Her eyes pooled with tears again. “No. But it’s only right that I suffer as much as possible, after everything I took away from so many people. It’s the only way I can think to make amends.”
His head dropped. He didn’t let go of her arms, he just stood there holding her like that for a moment until he looked up at her again. “You are seriously fucked up, you know that?”
This, she knew, was a rhetorical question. She bit the inside of her lip and didn’t answer.
“Okay.” He was thinking, staring at her with the wheels turning behind his keen brown eyes. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to clean up this shithole and get some better locks installed so you don’t get murdered in your sleep. Then we’re going to go through the phone book and find you a good therapist, because you really need to get your head screwed back on straight, sweetheart.”
“I’ve already had dozens of therapists, Ash. They don’t help—”
He gave her a hard little shake that snapped her jaw shut. “Then you just haven’t found the right one yet. A therapist is non-negotiable, Em, if you want to keep my beautiful ass in your life.”
She stared at him in horror. “You’re blackmailing me!”
He shrugged, unfazed. “Take it or leave it. And when I say that, I mean take it.”
She hung her head and stared down at their feet, toe to toe against the faded linoleum kitchen floor. Something scurried past on buggy legs in her peripheral vision and she sighed, envying how simple its little buggy life must be. Around the lump in her throat she whispered, “Okay.”
Asher gathered her to his chest in a fierce hug. “Good girl.”
Into his chest, after a moment of silence, she accused, “You called me an asshole.”
He chuckled. “I know. But you’re a tough nut to crack, honey, so I had to play my trump card. I should have called you names years ago. Chicks hate that.”
“Jerk,” she whispered, and hugged him as tight as she could, as if she were drowning, and he was the only thing keeping her afloat.
Because he was. Right now, he really was.
“Are you listening to me at all?”
Leander’s curt question jerked Christian back from the memory of Ember’s face. The depth of anguish he’d seen in her eyes when he’d recoiled from her had been seared into his memory with the excruciating, scarring permanence of a red-hot brand. It hovered around the edges of his vision like a malicious specter, a poltergeist always ready to torture him with some fresh misery when he was least expecting it.
“Yes,” he answered flatly into the phone. “I’m listening.”
A blatant lie. He couldn’t get himself to concentrate long enough to focus; she invaded his every waking thought, and even his dreams. He’d never had nightmares before, even after his parents had died, but now they were a nightly occurrence. Flames and screams, squealing tires and pounding rain—and always her face, her eyes, her look of wretched torment. Then everything would spin to black and he’d jerk awake in bed, sweating and panting as if he’d run a marathon. It had been this way every moment for the past two weeks.
He’d never, ever experienced such relentless hell.
There was a long, heavy silence. Then Leander said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind so we can get back to business.”
Damn. His brother knew him too well. Avoidance was useless; Leander was a pit bull when it came to getting answers. Christian passed a hand over his face and sighed. “Have you ever tried to reconcile two totally opposing viewpoints about something?”
He used the word “viewpoints” instead of feelings. He and his brother didn’t talk about feelings.
“You mean like, on the one hand, I know there’s a genocidal megalomaniac who needs to be taken down or thousands of people will die—and my brother is the best man for the job—and on the other hand, I’d do anything to ensure my brother never gets hurt, but giving him said job pretty much guarantees that he will?”
Christian’s lips twisted to a wry smile. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You’re damn right that’s a yes.”
There was another long silence, and Christian felt Leander’s frustration and worry even though he was a thousand miles away. They’d always been close; somehow they’d grown even closer over the past few months, the way people do when they know time is scarce.
“So how did you reconcile it?”
“I didn’t. I can’t. But being conflicted about something doesn’t mean you put logic aside. You have to weigh all the pros and cons and make a decision. In my case, that decision has to be best for the majority, which means even though I’d rather cut off my own arm than see you get hurt…” He left the rest unsaid, but his silence filled in the blanks. “In your case, that decision has to be whatever your conscience can accept without the guilt killing you.”
Guilt. He’d hit the bullseye with that one. Because even though logic told Christian that he and Ember were possibly the worst mismatch in history, and even though part of him was horrified by her admission, and even more horrified by the ways in which fate could be cruel—dangling such a tantalizing carrot of happiness in front of him only to rip it away with a few whispered sentences, by even putting her in his path now, of all goddamn times in his life—he still felt a tremendous sense of guilt about turning away from her.
Like it had been the wrong thing to do.
Like he had let her down when she needed him most.
So his mind and his heart were in total conflict about what she’d done, what he’d done, and what he should do next, all of which made it very hard to concentrate on anything else. The sleepless nights alone had taken their toll; he was about as animated as a zombie, all day, every day.
“One other thing, too, helps in making a hard decision,” said Leander.
“Which is?”
“Information. If you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, you need as much information as possible in order to decide which way to go. It might not make you less conflicted, but at least you’ll get some comfort knowing you did all you could to inform yourself beforehand.”
