by TA Moore
“What?”
“I… it’s VINE business,” Forrester said.
“I’m an agent.”
“Bennett was an agent,” Forrester countered. “If you were, then you’d already know what happened.”
The cold storm of anger stirred in Took’s brain for the second time. He could feel it crackle in his marrow, but that was all. Everything warm huddled down inside until it passed.
Forrester stepped back. His hip bumped the edge of the slab and he jumped, dropped the clipboard, and blurted out a nervous laugh. It steamed in front of his lips. “Sorry. I think someone dropped the temp in here again.”
“I—”
A hand scruffed the back of his neck and squeezed down. “Agent,” Madoc said, his voice sharp with anger. “I need to talk to you. Now.”
The familiar command in that word cut through the anger, right down to the ten-year-old boy whose immediate response was “I didn’t do it!” By the time that protest got to his tongue, it had turned into the more respectable “Sir?”
It wasn’t enough to get rid of the anger, but it shrunk back down into Took’s bones. Away from the hot tug of lust that ached in his thighs at the clipped command in Madoc’s voice. He wanted to ignore it, to shove Madoc against a wall and remind him that Took didn’t work for him anymore. He wanted to go down on his knees and do anything Madoc told him in that clipped, controlled voice.
Maybe that would stop Forrester’s cow-eyed admiration of Madoc over Took’s shoulder. As though Madoc could feel the dark chill himself, his fingers tightened on Took’s neck.
“Agent Bennett remains a VINE operative, Doctor,” he said. “His clearance level hasn’t changed.”
Took wondered bleakly if that was real, or if it was because Madoc had taken Took apart and fingered all the bits before he put him back together? He didn’t know. At this point he didn’t know if he even really suspected. Sometimes it just felt like an old, sour habit that he chewed over, like tofu with no seasoning. But he’d trusted that bit of his brain that stitched together motivation his whole life. He couldn’t stop now.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Madoc snapped as he hauled Took down the corridor and into another empty room. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, and the only thing on the desk that was pushed back against the wall was Madoc’s heavy leather combat jacket. He’d stripped down to a thin silk T-shirt and fitted jeans, and maybe that had been for Forrester. It was the last resentful jibe from the cold under Took’s bones. “Do you think you can just kill someone in the middle of the police station and no one will do anything?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Took snapped. “I wasn’t going to kill him, just—”
He trailed off. It was obvious he hadn’t been about to kill a police pathologist, right? But put on the spot, he couldn’t map out what exactly he had been about to do. That was the beauty of the cold, after all—he didn’t have to.
“Did you find your talent?” Madoc asked abruptly as he grabbed Took’s chin to yank his head down. His eyes narrowed as he looked for the reflection of something in Took’s. “It comes to most with the final kiss, but your situation then could have repressed it.”
Took pulled away. “I don’t have any,” he said. He sounded bitter, which made no sense. It wasn’t that he wanted powers, he just didn’t want to be what he was. At the same time, he didn’t want to have to pretend he was something better. “I’m not someone’s surrogate child. I’m not your precious Lawrence to be coaxed along by a Kiss. I’m the mongrel dog the whole fucking town gathered to kick. At least a dozen different bite marks on me, Madoc. That I have enough of me left to button my trousers—”
He choked on the ugly words that filled his throat when Madoc kissed him. His lips were warmer than they’d been last night, his mouth faintly flavored with salt. It should have made Took recoil, but instead he leaned in. He skimmed his hands over Madoc’s sides, the silk cool and slippery over hard slabs of muscle, and it made him ache to pull back.
But he still did.
“You can’t pretend—”
“I didn’t bite Lawrence,” Madoc said, as though that flash of jealousy were the problem. “She’s my colleague, she’s my partner until I get you to get off your ass, and she’s a good agent. That’s all. I don’t love her, Took.”
