Assassin's Kiss

by Paris Brandon

  She turned in his arms and he could just make out her profile in the moonlight that filtered through the small opening. “The power is gone, Bastian. Fontaine took it with him. I’m no longer a threat.”

  “How do we convince them of that? We don’t know if it’s true.”

  “You think I’m still connected somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “But knowing the Council, if they think it’s possible, they’ll order your death so that you don’t fall into the Brotherhood’s hands.”

  “So we’re running?”

  “At first light.”

  * * * * *

  They slept later than first light and Bastian crawled out first. She followed, the sun blinding her for a moment until she realized they weren’t alone and Bastian was standing in front of her, arms splayed. They were encircled by fully formed Jaguar Warriors.

  “Hello Book,” Bastian addressed the stocky Warrior who walked forward. “I claim the rights of firstmate.” That stopped the Warrior’s advance and he held up a hand when one of his Warriors spat, the insult clear.

  “You cannot take a halfling as firstmate, Sebastian,” he rumbled. “Step aside.”

  The air around them sizzled and popped, shimmering like heat waves bouncing off Bastian’s bronze skin. “My challenge stands. I will not let you kill her until I am dead or you are.”

  “We are not sent to kill her,” Book lisped around his canines. “We are sent to bring you before the Council to be judged. Your claim of firstmate damns you even more, but that is your choice.”

  The circle advanced and Bastian growled deeply. She watched Book wave them back.

  Book’s sigh bordered on exasperated. “It might go better for you if you didn’t kill any of my Warriors. Your father is working to change your death sentence to banishment.”

  His death sentence. Not mine.

  Kira wouldn’t have blamed Bastian if he wondered why he hadn’t just killed her in the beginning. He’d warned her but she’d just kept hoping. There had always been hope before. Now, watching the faces of the men who ringed them, she saw what she’d never seen in Bastian’s gaze. Disgust. And it frightened her.

  Once Book gave the order, his squad kept out of Bastian’s way. There were always two at her back though, as if she could run somewhere fast enough that they wouldn’t find her. Wishful thinking. Something to do while Book and the others transformed into humans and rummaged through their packs for jungle fatigues, donating pants and a shirt to Bastian, naked since their escape.

  Book called in a chopper that took them to a small airstrip where a private jet picked them up. The interior was plush and she sat gingerly on the burgundy seat in her dirty jeans and bare feet, holding her blouse together with one hand. Bastian sat next to her, holding her hand. They hadn’t tied them but there wasn’t anywhere to go unless they wanted to step out into thin air. Save the Council some trouble.

  She managed to fall asleep, huddled against him, woke briefly while the jet was refueling and slept through the next leg of the trip until they were on the ground again. She’d slept so long that instead of feeling refreshed she was groggy.

  She’d expected to land somewhere in Mexico. She hadn’t expected the Napa Valley with its rolling vineyards and well-tended estates. One that included an airfield and hangar.

  There hadn’t been any restraints but they’d built a cage of human bodies once they were on the ground and inside the dark, air-conditioned limousine. Bastian took off his shirt and wrapped it around her when she’d shivered.

  Their prison was a large stucco villa atop a hill, gated and pristine. She felt like an intruder when they walked through the arched, carved double doors. The entryway was a long, narrow hallway. Easier to defend if an enemy started pouring through the doorway. She was starting to think like Bastian.

  It wasn’t until they reached the end of the hallway that it emptied into a larger room. Bastian was focused on an older man who was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and tie. The man nodded, signaling their Warrior escort to surround her, cutting her off from Bastian.

  Kira was suddenly aware of her dusty feet and grimy clothes. The house was as cold as a meat locker and her sweat clung to her like a second skin. The human cage surrounding her seemed to be getting closer. Bastian didn’t turn around.

  “I claim this woman as my firstmate.” He turned and smiled at her. “Kira, this is my father, Edward Stryker, head of the Jaguar Council.”

