Bite Back Box Set 1

by Mark Henwick

  She leaned forward again. Unsure quite where to push, I didn’t do anything in time. She settled her face into the crook of my neck with a sigh.

  I slipped my arms around her while my heart and brain raced frantically. I needed to do something quickly because I could feel my own Athanate and wolf responses starting to run. My jaw relaxed. All it needed was for me to brush her hair aside and kiss her neck. My Athanate would know what to do next. I could feel my fangs ready to manifest. Her lips pressed their own hot message against my throat.

  “Stop, please. We can’t,” I managed to whisper.

  “It’s all right, I won’t bite,” she murmured.

  “Bian, no.”

  She raised her head, her face puzzled. “I’m mainlining your pheromones, Amber. Don’t try and tell me you don’t want it.”

  “I won’t try to lie to you Bian.” I swallowed. “My body does. My heart doesn’t, and that means I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She angled her face in to kiss.

  I got up in a hurry. I managed to twist, so Bian landed on the sofa rather than on the floor, but her look couldn’t have been any more outraged. And this was definitely not Leopard or Diakon now.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she yelled.

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with me? I said no. I mean no.”

  “Do you? Your body says different. I mean what I say, body and soul.”

  “And you’ve never thought about how you say it? You’ve gone crazy on me. I can’t tell whether you’re teasing or serious. I can’t tell who you are from one minute to the next.”

  She jumped off the sofa and jabbed me in the chest. “I’m hard to read? You’re the one who changed.”

  “You mean I’ve gotten wary? Couldn’t be anything to do with there being a spy at Haven, could it? The spy that everyone says is my imagination?”

  “You were the one who said it could be just someone putting two and two together!”

  “That was before I heard that Basilikos have enough information to do research on my Blood. That’s got to be details that people wouldn’t just happen to overhear. Where did they get that sort of detail from? Skylur? Diana? Your team?” My anger was blotting out my reason. “You?”

  Bian looked as if I’d slapped her. And I wasn’t finished. I jabbed her right back in the chest.

  “I made a call to Skylur’s secure cell this afternoon, left a message. I might as well have shouted out my position using a bullhorn. Matlal’s team were there six minutes later. Tell me, who has access to Skylur’s cell and yours?”

  Bian grabbed my hands. She was quicker and stronger than me. The realization that I might have just told the spy I was on to her was like a bucket of cold water over my anger. But it was pain and not rage that shouted at me.

  “It’s not me!” she protested. “If there is a spy and not even Skylur can tell who it is, how am I supposed to?”

  She pushed me hard against the wall.

  “And he starts issuing orders for you to come into Haven, passing them through my team, but not backing it up when you ignore them,” she hissed. “Do you think I’m stupid? Don’t try that affiliate independence shit on me either. You have no idea what leeway it gives you. You’re running a smokescreen for him. Fine. Where does that leave me? What if I do something that exposes it?”

  The unthinking emotion was back. Her eyes got that dreamy look that had scared me about David. She was panting and I could see her fangs manifest and disappear repeatedly in her mouth. All the tension in her seemed to be ready to explode into something—violence or biting. I had to stop her, not just for my sake. I knew Skylur would have to impose the death sentence for breaking his ban. There would be no excuses for Bian.

  “I’m Altau head of security, we have a problem and everyone can see that Skylur doesn’t trust me.” Her voice dropped, but stayed sharp as a blade. “How the hell do you think I feel?”

  Her body was shivering like a plucked bowstring. Somewhere inside, she knew she had to stop. She was fighting herself. But there was no way I could fight her. If anything, it would make it worse. I had to work with her. I had to cool this down.

  “Bad.” I spoke quietly. “If he loses trust in you, Bian, what does that mean for you personally?” I could see her brain working. That’s what stopped David. While she was thinking, her Athanate hunger wasn’t driving her actions. I needed her to think. For both our sakes.

  “For me?” A frown creased her brow. “Who cares what it means for me?”

  “I do.”

  Her eyes flared again, but her grip relaxed a fraction.

