The Prophecy (Daughters of the People Series Book 1) (25 page)

Dani fit
binoculars to her eyes and studied the scene below. After tracking down the
artifacts, with a lot of help from her favorite undercover Feebi, she’d
assembled teams to retrieve them, then been foiled when Dr. Terhune’s daughter
was kidnapped and a ransom demand issued. Amelia had been brought here, to a
warehouse not far from the docks. It was too much to hope that the missing
artifacts had been moved here as well, but a girl could wish, couldn’t she?

Once she’d
checked in, Dani had been given strict instructions to
observe only
while Maya and James made their way north to the Big Apple. The same teams that
had been intended for artifact retrieval would now be used to provide backup
for Maya.

It was a shame,
too. Kicking butt and taking names was a lot more fun than waiting in the wings
surveilling.

Of course, if things
turned bad here, she’d go in, orders be damned. A kid had been taken and was
being held by some very bad people. No way would Dani leave her in there alone,
not for long.

A footfall scuffed
on the roof behind her. Dani glanced over her shoulder. Two men were behind
her, one lanky and lean, the other a couple of inches taller than her and
stocky, hired thugs from Dave’s crew. The Blessed Mother knew she’d observed
them often enough. They ambled slowly toward her, spreading out in a futile
attempt to flank her, and satisfaction burst through her. Wasn’t it just her
luck that they were spoiling for a fight, just when she felt like fighting?

She stood and
bestowed her best come-hither smile on them. “Howdy, boys. What brings two nice
men like you to a dump like this?”

They glanced at
one another. Lanky’s eyebrows shot toward his crew cut.

Stocky shrugged.
“Boss said not to pay no mind to the broad’s yapping.”

Dave, that rat
bastard.

“Hey,” Dani
snapped. “The only yapping anybody’s doing is on your end, you lily-livered,
speckle-sided son of a goat farmer.”

Stocky grinned
and waggled his fingers at her. “Put your money where your mouth is,
sweetheart.”

Dani grinned
back. Fight it was.

Lanky leapt
toward her, arms open. She slapped her palms over his ears, and down he went,
screaming. She nudged him with one booted foot, satisfied he’d be down for a
while. Nobody ever saw that one coming.

Stocky grabbed
her from behind, locking his arms around her chest, pinning her arms in place.
Dani admired the firm steel of his arms and the flat, muscled planes of his
chest (A girl had to take her pleasure where she found it, didn’t she?), then
threw her head back sharply into his face. He dropped her and staggered
backward, blood streaming from a cut on his lip.

Well, damn.
She’d missed his nose.

Lanky was on his
hands and knees, struggling to his feet. She kicked upwards, catching him in
the stomach, and he collapsed onto the rooftop with a muttered, “Oomph.”

Dani hitched her
hands on her hips. “Come on, guys. Y’all are making this way too easy.”

A small pinch in
her arm startled her. She looked down. A tranquilizer dart protruded from her
clothing. She whirled around, staggering, and glared at Dave. He lowered a
small tranquilizer gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans as he walked
toward her, one corner of his mouth quirked up in that almost smile of his.

Her vision
blurred, taking the world with it. He’d shot her with a tranquilizer. He’d
really shot her. “Son of a…,” she said, and sank into oblivion.

She woke slowly,
groggy from whatever Dave had shot into her. She lifted one eyelid, had her eye
burned by a shaft of too-bright light for her trouble, and shut it again. Son
of a bitch. Where had he taken her?

She calmed her
breathing and listened. Shoes scuffed against concrete. Water dripped, pinging
metallically in an irregular rhythm. Something clicked nearby, maybe a light
switch. Somebody’s breath hitched, a near sob, as if he or she had been crying.

Dani shifted as
subtly as possible, testing her arms and legs. They were nearly immobile, her
arms bound behind her at her wrists, her ankles wrapped tightly together. She
clenched one hand into a fist and wiggled her arm back and forth, trying to get
a feel for the material holding her. It felt a little sticky. Duct tape maybe?  

