Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  He was not leaving this place unsatisfied.

  How could a man declare love for a thing like yourself? Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them, like the trash that they are.

  Tam tuned the insidious ghostly voice out with effort. Fuck off, Novak, she whispered silently. You’re dead. You lost the game.

  Evil old bastard. At it again. Chipping away at her, from the inside. None of it is true, she reminded herself. Don’t be fooled. Don’t fall for it. Don’t let him win. He would not drag her down with him now, when she was home free.

  On the outside, anyway. On the inside, she was a ragged mess.

  She dragged her attention back to the music blasting into her headphones and focused on the bracelet she was working on. The evil, whispering voice was backing off with time, but oh, so slightly and oh, so slowly. Every time she spaced out and stared blankly into space, which was often, Novak’s raspy voice was there to fill the gap, whispering his constant stream of cruelty and filth.

  Damn. She had to get over this. Rachel was traumatized, too, and Tam had to be strong for her. She could not afford to whine and mope.

  But oh, God, it was hard. She weighed two tons. She felt so tired, so sad and empty. The fucked-up arm and the near-lethal dose of poison on top of it all had wiped her out. So did pining for Val. Not twenty seconds passed that she was not thinking of him, dreaming of him. Lusting for him, too, now that the worst of the poison had worked itself out of her system. She was starting to feel almost human again, even a little bit female, which meant that erotic dreams of him had begun to torment her, along with the hideous nightmares. She’d be hard put to say which type of dream was the most upsetting.

  He had not called or texted or e-mailed. Granted, neither had she. She’d grabbed Rachel and run, over oceans and continents, as soon as she’d been capable of standing. Well before the doctors had wanted to let her go.

  She could not bear to see him. She’d been in overload. Poisoned, polluted, sickened by everything, herself included. It had overcome her. The poison she’d swallowed, being slimed by Georg, having Rachel taken, threatened. The mental poison that Novak had force-fed her. Those videos, playing and playing in her head.

  And that last awful conversation she’d had with Val. He, spitting with rage and betrayal, handcuffed to the bed. She, spraying a drug into his face so she could run off and murder someone.

  All things considered, they had issues.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of him looking at her the way she felt. She flinched from being seen by anyone. It hurt, it burned. The only reason she permitted it at all was for Rachel’s sake.

  That was why she allowed the McCloud contingent to hang out here, always underfoot and driving her slowly but surely bugfuck. So that Rachel would have one more healthy, sane point of reference, besides the long-suffering Rosalia. She could not trust herself to be one. On the contrary.

  She’d thought about contacting Val by e-mail, with the electronic distance giving her a little emotional protection. Had even gone so far as to pull up the Capriccio Consulting Web site contact page on her computer screen, even typing a few words.

  Something had always laid a heavy, smothering hand over each attempt. The same something that kept playing the erotic footage of San Vito and the Huxley hotel over and over in her head, the images cheapened by the camera’s cold, unfriendly eye into porn.

  She saw glowing, malevolent green eyes watching her in the dark when she lay in bed not sleeping. When she did get to sleep, she dreamed of herself, skim milk pale and covered with goosebumps, cold, wearing soiled, limp, red silk lingerie. Alone, shivering in the snow. All the many monsters of her life circling round, licking their lips.

  And that voice, whispering. That evil voice. Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them, like the trash that they are.

  This wasn’t her usual horror of being made a fool of. This was worse. The stakes were so much higher. If she called it wrong, if she opened herself up, offered herself to Val, and proved to be mistaken, she wouldn’t just feel like a fool. Not this time.

  She would be dead. Destroyed. It would be the end. She didn’t have the courage to risk it. Her reserves of courage were all used up.

  Hah. Now who was being melodramatic? She slid her hand up under the goggles to wipe the tears away. What would she say to him if she got him on e-mail anyway? Hi, what’s up? How do you feel?

  God help her. Did she really want to know?

