Tempting the Enemy (27 page)

Jalla’s explanation echoed in her mind. Pale had done it. But how?

Closing her eyes again, she decided not to second-guess it. Instead, she focused on colors.
White…

No sooner did she imagine it, the cool freshness of healing, and it manifested, holding without effort. All over her, her skin tingled, warmed, then the feeling dissipated. When she opened her eyes again, every ache was gone.

Something strange was going on. Her gift never took the pain completely. She took her pack into the bathroom to shower. Clean, she pulled a change of clothes from her pack, going through her ablutions as quickly as possible.

Pale came back into the room as she was pulling her boots on. His eyes widened as he took in her outfit, all white 236

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this time, but the same as the other two colors she’d worn in his presence.

“Where are you planning on going?” he asked, apparently tucking his surprise away. So much for gathering any information from his face, like normal people. Switching to her gift, his color was subdued as well, staying close to him and out of her reach.

If he insisted on ignoring what had happened between them, she could do the same. For now, there was something more important to discuss. “We need to talk.”

His eyes narrowed. “About what?”

She gathered her hair in one hand behind her head, doubting he had any kind of hair ties lying around. Maybe there was one in her bag. She moved toward it again.

“About the Woodsman.”

“No.” He crossed his arms when she spun back around to look at him in shock. “You’re not on the case anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

She couldn’t help it, she laughed. Not hard, not happily, but a laugh all the same. Jalla insisted and Pale denied. No one seemed to be interested in asking if she
wanted
to face this killer. Because she didn’t. But that didn’t mean she had a choice. “It’s not up to you.”

“You’re damn right it is. You’re my mate.” A word he said with too much relish for her not to feel a tingle of pleasure course down her spine. But tingles did not render her stupid…or weak.

“And you’re mine,” she answered evenly, opening her pack as she’d intended. The words seemed to soothe him. At least, until she spoke again, pulling out her brush Dee Tenorio

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and the bands she kept on its handle. “Mating hasn’t changed what has to be done.”

“What are you doing?” he grumbled, opting to change the subject.

“I have to re-braid my hair. Which I plan to do while we talk about the Woodsman.”

He made a face, one he wiped away before she could smile at him for it. If they survived this killer, she really would have to find out what was wrong with him.

He sat on the bed. “Fine, talk. But you’re not getting involved beyond that. Not after last night.”

“Why not? I’m not in danger of attracting Wolf hordes anymore, am I?”

The interesting thing about his beard being gone was that she could now see his jaw working with frustration when she asked a question he didn’t like. Much easier than feeling his color and being drawn into his inexhaustible desires.

“I’ll take that as a no. And since I have no plans to go anywhere near any more ghosts, I’ll be perfectly safe.”

She sat in the chair facing him and brushed the ends of her hair. If she kept her hands busy, chances were better he wouldn’t see them shake. “Just listen, all right? I have to tell you some things and you can never tell anyone else.

The Order is a secret society for a reason. They’ve killed for less.” A fact she knew better than many of the others.

She waited for Pale’s nod, however slight. Accepting that, she parted her hair and began to plait along one side.

“As you know, the Sibile are a matriarchal culture.

Sons have been bred, but they have little to no say. About anything. The reason is because males don’t manifest gifts. What no one talks about is the fact that we are all 238

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slaves, gifted or not. In our world,
no one
has a say of their own.”

He frowned, probably because he couldn’t comprehend a world where he didn’t decide his own life, but one existed. And no one would change it.

“Socially, we are controlled by the Order, which trains our women to use our gifts for the betterment of our people. Completing the training raises the social status of our families. It’s important not to fail.”

“Because you’re rented out like mercenaries,” he grumbled.

“Yes.” No point in arguing. Scarlets were mercenaries of the most powerful kind. “Part of each fee goes to the support of our family, extended and personal.

Families without appreciably gifted females have to earn their livings another way in the enclave. They’re looked down on, eventually bred out.”

“Survival of the fittest.” A concept he knew well.

“But the Order doesn’t control us as individuals. The Tribunal does. They decide everything for our people.

They assign leaders to the Order in each enclave, decide our place and our functions. They maintain the peace, prosperity and security of every enclave in the world.

They are spread out among all the communities and they only meet in person for the most serious situations. Right now, they are
all
in my enclave. Waiting.”

“What about your Praemonere person?”

“Jalla-Rouge?”

“She has a name?”

She nodded. “Jalla’s the most powerful precognitor in six generations. She’s a member of the Tribunal, but she’s a law unto herself to anyone who knows her because Dee Tenorio

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she follows her visions unerringly.” Jade pulled in a deep breath, a jagged stone in her stomach now that she knew
exactly
how unerringly. “As far as I know, only she has ever lived to disobey them.” Though there had been prices the other woman had to pay, prices she never allowed herself to discuss.

“So humans aren’t the only ones who rule through fear.”

If only it were that simple. “Their decrees aren’t about creating fear, they are about what
is
. That’s what makes them so powerful. What they say as a group becomes fact. It’s the way of the Rouge.”

He wasn’t understanding. His frown created deep lines around his mouth.

“Your people would kill for the scent of a female in season. The Tribunal will kill to preserve their way of life against those who would destroy it. It’s a brutal world, Pale. You know that better than anyone.”

He didn’t like it, but she watched him accept it.

“What’s the difference between a Rouge and a scarlet?”

“To achieve scarlet, rigorous training and tests are given. If you pass, you’re granted a cloak and allowed out into the human world on a case-by-case basis. The rest of the time, you study, increase your skill and knowledge and raise your family.”

“And a Rouge?”

“They’re the strongest of our people. Gifted with
unlimited
power. Only those scarlets with the greatest potential are allowed to attempt the Rouge trials and even then, they wait decades to try. The tests are so dangerous, failing usually means death. Once they’ve passed, an accepted Rouge becomes a member of the Tribunal.

