Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (48 page)

Cold. Hot. Hurt. Not just my shoulder, my whole body awash with pain, my mind clouded in despair. Shame. Humiliation. Everything that had been done to me. No, not my body. Jen’s. As fragile as the deep sea creature I’d glimpsed, shivering on the hillside above Denver; a fleeting phantom of hopes and desires, joy and pain.

Jen! Jen, trust me.

Always.

Our translucent phantoms touched, twined together, wreathed in light until I could not see where one stopped and the other started.

Our pain, our injuries. Hearts beating as one, air rushing into our lungs, blood flowing in our veins. Heal. Together in the heart-thudding silence. Without let or limitation,
our
strength,
our
health.

“BP rising!” Alex. Far away. “Pulse steady. It’s working, dammit Amber, it’s working!”

I flashed back to a childhood memory. My mother lifting me when I had fallen, kissing me on the knee and elbow and magically making me all right. This wasn’t the same at all, but I wanted to make everything all right again, all the damage, everything that had happened to her because of me. I didn’t want to heal only the cuts and bruises. I wanted to take away the terror, these last things in the darkness, screaming and full of pain. They were mine, my responsibility.

No!
Jen struggled.
You mustn’t.

They’re mine. I have a place for these.

And I took them.

“Good, Amber, good. Now enough.” Bian was murmuring in my ear. I was aware of her hand on my shoulder.

The lights seemed to fade and I heard the sound of thunder above the rain.

I was sitting back upright, with no recollection of moving. Jason’s blood was soaking into my jeans. Tullah was next to me, peering worriedly into my face. My shoulder ached.

Alex gently took Jen’s hand out of mine. She was so limp. I reached out weakly to take her back.

You can’t take her away from me.

“Amber! Stop. Just relax,” Bian said. “You did well. It takes a toll.”

“Was it enough?” I asked. Jen looked so lifeless. Alex was carefully washing the blood from Jen’s body. Horrific images of cleaning corpses for burial forced their way into my head.

“Yes,” Bian replied simply, and the images left me. “She’ll recover. She’ll heal completely.”

I slumped back against the side of the van and closed my eyes again. I’d done it. I didn’t care what happened to me now. Nothing could be worse than the nightmare of this day. A little smile, tentative as a spring flower, tugged at my lips. Just rest.

“Amber.” Tullah knelt next to me and shook me back to alertness. “I have to get out. I can’t go anywhere near an Athanate meeting.”

Bian looked at her without expression, and I had a bad feeling about this.

Alex cut across the tension. “Let her take the Ford, Bian.”

“But you’re House Farrell,” Bian said to Tullah.

“No.” Tullah and I spoke at the same time.

“Really?” Bian’s eyes became heavy and calculating. “Then we must meet again, young Adept.” She reached for an intercom behind her and told David to pull over.

Pia stopped behind us, on the roadside.

“Alex,” I said reluctantly, “maybe you’d better…”

He shook his head. “I can’t leave my patient at the moment,” he said. “Or you.”

“I have to go back to Ma,” Tullah whispered in my ear. “She was right. Kaothos is too strong. And what happened…Ma will need to talk to you.”

I snorted. “If she lets me talk before ripping my head off for putting you in danger. Yeah, okay.” I reached with my good hand and squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks. And if that
was
us, at the end, then we had to do it.”

“No. We broke all the rules. Kaothos used you, and she spoke to you, without telling me. I didn’t tell you her name. How can I trust her?” She pulled away and jumped out into the rain.

Pia joined Paul and David in the cab. I could just make out Tullah, through the heavy rain, getting into the Ford. Bian closed the door.

“You’re a fool if you don’t make her House Farrell very soon,” she said as we got back on the road.

“That’s not how I’ll work,” I replied. Mary would probably kill me as it was. Trying to get her daughter to join an Athanate House would only make things worse.

“We’ll see. Athanate imperatives may change the way you think.” Bian sighed. “We’re not finished here. We’ve all got to be one of two things when we arrive at Haven. House Altau or House Farrell. It’s not a matter of just saying it.”

Alex’s head came up and his eyes shaded towards the wolf. I put a calming hand on his arm and looked quizzically at Bian.

