Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  She rocks me gently; her lips kiss my eyes closed.

  “I cannot stay with you,” she says. “These are difficult times and I am afraid, for you as much as for me. I will go on, and wait for you, however long you may be.”

  I don’t understand, but I say, “I will come.”

  “Trust thyself…” she starts.

  This one I know. She told me this before. “…and another will not betray thee,” I whisper.

  The room gets darker and fainter.

  I’m in the desert.

  The khamsin sighs with the song of a forgotten sea and I feel the desert rain fall on my face. It’s warm and salty.

  Chapter 19

  I woke late in the day to a bed as empty as the desert and a scribbled note on the table.

  Some emergency. Possible surge of Basilikos agents down in East LA. Alex would be out until they had been nailed.

  I had to have been deeply asleep to have missed him getting up. I could vaguely remember half waking…something about the sound of the pen scratching against the paper. No, not quite scratching…hissing? Weird. Maybe that had slipped into my dreams. Like Diana.

  No.

  I’d dreamed of the desert, but Diana had been here last night. That wasn’t a dream. She said Bian would be here today and Skylur would need to talk to me later.

  I’m good to go? Or a session with Bian first?

  No compulsions. That wasn’t a dream either.

  I probed where they’d been. Mom. Tullah. Felix. Ingram.

  Oh, my God!

  I had to sit back down on the bed, with my heart pounding. There was no mental swerving away from all the outside pressures that Diana’s compulsions had been protecting me from. The compulsions were gone all right.

  Calm. Calm.

  I’d need briefings. Jen and Alex and Bian and Skylur. What had been said, how everything had been left, what was expected of me now.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing.

  The bed smelled of hot, wolfy sex and at least that took my mind away from everything I needed to be doing.

  Nothing to be done until after some food, or Bian’s visit, or whatever.

  I pulled on sweats, tied my hair back, splashed water on my face and went downstairs.

  Yelena’s eyes took it all in.

  “Much better,” she said, deadpan. “Well done to Alex. My grandmother always said a good night of hard—”

  I clamped a hand over her mouth.

  Yes, the concept of privacy in an Athanate House was weak at best.

  Dominé and Dante were up early and about to go back down to the club. I gave them each a hug, burying my face against their necks. The trace of my marque weaving around their individual scents reassured my Athanate.

  To my amusement, Vera offered to go with them. She’d taken it on herself to make them welcome here yesterday, and I suspected this was more of the same. I had to wonder whether Vera realized what she was setting herself up for, visiting Club Vasana.

  There were still a couple of Altau guards down at the club, but I asked Yelena to drive the three of them down there. I wasn’t going out, and there needed to be someone protecting them on the commute.

  No sign of Bian, so after snacking, I went down to the gym we’d set up on the floor below and attacked the punching bag.

  I could almost hear Master Liu—this is not the way.

  But it depended what you were trying to do. Speaks-to-Wolves had told me that anger was my tool. It stood to reason I should practice controlling it, shaping it, focusing it.

  The punching bag became Tanner Forsythe, or any one of his sick friends.

  Focus. Strike. Strike. Strike.

  But somehow, there was no form, no purpose to it.

  Redemption.

  That word fed the anger. I punched until sweat poured down my face and stung my eyes. Why did that word keep coming back?

  Resolution. That was what Diana had said I needed. Just decide what to do and move on. Deal with Forsythe and put the whole thing behind me forever.

  I’m ready. If I kept saying it enough, it would be true.

  The sounds of my attack on the punching bag almost masked the fact I had a visitor. I wasn’t concerned: I still had an Altau team on guard duty.

  And as she came closer I picked up her marque—my eukori might be misfiring, but I could receive that okay.

  Bian strode in, dressed in her combat silks and carrying a long bag.

  “Good. You’re ready. We don’t have much time,” she said.

  “There’s no one else here,” I said.

