My Immortal Assassin

by Carolyn Jewel

  Gray lifted her right arm and held it out, palm up. The markings underneath her skin writhed, reacting to the magic in the room. “He’s teaching me.” She touched her right temple. Her fingertips burned. “I think that’s to your advantage, don’t you?”

  Nikodemus crossed his arms over his chest. “So?”

  “You can’t trust Christophe,” Gray said.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Warlord, I think—”

  “Stay out of this, Durian. This is between me and your girl, here.” His gaze burned into her. “You better be sure you understand the consequences of crossing me.”

  The room went unnaturally silent and the quiet sent icy fingers skittering down her spine.

  She thought about that. Her concern right now was keeping Durian out of trouble, and she was willing, she realized, to say anything that would solve the problems now. The hell with later on. They had to make it through this. “Maybe I don’t.”

  “You screw me over, you screw him over.” He waited while she worked that out. It didn’t take long. She nodded. “I get that.”

  The warlord’s mood settled down. “You watch out for him like you swore you would, and maybe we’ll be fine. Set him up, betray him in any way, and I will come after you when I’m done with him.” He smiled. “I promise you a painful death.”

  “Understood.”

  Nikodemus frowned, and Gray couldn’t tell if she’d averted disaster or not. “Tell me, Big Dog, is she any good at what you do?”

  The warlord’s command to Durian was subtle, but she felt the imperative tug at her chest.

  “Yes.”

  “How good? As good as you?”

  Durian’s face was absolutely unreadable. “Not yet.”

  “But close. Am I right?”

  He nodded.

  “She needs to be bound over.”

  When nobody said anything, Gray looked at them both. “What does that mean?”

  “I won’t permit it,” Durian said.

  Nikodemus’s reaction was far too calm. Gray didn’t trust it at all. “No?” he said.

  Gray coughed. The fake kind. “Excuse me, Durian, but I think I can make up my own mind about this, if you don’t mind.” She met Nikodemus’s gaze without flinching. “I’ve already sworn fealty to him. Can I do that again? To someone else?”

  “Not an oath of fealty, Gray,” Durian said. “He means to bind you with a different kind of oath. One that will prevent you from taking a life without a sanction except in defense of your own or another’s life. If you were bound by this oath, Nikodemus and only Nikodemus could give you a sanction. And if he did so, you would be required to carry it out.”

  She looked to Nikodemus. “That accurate?”

  “More or less.”

  This time she looked to Durian. “I take it you’re already bound over like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I see the problem, Durian.” She tapped the side of her leg, trying to figure the downside. He could have been a rock, for all the emotion he showed. In her head, it was a different matter. Durian was close to breaking with Nikodemus and she knew she couldn’t let that happen.

  “It’s necessary, Big Dog, and you know it.”

  “It’s dangerous.” Durian and Nikodemus practically spit sparks at each other. “And you know it.”

  “What happens if I don’t get bound over?”

  “Nothing,” Durian said.

  Nikodemus was pulling again. “You aren’t a warlord yet, Big Dog.”

  “That was never my intent.”

  The stress between the two climbed again.

  “What was your intent?” Nikodemus’s voice got very soft. “Were you looking for a way to break your oath? Is there something going on I need to know about?”

  Durian went down on one knee, fingers of one hand pressed to his forehead. “No, warlord.”

  “Get up.”

  Durian rose, but nothing was resolved yet. He said, “You have a bigger problem than Gray, warlord. Christophe dit Menart meant to take our children and raise them to slavery. She will testify to that.”

  Nikodemus was silent. “He took her before the agreement went into effect. What he did was before she was kin. So far, he’s keeping his word, Big Dog. No new magehelds. No attacks on my sworn kin. I don’t like it any better than you, but he’s not in breach of our agreement. Which, you might recall, you helped forge.”

  “He is breaching the agreement.”

  “Proof.” He leaned forward. “We need proof.”

  “He’s using Rasmus Kessler, who, as you are aware, is not bound by any agreement. Kessler’s found a way to overcome the damage done to him, warlord, and he is now working against you, with Christophe’s help.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Proof?”

