by Kait Nolan
She started to circle around to the trunk, but a flash of movement caught her attention just before she was slammed against the back end of the car.
“I knew you was trouble, you,” snarled Mick, eyes glinting a dangerous gold. “What did you do to him?”
Embry drew on the heat of temper, focusing it where the Wylk’s hands dug into her arms. “That’s none of your goddamned business.”
“Mick?” Gage shoved the car door open. “What the fuck? Let her go!”
“Stay in the car. I’ll handle this. Let me go, Guidry.” She cranked up the heat until he pulled his hands away with a hiss.
Gage, naturally, didn’t stay in the car. “Mick, what the hell are you doing here? Did you follow us?”
The irate shifter glanced toward him and Gage’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit, you’re Wylk.” He sagged against the car for support.
Mick’s eyes widened before narrowing and swinging back to her. “What kinda game you playin’, ’tite fille?”
“One you have no place in. Why did you follow us?”
“I know what you are, and I gots to ask myself what some firecaster wants with mon ami, why she smells like anxiety and aggression instead of arousal when she drag him outta my bar. So I follow.”
“Mick, it’s not what you think,” started Gage, trying to steady himself with one hand on the door and the other on the roof of the car.
“Really? Cause it sure the fuck look like she been tellin’ you all kind of things she not supposed to. Not to mention you look like you either drunk off yo’ ass or been beat to shit.”
“She didn’t tell me anything. She filled in the blank.”
“She what?” Mick demanded.
Fuck. Embry scrubbed both hands over her face in frustration. “He was under a Lethe spell. I removed it. End of story as far as you’re concerned. Gage, get in the car, we have to go.”
“Who da fuck is Gage?”
“That was my name before.”
“Enough with the explanations. We don’t have time for this,” insisted Embry. She opened the trunk and tossed the duffel in.
“Who’s after you?” asked Mick.
“No one yet, but they’re going to be if we stand around here lolly gagging. Go away Guidry and forget you ever saw us.”
The Wylk stepped forward. “If you think I’m just gonna let you take him—”
“She’s not taking me anywhere. I’m going willingly. I’ll be fine, Mick. Just let it be.”
“This ain’t over,” he said, but he backed off.
Gage collapsed back in the car. Embry climbed into the driver’s seat and jammed the key in the ignition. The engine cranked with a roar. “Okay, can you tell me how to get to your house?”
“My house?”
“You need to pack a bag.”
“For what?” he demanded.
“An extraction mission,” she said, pulling out into the empty street and leaving Mick standing in the shadow of a streetlight. “We have to go rescue my father.”
Chapter 5
He insisted on driving. It was his car, he said. And he drove the speed limit. As if they had all the time in the world or were taking a fucking road trip. When she complained, he said it was best if they remained under the radar of both the human and Mirus variety. So Embry sat in her seat and seethed until somewhere south of Dallas, when he pulled into a roadside diner for breakfast. She remained silent, picking at her eggs and toast while he plowed through a tall stack, a western omelet, hash browns, and half a pot of coffee.
“Okay, you’ve had eight hours to sulk that we’re not doing this your way right now. You done yet?” he asked.
“I’m not sulking. I’m pissed. It’s not the same thing.”
“Semantics. Eat, you’ll need your strength.”
She narrowed her eyes and nibbled at a slice of bacon.
“Ooo, sarcasm by body language. That’s a step toward getting over yourself and getting to work.”
“Stuff it, Dempsey.” Embry scowled into her coffee. Christ, I’ve regressed to being a teenager. Irritated—with herself, with him—she put the coffee down and stabbed a fork into the eggs. “The intel came from the senior member of Dad’s team. They were on a clean-up mission trying to eliminate some traces of a—” Her eyes flicked around to check the distance of the waitress. “—an illegal hunting spree. Werewolves. Idiots. Right in the military’s back yard. The mission was get in, destroy their evidence, get out. Dad was lead, as usual. There were two others. Senior officer and a rookie. They got split up. Mission accomplished. But when they reconvened, the rookie didn’t make the check in. Dad went after him and got caught. The rookie was killed.”
“Can I top that off for you, hon?”
Embry looked up at the forty-something waitress, who didn’t wait for a reply before filling the tiny cup to the brim, thus totally ruining the concentration of sugar. Embry wondered if the woman would have noticed if she’d covered the cup with the saucer.
“Thanks,” said Gage, flashing a charming smile as his own coffee was topped off.
Simpering, the waitress sauntered off.
“Okay, so the senior officer made it out, reported back.” Gage blew on the fresh coffee. “Then what happened?”
“The Council sent a small recon team of other Walkers to find out what happened to him. They tracked him to a little known military base in Montana. The entire facility is lined in iron.”
“Iron?” Gage’s dark brows drew together. “I can see how that would limit spellcasting, prevent teleportation, keep the shamans from being able to get the layout via astral projection. But it shouldn’t limit Adan. Why can’t he just Walk out?”
