Harlequin Nocturne March 2014 Bundle: ShadowmasterRunning with Wolves

by Susan Krinard

  “You didn’t run,” she said.

  “But you expected me to try,” Phoenix said, standing near the bed.

  “I don’t know what to make of you, and I don’t like—”

  “Not knowing,” Phoenix finished. “Believe me, I understand.”

  Brita snorted. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for now,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t be watching.”

  “And I’ll keep your secrets as long as you keep mine.”

  “And what you just saw this morning?”

  “I’m not planning on telling anyone. It might backfire on me, too.” She offered her hand, which Brita pretended not to see.

  “The others will be back anytime now,” the lieutenant said. “I suggest you get some rest.”

  She left, played with the lock outside—presumably with the intent of hiding the fact that it had never been functional in the first place—and walked away, her footsteps barely audible in the corridor.

  Twisting her hair into the usual ponytail and tying it with a scrap of twine, Phoenix considered what she’d learned. There was so much she had yet to understand. Once again she weighed instinct against her orders. If she were to follow her instructions precisely, this would be the time to return to Aegis with the intelligence she had collected...presuming she could escape now that she’d let several opportunities pass. She’d made direct contact with an Opir spy, after all. And more.

  But that wasn’t good enough. Even if she could manage to get away, she still didn’t know exactly what role Sammael was playing in the assassination. If she could pin that down, she could return to Aegis having done everything she could.

  That meant she had to keep pretending to want to escape the city and still find a way to stay with Sammael until she understood his connection to Drakon. And she couldn’t forget her purpose, though part of her wished she could get away from the Enclave...from duty, from doubt and all the other emotions she shouldn’t be feeling. From wondering if Sammael’s actions with the emigrants had been done out of genuine compassion Opiri weren’t supposed to possess. That no agent of murderers could possess.

  She sat on the bed and massaged her temples. Wasn’t the fact that she wanted to believe proof that she hadn’t been the right choice for the job after all? They should have sent someone harder, more focused, more dedicated. Like her father. Someone who wouldn’t be thinking that maybe she wanted to stay with her enemy...not out of necessity, but because she was beginning to—

  Care. About an Opir who took in the weak of the Fringe, shared his “take” of profits with the poor, helped human convicts escape and refused to take advantage of a prisoner he badly wanted.

  She laughed. She kept assuming all that was true. God help her.

  But it wasn’t too late. There was still time to pull herself back from the brink and harden her heart, remembering that Sammael’s supposed goodness to the fugitives and the people of the Fringe meant nothing in the end. His breed had killed Dad, would keep killing until they’d won their war and enslaved all mankind.

  Turning off her troubling thoughts, she slept fitfully for the next two hours, trained, as were all agents, to rest whenever the opportunity arose but with senses tuned for any change in the immediate environment. By dawn—which she couldn’t see but sensed as clearly as if she were looking out a window—she woke to the sound of the crew returning to the Hold.

  But she didn’t hear Sammael’s voice. She rolled off the bed and half-ran to the door, every muscle tense and heart beating fast. Other voices rose in argument, and she knew something had gone wrong.

  Sammael hadn’t returned. Phoenix was struck by the sudden fear that the Enforcers scouring the Fringe, supposedly looking for the treacherous govrat, had taken Sammael against orders, anyway. Could his helping the emigrants have exposed him somehow?

  There was another, just as chilling, possibility. Phoenix had heard the very unsubtle threats leveled at Brita by The Preacher’s representative. What if one of his followers, or a whole crew of them, had caught Sammael somewhere alone?

  She banged on the door for a good minute before it swung open with a loud creak. Standing in the doorway was a small, wiry man she hadn’t met.

  “Brita said to check up on you,” the man said, gazing at her with pointed curiosity.

  “Where is she?”

  “Busy. You need the bathroom or something?”

  “I want to talk to Brita,” she said, trying to balance the tone of her voice between worried concern and stubborn insistence.

  “She ain’t available. I’ll tell her you asked after her when she’s free.” He began to close the door, but Phoenix wedged her boot in the crack.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Repo.”

  “Where’s Sammael?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I’ve heard a lot of arguing, but not his voice.”

  Repo shrugged.

  “He didn’t return with your crew, did he?”

  “That ain’t none of your business. It ain’t smart to pry into stuff that ain’t your business, not in the Fringe.”

  “It’s my business when he’s the one who’s supposed to get me out of the city.”

  “He’s Boss. He can do what he wants, and he don’t report to nobody. If your info checks out, he’ll keep his word.”

  The door groaned as Repo closed it behind him. Phoenix hardly noticed.

  If your info checks out, the man had said. So Brita had been lying about Sammael already knowing that Phoenix had been telling the “truth” about her information.

  But why? Just to throw Phoenix off her guard even more? Someone’s voice—a man’s—rose above the others Phoenix could hear in another part of the building.

  Sammael’s. He was back. Safe.

