More, this sound was coming from my right. And I was in the right lane. There shouldn’t be any vehicles on my right.
I turned my head to look just as something tapped on my window. Cursing myself for my lack of awareness, I did a quick mental check, although my subconscious had already done an inventory, evaluated and nudged me in the right direction as far as weapon choice—gun, quickest, easier to access, but messy. Only act if needed.
Tension eased away even as an engine revved behind me. We were sitting at a standstill. Nobody should be revving their engines.
The rider next to me gunned the powerful engine of the bike in response and grinned at me.
The bike—and the rider—were familiar. More than a few people in East Orlando got the hell out of the way when it appeared because the rider was known to be somewhat…inventive with her interpretation of traffic laws.
Not that there were any cops around to fine her.
But if she ended up running anybody over here, the people she’d have to deal with would be equally inventive.
But Targe wasn’t any more human than any other soul living in East Orlando and her reflexes rivaled mine.
As she came to a stop. She wore no helmet and I saw a smile curling her lips as she glanced at my escorts.
“Easy there, pups. I’m just making a delivery. Assembly courier. You can check it out, if you like.”
Then Targe dipped her head and peaked inside my car. “You always run around with furry escorts these days, Kit?”
“No. Ask them to go with you. Maybe they will.” I dropped my gaze to the sealed envelope she held. “Unusual way to deliver something, Targe.”
“Hey, you know how it goes. I was given top dollar to track you down today and make sure you got it.” She waggled it at me. “Come on…take it. Or are you going to make me do one of the package refusal bullshit claims?”
“What is it?” I eyed it warily. For some reason, I didn’t want to touch it.
“Dunno.” Behind us, a car horn honked. She tossed a heavy braid back over her shoulder and looked in that general direction. “Normally, I’d say you should hurry it up, but it looks like your escort has things under control. You must feel like a princess.”
I curled my lip at her.
Targe just laughed.
“Who is it from? Who’s the client?”
“Dunno…and…dunno. It was an anonymous drop. I’m the lucky girl because I was first on rotation today. Tried to hit you up early, but you were already gone. The roster said you had an out of town run—I dug around and saw where you were going and figured you’d have a return job in this area.” She shrugged, her obsidian eyes startlingly dark against her pale gold skin. “Come on, Kit. I’ve wasted half my day on this one job.”
Swearing, I leaned over and grabbed it.
The second I did, I wanted to jerk back and tell Targe to get it away.
But the second I did, it was too late.
Magic rippled over it, spreading from me to her.
She let go first and swayed backward, eyes widening. “What is that?”
I dropped it into the seat, staring at it with revulsion.
Without conscious thought, I started to rub my hand down my pants, trying to wipe away the feel of it. But it was embedded in.
I went to pick it up.
“Kit.”
Jerking my gaze up, I found myself staring at Targe.
“What…” She stopped, shaking her head. She swiped a hand over the back of her mouth. “That’s some bad shit in there. Maybe you should…no. You can’t reject it. You already took it.”
“Yeah.” My hand hovered over it and I pulled away, although it was oddly strange to move my hand away. It was like I was giving it the command to move, but that body part was disconnected from body and not ready to comply. Finally, I sat there, my hand clenched in my lap as I stared at it.
“You can call the department—tell them somebody sent you something with bad magic in it. They’d have you bring it in and they’ll track down the sender…or just destroy it,” Targe offered.
“No. I can handle that.”
“You’re not opening it?” she asked, a dark brow arching over equally dark eyes.
“Hell, no.” I gave her a dark look. “Next time I get an anonymous package, call me. I’ll pick it up.”
“Sure thing. I’ll…uh…I’ll make note of it on the rosters, too.” Then she winked at me. “By the way…your babysitters? They are adorable.”
I growled at her.
⸸
“Do you want it destroyed or just…held?”
The Father of Orlando’s Green Road house was as different from Es as he could be in almost every way. He was short and solid, like a stumpy tree with a face that looked like it might have been smashed in a time or two—by a fist. He exuded a caged sort of energy and talked with his entire body.
But when he met your eyes, there was a strange sort of calm that enveloped you.
And as he held the envelope Targe had passed me, I knew I wasn’t offbase.
There was some bad shit in tha thing.
I’d gotten in trouble once before opening something that all but hummed with magic. That time had been a bitch. I wasn’t doing it again.
“Should it be destroyed?” I asked.
“Hmmm…” He ran one wide hand down the front of it, his fingers toying with the flap. “He wouldn’t like it. But this isn’t good magic, Kit. Not good at all.”
“He.” I leaped on that. I had suspicions, but… “Who sent it?”
Gustave opened his pale blue eyes and stared at me. “You know the answer to that. Let’s avoid placing me in an awkward position.”
I wondered how he might consider it awkward, but decided it didn’t matter.
“Can you just…store it for now? I might need it later, but I get the feeling I shouldn’t touch it anymore.”
“You’re wise to trust those feeling.” He nodded sagely. “Palmyra has your money at the door. I’ll lock this in the vault.”
