by Moira Rogers
She offered him a gentle smile. “Then you and her friend should wait outside. Lorenzo can help me.”
Which was Rosalyn’s polite way of reminding him that a halfblood demon whose power lent itself to death did more harm than good in a healing. Zel turned to Devi. “Can you talk to her? Tell her she’s okay and you’ll be right outside? She’s better off if we aren’t in here distracting them.”
It was strange to watch Devi remain so quiet as she leaned over the girl where she lay on the table. Only her hands moved, and she swallowed a ragged sigh. “Outside,” she whispered finally. “You’re safe.”
Cache lifted a shaking hand, brushing the side of her neck, then Devi’s cheek. She wet her lips and whispered one word, slurred and rough. “Okay.”
Rosalyn touched his arm. “Zel.”
“I’m going,” Devi said thickly. “I’ll wait outside.” She turned and walked through the door, rubbing her palms against her khaki cargo pants.
The hallway outside the lounge looked even dingier than he’d remembered, with grimy walls and faded linoleum. He couldn’t remember which of the nearby rooms had furniture, so he shouldered open three doors before he found one with a table and a few banged-up wooden chairs. “Here, sit down. Let me look at the back of your head.”
“It’s a bump, that’s all.” Despite her words, she pulled the tie free of her hair and let the curls fall around her shoulders. “Tanner overreacts.”
Tanner must have been the man riding with her—the one who’d made it out alive. “Your friend should be okay. Most of the risk with Rosa is that she doesn’t know how to focus on an injury. Unless she’s got someone feeding her power, she’s more of a danger to herself than her patient. Like watering a couple of plants by setting off a floor-wide sprinkler system.”
“Is that what she meant when she said Lorenzo could help her? Cache wouldn’t want to put anyone in danger.”
“Lorenzo’s like me. Halfblood. Only one with skills more…useful in healing.” He slid his fingers into her hair and probed gently at her wound. “How bad’s this hurt?”
She barely reacted, and he didn’t know if that was good or bad. “It doesn’t, much.”
Hopefully it meant the injury was minor and not that she was going into shock, though at this point he wasn’t sure he could blame her. “You’ll make it. The rest of your people should be here within the hour, and we’ve got bunks in the basement of this building. You’ll be safe while you sort out what you want to do.”
“That skin tried to pop me out of my body.” Devi turned and looked at him. “If the officials in Nicollet find out, I can’t go back. They won’t let me into the city.”
She could have been any one of the hundreds of refugees who’d come to Rochester over the course of his life, eyes dull with shock or betrayal as they realized humanity had so utterly rejected them. For the first time, he wished there was a way to soften the blow, to give her something in place of what she’d lost.
He had nothing to offer but honesty. A brutal, bitter truth. “They won’t let you go back.”
Her eyes hardened. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”
“Is that what happened to Cache?” A pushy question, but he’d have to know if they ended up staying.
Devi dropped into one of the chairs. “She was taken. Nothing happened to her, but they deactivated network access on her chip anyway. She couldn’t function like that.”
He couldn’t imagine Trip similarly cut off. “So she got a new one.” Not uncommon, but an inexperienced tech could mangle an installation. Someone had obviously butchered the girl while replacing her chip.
“She got an infection. Then another, and each one got harder to treat. She ended up with nerve damage.”
“But she’s still riding with you. She travels under a fake ID?”
She nodded. “It’s never really been a problem. We all keep our noses mostly clean, and it works out all right.”
It was the opposite of how humans were supposed to behave. How they did behave, or had for the past four decades. “You’re not afraid of being banished if you’re caught employing someone who’s demon-touched?”
Devi’s spine stiffened. “I could be banished for a lot of things that would be way less worth it.”
That had touched a nerve. Predatory instinct sharpened, along with the urge to test her reaction, see what made her angry. Passionate. “True. Human rules are restrictive.”
She looked around at the dusty room, the one she wouldn’t be allowed to leave without supervision. “No, not just the human ones.”
Zel refused to flinch, even if the jab struck home. “I do what I have to do.”
She rose and walked to the other side of the room. “Maybe that’s what they think too. What they tell themselves when they throw someone like Cache away.”
There was the passion. Loyalty to her people stirred far more anger than worry about herself, not a trait that had been nurtured since the Fall. Too many refugees came to Rochester wrapped in wary self-interest, brutalized by a culture that encouraged safety and selfishness over all else.
He supposed it would be harder to banish people on a whim if those around them were liable to put up a fight.
With that in mind, he gentled his tone. “We don’t throw people away here. Not unless they’ve hurt someone else.”
She turned quickly, then blinked and paled as she swayed a little. “If it were just me, it wouldn’t matter so much what you did. But I have people to think about, and I need to know what you want.”
The weight of responsibility settled on his shoulders at the reminder. “Do you remember anything about the spy? Anything unusual at all?”
She tensed. “He was the only one who didn’t know any of the other passengers. He kept to himself, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Have you thought about the consequences of having him as a passenger?”
“The ones we’ll face here or back in Nicollet?”
“In Nicollet.”