Christian looked up from his desk and looked through the library windows to the day outside, sunny and bright. “Thanks, brother,” he murmured, watching a tiny white butterfly hover over a blooming bush of rosemary outside, then fly out of sight with bumpy grace.
“Don’t mention it. Can we get on with the conversation now?”
Christian smiled. Leander hated discussing things over which he had no control. “Aye, aye, captain.”
“Good. I’m emailing you all the information I have about this character Jahad who’s now running the Expurgari—”
“How’d you get it?” Christian asked, surprised. The Expurgari—a group of religious zealots affiliated with the Catholic church since the time of the Inquisition who’d made it their mission to eradicate the Ikati—were notoriously secretive, their ranks impenetrable. If the Council of Alphas, of which Leander was leader, had obtained any information on their enemy, it almost certainly involved a great deal of danger or bloodshed or both. This was confirmed with Leander’s next, darkly spoken, words.
“The old-fashioned way.”
Christian understood in an instant: interrogation. Torture.
“You caught one of them.”
Leander made a noise of assent. “Near the Quebec colony. We think he was doing recon.”
“For?”
“We don’t know. Unfortunately he expired before we could find out. Xander is a little too good at his job.”
“Xander’s back?” This, too, was a surprise to Christian. Xander was the tribe’s most feared assassin from the Brazilian colony who’d retired a few years ago.
“So is the rest of The Syndicate,” Leander said, respect evident in his voice. Then his voice turned lighter, filled with amusement. “And so is Morgan. Apparently retirement didn’t suit them.”
Morgan Montgomery. At the mention of her name, Christian had
to smile.
Xander’s wife, the first woman ever to serve on an Assembly, the first person to remind you she’d rather kick your ass than say hello, was a force of nature and fierce with a capital F. They’d grown up together, and he suddenly felt a pang of homesickness when he thought of her and all the trouble they’d gotten into when they were young.
Then he felt a second pang—darker, more twisted—when he thought of another woman who could be described by a word with a capital F: his little firecracker.
An ache unfurled in his chest like a snake unwinding its coils.
He’d fallen for her fast, hard, and completely, in spite of his attempts to keep away, to keep his head. And now that she wasn’t around, he felt like one of those people who’d had a limb cut off but still felt it itch and throb, a phantom presence that wouldn’t fade no matter how he tried to distract himself. No matter how hard he wished it away.
There was just something about her. Something that stuck. He realized she’d gotten under his skin in a way he’d never expected…and couldn’t appreciate fully until she wasn’t there anymore.
He’d stared at her number on his cell phone for so many hours over the past few weeks the image was probably burned into his retinas.
He tuned back into the conversation just as Leander was saying, “…we did find out however, that they still don’t know about the colony in Brazil. Which is damn good luck, since most of the other colonies have been moved there. It’s just a matter of time, though. If they’re watching us and we’re leaking deserters like a sieve, they’re going to catch one of them before we can. And our goose will be cooked.”
Which meant it was even more important Caesar be dealt with—immediately.
“They’re keeping a very low profile, wherever they are,” said Christian. “They’re being careful. I’ve been back to Gràcia nearly every day since…”
He didn’t say “since the murders,” because that would have been a little too obvious—and he’d already taken such a shitstorm of criticism over the debacle that he didn’t want to bring it up again. If he were anyone else, at any other time, that kind of display in public would have signed and sealed his death warrant. The Ikati had lasted in the human world as long as they had because of only one thing: secrecy. Not that it mattered anymore.
“But they’re nowhere. They’re ghosts.”
“Well, even ghosts can leave trails. Just keep your eyes and ears open. And listen—there’s one other thing.”
Christian waited, his attention now caught by the edge in Leander’s voice, the new undertone of warning.
“Xander got a lot of useful information from his mark, but the most interesting piece of information was that this Jahad is headed your way.”
Christian knew instantly this meant two things. One, the incident in Gràcia had drawn the leader of the Expurgari to Spain—more unanticipated fallout of his decision to attack in public—and two, this was a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.
Leander knew exactly what he was thinking. “It’s too dangerous. Caesar is the primary target, we can deal with the Expurgari later—”
“This Jahad won’t travel alone—there will be at least half a dozen of his top men with him, maybe more. It couldn’t be more perfect if we’d orchestrated it ourselves. We can cut off the head of the snake—”
“It would be quite a coup, I admit, but if Caesar finds out Jahad is closing in, he might run. And since Jenna won’t be able to See where he’s gone until after the pregnancy, we can’t take the risk of losing him—”
“Unless I can get Caesar and Jahad in one room together,” Christian said abruptly.
“And how exactly do you intend to do that? Send out engraved invitations?”
Christian knew if he could see his own face in a mirror, something ugly and dark would be looking back at him. Something violent and vicious and altogether wild. He said, “Let me figure that out, brother. If there’s a way to do it, I will.”
He disconnected the call before Leander could ask any more questions, opened his laptop, clicked through his email until he found Leander’s message, and began to read.
