Harlequin Nocturne March 2014 Bundle: ShadowmasterRunning with Wolves

by Susan Krinard

  And quite possibly witness Senator Patterson’s downfall.

  Drakon had done all he could to ensure the success of that venture. Matthew had proven to be quite a surprise, reacting with horror to what he’d seen in the files. He’d expressed a desire to seek some way to find peace by different means than had been tried so far, and, in spite of his previous behavior, he had proven to be both reasonable and mature for his age and occupation.

  But Drakon couldn’t be sure that the young man would go through with the plan to confront his father and urge him to face the consequences of his former heinous acts. It was still quite possible that Matthew had deceived Drakon all along, or would be “rescued” before he could read the pertinent records, though the young Enforcer had agreed to let his father believe there were snipers ready to kill him if he failed.

  Holding the rifle as close as he would an infant, Drakon closed his eyes and breathed deeply, in and out and in and out, as he had learned during his specialist training in the Force. But as much as he tried to keep his mind clear, it wouldn’t stay that way. Phoenix’s face was always before his eyes, smiling at him, kissing him, trusting him. Loving him.

  By now Repo would have taken her out of the city. If Brita had managed to do her part, she would have arranged to leave the mayor vulnerable for a few precious minutes, though how she would achieve such a miracle Drakon couldn’t imagine. Once she had raised the panels and managed to get the mayor into position, not even the supposedly bulletproof glass could save Shepherd. The Enforcers had a handful of prototype firearms the senators didn’t even know about, and one of them was in Drakon’s hands.

  Whether she succeeded or not, Drakon had already prepared himself for what would follow. He had told Brita he wouldn’t be returning to Erebus. He’d told Phoenix that they would find some way to live outside the Enclave, facing the dangers of the Zone together.

  But he wouldn’t be leaving this city. If he was unable to kill the mayor today, he’d try to hide long enough to get to Shepherd another way. Or, if not him, then Patterson. Brita planned to focus all her efforts on learning the location of the laboratory creating the biological weapon, but his odds of getting anywhere near the source were virtually nil.

  Leaning back, he waited. The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. By 11:00 a.m., he knew the reception committee would be gathering at the appointed place. He tried again not to think of what would happen there, or the fact that Patterson might find himself spared the airing of his flagrant repudiation of the very law he claimed to serve.

  It would be only a temporary reprieve.

  Sweat trickling over his forehead, Drakon wiped at his face with his sleeve. He’d put on his heaviest clothing, knowing he’d be exposed to the sun for anywhere from twenty seconds to several minutes. He should survive the burns, though the previous ones had just healed.

  But the shadow cast by the bulkhead was growing thin. The timing had to be perfect in every way.

  As noon approached, he turned his attention to the Capitol building. He knew exactly what to look for—the precise moment when Brita gave the signal. A brief flash of reflection. A second for her to drop to the ground.

  The sound of someone climbing the stairs inside the bulkhead sent him spinning to face the door. It opened, and he caught a scent so familiar and beloved that he was momentarily too stunned to move.

  “Drakon?” Phoenix called softly.

  Running at a crouch, he reached the door, grabbed her and yanked her down to the concrete beside him. He pulled her back into the scant shade around the corner and held her arm in a desperate grip.

  “How did you get here?” he asked. “You were supposed to—”

  “Be outside the Wall,” she said, her breath coming short. “I know that was what you planned.” She didn’t try to break free of his hold but scanned the area around them, taking in the vantage point and the meeting place a little over a half-mile away.

  “Brita was right,” she said.

  Drakon pulled Phoenix around to face him. “What do you mean, Brita was right?” he asked.

  “She knows you’re the assassin, Drakon,” Phoenix said.

  He was too stunned by her presence to pretend to be surprised. “And she told you I was here?”

  “She told me where to find you after she helped me get away from Repo and the others you ordered to take me out of the city.” She met his gaze without anger or reproach, only with deep sadness. “You didn’t trust me.”

  Fury burned through Drakon’s body like the sunlight. “Damn it, I wanted you safe!”

  “Because you always intended to do this.”

  He shook his head, fighting a wave of dizziness. The sunlight, reflecting off the metal and windows of surrounding buildings, was beginning to affect him. He pulled her closer still, catching her face between his hands.

  “Yes,” he said, “Brita has been working with me. But she always expected me to go through with it. I was going to quit, but then she told me—”

  “Drakon, you can’t do this.”

  Brita had sent Pheonix here, Drakon thought, even as she was setting up the mayor’s assassination. She’d deliberately put Phoenix in terrible danger.

  “I found out she was a double agent, Drakon,” Phoenix said. “I just didn’t know which side she was really on. But when she told me where you’d gone, I chose to believe that she really was on our side.”

  Our side, Drakon thought, shaking his head. Brita, his “sister,” a double agent.

  Eyes moist with anguish, Phoenix touched his cheek with her fingertip. “She was never your loyal lieutenant, Drakon. She’s been an Aegis operative since long before she joined you. She was hunting for Opiri spies before we even knew there might be an assassin planning to kill the mayor.”

  Drakon burst into choked laughter. “You knew this?”

