by Mark Henwick
“You failed to provide all the teams you promised.”
This was great—enemy alliances falling apart. I could listen to it all day, but I needed to see if there was something I could do to help Diana. The Adepts were still there, maintaining their lock on her, but the Athanate guards were drifting in to flank Amaral and balance the five angry Wind River Were behind O’Neill.
I edged toward Diana, but I was stopped by nuns coming out of the church.
Two of them that I’d fought were carrying the one I’d wounded. They passed me with no more than a hateful glance. Two more stood in front of me, idly spinning their bō, bleak-eyed and looking at me as if they wanted another round.
What now?
I heard voices behind me and looked over my shoulder. Three more nuns had just come in on the helicopter. All of the nuns were in their slinky charcoal-gray uniforms, but the arrivals were armed with top-of-the-line military weapons—HK MP7 and G36 assault rifles.
I turned to face them.
They surrounded me, just five of them, but effectively cutting me off from everything else.
One of them was carrying a spare cloak. She put it around my shoulders and fastened it at the front.
“Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was being polite to them, but it seemed better than getting my jaw broken by O’Neill. He’d just shouted at Amaral that half his force was tied up making sure Taos didn’t fill up with New Mexico Were, and he couldn’t spare any more to secure the meeting site.
“This doesn’t seem to be going well for them,” the nuns’ leader said, her eyes flicking across to where O’Neill and Amaral argued. She was old Athanate. A voice like satin, and brown eyes, oddly soft.
I snorted at her comment. And then winced at the pain that caused in my face.
“And you are?” I said.
Her ninja-nun outfit was complemented by a slimline black tactical vest, a Beretta Px4 handgun strapped to one leg, and an MP7 to the other. She was carrying a comms-enabled black battle helmet under her arm. Her dark hair was held back in a ponytail. Her face still had smudges of camo.
I didn’t know which war she’d just come back from, but these nuns took their fighting seriously.
“Mirela Tucek,” she said. A slight smile skewed her thin mouth. “I’ll drop the ‘Mother’ now. It’s served its purpose.”
“You aren’t upset by their problems,” I said.
“Let’s say that their path isn’t necessarily our path.” She glanced over at the arguing men. “We’ve traveled together. They may yet reach their destination, and it may yet serve our purposes, but it’s not essential.”
I was keeping my guard up and at the same time trying to sense anything from them with eukori. They might as well have been wearing mirror shades over their minds.
But one thing I did sense: we were related, Athanate-wise. These nuns were Carpathian.
“Whose purposes are those?” I said, afraid I knew the answer already.
“The purposes of House Lazar.”
“Carpathian,” I confirmed. “I guess that means you answer to Vega Martine.”
She looked surprised, and a genuine smile broke across her face.
“You are well informed about some things,” she said. “We do serve the Lady.”
I heard the capital letter and only just managed to stop my throat demon from passing a comment about her Ladyship.
Tucek saw it and laughed easily.
I had to admit, she was a lot friendlier than I would have been to someone who’d shot one of my team in the gut. Then again, I was the one who was trussed up like an oven-ready chicken.
If there was a choice, I’d take her over Evans and Amaral.
Was that what she was offering?
“You and the Lady are closer in mind than you think,” the nun to Tucek’s right said. “We believe in Emergence. We’re not fools like Correia, who believe we can hide forever.”
“And neither are we backstabbing psychopaths like Amaral,” Tucek said. “Who’s plotting his betrayals even while he negotiates his friendships and alliances: Romero, the Albuquerque Were, the Warders, the unsettled Houses in the US, the Confederation. Who’s next?”
The part about Amaral was right on. But Vega Martine and Emergence, that didn’t make sense, surely?
“Vega Martine supported Matlal,” I said. “Basilikos—”
“Basilikos and the Assembly would have supported Emergence if Altau hadn’t destroyed the Assembly in his grab for power.”
Well, they would put their spin on it. Were they trying to convince me that we were on the same side?
“Which he did while getting Matlal locked up, too,” I said. “I guess it’s hard on you that Matlal is a prisoner of Basilikos.”
Tucek smiled. “Not anymore. I put him on a helicopter in Santa Ana not four hours ago. We’ll be joining him and the Lady soon.”
Crap. She and her ninja-nuns have sprung Matlal from Basilikos. But why? He can’t be worth anything to them now.
Despite everything, I was feeling some grudging admiration for Tucek and her ‘convent’.
“It’s not about Panethus and Basilikos any longer,” the second nun was saying. “The real division is Altau on one hand and everyone else on the other. Not even Altau’s new allies, Theokos, really believe his line that Athanate and human are equal. It’s amazing he’s kept Panethus together, but it can’t last.”
She was right, in some of that anyway. Arvinder had given me the dummies’ introduction to Theokos. They believed that humans should worship Athanate.
“Panethus can’t last now that the Warders have been dismantled,” Tucek said. “The Assembly, and its artificial division of Panethus and Basilikos, is gone. Whatever replaces it will have to include the unaligned groups, and we don’t agree with Altau, let alone with what the Empire of Heaven believes.”
