Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (27 page)

I eyed them as I sipped, gave them the benefit of the doubt—it wasn’t a ploy. Liu didn’t go much for ceremony with his tea, but he liked to savor it quietly before getting down to business. Mary had adopted his Chinese habits. I wondered, as I had before, how they’d met and overcome their very different backgrounds.

Mary was Arapaho, and a senior Adept, if Tullah was right. Liu’s family had arrived from China to build railroads and stayed to build a quiet, insular community. In addition to being my Shi Fu, my martial arts teacher, he’d often been the most reliable source of calming perspective on my life since I left the army. All without my saying so much as a word about the Athanate changes that had been taking place in me. I tried to look at him with fresh eyes. Was he an Adept too? It would sure connect some loose ends.

“Yes, Amber,” he said. “I am an Adept.”

Okay, so silence hadn’t spooked me, but reading my mind was a whole different ball game.

“No paranormal ability was required to know what you were thinking.” He smiled slightly. “I’ve come to know you well in the time you’ve practiced here.”

We sipped our tea. Mary sat expressionless while Liu and I exchanged a few comments about the Kwan.

Mary placed her mug down on the table with a decisive click, and Liu and I turned to her.

“My daughter doesn’t have the ability to cope with what she’s attempting,” she said. Mary was never someone who’d creep up on a subject.

 “You were the one who was asking me what I was doing when I was nineteen, Mary. I don’t know what she’s attempting, but is it more dangerous than what I did at that age?”

“Very possibly.” Mary settled back in her chair, her eyes hooded. “This isn’t just about a mother’s ordinary concerns for her daughter.”

“It’s because she works with an evil, corrupting Athanate?”

“Stop trying to pick a fight, Amber.” Mary poured herself some more tea. “What do you know about her spirit guide?” she asked, looking up shrewdly at me.

I snorted. “About as much as I know about mine.” Mary waited, so I went on. “She has a dragon. And that’s not on the approved list.” I was not going to tell her that Kaothos and I were on speaking terms. Or maybe, that I had begun dreaming that I was speaking to Tullah’s dragon.

“Do you know why it’s not on the ‘approved’ list?” asked Mary. The stress she put on the word told me she didn’t like the description.

“No,” I said, and helped myself to some more tea as well.

“In China, a dragon would not just be on the approved list, but a cause for celebration,” Liu said. “Unfortunately, not here.”

“Why there and not here?”

“Because they are rare,” Liu said. “And extremely powerful. And very dangerous.” He paused. “In China, communities are formed around Adepts with dragon guides.”

I frowned. Surely…

“There are no other communities with dragon guides in America, Amber,” Mary said. “And, unlike the Athanate, we have no connections across the world.”

“Well, make them,” I said, exasperated.

“There will not be time,” Liu said with absolute finality.

I shook my head. “You’ve lost me,” I said.

“All spirit guides begin as incomplete, unsure,” Mary said. “Full of potential, but lacking direction and focus.” She stopped to squint at me, reached across and touched my forehead. “Your spirit guide has appeared to you?”

“As a wolf cub,” I said. “This week.”

Mary sighed and her head dropped. “More problems,” she muttered.

Liu rested his hand on hers in support and she looked up again at me. “All Adepts who wish to use their spirit guides enter communities. These communities have other Adepts with spirit guides, either the same or related. The communities across America span all the common types and tap deep into the history of this land, the oral traditions, the ceremonies, the knowledge that nurtures the fledgling spirit guide.”

“What you’re saying is the guide needs a guide?” I said.

“Not in accessing the energy. In developing it. And in the correct use of the energy.”

“Correct use? Some kind of moral guidance?”

“Yes. But not just that, also awareness of the limitations of the channel, the human host,” Mary said.

“So you think Tullah’s dragon might make her evil and burn her out somehow?” I laughed; surely not Tullah.

Mary’s eyes flicked to Liu. “Yes.”

Shit!

“But how? Not Tullah. I mean, she’s as far as—”

“It does not need a person to be evil to start with, Amber. It is power, and untrained, unrestrained power will create evil of itself.”

“Has it—”

“No, it has not started yet,” said Mary, and I felt a tiny spark of relief. Maybe there was still time. There must be something. “And it would be most subtle at first,” she went on. “We know the way of this.”