Her chin rose. “That depends on what sort of communications capability he has, and what you plan to do with him. If he’s already told the city heads about the attack, it’s one thing. It’s another if they never find out.”
He could reassure her. Tell her they’d expected a spy sooner or later, that they’d been making plans, considering their options. He wanted to tell her.
He wanted to trust her.
Which meant he couldn’t trust himself. A gorgeous, fiercely loyal woman. A cute, traumatized tech around whom no one would think to guard his tongue. The two of them could have been custom ordered to shut off his brain—his and Trip’s. And who’d bother looking for another spy when they had a known council agent in custody already?
Tread carefully. Give nothing away. “Either way, he won’t be able to communicate now. Our local network has a customized firewall. You might be able to tap into the Global or the signal from Nicollet from here, but if you need to link up and you can’t get a connection, let me know. Trip can get you temporary access.”
“Monitored access,” she clarified. “I understand that you have to maintain your suspicions. I’m not offended.”
“We maintain security. I have too many lives in my hands not to.”
Devi nodded. “I know there’s probably not much I can do, but if there’s anything you need from me, security-wise, name it.”
He clenched his teeth to keep from saying something blindly reassuring. She wasn’t scared, but she was so damn tired. “You’ll have to talk to my second-in-command. Hailey’s the one who handles visitors, but I can tell you now that we can give you a week’s shelter. If you want to stay after that, you’ll all need to go through the approval process.”
Zel could almost see the gears in her head turning as she processed the information, and he knew she was already laying out the possibilities in her mind. “That’s very generous.”
“That’s humane.” Even if they weren’t considered human.
; “A night is humane,” she countered. “A chance to rest up and plan our next move. A week is generous.”
Zel shrugged and turned away, focusing on the reinforced, boarded windows and the rough walls. “Maybe humanity’s redefined the word in the last hundred years, then.”
“Maybe.” She fidgeted, her breathing so slow and steady she had to have been making a concerted effort to keep it that way. “How long—I mean, with your niece’s magic?”
It wouldn’t soothe her to know he couldn’t hazard a guess. Rosa’s gift was powerful, but reliability and control would only come with training. Even with Lorenzo’s power to draw on, it could be hours before the healing was complete. “Lorenzo will tell us when it’s done.”
Devi nodded again, but her tension didn’t dissipate. “So I wait.”
“We wait.” And somehow he’d have to drag his body’s reactions under control, because right now he wanted to stalk her. Roll the taste of her nervous fear on his tongue and claim her. He’d stopped another demon from popping her, and the basest instincts he possessed told him one thing—her body now belonged to him.
No. Zel latched on to humanity, thin as it felt these days, and ignored the howling wind and static beneath his skin. Devi belonged to herself, and if he was fortunate, she’d prove to be nothing more than she seemed—a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. A loyal woman, strong and attractive, who deserved better than to be thrown to the nonexistent mercy of demons.
Or that’s what they want you to think.
No. No room for self-doubts, and no time, either. Hailey could look over Devi. Use the gifts born of demon and summoner blood and find out if loyalty and humanity went deeper than Devi’s sun-kissed skin.
And if those traits ended there… He stroked his thumb over the edge of the knife that rested against his thigh. If she was there to hurt his people, the thunder wouldn’t stay locked inside. He’d let the maelstrom free, and add one more black mark to whatever a halfblood bastard could claim for a soul.
Chapter Five
Cache was too small and still on the narrow cot, and Devi grew more nervous with each passing second. She should have woken up already, should have at least stirred.
What if she didn’t?
Devi shoved away the thought with singular viciousness. She’d failed Cache once before, and had only narrowly avoided it tonight.
It wouldn’t happen again.
The first sign of life was a moan, hoarse and rusty. Cache’s lips parted, started to form a word, then pressed together in a tight line as her eyes fluttered open.
Devi leaned over her, one finger over her own lips. The signs came easily now, nothing formal, just their own silent, makeshift language. Don’t talk. Rest.
Cache shook her head. Lifted her hand. It shook as she reached her fingers to touch her neck, then Devi’s. Network. Private.
Devi nodded once in answer, and Cache closed her eyes and clutched her hand.
The drop into Cache’s private network was usually smooth. The girl had put together the perfect environment for private conversation, one the crew used more often than not when they wanted to be sure no one could overhear them. But this time the connection was rough, a lurch as Devi’s chip activated and a jerky, gut-twisting spiral as Cache pulled her into the program.
Walls formed around them, a sparse office with chairs and couches and a desk for Cache with a built-in data screen covering most of its surface. The decoration changed with her moods, but today she hadn’t bothered with the bells and whistles. Cache sank into her plush swivel chair and rubbed both hands over her arms. “Physically, it isn’t so bad, but my brain hasn’t caught up. It’s like I should still feel like I’m dying.”
“They had to use demon magic, Cache. I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Cache scrubbed a hand over her hair, creating a tangle of purple and pink, a riot of color in the otherwise drab room. “There was a halfblood, a slick fucking pretty-boy, in my head. And not like this.” Her gesture took in the virtual office. “In my damn head.”
“Lorenzo.” It would have been impossible to ignore the man’s heritage. He possessed a sexual magnetism that couldn’t be attributed to anything less than demon blood. “He helped the healer treat you.”
