Cool Hand (6 page)

“Amber, I gave Bian your message and she’s on her way to help,” Jen said as we came to a halt.

I groaned. “Ricky said no one else should get involved. I’ll have to make this quick.”

I had a head start on Bian and maybe ten minutes to deal with this. Me against three hyped-up werewolves. No killing them. Piece of cake.

The apartment building was old red brick, a rectangular block three stories tall and a half-dozen apartments wide. Dark rust stains from the iron balconies ran down the brickwork, looking like dried blood.

Ricky had said Nick was holed up in 312, on the top floor facing the railroad tracks.

The Nissan pickup truck that Nick had rented was parked on the side of the building, with a brand new Dodge Ram 1500 behind it, blocking it in. The Ram had tinted glass, a custom paintjob in gleaming midnight blues, and a bulging air scoop erupting out of the hood. I’d bet my last dollar that belonged to someone in the pack. There was no sign of them, but the building’s front door was open and the lock busted.

One way of breaking things up would be to put a brick through that pretty truck’s side window. They’d be down investigating the alarm quickly enough.

But this had to be kept private. The fewer witnesses the better. And catching them inside might work in my favor; narrow corridors would prevent them from getting behind me.

I wanted Julie with me so bad I could taste it, but Ricky had been clear. No one else.

Pia was unhappy. Bian had told her to stick with me and it took a direct order for her to stay in the car.

I slipped into the building’s lobby and stopped dead.

This was like a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. I could smell Matlal.

No! The Matlal in Denver are dead. This isn’t a trap.

This must have been where they were staying when they were in Denver. Nick had tracked them down. He’d seen the boneheads following him and he’d decided to come here for a reason.

No witnesses?

It made sense. The place felt unused. Floors were bare concrete; the walls had marks and gouges where furniture had been moved carelessly. Along with Matlal, dust and decay, I could smell mold. And fresh scents of the pack.

I could hear them as well, screaming at Nick and Olivia and hammering on the door, swearing they were going to break it down if Olivia didn’t come out.

I sprinted up the stairs, pausing only to check the echoing hallways. I didn’t want a surprise coming up behind me, but the place seemed genuinely empty.

They were making so much noise they didn’t hear me. They didn’t even smell me until I was standing in the hallway.

I growled. I wasn’t trying to change to wolf, but my throat made sounds that I couldn’t normally. I had to swallow before I could speak, and even then, my voice was an octave lower.

“Ricky is going to be so pissed at you boys,” I said.

“Farrell! You jumped-up bitch. We’re going to fix this for good now.” He was a big guy, body sculpted like a boxer, with a strut like a farmyard rooster. I made him as the ringleader, so he got Bone One as his target name. Neither Ricky’s name nor my status seemed to have any effect on his intentions.

“Time for you to leave Denver,” he snarled, and started stalking at me as if he were confident I would turn tail and run.

Bone Two followed. He was tall and gangly, with arms like a wrestler. He moved with a loose assurance in contrast to the tight, controlled actions of Bone One.

“Time for you children to learn manners,” I said, and backed up till I had the stairwell on my right. Nothing like gravity and some hard steps to deliver a pounding to the unwary. They were still restricted by the width of the hallway to come at me one at a time, or lose the mobility of their arms.

Bone Two worried me. Bone One was too worked up to think straight. I couldn’t see enough of Bone Three to make a judgment.

I didn’t have any time, either. Bone One launched himself at me.

He showed he had experience fighting. In a bar, or on the street, especially given his Were strength, he’d be formidable. He relied on that strength, speed and aggression. Most opponents would be overwhelmed and quickly defeated.

Good thing I wasn’t most opponents.

In this close-quarter roughhouse, the odds were against me: I was smaller and lighter than them; I had less reach; I wasn’t as strong as they were. In my favor, I was quicker and stronger than they were expecting. Best of all, I was far,
far
more violent than they’d come up against before. Not wild violence. Studied, deliberate violence.

