“To go that deep would risk harming Conlan and Quinn if Quinn runs into something unexpected in Conlan’s subconscious mind . . . like a trap.”
Brina lifted her hands to her waist, heat searing her gaze. “First you defend Conlan as a loyal follower, then you suggest he could be a threat. Which will it be?”
He had no reason to suspect the young man. “I just disagree with putting Quinn or Conlan through this without being convinced it’s necessary.”
Brina crossed her arms and really looked at him this time, but not with love in her eyes. “You come here asking for information on the Alterant who has me spending more time at Tribunal meetings than taking care of Belador business, but you hesitate to pursue a danger to the Beladors . . . and me?”
How had she mangled his words to make him sound as though he was letting her down? “My first concern is always to protect you and our tribe.”
“Then consider this. The Alterants are an unknown entity. Almost a hundred have shifted into beasts in just two days. Does this sudden change, or what is causing the change, not concern you?”
“Of course it does, and I expect a report by the time I return to VIPER headquarters, but it’s unfair to point suspicion at Evalle when none of the beasts seen so far have green eyes. And we’ve even heard of one Alterant intervening to save a teenager’s life. If Evalle was here she could help us.”
Brina’s gaze narrowed in doubt. “You’re sure? How do you know whatever is causing this outbreak wouldn’t affect her ability to control herself?”
“Because I know Evalle. She can control her beast.”
“Are you allowing your relationship with her to blind you to a potential threat from Alterants as well?”
“Of course not.” Was he? No. He didn’t think so. He asked, “What does all this have to do with the traitor?”
She lifted a hand, counting off fingers with each point. “You believed Larsen O’Meary was involved with the first Alterant incident. You met Evalle when the traitor tricked you into a Medb trap. You got a tip on the traitor because of the Alterant who shifted in North Carolina nine weeks ago.”
“I’ll concede that you have a point, but why are you so angry with me? What do you want from me?”
She scowled. “What do I want? For you to carry out my orders for the mind probe and deliver me the head of that traitor. And for you to accept that I have a responsibility to the Beladors. It’s best we stop pretending that our relationship will ever work out so that we may both move on with our lives.”
He heard her message loud and clear this time, every word slashing what they’d shared in the past to pieces.
“You got it, Your Highness.” He couldn’t enter without her invitation, but he could sure as hell leave without her permission. He lifted his hands and withdrew his hologram from the castle in the brittle seconds before she could dismiss him.
ELEVEN
She should have let Tristan kill her.
Evalle sat on the fern-covered ground, knees propped up, facing the tangled jungle growth ten feet away that had been ripped to shreds and beaten to pieces by a beast. Tristan. The same Tristan-beast that stood glaring down at her with the promise of reprisal in his hollow black eyes.
The only thing preventing him from killing her was that invisible spellbound wall between them, which he’d failed to destroy in the past three hours.
Sunrise had to be coming soon, even though it was hard to tell with this dense cover of greenery and thick clouds constantly shedding rain and holding the dark close. At this point, she honestly didn’t care if her skin fried.
Like fatback on a hot skillet, as her Nightstalker buddy Grady would say.
Evalle had no way back to Atlanta, no weapon and no ally here.
Tristan turned away and made two steps when the air around him distorted, the way heat warped away from an explosion. His body started changing, shrinking from the ten-foot-tall creature to a just-over-six-foot human, arms and legs returning to normal size.
Which meant his jeans no longer fit.
They fell down around his feet, then he stepped out of them and walked away as naked as the day he was born.
She stretched her neck, looking for him, then gave up.
Why would he come back, when he couldn’t get his hands on her? He’d left her dagger right where he’d kinetically stuck it in the ground—inside his protected area.
Probably using her dagger as bait to lure her back inside.
Evalle dropped her head onto her arms, which were crossed over her knees. Failure would be easier to accept if no one else paid the price but her. She didn’t want to be locked away like Tristan, but at this point she’d accept that over leaving Brina to face down the Tribunal.
Not to mention disappointing the entire Belador race, including Tzader and Quinn, who had to be out fighting Alterants.
Now she was letting down all humans as well.
“Thought you wanted to talk.”
Tristan? Evalle jerked her head up and there he was, still inside his area, but now he wore a pair of khaki shorts with pockets everywhere. His body was clean, his blond hair slicked back as if he’d taken a quick dip in water.
And his eyes were chameleon green again.
“Yes, I do want to talk.” She pushed to her feet, dusting off her mud-crusted jeans. Something bit her neck. She slapped at the bug and brought back a bloody smudge on her palm.
Just great. Vampire bugs.
Tristan moved forward and she took a step back.
But this time he didn’t ram his body against the invisible force keeping him walled in. He sat on the ground and leaned against a gigantic tree that appeared to be growing half in and half outside his prison. His left arm pushed against a flat surface she couldn’t see, which must be the wall of the enclosure.
If he wanted to kill her, he could have done it inside his area. Maybe he wanted some company after all, but she wasn’t stepping back inside with him to test that theory.