His parentage was unknown, as were the exact date of his birth and his real name. He was known only as Jahad, an Anglicized version of jihad, a word which in Arabic means “struggle,” to go from imperfection to perfection, to establish the truth over wrongdoings, to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven while tempted by the myriad pleasures and sin on Earth.
Born with the melanin defect that produces albinism, he was found swaddled in blankets on the steps of an orphanage in Rome, abandoned at only a few weeks old. Little was known of his early life except that he was relentlessly bullied and tormented by the other boys in the orphanage, taunted for his marble skin and gray-violet eyes so pale they were nearly tintless. As it inevitably does when unchecked, the bullying turned violent. One Christmas Eve when he was approximately fourteen years old, the albino boy was set on fire and left to writhe and scream in agony on the basement floor of the orphanage while the others watched, laughing.
It was only the intervention of a visiting priest that saved his life. The priest arrived in time to douse him in a bucket of water drawn from the well, but by then almost all the skin on the right side of his body had been eaten away by the flames.
He refused to name the perpetrators. It took him nearly a year of excruciating physical therapy to regain the use of his right hand and leg. To celebrate the milestone, he burned the orphanage to the ground—with all the boys in it.
It was at that point he was recruited by the Expurgari.
With no earthly ties, a pathological thirst for revenge against wrongdoers, and a psyche as scarred as his body, Jahad was a perfect addition to their cause. In possession of a near-genius IQ, the new recruit demonstrated an exceptional ability to strategize and lead others. He quickly rose through the ranks, making a name for himself with his total devotion to Expurgari canon, unquestioning loyalty, and unflinching application of violence in the advancement of the holy war against evil.
Expurgari means “purifiers” in Latin, and Jahad, a man who’d been transformed by pain, believed pain was the only true path to purity.
Every day except Sunday he wore a spiked metal cilice cinched tight into the flesh of his thigh, which pricked holes that bled and scabbed and bled again. He flagellated himself with a corded leather whip while naked on his knees, until his back was bloody and raw and his vision was dim. He practiced celibacy, fasting, and self-denial in many forms, yet still was not satisfied with all he did to check the needs of the flesh. One day a month he allowed the basest desires of his nature to reign and he visited one of the specialty establishments in the city that catered to men of his particular tastes.
Afterward, he strangled the animal while reciting the Lord’s Prayer and dumped its body in the Tiber River.
“Jesus Christ,” Christian muttered as he read that little detail in the dossier Leander had sent. To which his subconscious wryly replied, Not even close.
He clicked on a link and opened a file that held four verified pictures of Jahad, taken from various angles. Two were too blurry to be of much use, but showed the substantial bulk of his figure striding away from the camera, his face in profile, features obscured in the shadows thrown by the brim of a hat. A third picture was clearer, taken from the front as Jahad was looking right, again in a hat, this time in mirrored sunglasses, with the bright sun overhead winking off the corner of one lens.
But the fourth picture was arresting. Taken head-on at what seemed an arm’s length distance but was probably through a powerful high-resolution lens, it depicted a shirtless Jahad on the balcony of a hotel staring straight into the camera. No hat this time, nothing to cover his head or hide his features. Christian felt an odd sort of fascinated disgust, as one might when driving by the scene of a fatal accident, repulsed by the carnage but unable to look away.
His eyes, which read pale silver in the photograph, hel
d the flat, killer gaze of an assassin. His head was snow white and entirely bald—satin smooth, without the telltale stubble of a man who shaves it—and it became clear as Christian studied the photo that Jahad had no eyebrows or eyelashes to speak of. He was, in fact, entirely devoid of any hair at all. The right side of his body from his jaw to his waist was covered in hideous scar tissue, puckered and shiny, and his right hand was little more than a claw that hung at an odd angle by his hip.
But beneath the ruined skin was the impressive, well-developed musculature of a dedicated athlete.
Christian checked Jahad’s stats: six-foot-two, two hundred and thirty pounds.
Big. Almost exactly as big as he was.
A notation farther down caught his eye—alopecia areata universalis. Autoimmune disorder that caused a total loss of all body hair.
Wonderful. A bald albino bodybuilding religious zealot with a near-genius IQ and a predilection for sadomasochism, pyromania, and bestiality. He felt a twinge of nostalgia for the old leader of the Expurgari, who was just your garden-variety nut job with a God complex.
He closed the files and logged out of his email, then sat staring at the computer screen, trying to concentrate on the job at hand and all that needed to be done. But his conversation with Leander about deciding between the lesser of two evils kept circling his brain, one word nettling him like a burr.
Information.
That was Leander: controlled, calculated, dispassionate. It was the price of leadership, this careful, logical approach to decision making. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes because too many lives were at risk. Too many people counted on him.
Christian, on the other hand, was the second son. Relieved of the burden of power that came with being the Alpha heir, he’d always been the wilder of the two, relaxed and indifferent where Leander was disciplined and reserved. His wild streak had gotten him into plenty of trouble on many occasions, but possibly never as much as the trouble he knew he was in now.
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