“Because they apparently light every inch of the facility, twenty-four hours a day. No shadows, no Walking. Someone knows more than they should. Or suspects anyway. But the same thing that prevents Dad from getting out kept the recon team from getting in. Without being able to gather any more intel, the Council deemed the risk was too great to send an extraction team. They ruled it would be less threat to the Races to leave him in the military’s custody to be tested or executed. Better they think him some kind of genetic aberration than one of many.” Embry tore into the last slice of bacon.
“You didn’t take that well, I bet.”
The Council certainly hadn’t appreciated the massive scorch mark left on the ceiling of the meeting chamber by her reaction. “I took a leave of absence.”
“And decided to come find me.”
“No, actually.” Because you were dead. “I was going off on my own. Matthias intercepted me.”
At the sound of the name, Gage’s face darkened and a muscle twitched in his jaw. “He was there. That night.”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“What happened after they took me out?”
Part of me died. “They took you away.” Embry’s throat felt thick as her mind conjured up the image of his limp body being hauled away by the wraith for disposal. The dojo had burned out to a shell before she stopped screaming.
She waited until the strain eased and continued. “I had to be . . . contained while they did. Eventually they took me home.” Where she’d been heavily sedated. “They waited around for Dad to get back from his mission. I wasn’t supposed to be there when they confronted him.”
“Always had a rebellious streak,” he murmured.
Embry rubbed at the tension in her temple. Rebellion had been the last thing on her mind that night. She’d stuck around hoping her father was going to make it right, make the nightmare go away. “They tried to be reasonable. Throwing cold, hard logic at him. If the Council found out about you, about the fact that he’d not only rescued you, but that he’d trained you, taught you to Walk—he’d have been executed. And you would have been tested. Poked and prodded . . . and probably eventually dissected. Because people like you aren’t supposed to be able to do what you do.” She saw from the look on his face that he knew that by people like him, she meant human.
/> “Nothing they said swayed him. I’ve never seen him so angry. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t have my specific . . . abilities. I don’t think there would have been anything left of the team, let alone the house. But what did they expect? For all intents and purposes, you were his son. You were what I couldn’t be.”
“Ember, your father adores you. He’s always adored you. He never wanted the life of a Walker for you.”
“He wasn’t keen on me going into the IED either.”
Gage held up his hand. “Wait, wait. You went into the Investigation and Enforcement Division. The fucking paranormal FBI? You?” He shook his head. “You hate rules.”
“Yeah, that hasn’t changed. But my being IED is neither here nor there. By then it was done and you were gone. Nothing was the same after. He wasn’t the same after. They thought that getting rid of you would teach him a lesson, curb his habits. If anything, Dad got more reckless. He was censured a few times, but nothing permanent. He’s too valuable to the Council to take off active duty. Or he was.”
She fell silent again, idly swirling her finger in the cup to reheat the coffee that had gone cold.
“Did you ever look for me?”
Embry looked up at him. Gage’s face settled into the carefully blank lines usually reserved for interrogation, but it wasn’t hard to guess what was going through his mind.
Distant, professional, she reminded herself. Stick to the plan. “No.”
The stone facade cracked just a little as a muscle began to twitch in his jaw. “I woke up looking for you.”
Startled, Embry caused the coffee to boil over the rim and jerked her finger out. “What?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I couldn’t remember. Not your name or your face. That was gone, just like everything else. But the potion or spell or whatever the fuck it was just erased memory. All the feelings were still there. I just didn’t have the right context for them.”
Embry couldn’t fathom what that would be like. “Where were you?” she asked softly.
“Nevada. In a shitty motel north of Vegas. I’ve got no fucking clue why they left me there of all places.”
He’d have been bruised and battered, she remembered. And burned. “What did you do?”
“Drove to Vegas. Matthias was decent enough to leave me with my Charger.”
Embry looked out the window at the pristine muscle car. “I didn’t think his taste was that good.”
“Oh it was a piece of shit before I restored it. But it was the only thing I had when I woke up, so I’m kinda sentimental about it. Anyway, I got in touch with the authorities, who were happy to slap a big ‘Solved’ on my missing person’s case. The social worker assigned to me kept assuring me that my memory would come back. Came up with all kinds of theories as to why it didn’t. Nothing was near the truth.”
It wouldn’t be.
He hadn’t mentioned it, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What about your burns?”
“Funny thing about that actually. Matthias must’ve done something to make them heal faster. When I woke up in the motel, I had seriously charred hands. By the time I made it to the hospital, they were down to blisters.”
“I’m so sorry, Gage.”
“I don’t want your apology, Embry. It isn’t your fault. You’re not the one who did this to me. No matter what else happens, you’re the one who dragged me out of the Purgatory of not knowing. No matter what I may have to leave behind of my life in New Orleans, it’s worth knowing. Who I am. Where I come from. You don’t know how important that is until you don’t have it. So thank you for that.”
