Wild Card (17 page)

Of course, she immediately felt it as I tensed, just as I felt the pain that caused her.

“Sorry,” I said quickly.

“It’s okay.”

The breathless sense of sharing blurred into disappointment and faded away.

“It’s not okay,” I said. “It’s complete shit.”

“What’s the problem? Too much, too quickly?”

I managed a weak laugh. “That ran out about a week ago.” I eased closer to her and concentrated on breathing evenly and slowly for a while. It helped to remember we might be interrupted at any time. I could hear Julie’s voice in the study and I could sense David in the house, though not Pia.

She rested her head carefully on my shoulder and we were fine. After a moment, our hearts fell into sync and the sense of sharing came back a little.

“So tell me,” she said.

“Pia filled you in on the details of the cross-infusion between Were and Athanate?”

“She said that the Were might influence the development of your Athanate side. It might make you become like the Basilikos. That Altau would be worried about you even without that, because you’ve developed in isolation and the Athanate that bit you sounds like he must have been Basilikos. Yadda, yadda.” She stopped abruptly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t dismiss it like that. I know it’s complicated. I know it’s a potential problem and I
am
worried for your sake. But why—”

“Pia should also have told you that newly infused Athanate are usually kept away from humans except under supervision.”

“Why?”

“The lure of Blood and sex,” I said and she laughed. “The problem is that new Athanate get carried away with it and, if they were with humans, they would end up unconsciously trying to change them. The process of successfully getting a human to become Athanate is long and careful. Someone unprepared like you, bitten by a new Athanate, would likely end up dead, or insane.”

“So what do new Athanate do?”

“They bump bellies with other Athanate,” I said, “or maybe Were, who are pretty tough and can’t be infused. Supposedly.”

“I see.” I wasn’t looking at her eyes, but her eukori took on that same steely blue sharpness. “So, you can make love with Deauville but not with me.”

“Alex. At the moment.”

“And Pia and David? Bian?”

“Not going to happen, Jen. I don’t care what the Athanate usually do or don’t do. To me, kin is different from House and affiliation. Kin is special.”

Her head came up and our eyes met.

My heart was hammering in my chest. I was gambling everything on being completely truthful with her, even though so many of those truths she wouldn’t want to hear. Any one of them might finally convince her I was a monster and she was better off alone.

A year ago, a woman called Dominé had fastened an
angoisse
around my neck. It was a mesh collar with the spikes pointing inward, like a choker made of barbed wire. She’d done it to show me how she felt I was living my life, a tightrope walk with pain on every side.

At that stage, one of the spikes had been the fear of becoming Athanate, another was losing my job, another letting the army down.

The spikes were all different, but I hadn’t changed my situation much.

David barged in noisily, carrying a laptop. “There you are. I’ve built a spreadsheet to show you what I was talking about on your P&L.”

Jen blinked. “Ahh. The boy wonder,” she muttered. She gave my hand a quick squeeze and swiveled around. “Okay, show me.”

I slipped out to check on Julie.

She’d had no luck—no one at Ops 4-10 was picking up calls from an unknown caller. We worked out how to set up the octopus so it looked as if the call was coming from a mutual friend and I left her to it, calling ahead to set up my next event.

The one that sent sudden, unexplained chills down my back.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Olivia and I crouched in the shadows of a fragrant screen of mountain mahogany shrubs. Leaves shivered around us in the breeze. Our target was an ordinary house, no security, lights bright enough in the rear-facing living room to ruin night vision for anyone who happened to look outside. Piece of cake—a ten-year-old could sneak in. So why was I anxious?

I was okay. Of course I was. I’d done this sort of thing before; I could handle this. My worry was Olivia. I was feeling guilty for persuading her to take this on.

Bit late for that.

Why hadn’t I had second thoughts earlier? Was werewolf impulsiveness leaking through into everything I did?

Oblivious to my thoughts, Olivia’s face was set; tense determination in every muscle. So much for the surface; I could sense the near-paralyzing uncertainty underneath. This wasn’t what she was used to.