  Even now, she imagined that she could feel his presence. Her skin prickled with warmth. If she turned, there he’d be, gazing at her out of those dark, smoldering eyes filled with speechless longing.

  But she would not give in to the urge to turn. The blankness she felt when she saw the empty space where he wasn’t was too fucking depressing. She had to stop doing that to herself.

  But her neck itched madly, hairs prickling. She took off the headphones, and hesitated for a moment. Her heart thudded.

  Ah, what the hell. Why not compound her misery?

  She turned, looked . . . and gasped.

  The world shifted on its axis. Her blush started from the very soles of her feet, or even deeper. From some other lost dimension of her being: the molten core of her soul, the bottom of the ocean of her heart.

  She felt naked. Inside out. Sweet, shivering chills chased themselves across her skin. Part terror, part astonished joy.

  He said nothing, just gazed at her. His hair was longer, too long for the cool style he had before. It dangled over his eyes and ears in unkempt waves, streaked with threads of stark white.

  He was thinner, more compact than before. His eyes shadowed, his skin paler, his jaw sharp. His cheekbones jutted out like they’d been carved with a dull knife. But it was him.

  God, how he filled the space he occupied. How he dominated it. He took the place he inhabited and claimed it utterly, made it his own.

  The way he had claimed her. By some freak miracle.

  She cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to say something?” The words burst past the aching block in her throat.

  His mouth twitched. “I was waiting for you to start.”

  She snorted out of sheer force of habit. “Typical. Men always shrug off the responsibility.”

  “No, Tamar. It is you who are being typical,” he said calmly. “Hiding behind your sarcasm the way a child hides behind her mother’s legs. Traveling across the world to you is a statement in itself. I am awaiting a response to it.”

  Her blush got hotter. She didn’t know what to look at, what to do with her hands, with her mouth. She felt . . . fluttery. A speechless ditz.

  “My response,” she repeated. “What am I supposed to respond?”

  His lips twitched, a wicked ghost of a smile hinting at how much he was enjoying her flustered state. She wanted to smack him for it, the uppity bastard. Condescending to her.

  “Anything you like,” he said blandly. “But if you need suggestions, I will gladly give them to you.”

  She clenched her jaw, forbidding herself to weep. “No one tells me what to say or think,” she said inanely. Gah. As if it needed to be said.

  His deep-grooved, blindingly beautiful grin rocked her back, gasping for breath. “Certainly not,” he said. “The very idea.”

  “What do you want from me, Janos?” she demanded.

  “Everything,” he said simply. “And call me Val. I have earned that much from you, by now.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Back off. Too much, too soon.”

  He was silent for a moment. “If you wish. I am in no hurry. I am not going anywhere. We can go as slowly as you like.”

  “This is my place,” she flared. “I say who stays and who goes.”

  “Of course, of course,” he soothed. “Let us talk of things that do not make you anxious. Neutral topics.”

  She was irritated afresh. Condescending to her again. “We have no neutral topics,” she snapped.

  He sigh
ed. “You are a difficult woman,” he said plaintively.

  She gave him a tight, falsely sweet smile. “Oh? Do ya think?”

  He flicked his gaze upward, praying for patience, no doubt. “How about the weather?” he suggested, his voice even.

  She waved her hand toward the window. “Take a look,” she said. “It’s gray. There’s fog. It’s the Washington coast. End of conversation. Nice try. No dice.”

  “All right, moving on,” he murmured. “How is Rachel?”

  That was far from a neutral subject. “She’s better,” Tam said cautiously. “She still has screaming nightmares every night. But she’s started to talk again, and she’s eating a little more and going outside the house, at least when I’m with her.”

  He nodded. “Good, then. I am glad. And your health?”

  She shrugged. “Fine.”

  He let his waiting silence speak for him, insisting.