“Skylur’s had to take desperate measures. He’s got…” She stumbled a bit. “He’s got reserves that aren’t strictly legal in the view of the Assembly. Look, we don’t have time to explain this. The Lyssae are loose on the grounds,” she said. “It’ll be hard enough getting House Altau people through.”

“What are the Lyssae?”

Bian shrugged impatiently. “You’ll see. Athanate who’ve lost the part that keeps them sane.”

“Rogues?”

“No. They’re not that. Maybe we’ll understand them better when we understand the prions you’ve told us about. We’ve always just said they have lost all their humanity.” She rubbed her face. “They’re difficult to communicate with and you can’t fight them. They’re just too strong and quick. They understand and defend House Altau, and they should accept House Farrell.
If
they can identify you all as House Farrell.”

“Pia and David—” I started.

“They’re clearly House Farrell. So’s Jen with the amount of aniatropics you’ve just pumped into her.” Her eyes swiveled to Alex.

“I don’t belong to any Athanate House,” Alex growled, his eyes becoming more golden with every passing moment.

“You’re more than halfway there already, wolf,” Bian said. “You don’t smell like the Denver pack. And as for it being an Athanate marque, it’s half wolf.”

“I don’t belong—” he repeated.

“Hmm, maybe we can fix that,” Bian suddenly moved with her predatory grace and rested a hand on him.

Before Alex could react, before I had time to think of what I was doing, I shoved her away and, protesting shoulder or not, I reached around him and pulled him to me. Almost all the way.

We looked at each other from inches away. His eyes were full-on golden now and although he hadn’t fought it when I grabbed him, his muscles were stiff and wary.

Mine, mine, mine
yammered my brain, but I forced myself to relax. I wouldn’t ever conscript anyone, and it wouldn’t work with this wolf anyway. I could feel my Athanate senses straining to reach out to him, to do
something
, but I refused. My jaw felt hot, but no fangs emerged. I wasn’t going to bite. That wasn’t what Bian was saying anyway, I thought.

I wasn’t any good at this. I certainly couldn’t make myself as attractive and seductive as Bian could. I didn’t even have a clear idea of what it was to bind someone. Bian seemed to think I would find my way instinctively through all these Athanate powers.

In the end I sighed, closed my eyes and waited. It was up to Alex. I couldn’t, wouldn’t force him.

His mouth touching mine was almost a surprise. We kissed gently and parted.

“House Farrell?” I whispered. He couldn’t have heard me above the noise of the rain, but maybe he could read my lips.

“Pack Deauville,” he joked back. “You can’t bind a Were any more than I can bind a vamp, but if it’ll keep Bian off me, why don’t we try anyway.”

We did just that, much less tentatively this time. I didn’t know if this was what I was supposed to do, but, as he said, if it kept Bian off him…

Not lights and mists, like Jen. Darkness and commotion in the night. A sensation of sharing. To be
one,
to hunt together.

And my gradual comprehension that all the groundwork had been done already, while we’d been, ahem, distracted in his office.

Was it all working? I hadn’t a clue. It just felt right.

And when we broke the kiss, Bian was grinning. Witch. She knew just what sort of reaction she was trying to provoke in me.

I scowled at her, as she slid across to Alex. My hackles came up, but she just sniffed.

“Smell’s better anyway; bit more vamp over all that wet dog. I now pronounce you House Farrell.” She held her hands up in surrender at Alex’s look. “At least for the purposes of getting into Haven.” Her eyes lingered over his naked body. “Time to get dressed again, wolf.”

His clothes had been tossed in the back with us and were stained with blood. He wrinkled his nose, but started to struggle back into them. He grinned at me, clearly not understanding what had just happened. I was going to have a hell of a time explaining it when I had a chance.

“Round-eye, another couple of things you need to know before we get there.”

I looked at her. The shutters had come down again. This was Bian’s hard shell showing now.

“Firstly, I don’t know if I’m still Diakon. Skylur went ballistic over this morning.” She shrugged. “I’d do it again, and at least we achieved the objectives I told you about.”

My hand rested on Jason. “At a cost,” I said.

