Tempting the Enemy (30 page)

Carter, the last face he’d expect to show compassion, dared to shake his head in pity.

Flinching, Pale glared back down at the desk. There had to be something there. Some clue, some slip. His gaze snagged on the picture frame. Jorgensen on his boat, little more than a dingy, on the still and greenish waters of a lake. In the background, an old cabin sagged among the trees. “Where is this?” He held out the picture.

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A few heads shook. Victor shrugged.

“That’s his place on Lake Salderon,” Kennison mumbled, taking the frame in hand, frowning down at it.

That lake was an hour away, up over the mountain.

Pale reached for Kennison’s tie, yanking the man forward and nearly off his feet, scaring the ever-living shit out of everyone nearby at the same time. Everyone took a step back, if not two. No one seemed interested in freeing their captain from his grip.

He leaned down, almost pressing his nose to that of the man in his hold. “Do whatever you have to, call whoever, but you get me up there. Now.”

Kennison didn’t so much as blink.

“If she dies, Kennison, trust me when I tell you that the Sibile will be the last people on your list to be afraid of.”

The captain nodded, but Pale took no pleasure in it.

He snatched back the framed photo, staring at the dilapidated cabin. The glass cracked in his fingers, falling to the surface of the desk. Irritated, he snatched the picture out, dumping the broken frame with the rest of the glass.

“There’s something—”

Pale half turned, finding Victor reaching for the photo.

His hands snapped back in surrender. “On the back.

It says something.”

Looking down, he flipped the picture over. A man’s scrawl wrote only one line.
Rysen—her heart can only
belong to one of us.

In a haze of pain, Pale remembered every heart he’d found in the woods. Torn straight out of a woman’s chest and left uselessly on the ground in shredded pieces. No, 264

Tempting the Enemy

not just a woman’s chest. A
Wolf’s
chest. All except the last, the only one to have her heart pulled out in a single strike.

They hadn’t been sport.

They were
practice
.

“He knew she was coming,” he breathed, remembering what she’d said about his precognition.

They’d been thinking too focused, closing in on the kills and not the pattern. The Wolves were practice. The scarlets were bait.

Jade was
always
the prize.

Jorgensen’s desk went flying across the room, landing with a crash, the surface shredded by his claws.

For all the noise it made, there was nothing else he could do. Pale held on to the part of her in his heart, the glowing vitality of her soul bonded to his.
Stay alive, Jade. Wait
for me…

But until he could find a way up that mountain, she was on her own.

Chapter Eighteen

Jade spun her back toward the mirror, facing the tall man, her hand at her throat where his touch left a numb pain behind. He’d burned her with the dark, somehow, but instead of the heat she’d expected, she found ice flakes on her skin. The garish hint of humanity floating in the nothingness faded to blackness as he slipped backward into shadow.

“Jade-Scarlet.” Jorgensen’s voice was more of an eerie hiss. Nothing she would have thought could come from a human voice box. “I wondered if I would ever meet you. Face to face…so to speak.”

She searched the dark for him, but could see nothing.

She held on to the sides of the mirror at her back, her heart racing. He’d teleported them.
Teleported
. That gift was nearly as rare as a lucescere and just as hard to control. He’d taken it from a strong scarlet. Nearly a Rouge herself. If he’d stolen that, what chance did
she
have?

“How do you know my name?”

“Everyone knows you.” The hissing voice seemed to come from all directions. “The Abomination.”

She wanted to flinch, but didn’t dare close her eyes.

“The child of traitors.”

“My parents were no traitors!” She hadn’t dared to say as much to anyone in the Order, but what did she have to fear now? This man fully intended to kill her.

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“No, they weren’t,” Jorgensen conceded easily. “But it was an excellent excuse, wasn’t it? Leak a little information, nothing truly harmful to the society, and have cause to claim the most powerful lucescere ever born. It was brilliant.”

Jade barely felt her breath passing through her lips.