“You sure?” I whispered. “We can still back off.”

“I said I would do it.” She bit her lip and then took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. “I need to do it for myself.”

“Okay.” There wasn’t any point in delaying any longer. “Let’s go.” I clapped her shoulder and gave her a little shove.

She got up and started walking forwards.

Now
my
nerves threatened to paralyze me.

I wiped my hands on my jeans.

Crap! What the hell was wrong with me? Was I channeling Olivia’s fear? Was I worried what Ricky was going to say?

Come on! This should be easy. A walk in the park. A meeting of lovers, not a struggle to the death.

I reckoned there was only one way to get rid of the nerves.

In seven strides I was at the fence and vaulting soundlessly over it into the unlit back yard beyond.

A broad picture window overlooked the neat lawn. The lights were on in the living room behind it, but the curtains were drawn.

I crept forward along the side of the tool shed, careful of a coiled hose tossed carelessly nearby. A wide barbeque grill smelling of yesterday’s steaks distracted me as I slipped past, but underneath that was the smell I was hunting.

Something was wrong. I could lie to myself all night, but every step was more and more reluctant. My body was screaming at me to get out. My hands trembled. Fearful, formless images boiled out of some unmappable corner of my mind.

I froze, unable to go further.

And strong arms reached out of the blackness and snatched me into a nightmare.

Chapter 17

Fear exploding in my gut. Helplessness. Violation. Shame.

I lash out. There’s nothing there, it’s not me, but I have to strike out. There’s nothing solid behind the swamping wave of emotion, but if I don’t fight, I’ll drown.

It’s not me! It’s just Jen’s emotions boiling out of my strongbox. They can’t harm me. Just emotions. No memories to tie them to.

But what follows out of the strongbox is different, and it is mine, and it does have memories.

Hands gripping me, wrist and ankle, even though I’m barely struggling. I can’t fight. Something very wrong. Weak. Can’t focus. Pain. Oh, no. No. Stop. Please. I’m screaming and screaming and they don’t listen.

On and on.

Couldn’t fight there. But I can fight here. Now. Training forgotten. Mindless swinging and kicking. Screaming. Pathetic, thin sound. So scared. Pain as I connect. Blood. Wooden bench rocking, gardening tools scattering, flesh. Hit there, there! Fight.

A grip on my wrists. So strong.

NO! NO! Desperation. Must fight.

Helpless.

Defenseless.

Drowning in despair.

“Amber! Amber! For God’s sake, it’s me.”

The screaming stopped. It had been my voice.

Pack!

Alex is here. Alex. Pack!

I was safe if it was Alex. Safe. There was nothing behind the emotions. They weren’t even mine.

I twisted away. He let me go and I fell onto my knees in the doorway of the shed, and vomited on the ground until my wracked and twisted gut told me there was nothing left.

I felt his hand on my back and shuddered. He took it away quickly.

A breeze blew across the garden and cooled the sweat on my face.

I sat back on my heels, concentrated on deep, even breathing.

Behind the maelstrom of stolen emotions came my own anger. Anger at myself for getting into this situation, and anger at everyone else who’d been involved. It was unjustified, but it was clean and clear anger, it was my anger, it had a source and a reason. I used it to push the other emotions back.

Pack it all back into the strongbox.

Only, it didn’t seem to fit anymore, like a vacation suitcase on the trip home. Random chills continued to slither through me, echoes of the tumult that had struck me. My skin prickled.

On instinct, I took off my bracelet. Mary had given it to me. It had an Adept energy cast on it that had reliably warned me of danger in the past.

The skin sensations died away.

A quiet corner of my mind noted that Adept workings could go wrong. Like a computer program, the bracelet spell needed information from me and if I gave it the wrong information, it gave the wrong result.

What a frigging wreck. While Olivia was distracting Ricky in his house, I was meant to be in Ricky’s garden making out with Alex. Instead, we’d triggered a meltdown, Jen’s emotions and long buried memories of my own like a volcano exploding in my head.

I was so broken I couldn’t get intimate with either of my kin.