  “Not until I returned from talking to the director. She told me to watch out for a deep-cover agent in the Fringe who might be able to help me. Brita revealed herself to me and said she had been about to expose the others just before I—”

  “Stop.” He looked away, sick with heat and rage and despair. “I don’t know what Brita thought she had to gain by sending you here. But you’re wrong.” He met her gaze again. “Phoenix, she’s more than my lieutenant. Her Opir father was my Sire. She’s been working alongside me from the beginning, pretending to serve your side while gathering information for ours. We discussed the need to take Shepherd out...yes, even after I promised you I wouldn’t do it. And I wasn’t planning to. But we discovered something that changed those plans. And I had to keep you safe, no matter—”

  “So you’re saying she was only half lying to me,” Phoenix said. “Telling me what I wanted to hear. If so, she must have done very well in deceiving my superiors.” She glanced around again, scanning the skies as if she expected a sudden onslaught of black Enforcer helicopters, and looked back at Drakon. “I don’t think you’re lying about your relationship with her. I’ve known almost from the beginning that she wasn’t human.”

  “You knew that, too?” Drakon asked bitterly. “And yet you—”

  “I discovered Brita wasn’t human when she met with one of The Preacher’s men just outside the Hold.”

  “She what?” Drakon snapped.

  “She turned down his offer to join The Preacher’s crew. But when I confronted her, she claimed I was a spy for Aegis, and not quite human myself. We promised that neither of us would expose the other.”

  Drakon leaned back against the bulkhead again and closed his eyes. He should have been shocked, but he felt nothing. He knew where Brita’s real loyalties lay.

  But why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she shared what she’d learned with him, so that they could take full advantage of the enemy’s intelligence?

  If he had been deceived so easily, how
could he fault Phoenix for believing Brita?

  Drakon inhaled sharply. Was it possible that she really didn’t want the mayor dead after all? Had she only pretended all along, never intending Drakon to go through with the assassination?

  It wasn’t possible, Drakon thought. If she’d wanted to stop Drakon, she could have done it a hundred different ways before he’d reached this rooftop.

  He blinked sweat out of his eyes. Brita hadn’t told Phoenix about the pathogen, or Phoenix would have mentioned it. Whatever her former loyalties, she’d have been horrified.

  Unaware of his racing thoughts, Phoenix pulled his hands away from her face. “You lied to me, Drakon,” she said softly, squeezing his fingers. “But it’s not too late. No revenge is worth what this will do to you even if you get away afterward.”

  “Phoenix—” Drakon began, barely able to speak.

  “We need to leave, now, and get you to shelter. Then we’re getting out of the city, just as we planned.”

  He checked his watch. Eleven-thirty. Almost no time left.

  “I didn’t come to kill Patterson,” he said. “I’ve come to remove a man who’s helping to create a biological weapon that could kill every Opir who comes in contact with it.”

  Phoenix stared at him, a look of blank incomprehension in her eyes. “A weapon?” she said. “The mayor?”

  Resisting the urge to shake her as he wished someone would shake him, he gripped her shoulders. “Brita didn’t tell you, did she?”

  “No,” Phoenix said slowly. “Everyone has been lying. You, me, Brita, Shepherd, Patterson. Everyone.” She pushed Drakon away. “Shepherd would never be a party to something like that, whatever he’s done in the past. But I don’t understand why she would tell you to—” Understanding swept across her face. “Drakon, she’s set you up. Maybe she thought I could succeed, but if I don’t, she’s going to send people up here after you.”

  “I don’t know why she said I was after Patterson or told you to come here,” he said, “but you have to go. If you leave immediately, you can return to the Fringe. You can make up some story about trying to save Matthew and being incapacitated while I escaped before the meeting.”

  “You should know by now,” Phoenix said gravely, “that no matter what Brita said, I’m not leaving here without you.”

  “Patterson is working with your mayor. Would you stand by while they create an illegal and devastating weapon?”

  Phoenix shivered, looking genuinely shaken. “Do you have any proof but Brita’s word? If Shepherd and Patterson are actually working together on something like that, killing either or both of them won’t stop it. Others must be involved.”

  Her sensible words were convincing, but Drakon knew far better than she what they were facing. “Once news of this gets out of the Enclave,” he said, “Erebus will—”

  “Attack first? And then we’ll have the new war so many on both sides seem to want.” Her voice thickened with tears. “Don’t you see? You wanted Patterson’s sins aired in public. Maybe they will be, maybe they won’t. But Aegis doesn’t know I’m any kind of traitor yet. I can go back and look for evidence of this weapon. There will be ways to expose it to the public, bring it to the attention of other senators—”

  “Many of whom will support it.” He looked into her eyes, hardening his heart against everything he had ever felt for her. “And since Brita is still apparently trusted by Aegis and has already lied to you, she could turn on you in a heartbeat if she thought it would serve her—our—cause.”

  “Neither of us can trust her, Drakon,” she said.

  Drakon set his jaw. “There is nothing you can do, and nothing more to discuss.” He glanced around the bulkhead at the Capitol building. “If you ever felt anything for me, find Repo and tell him my orders stand. He’ll get you out.”