“I’m not powerful.” She was barely functional. Not even Jalla-Rouge’s promises that she’d learn true control had helped. Only Pale ever had and she knew in her gut he was far, far from here.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jade-Scarlet. The power in you, it glows like a firestorm…waiting for me to take it.”

Her hands tightened on the mirror.

“When Jalla-Rouge told them what you would be, the Tribunal couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Your mother refused to give you to them. Refused to return, as was her duty to the Order. What she would not give the Tribunal demanded, at any cost. As was their right.” He waited several moments, as if he knew his silence built her fear. “No screaming in defense of your rulers, young scarlet? You have no doubt of their treachery?”

No, she didn’t. Which terrified her even more. He could be telling the truth. “Who
are
you?” she demanded, her voice roughened by a snarl.

“Me?” He sounded almost jovial. But then he would.

He was merely playing with her. Enjoying the upcoming kill. Suddenly, the dark parted in front of her, a breeze of shadows swirling until a tall blond man stood solidly in front of her, his handsome face clear of expression, but his dark eyes blazed with rage.

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Jorgensen. If she could have backed up a step farther, she would, but the mirror refused to bend to her will.

“Don’t you see the family resemblance?”

“F-family?” She cursed herself for showing weakness, but she couldn’t help it. Just the thought of this man’s blood running in her veins… Revulsion turned her stomach. “No, it’s not possible.”

“Come now, niece. Surely you haven’t forgotten your own mother’s face. Don’t you see her?” He leaned close, those eyes burning colder than before. “She’s right here. In me.”

Horror threatened to tear right out of her throat. “
You
killed my mother?”

“Where do you think the precognition comes from?”

He looked so pleased with himself as he backed away.

“She was my first. The hardest too. She saw me coming, even set a trap, but she knew as well as I did that it wouldn’t work. As soon as the Tribunal declared her dead so they could claim you, her fate was sealed. It was the opportunity I’d waited my entire life for. I couldn’t pass it up.”

“That’s not how it happened.” A man had come into the house, she remembered that much. He’d killed them in their sleep. Jalla had told her so. That was what everyone had said.

Jorgensen shook his head in pity. “Your father would have killed me but a funny thing happens when you kill the mate of a Wolf. He dies too. Painfully. You can actually
see
the soul being ripped out of him.”

She despised that she could feel his remembered pleasure. It filled the room like noxious fumes. That he was intimating how much he’d enjoy killing another Wolf 268

Tempting the Enemy

the same way. No. Not her, not Pale. “They caught the man who killed them—”

“They caught the man who
thought
he killed them. It comes in handy, the ability to enter people’s dreams.

Almost as handy as being a police officer who everyone trusts. But you’d know that because of your new mate, wouldn’t you?” He let the question hang there, enjoying his captive audience.

Finally he shrugged, looking almost casual as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “Mother has never quite forgiven herself for bringing on the death of her most cherished child, her protégé. I think that’s why she took you so much to heart, even if loving you meant I had something to torture her with in the night. For some reason, she thought
you
were worth it.” Bitterness laced his voice now.

“Jalla-Rouge isn’t—” Jalla would have said, wouldn’t she, if she were Jade’s grandmother? She would have told her…

He nodded and even that small movement was mocking. “We’re both quite auspicious, aren’t we? You, the lucescere they’ve waited an eternity for, and me, Challen-Rouge, son of the strongest oracle in six generations, cast out by the Tribunal in their jealousy.

Their
blindness
. But they see now, don’t they? That’s why they sent me
you
.”

If he was right about the other things—she shivered at the realization that he might well be right about that too. The Tribunal would do almost anything for power.

But power combined with reason, she reminded herself. Power they could control. Whatever Chris Dee Tenorio

269

Jorgenson had turned himself into, control was not a part of it. “See what? That you’re insane?”

A tsking sound accompanied his slowly shaking head motion. “That I’m ready to
join
them. I’ve overcome my trial by fire. I am what I was always
meant
to be.” He raised his hand, palm up. The shadows stripped away from the walls, piece by piece, whipping past and around her to gather into a sphere at his fingertips. Then even he melted away as darkness surrounded him again, leaving only the sphere that glowed malevolently with deep purple violence. “They know now that I’m a god.”