She opened her
eyes a slit, allowing them to slowly become accustomed to the light. The room
spun once, then snapped into focus. A rectangular folding table had been
erected about fifteen feet in front of her and to the side. A lamp sat on its
surface, along with water, packaged food, and what looked like a first aid kit.
Dave stood in front of the table watching her, his blunt features a hard mask.

Another man was
beside him, dressed in a fashionable black suit with a red tie. He appeared to
be in his late thirties, and was trim and clean-cut with black hair and vivid
blue eyes. He might’ve been handsome if not for the cold amusement etched into
his features.

This one she
didn’t know, in spite of the weeks of recon she’d done. Ol’ Dave had been
hiding things from her. She narrowed her eyes in his direction. That’s ok,
‘cause she knew where he lived. He had to sleep sometime, didn’t he?

Other people
were spread around what looked like the interior of the warehouse she’d been
casing before that rat bastard tranqed her. She counted two, four, blinked as
her vision blurred, and estimated instead. At least twenty just in her line of
sight and probably more she couldn’t see, both inside and out. Great.

The hitched
breathing came again to her right. Dani shifted her head slowly, avoiding sudden
movements. The tranq would filter out of her system soon. Until then, she’d
take it nice and slow.

She finally
turned her head far enough to the right to locate the source of the breathing. A
pretty, young girl with deep reddish-brown hair was tied to a chair some eight
feet away. Her face was tear-stained and too pale, and her lips were pressed
tightly together. Dr. Terhune’s daughter, had to be. Dani examined the girl
from head to toe, searching for any signs of injury, but could find none other
than some redness around the girl’s wrists where she’d likely been straining
against the ropes.

The kid got
ropes and she got duct tape. Go figure.

“She’s unharmed,”
the man in the suit said. His voice was low and smooth. The toney accent held
an undertone of the Mediterranean.

“And I should
believe you, why?” Dani asked.

He bowed
slightly, almost mockingly, in her direction. “Forgive me. We haven’t been
introduced. My name is Lukas Alexiou. You would know me better as the leader of
the Shadow Enemy.”

A chill raced
along Dani’s skin.
This
was the famed Shadow, the leader of the People’s
mortal enemy? He looked like he should be watching an opera, not cutting down
innocents left and right.

“My word is my
bond, Miss Nehring,” he continued. “In fact, I believe now that we’ve met, we
have a little business to attend to.” To Dave, he said, “Please bring me the
man who killed this child’s mother.”

Two men pulled a
twenty-something man forward. His clothes were torn and blood-stained, and his
face was so bruised and battered, he would’ve been hard to identify even for
kin and friends.

Lukas studied
the man coldly. “I gave very specific orders for this mission. What were those
orders, John?”

The beaten man
mumbled something too low for Dani to hear. Amelia sobbed once, cutting it off
with a sharp inhale.

“Correct,” Lukas
said. “The woman was not to be harmed. Retrieve the girl, do no harm. A very
simple request, John, yet you disobeyed me and killed a woman, leaving a mess
that must now be cleaned up. What do you have to say for yourself?”

John shook his
head slowly and whispered, “She came at me with a cast iron skillet.”

“I don’t care if
she came at you with a shotgun,” Lukas screamed, startling everybody except
Dave. “She was not to be harmed!”

The man broke
into helpless sobs. Dani’s lip curled into a sneer. Why did men always resort
to blubbering when faced with retribution?

Lukas cleared
his throat and smoothed a hand over his hair. “My apologies, ladies. Incompetence
brings out the worst in me. Mr. Winstead, if you please.”

Dave stepped
forward and, with a blank expression, backhanded John, knocking the bound man
to the ground. John’s blubbering came to an abrupt halt.

Lukas sighed and
straightened his cufflinks. “Much better. Now, on to business. Miss Terhune, I
realize you are not a Daughter, but given your father’s situation with Maya the
Protector, I think it fair to say that you will soon be adopted by the People
as one of their own.”

Dani sucked in a
quick breath. How could the leader of the People’s enemy possibly know
something as intimate as Maya’s relationship with James Terhune?