  Diana said therapy sessions needed xenagia, the guide, and stirythes, the helpers.

  “This is just you and me, Round-eye.” She unzipped her bag and pulled out kendo training gear. Practice armor, masks, and bokken—the two-handed wooden swords. The bokken were made from tightly bound rattan sticks. The kind that hurt like hell when they hit. And the armor was shit—no more than padded vests. The masks were different; instead of the usual mesh bowls, she had light wooden masks carved and painted to represent Japanese Shinto demons, one blood red and the other deathly white.

  I groaned. I hated bokken. I knew the basics, but blade fighting was not my scene. Bian was faster and stronger than me, and her expertise with bladed weapons was downright scary. This was going to be painful.

  And how the hell is this going to be therapy, anyway?

  She tossed me my gear and warmed up with a blur of strikes and turns, her wooden sword weaving an impenetrable cage around her.

  So, so painful.

  “Ready?” she said when I had the padded vest on.

  I slipped the white mask down over my face and grunted ungracefully as I tried to center my stance around the unfamiliar weight in my hands.

  She glided in like an oiled cobra and our bokken kissed lightly in a flurry of blows.

  “Stop holding the sword,” she said. “It’s part of you.”

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  I kept her out, but I wasn’t fooled. She was still just warming up.

  There was an angry glow in the eyes behind her red fanged mask.

  What was it Dominé had said about masks? They allow our true selves to come out. Was this red demon some aspect of Bian I hadn’t seen before?

  Rap. Rap. Thump.

  She bounced her blade off mine and she used the position to whip it in and whack me across the ribs.

  Yeah, it hurt like I remembered. I also remembered you were supposed to take the blows and use the fact that your opponent overextended to hit back.

  My bokken swept down and I managed to catch her on the side of the thigh as she danced back.

  “Better, Round-eye,” she growled, and leaped in for a complex overhand attack that had me stumbling backwards as I defended desperately.

  Sweat started to sting my eyes again.

  “You’re holding out on me,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  “We’ve taken you apart and put you back together again.”

  She lunged and I danced to one side, my blade sweeping down into the empty space where her arms had been.

  Damn. Thought I had her.

  “Cleared the damage that Petersen and his Obs team did to you. But there’s still something you’re holding back. There’s poison you won’t let go.”

  Her blade flickered up at my face. I parried and moved in, trying to surprise her by using the handle of my bokken to hit her in the ribs.

  “Sneaky!” She twisted out of the way and shoved me off. “I like it when you try and catch me out.”

  Her bokken drooped temptingly as if her guard had fallen. I wasn’t fooled, but I was going to try anything to stop her questions.

  I leaped and thrust, but she wasn’t there.

  Her blade poked me in the ribs and I had to spin away.

  She chased me with a complex flurry of blows, alternating high and low.

  “Something missing,” she said, as calmly as
if we were talking recipes.

  Words and blades. As if she was backing me into a corner.

  “Shut up,” I said and made a low sweep to catch her knees.

  She jumped over my blade.

  “Sometimes when you hold poison inside, it becomes part of you,” she said. Her wooden blade whipped past my face as I stumbled out of the way. “No one likes to lose something that’s a part of themselves.”

  I doubled my attack to shut her up. It didn’t work.

  “With some people, it’s grief,” she said.

  Rap. Rap. She slipped past my bokken. Hers dipped, lifted and stabbed. The point thumped me in the gut, making me grunt.

  “With some, it’s hate.”

  My attack was dissolving in the face of hers. She’d become a blur of movement. My parries came later and later. I stopped her blade closer and closer to my aching flesh.

  “Or shame. Or fear,” she said. “And with some, it’s a mixture, all bottled up, just waiting to explode.”

  She split her attack, brushed my bokken aside and kicked me in the stomach.

  I used it to roll clear, put some distance between us.

  “There’s nothing left,” I managed to gasp, retreating in a circle as she stalked me.

