“But Ares will do anything to protect his mate.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. He rose and paced across the tent. “When was the last time you saw Trinity?”
“When Ares was preparing to leave Tanis,” Isis said. “I have no idea where Anu could be holding her.” She began to rise. “I must return to Tanis and find her.”
Ares walked into the tent while Daniel tried to make Isis sit again. “You do not condemn me for refusing to sacrifice my wife?” the Bloodmaster asked, letting the tent flap fall.
“No,” she said, relaxing under the firm pressure of Daniel’s hand on her shoulder. “I...” She glanced sideways at Daniel. “I understand. Better than I could have believed.”
Daniel released Isis, half afraid that she would feel the intensity of his emotions. He realized that he was with the two people in the world he most cared about; two people who could easily become opponents in a terrible game.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said to Isis, and then addressed his father. “How much control do you have over this army?”
“Complete,” Ares said. “I have the loyalty of all my soldiers, and they know of the blackmail.” His voice simmered with anger. “They would die for me, if I let them.”
“So if we can free Trinity, they will still obey any order you give them?”
Ares nodded, anguish in his eyes. “I cannot free her if I can’t find her,” he said.
“Isis showed me another way into the city,” Daniel said. “Where is Tanis relative to this camp?”
“Ten miles to the southeast,” Ares said. “But it’s a moot point, because—”
“I’ll go back in and find Trinity.”
“Daniel—” Isis began.
“No,” Ares said. “Trinity will be surrounded by Opiri, and you would have no way of getting near her. I won’t lose you, as well. We will find another way.”
“I can still get into the towers,” Isis said. “If Anu failed to kill me once, he will hesitate to—”
“Enough!” Ares growled. “Neither of you is going back into Tanis, even if I must hold you prisoner here.”
The tent flap rustled, and a uniformed Freeblood poked his head through the opening. “Sir,” he said to Ares. “There is a matter requiring your urgent attention.”
With a grunt of annoyance, Ares got up and left the tent. Isis and Daniel sat in tense silence for several minutes, Daniel listening to the voices outside. After a moment, Ares reentered the tent. His expression was grim.
“You cannot remain here indefinitely,” he said. “You will rest here for a day, and then we will find you another place to hide.” Both Daniel and Isis began to object, and he raised his hand to silence them. “We will not discuss this any further tonight. I have set aside another tent for the two of you, if that is acceptable. If you require separate lodgings—”
“We do,” Isis said. She glanced at Daniel, her face expressionless. “It would be best.”
“Whatever the lady wants,” Daniel said, wondering if she was still angry with him because he had lied to her about his origins and true nature. Or was it because she knew he’d do everything in his power to keep her from going back to Tanis?
“I’ll see to it,” Ares said. “You may have this tent, Lady Isis.”
Ares left the tent. Daniel lingered by the tent flap.
“Are you trying to punish me?” he asked Isis.
“Punish you?” She shook her head sharply. “No.”
“Then why do you want separate tents?”
Color surged into her cheeks. “I...feel the need to be alone for a while. It has nothing to do with you.”
Daniel knew she was lying. She was afraid of renewing their intimacy, even though the reason for keeping it secret had passed. Was it because she believed she could no longer trust her own judgment, especially about him?
Could he trust his own?
“You need clean blood,” he said.
“I will ask Ares for what I require,” she said. Her fists clenched on the sheets stretched across the cot. “Please, Daniel. Do not ask more of me now.”
Daniel pushed at the tent flap, torn between insisting on answers and leaving Isis to recover in peace. After another long moment of silence, he walked out of the tent.
He moved among the Freeblood soldiers, noting again how disciplined they were...the complete opposite of the ones he had dealt with when he’d lived in Avalon and Delos.
Not even all Freebloods are alike, he reminded himself. Under a strong leader fighting for the good, these Opiri would be a formidable force.
But Anu would not be fighting for the good.
Near midnight, a respectful Freeblood soldier found Daniel, saluted and led him to a small tent that had obviously been recently occupied. Daniel began to protest that he could sleep anywhere, but the Freeblood insisted that this was Ares’s wish. An orderly arrived with fresh bedding and hot food.
After he ate, Daniel wondered if Isis had requested blood from the army supply. He thought again of having it out with her, but in the end he gave way to exhaustion and lay back on the cot. When he woke, it was still dark.
Moving to roll off the cot, he found that one of his arms was caught on something and tried to jerk it free. Metal pressed against his wrist. He twisted around to find that he had been cuffed to the cot in a way that made it impossible for him to get up.
He cursed and fought the restraint, first working to break it and then to force his hand through the cuff. The panic of remembered confinement and bondage turned him half-mad, and he continued to struggle until his wrist was bloody and his thumb almost dislocated.
The tent flap opened, and Ares stepped inside.
“Stop,” he said, catching Daniel’s arm in an iron grip. “Doing yourself harm will change nothing.”
Daniel flailed at his father with his other fist, making contact with Ares’s jaw. Ares didn’t release his grip, though he jerked back out of Daniel’s reach.