She stared, struck mute, as the sphere began to rise.

“I am the judgment you’ve been awaiting, Jade-Scarlet. The embodiment of the law of our people. You have been found guilty. Lacking.
Evil
.” The sphere’s glow increased to a stinging blue.

“I’m not evil!”
Get your wits, Jade. He’s scaring you
to keep you still. Move.

But her legs wouldn’t unlock.

The sphere reached the ceiling.

Move!

She leaped as the black ball of energy darted in her direction. She hit the ground, the explosion shattering the mirror behind her. She scrambled, pulling the cape around her and raced into darkness. Her eyes adjusted to the dark instantly. There were pictures. Cabinets. She sidestepped a beat-up recliner and noticed the wood floors. A cabin.

They were in a cabin. She searched for a door.

“Will those Wolf instincts come with your power, I wonder?”

She ignored him, running flat-out to the door. She’d almost reached it when he was suddenly there, his powerful size blocking the way. She almost skidded into 270

Tempting the Enemy

him. He allowed her to step backward out of his reach.

Allowed
. Anger charged her.

“I’m curious how your gifts will change for me, Jade-Scarlet.” He watched her back away, made no move to reach for her. He knew he had her cornered. That he was free to toy with her.

She bit back a snarl, scanning the room for another exit. A boarded-up window. A crack of light. Anything.

“I’ve wondered for a very long time, what would happen if I took your gift. Can light become dark? Or will you be the key to changing me to the light?”

“What are you talking about?” No exits she could reach. A small skylight, square and dingy, in the roof above the mirror. She’d never fit and he’d never let her get close to it anyway. There, finally, a closed door behind a chair, but it might only lead deeper into the cabin. Or was it the only way out?

“Taking gifts is no easy task. The giver must be alive, but even then, once it’s out, once it’s inside someone new, it changes, becomes like the taker. They’ve all turned inside-out. Dark.”

Rotted, she almost added. That explained his strange auras. The mixed colors weren’t stray signatures. They were dying ones.

“Everything turns dark in me. Even fire becomes a shadow flame. Cold.” He stared down at his hands, not even watching her anymore. “I
am
the dark.”

Memories startled awake in Jade. Jalla-Rouge’s arms around her shoulders when she was young. “You’re more than you think,
chère
. Someday you will do more than just see light. You will
be
the light. That’s what a Dee Tenorio

271

lucescere does—becomes light and saves us all from darkness.”

Is this what you meant, Jalla?

“You
will
give your light to me, Lucescere.” Another blast came from nowhere, launching her into the furniture.

“Sure. Whenever’s good for you.” The light here was weak, enough only for a small dagger at best. It wasn’t enough.

Do something, Jade, she ordered herself, but there wasn’t anything
to
do.

Become light.

She pushed away Jalla’s unhelpful voice in her mind.

Run.
Which was a much more productive thought, given that another ball of dark energy came hurtling her way. Taking the last option left, she burst through the door, only to tumble down a flight of rickety stairs, dust choking her as she fell. The faint light had disappeared completely, until even her night vision was completely blind, but she was conscious.

And trapped.

Darkness, thick enough to strangle, surrounded her.

She could have fallen into a cave or a box, there was no way of knowing.

Become light.

“Shut up!” she snapped at the urgent voice in her head. She knew what she had to do already. It didn’t help.

There wasn’t enough light to wrap around herself. Or even to create the smallest glow to comfort herself.

The weight of the darkness increased, flattening her body to the ground beneath her. She pushed upward, a scream escaping when she realized the dark was solid.

Suffocating. No, it was more than that.

It was
him
.

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His hand clenched ruthlessly around her throat. Her claws sank into the black, finding no purchase, no muscle, no man to release her. Only an oily evil she couldn’t push away. Heavier and heavier it weighed on her, seeping into her skin and leaching out all fight, all resistance…all hope.