by RJ Blain
I retreated deeper into the open space, quivering from tension, my hand on my sword. I lived by blades and poisons, so it made sense to die by them, too. If I couldn’t escape, I would.
Once people found out Jesse Alexander and the Water Viper were one and the same, they’d understand my death, and all the goodwill earned in my life would vanish in a puff of smoke.
The open courtyard featured stone walkways lined with rose bushes and benches, and a large pool dominated its center. The pool connected to the outside; it’d been my second choice of ways to escape when I’d murdered the previous mayor.
Gentry’s mercenaries blocked the main ways in and out, working to cage me in. If things went their way, they’d wrestle me to the ground, shove sedatives in my mouth, and force me to swallow so I could breathe.
The pool was my only choice, and I couldn’t remember which of its many passages would lead me out of the palace rather than to my death. The pool had been built to allow water shifters access to their rooms without leaving their preferred element. Many of the suites included access to the waterways with the exception of the mayor’s and those of the most important dignitaries.
Todd’s suite, if I remembered correctly, lacked a connecting passage, a nod to his influence in the city.
I headed for the pool, careful to keep an eye on all six of my bounty hunters. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell who they were, but I probably knew and liked them. Gentry used cheap tricks like that. When I hesitated to hurt old friends, they would strike—and win.
“There’s nowhere to run, Jesse, so we might as well do this the easy way. We have all the exits sealed off, and I’d rather not have to leave any bruises or wreck that pretty dress.” I recognized the smooth, eloquent, sophisticated voice. When Dawnfire made public announcements, they sent their third-highest ranking member, Ferdinand Marshall, a wolf shifter on the prowl for a mate. I suspected he was a mystic with the ability to make panties dissolve, which resulted in a lot of frustration for every female who came within ten feet of him.
Gentry’s tactics sucked. I liked Ferdinand. Most did. The man could walk in a room, smile, and make everything a little bit better for everyone.
Did Ferdinand know about the waterways? If not, I had a chance of escape, although it would ruin my pretty dress and make a mess of my evening. “You could just stay back, then nobody gets hurt at all.”
Ferdinand was good, which meant his team mates were probably just as good, which in turn didn’t bode well for me at all.
“I’ve always liked how plucky you are, girl. Maybe I should take a nip and take you home with me.”
I stiffened, my eyes widening. “Keep your pants on. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be turning me in for a bounty, not selecting me as your mate.”
“That was before I realized you cleaned up so pretty. Ditch your weapons, Jesse. I’d rather not have to use force. I promise to keep my teeth to myself.”
The unspoken ’for now’ hung between us and frightened me far more than being captured or killed. Maybe I didn’t know for certain what I was, but there was zero chance I wanted to mate with a wolf.
I lifted my hand and pressed it to my throat, to the right side, which many wolves favored nipping when establishing their claim over their mate. “No biting.”
“You’re not mated. We’d make a good pair.”
I spluttered, backing to the pool until its ledge pressed against my legs. “Not happening, Ferdinand.”
“Why not?”
The other five in his team drew closer, and I clenched my teeth. “If you don’t want a fight, then tell them to stay put. You, too.”
The wolf lifted his hand, and his teammates halted. “Drop your weapons nice and easy. I don’t want to hurt you.”
If the wolf was using the threat of his species and mating to unsettle me and make me easier to catch, it was working. Few shifter species wanted to face off against a wolf protecting their mate or prospective mate. Mating with a wolf came almost last on my list of things to do.
I considered his order and let out a gusty sigh. Losing the weight of the weapons made sense if I was going for a swim, but it made me feel far too vulnerable. “Fine, but no rushes, no attacking me while I’m doing this, nothing. Stay back.”
“No closer than ten feet,” Ferdinand promised, stepping forward. “That really is a pretty dress. You look lovely.”