  Durian continued. “Kessler attacked Gray and me using magehelds whose minds had been destroyed. We saw this. I saw Kessler with my own eyes.”

  “You saw Kessler with Christophe?”

  Durian made a cutting motion with the side of his hand. “If you wait until there is no doubt, it will be too late. Give me dit Menart’s sanction.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Then give me Kessler’s. That’s no breach.”

  “Rasmus Kessler and I are negotiating. Obviously, I wasn’t going to ask you to do the honors and you’ve been making yourself scarce lately.” Nikodemus cocked his head. “We can’t go back to the way things were. We can’t. You listen to me, Big Dog. I understand your feelings about Kessler, but I’d fucking talk to Álvaro Magellan if he were still alive.”

  The tension bore down on Gray like a weight. The two were at the breaking point, and she didn’t know what to do to stop it from happening. The warlord glanced at her and she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, warlord. I won’t go back to Christophe.”

  Nikodemus scowled so hard she took an involuntary step back. “You’re kin. I don’t turn kin over to the magekind. Not for any reason.” He sighed. “If you’re not bonded to me, I don’t have direct authority over you. Christophe knows that. You know that. You’re working with my assassin and, sweetheart, what he’s teaching you to do makes you too dangerous not to have that power bound over to a warlord.” He raised his hands. “If not me, fine. But it’ll have to be Kynan instead.”

  Gray snorted. “Hell no.”

  The warlord laughed. “Still having trouble making nice, is he?”

  Durian stayed intent on the warlord. “Since she is not bound over, under the right circumstances, she can kill Christophe without breaking the agreement.”

  The air crackled as Durian’s bonds to Nikodemus stretched to the limit. She knew it. She could feel it. “Don’t do this,” Nikodemus said.

  She walked between the two of them and faced Nikodemus. Tigran had taught her that kin social structure was based on a combination of power and the bonds that conferred rank. A fiend with no bonds was almost certainly weak and definitely at risk of existing outside the social structure of a highly social people. The kin didn’t enter into such bonds lightly. As Durian had already pointed out to her, they carried consequences, but they were also a fact of their existence.

  “If I’m bound over to you, what does that mean?”

  “It means you won’t be able to kill except on my order, in self-defense, or, in your case, in defense of Durian.”

  “Gray—”

  She ignored Durian for now. “My decision, right? Not yours. Not Durian’s.”

  Nikodemus nodded.

  Her decision meant giving up the revenge she’d promised herself after Christophe murdered Tigran, but if doing so meant keeping Durian from breaking with Nikodemus, well, it felt like the right thing to do. “I say bind me over.”

  CHAPTER 17

  While Durian waited for this ill-begotten situation to be anything but what it was, Nikodemus faced the door and flicked a hand. The locks clicked shut. The rest of the room sealed off, too. Then he looked at Gray ove
r his shoulder and winked at her. “Don’t want anyone walking in on us.”

  “I guess not.” She shoved her hands in her back pockets, trying not to be obvious about watching them. Not that it mattered. Durian had shut himself off from her the minute she agreed to be bound over, and it was bothering her. Gray, on the other hand, wasn’t blocking herself so he and Nikodemus both knew she was worried. Nervous. Uncertain. Afraid. As well she should be.

  She was choosing him over killing Christophe, and if it weren’t for the fact that her decision had prevented disaster between him and Nikodemus, Durian would have been angrier than he was. He might not like her decision, but he could not, in conscience, judge it a betrayal.

  “Don’t be an ass, Durian.” Nikodemus went to him. He put a hand on Durian’s shoulder. Durian could not help but react. Though the contact soothed him, the effect should have been more immediate. More intense. He wondered how badly his bonds to the warlord were weakened or whether it was his oath to Gray that interfered.

  He inclined his head. “Warlord.”

