Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes (49 page)

Tumbling down a hill in the dark doesn’t favor anyone.

I collected two hard thumps to my head before the slope leveled off. Forsythe got off lightly, and I’d had to let him go to protect my head.

He jumped up, lashing out wildly all around him.

I was in about as much danger from his swinging arms as I was from getting sunburn in the middle of the night.

I took him by his shirt and slammed him back against a tall boulder.

But something changed. All of a sudden, there was less fear from him. A sense of relief, as if somehow he felt he’d done something clever.

Which might have been something to do with the hypodermic syringe sticking out of my side.

I grabbed the first thing that came to hand. It turned out to be the knife I’d taken from his bodyguard. I shoved it under his jaw and pushed up until he was standing on the tips of his toes.

“So, this was a little something you had for the auction?”

“Farrell?” he said, his voice squeaking.

“A muscle relaxant? Something to take the fight out of her, but leave a woman able to sense what’s happening to her?”

I pressed harder.

“Wait, wait.”

“Oh, I’m waiting,” I said. “Thing is, these drugs don’t affect me the same as they used to. So, two things can happen. I start to feel weak, in which case I slide this blade up through your jaw and into your brain. Or I don’t, and we just have a talk, you and me, while it wears off.”

The fear was back. His whole body was shaking.

I pulled the syringe out. The plunger had been pushed all the way in.

I felt fine. A bit light-headed. Muzzy. Battered from the tumble. Post-adrenaline kicking in.

The blade twitched in my hand.

Fear. That sweet, sweet taste. Flooding my senses.

I had to focus. I was not going to go down the Basilikos route. It wasn’t anything to do with what he deserved, it was everything to do with the choices I made for myself.

Focus.

I said the first thing that came into my head. “What did you do to Fay?”

“
Uh?
”

I eased the blade back a little.

He was bleeding. Not a deep cut. Still, I wanted to pinch my nose so I couldn’t smell it. The blood was calling to me.

“Fay,” I said. “Fay Daniels. Your lawyer. What did you do to her? How did you make her go along with your sick fantasies?”

“No! She…” his voice cut off.

He couldn’t speak. I eased off a fraction more.

“You’ve got it wrong. She’s the one you want,” he said.

I pressed again, the blade drawing more blood.

“She came up with it!” he screamed, his feet scrabbling back to try and lift his chin away from the knife. “You’ve got to believe me. All of it. It was her idea. When you made fun of her. She couldn’t take that. She got the drugs. She told us to film it.”

What? Is he lying?

I wasn’t an Adept Truth Sensor. I could hear if a person was lying from the changes in their heart rate and the scent of the body.

Forsythe’s heart rate was one step from him blacking out and he stank of fear. And blood.

I pushed closer, glaring into his eyes.

If my eukori worked, would I be able to tell if he was lying? What would his eukori feel like? Would I ever get the stench of it out of my head?

The drugs were making me trippy. I couldn’t handle this shit now.

His face. Gleaming with sweat. Eyes manic.

Shouting.
Close up! Close up!

She’s a whore! Fuck her. Fuck her.

This is the man who raped me. Who got his friends to rape me.

And he stinks of fear now.

Just like Amaral down in New Mexico when my wolf jaws closed on his throat.

I blinked.

Forsythe’s face blurred with Amaral.

I was sweating. The temperature was dropping. Shivers broke out. The drug was getting to me. I could feel it slowly sucking me down.

Can’t let him go. Rather kill him. But Ingram wants him. Needs him alive. Where’s Alex? Yelena?

Forsythe was babbling.

“You want revenge. You have every right.”

It isn’t about revenge, is it? Resolution? Redemption?

What do I want to do?

I wanted to lie down.

He was still babbling. “I’m as much of a victim. She’s screwed my head, Farrell. I’ve never been right. It’s her you want.”

Lies. Half a truth, maybe. Both of them sick, sick, sick. Both of them.

I just wanted it to stop. All of it. Just let it all go.