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Together, if they deem something to be true, it
is
true. Or becomes so.”

He was a smart man, this Wolf who could consume her with only a half-lidded glance. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together. “Your parents.”

She nodded. “Information about the society became known and released in a series of articles in a national newspaper when I was five. The information could not have been known by anyone who was not part of the Order. My mother was the only scarlet to have ever left them. The Tribunal deemed her defection a danger and declared them both dead in their eyes. Three days later, a man came into our home and killed them. Later he killed himself because he had no idea why he’d committed the crime.”

His gaze flickered. Did he wonder at the lack of emotion in her voice as she relayed the information?

Should she tell him of the nights she cried, as silently as possible, mourning for parents the Order openly viewed as traitors? Did he know the kind of fear she had lived with every day, waiting for her parents’ judgment to be brought on to her head? Or would telling him just make him hurt for the years of pain he couldn’t take away?

“Why are you telling me all this?” Simple enough question.

Very complicated answer. “Because I want you to fully understand what you risk if you help me.”

His enigmatic eyes narrowed. “Help you what?”

She finished the second braid. With surprisingly steady hands, she twined the two braids together. In fact, as she’d spoken, a calm like none she’d ever known covered her. Or maybe it was just purpose. Using the Dee Tenorio

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band at the end, she secured the plaits. Taking the second band off her wrist, she held the ends to her nape and looped it into place. All the while, Pale watched silently.

Patient again. Finally, she could put it off no longer.

“I need you to help me stop a Rouge.”

“The Woodsman is a
Rouge?
” Pale tried to force the puzzle pieces together in his mind, but nothing fit. “How do you know what he is?”

Her eyes turned dark. As if a world of misery were locked tight inside her. He almost pulled her into his arms, but every signal she had was blaring to keep his hands off. If he thought she was doing it in rejection, he’d be angry. He could read her fragility. Whatever she was going to ask of him, it was taking all her strength to force it out. Someday, someday she’d understand that there was nothing she could ask that he wouldn’t do for her.

Except let her go.

“When you started outlining the crimes, certain facts stood out right away, but I thought they were coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence.” Not in his experience.

Her lips curved slightly. “I’m starting to realize that.”

Much as he liked that subtle grin, how it seemed to say finding him was no coincidence, it faded quickly. “Or maybe I just didn’t want to face what was right in front of me, I don’t know. But I should have realized.”

“Realized what?”

“When you mentioned the triangle cut into the arms,”

she answered. “I should have put it together. It was too specific to ignore, but I was so tied up in keeping our secrets, I dismissed it.”

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Pale thought back. He’d known something had caught her attention. He’d even asked about it, but when she’d claimed it was nothing, he let it go as well, his mind clouded by Heat instead of the matter at hand. It was clear to him now, though. The two-inch wide shape, just wide enough to fit a red tattoo… He stood, restless energy inundating him while understanding froze the blood in his veins. “The victims are Sibile.”

“Scarlets,” she corrected solemnly. “He hunted them.

He killed them. These four weren’t the first. I think he just let you know he was killing so he could lure in more.”

Questions bombarded Pale until he didn’t know where to begin. “But you said it was a Rouge. How can it be a man?”

Fear, the first true fear he’d sensed from her, filled the room. “I’ve told you how a signature works. It’s emotional, the stronger the emotion, the stronger the signature. Just like a shifter is different from a human, the Sibile are different from shifters. Maybe it’s the strength of the magic that gives us our abilities, I don’t know.

Humans don’t have enough to leave more than an emotional impression. Shifters…your signature is a living extension of your life force. It’s almost an extension of your will. For the Sibile, though…it’s even more than that. A scarlet’s power is in her blood. Part of her body, part of her soul. Power is far stronger than a signature.

Wherever her blood is,
she
is. Do you understand?”

The strangers looking out through her eyes in the morgue. They hadn’t been figments of his imagination.

They’d been real women, trapped in the pieces of their bodies by their own magic.

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She must have seen the horror on his face because she pursed her lips and released a careful breath. “When we die, there’s a ceremony that releases our souls from our bodies. Without it, we’d remain trapped. That’s what he’s done to them. On purpose, he’s forced them into a hell no one can even imagine.”

“You can, though, can’t you?” Pale closed his eyes, his chest tightening into a vise around his heart. There was no way to shelter her, protect her from something like that. He wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Helplessness crouched on his shoulders like a steel weight.

All their fear, all their pain, shadows of what they saw and did, they had forced her to relive, and all he’d done was hold her for the violation. For the first time in his life, Pale was almost violently ill where he stood.

“Does that mean they’re still there? Still trapped in that morgue?”

Jade shook her head. “Not anymore. When the ghosts took me over, those traces of their souls were freed.”

“Is that what happens in that ceremony? Someone goes through what you did?” He couldn’t picture what that kind of horror must do to a soul, over and over again.

Or maybe he just didn’t want to.

“Normally it’s a beautiful ceremony, a peaceful release. I don’t have that gift, though.” Her expression darkened. “My gift siphons them out, like a magnet.

Violently. Painfully, for all of us. That’s why I was unnerved when I found out what kind of case this was.

You were right, on the mountain. I do feel the deathblows, I hurt the same as the victim. Humans and shifters take me over, but with the Sibile…with them I rip the soul 244

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right out of the signature. It’s not what my gift was meant for, just an uncontrollable side effect.”

One he’d never have her face again, if he had his way. He wanted to touch her, soothe her, and normally, he would have. But she looked so fragile, as if it were taking everything she had to explain this to him. And it was important to her to get it out. He’d already screwed up making her go through it. He could make himself listen as the poison of it all seeped free. “So what did these ghosts tell you?”