As hesitantly as Alex’s hand, the feeling of our bond link crept into my mind. Clever man to use that. The sense of him was as dark as Jen’s was light, but warm and welcoming.

Alex radiated comfort. And underneath that, bewilderment.

You and me both.

The gentle pressure that was Alex in my mind seemed to flow suddenly. I looked around and came eye to eye with his wolf.

That spiked my heart, but I could handle it. He was scary, but I could see him; he wasn’t some formless, overwhelming panic that had sprung out of nowhere.

Cautiously, he sidled alongside. In this form, his worry for me made his breath whine, but it didn’t trigger a reaction from me. The strongbox stayed mostly closed. I slipped my arms around him and buried my face in his pale ruff.

“That’s clever, wolfy,” I whispered, crying into his fur. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I got a cold, wet nose against my shoulder for that, and a tender little gnawing of teeth against my skin. Dumb to be less scared by that than the phantoms in my head. Teeth like those were dangerous, capable of breaking my bones with a single bite. But that I could manage. That was about as back-to-front broken as I could imagine.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

“It’s shit, Bian, complete shit.”

“Calm down.”

That wasn’t a mistake she would have made if we were face to face. As it was, I was calling her while driving back to Manassah and her comment made everything worse. I was alone, having left Olivia so successfully distracting Ricky that the man had no idea what had been happening in his back yard.

At least my plan for Olivia and Ricky had worked.

And it was good I was alone, because that gave me the leeway to shout at Bian.

“I’ll calm down when I’m dead. I don’t care about being thrown in the deep end, but it’s not just me. Saving David’s life nearly cost three lives because nothing had been explained to me. You and Skylur forced me into healing Jen without any idea what I was doing, and that’s completely screwed things with both my kin. I have to stay away from Jen because I might infuse her, and I can’t get near Alex without having flashbacks of Jen’s rape. Why the hell should I be calming down?”

“Because yelling isn’t helping.”

“Nothing’s helping. No one’s helping. I need time to get help. We all need Diana back in Denver. That’s what I should be doing.”

“I understand this is causing problems with your kin—”

“My kin are being so frigging understanding, it’s setting my teeth on edge.”

“But you’ve agreed to help the pack find the rogue.”

“I can’t handle the hunt for the rogue if I’m liable to have a breakdown any second, however much Skylur wants me to do it for Altau. For that matter, you’re all telling me I could go rogue myself at any time. And I can’t be a liaison with the Were because I don’t know what Altau wants and Skylur doesn’t trust me enough to tell me. I’m neither Were nor Athanate. I’m not going to—”

“But you are our liaison.”

“I was and I’ve reported back that the pack isn’t going to do what you asked. Now I’ve resigned. Access to my Mentor is a right, isn’t it? As far as we know, Diana’s in New Mexico. I’m going there to find her.”

I hated this. I
never
backed away from tasks I’d taken on. It made me even madder that I couldn’t see any way around it. And going on like this with Bian was hardly likely to get me the favor I needed for Tullah—an introduction to someone in the Empire of Heaven so I could arrange contacts between the Chinese Adepts and Mary.

Whichever way I went, something failed.

If I went to New Mexico and found Diana, maybe she could help me with the mess inside my head. Then I might have a chance of learning to being useful around here instead of a liability. I needed to visit New Mexico anyway. When I’d offered to help Larry escape from Matlal just before the Assembly, I’d taken on an obligation to him. And even though he’d been killed by Matlal, the obligation remained to rescue his kin down in Albuquerque.

“Let’s discuss this with Skylur at the reception tomorrow,” she said. “You think you’re okay for that?”

“I don’t know, Bian. Tell me everything I could possibly do at the reception that might get me into trouble.”

“Amber—”

I’d been so focused on the conversation, the squawk of the siren and single, lazy spin of the blue police lights in my mirror shocked me.

“Crap, got to go. Police.” I ended the call, kicking myself as I slowed. What kind of a blind, dumb-ass, walking target was I making of myself if I couldn’t even spot a police cruiser coming up behind me?