Under normal circumstances, I would have just taken off my sword belt, but I didn’t want anyone to know I had a Starfall stone adding to my long list of problems. It took longer, but I separated the katana’s sheath from the belt, using my foot to lower the blade to the ground so I wouldn’t have to crouch and offer the mercenaries any opportunities to get the jump on me. The gun went second, and like my sword belt, I left the holster intact. “Damage those and Todd will be really pissed,” I warned.
“You and your things will come to no harm.”
I took my time ditching the ammunition and anything else the mercenaries might perceive as a weapon, leaving a respectable pile at my feet. With only ten feet separating me from the mercs, I’d have to move fast if I wanted to get into the water without them catching me. The pool’s ledge, no more than eight or twelve inches high, made it low enough I could step on it without any real effort.
The mercenaries kept their eyes on me while I sidestepped out of reach of the gun and sword. “Happy?”
“I’d be happier if you came over and submitted without making any trouble. You’re as good as caught and you know it. Lucky for us you were flushed out of the ballroom. Not so lucky for you, but it could be worse, right? A little inconvenience never really hurt anyone, and we get a really nice paycheck for bringing you in without a scratch. I’ll even use my share to pay for our wedding.”
One of Ferdinand’s companions chuckled. “You’re gonna scare her off laying it on that thick, pal. For a lady like her, you may wanna try some roses first.”
“What the hell?” I blurted. “I’m not a broodmare up for sale.”
“Oh, you’re up for sale all right,” my unwanted wolf suitor replied. “And if I’d known how much you were worth earlier, I wouldn’t have waited so long to make a move.”
“The answer is still no.”
“That’s still up for discussion, Jesse. Come quietly, and we’ll have a long, intimate talk about it.”
“Yeah, right before you collect your share of the bounty.”
“It’d let us have a very nice wedding.”
I turned in a slow circle, noting the positions of the mercenaries. They left no convenient gaps for me, using the pool to their advantage. None of them had their weapons drawn, which comforted me a little. The weight of their swords and formal attire would make them think twice about jumping in after me.
The advantage belonged to me.
“Over my dead body, Ferdinand. Pick a different woman—one who wants a wolf.”
“I’ll change your mind.”
“As I said. Over my dead body.” I turned another full circle to keep a close eye on the stalemate. They had a lot of money riding on their capturing me without injury. They’d keep their fighting to grappling, so the worst injuries I’d get would be a few accidental bruises—something expected when it came to a live bounty.
The puff of air warned me, too late, of trouble. Something pricked my shoulder near my neck, and I lashed out my hand, fingers brushing the feathered tip of a dart. I yanked it out, aware of the faint numbness where the needle had pierced my skin.
Within three to five minutes, I’d be taking a nap like it or not. The faster-acting sedatives had a higher risk of death. I sucked in a deep breath and dove into the pool, angling for the depths and the maze of tunnels, aware I was courting death.
At least my death would be of my own choosing.
Chapter Fourteen
About fifteen feet below the surface of the pool, a hive of dimly illuminated holes marked the entries to the warren of tunnels beneath the main level of the mayoral
palace. I couldn’t remember which one lead where, so I picked a hole at random, and slid inside. While the waterways were meant for aquatic species, someone had installed metal rings in three foot intervals, designed to anchor anyone working on the flooded passages.
The rings would make or break me; swimming in a dress classified as idiocy of the highest order. The material caught on my legs and slowed me down, but the rings let me pull myself along far faster than I could swim.
At rest, I’d have three to five minutes before the sedatives kicked in and knocked me out. Moving, with my heart rate elevated far too high, I’d give it two max before I was done. I should have started counting the instant I hit the water.
Too many precious seconds had gone by, and I had no idea how long I had to find the nearest surface access before I drowned. I worked my way, hand over hand, through the waterway, the walls glowing a faint blue-white to accommodate the aquatic species reliant on eyesight.
The tunnel branched into three different passages with no sign of a way up. I veered to the right. If one of Gentry’s men did follow me, I didn’t want to make it easy for them to locate me.
