“What?” Xander couldn’t hide his tone, and the shudder of horror unfurled from the depths. For a split second, he saw his face crumble to dust. Mina was right, there was more to what was going on than he’d realized. What a fool he’d been.
“You don’t think we got to this place of power by standing by?” Thomas bellowed, his drunkenness making it impossible for him to regulate his volume or reaction. “No, we take what we need. Tell the lower levels what they want to hear.”
Xander reminded himself the man was under the influence. How much was truth or impaired rambling, he didn’t know. The words rang with the weight of fact, a certain heavy finality he couldn’t ignore.
“We experiment on children?” He still wanted to believe this was only done on adults—consenting ones. He knew as he asked how foolish this thought was. Who would consent to the pain of experimentation willingly? He knew several desperate parents who’d pay anything to give their children more power—or recently, to even have children. He’d been hearing of Mages contracting low-level Elementals as surrogates, with little success.
“Of course! Aren’t you listening?” Thomas shook his head. “You have to ask your father. He’s a genius.”
The sensation of the bottom dropping out from under Xander was real enough he gripped the chair. His father? No. This couldn’t be.
Thomas Voda tried to stand; it took several attempts. “But now we have to end this war so we can get back to the business of saving our race.” He pointed to the flat screen. “The humans are involved now. Together, we can deal with it, but separately, we’re all fucked.” The last word sounded odd coming from the senior Board member. This was a man who rarely cursed.
Humans? Xander kept his mouth shut; he’d ask someone less under the influence. The older Mage gave him a nod, which nearly unbalanced him as he turned toward the door, stumbling into furniture as he lurched toward it. In the doorway, he paused and gave a wave.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. It will be good to have you at my back.”
Xander’d had no intention of going to the talks with Cazacul. Why the hell did he want to face his torturer and negotiate? He’d rather knife the bastard. Now Xander found he wanted to go, if only to find some answers. He wasn’t stupid; although, it appeared his intelligence was truly in question lately. What he did know was the Chairman, a man who used to intimidate him as a youth, was incapable of not grandstanding. The Mage leader would hate knowing Thomas Voda and the Board went behind his back. He’d want to make a very public example of him, and he’d drag with him his oldest friend, the pet scientist and current prisoner—his father.
Xander drained the last of his scotch, not even tasting it.
The truth was he’d go just to be able to talk to his father. He wanted to find out the reality of this information. To verify the facts, because if this were true…His mind skittered away from the possibility, telling himself it couldn’t be, but knowing, somewhere inside, he was delaying the inevitable.
He stood and grasped the scotch bottle. As he walked by the small bar, he picked up the full bottle of vodka and a shot glass. He didn’t need a glass to drink, but the Russian was peculiar about his alcohol. It was time to find Petrov.
He found Mikhail Petrov standing at the edge of his stone deck, looking out over the valley, smoking a cigar. The man didn’t move as Xander approached.
“I see you’ve recovered,” Mikhail said in his laconic tone.
“If you expect me to thank you, I’m not going to,” Xander replied as he put the bottle of Vodka and glass down next to him on a small table with an ashtray.
“Good. It will make killing you easier.”
“Always the charmer.” Xander stood next to the Russian, who continued to watch the lights twinkling down in the valley. He took a swig of his scotch. For a time, they stood together in uneasy silence. The brush of wind sounding like a thousand whispers carried the incessant song of nighttime creatures and the low hum of traffic to them.
“Why’d you save me?” Xander finally broke the silence between them, keeping his tone mild. He’d tried to kill his former friend, Mikhail, and his bonded lover. It wasn’t something one walked away from. This generosity mystified him. “I’d have killed me.”
“It was my first choice,” Mikhail admitted, inhaling the pungent cigar smoke and letting it curl out of his mouth. He glanced at Xander, his eyes slowly rotating through the range of color, indicating he wasn’t as cool as he sounded. “But I have other plans for you.”
Everyone had plans for him.
“And if I refuse?” Xander wasn’t in the mood to play this game. The breeze grew stronger, and he wondered how much of it was Elemental-directed.
“Then you will make Mina very unhappy and my Laurie upset. This I won’t allow.” Mikhail leaned back his head to blow out smoke. “You owe me for your life. For trying to take all that was mine.”
“You’d have done the same,” Xander told him.
“This is true.” Unapologetic, Mikhail finished his cigar, crushing it out in the ashtray and picking up the vodka Xander had brought him. He poured the clear alcohol into the shot glass, setting the bottle down with at thump. “I want you to give a life for a life,” he continued before Xander could respond. “You are a powerful Mage. You’ve pissed off your leader, betrayed your people…” Mikhail raised an eyebrow at Xander’s frown. “Da, when you went with Mina, you sealed your fate. It doesn’t matter what you suffered. You know the Chairman, an unforgiving bastard. I can use you. I need your help in protecting Laurie and my unborn from your people and mine.”
“I’m not a babysitter,” Xander shot out. His reference of protecting the children from the Mages reinforced this unsettled feeling he’d had since talking with Thomas Voda. “Hire a few mercs. They’ll protect.”
