Fire Kin

by M. J. Scott

  The room reeked of fear and sweat and Beast now. It stung my nose and it had to smell worse to him. He would be able to decipher the pain in the scents too. He looked up at me as I approached.

  “You’ve heard what came before,” I said. “Do you want the same or do you want to talk?”

  His pupils flared and his throat worked. “Ask me what you want to know.”

  Guy started to run though the questions again. “Who sent you?”

  “Pierre Rousselline.”

  “What was your target?”

  “The gate.”

  “Why the gate?”

  The Beast hesitated. “Testing defenses,” he said. “I’m only a second-tier guerrier in my pack. I didn’t hear all the plans. But they were talking about the tunnels. They want to get into the tunnels.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “Pierre and the new Blood Lord. Lord Ignatius.”

  “You heard them say that?” Guy demanded.

  “Not them. But my alpha, Luka. He was muttering about tunnels and madness when he came to pick two of us for the job. Alain and I, and then tonight we were told we were working with the young Krueger in there.” He glared at me. “He’s a brave one.”

  I met his stare coolly. “None of you are brave. If you were brave you’d stop this madness with Ignatius and want the peace restored.”

  “We do as our alphas command.”

  “That only proves my point. Your alphas are leading you to destruction. Time to choose more wisely.”

  Something swam in his eyes. Regret? Fear? Anger? “That’s not our way.”

  “In that case, I hope you don’t have a family. War brings death. And not just to soldiers. The humans won’t let Ignatius bring this City down.”

  He stared at me for a few more seconds, then looked back at Guy. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Is there anything else we should know?”

  “Like I said, I’m not high in the ranks. I don’t know much more. The Blood are moving toward something. They’re running things in the Night World now. The alphas have agreed to that.” He looked disgusted. “But I don’t know what Lord Ignatius wants in your tunnels. Then again, you probably do.” He stopped then and hung his head.

  Guy looked at Father Cho, who made a little gesture as though to say “enough.” The knights put the Beasts back into cells—the three of them separated now, in case they decided to turn on one another—and then we were left standing there.

  There wasn’t much more I could do. Father Cho and Guy knew what was in the tunnels below the hospital as well as I did. And I wanted more than anything to take a bath and sleep for a time. Maybe I would forget what I had done. Maybe I would be able to wash the slimy feeling off my skin.

  Maybe.

  ASH

  Bryony turned away from the cell door, moving slowly.

  “I’ll go back to St. Giles now,” she said to Father Cho.

  He nodded, patted her shoulder. “Rest, my lady.”

  Rest? He’d just watched her torture two men and thought she’d be going home to sleep easily? My gut twisted.

  Bryony nodded and headed for the stairs. I followed her up out of the dungeons, trailing a little behind her. I would do her the courtesy of not pressing her while we still had an audience.

  She walked more slowly than usual, her shoulders almost painfully straight. Trying too hard. She wasn’t all right. I could feel the ripples of discord in the usual deep calm of her power. When she stepped outside the Brother House she sighed, then stood a moment, sucking in lungfuls of air as though she could purge something from her body with each breath.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, moving to block her path. She looked too pale and the chain at her neck gleamed a bruised pale green that didn’t ease my concern any.

  She waved me away. “I’m fine. Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t push me, Ash. I’m not in the mood.”

  “And I’m not in the mood to be pushed away either. Either you’re upset by what happened down in those cells or you’re upset about the attack.”

  “Those are my only two options, are they? I’m glad you know every detail of my life.”

  Anger glimmered in the depths of her eyes. Which was good. Anger was better than her looking washed out and pale. Anger meant she was alive and fighting.

  “I don’t. That’s true. But those are the main things that have happened since I climbed out of your bed,” I pointed out. I tried to figure out how long ago that was. I’d heard the cathedral bell toll nine while we were down in the cells. It must have been near four when the explosion had happened. Had it really only been five hours? It felt like days.

  I was starting to feel desperately tired. Adrenaline wearing off compounded by little sleep. “Unless you’re telling me that something else momentous happened in the last six hours.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You consider yourself momentous, do you?”

  “I consider you letting me into your bed momentous.” I risked a smile. “I’ll let you decide the rest.”

  Her mouth twitched, but then she shook her head. “Don’t try and charm me.”

  “So it is last night? You don’t have to worry. If you tell me to go, then I’ll go.”

  A brief flash of vivid red ran the length of her chain, disappearing so quickly I was half afraid that I’d imagined it.

  “Says the man who’s standing in my path.”

  “I’m concerned about you. That was difficult, down there.”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “That doesn’t mean you like it. I’ve killed plenty of men on the battlefield. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “Nor does discussing it.”

  “What you did or what he said?” I asked. “Do you know why Ignatius is so curious about the tunnels?”

  “He wants to be able to attack the Brother House and the hospital.”