  Edward didn’t so much look past her as look through her. She hadn’t expected more. When he spoke he addressed only Bastian.

  “You cannot claim what is forbidden, Bastian. Your past record is the only thing saving you at this point. Not even I have enough influence to override the Council if they decide to let both your death sentences stand.”

  “Then let her stay with me, at least. She can’t be a threat in this fortress.”

  “It will go better for you if I don’t bend any more rules at this point.” He nodded to her escort and they shifted, flowing as one being and giving her no choice but to keep up the pace or be run over.

  “Bend?” Bastian spoke so softly that it sent a chill up Kira’s spine. “I’ve broken the law. If you cage her, you cage me too. I won’t be separated from her.”

  “You can’t be together and there is no discussion about that.”

  “You’re not taking her down there. Put her in my suite. I’ll go down.”

  The Warriors around Kira tightened their cage as his father tensed. One wrong move and she could be dead. Proof that she was a halfling could be destroyed. Bastian would be free. If Bastian were her child, she would probably be tempted to do the same.

  Bastian leaned back and the room seemed to breathe a collective sigh. Kira couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want him to see that she was terrified.

  “You can’t put her down there,” he repeated. “She was caged for the first fourteen years of her life. She survived a Brotherhood exorcism and lived on the streets these past ten years. She risked her life to save all of you even when she knew there was a chance she would have to forfeit her own. Don’t cage her. Give her that, at least.”

  Edward Stryker’s stony expression hadn’t changed throughout Bastian’s plea and Kira’s stomach rolled over.

  “This law was not made without thought, Sebastian.” There was steel in his threatening tone, though it was just as soft as Bastian’s.

  Bastian turned and shoved at the Warrior in front of her and she raised her gaze to meet his. “Don’t,” she whispered the moment after the air shimmered with the changing nature of everyone in the room. Everyone, except her. “For me, please don’t.”

  It wouldn’t help either of them and they couldn’t escape without a bloodbath. That was what they had been trying to avoid all along. She drew herself up and faced Edward Stryker, who had yet to acknowledge her.

  “My name is Kira,” she said evenly. “I don’t know why you think the law was made but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for the reason you’ve been led to believe. And if I had any kind of power that you should be afraid of, I would have used it already to escape.”

  He blinked and she managed a smile.

  She winked at Bastian and kept her smile as she was led away. She wanted to cry and scream but she was playing a part. If you can’t make them afraid, make them wonder. At this point one was as good as the other.

  The rooms were a blur of color and noise and the kitchen was bustling when they entered through a swinging door. One woman was cleaning a sink and two more were cutting vegetables while seated at a long table in the center of the warm room. They didn’t look up when she was led past. The smell of roasting meat made her stomach rumble. She was having enough trouble remaining haughty with bare, dirty feet and clothes, she didn’t need this too.

  Her stomach rolled over again when one of the guards changed the hands of a clock on the wall and a shelving unit swung away, revealing an open elevator. She swallowed her fear in the silence of the
dimly lit enclosure that barely held them all. None of them spoke as it descended.

  The air that swirled around her got colder and she knew what she was going to find even before the doors opened. She still wasn’t prepared for the cells or the remembered smell of disinfectant or the walk through the bright corridor. The doors to the cells were solid with only a small window. There were five on each side of the room and a swinging door at the end of the hall.

  Her bravado dissolved the moment the door locked behind her. The room was padded, the same butter yellow panels that had been in the room she’d been locked in at the museum. There was a narrow bed shoved up against one wall. The stark white sheets and blanket were crisp, folded with military precision. A pair of loose, pull-on blue pants and T-shirt lay folded just as precisely at the end of the bed. At least there was a small bathroom with a shower stall.

  Caged. She wanted to beat her fist against the wall and scream. She took a shower instead, crying under the spray of water. It didn’t make her feel any better. She dried off and folded her towel, hanging it over the shower curtain rod.

