End Game (The Foundling Series)

by Hailey Edwards

  “I could hunt him.” I tightened my fingers in the fabric of his shirt. “We could hunt him.”

  “Wu hasn’t had any luck finding him,” Cole reminded me. “None of our scouts have located him either.”

  After the meeting with Wu that resulted in Conquest being unleashed, Ezra vacated the usual places. Wu hadn’t been able to pin him down yet, and wasn’t that a kick in the teeth?

  “I can’t keep sitting on my hands.” I growled low in my throat. “I need to do something.”

  The front door opened and then shut, drawing my attention to Miller.

  “Two more squads are MIA.” He crossed to me, handed me the tablet. “They should have checked in this morning, but they’ve been out of touch for three days.”

  “I don’t understand.” I read the strings of correspondence. “These are in addition to the previous total?”

  “Maggie called these in,” he explained. “Neither clan is proficient with technology. They hadn’t recharged their tablets, so they had no means of communicating with us. Until Portia and Santiago arrived, they weren’t overly concerned. Delays happen.”

  Too bad I wasn’t standing near a brick wall to bang my head against. “The only way to be certain Kapoor is responsible for these attacks is to contact Haven and get an idea of how long he’s been gone. He would have had to be on a killing spree from the time he left to the time he showed up here to hit this many groups, and how would he find them? He’s been in Haven this whole time.”

  “Wu could have given him some intel,” Cole said quietly. “Prior to this we had no reason not to share information with Kapoor.”

  “True.” I drummed my fingers against the plastic case. “We can ask.”

  But the odds of exact coordinates of multiple groups coming up in casual conversation were nil. Wu might be walking on eggshells around Kapoor, but he would notice any marked interest in tactical information. It would shoot up a red flag not even he could ignore.

  I found Wu where I saw him last, sitting vigil beside Kapoor with his face resting in his hands.

  “Did you happen to mention the locations of any allied encampments to him?”

  Sitting up straighter, he dropped his arms. “Why would I?”

  “It’s a yes or no question.” I hated being a hard ass, but Wu was too slippery to handle with kid gloves. “Did you happen to mention the locations of any allied encampments?”

  “No,” he said on a sigh. “He hasn’t been interested in talking. I called him daily at Haven, but I had to drag conversation out of him. Frankly, he didn’t care enough to ask me any questions in return.”

  “Then we have a serious problem.” I indicated he should join us downstairs and sent Miller up to keep an eye on Kapoor in the meantime. “How did he locate so many groups? These were scouts, trained in stealth ops, apart from the main group. So how did he find them? One or two, okay. Maybe someone got sloppy, but how —?”

  “You don’t understand what Kapoor is,” he said earnestly. “He was the janitor for a reason. He could find anyone, anywhere. His record was spotless. He retired with a one hundred percent success rate.” He pitched his voice lower. “He doesn’t need a map or a hint. Once he’s locked in, you can’t escape him. I’ve never seen another charun like him. His mother refused to participate in any testing. They were unable to determine her powers and released her after sterilization. She’s never been seen again.”

  “You’re telling me his mojo works in reverse as well? He could have bolted, and we would never hear from him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was cognizant enough to realize what happened to him, then.” That was a spot of good news. “He came to us, to you, for help.”

  “Luce … ”

  “You’re telling me he’s an unparalleled tracker.”

  Wu must have picked up what I was putting down. “No.”

  “I get why you wouldn’t have told me this sooner, seeing as how you were covering your ass for the day I found out about Ezra. You could hardly say ‘My pal Kapoor could find him no problem’ because you never wanted me to learn the truth.”

  “I’ve apologized for what I’ve done and explained my motives for doing it. What more do you want from me?”

  A big red button to smack with my palm that reset everything. I wanted a do-over. Stat.

  “I want you to glue Kapoor back together. I want you to sic him on Ezra. I’m tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want to find the shoe first this time and beat Ezra to death with it.”

  “Kapoor won’t stop until he finds Ezra. Be very sure you’re ready before you unleash him.”

  “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. You know it as well as I do. We’ve rallied an army, we’ve stocked our larders, we’ve hidden our loved ones. There’s nothing left to do but fight. The longer we put it off, the more time we give him to think circles around us.” I gripped his arm. “Kapoor was a Trojan horse. For all we know, Ezra gave him orders to slit our throats in our sleep. Since we weren’t handy when he activated, he could have done the next best thing to get relief. This is our chance to turn Ezra’s cunning against him. And it will help Kapoor atone.”

  “He will bear the guilt as he always has done.”

  “You know as well as I do that when the others find out he’s responsible, they’ll want blood.”

  Charun were big on the whole eye for an eye thing.

  “Do you think this will earn him forgiveness?”

  “No.” I had to be honest about the odds. “I think there’s a good chance we’ll all die, and none of this will matter anymore.”

  Wu studied my face, his pale and tight. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  That made two of us.

  That night, after the coterie gathered together, we put the matter of Kapoor to a vote. Wu, to my surprise, threw his weight behind the plan. But he wore his true feelings on his face, and you only had to look at him to see he already mourned his friend. All I had done by suggesting this course of action was give him a villain to point at down the road when he needed someone to blame.