“Gone back to your old ways, Ares?” Daniel spat.
“This is for your own protection.”
“You haven’t let Isis leave?”
“No. And I will not let you go, either.”
Daniel pulled his bloody wrist from Ares’s grip. “I’m not your serf anymore... Father.”
“No,” Ares said, crouching beside the cot. “But you are precious to me, and I will not throw your life away.”
“And how do you plan to hold Isis here? Chain her up, as well?”
“She will not be going anywhere,” Ares said. “She has had a relapse. One of my soldiers found her nearly unconscious. She has developed the Opir equivalent of a fever.”
“What?” Daniel struggled again, but he realized that he was only hurting himself. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Apparently the tainted blood she drank is still affecting her. She will have the best care and as much fresh blood as she needs.”
“For God’s sake, let me go to her!”
“Later, when I know you’ve come to your senses.” Ares rose to leave. “I will send someone to look after your wrist.”
Then he was gone, and Daniel lay back on the cot, breathing hard with anger and fear. Ares seemed to believe that Isis would be all right, but no one knew the full affects of whatever poison she had been given.
No one but the Opir who had poisoned her. The spider crouching at the center of this vicious web.
Calming his racing heart, Daniel waited for the medic to clean and bandage his wrist. As soon as the man was gone, Daniel concentrated on doing deliberately what he’d nearly done by accident...dislocating his thumb so that he could slip his hand through the cuff.
The pain was blinding, but he’d become accustomed to dealing with such discomfort long ago. He pulled his hand free and
carefully pushed his thumb back into place. It would be useless for a while, but he could work around it.
He continued to evade the patrolling Opiri and made his way to Isis’s tent. She was deeply asleep on her cot, undisturbed by his arrival. Her skin was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.
Daniel knew better than to wake her, though his fear for her curdled in his gut. He knew Ares would do everything within his power to help her, and Daniel had a task that wouldn’t wait.
He knelt beside the cot, brushed his lips across her hot cheek, then left as silently as he’d come.
Somehow, he got clear of the camp and started southeast toward Tanis.
Halfway to the city, Opiri guards from Tanis ambushed him. He was outnumbered six to one; they took him down, bound him and threw a day coat over him to disguise his identity. They kept him surrounded like a living cage as they marched to Tanis, refusing to identify themselves.
Daniel could already guess that they were Anu’s men. And when they entered Tanis, moving past what seemed like countless Lawkeepers and armed Opiri, he could smell the sharp, mingled scent of fear and rage in the air.
His captors made it impossible for him to observe more closely, and the human sector of the city was quiet. But he had no doubt that things had gotten worse in the short time he and Isis had been absent from Tanis. As he and his captors made their way toward the tower of the Nine, he could hear shouts of anger and pain, and glimpsed open struggles between Opiri and humans.
Anu’s suite was empty of all but the “god” himself and a handful of his supporters, including Hannibal. Daniel cursed himself again for letting Hannibal escape, but he had little time for regret. The guards pushed him to his knees and held him there when he would have struggled to his feet. Anu examined him with the interest of a snake regarding a small rodent, his gaze sharp beneath hooded eyelids.
“You had one chance,” Anu said, “but you did not take it. Why were you returning to Tanis?”
Daniel didn’t answer. The guard bearing down on his shoulder pulled him up by his jacket and struck him across the face. Daniel’s teeth cut the inside of his lip, and he tasted blood.
He knew, then, what was coming.
Anu asked again, with the same result. Daniel picked himself up off the floor.
“Where is Isis?” Anu said, leaning forward on his throne. “She left with you and the exiles and never returned. What is she doing?”
It was a strange question from the one who’d presumably tried to kill her. “I don’t know,” Daniel said, holding the Opir’s gaze. “I didn’t see her after we left the vicinity of Tanis.”
“You are lying,” Hannibal said, stepping forward to stand beside Anu’s chair.
“I didn’t know you were so concerned for Isis’s welfare,” Daniel said, his mouth beginning to swell.
He was ready for the next blow, and the next. He told Anu nothing, and he didn’t ask if Anu had tried to kill Isis. He kept silent until he would have found it difficult to speak in any case.
“This gains us nothing, my lord,” Hannibal said, gesturing for Daniel’s guards to let him slump to the ground. “This man was a serf, accustomed to receiving punishment for his defiance. We will require stronger measures.”
“Then by all means, use them,” Anu said. “I give him to you. But keep him apart from the others. He must remain isolated until he tells us what he knows of the human resistance and any other information that may be used against us.”
“No limits, my lord?”
“None, as long as he does not die. We may still use him against Isis if she returns and proves troublesome.”
Hannibal nodded, a satisfied smile on his face. He gestured for the guards to drag Daniel out of the suite. He was only half-conscious as they took him to some other part of the tower: a dark and empty former Household, evidently long abandoned by its original owner. Someone had knocked down the walls between the antechamber and the central hall, and built many small rooms that looked like prison cells.
