by RJ Blain
Then again, I’d be amazed if I could stand without falling on my ass, leaving me to settle with cooperating with the shifters. “I don’t understand.”
“After you vanished, Todd Jacobson informed Gentry Adams you were likely close to shifting—and you’d be shifting into something with big claws and teeth, a potentially dangerous combination during a crowded, week-long banquet.”
“Excessive,” the lion pitched in, his eyes brightening to a golden, luminescent hue.
“What my daughter wants, she gets, and she wanted a big wedding where others might find the love of their life, too. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed I didn’t think of putting a live bounty on your head to see just how much you’d challenge my daughter.”
“I’m a little disappointed, too, actually.”
The two settled into a glaring match, but I got the feeling they liked each other far too much for their comfort—and mine. “What proposal?”
“I will put a stay on the bounty until the banquet’s conclusion, but in exchange, you need to tell me how you broke in and out of the mayoral palace. I want you to walk security through how you did it. I want to make this place as secure as possible.”
I thought about it. The security measures over the bridges bordered on excessive, leaving the waterways as one of the few stealthier ways in and out—other than flight. While avian shifters existed, they were few and far between, which came as something of a relief, especially to people like me. “I’m not going to be captured, thrown in a prison, and starved to death?”
Both men stared at me; the mayor’s mouth opened, although he didn’t say a word. The silence stretched on, and I forced myself to adjust the cloak over my shoulders, burrowing into its warmth.
Gabriel recovered first. “Well, I can’t say I thought of that as a way to circumvent the bounty terms. That said, absolutely not. You’re not even an adult yet.”
“I’m nineteen. Pretty sure the age of majority is eighteen.”
“You haven’t shifted yet, if our information is correct. Even if you were taken by the police, you’d be tried as a juvenile. The kill bounty would be shifted to your handler.” The lion huffed and shook his head, his mane of thick hair rustling. “Actually, I’m not sure who impresses me more: you or your handler.”
I found it intriguing they believed I had someone managing my hits. Relaxing at the unexpected praise, I wiggled and tucked my legs close to my body so they could benefit from the cloak, too. “I don’t have a handler.”
The lion’s eyes widened, and he let out a slow whistle. “Who planned your assassinations, then? You would have been thirteen or fourteen for your first, right?”
“No one. I did it all on my own. Overheard some of the older mercs talking about how it was done, including how to arrange to receive a payment. Read some things about it in the library, too. I took a chance to see if it worked. Had a mark I wanted dead, did the whole letter thing, and ran with it. I needed a way to earn money.” I shrugged. “Fact of life when you’re a nobody. Working as a bodyguard helped.”
The mayor’s smile morphed into a large, shameless grin. “That explains so much. I was trying to figure out how someone so young could be so respected as a bodyguard. Being an assassin yourself, you knew exactly what to look for. Bargain struck? I’ll have your bounty frozen until two days after the banquet. It’ll be trivial to clear it with Gentry and the bounty holder.”
Asking for the bounty to be removed wouldn’t work; while there were ways to freeze it, only the bounty holder could revoke it entirely. I understood that. Two days would give me plenty of time to make a plan, leave town, change my identity, and disappear. “All you want are the details on how I pulled the one job off?”
“Just the one. How you got in, how you got out.”
If I played my cards right, I’d be out of Charlotte—permanently—within a day of the banquet’s conclusion. The time was worth far more than the information, and I struggled to avoid showing my relief. I didn’t have to tell him the entire truth about how much I knew about the palace, just how I had gotten in and out when I’d killed the previous mayor. “At night during one of the supply runs. I came with the suppliers, slipped away, dodged the guards in the building, and went into his suite. I sedated everyone in the room, used poison on the mayor, tatted him, and left during another shift of the guard. Someone left a window open, so I climbed down that way. Not much to tell, really.”
The mayor nodded. “You think you can retrace the gaps in security?”