  She lay back on the bed and reasoned with herself. She was exhausted, that was why tears leaked silently from beneath her closed lids. Her stomach rumbled again. Yeah, she was hungry too. She didn’t think they’d really starve her. Edward seemed like the type who thought of himself as a reasonable man. He was just following rules, just following the logic that had probably gotten him through his life.

  The knock at the door startled her and she sat straight up, throwing off the blanket she’d crawled under.

  “Are you decent?” The voice was male, calm.

  “Depends on your point of view,” she quipped, wiping the tears off her cheeks with the edge of the blanket and swinging her legs over the bed.

  The door opened and a short, muscular, dark-haired man carrying a vial caddy stood as if he waited for an invitation. At least he wasn’t wearing a damn suit or jungle fatigues. She sized him up, from his round wire-rimmed glasses to his casual pullover gray sweater, worn jeans and sandals. She returned her focus to the vial caddy and swallowed hard.

  “Are you waiting for an invitation?” She growled.

  “Yes.”

  She blinked, startled for a moment. “Are you a polite executioner?”

  “I’m Mycroft Bell. Dr. Bell. We just need to make sure of what Alvarez did to you.”

  “He drugged me senseless so I’d be crazy enough to have sex with him, which I never did. We managed to escape before that.”

  He had the decency to grimace. “We just need to make sure that was all he did to you.”

  “What else could he have done?” she scoffed.

  “The Brotherhood hates us enough to try to infect us all. With the technology he had at his disposal, he could have used you.”

  The idea made her skin crawl. “Now I’m Typhoid Mary. How many reasons do you people need to kill me? Is there a quota that I don’t know about?”

  “Bastian told me you had a smart mouth,” he said, the corner of his lip kicking up. He tied an elastic band around her upper arm and she automatically made a fist.

  “What?” She winced when he slid the needle into her vein. He wasn’t as good as Dax had been but he wasn’t bad. “Did you think I was going to run around the room, screaming?” She bit off, exasperated because her pulse had kicked up at the mention of Bastian’s name.

  “He’s giving his father, and anyone else who will listen, a list of your glowing accomplishments. I have to say that I’m rather impressed.”

  “I don’t suppose you happen to be on the Council?” she asked, doing a lousy job of masking her sarcasm.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” he said, filling a second vial.

  That surprised her. “I sort of thought they’d all be Edward’s age.”

  “I inherited the position when my father…died, recently.”

  Oh hell. “Your father was one of the Council members killed?”

  “Butchered.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, curbing the urge to cry. She wasn’t usually this emotional but reality wasn’t looking wonderful at this point.

  He nodded and watched a third vial fill. “I know you don’t have any reason to want to help any of us and I don’t blame you. But, do you have any odd symptoms, something out of the ordinary for you. Fever, cough, blurred vision?”

  Shit. I really do want to hate him. She told herself that she would start when she wasn’t so tired. She settled for bitchy. “I haven’t been able to change since Alvarez drugged me. Bastian taught me how without the moon and I can’t do it. Not even with the moon.” She shrugged. “Nothing, nada, zip.”

  He was looking at her like she was crazy. Like she’d suddenly started spouting a foreign language. He had the needle out of her arm in a flash, a cotton ball pressed to the tiny wound. He fished a screw-top jar out of the caddy.

  “If you’ll fill this, I’ll leave you alone and see if I can hurry the kitchen staff. Is there anything you’d like to eat?”

  She didn’t say anything about the condemned eating a hearty meal. She just took the jar and slipped off the bed. “I’m not picky as long as it’s not moving.” There wasn’t a door on the bathroom and she waited until he closed the cell door behind him before she filled the jar. A lab rat to the end, she thought grudgingly. It wasn’t going to save her, it wasn’t going to make anyone love or respect her. She was no better than her mother.