Took knew what that meant. Even Lawrence—and he knew he was being unfair—could tell what Madoc was ready to confess. It would be easy to draw it out, to turn a suggestion into a statement. Took just wasn’t ready to deal with a world where Madoc was maybe a breath away from saying who he did love.
“What was it that Dr. Forrester couldn’t tell me, then?” he changed the topic abruptly. “What did you find out?”
Chapter Twelve
MADOC WAS too old to be a fool, but he could play one if he wanted. There was no one on this side of the world, not even the boyar he still served, who had the authority to bar him from that. He could ignore Took’s silent rejection of his declaration, the sticky taste of old fear that clung to his mouth from Took’s, and even resist the realization that his love for Took had done neither of them any favors.
Should he, though?
The only reason he’d let Took withdraw so totally, even handed over supervisory duties to West, was because he wanted to preserve something of that delicate not-quite-a-thing between them. Anyone else he’d have dragged out of their hermitage and done the due diligence that a man owed those beneath him.
His father’s morality. It made some old, still-petty part of Madoc cringe to realize that he hadn’t lived up to the low bar his father had set.
“We will talk about this.” He caught Took’s hand and lifted it to his mouth. His lips brushed over fight-scarred knuckles in a gesture that was half courtly and half courtship. “Later.”
There was a hint of bitterness in the corner of Took’s mouth as he tilted it in a smile. “Later is always convenient,” he said. Then he grimaced as though he’d accidentally caught himself on the jab. “After this is over, then we talk.”
Madoc wasn’t sure what to make of the grimness in Took’s voice. He wished there were time, but every discovery in this supposedly dead case pressed the accelerator on the investigation.
“Right now,” he said. “I’m putting you back on active duty.”
Took flinched and pulled his hand away. “You can’t do that.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Panic flashed through Took’s eyes as he shook his head. “I’m broken, Madoc. What if I have a panic attack if I’m trapped somewhere? Or lose control in an armed situation. I can’t be trusted in the field.”
They were the same bullet-point excuses that Madoc received every time he queried when he’d get his agent back. He had lost patience with them a year ago, but he throttled back on his frustration the best he could—not particularly well, but it wasn’t something he’d ever cared to practice.
“Then stay out of the field,” he said flatly. “It isn’t as if I can’t replace you with any of the other Biters there. I have for the last two years.”
The flash of resentment that crossed Took’s face for a second was simultaneously hypocritical and reassuring. Whatever he might say about his unwillingness to get back in the field, he obviously didn’t expect anyone to agree.
“Then why bother?” Took asked.
Madoc reached up and tapped his fingertip against Took’s forehead, right between his eyes. “What’s in here,” he said. “I can find a dozen capable Anakim to throw on a Biter’s uniform, hold a gun, and pull the trigger. What’s in your gray matter is harder to train, and the boyars won’t let you near this case if you aren’t a paid-up agent.”
“I made a commitment to the Warings.”
“You need a payday that bad, I’ll give you a bonus,” Madoc snapped as his patience finally frayed. “You want to play Judas for the bigots? If you can live with it, go right ahead. Pretend they think you’re still a bleeder under the skin. I don’t care. All I car
e about is that I need your brain, or whatever is left of it after two years spent feeling sorry for yourself.”
That time Took didn’t bother to hide the glare. Anger made him look brutish as the open surfer-boy features tightened and piercing blue flashed from under heavy brows. It was probably a symptom of lovesickness that Madoc found that attractive.
“I thought Lawrence was your go-to expert now,” he said sullenly.
Madoc snorted. “Now you want me to pet your ego?” he asked as he stepped into Took’s space. He watched Took’s eyes flit over his face and then drop to his mouth, pupils dilated as a flush of hunger edged out the lust. “Fine, even with half a brain and twice as needy, you’re still a better profiler than Lawrence, but she’ll be your boss one day.”