  “No?” She casually threaded my defense and hit me across the mask. “Tell me about how you escaped from Forsythe’s house.”

  “I’ve told you.” I swung tiredly. I was amazed that I grazed her chest. “You’ve seen it in my head. Dozens of times.”

  She rapped my ribs again while I was out of position, and stepped backwards.

  “Take me through it again,” she said, barely breathing heavily despite the onslaught she’d unleashed on me. “You’ve gotten dressed. You’re leaving the basement. How many steps up to the hallway?”

  “Fifteen,” I said without thinking. I hadn’t realized I knew that. Maybe I counted them at the time.

  “So now you’re in the hall,” she prompted.

  “Yes.” It slipped out. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to go back there. I couldn’t.

  “No one’s there. Where are they?”

  When I hesitated, her bokken swept across my ribs, a stinging blow.

  “Upstairs!” I yelled. “I told you. You saw it.”

  “Why? Why are they upstairs?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Lie.” Her bokken shot through my defenses and glanced off my mask, leaving my head ringing.

  “Shit. Damn you.” I swung wildly at her, trying to get her to back away. She deflected every blow and came on. “Damn you. Leave me alone.”

  “Why are they upstairs?”

  “I don’t know!” Tears and sweat. My eyes were stinging. I could barely see her as she slipped around my ineffectual guard. Suddenly she was right in my face. She broke my grip on the blade. Her arm trapped mine and she hurled me over her hip in a judo move.

  She landed with a knee in my belly. The breath exploded out of me, and her bokken came down across my throat.

  “How do you know they’re upstairs?” she shouted.

  I can’t tell her. I can’t. I can’t. The same way I couldn’t tell Top and never did.

  “How?”

  She was relentless. Her bokken pressed harder on my throat.

  “I can hear them,” I gasped before she crushed my larynx.

  The pressure on my throat eased. She tore both our masks off and loomed over me, face inches from mine, eyes hard as knives.

  She let me go and I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t meet those eyes.

  This is my shame. She’s right. This is the poison in my heart.

  “You can hear them,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I shouted. I wanted this to be over, but I couldn’t go on. I would lose everything. I’d be too ashamed to look anyone in the face ever again.

  She wouldn’t stop. “What can you hear, Amber? You have to tell me.”

  Something broke inside me. Something ugly, something vile and corrosive that I’d locked away. The last of the last in my strongbox. The thing I could never let go.

  “They’re raping Fay,” I screamed at Bian. I was blinded with tears. “They’re all up there. Every sick bastard in the whole house and they’re taking turns with her. I can hear them. I can hear them laughing and joking like it’s funny. I can’t do anything.” The pressure came off me and I lashed out blindly, but Bian wasn’t there. “I can’t do anything. I can’t feel anything. If I feel anything I’ll have to try to stop them and they’ll rape me again. Or kill me. Or kill both of us. So I can’t feel anything. If I can’t feel anything, I can run away and save myself.”

  The anger went out of me and I collapsed back, sobbing.

  “So I run. I stop feeling anything so I can leave her there and I run. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I left her there.”

  Bian slipped in behind me. She made a pillow of her lap and lifted my head into it.

  “Shhh.” Her fingers stroked my hair. “Because of your shame at running away, you couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t even bear to see them afterwards. Because they’d know. They’d know you abandoned her. Even if she was a bitch you owed nothing to.”

  She slipped an arm beneath me, cradled me and began rocking gently.

  “And from this comes what you are today. Oh, my sister,” she whispered. “My wonderful, crazy sister.”

  Chapter 20

  Redemption. Redemption. Redemption.

  I failed Fay. I left her in that house. I did nothing. What if Forsythe—

  “Shhh.” Bian kissed my forehead. “You’re done with the therapy.”

  For a moment, I didn’t want to be done. I wanted Diana and Bian to scrub my memory.

  But I am all the things I’ve ever done, all the things that have ever been done to me.