In a show of camaraderie, she eased over and slid down on the left side of Tristan against the same tree. But she kept a few inches of separation from him even if he couldn’t touch her.
What do you say to a man you’d sent back to hell? “How you doing, Tristan?”
He ignored her, looking up into the canopy of tree cover. His lips moved with whispered words she couldn’t hear. She waited for him to say something to her next, but he sat quietly for a few minutes, then a monkey high above them screeched.
Tristan couldn’t leave his area, but any animal could.
She tensed and glanced up in time to see a yellow bomb falling at them.
Evalle dove away to her left.
Tristan didn’t even flinch.
He caught a large bunch of bananas that filled his hands. Snapping one free, he placed the rest of them on his right and said, “So what do you want?”
Could he direct an animal on her side of the wall to do his bidding, too? Like sending a predator to get her?
She sat back up and kept an eye on her surroundings while she considered how to answer him. What was the point in searching for a diplomatic way to put this when she’d already told him the same thing once? “I was sent here to find the three escaped Alterants.”
Tristan bit the banana and smiled briefly around each chew. “You ask Brina where she had them caged?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Evalle could see no reason to shade the truth, not if she had any hope of Tristan answering her questions honestly. “Because the Tribunal forbade my asking her and she’s sworn to secrecy about the Alterants for some reason.”
“Doesn’t matter. Brina doesn’t know where those three are right now anyhow,” Tristan said, smug with knowledge. He finished the last bite of the banana and tossed the peel aside.
Then why ask me if Brina knew? Evalle would not lose her temper with him. “But you know where those three are, right?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tel
l me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I know you’re not going to see this my way at first, but give me a chance to explain.”
Tristan snorted and broke off another banana. “The same way I got a chance to explain before you used the Ngak Stone to send me back here?”
“I didn’t want to do that—”
“Tell it to someone who’ll listen.”
She was tired of constantly taking the blame for everything. He had some responsibility in all this. “You were the one who sided with the Medb and Kujoo. If you had helped our side I might have been able to talk Brina into not sending you back.”
“Right. Brina sent me here the first time before I ever shifted into beast form. I’m sure she’d want me walking around telling everyone how she’d screwed me from day one.”
Evalle drew her knees up and dropped her chin down. That was what Tristan had said the first time she’d met him, and she could tell he believed what he said, so had Brina really put him away without reason?
“I understand, Tristan, but I wasn’t there when she sent you to this prison, so I can’t argue with you. I do know other Alterants have killed humans and Beladors after shifting into beasts. Maybe Brina was trying to get ahead of the problem before you shifted. I don’t have answers for any of that.”
“Then why didn’t they lock you away?”
The shade of hurt in his voice caused her to lift her head so she could look at him when she answered honestly. “I spent my entire life in a basement because I have a lethal intolerance to sunshine. An old druid came to me there when I was eighteen and told me of my destiny to be a Belador warrior. He didn’t know my eyes were an unnatural Alterant green because my eyes are so sensitive I always wear sunglasses, even in the dark.”
“But you could leave the basement at night, that’s more freedom than I’ve had here.”
She never talked about her life growing up, but Tristan had seen his own share of misery, and he was talking to her. “No, I couldn’t leave that basement. I was adopted by my father’s sister, who kept me locked up. If I can believe anything that hag told me, when my mother died in childbirth and I had a severe reaction to sunlight the hospital ran tests that exposed that I was not her brother’s child.”
Tristan didn’t look at her, but the stern angles in his face softened some. “What’d your father do?”
“Basically, sold me to my aunt, who believed her brother could do no wrong. She offered to be the martyr and take me on. She didn’t want some mutant child to embarrass her beloved Army officer brother, so she legally adopted me, but, as she once put it, I was her retirement nest egg.”
Ironically, the hag died before she could retire.
Tristan asked, “What happened when you met the druid?”
She’d never been much for dredging up old pains, so she was glad to move on past family hour. “He offered me a chance to train as a Belador if I was willing to swear an oath to uphold their code of honor. I would have signed on with the devil to escape that basement and my aunt, but I am loyal to the Beladors.”
At that she got an eye roll from Tristan, but Evalle finished explaining. “By the time the Beladors got a look at my bright green eyes, I was already training with them. They figured I might be different because I’m a female Alterant. That I might not shift involuntarily.”
She wasn’t sharing the fact that things had changed a few days back when another female Alterant had surfaced and killed humans. That was more of a need-to-know detail.
Tristan said, “I never saw a druid. Never got an offer to choose my destiny.”
“That just means you weren’t expected to be a warrior. Trust me, it’s not all fun and games.”
“Neither is this place.”
What could she say to that? Nothing.
She had to move the conversation back to finding the Alterants. If those three were together, she’d risk burning one of her Tribunal gifts to find them, but not if they were separated since she could only use a gift one time. “Are the three Alterants all in the same place?”
