Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  Ingram made a whirling gesture with his hand. The pilot got the engine turning again, and bent his head to concentrate on his checks.

  “Can’t say I fully understand it,” Ingram said. “Mr. Altau said we were alike in many ways. He seemed to think you’d want these. That you’d be looking for a place holder, too.”

  Turning his back so the pilot couldn’t see, Ingram dipped his hand into his coat pocket and came out with a bulky packet, which he held out to me.

  What? Why hadn’t he just destroyed it?

  “There’s…” he started to say something and paused, as if he was waiting for inspiration. He looked old and tired. Eventually he shook his head and, without another word, bent over and walked quickly back to the helicopter.

  I got well back as the thud of the blades changed pitch and the helicopter lifted.

  Stranger and stranger.

  Why did Skylur think that I’d want the tapes? A place holder? Had Diana spoken to him about my wanting redemption somehow?

  A trickle of worry began to take hold. I turned my back on the snowstorm kicked up by the helicopter and looked in the packet.

  Two tapes.

  Old VCR tapes lasted for three hours or more, if I recalled. Forsythe couldn’t have needed more than one for me. However it felt at the time.

  I took the first out. In the light from the ranch, I could make out the writing. Printed on the top was the brand name and the maximum duration of 180 minutes. Then written in marker pen the date, which I’d never forget. My stomach twisted with nausea. Beneath the date, my initials AF. The pen was broad, Forsythe’s writing just as I remembered it, square and neat, like a stencil.

  In this light, the color of the ink came out as black, making me think of blood under UV.

  I pulled the second tape from the package. I frowned. The date was more than a month later. I was gone from Denver by that time. I was at boot camp.

  And beneath the date, in the same careful, blocky writing, were the initials KF.

  Inside Straight

  Prologue

  Midnight in the heart of the Painted Desert, and the tattered dead rise up like the dust of dreams behind her whispering feet.

  Their features are blurred, the many dead; all the once-proud edges have been caressed into soft, uncertain shapes, the way stone is carved by centuries of wind and rain. Moonlight flows through them as if through troubled water, and they raise a million tangled, untold stories to fly like banners behind them.

  They’re called here, the dead, from their silent graves along the countless sorrowing trails. Here, where the mountains still breathe and the rocks talk. Here, where rain is a blessing on the seared earth, and the sun looks down on the yellow corn as it dances to the desert’s tune.

  Here, where they may find those who may listen, in this sacred place.

  Tullah listens as she steps the circle through the cold depths of the night. Every night. It’s her choice. Her atonement. In exchange, the dead swirl behind, obedient to the summons, and their spirits cloak the kiva in which her family and friends sleep underground.

  She can feel the searchers she hides them from; great, blind monsters snuffling over the hills and through the valleys, flickering spirit tongues testing the city airs, cold spirit hands like spiders creeping across the plains.

  As the days have crept by, there are more of them, instead of less.

  Her family and the others are safe, so long as the legions of dead surround the kiva—around, above, below, and make it a place between the physical world and the spirit world. The searchers slide over them, oblivious, unable sense the kiva and the people within.

  So far.

  This masking is Chatima’s working, a powerful working, shamanic and obscure to the searchers, and without it they would have found her long ago. It is a spell of strange and awful beauty, locked here around this place of power. Tullah maintains the working, treading the circle every night, and takes some pride that she does it well.

  But it cannot last forever. They have reached a point of balance between the dangers of staying here and the dangers of moving.

  She has discussed this with Chatima and with her parents. They’ve waited as long as they dare with the spirit world pressing in so close. Being with the spirits takes its toll: the sun-struck lethargy; the night-long, dreamy disconnection from the physical world; the feeling of being more spirit than flesh.

  Not for the first time, Tullah thinks of the kiva as a grave.

  Much longer inside and it will be; their spirits will untether from their bodies.

  Even before that, the fragile tethers to spirit guides will part, and prevent her from ever getting Kaothos back.

  The thought of that sinks claws into her chest, making it difficult to breathe. If that happens, she might as well become one with the spirit world.

  But not the others. They shouldn’t suffer.

  It’s her the searchers are looking for, because they think she still has Kaothos. Not that it would be a good idea to point out their error: being caught without Kaothos is even worse. They’ll know that they could use her as a way to draw Kaothos into a trap. It would actually be safer for them to do it that way.

  She has to leave. She has to evade the searchers. She has to return things to the way they were before.

  The rest of them won’t be in danger for long, once she’s gone.

  She must prepare herself. She can’t perform Chatima’s workings on her own, nor can this working be moved from this sacred place, but she has concealment spells of her own that might do for the time it takes to get back to Denver. Matt says that’s where Kaothos and Diana are heading right now.

  She must go soon. She must go alone. All thoughts of the deadly situation aside, her crippling shame is infecting everyone. Even Matt.

  As the moon slips across the night sky, someone walks beside her on the circle path.

  The dead sometimes do that, so it takes her a while to notice it’s Chatima.

  Whether she’s in her body or she’s spirit walking, Tullah is not entirely sure. Here, in the place between, it’s not always possible to tell.