The guards hurled Daniel into one of them, throwing him against the back of the cell. There were chains and manacles attached to the wall. The Opiri forced him to stand and shackled him so that he had no means of sitting or resting his legs. They closed the cell door and left him there with his pain.
He had been alone for an indeterminate length of time when Hannibal arrived, carrying a whip.
“A pity that Palemon isn’t here to see this,” he said, playing out the whip. “He would have enjoyed seeing you reduced to what you were before Ares saved you.”
Daniel didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. He didn’t fight when Hannibal’s guards unshackled him, turned him around and bound him again. He didn’t make a sound when the punishment began, or when Hannibal questioned him with greater and greater impatience.
Gradually, he stopped feeling the pain. He gave himself over to the numbness of semi-consciousness and felt himself with Isis again, lying with her, feeling the healing warmth of her body against his.
But that wasn’t right. “Stay away,” he mumbled, his cheek against the wall. “Stay...”
The words trailed into silence, and so did his mind.
CHAPTER 23
Daniel came to when the cell door opened again. He peered through swollen eyelids from his position on the floor, struggling dimly to prepare himself for more pain.
The cell door shut quietly, and the person who had entered, breathing rapidly, pressed herself against it.
“My God,” she said.
Daniel managed to lift his head. Even through a nose clogged with blood he could smell her; he knew her, though he couldn’t seem to remember from where.
“Daniel?” She knelt beside him, her hands reaching out to touch him. He flinched back, rolling toward the wall.
“It’s me,” the woman said. “Trinity.”
Her name awakened a strange urgency in Daniel’s muddled thoughts. He did know her. She was important.
“How did you get in here?” he croaked.
“I broke the lock,” she whispered close to his ear. “I didn’t know you were here until I smelled you. If I hadn’t...” Her voice broke. “Why in God’s name did you come to Tanis? Did Avalon send you to find us?” She rested her hand on his damp hair. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get you out.” Her head jerked over her shoulder. “This is the first time I’ve managed to escape, but they’ll notice I’m missing soon. We have to move.”
Her tug on his arm brought fresh waves of excruciating pain, but he tried to get up. He was remembering now. He was supposed to find Trinity. Bring her out of Tanis for Ares, so he wouldn’t have to—
“Easy,” Trinity whispered. She took Daniel’s weight against her own body. “I’m sorry, Daniel, but we’ll have to move fast. Fast and quiet. Do you understand?”
He managed a nod. She dragged him out of the cell, and he fought to set his feet one after the other, wondering how long it would take for the smell of his blood to attract whatever Opiri were in the vicinity.
“Leave me,” he said, standing fast against her pull. “Get...out of Tanis. Ares is in the northwest, with...an army. Find him.”
“I’m not leaving my husband’s son to die here alone.”
Her agile strength was too great for him to resist in his current state. They crossed the hall and approached the outer door to the suite. It was unlocked. Trinity released a loud breath and opened it.
There was nobody in the lobby. Trinity pressed the down button on the elevator, her head darting this way and that.
“Listen,” she said close to his ear. “There are things you have to know if I don’t make it and you do. Anu’s supporters live the old way in secret, with dozens of men and women they’ve stolen out of the human wards to keep as serfs. They want Tanis back the way it used to
be. They’re preparing to take over.”
“We...know,” Daniel said hoarsely as the elevator reached their floor.
“I had help, Daniel,” she said. “There’s a resistance in the city, and serfs here who’ve risked their lives. Get out, and find the rebels. Look for a man named Hugh, but don’t let yourself be seen. Tell Ares...that I’ll do what I can from here.”
“No,” Daniel said, shaking his head wildly. “Come with me.”
Instead of arguing with him, she tried to push him into the elevator. He resisted with uncertain strength, turning his weight against her to reverse their positions. Someone shouted from a corridor off the lobby.
The elevator doors closed on Trinity. Daniel turned and braced his feet, watching the guards emerge from the corridor. He struggled as they dragged him back to his cell, hoping that the guards’ focus on him would allow Trinity a better chance at escape.
They shackled him in such a way that he could lie down, and exhaustion claimed him soon after. When he woke, Hannibal was there.
“I am told that you tried to help a prisoner escape,” he said, almost mildly. “You might be interested to know that she has been taken, and so have the humans who helped her.”
“The serfs,” Daniel croaked. “You’re...so sure you can win.”
Hannibal cocked his head. “Palemon never could break you. I will succeed where he failed.” He gestured to the guards behind him. They pulled Daniel to his feet, and Hannibal sank his teeth into Daniel’s neck.
After that, there was nothing but darkness.
* * *
Isis woke to the sound of the camp bustling with activity, voices shouting commands and gear being moved. It took a moment for her to focus her eyes and realize that she was staring up at the roof of the tent, and that she was lying in the same cot they had given her when she had become sick again. She wore a sack-like sleeping gown, slightly damp with perspiration.
“Daniel?” she said, trying to sit up. Dizziness overwhelmed her, but she persevered until she was firmly braced on her arms and could make her voice heard.
Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set Page 22