  There was a difference in him declaring his friend unsalvageable and me setting Kapoor on the path to self-destruction.

  I acknowledged my part in it. I accepted it. They wanted me to lead, well, follow or get the hell out of the way. The longer we sat around twiddling our thumbs, the more people — human and charun — would die. We didn’t have the luxury of waiting out Ezra, who had won this game each time he played. We had to topple the pieces, toss the board, take a page out of a book he hadn’t read so many times the words were emblazoned in his memory.

  Ezra was used to being the aggressor. He was used to calling the shots. He was used to being one step ahead of us, of everyone.

  If we wanted to shake his confidence, we had to be the aggressors this time. We had to hit him where he lived. We had to knock the legs out from under him.

  With the vote unanimous, I searched the faces of everyone gathered for signs of doubt but found none.

  Maybe I was more than the antidote we had to shove down Ezra’s throat. Maybe I was the bitter pill Wu had to swallow if he wanted to outthink and outmaneuver the male who had raised him, made him who he was, turned him into this vengeance-driven machine.

  “We start tomorrow,” I announced in closing. “Pack what you need and keep it light.”

  The coterie dispersed, off to gather their things in preparation for what came next.

  Wu kept his seat, and so did Cole. So did I. And I waited for one of them to speak.

  “I’m going to sit with him tonight,” Wu said to the floor.

  “All right.” I had no doubt Thom had gone straight to check on the patient. “We’ll bring a cot for you.”

  “The chair is fine.” He rose, angled toward the dining room. “You’re doing the right thing.” He still couldn’t look at me. “I don’t want you to be right, but you are, and I know that.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” I told
him. “I don’t.”

  “But you’ll do it,” he said, and I heard the accusation he tried to hide.

  “I will.”

  “You’re everything I hoped you would be, Luce.”

  He left before I could form a comeback that didn’t throw my creation in his face.

  “Let it go.” Cole took my hand. “He’s hurting, and he knows he only has himself to blame.”

  Hauling me to my feet, he took me outside for a moonlit stroll to cool my temper.

  “I could tell by how he tried to make me sound like a monster there at the end. The compliment almost sold me, but the disdain dripping from every word is going to make one hell of a stain on the floor.”

  “He has to lash out at you. It’s the only way he can avoid castigating himself.”

  “He’s brittle around the edges, isn’t he?”

  “He’s old, Luce. Very old. He’s been holding onto his anger for a long time. It’s what’s been fueling him. Without it … he’s got nothing.”

  “I couldn’t see it at first.” I kicked a piece of gravel into the dark. “But the more things go wrong, the realer it gets, the easier it is to see the cracks in his façade.”

  “It’s one thing to think you’re ready to kickstart a war you can’t win. It’s another to realize you’ve begun something that can’t be stopped, that you can either run to catch up or wait until it circles back and crushes you before rolling on.”

  “You make it sound like it’s up to us to begin the apocalypse. I’m not sure I want that on my tombstone.”

  Here lies Luce Boudreau. She started the end of the world. Oops.

  “You can’t take all the credit.” Cole chuckled. “Wu and Kapoor have been working behind the scenes to bring this about for decades at least. On Wu’s part, we might be talking centuries.”

  “You don’t sound panicked,” I noticed. “You’re always so chill and calm. How do you do that?”

  “This isn’t my first war,” he said simply. “I’ve been in many battles during my lifetime.”

  “But the fate of the —” I began and then stopped before I made a fool of myself.

  “Conquest was true to her name. She conquered many terrenes between her home world and this one.”

  Including Convallaria, his home. She had wiped out the entire royal line, his family, smote them to ashes, and presented him with an urn as a keepsake.

  “This feels so big to me.”

  “It is big.” He pulled me to a stop and faced me. “For you, it’s everything.” His gaze went distant. “I remember the desperation, when it was my home and my people at stake. I remember fighting against the clock, making any deal I could to save those I loved. I remember, and that’s why I want you to conquer, one last time.”

  “I really don’t deserve you.” I placed my palms on his chest, smoothed them over his shoulders. “You’re too kind and too forgiving.”

  “I’ve had a long time to make my peace.” He cradled my face in his palms. “I will never forget, and I will never forgive her. But you’re not Conquest. You’re Luce.” He brushed his lips over the stubborn line of my mouth. “You’re mine.”

  “Want to go someplace quiet and make out?”

  His teeth scraped over my jaw. “Do you even have to ask?”

  “I do try to be polite.” I smiled into his kiss. “It’s not easy, mind you.”

  He and I had made the tent in the woods Portia and Maggie arranged for us our own. It wasn’t too far from the others, but it gave us the privacy any couple still exploring each other required without putting on a free show.

  As I guided Cole into our home away from home and knelt on the mound of pillows that made up our mattress, I couldn’t imagine how Conquest had known him, loved him in her way, and had the heart to break his. But that was another Cole, lifetimes ago, and he was no longer that person any more than I was her. We had both changed, and the breaking of us made the fit perfect when we came together in this life.