The knife felt clumsy in my hand. Slippery. Heavy.

His feet weren’t scrabbling any more. His voice was slowing down.

“You don’t want this on your conscience. I’m unarmed. I’m not the one you want anyway.”

Something’s wrong.

His smell was changing. Or my senses were changing. I was losing the wolf.

I wasn’t getting all the richness of the night in my nose.

His face seemed to darken, lose definition. He just smelled human and sweaty. My whole body was shivering.

Kill him now.

It felt like I was wading through molasses. Everything went slow.

He grabbed one of the bodyguards’ guns I’d picked up. I’d just shoved them in my jacket pocket, and one was hanging out after my fall down the slope.

It pulled free easily. He wasn’t even hurrying.

I just wanted it to stop.

He smiled. A wide, easy smile. Confident. Just the way he used to smile at South High.

Elethesine exploded into my system. The Athanate equivalent of adrenaline, turbo-charged. Burned out the drugs.

I trapped his arm, kicked his feet out from under him and drove his body into the ground, using his own weight to snap his elbow.

He was screaming as I lifted him back up and smashed him back against the rock.

“That was fun, shithead,” I yelled in his face. “Try the other pocket now.”

The knife was against his face now.

I worked it back and forth, weaving the tip in front of his eyes, pulling the sharp edge down along his cheek. And it was sharp.

“Damn. Broke the skin there,” I said, as blood started to drip. “Man, that drug is strong. I’m really not in control here.”

I wasn’t.

He was terrified again.

The feeling of fear was like a bad drinking session. Just one drink. Just another. I deserve it. A little more won’t hurt.

I ran the tip down his shirt. It caught, sliced through. More blood.

“Oops,” I slurred.

The blade twisted, hissed over the shirt fabric, down his chest, past his belt. Down.

He was whimpering.

Fear. Like Amaral. Like Amaral; breath and blood bubbling through his throat while I bit and bit and felt the ebbing of his strength.

So sweet, that fear, that fear of the long night finally falling. So sweet to feed on it.

I reversed the course, brought the blade back up into his groin. Pressed it hard. Felt the fabric of his pants part. Nothing but flesh beneath. Felt the skin bleeding already. His desperate attempt to keep still, to keep the blade away from him just a moment more.

He pissed himself.

Like Amaral, when he knew.

His face blurred with Amaral. The man whose plans had killed Diana. And Kaothos.

Prison was too good for them. Amaral and Forsythe.

I held his life in my hands. He knew it. I fed on his fear.

But the message that my wolf was trying to tell me finally got through.

My wolf had hunted him down. Now it was my Athanate’s turn.

I refused to let Forsythe have power over me.

He has no power. No power.

He can’t make me do anything.

Not one single thing.

Not even to make me kill him.

I choose my path.

My eukori stuttered and flowed. Touched his mind. Felt it squirming. He sensed something. Too late.

This is what it’s like, Forsythe.

This is what it’s like to be injected with drugs so you can’t fight but you can still feel.

You can still scream.

The smell of the basement. The stink of lust.

The noise. The shouting.

The touch of tongues. Hands.

All their hands. Clutching and tearing and pushing. Invading.

This is what it’s like to be powerless. Weak. Defenseless.

The pain goes on and on.

This is what it’s like to trust and be betrayed.

What it’s like to be drugged and held down.

What it’s like to be raped.

This is what it feels like when you beg them and scream until your throat is raw, and they still continue.

This is what it feels like. Feel it now.

And this is what it’s like when it comes to haunt you. When you think you’ve got it beaten and it comes back, again and again, and you can’t stop it. When you can’t sleep, because you wake screaming at nightmares you can never defeat.

This is what your life will be like until you die.

You will never be able to sleep normally again.

You will cooperate with the law, because anything, anything is better than trying to sleep without sedation, and unless you do what they ask, they will withhold it.

This is the rest of your life, Forsythe.

“Amber?”