“The entire place is a gap in security,” I muttered.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but perhaps it would be wise to continue this discussion later? After she’s safe in Jacobson’s custody and you’ve had a chance to notify Adams and the others of the bounty freeze? It would also be wise to have Jacobson’s mystic look her over.”
“I’ll freeze the bounty first. Stay and guard her. Let me get word spread so we don’t have any unwanted surprises getting her moved. Let’s not antagonize her into her first shift, especially if Todd’s mystic is correct on her species. We’ve had enough trouble for one day.” The mayor straightened, brushing dust off his clothes. “If anyone tries anything, Gabe, you have my permission to maul them a little.”
The lion snorted. “How am I supposed to maul someone only a little?”
“Carefully. Keep them alive. Beyond that, do what you want. I’ll take the light with me, so if anyone does come in here, you’ll have a chance to get the jump on them. I’ll try not to be long, but expect an hour. Gentry will need some time to call off his mercenaries.”
“Understood.”
The mayor left us in darkness, and I shivered from more than the cold.
Chapter Fifteen
I really needed to stop taking unexpected naps.
The disconcerting lurch of having fallen asleep in one place and jolting back to consciousness in another spurred my heart rate up to mile a minute territory, and my breathing raced to catch up. Blinking away the blurriness in my vision, I scrambled upright, my legs tangled in a thick blanket usually reserved for deep winter.
“Relax,” Todd ordered.
I jerked in his direction and spotted him lounging in an armchair not far from the bed. Most of his attention remained fixed on the book on his lap. His sprawled pose, with one leg draped over an arm of the chair while the other stretched out to the floor, might have fooled others, but I noticed the tension in his body. If he wanted to move, if he needed to strike, he’d be able to act far quicker than most would expect.
I peeked under the blankets, relieved someone had put me in something other than Todd’s preferred lingerie, although I cringed at the thought of how much the silk pajamas had cost. Rubbing my eyes didn’t dispel the lingering lethargy of sedation, and I grumbled my complaints on a yawn.
“Next time you get hit with a tranquilizer, don’t go for a swim.” Todd swung his leg off his chair, set his book on the end table, and rose to his feet. In two steps, he crossed the distance between us, reaching out to touch my throat. His attention focused on the clock mounted on the wall. “I was convinced you’d gone and gotten yourself killed.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t do it again.”
“Todd, I—”
The stallion clamped his hand over my mouth. “I came pretty close to killing Ferdinand last night. Wolves like to believe they’re apex predators. He forgot an angry stallion can be a dangerous—and lethal—opponent. After I broke both of his legs, Gentry convinced me I probably shouldn’t kill him. I made him an example to anyone else who thought they could lay a hand on you. I also informed him if he even thought about trying to bite you without your consent, he’d wish I had broken his legs rather than do what I have planned for him.”
My face flushed from embarrassment others knew the things the wolf had said. I swallowed and kept quiet. When Todd wanted me to speak, he’d move his hand.
Todd’s expression darkened. He
snorted, confirming my suspicion the stallion’s fury lingered beneath the surface. “Gentry asked me to apologize for Ferdinand’s poor behavior. Unfortunately, he also made me ask Cleo to heal the mangey mutt, which I conceded to with open displeasure.”
After a moment of hesitation, Todd lowered his hand, inhaled, and flopped onto his chair.
“I’m sorry.”
“Next time, run the fucker through when you tell him you’re not interested. If that doesn’t kill him, threaten to geld him.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I glanced around the room, admiring the hand-carved furniture, stained a rich cherry red. “This is part of your suite?”
“Your room of it, yes. Holly carried you in about three hours ago.” A faint smile curved Todd’s lips. “You were in and out. Blossom helped you get cleaned up and changed before Cleo looked you over. Said you probably wouldn’t remember much of anything. You got lucky; the two drugs did react, but beyond mild breathing difficulties, which Cleo addressed, you escaped unscathed. Well, except for the puncture wound from the dart. Gentry is not happy about that at all.”