  “There are many paths to go forward, but none to go back,” Chatima says, as if she hears the thoughts in Tullah’s mind about returning things to the way they were before. “And every path bears death and sorrow and pain and loss.”

  Amber’s words.

  Tullah’s tears fall to the dusty path, to be lost among the dreams of the dead.

  “All the things I’ve ever done,” she whispers. “In balance with all the things I will do. I will make this right.”

  “The world is a maze, child. The way is never straight. But look up sometimes, for the sky remains pure.”

  Tullah raises her eyes. Chatima is right; the light of the crescent moon has a silver purity. It’s calming.

  The shaman Adept is no longer beside her when she looks back down.

  “All the things I’ve ever done,” she repeats to the listening dead. The words seemed so simple when Amber spoke them. She’d heard them with her ears, but she’d not felt them in her heart. The words had seemed so light.

  Now they are like draglines on her soul.

  The dead do not shy away from her shame. The dead stay with her.

  Their thousand, thousand voices rustle like dry leaves. If she let them, they would leech the shame from her. It would be so easy; spirits hunger for the emotions of the living. Yes, it would be so easy to let them feed, but they would take all. And when they finished, she would be one of them.

  Thoughts like that come to her. It’s not a good place, this between, not for anyone, and especially not for her.

  Alongside the thoughts, she sees visions and hears voices.

  She sees Evans sometimes. The man she killed in the battle at Carson Park. Her hands tingle and she feels the snap as his neck breaks, all over again. The sickening, appalling moment of savage pleasure and the following flood of shame and recrimination.

  It’s not about
him. He deserved to die. It’s about you.

  It feels as if Amber herself is speaking the words to her, and they do help.

  Sometimes the visions are a comfort as she walks: the cougar, down off her lonely range; the bear, awakened from her sleep; the buffalo, up from the grasslands. The coyote. The fox. The snake. The owl. The raven.

  Sometimes it’s not a comfort: her dragon walks silently with her, a vision of all she’s lost. And often, when the dawn breaks, the strange wolf will stand on the cliff with the rising sun behind her, a vision aflame. Chatima is uneasy about the wolf, though she tries to hide that. Openly, she says it signifies the hope of redemption, but in her heart of hearts, Tullah knows that for her, it’s a vision of shame, and a symbol of forgiveness denied.

  Chapter 1

  “Amber. Amber. Wake up. Sorry. Phone call. You have to deal with this.”

  It was Pia whispering in my ear, shaking me awake in the small hours.

  “From Tullah?” I mumbled, reaching out a hand.

  I was dreaming of her... walking a circle... death and sorrow...

  “No.”

  Alex was rising off the bed, hearing trouble in Pia’s voice, imagining a threat, his eyes halfway to wolf already when Pia held up a hand to stop him.

  Jen rolled over sleepily and tried to drag us both back.

  “Athanate business,” Pia explained. “It’s a House Lloyd. I don’t know her. She apologizes, but says it’s urgent and private. I’ve transferred her to the phone in Jen’s study.”

  I slipped on a bathrobe and frowned as I followed Pia out of the bedroom.

  My House regularly ‘borrowed’ my cell and dealt with callers so I wasn’t disturbed. A middle-of-the-night call from some House that I had to take myself meant trouble. And an unknown House?

  “I thought you knew all the Houses,” I said as we climbed the stairs. “Unless—she’s not from Carpathia or the Empire, is she?”

  That would open a can of worms that I didn’t need right now.

  “With a name like Lloyd?” Pia said. “No, she’s American, from the slight accent. That’s what’s so strange—I thought I knew them all. But she’s a real House; she spoke perfect Athanate and used all the correct protocol.”

  I thought that over. “Diazoun?” I suggested.

  Pia’s eyes widened slightly. “I hope not,” she muttered.

  So did I—that would be another squirmy, messy can of worms.

  It had once been acceptable to be diazoun: to cut all ties with other Athanate, and live without getting involved in the squabbles of creeds, or the responsibilities of associations. It wasn’t acceptable anymore. Skylur had declared every Athanate in the US had to be associated, directly or through intermediary Houses like me, to House Altau. Diazoun now had the same connotations as epitre, which, though it translated approximately as ‘unorthodox’, really meant ‘unacceptable’.

  Rogues were epitre.

  Rogues were put down.

  A diazoun House wanting my help would put me in a tricky spot, and however patient Skylur had been with me so far, there were limits.

  Pia stopped at the study door. The caller had said private.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said. “Speak cautiously. Call me if you don’t feel you understand the political implications of anything.”

  The Athanate can be picky about how things are asked for and agreed on.

  “You mean like the approved way to ask why the hell she’s requesting an urgent, private conversation in the middle of the night while everyone’s in bed?” I grumbled.

  Pia just ushered me inside and closed the door behind me.

  On the table, the sleek handset’s ‘hold’ light blinked.

  I sat down and, despite the hour, the last traces of sleepiness vanished.

  I picked up the handset and punched the button.

  “This is House Farrell,” I said. My Athanate was still poor, so I spoke in English. Maybe that would cut down on any ambiguities about how things could or should be said.

