Dragon Justice (22 page)

Aden Stosser, who hated everything we were, everything we stood
for—and hated her brother for creating us.

“No. Aden…would never attack directly, not like that. And I
don’t think she’s capable of physically hurting Ian, any more than he would hurt
her.”

Personally, I thought that Ben was giving both Stossers more
credit than they deserved…or maybe less. I didn’t say that.

“Then what? Who? We need to know. For our own safety, as well
as his, we need to know who else in this damned city is maybe aiming a smackdown
on us. And that means knowing what happened in Chicago.”

If it was related to Chicago, then odds were Ellen’s seeing
both Stosser and Wren dead were unrelated to this attack. But somehow…I didn’t
think so. The fact that Venec wasn’t shutting me down entirely meant he didn’t
think so, either. There were too many threads, and they were all tangling here,
in a city not our own.

“Benjamin.”

“Jesus. My mother used that exact same tone. Don’t do
that.”

He got up and stared out the window. I knew damn well he wasn’t
seeing the view, though. I sat on the bed and waited.

“Ian was your age, maybe a year older. His mother was seated
chair, Midwest Council.”

One of the most powerful pooh-bahs, even in a council of
overachievers. I’d known that, at one point, before Ian Stosser just became
Stosser-the-boss.

“His father… God, Michael was one of those people, the hair on
your arms stood up just being in the same room with him. I think he was born
with core. And the kindest, softest voice. I don’t think he ever raised his
voice once.”

Carrying that much power, he probably never needed to.

“What happened?” Because you could feel it coming, the way a
story has an inevitable ending.

“He was a researcher. Not just theory—he was trained as a
doctor.”

Rare—current use and hard science didn’t go well together,
because of all the tech used. Something like an electron microscope or an X-ray
machine....

“He did most of his work in the field, before Ian was
born—working in South America, where they didn’t have tech, just whatever they
could do with what they packed in. Tiny towns, up in the mountains and hidden in
jungles. Then he came back and married Sofia and spent the rest of his life
researching. He had a theory. He believed that current was a genetic
inheritance, but one that all humans had, in varying degrees. That it could be
enhanced, built up....”

“Like the woman in the Park.”

“What?” I’d jolted him from his memories, and he looked at me
blankly.

“The woman in the Park, the one who lured all the girls to her,
told them they’d be able to pool their abilities. We think she was trying to use
them to enhance her own.”

“Like a coven. That wasn’t Uncle Mike’s theory, but yeah, it’s
on the same sort of principle, that the use could be enhanced.”

“So what happened?” Because, yeah, this was not going to have a
good ending.

“Michael…” Not Uncle Mike now, I noted. “He started to become
obsessed with the idea. That it wasn’t so much Nulls and Talent, but a sliding
scale. He thought that if we could just find some way to test, early on… If we
could find them before they started to manifest, encourage even the latent skill
sets, we’d increase the population significantly.”

He paused.

“He thought that would be a wonderful thing.”

“And someone else didn’t.”

“Council. They’re jealous of their status. Not all of them, not
even most of them, but enough. They have this idea that current makes them
special, that they need answer only to their exact peers.” He swallowed, and now
I could feel him, still filled with sorrow and rage and confusion, still bright
despite the years he’d stored them.

I knew what he was talking about: I’d been raised Council, even
though my dad had been pure lonejack. That was the heart of Aden Stosser’s
accusations against us, that we would take that answerability away, open it to
public scrutiny. True enough; that was exactly what we wanted to do. “They
killed him?”

“Worse. They destroyed his records. Years of research, files
and notes and…they turned them to ash.”

Current-blast. It took a lot out of you, but it couldn’t be put
out, not without a matching current-blast, the way smokejumpers matched fire
with fire. But there was worse coming. I could feel it.

“They also… Nobody could swear it was deliberate, but they also
killed the kids he was working with. Four kids. The oldest wasn’t even thirteen
yet.”

God. “His dad tried to stop them.” Of course he did: any man
Ben called “Uncle” would have died to protect children, no matter what his other
personal flaws.