  She blinked and her breathing slowed. “Even if he believes I betrayed him; even if he locks me away, kills me, he is the only one who can stop us going to war. He’s the only one who can prevent the worst possible thing that could happen to the Athanate.” She let out a slow breath. “And he is the only leader who can deliver Emergence. Against that, what happens to me is nothing.”

  I felt the shock of that down into my belly. This wasn’t an Athanate reaction. This was Bian’s stone-hard rational assessment.

  “It’s not nothing, Bian. What does Diana say?”

  She let my hands go. “She hasn’t called. I can’t reach her. I don’t even know where she is.”

  I understood. I didn’t like the sound of that either. In fact, pretty much everything today was ratcheting up the feeling that we were all sliding into a train crash. I needed to keep her thinking.

  “Why, Pussycat?” My voice sounded rusty. Very carefully, I put my arms around her. I held her gaze with mine. I mustn’t let her start focusing on my neck. “Why is Emergence so important?”

  “Such a question.” She snorted and it almost sounded as if the Leopard was back. “Because I want to come out of the closet.”

  I spluttered. “You’re so far out of the freaking closet that—”

  “Not that closet, Round-eye. I never got in that closet. I want to come out as Athanate. I want people to know it and accept me for what I am. I want to be able to get close to someone—like this—and when their heart speeds up, I want it to be because they’re excited, not because they’re scared. Even though they know I’m Athanate. Even though they know I drink blood.”

  From beneath the armored shell of her sexuality, a different Bian peeped out at me. It was as if we’d been sparring and she’d dropped her guard. Something precious had been handed to me.

  It was up to me not to stamp on it. I was good at robust refusals, but this was new.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  “Who do you trust completely?” she said, abruptly in my face again, lips almost touching mine, body pressed hard against me.

  “Diana,” I answered automatically. With my life. Literally.

  She nodded, her eyes locked on me. The pressure came off as she stood back, but she didn’t let go.

  “There’s a key in the kitchen to an old Ford downstairs. Leave the Jeep and take it. No one but Diana and I know about it. And come to Haven tomorrow.” Her face was still angry, belying the calm in her words.

  “Thank—” I started.

  “Trust me,” she said, jerking me off balance. “Trust me. Less than Diana, maybe, but trust me. And keep your freaking gun on you.” She flung me back against the wall and by the time I picked myself up, she had taken her sweatshirt and gone.

  Chapter 33

  I walked shakily to Manassah, along the side of the golf course. I was early and it was a good way to get my adrenaline overload damped down. But it meant I went in through the patio doors, and didn’t see the car outside.

  They’d seen me, so there was no point in trying to sneak off and come back.

  “Agent Ingram, what a surprise,” I said.

  “Hey there, honey.” Jen got up and kissed me on the cheek. “My, what a lovely suit.”

  I tried to glare at her, but clearly I hadn’t been practicing enough recently and it didn’t work.

  “So glad to have caught
you, Ms. Farrell. I understand you’re mighty busy at the moment.”

  I let the sarcasm slide off, while my little demon reveled in the Texas drawl. Jen brought me a rum, and we settled on the sofa, facing Ingram. Jen looked reasonably relaxed, so I guessed he hadn’t been giving her the third degree.

  “I assume you’ve come to see me, rather than Jen?”

  Agent Ingram nodded. “Yup. Dropped by on the chance you’d be here. Just a few small points.”

  I hid my sigh behind a sip of the rum, and let it work its magic on me. At least he hadn’t come in brandishing cuffs and dragging Griffith along.

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked.

  Ingram looked uncomfortable. “We had to split up. He’s checking some stuff on the other side of town.”

  Yeah, for sure. Suddenly, this was a whole lot more interesting. Ingram wanted to talk to me without witnesses. At least, without FBI witnesses.

  I raised my brows. “Jen okay to stay?” I saw her twitch with irritation out of the corner of my eye, but I wanted to see what he’d say.

  He nodded and struggled to settle on his chair.

  “Ah, dammit all,” he said. “Ray’s on a wild goose chase. He is…unimaginative. And not cleared for certain projects.”