“Blossom? The mayor’s daughter? What? Why? I’ve never met her before. Why would she…?”
“Her brother is single.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Todd scowled. “You heard me. Her clan brother is single.”
“Clan brother? What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s among her escorts from her clan, I presume; probably a close friend or in the family adopting her as a tigress. In some ways, closer than blood family, or so my understanding of it is. Equines don’t have it. We have a herd, and our loyalty is always to the herd as a whole. Wolves have packs. Tigers have clan siblings, and they don’t necessarily belong to the same clan. Cats are such obnoxious, contradictory creatures.”
I held my hands up in a helpless gesture. “So?”
“I’m going to blame the sedatives for you being so dense. Let’s review. You came to the banquet as one of my guests. It’s discovered you’re serving as a bodyguard as well as my companion. You knock a throwing knife aimed for my back out of the air with your sword, which had been sheathed until you noticed the attack. No one beyond our small circle is aware the toss was slow to test you. It’s deemed an impressive display of skill, and, with a word here and there from Gentry, you’ve become an interesting person attending the banquet.” Sighing, Todd stretched his legs out and slumped in his chair. “Someone leaked you’re the quarry of the large bounty. Everyone knows now, by the way. The mayor wasn’t at all shy in declaring he would tolerate no attempted bounty hunting at his daughter’s wedding banquet.”
“Wonderful.”
“It gets even better.”
I slumped onto the bed, grabbed the blanket, and covered my head. “By that, you surely mean worse.”
“You escaped from six of Gentry’s best mercenaries and pulled a complete disappearing act, one so good it took over twelve hours to find you. You managed this in the few minutes before the sedatives kicked in. I’ve been informed this was likely a one to two minute window of time.” Todd grunted, stomping one of his feet on the floor. “Maybe three if you were lucky. You did it fast enough Gentry’s men didn’t see where you’d gone in the pool, and by the time the team got around to reporting in, the aquatic shifters couldn’t find you in the water, since the water circulates fast enough to erase water trail evidence after ten or twenty minutes.”
“I didn’t know that.” A ten to twenty minute window for being chased by aquatics made the waterways even more dangerous to residents and far more useful to scoundrels like me. Unlike hallways, where scents could linger for hours or longer, a loss of trail in twenty minutes would make any assassin happy. “Interesting.”
“Of course you’d find it interesting.” Something in Todd’s tone warned me I wouldn’t like what he was about to say. He delivered when he growled, “How long have you been taking kill bounties?”
I flinched, grabbed the pillow, and threw it over my head, not that the fluffy barrier would protect me from the stallion’s anger. I had let the mayor believe I’d been thirteen when I made my first kill, but it wasn’t the truth. I’d been thirteen for my first kill in Charlotte, but my hands had taken lives years before I’d begun using the mark of the Water Viper. “What was I supposed to do? It’s the only thing I knew how to do. I was on my own. You know how often someone needs a kid on a job?”
“I gave you jobs.”
“I was already working before then,” I whispered.
“How old were you?”
There was no point in hiding it anymore, and my misery threatened to strangle me. “Eleven. I was eleven. Happy?”
“No, I’m not happy. Why would I be happy over something like that? If you had told me, I could have helped you get out of it. Hell, Jesse. That’s part of our job as guild masters. We’re supposed to protect kids from abuse or becoming tools. There’s a reason we augment the military and the police; it’s to give people in bad situations a way out without having to go to the full legal authorities. One word from you, and I could have acted. I could have gotten you out of taking kill bounties and put into the system properly. You didn’t have to become an assassin to get by.”
“They deserved it. Every last one of those fuckers I killed deserved it.” I curled, trembling from the anger bubbling through me, which demanded an outlet despite my inability to act. What could I do? Rage against Todd?
I couldn’t. Even if he turned against me and held the blade destined to slit my throat, I wouldn’t.
“All right. I’m listening. Why?”