“Heart attack was the official verdict.”

In other words, he drew so much current from his core, he
drained his entire body—enough to damage the natural electrical surges of his
body—and his heart stopped.

“They killed him. Standing there, never touching him, never
doing anything directly, but they killed him and four innocent children.”

“And Ian demanded that they be punished.”

“No.” Ben let out a noise that might have been trying for a
laugh. “Aden did.”

I didn’t remember moving, but I was across the room, my arms
around his torso, palms flat against his chest, feeling the reassuring rise and
fall of his breathing, the steady beat of his heart. “What happened?”

“She went after the leader with a knife, as I recall. She’s
always been…emotional. Ian stopped her. I think…in some ways she has never
forgiven him for that. She’s very much eye for an eye.”

“And instead he went in front of the Council and demanded a
formal hearing, didn’t he? To determine their guilt publicly, hold them
responsible for his father’s death?”

“You know Ian. He likes things…clear-cut, duly processed. He
wanted them to have to admit their guilt in front of witnesses, so there would
be no doubt, no second-guessing. So the verdict would be clean—and the blood not
on his baby sister’s hand.”

“The Council disagreed?” There was Council, which meant anyone
who agreed to live within their structure, and then there was the Council, the
Talent who determined that structure and ruled their region with a mostly
invisible but always-felt hand. In theory, it was of the members by the members.
In practice…not always so much.

“I don’t know what happened. Nobody talks about it, ever. But
nobody was punished. All I know for sure is that Ian came out of that Council
room determined to create a structure by which even the highest of the holies
would not be able to evade responsibility. And the rest you know.”

The rest, I was part of.

“None of which explains why someone related to that would come
after him now. I mean, other than the Bitch. Or why he would let them.”

Ben sighed, and it felt like a shudder. “The only thing that
Ian holds more dearly than justice is honor. Whatever this is, it’s tied to
that. How? God knows. If you can figure out how Ian Stosser’s brain works…”

All right. Good point.

I rested my cheek against Ben’s shoulder, letting his breathing
settle my own thoughts. The Merge seemed to hum like a generator, the connection
between the two of us smooth and deep, almost effortless. The invasion of
privacy I’d been afraid of for so long… Yeah, he knew more about me, could
predict me in ways I wasn’t comfortable with. And probably—definitely, he felt
the same about me. But there were moments maybe it didn’t feel like such a
terrible thing, after all. Right now, at oh-dog-early in the morning, exhausted
and worried, having someone who was totally there was…nice. Like bracing
yourself for cold water and instead sliding into a nice warm gel....

“Gel.”

“What?”

His body was almost relaxed under my hands, but I could feel
Venec come alert when I said that single word, his core reacting to me.

“Gel. That theory that Talent is actually just better
insulation, allowing us to channel current rather than it slipping out of our
bodies?”

“Yeah.” That one word was not so much agreement as waiting to
see where I was going with this.

“The theory that it can maybe be enhanced, added to. What Ian’s
dad was working on. The idea that woman in the Park had, that even those without
Talent can maybe add to it. The idea of a sliding scale’s been around for a
while, in one form or other. So odds are, other Talent have thought it,
right?”

“That would seem logical. Also, intuitive. There’s no idea ever
held by only a single mind.”

That sounded like a quote, but I didn’t recognize the
source.

“So maybe…maybe our killer had it, too?”

He turned within my hold, putting his hands on my shoulders and
moving me a little bit away; not a dismissal but reasserting the difference
between Ben and Bonnie, and Venec and Torres. I was good with that.

“You think he was performing a scientific experiment…the
vivisection not to cause pain, or ritual, but…”

“I think maybe he was trying to find the source of the
insulation. Maybe…” I shuddered. “Maybe to scrape it out, and test it, or find
some way, oh, god, some way to add it to himself. A transplant to increase his
abilities. Or, if he’s a Null, to, god, to steal them somehow.”

“That’s…”

“Gross.”

“Brilliant.”