  “Uh-huh,” I replied. Anthracite, for example.

  He’s trying to set me up for a sucker punch.

  He finally relaxed and tilted his head to one side. “Y’know, Ms. Farrell, there’s more…’scuse me, more horse shit talked about you than a whole roomful of politicians.”

  I just shrugged.

  “An’ my interest must be like a red, red rose. Feed it horse shit and it jes’ keeps on growing. Lemme give y’all an example,” he said. He pulled out some notes and perched a ridiculous little set of reading glasses on his twitchy nose.

  “Emily Schumacher.” He stopped me before I could say anything. “I haven’t bothered the family. Just past the anniversary, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer; he knew the date perfectly well. “Let’s see. Three men, no known motive. There was a firefight, two police officers killed, little Emily taken hostage, yadda, yadda. You misplaced your partner in all the excitement, tracked them down, called in the SWAT team and it all ended well.” He peered at me over the glasses. “Y’see, horse shit, premium grade.”

  No, it didn’t happen like that. But I wasn’t about to explain. At the moment, I was more intrigued by how he’d reached his conclusion than worried about where he was going afterwards. I had a feel for the way he worked. He’d explain the first part to me, to soften me up for the next part.

  “Y’know, we live in a terrible age,” he said. “Ruled by bean counters. And bean counters got their claws into the police like nothing else. So after I got this here report, I looked at the bean counters’ stuff. The police do an audit on every SWAT operation. Every one. Can you imagine? Jeez, and every time a gun is fired too.”

  Yeah, not the way they do it in Texas, Agent Ingram. There wouldn’t be enough paper.

  “So important, this stuff, so important. And y’know what?” he said, peering at me over his glasses.

  Okay, here it comes.

  “Not one of the SWAT team fired a weapon that day. Not one.”

  Oh, crap.

  “You, on the other hand, Ms. Farrell, you were lugging around that there cannon of yours and the bean report says you fired it dry.”

  Ingram leaned back in his chair and tossed the report aside. He took off his glasses and chewed the end thoughtfully for a minute.

  “Twelve round magazine. Three men. Only two of them with .45 bullet wounds. I’ve seen your shooting scores, Ms. Farrell. Care to comment?”

  “It was dark.”

  “More horse shit,” he said cheerfully. “No offense.”

  Athanate can move faster than humans, an ability that develops slowly over time. I was fortunate that the three rogues I’d killed weren’t old, in Athanate years, and I’d had a chance against them, even if it’d taken nine shots to nail the second. But I couldn’t tell him any of that.

  “Four other policemen tried earlier on. Two died and two wounded. You went in alone, ahead of the SWAT team, shot two of them and, uh, defenestrated the third.”

  Seven syllables said my demon gleefully, seven syllables. Dee-yuh-fen-es-trah-ay-ted.

  “Oh, and this.” He held up a single sheet of paper between thumb and forefinger like it was dirty. “This claims to be the complete forensics and coroner’s reports on the three bodies. John Doe, one, two, three. Bullet wounds and massive trauma and…nothing. No blood tests, no DNA, no fingerprints, no scans, no documentation, no photos, nothing at all. Not even details of the disposal of the bodies. And no signatures.”

  The bodies had disappeared into the Obs laboratories for the scientists to study. Of course no one would sign that document.

  “And your little problem at Cheesman Park on Tuesday,” he said, and Jen’s head twitched around. I hadn’t told her anything, of course. Ingram spotted that, too. “Glad to see those bruises cleared up so quickly, by the way. Now, you didn’t have a gun on you then. You took two of them out and were having a damn good set-to with the third. They weren’t just muggers strolling in the park, were they, Ms. Farrell?”

  I pursed my lips and shrugged again.

  “And I’ve seen some fancy fighting in my time. FBI Taekwondo champion in my youth. You wouldn’t believe it now.” He chuckled. “Seen some moves, but I never seen them like that.”

  “Dentou-tekidenai,” I muttered. “No style.” Competition is about points and styles. Fighting is about winning. My opponent that night had certainly understood.