“And what about me then? I can’t be accepted into your community. What about my spirit guide making me evil and burning me out?”

“The wolf is not as powerful as the dragon,” Liu said. “No other spirit guide is. It’s unlikely the wolf will burn you out. But,” he sighed, “forgive me, with the presence of the Athanate, the powers of the Athanate and no supporting community…”

“I’ll turn out bad. Mom always warned me.”

“This is not a joke, Amber.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

It’s gotten to be kinda laugh or cry, guys. I already have Were and Athanate duking it out in my head and making it likely I’ll go rogue. Now I find out that Hana can achieve that all on her own. Think.

Tullah’s case was more urgent. “So, why can’t the two of you provide a community for Tullah?”

Mary and Liu exchanged a look. Liu took up the question. “We tried, as soon as we found out. But the dragon rejected us. She has developed this far in secrecy and isolation. She will not accept advice from us.”

“We think this…this arrogance has spilled over into Tullah,” Mary said. “It is the first warning sign. Rejection of community.”

Hmmm. Tullah had seemed on edge this week, but not exactly arrogant. And I thought Kaothos wasn’t rejecting community itself, maybe just theirs.

“Not accepting Matt as a boyfriend didn’t help there,” I said.

Liu looked embarrassed. “More my fault than Mary’s.”

Yeah, dads and daughters. Nice that even the inscrutable martial arts master and Adept fell prey to the simplest of human reactions. And a weak ray of hope that the both of them might be overreacting here because it was their daughter.

“Okay. Given you don’t have any links to Chinese Adept communities and there are no dragon guides around, how certain are you about all this?”

“Tullah’s argument exactly. All we have is tradition from China that we have kept in our family,” Liu said.

“Which warns of what?”

“The last unrestrained spirit dragon swept whole empires away,” said Mary, “from China to the gates of Byzantium. Whole peoples were wiped out.”

Liu fixed me with his stare. “It is very difficult to kill people with swords on this…industrial scale,” he said. “Imagine what can be done with more modern technology today.”

I could imagine it indeed. I had seen it, far too close.

“So what do you want with me? I won’t fight her and I’m not going to spy on her.”

Mary ducked her head. Liu answered, “Be there for her, keep talking to us. I don’t mean behind her back. We want you to tell her you’re talking to us, and what you say. We need her to know we’re always here.” He paused. “Then, also, the dragon may listen to you,” he said quietly. “There is a little hope.”

“But you believe I’m going to become evil. Why do you want me influencing your daughter’s spirit guide?”

“You’re not there yet, Amber, and…”

The pair of them exchanged looks again.

“There’s something you want to tell me?” I prompted.

Liu cleared his throat. “If Athanate are truly evil or not…we disagree on this in the Adept community. But there is hope. If you can form a link to her and we can form a link to you. There is hope. Maybe for both.”

I rubbed my face in my hands. At some stage, I’d have to stop holding out on everyone, but it didn’t feel right telling them everything yet. I wanted to get out and let this percolate along with everything else that was happening. See if something smart might occur to me. But I had one question I wanted answered.

“I know there are Athanate who are evil, but the Athanate in Denver don’t seem evil to me. What argument have you got that they are?”

I waited. Liu looked uncomfortable.

“I know the way you were brought up.” Mary leaned forward. “I’ve met your mother, Stacy. She taught you that everything has a cost, doesn’t it?”

I nodded.

“So what price do Athanate pay for their powers? Or does someone else do the paying?” asked Mary.

I didn’t have an answer to her question. “What about Adepts?” I countered.

“We pay, Amber. Our own life force. Adepts who use their powers often, they live shorter lives. Yet within the Athanate kin, Adepts and humans live longer. Why? How?”

“Dammit, I don’t know. Some effect of the Athanate blood. It’s clear you don’t know either, but you’re just assuming it’s evil.”

Mary went quiet, as sure in her own viewpoint as I was in mine. Time to go. I got up.

“Liu, Mary,” I said. “Tullah’s like a sister to me and I’ll do what I can to keep her safe, short of trying to change her completely. I don’t think I’m evil. I don’t think all Athanate are evil. I’ve stopped fighting becoming Athanate.”