But it was my fault. The certainty of it settled in her belly, transmuting what little breakfast she’d managed into lead. He certainly wouldn’t be thanking her for anything if he knew. But that was on the list of things she would continue to lie about. She wouldn’t risk her father’s life by telling him the truth.
* * *
“You are a Shadow Walker, Gage. Whatever it is that makes some people able to tame the shadows, it’s in you, just like it’s in Dad. Traveling through shadow used to be second nature to you. If you knew the layout or had a person in mind as an anchor, you could travel virtually anywhere. You could see in the dark, you could move without sound. Dad trained you so that you could—”
“I know all that! I have all my memories, all the fucking facts. I remember doing it. I just can’t . . . I guess I just can’t remember how I did it. Or something.” He tunneled his fingers through his hair. We should have gotten separate rooms.
Embry’s eyes bored into him from where she lay sprawled on one of the beds. He could feel her gaze on him, like twin points of heat on his chest. Her scrutiny—and her lecture—was really fucking with his concentration.
Not that he’d been able to do much on that front since she’d walked into the locker room and back into his life. He was too busy trying not to keel over from the constantly unfurling memories bombarding his brain. Not to mention the effort it was taking to remind himself that what had happened—or not happened—between him and Embry had been over a decade before. Everything about that fabricated date had just been about getting him in place to take the antidote.
She didn’t even look for me. Not until I was of use to her. The thought rattled around his head, banishing whatever vestiges of focus he’d managed to drum up.
Had he misinterpreted everything that had gone on that last night? Had it been some kind of game to her? Or maybe the disastrous confrontation with the other Shadow Walkers had scared her away from any kind of involvement. If the consequences for him had been a total eradication of his memory, the consequences for her for coming after him would probably have been pretty steep. Hell, it wasn’t as if the Council had likely changed much in the last ten years. The consequences would still be brutal if they were caught.
So, better figure this shit out and not get caught.
“Have you fallen asleep standing up?”
Gage didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I can’t do this with you watching me.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s not like you’re taking a piss. Just dematerialize already.” Impatience simmered in Embry’s voice.
He swallowed the irritation, reminding himself that she was anxious about her father and not thinking clearly. Still, it was a stretch to keep his tone even. “I get that, but having you staring at me is just adding more pressure to an already stressful thing. I haven’t done this in ten years.”
“Well what do you want me to do? Go hide in the bathroom or something?”
“Why don’t you run to the vending machine, get a couple of drinks to go with the Chinese when it gets here.”
“And leave you by yourself. What happens if you manage to Walk, and then can’t get back because you have no anchor?”
When he opened his eyes, her arms were crossed and her face was etched with an I’m making a reasonable argument, aren’t you going to listen to me expression.
“I seriously doubt I’m going to manage that in the five minutes it will take you to go to the Coke machine, but it might let me clear my head and get centered.”
She swung her legs off the bed with an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. But if you disappear and can’t find your way back here, I’m going to be beyond pissed.” She shoved one of the keycards into her pocket and snagged her purse.
Gage waited until the door swung shut before releasing a long, shuddering breath. He wouldn’t have long, and he needed to focus.
He turned off the bedside lamp, throwing half the room into shadow. Stepping into the deepest part of it, he shut his eyes again and focused on his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In. Out.
Like riding a bike, he told himself.
An unfamiliar buzzing started in his head and spread throughout his torso. Was this what dematerializing felt like? He couldn’t remember. Maybe he was just hyperventilating.
Okay, I’ll just try something simple. From one side of the room to the
other.
He visualized the pool of dark on the other side of the bureau, willing himself into it. His pulse beat slow and thick in his chest, and instinct demanded that he match his breath to the rhythm. In his mind, he pulled the tendrils of shadow around him like a cloak, wrapping himself from head to foot.
That’s it. That’s it. Now show me the pathway.
The darkness extended, a bridge at the edge of the light. He had only to walk across it . . .
Someone pounded on the door, shattering his concentration.
“Goddamn it Embry, I thought you took your key.” He stepped out of the shadow and toward the door, feeling suddenly exposed in the light as he yanked it open. The additional curses died on his tongue as he took in the punk-haired Asian kid holding the plastic bag of their food.
“Delivery?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Gage, shoving a hand through his hair and trying to readjust his brain.
“Eighteen thirty seven,” the kid announced.
Gage dug in his wallet for a twenty and a few ones.
“Hey!”
Gage looked up at the excitement in the kid’s voice.
“You’re Cade Shepherd!”
He blinked at the kid. It wasn’t the first time he’d been recognized in public, probably wouldn’t be the last. But that life already felt so very far away as to belong to someone else. Still, he tried to muster up a smile. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God, dude, I just watched you take down Archer on TV last night! That was freaking awesome! And that whole season of Ultimate Fighter, I was totally pulling for you.”
Amusement made his lips curve. He could never get used to the idea of having fans. “Thanks.”
Embry came down the breezeway, a couple of cans in her hand.
“Can I have your autograph?” the kid asked.
Embry’s brows winged up.
“Got a pen?”