“Why did they deserve it? Why did I do it? Why what?”
“All of it. I’m listening. It’d probably be easier if you came out of hiding, though. I’m angry, but less at you and more that I didn’t see what was right under my nose. I should have noticed. I should have seen how you move, how you fight—how good you are at exposing kill attempts. How good of a bodyguard you are. It all points to the same place, and I was too stupid to see it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Tell me why. I want to understand.”
While I couldn’t work up the courage to face him, I did poke my head out from beneath the pillow and blankets, staring at the far wall without really seeing it. “I knew his son. He was a little older than me, a rabbit shifter. His father was a wolf. Don’t know what his mother was. She died before I met him, but she’d probably been killed by his father. It wasn’t long after his first shift.”
Todd sucked in a breath. “Your friend’s father killed him?”
Grateful I didn’t have to explain, I nodded. “I saw it. He… he called me a snake, blamed me for his son’s species. Told me if he ever saw me again, he’d kill me, too. I reported it, but I didn’t have any proof. No money. Nothing, just my sword.”
For a long time, Todd remained silent. “All right. Go on. What happened?”
“His father bit a woman to claim her as his mate. Against her will. She…”
“Ah. She was a mate-for-life species.”
“Yes.”
“May I try to fill in the blanks?”
I nodded, and to make sure he understood, I lifted my hand and flapped it.
Of all the reactions he could have made, his chuckle surprised me. “Someone from her family, or potentially a suitor, put a bounty on him. You wanted a chance to get revenge for your friend’s death, so you took it.”
“Right.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred dollars. It was all he had. I could barely read then, but I overheard some mercs talking about it and how they would’ve done the job if it weren’t for the paperwork and needing a mark. I went to the library. They had one book on guild law there. It had a section covering bounties and assassinations. I left a note to the bounty holder. Told him I’d do it, but I needed things from him. Instead of the five hundred, I wanted those things done. He did them.”
“What did
you ask from him?”
It hurt, remembering my descent into the dark world of paid murder. “The tattoo kit. The paperwork. He filed it for me, and paid the registration fee anonymously. Cost him less than fifty bucks.”
“At eleven, you could barely write, too. Right? You couldn’t handle the paperwork on your own.”
I grimaced. “Right.”
“What happened?”
I’d killed many men since, but the gush of blood, the gurgled cry, and the sound of an old, twisted body hitting the floor with my sword still embedded in his throat rose out of my memories to haunt me. His body had fallen beside hers, cold and still, hours dead before I’d arrived. “I killed him. I took his head, delivered it to the bounty holder. Too late. He…”
“He what?”
“He had killed the woman he had bitten. She was dead when I got there. I brought her to the bounty holder’s home, too. Knocked on the door, left her body and the head together on his doorstep for him to find. I ran.”
I had run straight to Charlotte, stayed there a while, left, returned, left again, and kept coming back, leaving more and more corpses behind me. The previous mayor had been my first hit in the city, and my fury over my impotency and inability to prevent the deaths in my past had driven me to keep killing.
“I’d say he deserved it. I saw the kill bounty for the old mayor. Wasn’t sad to see him gone. But…”
“The guild masters.” Swallowing, I curled tighter, clutching the blanket. “The one sold kids. It was me or him. I was on his list. Instant I saw a bounty for him, I took the job and the chance. He deserved it. The—”
Todd clucked his tongue. “I know. I was the bounty holder.”
I froze, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. “What?”
“Gentry Adams handles the legitimate bounties for proven criminals. Didn’t you wonder at all why he was so upfront with me last night? Dawnfire handles the open, legitimate bounties. My Lancers’ Alliance handles the less savory ones—the ones the government doesn’t want tracked back to them. The government sends me tips on who needs a bounty and the amount, I take care of the rest. I set it up anonymously and handle payments to the networks. I do it all. I handled the bounties of both guild masters you killed. I vetted their guilt. I wanted to know if you had vetted their guilt before killing them.”