  Finding her way to the bed, Phoenix sat down heavily. She felt as if she had won a sudden and unexpected reprieve from some terrible punishment, and yet she was ashamed. Ashamed that she’d cared about Sammael’s welfare, not just about losing her chance to learn the nature of his connection to Drakon.

  Ashamed that she could imagine his fingers pushing her hair back as tenderly as he had the boy’s, speaking to her just as gently.

  Could she make him care for her? Not simply desire her, but care in a way that he wouldn’t want her to leave his side until his work was done?

  No. She had to concentrate on what she knew was real...the sexual desire he refused to act on for reasons of his own. If it was weakness he feared, she had to make him believe he was in no danger of falling into a trap by making love to her. If it was her dhampir blood that drew him to her, so much the better. He wouldn’t give himself away by trying to take it, but there still might be a way to use his craving against him.

  If Brita hadn’t already told him that Phoenix was part Opir.

  * * *

  It had been a very close call.

  The crew was nervous, exchanging uneasy whispers, fidgeting, glancing right and left as if they expected Enforcers to burst in on the Hold at any moment.

  That, Drakon thought, wasn’t going to happen. The men and women who’d finished up with the shipment had narrowly escaped the Enforcers, it was true, but they weren’t anywhere near the Hold, and the crew would settle down once they knew they were safe.

  But every moment of the debriefing, as Drakon covered each small error and moment of nearly fatal inattention, he thought of Lark. He had been thinking of her when they had been in the midst of unloading the shipment of produce and hiding it as close to the city Wall as possible, in preparation for bringing it through after the next nightfall made it safer to move the material.

  He’d been thinking of her when they’d run into the Enforcer patrol soon after releasing the fug
itive humans. He’d thought of her when he had come so very close to capture—to losing his life, since he was required and intended to die first—after he’d deliberately caught the Enforcers’ attention and led them on what once had been commonly known as a “wild-goose chase.”

  And he’d imagined her body, her warm lips, her welcoming arms as he made it to the Hold just before dawn, half regretting that he had survived. Knowing that she had, at best, offered herself to him only because it was a way of buying her escape from the Enclave.

  Knowing, too, that she might even have been behind the Enforcers’ attack.

  Now, as he discussed the operation with his crew, he could think only of going to her. Brita had moved Lark to new quarters—ignoring Drakon’s express orders to keep her firmly locked up in his room—and had reported that their guest had been very cooperative ever since.

  Perhaps too cooperative.

  Recalling himself to the task at hand, Drakon finished the debriefing. “Go eat and rest,” he said, rising as he dismissed the crew. Brita and most of the others left, but a few lingered.

  “What you gonna do now?” Shank said with a leering glance. “Go check on the client, maybe give her a little personal attention?” He glanced around the table at the others who had remained. “It’s her fault there’re so many Enforcers around, whether they’re really chasing her or she brought them with her.”

  Drakon walked around the table and backhanded the human, sending him flying halfway across the room. It was always a risk to display his more-than-human strength, but he had to keep Shank in line before he encouraged others to defy his Boss.

  When Shank lifted himself off the floor, groaning and swearing, Drakon was standing over him.

  “You can leave now,” he said, “or stay and keep your mouth shut. But if you run and pass on information that can damage this Hold or any of the crew, I will personally hunt you down. Understand?”

  Shank wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “I get it,” he said sullenly.

  For a moment all Drakon could do was stare at the blood on Shank’s mouth. Fresh blood. So long since he’d had it. So easy to take.

  So deadly to his purpose.

  “Sleep,” he told the others, quickly backing away. “I’m sending most of you out tonight to finish the job. Those who don’t want to risk it and forfeit their share of the profit are free to do so.”

  With many glances at the unfortunate Shank, the last of the crew filed out of the meeting room. Drakon spent a good half-hour walking aimlessly through the corridors, trying to convince himself not to go to Lark’s new quarters. He didn’t succeed.

  He found the lock broken, but if the prisoner had made any attempt to escape, Brita hadn’t reported it. Lark was standing in the center of the small, damp room as if she had been expecting him.

  “Did you do it?” he demanded, striding to stand directly in front of her, toe to toe, face-to-face.

  She searched his eyes, her own slightly moist, as if she’d been weeping. “Do what?” she asked.

  “Bring the Enforcers in to hunt us down?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He grabbed Lark by the shoulders, not gently. “You know. And now I have reason to think we were almost ambushed because of you.”

  “Ambushed?” Her chin jerked up. “You seem to have forgotten that Brita was with me all night.”

  Of course Lark was right. Brita had been very clear on the matter, though she obviously trusted Lark no more than she had before. “That means nothing,” he said, “if your plan was to make everyone in the Fringe believe the Enforcers were only interested in you, and that everyone else was reasonably safe.”

  Shaking him off, she gave him a look of utter contempt. “Safe?” she said. “I’m not telepathic, able to figure out where you and your crew were going to be doing ‘business’ last night.”

  Her logical response hardly set Drakon at ease. In the year he’d been leading his crew, not once had they walked into a trap. When it had finally happened, the one who might be responsible had a clear-cut alibi.