Alex. Quiet as a fox. Strong as a wolf. His strength and love flowed into me.

“Yeah,” I said.

I let Forsythe go, and he slid down the rock and crumpled into a heap, his face blank with horror.

We dragged him up the slope and threw him onto the road with his former bodyguards.

He lay there, sobbing.

“You’re pathetic,” I said, not caring whether he heard me or not. “I’m finished with you. I’m free of you.”

Yelena’s hand rested on my shoulder.

“Victor’s coming,” she said. “We’ll make two loads for the Gazelle and ferry them back to the studios for Altau to handle them. I’ve called Tarez and told him.”

I nodded.

“Take a picture of him like that, please,” I said. My voice felt odd, light. “Send it to Tove Johansen. Tell her he’s going to be helping the FBI. That the truth will come out. People will believe her now. Tell her we’ll take her home to Clearbrook. Or she can go anywhere she wants, and we’ll pay the airfare. Or she can come live with us. Whatever she wants. Tell her it’s over. It’s finally over.”

I felt numb. Maybe it was the trailing edge of the drug Forsythe had injected into me. Or the accumulation of everything that had happened during the day.

Tarez security had taken Forsythe away as soon as we landed, to be held with all the other bidders and guards until Ingram collected them.

The studios seemed empty, apart from guards on the door. The Sikorskys were gone. The vans were gone. No representatives. No bustle in the corridors.

Ominous.

“All the representatives have been sent home, House,” was all the guard was able to tell me. “Most of them escorted to the airport. Anyone not on escort duty, Athanate or Were associate, got involved in a sweep of the entire city to clear out the last of the Basilikos.”

“Except those who pulled guard duty, hey?”

He grimaced and laughed.

Tarez had left a message for us to wait for him. We took over one of the empty side rooms that had comfortable couches.

Alex organized burgers to be delivered from the nearest In-N-Out.

And Tarez arrived just in time to share.

The man looked as if he’d gone a dozen rounds in the boxing ring.

“The rest of your House are fine,” he said immediately. “I spoke to them while you were flying back. They’ll be coming in to join you here once the police have finished with them and we can spare an escort.”

As we sat and ate, he got us to report what had happened in the San Gabriel Mountains after the auction.

“Good,” he said when I finished. “Very good. Skylur’s explicit instruction was that you had carte blanche, but your restraint will go down well with Ingram. We need him to look good in front of his bosses while we puzzle out how we’re going to work with the FBI on Emergence.”

“How did it go in…” I started.

“Las Vegas was a complete success. Your hunch turned out to be exactly right. They found a gold mine of information in an isolated farmhouse that Forsythe and Spiegler own through a trail of foreign companies. A gold mine. Forsythe records
everything
and he keeps it all.”

I twitched, but Tarez didn’t notice.

“Forsythe’s power in this trafficking network has been based on his ability to blackmail so many people. Ingram’s not speaking to me of course, but the Vegas House managed to stay involved right up to the takedown of the farm Spiegler had been heading to. The place is an Aladdin’s cave of recordings.”

He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, looking off into space as if planning ahead.

“Ingram and Project Anthracite will be tied up for months,” he said.

I dropped my burger back into the bag, my appetite gone.

I chose my way.

Forsythe has no power over me.

Not even if there are twelve-year-old recordings of him raping me.

“What’s happened here?” Alex asked Tarez.

He sighed. “Skylur lost the vote of confidence. He’s no longer President of the Assembly. House Correia has taken that position.”

“Huang really did it? Voted against Skylur?”

Tarez nodded. I could see him debate with himself on several things to say and the way to say them. He was plainly puzzled by what had happened.

In the end he shrugged and simply said: “Skylur kicked everyone out. Every single House from the Hidden Path or Empire of Heaven got, how should I put it,
escorted
to LAX.” He checked his watch. “Only Altau, or Altau sub-Houses such as you, or Houses in explicit sworn association with Altau, remain in the country.”