  Unable to hide my grin, I let him strip me naked and look his fill. He traced the delicate lines of the rukav across my shoulders, allowing himself to get sidetracked by the curve of my breast. That was fine with me, I had my own exploring to do.

  I shucked his polo over his head and spread my palms across his pecs, marveling at the sheer size of him. He was all muscle, probably thanks to the amount of time he spent in his other skin, and I couldn’t touch enough of him.

  When my fingers bumped across the ridge of his abdomen and hooked in the front of his pants, he growled approval that melted me into a puddle beneath him. I had to make a conscious effort to finish the job of working the button free and yanking down the zipper, and then I had him. I closed my fingers around his length, and he punched out a hard breath against the side of my throat.

  Abandoning my breasts, he smoothed one of his wide palms down my torso until he cupped me between my legs. I didn’t imagine his chuckle at my gasp as he speared first one finger and then another into my core.

  “I love you,” I panted. “I’ll love you even more if you invite your thumb to the party.”

  One expert brush of his thumb, the pad calloused and textured, over the tiny bundle of nerves begging for more, and I exploded around him.

  I was still catching my breath when he spread my legs and sheathed himself with a single thrust.

  Drifting on pleasure, I stroked my hands down his back, relishing the feel of him. The flex of muscle, the beads of sweat, the catch of his breath. And as he coaxed me back up to that perilous ledge, he toppled over it, growling my name into my ear, dragging me after him.

  “What do you think?” I murmured sometime later, after I found my voice again. “We could run away together, do this every day, and never look back.”

  “Depends.” A thoughtful sound moved through his chest. “Does every day mean once a day or … ?”

  Happier than I had any right to be, I chuckled as I snuggled up against him and let sleep take me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The starlit night birthed a gray day that suited everyone’s mood down to the forked lightning that struck in the distance and the rolling boom of thunder that could have been a growl from any of our throats.

  One look at Wu told me he hadn’t slept last night, which made me feel guilty for the warm and loose-limbed way I greeted the day. The others looked rested enough, though. That had to count for something.

  While the coterie waited outside, I joined Wu alone over Kapoor’s bed. He held an injector of the serum that would bring Kapoor out of his induced coma like it might come alive and bite him.

  Hands resting on my hips, I stared down at Kapoor. “How does this work?”

  “He was trained to hunt on command.” Wu pressed the needle to Kapoor’s skin hard enough to dent but not deep enough to pierce the flesh. “I will tell him his target and give him the order.”

  NSB training for their charun division bordered on torture from what I could tell. “It’s a compulsion?”

  “Part of it is his nature, but yes. The NSB wanted to guarantee their control over him.”

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t want to turn a trained killer loose and risk him getting any ideas.”

  “He served a purpose, and he performed his duty with more compassion than any of his predecessors.”

  “That’s why he burned out on the job,” I surmised. “His productivity declined.”

  “He was too well trained for that.” Wu exhaled and depressed the plunger. “But he lost weight, lost his edge. The hope was he would rebound if given a different position. His stint in management was never meant to be permanent.”

  How depressing for Kapoor. “Did he know that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You never told him.”

  “No.”

  “He’s your best friend.”

  “He’s the closest anyone has ever come to claiming the title, yes.”

  “Do you not understand how that works?”

  “I … ” He
watched as Kapoor’s eyelids fluttered. “Farhan?”

  Farhan, not Kapoor.

  Wu was definitely slipping up more often.

  “You’re … loud.” He wet his dry lips. “Water?”

  Prepared for his cotton mouth by Thom, I passed over the bottle of cold water from the fridge.

  Wu took it from me and held it to Kapoor’s lips while he drank, somehow managing not to get a dribble on him.

  Watching them, I could see Wu cared about Kapoor. And Kapoor had already shown how far his loyalty to Wu extended. He had allowed Ezra to capture and torture him for Wu’s sake, and for the enclave. I could also tell from the fumbling overtures that Wu hadn’t realized Kapoor was more than a cog in his revenge machine. Along the way, they had become friends. Somehow. And Wu was struggling to cross the finish line. Too bad the race had already begun. He ought to know. He’s the one who pulled the proverbial trigger.

  “Could you give us a moment?” Wu placed the bottle on the bedside table. “I would prefer to do this in private.”

  “Sure.”

  I left them with the understanding that Wu had more than a vague inclination of Kapoor’s capacities as a tracker. The guilt? It was multifaceted, as were most things where Wu was concerned. But I had no doubt, none, as Wu lured Kapoor into a trancelike state behind me, that he had trained Kapoor himself.

  And maybe that was how he could speak to his father’s skills with such certainty. Perhaps what he had done to Kapoor, to others under the auspices of the NSB, was learned at his father’s knee. So when he told me Kapoor was broken, he meant it.

  And I had to wonder, if the ability to program and reprogram at will was one of the gifts of his species, had he used them on me?

  I credited my core beliefs to my father. Edward Boudreau had raised me a certain way, and his friends, who had become my family, further reinforced that moral code. But what if Wu had whispered in my ear the night he made me? What he wanted me to be, how he wanted me to behave, what he wanted me to value?

  Alone in the kitchen, I stuck my head in the freezer to cool the summer heat off my nape and shock my senses.