“They can be paid off.” Mikhail raised a glass in a toast and, with a practiced move, drank the alcohol. “Nyet, it is you. We are facing more than further unrest between Dark, Mage, and Elemental. We face the humans and their technology. I need to know my family is safe even if I am not here.”
Xander took time to really look at this man. Petrov hadn’t aged since last he saw him—still lean, elegant, with the hard-planed face of a man used to getting his way. He’d trusted Xander once, and now he was offering what could only be described as an olive branch.
“You don’t think you’ll get out of the talks alive.” Xander didn’t ask, he stated it. Petrov was the most pragmatic person he knew.
“It is a possibility.” Mikhail shrugged as if he’d given it little thought. “I know no matter what you think of me, or even Laurie, you’ll protect the children. I know this about you.”
“How do you know this?” Xander challenged. “I’ve killed before, allowed others to torture. What makes you think I’d protect yours?” He felt for the first time in his life a bit out of his depth. For a long time, he’d known his place in the world. Now he was uncertain, without purpose. A dangerous place to be.
“Because, moi droog,” Mikhail answered in his cool voice, “I’ve seen you protect them. You only kill adults; you’ve never harmed a child.” He poured another glass of vodka. “I know you, and I know you’d protect my children even if you hate me.”
Mikhail had said “my friend”—an interesting choice of words. Xander didn’t reply but filled the silence by drinking the scotch in his hands. He looked out over the valley and again picked up on the strange eddies in the night. It felt like magic, but didn’t quite match it, not the smoothness of Mage power, or the violence of Elementals, or the strange energy of the Darks. He recognized the oddness, but he didn’t focus on it. No, he pondered Mikhail’s words. The damn Elemental was right. He’d never allowed the children under his influence to be harmed. He’d thought it was because this was the duty of a Mage. Now he wondered how much of it stemmed from something in his past he couldn’t even remember.
Mina.
He could still see her large, dark eyes when she was eight and the
spelled stones hit her. The confusion, dismay, and hurt…the image of it made something twist deep inside of him. It was this memory propelling him when he stepped in to prevent abuse with children. It was also the same thought that made a murderous rage boil up inside him, a pressure cooker of unspent fury, at the thought he’d been experimented on.
“I’ll do it,” Xander said, surprising himself. No matter what he felt, the logical thing was to say no, but apparently he’d lost that part of him somewhere in the dungeons of the Darks. He turned his head to stare at Mikhail, who met his look with a bland expression. “But I will go with you to the talks with Cazacul.” He didn’t ask nor did he add his theory the Chairman would show up. He’d find out soon enough.
“Fair enough.” Mikhail drank another shot of vodka, put down the glass, and pulled out another cigar. “It will be interesting.” The Russian probably already knew; the man had more spies than the Chairman.
“Calling a potential blood-bath interesting, Petrov you are the king of understatement,” Xander mused.
Mikhail didn’t reply, deftly cutting the tip off of his cigar, and lit it with a match he took from a small box he kept in this pocket. Together they stood and watched the night-shrouded valley, and Xander couldn’t help but wonder who watched them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
HER ABUELO ONCE TOLD HER it was possible to put aside one’s family and past, but you couldn’t run from yourself and what you are. A cliché sentiment, but one Poppy contemplated as she stared into the lens of the microscope, not seeing a thing.
She’d divested herself from her superstitious, drug-dealing family and traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, on a full-ride scholarship to get her PhD in Forensics and Investigative Genetics. She’d recreated her life and background, and for the last ten years, she’d lived like she’d never grown up with strange herbs being ground and put into teas. She conveniently forgot about the money handed under the table to her grandparents from twitchy-looking customers looking for a miracle that would never arrive.
Now her past had her quarantined, and she didn’t really understand why. Her grandparents were herbalists, witch doctors to the superstitious, nothing involving science. What she did understand was that she stood on a precipice of choice, and there weren’t any good options.
The thud of feet echoed loudly in the room where state of the art equipment crowded what once had been a chemistry lab. It was late; her eyes were gritty with fatigue. She’d purposefully dragged out her research because she knew John Bradford came in after everyone was gone to go over the results. Did the man ever sleep?
“John.” Poppy stepped out from where she’d been standing for the last two hours, staring at slides of blood samples from the people who’d been detained with her. The images made no sense. They weren’t the oblong cells, but similar to sickle-cell—some were circles with no centers. She should be excited. This is what she’d trained for. This is what she loved. Now uncertainty lessened her interest, and anger made her attention shift.
She had a few questions for him.
He stopped, his expression disdainful, eyes cold, flat, like a reptile as he met her gaze. She swallowed, forcing herself not to back away. Her skin itched with the fierce gazes of the armed guards following the trim man.
“Dr. Delacruz.” John stopped. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
He was acting as if they’d never worked together before. What a douche bag. She arched an eyebrow at him, a gesture her students despised when she lectured and someone had voiced something particularly ignorant. The feeling of inferiority she’d wrestled with since he’d put her under house arrest evaporated.
“No pleasure,” Poppy responded in her frostiest professor voice. She outranked him intellectually, but she didn’t make the mistake of underestimating his cunning. “You can’t keep asking us to take blood and skin samples from unwilling people. This isn’t Nazi Germany, and you’re violating at minimum the Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Amendments.”