  Tam made a rude, impatient sound. “Really. I’m not lying to you. The last time I had liver function tests, there was definite improvement. The tissue is regenerating. There’s some organ damage, of course, but nothing that’ll kill me any time soon. I’m not going to climb Everest or run any marathons for a while, that’s all. It was just the month-long mother of all hangovers.”

  “And the arm?” he persisted. “The McClouds told me you had surgeries.”

  “The McClouds talk way too much,” Tam muttered. “And one in particular takes quite a lot upon herself to open my door to uninvited guests. That McCloud is going to hear from me about it.”

  His mouth tightened. “Ah. That’s all I am to you, Tamar? An uninvited guest?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do not guilt trip me, Janos.”

  “Why not?” he said. “I have nothing to lose. I might as well see if guilt will work with you, since nothing else does. I saw what that poison did to Georg. I thought you were dying. Why did you not tell me that you had taken the antidote?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “I had a lot on my mind.”

  His mouth hardened. “You really are a bitch, Tamar.”

  “And that’s a surprise to you? That’s not liable to change, Janos. If it puts you off—”

  “It does not put me off,” he said. “On the contrary.”

  She floundered for a moment. “I—I—what do you—”

  “I know you now, Tamar,” he said. “The more acid you are, the more tender the place you are trying to protect. The crueler you are to me, the more I have cause to hope.”

  Cause to hope. His words made her heart shake in her chest.

  “I told you once before not to pin a softer side onto me,” she said, but her unsteady voice betrayed her.

  He let his silence speak for him once again—for such a long time, she began to twitch. “You are lying because you are afraid,” he said finally. “But you need not be afraid of me.”

  “Um.” She decided to ignore that loaded statement, and groped for a neutral topic to replace it with. “So how’s your health, Janos?”

  The bastard had the nerve to look as if he was trying not to smile. “What about it?” he said lightly. “What do you care? I am no one to you. I am just an uninvited guest, no? You do not even call me by my name.”

  “Cut the crap and answer the question,” she snapped.

  He shrugged. “There were many holes to mend,” he said matter-of-factly. “I lost a great deal of blood. My convalescence would have gone more quickly if you had been near me.”

  “I’m glad to see it went just fine anyway,” she said crisply.

  The silence lengthened. Tam was on the verge of flinging herself at him when he looked around her studio with a rueful smile.

  “I almost didn’t recognize the road to your house,” he said.

  She sniffed. “Ah, yes. That. I changed the look of everything in the interests of getting the hell over my own paranoid bullshit. It was just overcompensation, anyway. I started feeling embarrassed by it.”

  “You have less to be afraid of now,” Val said. “With Georg and Novak dead. And PSS is working on making you disappear from all the Most Wanted databases of the world.”

  “They are?” She was startled. “Why on earth would they do that?”

  He shrugged. “Because I told them to.”

  The edge in his voice made her look at him more closely. “I didn’t know you had that kind of clout with them,” she said.

  He waved his hand dismissively. “They were embarrassed about Hegel and Berne’s involvement in a mafiya turf war,” he said. “Bad for the company’s image. I told them I would be pleased to keep my mouth shut—if they did what they could for you.”

  She blinked. “Ah. So you’re bullying them now? I’m surprised they didn’t just kill you.”

  “Let them try,” he said.

  She swallowed. “No,” she said quietly. “I would rather they didn’t.”

  “Would you? How kind,” he said, his voice laced with irony. “In any case, you should not have much trouble now from anyone.”

  “That is my hope,” she said stiffly. “I’ve lost my taste for trouble.”

  “I have not,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “There is some trouble that I still would welcome.”

  She broke eye contact quickly and stared down at the jewelry that she’d been working on. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Feelings vibrated inside her at a screamingly high frequency.

  His footsteps sounded soft and deliberate, moving closer to her. “What are you working on now?” he asked quietly.

  She invited him with her hand to take a look at what was on the bench. “See for yourself.”