“So you claim,” I said, but I was arguing with Athanate who knew much more of what was going on than I did. How did things stand now that there was no means to maintain the Assembly?
Were they so bad, these ninja-nuns? My paranoia twinged. They were putting a lot of effort into talking to a prisoner.
The mental clarity that had seemed to linger after the shock from the bō was ebbing away now. I needed to be thinking of…what?
Tucek came closer.
“But really, you need to be thinking on a more personal level,” Tucek said. She ran one gloved hand gently down the side of my face. “I’m not the Lady, but I can sense the turmoil inside you. Were and Athanate, fighting each other. It must be exhausting, even without this.”
It felt like she’d switched on small light inside my head. Monsters prowled my mind in the darkness. Within the weak glow of the light was what remained of my strongbox—the place I’d kept the things I didn’t want to get out.
“The Lady can cure all this,” she murmured.
No. Something very important.
Dungeons.
That’s it. Something about dungeons. Not how nice the nuns were being to me. Dungeons in the basement of the convent. Dungeons that had been used recently. That stank of fear and despair.
Yes. That’s what I needed to think about. What they had been using the dungeons for.
“You used the dungeons downstairs to discipline the children, didn’t you?” I said. “To break them, until they did whatever you wanted.”
Tucek’s face went suddenly blank, and the strange feeling of admiration for the nuns disappeared.
“Mother Tucek, not trying to walk off with my prisoner, are you?” Amaral eased his way into the circle. He was smiling, his voice almost jovial. Underneath, he was primed like an explosive. His Athanate were right behind him. O’Neill had stomped off, hopefully to make sure the assaults on the Ute Mountain women had stopped.
“She turned me down.” Tucek’s voice matched his light tone.
“You’d have been second in line.” Amaral jerked his head after the Wind River alpha. “But she’s not availabl
e anyway. She’s mine. I have important uses for her.”
Tucek smiled and casually stepped back.
Locked into some invisible signal from her, the nuns moved. It looked random, but suddenly they were all facing the Amaral Athanate.
Please. Let them all kill each other.
Amaral and his men shifted, unconsciously responding to the threat they hadn’t really registered yet.
Tucek’s lips thinned. Not a smile. Not quite a sneer.
“House Amaral, we’re leaving now. Consider this building as a gift.” She tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. “I’ve been here nine years, and though I’m no more a nun than you are, it has provided me with a chance for contemplation. I urge you to think on its message.”
Amaral blinked. “Deception?” he guessed.
“Oh, that too. But there’s another, one that was laid down in the bones of the old farm.” She tapped her foot on the flagstones. “This place was built from the foundations upward on the premise that you don’t really have what you can’t hold.”
Amaral blinked again, an understanding of the precipice beneath his feet gradually dawning on his face. His team picked it up. They were good, too, much better than I’d given them credit for. Without any sudden movements they were spread out. Hands strayed closer to guns and the tension ratcheted.
Then the moment was broken.
Another couple of nuns came in, supporting Frank, who was pale and stumbling. He’d been beaten when they kidnapped him. Now, his neck was bloody with bites. His hands were still tied.
But behind the nuns, four more Amaral came in, these dressed in combat gear and with assault rifles already in their hands. The balance shifted.
“Ah. The bait we brought in from the town,” Tucek said, as if nothing else had happened. “Redundant now. Is he yours too?” She raised an eyebrow at Amaral.
Frank’s dazed eyes found me and he jerked in shock. The look of hope that dawned in his face was like a punch in my belly.
“He’s just a store clerk,” I said. “Blank his memory and let him go. Please.”
Amaral ignored me and shook his head, his mouth pursed in distaste. “No interest here. Take him with you.”
“For in-flight snacks?” She laughed. “We’ll all be strapped in, flying at treetop level. No chance for entertainment.”
Amaral jerked his chin. One of the guards raised his gun.
“No!” I yelled.
“No.” Tucek raised her hand. She smiled at me. “You’re right.”
She walked to Frank. “No point in waste.”
“No, please,” I begged. I’d gotten him into this, however inadvertently.
Death and sorrow and pain and loss.
“Too late, Farrell,” she said. “You had your chance.”
Frank overbalanced as Tucek grabbed his shirt. Before he recovered, she’d bitten his neck. His scream choked off raggedly and his knees folded underneath him. She lowered him smoothly, the fangs tearing his flesh but staying buried in him. He started to struggle, giving another thin, bubbling scream that almost covered Tucek’s grunts of pleasure.
My hands were tied. I was hobbled.
The wolf burned like acid inside. My view of the courtyard twisted and the sound I made didn’t come from a human throat. I lunged toward Tucek’s vulnerable back.
There was a searing explosion in my skull as the bō hammered against my head, and darkness followed like a falling blade.
Chapter 53
When I came around, I was slumped in the back seat of an SUV.
It was an improvement over the last time—no toilet smells and I could actually see. And I still had the nun’s cloak fastened around my neck, although it wasn’t doing much good, twisted and bunched underneath me.
Without opening my eyes, I knew Evans was sitting next to me.
Given that I was tied up and mostly naked, that wasn’t good.