My lungs burned, but I didn’t have to go far before a hole in the ceiling offered the hope of air. I wiggled my way into the narrow opening and shoved off the floor. Unlike the main waterway, there were no rings to offer aid, and while I could kick my legs, my feet smacked against stone.
Ripples overhead flooded me with relief, and I clawed my way to the surface. The hole opened to a pool, shallow enough I could kneel without risk of drowning. Darkness engulfed the room, broken only by the waterway’s dim mystic glow. I gasped for air, aware of a cold numbness spreading from my shoulder up my neck and into my chest.
I made my way to the edge of the pool, collapsing over the side of it and onto a hard, cold floor. My relief didn’t last long, not with the sedatives smothering me, determined to pull me under. The light from the waterway didn’t penetrate far into the room’s darkness, but dust layered the floor and caked to me.
I somehow retained consciousness, although my body refused to move. My breath wheezed in and out, and the tightness in my chest frightened me almost as much as the twitching of my arms and legs. The familiar fog of sedation made it hard to think, hard to do anything other than concentrate on making certain my next breath wasn’t my last.
In a dark and quiet room, time lacked meaning. Some sedatives didn’t take long to wear off, no more than a few hours, but others lasted longer. I experimented with the ones I used, working to ensure my victims went down and stayed down, timed to species. Unless I was planning on killing someone, I disliked giving doses lasting longer than an hour.
I used them to buy myself time to escape. When I hunted a bounty, I went for the kill, not the capture. Taking someone alive took work, effort, and luck. Taking someone alive uninjured took a great deal more of all three.
In all likelihood, Ferdinand had a mystic on his team, one who could make the evidence of his dart disappear. With so many different underwater ways through the mayoral palace, it would take the team a long time to check every possible room and tunnel. If they got their hands on the blueprints of the place, it wouldn’t take them long to find me—assuming they didn’t presume me dead, a comforting possibility. Once the sedative released its hold on me, I could find my way out of the palace through the underwater passages. I’d have to sneak into rooms to catch my breath, but as long as I limited my movement to the deepest parts of night and kept quiet, I’d be able to slip away, assuming the ways out to the crater remained open.
After my murder of the previous mayor, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had barred the ways out to prevent other assassins from gaining entrance. Unless they figured out how I’d gotten in and out, the underwater passages made sense—especially for an assassin named the Water Viper.
I closed my eyes, knowing I was making a mistake even as I did it.
The scrape of boot on stone woke me, but my body refused to do more than twitch at the sound. At best, I feared it would take me a few minutes to force my eyes open. If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead—or caught. Moments later, a hot hand scalded my cheek, and the touch slid along my jaw to my throat.
“Alive,” a man’s voice reported. “Heartbeat sluggish, skin temperature low.”
Another man spoke with a faint hint of a growl, “Conscious?”
Sometimes, problems resolved themselves. A man pried one of my eyes open. A hovering mystic light illuminated the bare, dust-filled room. While my vision was blurred, I didn’t recognize the man crouched beside me. His hair, however, I recognized; brown and tawny, long, thick and crowning his head, a proper mane only a lion would dare to wear.
“Semi. She’s wheezing.”
Fabric whispered, and a hand pressed to my side. “She’s been here long enough to dry off.”
Someone draped something thick, heavy, and warm over me. I swallowed, and my throat reported dry, burning pain. I blinked several times, my eyelids heavy and uncooperative.
“No more than ten minutes from when she was last spotted, probably.”
In truth, I doubted I had lasted more than two minutes between submerging in the pool and finding my way into the dusty room. “Two,” I choked out, my tongue thick and unwieldy in my mouth.
“And I stand corrected,” the lion murmured. “Good morning, ma’am. Pleasant nap?”
“No.” A shudder ran through me, and after several tries, I forced my arm into motion, flopping my hand to where I’d been hit with the dart. “I need to kill a wolf. You’re a lion. You like eating wolves, right?”