  It was a part truth. Bryony was good at dissembling, like all Fae, but I could also tell she wasn’t telling me the whole truth.

  “Perhaps I need to go take a look. If there are weaknesses down there, I need to know about them.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Problem?”

  “Why can’t you just leave things alone?”

  “Because the Templars are paying me a nice pile of money to help them out. And I can’t do what they’re expecting for all that gold if there are cracks in their security that I don’t know about.”

  “The security in the tunnels is nothing to concern yourself with.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I set the wards myself. And I’m not the only one who worked on the defenses.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble for some disused space.”

  “The tunnels are a strategic target.”

  “Yes, but you’ve only been fighting the Blood for a short time. You’re not even officially fighting them yet. Are you telling me all those wards are new?”

  “No. The Blood have always been a danger.”

  “They’re not likely to get in through the Brother House, and to get through St. Giles would take a major offensive. So either the humans who built the hospital were particularly paranoid or there’s something else down there that you’re not telling me about. Is there?”

  It was a direct question. She had to answer or say nothing.

  Or so I hoped.

  She stayed silent. Which meant she didn’t want to answer.

  I folded my arms, prepared to wait her out. The silence stretched past a minute. Stubborn woman. “Perhaps I’ll ask Guy.”

  Her fingers stole up to clasp the chain around her neck. Worried. Or annoyed. “Just leave it alone. For now. Can’t you do that much?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. You wouldn’t want to keep it a secret if it wasn’t important.”

  “I can’t tell you. Not just now.”

  “Is that the truth? O
r a shade of it?”

  “I’m asking you to wait a little while. The sun is up. The Blood can’t try anything just now.”

  “Beast Kind don’t need moonlight to attack.”

  “No, but they’re a hell of a lot more obvious during the day. And they wouldn’t have the Blood to back them up if they did try anything.”

  “Maybe we should just go over there now and take them out, then.” I was only half joking.

  “There are children amongst them.”

  “Some would say they’re children who would grow up to be our enemies.”

  Her mouth flattened. “And you? What would you say?”

  “I don’t kill children,” I said. “Do you think I would?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know you anymore.”

  “Yes, you do. I’m the one who was inside you last night.”

  “Sex isn’t knowledge.”

  “Maybe. But that wasn’t just sex.”

  She paled and I cursed myself beneath my breath. I’d only come after her to make sure she was all right, and here I was, making things worse.

  I held up my hands. “Look, forget I said that. But I swear, you know me. I’m still me. Still the one you used to . . . care for.”

  Her eyes glimmered for a moment with something that, in anybody else, I would’ve said were unshed tears. But Bryony didn’t cry. “Maybe you haven’t changed. But I have.”

  She turned and I couldn’t help it, I caught her wrist before I thought. “Don’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re upset and I want to help.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I haven’t changed.”

  “That’s what scares me.” The words came too quietly. And while I was still trying to work out what she meant, she slipped her hand free, turned, and vanished.

  Chapter Fourteen

  BRYONY

  Maybe it was childish, using an invisibility charm. And maybe it was futile and Ash would follow me anyway, tracing my path by the feel of my magic, the same way I would be able to trace him.

  But I couldn’t face him anymore.

  I couldn’t afford to believe that his words were truth and that he still cared for me. That this time perhaps we had a chance. Because I wanted too much for those words to be true and I feared too much that they weren’t.

  And, after so short a time, both of those things scared me.

  I walked cautiously at first, turning to see if he followed. But he hadn’t moved. He was looking in the direction I was taking, but I couldn’t tell whether he could sense my direction or whether he was just guessing my path. But by the time I reached the gate in the wall that stood between the Brother House and the hospital grounds, he still stood there, just watching, his face troubled.

  I lingered for a moment, there at the junction between his world and mine, watching him too.

  He was rumpled, dressed in his brown leathers and shirt, dirt on his breeches and on his long boots. The bloodstains had faded to brown too now. All those browns echoed the shades of his hair and made his skin look even more tanned than usual. Long fingers drummed on the hilt of his sword hanging on his hip.

  Fingers bare of his ring.

  I remembered the feel of those fingers against me last night and I almost gave in and went back. The urge to take him by the hand and see if I could drive that troubled look away and if he could ease the regret in my heart for what I had just done burned fiercely.

  But I didn’t. I just took a few more seconds, drinking in the sight of him, part of me still not convinced, it seemed, that he really was back and needing the proof of sight. And touch. But no. Last night was done and it was a new day. I had to be strong.

  Ash could’ve been killed last night by one of those Beasts. He could be killed any moment. And if he survived it all, then most likely he would ride back out the City gates and disappear from my life for a second time.

  Last night I had been weak. It had been pleasurable, yes. Beyond pleasurable, but that was exactly why I couldn’t let it happen again.

  Right now I had just enough strength to resist him. If I let him snare me in that web of pleasure that he wove so easily, then those threads of strength would snap one by one until the last of them gave way and I fell into a place that there would be no returning from.