That made Took’s eyes flick back up, and he snorted. “Like I’ll be in VINE by then. I have one more assessment to go, and then, temporary return to duty or not, I’m out.” He stepped back and tugged absently at his collar to pop the small ivory buttons. The hint of a bruise, a curve of ripe purple stain against tanned skin, made it Madoc’s turn to be distracted by the lust that flared to life in his balls. “If I do this, we treat the Waring family fairly. Nothing brushed under the rug, no evidence that gets buried because it would be embarrassing to overturn a verdict.”
“That’s not your call to make.”
The corner of Took’s mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’m still making it.”
They stared at each other for a second. There wasn’t any aggression in Took’s face. It was a blunt statement of the facts as he saw them.
“You know I don’t work like that,” he said.
“I know. The boyars do, and once it gets out that VINE thinks there’s a chance the dhampir kids are still alive? They’ll do whatever it takes to get them back and come out of this scented with roses. Whatever Dom Waring did, he can pay for, but not for anyone else’s sins.”
That helped. It had caught Madoc a little on the raw that Took thought it needed to be said. His tender heart preferred the explanation that it was the boyars Took didn’t trust.
“You know I can’t make promises for the boyars’ behavior,” he said, “but I won’t bend the neck if they play the villain.”
Finally Took nodded, and his shoulders relaxed as some tension that Madoc hadn’t even noticed let go of its hold on him. He flicked another button on his shirt. Madoc glanced away from the bruised temptation of his lean throat.
“I take it I can borrow a uniform?”
“Ask Lawrence.”
Took gave him an annoyed look, but nodded. “So why?” he asked. “If I’m officially back on duty, what’s the big secret?”
“I found the youngest of the Aron children,” he said. It wasn’t often he surprised Took—a kiss, a rescue, this—so Madoc savored the moment. “She never left the house. So, don’t kill Dr. Forrester. We might need him.”
“THERE AND back by candlelight,” Madoc said as he greeted Pally at the Sword Gate entrance to the police station. “Good as your word.”
Pally slung his go bag onto his shoulder with an ease that belied the arsenal of weaponry that Madoc knew was in there—guns mostly. He’d have a few knives, but Pally didn’t trust himself with edged weapons. They got you too close to the blood, and his control was… not what he might wish. He glanced up at the slice of moon that hung on the black velvet of the sky.
“Not quite,” he said in his low, ruined voice. “I tried, though.”
“It’s appreciated,” Madoc said. “The Aron files?”
“I tried,” Pally repeated with a faint grimace at the admission. “Quick is at the local chapter of the Proverbial Church to get into the records on their missionaries. He said I needed to let him off the leash if we wanted access to their records without the stamp of a boyar. I don’t exactly know what he meant, but I gave him permission anyhow.”
“It was the right call,” Madoc said, “and my responsibility.”
Pally shrugged. “Let the boyars rage if they want,” he said. His pale, amber-yellow eyes always had a disconcerting effect. They were a beast’s eyes in a human face, but the flash of anger that lit them from behind drained the humanity out of them. “If the Proverbials had anything to do with the loss of this little one, there won’t be enough of them left to raise a hue and cry on our methods.”
The hot edge to his voice made Madoc scowl. On most days he trusted Pally. They’d been enemies once. The reasons for that were all sealed under The Salt, but Madoc remembered times he’d ridden into a settlement and found it gone, wiped away root and branch by Pally.
Or Paladin, as he was called back then. No one had wanted to be intimate enough with him for nicknames.
Of course all the cardinals had done terrible things. Pally had just done them with confidence in the justness of the cause. The same steel-shod self-righteousness that made him strap on his country’s cause, back in the day, had seen him visit atrocities on those who endangered his new faith in his boyar.
In Madoc’s experience, a man with a cause was the worst enemy—or ally. A wicked man might, at least, hesitate to add something new to their tally of sins, but someone who believed they acted for the Greater Good could commit any sin and still sleep at night.