Liu followed me out the door. “You say you’re not fighting it, Amber,” he said quietly, his voice masked from the class by the noise they were making, “but you’re no more Athanate to my eyes than you’ve always been.”

“I get fangs, Liu. My senses have gone crazy. My heart rate won’t go over 120. I’m looking for kin. I’m there.”

Liu smiled and shrugged. “Your description is similar to changes the Were go through as well, you know.”

Damn, I hadn’t fooled him. He could see what was going on.

“Trust me, Amber,” he said. “I have known you longer than the Athanate, longer than the Were. There is a tremendous strength in you. I can help, if you let me. Athanate, Were or not. Keep up your training sessions here, and we will talk.”

His face became more serious. “That anger,” he tapped my chest and belly, “trapped in there. That is not good. Not for the human. Not for the Adept. Not for the Were. But especially, not for the Athanate.”

Chapter 26

“Ronit Chopra,” the voice said. I checked the number Skylur had given me. This was it.

“Amber Farrell,” I replied. “Can I speak to Arvinder?”

“Ms. Farrell, I am so very pleased you called. I am the Diakon for House Singh. Arvinder has asked me to set up a meeting with you urgently.”

“Ronit, I’ve had attempts to kill or capture me in the last week. You realize it’s all sorts of crazy for me to be risking a meeting.” I eyed the octopus on the computer and hoped he was doing his job hiding where I was as I drove slowly northwards.

“Ms. Farrell, we absolutely guarantee your safety.”

“That’s nice, but it might be difficult to make a claim against that guarantee.” I huffed. “If he really wants to meet, it’ll be tomorrow. I’ll make a call and ask him to show up alone somewhere. If I get any feeling that it isn’t safe, your fault or not, I’m out of there.”

“We understand, Ms. Farrell, and thank you.”

I ended the call. Whether I actually managed the meeting or not, at least I’d shown I was willing. His eagerness to set the meeting had my antennae twitching, but if he thought he could manage something with the security I was going to put in place, he had another think coming.

It was getting late, and I’d promised to be back at 7 p.m., at Jen’s house, Manassah. Only, that wasn’t what I was calling it in my mind. I was calling it home.

I called Alex.

“Wolfy, can you talk now?” I said when he answered.

“You are a—”

“Bitch?” I suggested. “Yeah, I can do that. I’ll be your bitch and you can be mine. Didn’t you enjoy my last call?”

He laughed. “Not as much as you did.”

“Well, it sounds as if you can get me back now.”

“Hmm. I’m more physical than verbal.”

That was an opening for me. Not one I’d been waiting for particularly. I’d have much rather done this face to face.

“About that, can I ask a tough question?”

“Not got doubts again already?”

“No.” I smiled. “Just asking.” I was painfully aware of how little I knew about Weres, how much Alex would be happy to talk about. The question had formed in my mind from other people’s descriptions about them. I wasn’t even sure what answer I wanted to hear.

That untamed look in his eyes, the wildness, it was scary. It spoke of danger, the potential for animal violence. But I
liked
scary; it turned me on. And I was no powder puff. I guessed I just wanted to know how much of a leash there was. Trouble was, how to put that into words?

“Well?” he prompted me.

“Er…when we were in bed yesterday, y’know, afterwards, when we were talking.”

“I like this part.” There was almost a growl behind his words.

“Just before your cell called you away and ruined it.” I tried throwing a bit of cold water on him. “You said not every girl was physically up to it.” I swallowed, hearing a deep silence on the line. Oh crap! Why couldn’t I just shut up?

“Yeah, we can get rough, dominant, and believe me, even in human form, we enjoy biting as well.” He paused. “I wish you were here,” he said, very quietly, very simply.

I’d pulled over and parked. That was a good thing because driving wouldn’t have gotten my attention at that moment. I’d wandered into difficult ground in a new relationship, a very important relationship for me, and all the nonverbal communication stuff was out.

“I wish you were here, too,” I replied.

“You’re in your car.”

“Doesn’t matter where we are.”

He chuckled. It was a deep, rich sound and it told me we were okay. “I didn’t come looking for someone to be submissive all the time, hot stuff, and I won’t promise I’ll always be gentle, but I am not a complete animal. Not even when I am.”

I laughed. I could handle that. “When do I get to see the complete animal? I’m guessing the full moon is just Hollywood.”