  Still hoping. She was pathetic but she was tired of running, tired of being less important than the people she’d tried to save. She’d taken a chance and lost. The least they could do was let her see Bastian again. If his father had his way, he’d keep them away from each other until he could convince the Council not to kill his son.

  The doctor asked if she was decent again. She told him once more that it depended on his point of view. Two civil people having a conversation. As if they really had a relationship. And this wasn’t just another pretense of normal. She handed him the jar when he opened the door.

  Bastian was probably still lobbying for her release. But the Council wouldn’t need to meet if she was an immediate “diseased” threat. She could be quarantined indefinitely. Or exterminated. She thought she was all cried out but the tears started again. She’d always known this might happen. What the hell was the matter with her?

  Maybe this was her last meal. Maybe she should have asked for something she really wanted. She’d give up the meal if they’d just let her be with Bastian one more time. The thought of not being able to touch him again brought a fresh batch of tears. “Bastards,” she wept, lying down and pulling the blanket over her head.

  She must have slept because the scuffle in the hallway woke her. A door banged and a man screamed. It didn’t sound as if they were fighting over who was going to bring her dinner. There wasn’t anything that could be used as a weapon, everything was soft or nonexistent. There wasn’t even a toilet stool lid she could use to bash someone over the head.

  Maybe Bastian was rescuing her. They were going to make a run for it. The seconds ticked by and the door swung open.

  Ten years had barely changed Marquette. He looked like an aging choirboy, his spreading middle barely contained by his black robes, one sleeve ending in a gleaming curved hook where his hand should be. He’d found another crucifix-sword to hang around his neck.

  “I almost had you at Sangre de Luna. It would have made this so much easier.”

  She screamed and launched herself off the bed. He caught her squarely on the jaw with his fist and she went down hard, slipping when she tried to stand. He kicked at her and she twisted, the blow missing her stomach but glancing off her ribs. The pain was so sharp she saw stars.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sebastian wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped from the bathroom into the bedroom he’d occupied his entire life. Edward was waiting, unrepentant and angry, standing in front of a set of dark bookcases filled with books and Sebastian’s childhood memor
ies.

  “Everyone knows you’ve put me in a room I could escape from. Did you think I’d be grateful?” He challenged.

  “If you leave now, no one will follow you, but don’t give them time to think. Grab what you need and get the hell out of here,” he said, nodding toward the bookcases behind him.

  “I told you that I wouldn’t leave without her, so unless you’re willing to call off your guards and let us both go, no deal.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Edward seethed. “I can get your sentence reduced to banishment but I cannot help her. The halfling law must stand. Be reasonable, there are places you could live free in the world.”

  “Alone. With invisible boundaries.”

  “At least you’d be alive!”

  Once that might have been enough but not now. He shook his head. “Not without Kira. That’s her name. You haven’t mentioned it since she told you,” he said, swallowing hard. “I didn’t ask her name either. She volunteered it. She wanted someone to know who she was. She was risking her life to save people that she knew would condemn her and I didn’t even ask her name.”

  Edward’s jaw tightened. “I came here to talk some sense into you so that you didn’t make the same mistake I did. Even if the death sentence is lifted, do you think she’ll stay with you? Does she even understand what you are?”

  “She knows what I am and I won’t make the same mistake you did. I won’t kill her next mate and listen to her children cry until they accept their duty and their place in your house, until they can accept that their mother died of grief. I can accept you for what you are, Edward. I can even understand what drove you to try to reclaim my mother but I won’t make that mistake.”

  “You won’t have that problem. She can never give you a child,” he sneered. “Or maybe that’s the appeal.”

  “Don’t test me, Edward,” he warned.

  Edward closed his eyes and his jaw worked furiously. “Have you thought of what would happen if she fell into the Brotherhood’s hands? What kind of power they would hold over us, over everyone? Do you want to see their vicious, twisted doctrine infecting the masses? The halfling law has protected us for centuries.”