Cache brought her booted feet up to rest against the edge of her desk, drawing her knees close to her chest. An obvious defensive posture, curled tight and wary. “I don’t like him. He can’t get back in my head, can he? Is it like getting flipped?”
“I don’t think so. It was a special circumstance.”
A nod, sharp enough to send overgrown bangs spilling over her forehead, but Cache didn’t push them back. She didn’t look up, either, though her body tensed. “I…saw some things. I don’t know what’s real and what wasn’t. It goes so damn fast when you can’t hear anything, but I thought—” A pause, and even in virtual reality, her voice held a tiny hitch. “I pinged Shane when I woke up, and he didn’t answer.”
No, she wouldn’t have known. She couldn’t have. Devi focused her gaze on one corner of Cache’s desk and swallowed hard. “He didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Her boots scraped against the desk. “Popped?”
“Yeah.” Cache deserved the whole truth. “I had to—to shoot him.”
“He would’ve preferred that. He never wanted to be one of the zombie masses.”
Yet she still couldn’t meet Devi’s eyes, and Devi didn’t blame her. “I know. I wish I’d been able to save him.”
“You found out about us.” It wasn’t a question.
“Tanner told me last night. Right before—”
“Tanner told you?” Cache straightened her legs so fast the desk screeched across the floor and her chair nearly toppled over backward. “How the fuck did—oh, that bastard.” She slapped her hand over mouth, looking horrified. “Oh God, I can’t be mad at Shane. He’s dead.”
“Hey.” Devi rounded the desk and grasped Cache’s shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. You be angry if you need to. It doesn’t change how important Shane was, or how much we’re going to miss him.”
“No. No, no—” Cache wrenched her body free, and the world tumbled end over end in another terrifying spiral. The walls fractured, and Devi slammed back into her body in time to see Cache turn on her side on the small cot, her legs coming up as her body shook with sobs.
Devi dropped to her knees beside the cot and folded an arm around the girl in a tight hug. Leaving virtual space was an escape for her; if she couldn’t hear anything, she couldn’t get more bad news.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” She whispered the words, though Cache would only know the vibrations of them, the puff of breath stirring her hair. “It’s okay.”
Devi didn’t know what else to say. The painful truth was that they all needed to be looking to Cache right now, asking her advice, because she was the only one of them who’d been through this before. She’d been cast out, cut off from the network that bound most humans together, formed the locus of their cultural identity.
Being shut out of the network would be bad enough. Outside of it, there was no recreation and little socialization. There was only work, difficult and demanding, a struggle for survival. But the city leaders never deactivated a chip without also removing its bearer from their borders to fully eliminate the threat of demonic corruption.
Few people could survive it physically. Even fewer kept their sanity intact.
It may not be a problem. The spy might not have managed any contact with his handlers during the brutal chaos of the attack, but Devi couldn’t allow herself to rely on that. She needed to focus, make peace with the possibility that the life she’d known was over.
She’d made plans for it. After what happened to Cache, she’d driven herself and her team to the breaking point, taken on as many jobs as they could bear, just in case. Scrimping and saving, ferreting away enough chips and resources to ensure black-market network identities for the—
For the five of them. Just f
our now. Devi closed her burning eyes. Shane had known the risk of running with her team. They all did, but it didn’t change the facts.
She hadn’t kept Cache safe. She hadn’t kept Shane alive; worse, he’d died by her own hand. That he would have considered it a mercy didn’t assuage her guilt.
A knock startled her, and she swiped both hands over her face as the door swung open.
It was Lorenzo, his eyes and voice soft. “Sorry. I just wanted to check on her.” He nodded to Cache.
“She’s fine, thank you.” The words were automatic, edged with the tears she’d swallowed. “She said you were in her head. During the healing?”
His hands flexed and almost curled into fists. Defensive reaction. “I was—”
Devi turned away. “Don’t do it again.”
She expected anger, some verbal denial of the remorse she’d glimpsed in his eyes. Instead, he closed the door, retreating silently.
Devi shuddered. She hadn’t gotten the job done. She hadn’t kept her crew safe.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Zel’s office hadn’t been designed for large meetings—not before the Fall, when it had been a deeply buried security hub, and not in its current incarnation as the beating heart of the Rochester colony. The sloping walls combined with the cluttered press of computing equipment made the place hell for extended periods, like living inside the brain of a giant robot. His magic didn’t clash with basic electronics the way it did with the network’s anti-demon signal, but some days Zel thought he could feel the buzz from the settlement’s network room from its secure spot a few feet behind him.
Trip seemed at home in the place. He had his own office—a spacious one that marked his relative importance in a city with so little room to spare—but, more often than not, Trip spent his days perched in front of the main terminal, working whatever magic kept them connected to the outside world and sane when their only escape from a cramped, underground life was a virtual one.
Though he’d never admit it to Trip, Zel had grown accustomed to the company. It was comforting to have some noise other than the purring whir of dozens of computers, even when that noise usually consisted of Trip’s collection of pre-Fall music punctuated by triumphant exclamations or angry mutters.