  But he knew, as soon as she’d finished speaking, that she’d never go.

  “Phoenix,” he said.

  She looked at him, weary and bewildered.

  “Come here,” he said gently.

  She edged closer to him, a wariness in her eyes that cut him to the quick. He opened his arms, and she fell into them, holding on to him so hard that his ribs protested and he grunted with surprise. He kissed her, and she responded desperately. So many times it happened this way—in desperation, in haste, in fear of some terrible, inevitable loss.

  “No one’s watching this building,” she whispered into his neck. “We still have time to leave without being caught.” She pulled back, her eyes dry but filled with the ferocity he knew burned beneath the facade of calm composure. “I choose to trust you, Drakon, over everyone else in this world, no matter what you’ve done. Will you trust me the same way?”

  They gazed at each other as Drakon felt his heart slowly tear itself apart. His watch pinged. Five minutes left. He laid down the rifle and, still crouching, led her to the bulkhead door. She smiled at him, believing he had given up, and preceded him through the door to the landing.

  Careful to make sure she wasn’t watching, he removed two capsules from a tiny inner pocket in his jacket. He popped them into his mouth, holding them on his tongue, and pulled Phoenix around to kiss her again.

  She struggled when she felt the pills pass over her tongue and into her mouth. She tried to spit them out, but he covered her lips with his hand and massaged her throat with deliberate, carefully calculated strokes.

  “Don’t fight it,” he said, resting his cheek against her hair. “If they find me, I’ll tell them I drugged you. You’ll only be out for an hour or less, depending on how the drug works on your metabolism.”

  Phoenix tried to shake her head. She was weeping, but she couldn’t keep fighting him. She swallowed, and after a minute her eyes drifted shut. Drakon carefully laid her out on the landing, stroked her hair one last time and ran back out onto the roof. He retrieved the rifle and set up facing the Capitol building, the sun already beginning to burn through his clothes.

  One minute passed. Two. And then it was noon, and there was no flash, no signal, nothing to suggest that Brita had succeeded. He waited another several minutes until he could feel his skin begin to blister, and then withdrew halfway inside the bulkhead.

  It was over.

  Letting his head drop back against the inner wall, he pulled Phoenix into his arms, wondering how he could get her down the stairs and to safety when she couldn’t walk. Carrying an unconscious woman over his shoulder would be too conspicuous. If he could just—

  “Drakon!”

  Brita was running up the stairs, her expression tight with anger and urgency.

  “I couldn’t make it work!” she said, stopping just below the landing as her gaze flickered from his face to Phoenix’s. “I had no way to communicate, but at least she found you.” Brita crouched. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Drakon asked, dragging Phoenix’s limp body behind him. “You sent her up with some story about my intending to kill Patterson, telling her to stop me! Elders, Brita, what were you thinking?”

  “I sent her here to stop you and get you away because I had to try to make sure no one else found you here,” Brita said. “I never told her you meant to kill Patterson.”

  Drakon didn’t believe her. Her voice was strained, lacking its usual confidence. She was too earnest, almost pleading with him to understand. To accept.

  “I had to knock her out in case someone found me here and believed she was helping me,” he said, holding Brita’s eyes. “You told her you were working for Aegis, and I told her you’re with me. Whatever the truth is, she knows that much. Are you planning to kill her for that?”

  “We can’t let her go back to Aegis.”

  “She’s still going outside the Wall. Once I know she’s safe, you and I will do whatever we have to.”

  Brita looked out t
he half-open door to the roof. “The meeting’s happening right now. Matthew Patterson is out there, standing in front of the assembled reporters and politicians and Enforcers. If you ever wanted revenge, you’ve lost it now. Matthew will never talk.”

  “You convinced me that killing the mayor was necessary,” he said. “More vital than any revenge.”

  “But now we’re here, and you’ve got nothing to lose. You can take Patterson now, and that makes their pact to destroy us almost as unstable as if you’d killed Shepherd. We can still use it.”

  Drakon looked down into Phoenix’s face. It was almost peaceful. As if even now she trusted him.

  “No,” he said. “I’m getting her out of here.”

  “I expected you to say that,” Brita said. Without warning, she half-jumped, half-ran over Drakon, snatched up the rifle and ran out onto the roof. Drakon had barely rolled Phoenix off his lap when he heard the shot. Ten seconds later Brita was back through the door and on the landing, perched on her toes and ready to run. She dropped the rifle at Drakon’s feet.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “You have your revenge. And so do I.”

  Drakon moved, but not soon enough. Brita jammed a gun under his jaw, and he heard the wail of sirens on the streets surrounding the building.

  Brita had set him up, exactly as Phoenix had said. She’d never intended for him to kill the mayor. Whether she’d really wanted Patterson dead or only wanted to make it look as if Drakon had killed a major political figure in the Enclave didn’t matter now.

  For some incomprehensible reason, she had betrayed her so-called “brother.” He no longer had any understanding of her loyalties. All he could do now was maintain a plausible story that Phoenix had in no way been involved. A story plausible enough to counter anything Brita might claim to her masters at Aegis.