  I had people who were depending on me now. I had to move forward.

  “You need to tell the others about this session,” she said. “You owe it to them.”

  I shook my head, but she ignored it. “When you tell them, it’ll break your misconception that they’d think any differently of you.”

  I would have to tell them face to face. The thought of looking them in the eye and speaking, rather than knowing they were there in a reliving session—it seemed harder.

  Bian’s eukori brushed mine. “You have to move on.”

  She was dosing me with pacifics; the pheromones were wafting down over me. Not as effective as Diana, but enough to help me relax.

  “It’s gotten more complex,” I said. “Not just Forsythe, but I have to do something about Fay.”

  My subconscious had been telling me for weeks.

  Redemption. Redemption. Redemption.

  More important than Forsythe?

  What Forsythe had done to me was history. But I’d failed Fay and that lived on. I’d failed by not doing anything, by being too ashamed to do anything, too numb to consider what she’d gone through.

  “Ease up.” Bian murmured as my heart struggled against the grip of the pacifics to race again.

  “What if Fay’s still suffering? I had the strongbox, and all of you. What if she’s had nothing all this time?”

  “Ease up,” she said again, her face devoid of expression. “Here’s the difficult part: I tracked everyone I could from your year at school to try and understand more of what happened. There were a couple I couldn’t find.”

  “Fay?”

  She nodded. “No record of Fay Daniels after she left South High.”

  I frowned. Nothing?

  “People don’t disappear,” I said, “present company excluded. Family? College? Driver’s license? Bank cards?” I licked my lips. “Police reports?”

  “I haven’t been able to check every possibility,” Bian said. “I’m no net wizard.”

  “Dead?” The word slipped from my mouth.

  Pray she hasn’t killed herself.

  “No reports of that either. Dead or
missing usually gets a report. My gut instinct tells me Forsythe’s the key to finding Fay. And you know…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s in LA.”

  She checked the time. “We’re due for a meeting with Skylur. We can talk more after; make some plans. Decide what it is you’re going to do.”

  I could think of several things that wouldn’t take a lot of planning and would be over quickly. If Forsythe had been in the room, I’m not sure whether I’d have changed and torn his face off, or dripped excruciating poisons into his bloodstream.

  I didn’t need to tell Bian that. She hated Forsythe with that sort of hate that starts low and burns upwards through your body.

  She’d kept her voice neutral when she’d talked about him, but the sort of thing she’d do to him was obvious to me. For her, this was personal too. I didn’t know why. I hoped someday she’d be able to share with me.

  In the meantime, what I had to do about Forsythe had just gotten more complicated.

  Bian was frowning. Her earpiece, discarded on her bag, squawked and I could hear Tom Sherman’s voice, loud in the stairwell. Along with the sound of boots—Altau guards, all of them in a hurry.

  They came bursting in moments later. All three had their ugly Herstal P90s out and Tom was wearing an Altau commset.

  “Both here,” he said into the mike. “Secured.”

  We got to our feet.

  “Tom, what the hell?” Bian said.

  “We have a situation,” he replied. “Multiple attacks. The worst confirmed so far: a cross-party group meeting off-site to discuss a complaint from the Were in LA and a Basilikos team hit them.”

  Alex was out there. And Yelena. Dominé and Dante.

  Tom wouldn’t have everything. It’d be confused.

  “Casualties?” I asked, keeping it level.

  Tom knew why I was asking.

  “Nothing on your House I know of. Two fatalities from that meeting. Four, if you count the assassins. I’m hearing a dozen others injured at other places.”

  “Who’s dead?” Bian said.

  “House Lindberg and the Diakon of House Karamazin.”

  Lindberg: the leader for the Swedish Athanate. Karamazin: a Diakon of an old Basilikos House, now Hidden Path. Why had they been targeted? Random, unfocused violence? An accident? Or had Karamazin been contemplating voting for Emergence?