He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin while I frowned—that sounded like Skylur throwing a tantrum. What the hell was going on?

“Skylur’s excuse was that he was no longer under any obligation to host or protect them, and, of course, he’s right,” Tarez said. “Neither the Agiagraphos nor the laws of the Assembly require him to allow non-associated Houses in his domain now. And the issue about protecting them from Basilikos attacks was valid, though by now there shouldn’t be any of them left either.”

I could tell Tarez agreed with my unspoken thought—there was something more going on than appeared on the surface.

“At least they’ll be home for Christmas,” Alex said.

“As will you,” he replied. “But I believe Skylur has just a couple more tasks before you go.”

Alex snorted quietly.

“How has this affected Panethus as a party?” Yelena asked.

Tarez let a tired, cynical smile play about his face. “Purely from a matter of internal party politics, it’s the best thing that could have happened to us. Even better than catching Matlal trying to assassinate Houses in the Assembly. All the Houses that had the privilege of arguing side issues to score political points have suddenly realized the game has changed. They’ve realized that even Emergence is not as big a problem as the Hidden Path leading the Assembly. Panethus is firmly behind Skylur once again. We are the biggest single party, once again. Useless against the combined weight of the Empire and the Hidden Path, unfortunately.” He shrugged again. “We’ll see if the addition of Were and Adept changes that, but I doubt it.”

There was one Athanate group that was significant for me at least.

“What about the Eastern Seaboard association?” I said.

Tarez looked grim.

“There is no Eastern Seaboard association any longer,” he said. “They’ve disbanded and taken Blood oaths to Skylur. All but one.”

“Ibarre?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Even with every Panethus House his firm supporter now, Skylur has to be seen to be strong. Ibarre realized his revolt was over, but Skylur refused his offer of an oath.”

“What about the offer to leave the country?” Yelena said.

“Skylur rescinded that.” Tarez rubbed his face. “However he might have seemed in the brief time you’ve known him, Ibarre had his own sense of honor, and a deep understanding of old Athanate tradition.”

I swallowed. If Skylur judged Ibarre a traitor, then the lives of the entire House Ibarre were forfeit. Surely…

“Ibarre and House Ibarre’s entire Athanate delegation here in the city made the
korheny
, the sacrifice of Blood in payment, to plead for the lives of the rest of their House.”

“Oh, gods,” Yelena whispered.

“Their kin here in LA elected to join them. All of them.”

Ibarre. His two Athanate assistants. A couple of guards. And about twenty humans. Dead.

“And his House in Maine?” Yelena said.

“Skylur has accepted the korheny. What he does with them now…” He raised his hands.

Tarez got called away for an update on the hunting down of the last Basilikos cells. We sat and stared into space, the remains of the meal forgotten in front of us.

Alex pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around me.

It was selfish, to take comfort from him and be able to give none back. But the sorrows of the day seemed to overwhelm the good that had happened and sucked everything down into a sewer of miseries.

Diana and Kaothos.
I still couldn’t believe it.

How must Tullah be feeling? Why hide from the Empire’s Adepts if Kaothos was dead? What were the Adepts doing?

Others. The Altau guard who’d died at the ranch, whose name I didn’t even know.

And Ibarre. It was strange to mourn him. Maybe not so much the man but his kin, who’d died rather than outlive him. How did we Athanate earn that?

As a House, how could I live with such power over people?

As that churned in my mind, fatigue overwhelmed me.

Nothing is as it seems.

The long dragon spine of San Gabriel sprawls over the trembling San Andreas fault and four million people cluster in its shadow.

In the city, glittering streets cut like knives through the barrios. Monsters—human monsters—stalk the valley and no one hears the sound of endless shackles dragging down in the dark of the sewers. People walk by, blind and deaf, through the haze of heat and car fumes that smells of desperation and last chances. They pass on, through a sleepless city, a city scarred with sun-bleached roads and anointed with azure pools.

Cool and slow comes the starless night that covers all, in the city that feeds on dreams; and we are such stuff as dreams are made.