  “Durian,” Nikodemus said softly. “I know this isn’t what you want. I understand what you were after.” His hand tightened on Durian’s shoulder. “If I were in your place, I might have done the same. This has to be done. She doesn’t want it to be Kynan and I’m guessing you don’t want that, either. Do you want me to ask one of the others? Huijan maybe?”

  “No.” He didn’t want Gray bound to Nikodemus or to anyone else. For any reason. The reaction was irrational, he knew that. Just as this aspect of his power needed to be bound to a warlord, so did hers.

  “Let’s get this done.” Nikodemus took a step back and toe-heeled off his boots. He stripped off his shirt next, then his socks and jeans. Naked, he tossed his clothes onto his chair, oblivious to Gray quickly turning her back.

  Nikodemus took on his true form.

  The room got warmer, the air thicker. The skin down Durian’s back rippled with the magical resonance.

  Gray peeked at Durian. Her pupils were huge and her cheeks were bright red. He wanted to reach out to her, but that would only cause problems. “Please tell me I don’t have to take off my clothes for this.”

  “Sorry, but yes,” Nikodemus said. Gray’s head whipped around, her eyes wide.

  “You don’t.” Durian put a hand on the back of her neck. “He’s being an ass.” He brought her in close.

  “You’re no fun,” Nikodemus said. He gave them both an easy grin. “Keep your clothes on, sweetheart.”

  Durian slipped off his shoes. As he, too, stripped down, he folded his clothes and placed them on the seat of another chair, out of the way. He kept his one-way link with Gray.

  Changing forms wasn’t entirely comfortable. The urge to be naked tended to be overwhelming, and Nikodemus was right. It was much easier, much more natural to be unconfined by human clothing.

  Durian stayed where he was, and let his body shift. His surroundings seemed to shift, too, though he knew they hadn’t. In this form, his experience of the world changed. Magic flowed along his skin and through his body without the need to pull for it. Colors were more intense, more vibrant. All his senses sharpened. He no longer had a core of magic encased in a human form. His emotions were bigger. More elemental. More raw.

  In this form, Gray’s humanity called to him irresistibly. She was ancient prey. She was female. The object of his intense sexual desire. By extension, Nikodemus would have the same reaction to her. To any human female. Regardless of his bonds to Carson. Gray knew it and was afraid.

  Nikodemus walked toward her and Durian immediately found himself holding back from an attack.

  He crouched, one hand touching the floor. He growled, twitching with the urge to keep Nikodemus from getting anywhere near her. But he managed himself and stayed where he was.

  Light altered and bent around the warlord so that at times his body glittered brilliant black or slid into shadow so he was hardly visible at all. Durian’s oaths to Nikodemus burned hot and collided with his obligations to Gray. He held steady when Nikodemus touched her. She was his sworn fiend. What Nikodemus was about to do would not change that.

  This must be done.

  Gray’s eyes opened wide at the warlord’s touch to her forehead and upper chest. At the contact, the surge of magic from her made for a potent mix of power tinged with her very human fear. She wasn’t going to break because of her emotions, Durian did not doubt that for a moment. She was kin, after all.

  He widened his connection with Nikodemus and Gray.

  Along his skin, inside him, through the core of what he was, his oaths shifted in weight and realigned. The sensation was odd, disorienting even. For years, he had never wavered in loyalty to Nikodemus, even when they disagreed. Nikodemus had been right to worry about Durian’s allegiance. Now, at this moment, his need to protect Gray took precedence over his oath of fealty to Nikodemus.

  He moved closer, concentrating on what Nikodemus was doing while keeping himself in Gray’s head. Enough to be certain she was safe, not enough to interfere with Nikodemus.

  The binding required a deft use of power. As Nikodemus shaped his magic, the air around him shattered into prisms that reflected color throughout the room. Nikodemus formed the threads that created the oath that would prevent her from using her killing magic without justified cause. He worked quickly. Deftly and with a precision that made what he did look simple.

  When it was done, Gray pressed her hands to her chest and stood motionless, head bowed.

  There was no sound in the room but for their breathing.

