chance of success. Let’s make it work.”

  “No one has come sniffing around your home in the last two and a half days. It’ll take longer than that to be sure, but I think you’re in the clear,” Dave said to Julie. They sat close together near the windows in the cafeteria. Pete was treating Alex to an afternoon at the batting cages and Jack was in the gym enduring physical therapy so they were alone for a change. “I don’t think The Lion is going to come after you and Alex again.”

  “What about Jack? Will they come after him?”

  “Jack was collateral damage.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they weren’t aiming at him; he was just in the way. If you’re no longer a target he won’t be either.”

  “They killed their own guys,” she objected.

  “Those guys were killed because they were stupid, incompetent, and a liability.”

  Julie’s brow furrowed as she hesitated.

  “Spit it out,” he urged her.

  “I should have asked before, but…” She looked away and whispered, “How did you do it?”