  And Lark’s sincerity—now that he was with her, smelling her, feeling her heat—only increased his uncertainty. Someone among the crew would have had to inform the Enforcers, but it hadn’t been this woman.

  That would mean he had a traitor among his crew. And that he couldn’t accept.

  Why? he asked himself, when you are the ultimate traitor?

  “How many Enforcers attacked you?” she asked, her brow creased in a very good approximation of worry.

  “Nine,” he said, his anger draining away.

  “Nine.” She laughed shortly. “Even if Brita hadn’t been here and I’d been in touch with the Enforcers, do you really think I’d have thought that nine of them would be enough to take on you and your crew?”

  Once again, Drakon had to admit that she was either the best liar in the Enclave or he was the greatest fool here or in Erebus.

  But one fact couldn’t be denied. The Enforcers were in the Fringe because of Lark, one way or another. Ultimately, she would have been the cause if any of the crew had been caught or killed.

  And she was his responsibility.

  He turned away from her and paced across the room. “What am I to do with you?” he asked.

  “You haven’t checked out my information, have you?”

  “When would I have done that?” he demanded, turning to face her again.

  Lark shrugged, a slight shift in her expression suggesting that she had been about to speak and had thought better of it. His suspicion flared again.

  “Look,” she said, “put me in a concrete-walled cell with a bucket and a pile of straw, if that’ll make you feel better. But I can’t tell you anything I don’t know, or confess to something I didn’t do.” She returned to the bed and lay down, closing her eyes as if she knew she had nothing to fear. “Maybe you should look among your own people for a leak. And tell me if you find anything interesting.”

  Chapter 7

  Lark’s dismissive manner aroused Drakon’s anger all over again. “You seem very comfortable here all of a sudden,” he said, moving closer to the bed.

  She opened her eyes and sighed. “You may have noticed by now that I’m not the type to beg and whimper. Believe it or not, I don’t want anyone to get killed on my behalf. The sooner you can get me out—”

  “We know they’re watching the Wall much more carefully than they ever have before,” he said. “We have one last job to finish, but after what happened this morning, I’m not taking my crew out again until I can find a way to solve our current problem.”

  She sat up, her back against the wall, plucking at the tumbled sheets. “Okay. I’ve accepted that I may be here for a while. What else do you want me to say?”

  Drakon wondered what he did want her to say. He turned to leave.

  “Brita and I had a talk while you were gone,” Lark said.

  Very much on his guard, Drakon turned again and stalked toward her. “What kind of a talk?” he asked.

  “Well, first she moved me out of your room. She didn’t say it right out, but I think she was worried that you’d fall prey to my feminine wiles.” Lark grinned, an expression which, under the circumstances, seemed more than a little crazy. “But we know that didn’t work, don’t we? You’re not interested.” She sobered again with the same startling suddenness. “Brita did seem to want me to understand you better, or at least what you do here. I don’t know why.”

  Neither did Drakon. “What did she say?” he asked, taking up his pacing again.

  “She told me what you do for the people of the Fringe, and how well you treat the convicts you smuggle out of the city.”

  Drakon almost laughed. In his former life, he hadn’t been able to ignore the suffering here, though for
the first few years he’d tried to block out everything he hadn’t wanted to see. In so many ways, he’d been far worse than merely blind.

  Now he saw far too much. And what he did now could never make up for what was coming.

  “Is this why you feel so safe?” he asked harshly. “Because Brita told you these stories about my many kindnesses? You shouldn’t believe her.”

  He felt her gaze tracking his agitated strides across the room and back again. “I was wrong about you,” she said. “You know, since I came here, I’ve seen things I never let myself think about before. I’ve had a real look at people who don’t have anything except a tiny government stipend to live on, no decent housing, never enough food. People who have to scrounge for whatever they can find to make life bearable.”

  “And how do you feel now that you know these things?” Drakon asked without slowing his pace.

  “Helpless,” she said. “Even if I stayed in San Francisco, I wouldn’t know how to make a difference.”

  She couldn’t make a difference, Drakon thought. No one could, not with the Enclave run as it was now.

  Again and again he had tried to justify his purpose here. What he was going to do... Could it result in anything worse than what already existed in this city?

  Yes, the death of one important man might achieve what the Citadel intended. The entire Enclave might collapse from within. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  But the Opiri seemed to forget, again and again, how resilient and stubborn human beings could be. The mayor’s assassination and the resulting chaos might finally force the government, with all its corruption, to acknowledge the weakness in the system they had built since the end of the War. The Senate would realize that simply stopping the tribute wouldn’t lead to peace, only a conflict as bad as or worse than the one before. But the Enforcers and their reign of terror would have to come to an end, as well.

  A new way would have to be found. The Enclave could even become stronger, able to fully hold its own against Erebus far into the foreseeable future. And if it did, Erebus would also have to change.

  So he told himself, when he was at his weakest. When he doubted. When he thought of the Scrappers and those desperate to avoid deportation, the ones his guilt and former convictions bound him to help.