  “And when they ran away, flat-out sprint, a couple of them carrying injured men like they weighed nothing. Some muggers, Ms. Farrell. Anyhow. The army feeds me horse shit. The police sure rate you highly, but behind your back, they think you’re some kinda woo-woo army experiment gone wrong. More horse shit. Now Captain Morales knows something, but he won’t say squat. And it all boils down to this: you were out there doing something for ten years that no one who knows will talk to me about. And now you’re doing something else that someone else really doesn’t want you to do, and no one who knows wants to talk to me about that either.”

  I wondered how high in the agency Ingram could reach. If Colonel Laine wasn’t able to use his contacts, then what about Agent Ingram? He was on the trail and with his resources he could stumble across the Athanate at any time. Hell, he already knew something about them from the phone tapping. Maybe it would be better to try and get him on our side. If it turned out he couldn’t work with us on Diana’s project, I was sure Skylur would require him to have a memory lapse.

  We’d fallen silent and Ingram was watching me closely. It was a small mercy he didn’t have Athanate senses as well.

  “Ms. Farrell, I’ve got no doubts you were in the army, and you did good things there, and I suspect your reluctance to talk to me comes from some agreement you had to make with them.”

  Gods, he’d gotten so close on so little.

  “Still,” he went on. “Anything that secret, it’s a problem. ’Cause if it’s so dammed secret, how do you know it’s doing what it should? And when I say secret, I mean the FBI National Security Director doesn’t know. I’m a-wondering if the Director of National Intelligence himself doesn’t know. Y’understand my point?”

  Only too well. He’d put his finger on a problem I’d been having with Ops 4-10 ever since I had heard Colonel Laine’s news. Who was running the show now and who did they report to? I’d never had doubts when Laine had been running it. Now? I wasn’t sure any more. Really not sure.

  How high in the FBI ranks was Agent Ingram?

  “You speak to those guys?” I asked.

  “I’d get a nosebleed from the altitude,” he replied, which wasn’t confirmation or denial. He could play that game as well as I could.

  I steadied myself, took some deep breaths, flicked an imaginary piece of fluff off my skirt. In
gram had just unknowingly signed up for a meeting with Diana and the colonel, if I could swing it. But he wasn’t finished yet.

  “So’s anyway, I got to thinking,” Ingram continued. “If there’s one, maybe there’s more, and Lieutenant Krantz has been a most cooperative fella. And, y’know, it’s like there’s one of them blind spots you get in your eye.” He held up his pen in front of his face and moved it backwards and forwards near his eye. “But not in my eyes, in the military records. Guys and girls just disappear off the books and then maybe reappear a while later in a different unit, maybe with a different rank and pay grade. Not many folk, taking into account the whole military. Maybe a kinda short battalion, say five or six hundred.”

  Again, close.

  “And every request for clarification gets kicked up the chain of command. It’ll take time, but I guess we’ve got to find someone who knows what’s going on?”

  He made it a question. He could see decisions being reached in my face.

  “When Krantz was chasing me, I fed back through Colonel Laine. He spoke to someone and that someone had Krantz hauled off the case. Go ask Krantz who that was. It had to be someone in his chain of command that spoke to him. Maybe that’ll get you somewhere quicker.”

  Ingram pursed his lips and nodded.

  “You’ll make sure and tell Krantz that he’s done me a favor and I will repay it.”

  Ingram smiled and nodded again, still waiting.

  I laced my fingers together to still my nervous hands.

  “You’re looking at two completely separate things. Give me till next week,” I said. “By then, you might have some idea who knows what in the army. And I hope I’ll be in a position to set up a meeting for the part that isn’t the army.”

  “Yes, Agent Ingram,” Jen came in. “Hell, all I’ve heard is that Amber’s been doing good things and can’t talk because of some restrictions that aren’t her fault. I think some leeway would be in order.”

  Ingram scratched his chin thoughtfully while he looked from one of us to the other, taking his time reaching a decision. I noted he didn’t say anything about needing to talk to a boss. That added to my impression he was far more senior than I first thought.