“Also gross.”

Venec swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, also gross.”

“If he used the same blade each time, trying to scrape the goo,
all their current…” A shudder ran through my body this time. “God, can you
imagine how many signatures must have touched it? How many layers… As they died,
being conducted through the metal… It’s taken on a life of its own, almost like
an Artifact. That’s what I was sensing.” I was desperately thankful I’d never
touched the actual weapon.

“It’s just a theory.” He paused. “A good one, though.”

“I guess I should go wake Sharon up, huh?”

“No.” Venec shook his head and sighed, then drew me toward him
again, his hands slipping over my shoulders to the small of my back, pressing me
against him. It wasn’t sexual, in any way, but it was, too. Comfort and sex were
linked in my mind, but this was that and a level of something else. A pause
before battle, a gathering of forces.

And the kiss that followed was pure heat, even for us. Neither
of us were novices at the game, and we’d gotten past the awkward
who-does-what-where stage months ago. So just warmth and pressure and a hint of
teeth and tongue, our bodies pressed against each other without any need to do
more or go further.

We had time. We had all the time we had.

“Let her get a few more hours of sleep,” he said, drawing back
just enough to speak, his breath warm and a little bit stale, which was
weirdly…intimate. No rush to prep with mouthwash or breath mints, just him.

I could talk all I wanted about being on the job and dividing
up personal from work, but the truth of the matter was that we lived our jobs,
and there was never going to be a day—or night—where one or both of us wasn’t
going to be working.

And here we were, two consenting adults, in private, with a few
hours to ourselves, and an itch that very badly needed to be scratched.

“Sleep, huh?” I managed, and felt his smile more than saw it, a
glow of amusement tinged with smugness, and just a hint of uncertainty, wrapped
in anticipation.

“She should sleep,” he agreed. “You, not so much.”

All right, then.

The thing about sex is, most of the time it’s just a
confirmation of what you already know: I like you, you like me, we can make each
other feel good. Nothing wrong with that, at all. But when you delay, when you
build up the tension, the anticipation, you run the risk of letdown, that the
“feel good” isn’t as good as you’d expected.

We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t think about it. Hands and
fingers and mouths roamed freely, clothing sliding off, piece by piece, a slow
discovery. That made him shiver. This made me giggle and buck. Naked, the
air-conditioning barely able to keep us cool, I took a step backward, pulling
him with me, and then turned even as I fell, so that he landed underneath
me.

“Nice trick.”

“I’m full of nice,” I said, and he laughed, so I had to prove
it to him.

Even when I was a teenager, sex was more than just in-and-out,
to be crude. I was glad, but not surprised, to find out that Venec agreed. The
Merge might have given us a fast track, but there was still so much to learn; no
point in rushing things. We were sweaty but not sated, and it was enough. For
now.

We ended up spooned together on the bed, his arms wrapped
around me, one knee between mine, his lips pressed against the back of my neck,
and slept.

If dragons flew overhead, in that hour before dawn, I didn’t
dream of them.

* * *

Ian knew that Pietr was behind him. He might not have
had the training of the PUPs, the way Ben had, but he knew the signature of
everyone who worked for him, invisible or not.

He also could not fault the way the boy handled himself: no
less than fifteen paces behind, maintaining an unobstructed line of sight, not
enough to crowd or insult, but were there to be trouble, able to come to
immediate assistance—or, knowing his PUPs, to note the details for a later
report, leaving the boss to handle it himself.

Ben had sent him. No doubt: not even the most aggressive PUP
would follow a Big Dog without orders. And Ben was not wrong to worry. The fact
that he had allowed his attackers to do as much damage as they had was proof
that he, Ian, was not thinking clearly, taking too many risks. Drawing his
enemies into a false sense of confidence that might, in fact, be truth; more a
trap for himself than them.

Ben would scold him. Ben, who had been the original lone wolf
before Ian made him the lead dog of the pack, knew how risky, how stupid it was
to use oneself as bait and trap alike. Knew, because Ian had told him, over and
over again.