The dragon stirs.

Sighing sands burst out and leak into the white marble malls to the sound of a thousand snakes, and the people tremble in the neon darkness.

The dragon stirs.

The dragon stirs, and the whole world shakes.

“Amber, wake up.”

It was Jen. Her arms were around me. I’d fallen asleep in Alex’s lap. His arms were around both of us. It was a good way to wake up.

“Bad dream?” she said.

“Ugh. Did we have an earthquake?” I mumbled.

“No. Nothing. But Skylur wants to see us now.”

“Us? All of us?”

“Yeah.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. That’d have to do.

“Where are the others?”

“We left Dominé and Vera with Dante and Tamanny. The girls are exhausted and the guards are still there.”

Fine. I’ll see them later.

Assuming Skylur didn’t have something for me to do that would take me away.

We walked down the hall and trooped into his office, Keith limping in last.

Just Skylur. No Tarez.

What’s going on?

Skylur sat at his ornamental desk. It was empty, save for an old-fashioned pocket watch and a commset. Presumably, he’d been up all night, but he didn’t look tired at all. In fact, it looked like he was buzzing with energy.

It was shocking. He’d lost his oldest friend, not to mention the presidency of the Assembly and any hope of controlling Emergence. Yet he looked positively happy, behind his usual mask of steepled fingers.

He glanced at the watch, stood up and launched straight in.

“Bear with me. Here, in the heart of Hollywood, things are not always as they seem.”

My instincts were right on that.

“There’s little time to explain. My thanks to you all on the work you’ve done. You’ve exceeded all expectations.” A small smile chased across his face. “The reward for which is, of course, more work.
If
you agree.”

Alex and Jen both had snorted. We exchanged looks.

I nodded to Skylur. I had given him my Blood oath. He didn’t need to ask.

“Excellent.” He leaned on the desk. “Political situation: spare a thought for Imiso Correia on her plane heading back down to Rio. She has the presidency. However, before she can convene the Assembly and actually do anything, she has two small problems. Firstly, the Hidden Path has to completely and utterly sever links with Basilikos and her memories of those links have to be erased.”

“That’s certain? We
know
the Hidden Path is still connected to Basilikos.”

Skylur nodded. “More than connected. Basilikos still control the most powerful factions in the Hidden Path.”

“I don’t understand,” Jen said. “Why does that stop her from convening the Assembly?”

“I think I know,” I said. “The president is subject to the assessment of Truth Sensors for anything they say in the Assembly. It’d be your first question: ‘is the policy of the Hidden Path determined by Basilikos?’”

“Exactly,” Skylur said.

“That was the first thing that’s holding her back. What’s the second?” I asked.

“Even if she tries running things through committees, she needs the approval of the Empire before any major decision.”

“The man just voted against you.”

“He did. However, I believe we have an…understanding.”

“You
believe
? You had negotiations with him?”

“After a fashion. There is no evidence of collusion between us, which is as it must be. Correia will set up committees and try and run the Assembly through them. She complained of endless bureaucracy, but that is precisely what she will have to endure. And with every tiny step, she will have to ensure that she has the support of either Huang or myself. This is what the Empire of Heaven has been aiming for.”

“But Kaothos…”

“Oh, they’d have preferred to have a dragon, or both the dragon and the Assembly. But never imagine the Empire’s strategy is only what you see. The Emperor is as concerned as I am about Emergence. We will row this boat together, he and I, for all that Correia waves her flag.”

“And all the time, the Hidden Path dare not disturb the peace while they are the party supposed to be in power?” Yelena laughed.

Skylur joined in and checked his watch again.

Before we’d come to LA, I would have sworn the man had no nervous tics.

He went on before I could ask any more. “Internal situation: as we speak, Naryn is preparing to move House Bazhir to Maine. There, he will take over the remainder of House Ibarre, and help me ensure there is no weakness caused by the aftermath of the Eastern Seaboard association.”