  Nikodemus remained standing over Gray, his head thrown back, his body vanishing into shadows. His chest expanded with his breath. Then, without a word, he turned on his heel and walked out.

  Gray lifted her head. Her eyes were wide, icy blue in her pale face, not in reaction to her bond with Nikodemus, but to seeing him in his true form. Her dark lashes and eyebrows made the color of her hair all the more brilliant and unnatural. Her hands remained touching her chest. Their gazes locked and Durian felt his control thin. He didn’t dare move.

  Slowly, Gray walked to where Durian stood. He quivered with all the instincts of his kind; the desire to possess, to increase the mental connection they already had, perhaps even to disappear into her. She knew it, too, and knelt in front of him anyway. The magic in the room continued to spread through them both. He curled his taloned fingers toward his palms, resisting the urge to touch her.

  She studied him, taking in what he was. “We’ll find another way to take down Christophe, all right?”

  CHAPTER 18

  A few days later. Broadway near Baker, San Francisco

  Durian crooked his fingers at Iskander. “Come after her. And mean it, fiend.”

  Iskander stood there, a smile spreading over his face. “You sure?”

  There was only so much a construct offered. Gray needed to go up against the unpredictability of an independent consciousness. Physically, she was far beyond any of the lesser kin, which was why he’d tapped Iskander.

  She tapped Iskander’s shin with the toe of one foot. She was much better than Iskander realized, and Durian was looking forward to him finding out just what he was facing. “Do it, big boy.”

  Iskander wasted no time. Except he didn’t come after her. He came at Durian hard and fast. Durian centered himself just in time.

  Gray’s oath to him required nothing less of her than to lay down her life to protect him, and she went after Iskander with a ferocity that echoed in his bones. Despite everything, there was nothing wrong with her oath. She shouted, and his connection with her flashed through his body. Hot. Intense. Immediate. For a moment, while he was fully in her head, Durian couldn’t see anything at all. The next, he felt Iskander and Gray both with a precision that startled him. His vision returned.

  She rolled, turned, grabbed, and had Iskander on his back and one hand around his throat, going for his heart. Iskander laughed and blocked her easily. The tats down his fac
e lit with an inner glow. He damn near took off her head.

  Her body bowed backward but she reached for his chest, her fingers inches from a touch. Just when he thought Iskander had forgotten himself, the other fiend released his magic, and she flew off him, sliding several feet on the floor.

  “I forgot about her oath,” Iskander said. His eyes stayed a brilliant, unworldly blue.

  Gray was on her feet, her mouth pressed closed so tight her lips were white at the edges. Her hands, too, were clenched at her sides. She stood and momentarily towered over Iskander like Godzilla over a fallen Rodin. “This isn’t a game, Iskander. Play it the way Durian said.”

  Durian absorbed what she was, how she looked—her svelte body, lean and yet so undeniably female—and Iskander hooked in. Iskander’s reaction to Gray’s humanity and her magic was predictable and entirely normal. The sizzle between the three of them grew insistent.

  “Why?” Iskander got to his feet in one motion. He slid a glance at Durian but addressed Gray. “The world out there will not play by your rules. What are you going to do when Nikodemus sends you on your first sanction, little one? Ask him to please hold still while you kill him?”

  She closed the distance between them until she was toe-to-toe with Iskander. “Are you trying to be an asshole?”

  “I don’t have to try.” He grinned. “It comes naturally.”

  Gray looked at Durian. “How the hell do you stand him?”

  “We all have our burdens to bear. He is mine.”

  “What have you been doing to the Big Dog?” Iskander put one hand on Gray’s shoulder and the other over his heart. Durian held back a growl of protest. “Did you go out and steal him a personality?”

  “Lay off, will you?” She poked Iskander in the chest. The tension receded.

  Iskander met Durian’s gaze over the top of her head. “My friend. Do you deserve such loyalty?”

  “Can we get back to work?” Gray took a step back.

  “Anything you want.” Iskander’s smile slowly faded. He cut off his connection with Gray, and Durian did the same because he didn’t want to incidentally help her. She needed to know how to fight alone.