I pretended to be unconscious still, but Evans wasn’t fooled. I could feel the weight of his look, the touch of the sickness in his head. Joining Gold Hill had twisted his mind with shocking speed. His marque was still from the Denver pack—it should have been comforting and familiar to me. The fact that it wasn’t comforting at all was a double blow.
There was a subliminal growl from the front of the car.
Two Were. Wind River marque. One concentrating on driving nose to tail behind another truck, and the other turned around and snarling displeasure at Evans.
I let myself relax one degree, no more.
Wind River were the enemy, but they weren’t like Gold Hill, and I was relatively safe while they were around. If Evans got me on my own…
I swallowed painfully, my throat dry.
If Evans got me on my own, then I’d do what I’d been trained to do in Ops 4-10.
It had been one of the few times they’d split us up by gender.
I blinked at the memories crowding my mind.
Top is standing at the front of the room, his hands behind him.
‘You come to us as a product, in part, of the culture in which you were raised,’ he says. ‘A culture that reacts differently to capture depending on whether you are male or female.’
He rocks up onto the balls of his feet. ‘I will challenge that,’ he says.
The women got Ben-Haim. He had us strip naked and tie each other up. We didn’t dare laugh, but there were some sly winks and nervous whispers. Then he put bags over our heads and made us stand for hours. Men we couldn’t see strolled through our ranks, making obscene threats and laughing at us.
And behind them, Ben-Haim walked, so quietly my ears ached to hear where he was. He touched us or slapped us painfully at random, without reason or excuse.
I could hear his voice, like a gray knife sliding under my skin:
You will smile and sing lullabies if you have to. You will do whatever it takes to make your captors believe they have the upper hand. Whatever it takes, because there is nothing more important than staying alive. Nothing. Not your dignity, the sanctity of your body, your morals, your ethics. Nothing. Dead women don’t get away. You will survive.
That had only been the softening up.
A dozen women left the unit without passing that test.
I wouldn’t have passed, without the strongbox to lock things away.
Something touched my lips and I jerked in shock, but it was only the guy from the front, holding a water bottle for me.
I drank thirstily.
“Thank you,” I muttered hoarsely.
His mouth was a thin, hard line and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He’d probably been assigned to this truck randomly and once we reached our destination, he’d have other duties. Evans was the one who’d be guarding me. The Wind River Were didn’t like it.
I couldn’t say anything else to him.
I would endure. Evans would make a mistake. Eventually.
The guard reached into the back and tugged the edge of the cloak from under me. “Sit up,” he said, and I did, letting him pull it around me.
Which meant I had a great view of what happened next.
The lead truck slowed. I craned my neck. There was a metal barrel in the middle of the track.
Oh, my God.
The second truck wobbled and ran into the back of the first without braking. The rest screeched to a halt.
“What the fuck?” the driver swore.
I twisted and dived into the footwell.
The windshield shattered with a bang. The driver shuddered and collapsed over the steering wheel. The barrel in front of the convoy exploded. There was another explosion behind us, and suddenly there was a wave of dark shapes breaking over the trucks.
The freaking cavalry was here.
Evans was half-way out of the truck when the door slammed back into him.
“Don’t kill them,” I yelled, keeping my head down.
Even if they knew I was here, an accidental bullet is still a bullet.
Shots were fired. There were shouts a
nd screams, and then, abruptly, it was all over.
“Amber?” a deep voice boomed.
I looked up carefully. The gathering gloom of evening seemed to pool into one huge figure at the open door of the car.
“Silas?”
“Yelena,” Silas yelled. “She’s here.”
He lifted me out gently. I groaned at the stabbing pain in my shoulders as my weight came to bear on them.
Yelena ran up, pulling out a knife to cut my ropes.
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t cut them. And keep that bastard alive.” I kicked Evans’ unconscious body.
“What?” Yelena and Silas were frowning at me. Head injury, I could see the thought hit them both.
“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’ll explain.”
They watched dubiously as I hobbled around the SUV. The driver had been hit by a hollow point round, right through the chest. He’d been dead before his head hit the steering wheel. The guard who’d given me water had gotten out of the car, but he was dead too, and I was sorry for that. He’d ended up on the wrong side and he’d have handed me over to whatever Amaral had planned for me, but he hadn’t been evil like Evans.
Yelena had followed. She caught me carefully, trying not to put pressure on my arms.
“Slow down. You’re okay now,” she said. “Let us help you.”
“No,” I said, putting out all the House authority I could muster. I pulled gently away from her, and she released me, frowning again.
Silas had joined us, and behind him another Were. For a moment, I thought it was Ben. Right marque, wrong man, wrong level. This was the Cimarron pack alpha, and I became aware of more Cimarron behind him.
“Ma’am,” he said. His voice was measured and growly. “You’re safe now. Let us get those ropes. They look damned uncomfortable.”
On him, the crusty Were paternalism was kind of sweet.
“Believe me, I’d like nothing more,” I said. They had no idea how true that was; I’d had a hell of a day and I didn’t look forward to making it worse. “But these ropes have to stay exactly the way they are. I know where Diana is. She’s in Amaral’s camp. And I need for Evans to escape with me as his prisoner, so that little shit can take me right to them.”