She nodded and the shell slipped a bit. “The second thing you have to understand is how important you’ve become.” Her head turned away, her voice nearly lost in the noise of the rain. “I had a third objective I was given. In the event you were captured, I was to make every effort to kill you all, at any cost.”

Shit. I opened my mouth to ask the obvious question, and the van turned and came to a jerky halt.

“Not a moment too soon,” Bian said. “Playtime’s over.”

Chapter 49

We all got out into the pouring rain at the gates of Haven.

Thunder rumbled down from the mountains, feeling its way through the valleys like some blind, hunting monster, seeking us out, slowly getting closer.

The rain got harder. We were already wet and there’s a point where you don’t get any wetter. Good thing I didn’t spend much on hairdos. And maybe some of that water would wash away the blood.

The gatehouse had steel shutters blocking the firing slits. Two figures emerged from inside. One was a man I had seen on the gate before and the other was Mykayla. They both embraced Bian. With Bian there to compare against, my nose told me the man was her kin. I didn’t think Mykayla had been bitten by Bian yet, to my surprise, but she might as well have been.

“You should be inside already,” Bian said to them, but not angrily.

“We had to wait for you,” Mykayla replied. “Everyone else is in now, or well away from the boundaries.” She looked over towards the dark grounds and shuddered. “They’re out. And someone tried to get in on the far side.”

“I know,” replied Bian. “Open the gates and let us through, then close them behind us. Amber stays with me, the rest get in the van. And leave the back doors open. Same with the windows in the cab, David.”

Alex started to argue, but Bian wasn’t having any of it.

“You have no idea, Alex. You’ve just got to trust me. Get in there and do not move, whatever happens.”

I touched his arm. He’d taken Bian’s refusal to take Jen to the ICU. He’d worked without complaint in the back of the van while Jason’s blood washed the floor. He’d submitted to Bian’s requests about binding. He had been getting angrier and angrier as the night went on and I was worried about how he might react now. He’d been wolf already once tonight and I sensed that made the wolf close now. I didn’t know whether there was a point when the wolf just took over.

“Please, Alex. I’ll be okay. Stay with Jen.”

He spoke to me quietly in my ear, disguising it with a hug.

“I’m worried about this, Amber. She’s right—I don’t know what’s going on. Do you trust her? After what she said?”

“I don’t know what’s going on either,” I replied. “But I trust Bian. And I’m glad you’re here.”

He nodded unhappily and got back in the van. Once the gates were closed behind us and everyone else was on board, we started towards the house. Bian and I walked in front. The van rolled slowly along behind us. It was like a funeral procession. In fact, I reminded myself, it was. Jason’s body lay in the van.

The van’s lights glared around us. It was quieter than it had been inside the van, but there was still the unceasing surf sound of the rain, the howl of the wind, and gravel crunching beneath our feet and the tires of the van.

One second, the van lights showed nothing but the falling rain, and the next, they gleamed on a huge figure blocking our way.

I gasped in shock and stumbled. Seven feet tall and dark as the void, the statue of Anubis from Skylur’s dungeon stood in front of us, his breath steaming around him like an old-time locomotive.

Bian, at least, had expected this. She walked forward confidently, dwarfed by his size, and spoke to him.

She used Athanate, and touched him lightly on the arm to emphasize what she said. The sound of his breathing was louder than the rain and wind, reminding me of a laboring horse. His wet skin gleamed darkly in the lights of the van, but his eyes reflected nothing. I was happy his attention was focused on Bian.

His head bowed until it was close to Bian’s and he snuffled. Bian continued to talk to him. I could see the muscles in his neck and head, the twitch of his muzzle, even the saliva dripping from his loose lips. It was difficult to believe. This wasn’t some lifelike mask on a huge man’s head. This was a man, seven feet tall, with the head of a jackal, who’d been a statue last time I saw him.

He stood back up and Bian turned so she could gesture to me.

“
Ykos
Altau,” she said loudly, her hand on her chest. “
Ykos
Farrell.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “
Philos. Perikos.
”

I really hoped those meant good things and Anubis understood them. I couldn’t see how he was taking it. How do you read expression in a jackal’s face?

He stepped forward. I really, really wanted to see if I could make it back to the gatehouse and hide before Anubis caught me, but taking my cue from Bian, I stood my ground.