Chapter Ten
“I’m not buying it.”
Damon hadn’t come in until late the night before and I’d barely roused when he slid into bed. But he’d been wide awake when I emerged from the shower—wide awake and energetic enough to strip away the towel I’d wrapped around myself and engage in some early morning activity that had cleared any lingering clouds from my brain.
Now, after a second shower, with a plate full of food and a pot of tea in front of me, I tried to wrap my mind around what he was telling me.
“You don’t think that arrogant asshole might be looking to set up a fiefdom here?” Damon snapped into a piece of bacon.
“No, what I’m not buying is that he’d try to do it…here. Strategically, it makes no sense. The majority of the NHs here are shifters and vamps. He’d have to oust them all because no shifter or vamp is going to cede control over to somebody looking to set up a…fiefdom.” I grabbed another piece of bacon before he ate all of it. He packed more food than in a day than I did in a week. “And fiefdom or not, why do I have to have a couple of baby wolves stuck on my ass? I’m older than they are, for crying out loud!”
“They’re enforcer-strong,” Damon said. “I’ve met both of them. Alli will happily smile while plotting out how to gut an opponent. Jay will happily not smile while doing the same.”
“I don’t want babysitters!” I shouted. “And this is bullshit. It’s a pain in the ass outsider. He’s barely been here as long as I have. And the Assembly doesn’t listen to me. Why are they going to give him a lot of credence?”
“Because he plays their games. Besides…” Damon blew out a patient sigh. “He’s already trying to cause a rift in the two main shifter factions.” Damon shrugged. “His problem is that he didn’t realize how well Dair and I make things work. He came here at the tail end of Annette’s reign. He’s used to her dynamics.”
“Hasn’t he noticed the dynamics have changed?”
“To an o
utsider’s eyes, it won’t be that different. Dair and Annette always pretended to be friendly in public. The backstabbing made its way into public conversation by way of gossip. That’s still happening.” Damon smiled a little. “We let it happen. It works to our advantage.”
Okay…this was news to me. But I’d been…busy. Also, I’d been avoiding the Assembly. Leaning back, I crossed my arms over my chest. “So you two let the Assembly think you’re at odds.”
“It only fools the idiots who don’t pay attention.” He hitched up a shoulder in a shrug and picked up his fork.
As I added that into the equation, he decimated the mountain of eggs on his plate. “I shouldn’t have ignored the meetings there as long as I have,” I said, more to myself than him. “I missed too much of what’s going on. I still don’t want the babysitters.”
Damon didn’t respond.
But there was a reaction.
Shifting my gaze from the mug of tea I held to his face, I found him watching me. “You had demons you were fighting. You’re not the watchguard for the whole damn city, Kit.”
“I never said I was.” Frowning, I drank some of my tea as I fought with some uncomfortable understandings. “But I’m part of it, aren’t I? And I’m part of the group that has less of a voice than the rest. When we don’t go out and force the rest of you to listen, people like Malcolm pretend to speak for us.”
The thought made my stomach turn.
“Nobody sees him as speaking for anybody but himself.” Damon, disgust on his face, pushed his plate away from him. “I’m still trying to figure out how he climbed so far up the ladder like he did. Two Assembly speakers died.” His eyes shot to mine. “And I didn’t do it. Then one of the Regents abruptly stepped down. Landon. He’d been a Regent for as long as I’d been around. Then he up and stepped down. A few days later, he killed himself—self-immolation.”
“Immolation…?” A split second later, I understood. “He set himself on fire? What the hell? And when?”
Damon’s jaw went tight. “You were in Winter Haven.”
That statement threw a pall in the air and I looked away. After I’d been kidnapped, I hid away from the world, from everything—including myself—for a couple of months. Whatever had happened here during that time, I’d been unaware. A war could have happened in the streets of Orlando and I wouldn’t have known.
Fisting my hands in my lap, I lifted my face to the ceiling and drew in a breath.
“Anything else that shook things up happen while I was busy hiding?”
“You weren’t—”
“Stop.” Cutting him off, I looked back at him and shook my head. “Just stop. I was hiding. And guess what? I had every right.” My hands still shook in my lap and I got up from the table, unable to keep sitting there with memory trying to swarm up and take me under. “Kidnapped, beaten, tortured, raped.”
My voice hitched on almost every word, but I forced them out. I had to quit hiding from it. And so did he. He flinched like he’d been struck. “It happened. It’s over. I’m getting better. And part of the reason I’m getting better is because I hid away for a while and came to grips with it in my own way. But things happened while I was doing that.”
Damon’s jaw clenched, bones cutting against his skin. The crazed energy in him popped and danced, a charged storm buzzing in the air all around us.
After a moment, it faded away and he looked at me.
“Okay. Okay.” He nodded, a heavy sigh shuddered out of him, the last of the tension going with it. “Yeah. Shit happened. A lot of the off-shoots have hit the highway. We’re just now becoming aware of how many have left.”