  I should be so lucky.

  “Thank you for taking my call, House Farrell. I apologize for the hour. My name is Amanda Lloyd, House Lloyd.”

  Her voice was smooth, and despite what Pia had said, I thought it was nearly accentless, but it gave the impression of being tightly controlled. This sounded like a strong woman under considerable stress.

  “House Lloyd,” I said. “May I ask what’s so urgent that you needed to speak to me in the middle of the night? Especially as my Head of Protocol is unfamiliar with your House.”

  I heard her take a breath, and then she said, “We’re diazoun. From Michigan. House Farrell, I’m calling to beg sanctuary from you.”

  Shit!

  I’d gotten it in one guess—a can of worms.

  From what I knew about Athanate protocols, ‘sanctuary’ could mean either simple protection, or becoming a sub-House. It was all trouble, but the amount depended on which she wanted.

  If—for some insane reason—I accepted House Lloyd’s Blood oath and made her my sub-House, then all her problems suddenly became mine. But on the other hand, if I took her diazoun House under my wing without making her part of my House, it would mean I, too, could be declared epitre, along with my entire House.

  In the usual, absolute, Athanate way, there was some balance applied to this situation: in asking for sanctuary, she was offering me the power of life or death over her and her House.

  It wasn’t a move to be considered lightly and I had no idea why she needed sanctuary—and from me in particular—but it couldn’t be good.

  I shivered. Athanate politics was deadly and complex. My impulse was to just say no immediately, but I’d already heard something in her voice that stopped me from rejecting her outright. I felt I had to at least listen to the woman.

  Didn’t mean I should go easy on her.

  “Michigan. So, you’re from House Prowser’s territory,” I said. “I have to warn you that I’m a direct sub-house of Altau, and House Prowser is a senior ally and close friend of House Altau. If you’re on the run because you’ve offended or betrayed her in some way, I can’t help you.”

  I was being less than diplomatic, especially by Athanate standards, but it was the middle of the night, and if she needed sanctuary, she was in no position to complain about my manners.

  “We’re not running from House Prowser,” she said. “I don’t believe she will contest our departure.”

  She believed. She didn’t know. And she hadn’t said she wasn’t on the run—just not from Prowser. This wasn’t sounding any better, and I was losing patience.

  “Well then, who are you running from? And why are you proposing to come over a thousand miles to Colorado? There must be dozens of Houses between here and there.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then: “House Farrell, I am desperate, and it can only be you.”

  That iron control was slipping, and a raw need was singing to me down the line.

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Because Scott, my eldest kin…” she paused, a catch in her breath, and I could hear she was gathering herself, fighting to keep her voice level. “Because he’s dying. I lost my other two kin in a car accident a year ago and I thought I’d lost him as well. I... can’t. I can’t lose him too. Not even now I have more kin. He’s been with me all my Athanate life.”

  The sheer power of her simple words held a weight I could not turn aside, and the shock of emotions she’d let slip combined with my guilt over thinking this appeal had been all about Athanate politics.

  I leaned forward over the phone, as if that movement would somehow make a difference to her.

  “Can’t you heal him?”

  The question came quicker than I could stop it, but even as I spoke, it sounded heartless.

  She didn’t flinch from answering.

  “Not from age, House Farrell. It’s complex. We were separated for a year. If we hadn’t been, I would have infused him while he was still stron
g so he could become Athanate. Now it’s too late; he’d never survive crusis from an ordinary infusion.”

  Finally, her purpose and her need became clear to me.

  Oh, damn!

  “You want me to infuse him?”

  Me, with my unique blood.

  “It’s his only hope,” she said. “I’m told your infusion carries less severe crusis and he has a chance of surviving it.”

  I wasn’t ready for this. Every time I thought about infusing someone I felt a leap of eagerness inside, immediately squashed by the fear that it would go wrong.

  “My infusion hasn’t been tested,” I pointed out. “The rumor may have told you my Blood shortens crusis but it’s just that—a rumor. It may kill him outright. Even if it doesn’t, I guess the rumor also told you I’m hybrid Athanate-Were. My infusion may make him a werewolf and drive him rogue.”

  “It’s better to hope than do nothing,” she said. “Please, House Farrell. I’m begging you. Send us back to Michigan if you must. But please, infuse him first.”

  I hesitated. If Prowser wasn’t after her, then Skylur might agree to my giving sanctuary. And there was pressure on me to test my infusion. Nothing like an order from Skylur yet, but definite reminders from time to time.

  Could I use that as a reason for Skylur to agree to them staying?

  Finally, I said, “Well, in any case, you understand I’m going to have to talk to others and ask questions before I can commit to anything?”

  Skylur, House Prowser, Bian. There were a lot of people who had to agree if we were going to move forward.

  “I understand, House Farrell. We’re at the state border. May we come on to Denver? Please? I’m sure I can explain it all better in person.” She faltered, and I got the sense she was working hard to speak calmly and evenly again. “If your final answer is no, I will understand.”

  I could feel how much that last comment had cost her.