With every word, it became easier to talk, and I wiggled my toes in my effort to reclaim control over my body. I shook my head, drawing in slow, deep breaths to alleviate the wheezing.
“I’m on a strict no-wolf diet, I’m afraid. It’d be rude to our host.”
“I might make an exception this once.”
I blinked. “Mayor Longfellow?”
“Guilty as charged, Miss Alexander. There are quite a few people worried about you, rather convinced you’ve gone and drowned and possibly swept out into the crater. While the aquatics offered to search, there’s many miles worth of tunnels under here, a fact you knew before you jumped into the courtyard pool, I presume?”
The lion was probably the mayor’s future son-in-law, although his name eluded me. “That makes you the lion pride leader. I think you have a name. I’m pretty sure you do.”
“Drugs make recollection difficult,” the lion acknowledged. “I’m Gabriel Holly.”
“You’re Blossom’s groom.”
“Yes, I am. Do you think you can walk?”
“Give me a few minutes, then maybe. How long have I been out?”
“It’s noon.”
“Shit.” I shook my head, worked my arm under me, and sat up. The room did several flip flops around me, and only Gabriel’s hand on my shoulder kept me from falling back to the floor. “If I can’t walk, I don’t suppose you’d forget you ever saw me?”
The two shifters exchanged glances, and the mayor chuckled. “My apologies, Miss Jesse, but that would make me a very poor host. I can, however, discreetly provide you with a suite nearby until you have a chance to recover—one that isn’t rather neglected. I’m going to have to have words with housekeeping about this. I’ve never seen so much dust in one place in my life.”
Was the mayor just playing at being a good host? I doubted it; he was a lot of things, but he did nothing without a reason. Charlotte thrived under his care, a dramatic change from his predecessor.
“It is rather dusty,” I conceded.
“Is this how you got out your last visit?”
I froze, my eyes widening. The mayor knew, and if the mayor knew and spoke of it, his future son-in-law knew, too. When I opened my mouth, I only managed a frightened squeak.
“That explains a lot.” Gabriel slid his hand from my shoulder to the back of my neck, giving a firm but gentle squeeze. “Relax, Miss Alexande
r. Despite your side job, neither one of us have any intentions of doing anything to you. We were trying to figure out what happened and why. My guess is this: Adams scared the liver out of you, your nerve broke, you went somewhere to regroup, and got cornered in the courtyard by one of his teams. One of them, despite the bounty rules, nailed you with a dart, and you went for a swim. Made it here, probably by luck, where the sedatives took you out of action. Correct?”
The mayor smiled at me, and his expression transformed him from good-looking to devastatingly handsome, although not in the tall, dark way I preferred. “He’s right. I’m rather grateful you accepted the bounty for my predecessor. It was a nice piece of work and worth every penny of your fee for ridding the Earth of that bastard. You did the entirety of Charlotte a favor. Of course, I wouldn’t go advertising it, but there you have it. I have a proposal.”
I reached the point where I couldn’t take anymore surprises—or comprehend why they weren’t killing me on the spot. “You have a what?”
The mayor chuckled. “Proposal. A bounty like the one on you has to be cleared by me first, so Gentry and I had a long talk about you and your secondary job, and we also spent a great deal of time speculating how you managed to pull it off. Until we were given a tip and provided with proof we could verify, we really had no idea you, a mid-list freelancing mercenary, could also be Charlotte’s premier assassin. First time in my life I’ve seen Gentry flummoxed. I should be tipping you for the honor. Todd’s convinced you’ve gotten yourself killed being stubborn and stupid, so he’s sulking in his suites.”
“Why aren’t you turning me in to be killed?”
“That wouldn’t be very nice of me. Right, Gabriel?”
The lion snorted. “Don’t bring me into this. I’m only here because Blossom asked me really nicely to keep you out of trouble, and Gentry seemed really concerned you’d get mauled if a bigger predator wasn’t around to keep an eye on you.”