“Hit the highway,” I echoed. “Are they gone, as in for real gone, or missing?”
“Most of them are for real gone—they left, and they can be tracked.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how much contact you had with any of them, but I’d say since January, almost fifty have left. I only know about it because a few of them used to be…well, not friends, really, but we’d talk when I’d be out working the streets. One of them sent a message my way, told me he’d appreciated seeing how I was cleaning things up on this end, wished he could stay around to see more.”
He shrugged restlessly. “It was worded oddly enough that I said something to Chang. He told me he was just one of many. Chang would have a better idea, and he has names, even kept in contact with a few of them. Some, though, he says they’ve just disappeared off the map.”
“So some of them are dead.” Uneasy, I went back to the table and picked up my cup of tea. I didn’t drink it, but the warmth felt good to my hands.
“Unconfirmed. But…” Damon’s eyes lit, rolling to gold. “Chang was friends with a couple of them. One or two, at least, were territorial, though. As territorial as some cats are, according to him.”
“Territorial.” The bad feeling in my gut spread.
Damon shrugged. “Only way somebody would remove me from this place would be if they killed me. Unless, of course, I had to go chasing after you.”
“Cute.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I processed what he’d just told me. “So some, at least, are probably dead.”
“I can’t confirm or deny that. All I can say is they wouldn’t have left easy.”
⸸
I left two sulking wolves seated outside the hall that led to the A&R wings in the Assembly. Archives and Research weren’t open to all members of the Assembly, although special permission could be granted, if requested ahead of time.
I didn’t bother requesting it, even though I knew Jay and Alli would accompany me.
Sadly, I hadn’t notified my shadows I would be in the Assembly.
The witch manning the door eyed them narrowly as she admitted me, but she said nothing as I passed inside.
I had no doubt there would be chatter about how I’d acquired some furry new friends though. Assuming there wasn’t already.
It made my head ache and I hadn’t even started the tedious part of my day. The good thing was I hadn’t crawled out of bed this morning expecting anything to be fun.
I planned on digging into the archives and records to find out more about what Damon had told me. According to the formal laws of the Assembly Charter, NHs are required to be registered.
It comes with a fee and a yearly status update.
Basically, it means they keep tabs on all of us.
They say it’s better they do it than humans.
I guess that’s one way of looking at it.
I don’t let myself get too pissed off about it, because the Assembly has provided me some protection—and a job. Being a licensed contractor with the Assembly is better than working as an unlicensed one.
It sucks to feel like I had a government leash on my throat, but there was no denying if we were going to be registered, it was better that it be done by those who were also non-human.
My status as a contractor also allowed me to nose around in Archives and Research without being questioned about it.
If I was questioned, I’d just point at the Clan and say I’d been hired.
Nobody would question the Clan and I was on retainer with them.
The only people who’d question me from within the Clan would be Chang or Damon and that was unlikely. They were smart—they’d figure it out on their own.
The only real thing I needed to be concerned about was running into Malcolm while I was at Assembly HQ, accessing protected data files, looking into the names of the offshoots Damon had given me.
I’d known only one of them and that was more in passing than anything else.
He’d used to work for the Assembly as well but had left a year or so after I’d joined for private work. I skimmed his file, found that he’d worked a couple of jobs with another mercenary I knew—Charles Andrulis. “Well, hello, Charles.”
I made a note to call both of them later, then moved on.
The next two names were low-level players in the field and one had already been reported as deceased. Anothe
r note—research that, in my copious spare time.
I tried calling the third, but the numbers left behind had been disconnected. Lovely.
Rubbing my temple, I entered another name Damon had given me.
One Samantha Anne Diamond. That was the full name in the file, but there was a note referencing her as Anne Diamond. Offshoot, another licensed contractor with the Assembly—a mercenary, in other words. She had some affinity for earth magics and was suspected to have some psychic skills. Also unusually strong but declined to acknowledge what flavor of NH she might be. Meaning she probably knew and didn’t want others knowing.
Kind of like me.
Clicking on the thumbnail image that was displayed with her file, I brought up the full version.
“Eesh,” I muttered. Not somebody I wanted to fight hand to hand, especially if she was considered unusually strong—and that had to be by NH standards since they’d made a note of it in her file.
“Five feet nine inches, two hundred pounds…” I eyed her long, solid frame and decided most of it was muscle, but she had a rack on her, too. Glancing down at my decidedly meager curves, I grimaced. Immediately after, I felt stupid. “Okay, Samantha Anne. Just why did you leave and what about you made Chang take note?”
I opened the list of assignments she’d taken from the Assembly.
The list sent a prickle down my spine.
Most of them were sealed.
It was standard practice that our jobs weren’t hidden. Early on, I’d been told, when the Assembly was just in its infancy, licensed contractors had been used as full out mercenaries and assassins and there had been no leash on them. No rules, no laws and it had led to warring between the factions that had threatened to spill out into the human world.
Haunted Blade (Colbana Files Book 6) Page 9