  He looked at the items she’d been working on, and carefully picked up a ring. It was a streamlined blend of white and colored gold knotwork, with a blazing sun as the centerpiece, a yellow diamond glittering in its core.

  “Very beautiful,” he said. “This looks too big for a woman’s hand.”

  “It’s not for a woman’s hand,” she said.

  He slanted her a startled glance and then reexamined the ring in his hand. “No? Did you not tell me that you only design jewelry for women? Was that not part of your philosophy?”

  “I did, and it was,” she admitted. “But this ring is not for a woman.”

  He slid it onto his left hand, and admired the effect. “It fits.”

  She shrugged. “It’s part of a matched set.”

  “Ah, sì? Show me the other pieces.”

  She picked up the other ring, a smaller one. “For the woman,” she said. She put it in his outstretched hand. This one was white gold knotwork, with tiny accents of yellow gold, with a crescent moon curled around a small white diamond.

  He stared down at the pieces, a frown of concentration on his face. “They are perfect,” he said. “What are their defense applications?”

  Her blush began to rise again. “There are none.”

  He swiveled his head toward her, taken aback. “None?”

  She shook her head.

  Val closed his hand over the woman’s ring. “I want them.” His voice rang fiercely. “These rings are mine.”

  She bit her lip, still unable to look into his face. “They’ll cost you.”

  “I’ll give you everything I have,” he said promptly.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not a very shrewd bargainer, Janos.”

  “Do not play with me. Do not be flip. Not about something so important,” he said roughly. “Be silent if you cannot control yourself.”

  He grabbed her left hand and slid the woman’s ring onto her ring finger. It fit, of course. He put her hand up to his lips, and kissed it. “Beauty for beauty’s sake alone?”

  She covered her shaking mouth, embarrassed. “I suppose so.”

  “No more deadly secrets?”

  She started to shake with silent, helpless laughter. “I don’t have any secrets from you,” she said at last. “I’ve tried to keep them, but it just never seems to work out. I’m giving up the e
ffort. Go ahead, Val. Know all my nasty, deadly, dangerous secrets if you feel like it. Knock yourself out.”

  He kissed her hand again. “I am honored to know them.”

  “Nice, nice,” she scoffed. “You’re good at putting a pretty spin on things, Janos. Did they teach you that in gigolo school?”

  He winced. “Ouch. Must you always deflate me?”

  “Always,” she warned. “I’m hardwired that way. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that love will change me.”

  His grin went suddenly incandescent. “I could weep for joy to hear you say the word love for the first time. But for the fact that it would frighten you into fits if I did.”

  “Frightened? Me? Hah.” She glared at him, but could not maintain the expression when he touched her face with his fingertip that way, as if she were a flower. Rare, precious, and delicate.

  He leaned his forehead against hers, and the hot point of contact was so sweet, as intimate as a kiss but more oblique, more secret. She did not flinch away from it. She melted into it, softening.

  He slid his hands down, over her shoulders, over her ribs, to the warm, bare skin of her waist, and then skimmed them upward, pulling the black T-shirt with them. Tam raised her arms, let him tug it over her head, pulling wisps of hair loose and dangling around her face.

  She gazed at him, naked to the waist. “It’s not the first time,” she said. “I said the word once before.”

  He froze. A muscle in his jaw pulsed. “After you drugged me? So it wasn’t just a dream?”

  “No. It wasn’t a dream. I said it.” She shivered, feeling exposed. The pants hung low on her hips. He drew the drawstring bow loose, with a slow, deliberate pull. The soft, crumpled linen garment puddled around her feet, leaving her entirely naked. “And I meant it,” she finished in a whisper.

  “Ah, Tamar,” he whispered back.

  She flinched violently at the gentle touch of his hands spanning her waist. For a moment, it was just as she had feared it would be.

  She cringed, her body going hard and tight with self-loathing at his touch. Still hearing that low, rasping voice, droning endlessly. Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them like the trash that they are.