“There is no violation in war time.” He gave her a humorless smile. The urge to strike him became so strong, her hand ached. Poppy didn’t like bullies, and he was one.
“This isn’t war, John,” Poppy snapped. “Those families out there—”
“—were spotted by the technology you created, Dr. Delacruz.” He stood closer, trying to crowd her, but she refused to be cowed, narrowing her eyes at him and crossing her arms. “If you haven’t noticed, their kind can—”
“—take out a city block. You’ve harped on that point already. A very thin justification for my detainment.” Poppy wasn’t going to let this stop her. “And don’t try to pin what you’re doing on me. I gave you what you wanted, but it wasn’t to use it as weapon to incriminate and recreate the death camps. What you’re doing is morally and ethically wrong.”
“So over dramatic, aren’t you?” John mocked. His voice hardened. “This is wrong? Tell that to the human families who are dead. Caught in the crossfire from things we know nothing about. This isn’t the end. We’re finding more and more of these things in our—” He stopped, clamping his mouth shut with an audible click.
“How many?” Poppy hissed at him. “What makes you so damn afraid you’re willing to cross lines with legal citizens of the United States?”
By the flare of his nostrils and thinning of his lips, she’d hit a nerve. John Bradford, asshole extraordinaire, was pants-pissing scared. She’d seen the same fear in those people who’d come to her grandparents for help. Desperate to evade whatever fate was in store for them. For a moment, she wondered if those stories of monsters in the night were true and they were looking at some of the remains now.
“Classified information,” he bit out, but she didn’t miss how he shifted away from her.
What the hell?
“I can’t help you unless I know what we’re up against.” Poppy toned down her voice, making it reasonable. “I am not your enemy.”
“And you don’t need to know,” he told her in a flat voice. The lines on his face smoothed out into an expressionless mask as he gestured to the adjacent lab where the bodies of the mummified teens were kept. “Your job is to gather information. My job is security. You will continue to do as we tell you until the threat is neutralized.”
Frustration flickered through her, making her heart pound with the increase of blood pressure, and Poppy tamped it down. So, he wouldn’t give her the information outright, but there were other ways.
“Fine, I can’t force you to talk to me.” She frowned at the menacing movement the guards made toward her at her clipped words, but she kept her attention on the Director of Internal Terrorism. To think she’d had a grudging respect for him at one time. “Nor am I going to be intimidated into crossing lines you have no problem violating. I’ll do the research on the bodies you find, but I sure as hell am not going to support or participate in gathering samples from American citizens.”
“I’ll take what I can get from you.” John spoke as if he were talking about delivering dry-cleaning, with little interest of who did the job. He turned, making it clear he was done with the conversation. “I have plenty who are willing to help me protect this country.”
“Traitors all of them.” Poppy shot back, knowing she should keep her mouth shut.
“History will prove me right or wrong.” John walked past her, forgoing his visit to the lab to review the day’s results. “Until then, prepare for more visitors to your compound. I am bringing in your grandparents to keep you company.”
What?
Words failed her.
He paused at the open door. “Consider it motivation.” Then he was gone, the armed guards shutting the door behind them.
If someone had told her a month ago she’d be a prisoner of the US government, she’d have laughed at the absurdity of her being detained.
Now her past was being brought back to her, and what she thought she’d run from was going to be the one thing that could possibly save her.
Her abuelo w
as right; you couldn’t run from yourself or your past.
Mina hadn’t meant to startle Xander, but when he walked back into the house, leaving the Russian to stand alone, continuing his personal vigil, she gave a soft hello.
He must’ve been deep in thought, because he stopped, and the electrical fizzle along her skin told her he called up a spell. But when his blue eyes focused on her, he relaxed, the magic dissipating, leaving only a small tingle on her arms. Which was good—it would’ve been awkward if he put her in a binding spell.
“I thought you were sleeping.” Xander’s voice was gentle, which made her go soft in the middle. He usually had a half-exasperated tone when he spoke to her.
He put down the half-empty bottle of scotch in the base of a large potted palm near the door. She liked the white T-shirt he wore. It made him appear broader and showed off his whip-cord muscles, ones she’d like to see again—soon. From where she sat cross-legged on a sturdy side-table, she appreciated his strong, purposeful movements. When he reached her, he didn’t comment about the small pot of mint she’d been plucking leaves from and chewing, which made her think better of him. Instead, he brushed some of her hair out of her face.
“I wanted to be near you,” she answered honestly, searching his face. All she could pick up was the sweet taste of affection. “I see Misha didn’t kill you.”
“He didn’t want to deal with the aftermath.” He gave her small smile. “And he still has use for me.” Here he made a face, and his emotion turned a bit sour. “From having servants to being one. I am not sure it suits me.”
“Who says you’re a servant?” Mina defended. “You’re an ally, a big difference.” She caught his hand and brought his palm to her lips.
“That depends on your take.” His voice sounded tired as he murmured his response into her hair and pulled her close. Keeping his hand, she used her other palm to put it on the flat of his chest.
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