“We don’t know who’s involved yet,” he said as he gestured for Pally to follow him up the blanched white steps to the heavy doors. “Waring could still be the sole actor. The fact that Nora Aron was a dhampir puts the family within his victim group, or this could be some new brutality from the Hunters. Even if the Proverbials are involved, we don’t want to sow disputes within the Accord if we do not have to.”
The old motto of the Empire of Blood was still carved over the door, scarred and chipped in places where public opinion had run against it. There was something dourly appropriate about the grim old words—If you would be our enemy, we do not bend, and you will break.
Pally paused in the doorway under them. He had the sort of looks Tepes favored in his court—dark, pretty, and dead-eyed. “If they murdered our children,” Pally said coldly, “the Accord is worthless, and it’s war that we’ll court.”
It was the sort of sentiment that Madoc should stamp down on and then send a report up through the hierarchy to whatever politician oversaw VINE. But for all the things Madoc had lost in his long life, and he would unsentimentally note that his losses had been many, he’d never lost a child.
To rebuke Pally now would be as pointless as when they’d told Madoc to stop looking for Took.
“It won’t come to that,” he said.
Pally tilted his chin in acknowledgment. “We can hope for a better outcome,” he said, “but be prepared, Madoc. If we find more dead children, then I will fuck over every last, toothless bastard between here and California. And I will not be alone.”
“MAY I?” Pally asked as he extended his hand, his fingers poised just above Nora’s bone-white brow. Death had made him pallid a long time ago, but his fingers still looked darker than the child’s skin.
On the other side of the table, Forrester looked uncomfortable as he fidgeted with his glasses, but he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve already collected all the trace evidence that was on her… um… on her clothes and skin. Not that there was a lot.”
Pally settled his fingers on the girl’s skull and closed his eyes.
“It seems as though the winter tree has withered.” He murmured the Enochian prayer in a soft, reverent voice.
Madoc grimaced but crossed his arms and waited. Enochian piety had never come easy to him. He’d been raised as a weed in the local church garden, an example to point to when they preached original sin and a cautionary tale for young girls with an eye for the boyar’s guard, but it was still the faith he fell back on when he was in need. Madoc absently reached up to tap the worn medal under layers of leather and silk.
Like his father’s old gift, the silver stung, but he’d grown used to the itch.
&nbs
p; “So?” Took interrupted as he pushed open the door to the morgue. “Are we sure this is Nora Aron?”
Madoc turned to gesture at him to shut up, but his brain tripped up on itself as he saw Took back in full uniform. In Madoc’s livery, essentially, since he’d been the heart and the head of the Biters since they were conceived. Took had always looked good in black, pared down so you could enjoy the broad shoulders and the harsh taper down to lean hips, the lack of any design element or color to distract from the earnest, corn-fed good looks and salt-blond curls. He looked even better now that Madoc had touched and kissed everything that lay under that fitted cotton and kevlar.
The ache caught at Madoc’s heart and his balls at the same moment, but he couldn’t decide which was stronger, his satisfaction to see Took back in uniform and back at work or the desire to take the uniform right off him again.
Before he had to decide, Pally tossed a black, dangerous glare toward the interruption, but it turned to an expression of delight as he saw Took.
“Bennett,” he said with a slow, sweet smile. It was a rare expression to see on Pally’s face, and Took looked surprised. They had always worked effectively together, but they had never been friends. “You’ve come back to us.”
“I was—”
Pally walked briskly across the room and pulled Took into a rough, affectionate embrace. He kissed him on the cheek.
“For every one lost to sleep, we raise another,” Pally said. “Are you well, brother?”
Took stood awkwardly, arms at somewhere between “I surrender” and “awkward aunt hug.” He gave Madoc a confused, slightly terrified look over Pally’s shoulder.
“I’m… better than before,” Took said. He sounded nearly as surprised by that answer as he had the hug. “Not well, yet, but getting there, I guess.”
Pally nodded and stepped back. Then he slapped Took on the shoulder and gripped it in slim, elegant hands that could punch through brick.
“The first decade is hardest,” he said.