“Because of
this,” Lukas continued, “I am willing to follow the People’s tradition and
allow you the right to kill this man for what he did to your mother.”

“No.” Amelia
closed her eyes and turned her face away. “I don’t want to.”

“Oh, but I
insist. It is the People’s way, is it not, Miss Nehring, vengeance in the face
of injustice?”

Lukas’ tone was
light, playful even, and he smiled, a vacantly pleasant expression. Dani
shivered. The man was about as sane as an escapee from the loony bin. She had
to find a way to deal with him, though, and fast. She glanced at Amelia, young,
mortal Amelia. “She’s not old enough. Fourteen is the age of decision.”

“But in these
circumstances, with her mother murdered before her very eyes, surely we can
waive a few months and allow her to avenge that death.”

“No,” Dani
insisted. “In that case, her nearest relative would step in for her. Since she
doesn’t have a relative here, exacting vengeance falls to me.”

Lukas threw his
head back and laughed, the sound grating across Dani’s nerves. “I was told you
were a canny warrior, Miss Nehring, and now I can see how very true that is. Of
course, I cannot let you kill my man here. Why, we would have to untie you for
that, and then you would try to kill us all. What a shame that would be.”

Dani gritted her
teeth. Crazy he might be, but Lukas Alexiou wasn’t dumb, more’s the pity.

“No, we shall
wait for Miss Terhune’s father. He and Dr. Bellegarde should be here bright and
early tomorrow morning. I regret that we shall have to leave you tied to that
chair. I’ve been told you could create quite a bit of mischief for us if we
allowed you to roam freely.”

Dani shot a
killing glance at Dave. He returned her gaze with a stony one of his own.

Lukas glanced
between the two of them and folded his hands together at his waist. “Why, is
this a love match in the making? Will yet another Daughter succumb to frail
mortality through her love of a mere man?”

Dani rolled her
eyes skyward. “Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”

“Mr. Winstead
does seem rather fond of you. Perhaps I shall give you to him once this
unpleasant situation is resolved. On the contingency that he not harm you, of
course. Can’t have one of the Daughters bruised, can we?”

Dave grunted.

Dani smiled
sweetly. “Sure, give me to him. I’ll make sure he suffers for it.”

Lukas clucked
his tongue. “Now, Miss Nehring, that is not the way one treats a lover.”

“We’re not
lovers, ergo…”

“I know what
it’s like to love a Daughter,” Lukas murmured. He walked over and bent down,
putting himself on eye level with her, and brushed a loose curl away from her
face.

Dani swore he
did it with tenderness, but still, his fingers brushing against her bare skin
repulsed her. She quashed a flinch as his hand withdrew. “Who did you love?”

He eased
upright, his gaze fixed on a scene only he could see. “I have loved her for an
eternity, and always will. She betrayed me, yet love her I do. Can you believe
that?”

She scrambled
through the tales she’d heard of doomed alliances between Daughters and members
of the Shadow Enemy. None matched with this man. “If she betrayed you, why do
you still love her?”

“I have no idea,”
he said, and it struck Dani as the most honest thing he’d said.

“No matter.” He shook
his head and returned to Dave’s side. “She and I shall be together again soon.
It has been foretold.”

“Care to share
that foretelling with me?”

Lukas laughed
again, this one softer, almost genuine. “What do you think this little scenario
is about but the Prophecy? Surely Dr. Terhune has gotten that far along with
his translations.”

Dani’s lips
thinned. She was just a soldier in the war between their peoples. Her knowledge
of those kinds of things was limited to what she needed to know for the
missions she undertook, and only that.

“I have only
come across it once before, you know. That’s why I had to have these artifacts.
My father destroyed the first mention of it when he learned…” Lukas’ voice
trailed off and his eyes glittered, cold, ruthless, determined. “Well, that’s a
story for another time. He paid for what he did, and I have searched since then
for another version in the hopes of finding
her
, the woman I am meant to
love. She and I will be together, Miss Nehring.”