  Once I passed through the gate, I sped up, almost running. Across the grounds, through the nearest door. Down the stairs, into the tunnels, and down the familiar twists and turns of the way to the hidden ward. Normally I didn’t seek the place out. I visited daily to see how Simon and Atherton were progressing, but the iron doors that guarded the ward made it uncomfortable to be in for any serious length of time.

  I had a high tolerance to iron, but so much in one place, so close, was past my limit.

  As I approached the door, my stomach started to roll in protest and I wondered if I’d made a mistake.

  But then, maybe Simon would be able to do something to ease my nausea. It might have been caused by the mental stress of what I’d done, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t remove the physical symptoms at least. My mind, I would have to deal with myself.

  And I would.

  I stopped before the door, to reach into the well-warded niche where I kept a stash of leather gloves, and pulled a pair on. They let me press my hand against the doors to work the wards, even though the iron made them ache down to the bone, as though I’d drenched them in freezing acid.

  But the sensation was only temporary, or so I reminded myself every time I did this.

  I closed the second door behind me gratefully and stepped into the outer room of the ward.

  Atherton wasn’t at his desk. No doubt I’d find him inside, tending to his patients.

  Sure enough, I heard voices from the room beyond. Atherton’s tenor voice and Simon’s slightly lower rumble. Female voices too. Three of them. Holly and Lily, I thought. And maybe Adeline, given that I couldn’t feel any hint of Saskia’s magic.

  We’d sworn Adeline to secrecy when we showed her this place, making it a condition of her and her group of refugee Blood being granted Haven here at St. Giles. Along with her agreement to help Simon and Atherton with their quest for a cure.

  So far she’d seemed to have kept her promise.

  I opened the door to let myself through into the inner room. The hidden ward had six rows of beds, most of them occupied. Almost fifty patients. Once upon a time, before Lucius had died, all the occupants had been silent and unmoving, comatose for all practical purposes, blood-locked and senseless. Now some of them were awake, though they still need encouragement to talk and walk and do anything near normal activity. It was progress, but it was, in some ways, harder to take than their former state had been. Like being able to see the light at the end of a tunnel but having the path to that light blocked by an impassable barrier.

  Nothing we’d tried so far had enabled us to progress past rousing them to this point. Right now returning them to their families would just mean a life sentence of having to be cared for day and night. A stopgap, not a cure.

  When Simon and the others saw me, the conversation died. Not the effect I wanted to have on people right at this moment, but I understood. They wanted to know what news I brought. What new twist to our situation might have occurred.

  Lily spoke first. There were shadows under her clear gray eyes, something I’d rarely seen. She had been pushing herself too. Maybe we all needed to give one another a talking-to and convince ourselves that sleeping occasionally was acceptable.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  She was involved in what had happened last night, I knew. She’d found the Beasts for the Templars. Which explained the exhaustion on her face and the worry on Simon’s.

  “Yes, do tell,” Adeline added. Her voice was light, as it often was, but she too looked nervous, though in a vampire, it can be hard to distinguish. Her pale hair was impeccably dressed as always and her skin was the clear white of moonlight or milk, glea
ming against the startling red slash of paint on her lips. Her stark black dress set it all off. Of the six of us, she was the only one who didn’t look as though she’d been awake for days and possibly sleeping in her clothes before that.

  “One of the Beasts they captured talked,” I said shortly. “He confirmed that Ignatius was trying our defenses. He mentioned the tunnels as a target.”

  That hardly lightened the mood. It wasn’t as though anyone here could have been expecting anything other than Ignatius being curious about what was down here. Adeline had been unable to tell us if he had any inkling of what Simon was up to. Lord Lucius had suspected, but Simon and Lily had killed him. And he wasn’t exactly the type to share information with his underlings until he had to. Back then Ignatius had only been on the fringes of Lucius’ inner circle. But we couldn’t discount the fact that he might know something.

  Even if he didn’t know about Simon, he knew that Adeline and her party were hiding in St. Giles. Had probably heard that we were housing them underground in some of the disused wards. That on its own was a big enough draw.

  If Ignatius could kill Adeline, then he would have killed the last of the Blood who openly stood against him.

  Plus, getting to her down here in the heart of the humans’ stronghold would send a fairly clear message of his degree of power.

  Which was why we couldn’t let that happen.

  “Did he say anything more specific?” Simon asked eventually after they had all taken a moment’s silence to digest the information.

  “No. Sorry. From what he claims, he’s a lower-ranking guerrier in the Theissen pack. Not privy to any high-level plans. One of the three is Krueger, though, so Martin was involved. And they all said it was Pierre calling the shots.” Pierre Rousselline was the alpha who had been closest to Lucius and he’d worked hard to keep that position throughout the Blood Court’s power struggles. Whatever he was doing, the orders were coming straight from Ignatius; of that much we could be certain.