“Maybe . . . maybe not.” Tristan shrugged. “Tell me about Beladors. What made them send a druid to you?”
“They didn’t specifically send one to me. The way I understand it, Belador warriors are born under a star called PRIN, but I know nothing about astrology. A druid meets a child around age five to make contact, then goes away until that person turns eighteen. The druid that appeared in my basement said he was Breasel and that he’d met me when I was a kid. I told him I didn’t remember meeting him, but the weird thing is that I did recognize him when he spoke to me in an ancient language. He said he’d told me the same words when I was five.”
“Was it Gaelic?”
“Sort of, but older than that, a secret druid language. That’s when I recognized him as the guy I’d seen working in my basement on a hot water heater or something when I was little. I watched him from where I hid in a corner and remembered him talking some foreign language out loud, then leaving. When he offered me a chance to escape that basement at eighteen, I was in. I’d been afraid for years—”
Tristan cut his eyes at her, which she ignored, because she was not sharing why she’d lived in terror for three years.
“—but I had this moment of knowing for sure that old druid was no danger to me. I told him I’d go anywhere to get out of there but I couldn’t be exposed to sunlight. He smiled and said to hold his hand and close my eyes. Next thing I knew, I was in Alaska, wearing animal skins and heavy boots with a group of new Belador recruits being trained.
“We lived in a barn with little heat during the shortest days of the year, which worked for me. We had to fend for ourselves and learn how to live off the land in a frigid climate, but for the first time in my life I was free to go outside whenever I wanted.”
Tristan said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
She searched her mind for a way to find common ground with him. The more she learned about him and how they were possibly connected as Alterants, the better chance she had of proving Alterants were more than a bunch of mutant mutts.
That we deserve to be a recognized race.
She asked, “How did you know you had Belador blood if you didn’t meet a druid?”
His smirk tilted arrogantly when he shook his head, refusing to answer her. He spit out bitterly, “I don’t think having Belador blood counts for shit.”
“It might if you’d help me figure out what else plays a part in our genetics. You told me in Atlanta you had an idea what had bred with a Belador to make an Alterant and what we have in common with the other three Alterants.” Her stomach growled loudly.
Tristan arched an eyebrow at her.
She hadn’t realized she was hungry until he’d started eating, and her mouth had watered at the smell of fresh bananas.
Breaking off a banana, he held this one toward her in offering, but not close enough for the fruit or his hand to pass through the barrier.
She’d passed through once, so she should be able to put her hand back through.
Evalle reached over and took the banana. “Thanks.”
He grabbed her forearm.
Every muscle in her body tensed, ready to fight.
She stayed very still, watching the fingers of his free hand slide down to curl around her wrist snug as a handcuff. He turned her arm toward him and gently lifted a leaf-shaped bug off her skin, placing the critter safely on the ground.
Then he released her arm.
She expelled a breath she’d caught in her throat and started peeling the banana. Act calm, as if nothing has changed. “You were going to tell me what else you were besides Belador.”
“No, I wasn’t. I’m not sharing anything I know about our origin as long as I’m stuck in here.”
Who could fault him for holding back? In his place, she’d have done the same, which meant she had to offer him something he might be willing to trade for.
A chance to fight for his freedom.
Evalle weighed everything and believed Brina could hold her own if what Evalle suggested came to pass. “I got the Tribunal to agree to let the three missing Alterants plead their cases.”
His eyes flicked with surprise, but he only said, “If you find them.”
She sighed and moved on. “You said you were unfairly caged. I won’t make promises I can’t keep, like saying I can get you out of here, but if you’ll help me I will promise to ask the Tribunal to let you plead your case directly to them, too.”
First, she’d have to get Brina to ask Macha to allow Tristan to be released, but one step at a time.
He polished off another banana, asking, “Why would you try to convince Brina to do that?”
“I took an oath of honor, and I consider that an honorable choice. If Brina had good reason for having you sent away—which I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt about as well—then she’ll have no problem explaining her actions. I’m going to let truth play out.” And hope like the devil Brina did have a sound reason for locking Tristan away.
“But you said you couldn’t ask Brina about the location of the Alterants.”
“If we can hand Brina the origin of Alterants, I think she’ll talk to Macha about giving the Alterants who have their beast under control a chance to join VIPER, and maybe the Beladors.”
“I don’t know.” Tristan scratched his shoulder.
“VIPER and the Beladors need us right now. Alterants are shifting all of a sudden everywhere.”
Tristan cracked a smile. “No kidding?”
“Not funny. People are dying.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin, losing his smile. “Let’s say I consider what you’re suggesting. What did the Tribunal offer in return if you brought in the three missing Alterants?”
He wasn’t going to like her answer, but then neither did she. “My freedom.”
“Guess you didn’t come with a conscience, huh?”
Guilt hammered at her soul every time she considered taking those three back with her, because she didn’t trust the Tribunal. But she believed in Brina, who had promised that those Alterants would get a fair hearing while being held under Macha’s protection in the meantime.
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