I couldn’t avoid his grab for me, so I went in and met him, hard and fast. I shattered his nose with my forehead, while the heel of my right hand punched upwards and broke ribs. Then my left fist came up and slammed into his throat.

His arms flailed around to grab me. It was a bad idea to let him turn this into a trial of strength. I’d lose that. But I was too close to get away, and besides, the momentum was with me. So I kept straight on, shoving him back into Bone Two. When he stumbled and lost the opportunity to protect himself for a second, my knee went into his groin.

And when he doubled over in pain, I stiffened my hand and drove my knuckles into his eyes.

Bone One was out of it, and I lost a second pushing him down the stairwell.

In that second, Bone Two caught me.

This was bad. His arms pinned mine to my sides. He was too tall for me to hit him with my head and too smart to let me kick him in the balls.

I’d started to drop as he caught me, so I straightened my legs, using his grip on me to lift him. That surprised him, even more when I ran. He was off balance, but light-footed enough not to trip. We crashed into the wall behind him. His breath rushed out, but his body was braced.

I tried to stamp down on his foot. He nudged me off line, then he returned the favor, lifting me and running at the opposite wall.

We both grunted at the impact. It felt like a horse had fallen on me.

Short of dancing backwards and forwards like drunk teens at the prom, he had a couple of options. His best one was to wait for Bone Three to help him, but I was sure he was going to try and slam me into the floor. Until he did something like that, I was out of options.

Very, very bad.

There was a thud down the corridor that distracted him and I got my legs going, pushing him backwards again. He half tripped and I twisted in his grip and lowered my shoulder. When we hit the wall, the point of my shoulder went into his belly and then up at his ribcage.

He grunted again, but this time I screamed. That was the shoulder that Frank Hoben had damaged just before the Assembly. Even with Athanate healing, it wasn’t a hundred percent, and it
hurt
.

There was another thud that I could feel through his body, and his grip loosened even more.

I heaved him away.

Olivia’s third blow with the wooden chair leg broke it in two over his arm.

With his arm out, and his head wobbling dazedly around, he made an easy target. My punch to his jaw snapped his head to the side and he dropped to the ground, folding silently like an old coat.

Bone Three was cursing and struggling to stand up. Olivia had only hit him the once.

I kicked him onto his back and bent over him.

This time, my growl was pure liquid rage. It poured down onto him and pinned him to the floor. His eyes bugged and he started to shiver uncontrollably.

When I got my voice back, it came out low and cold. “Take your friends and get the hell out of here. Stay away from Olivia. If I ever see you again, I’ll rip your throat out.”

I stood back and let him scrabble to his feet.

Nick had come out of the apartment after Olivia, and now he lifted Bone Two up by his jacket like he was a trash bag. He dragged him downstairs. On the way he picked up Bone One, who was waving his arms feebly and croaking unintelligibly. Bone Two was completely out of it, his body hanging limp and his boots thumping down from step to step. Bone Three scurried after them.

I didn’t think I’d see Bone Two or Three again. I wasn’t sure about Bone One.

I watched them as far as the next floor and then turned to Olivia.

Of course she wouldn’t have crouched and cringed in the room. She’d been waiting for the best time to come out and make it count. Nick couldn’t get involved in the fighting, but she could. The pack probably expected her to.

I hadn’t factored that in. I hadn’t thought of it at all.

“That was great,” I said, still panting from the effort. “Good work with the chair leg. Thanks.”

She nodded jerkily, stepped in and hugged me.

I slowed my breathing, suddenly feeling dizzy.

She nuzzled against me, wolf-submissive, her spiky red hair tickling my cheek and her body trembling with adrenaline aftershock.

This was a good thing for the pack; it comforted her, reinforced the pack dynamics and fed my alpha ego. But it was more than that; it was mainlining werewolf feelgood into me. My lips pulled back in a silent snarl of pleasure and I struggled to get air into my lungs.

A good thing for the pack; not a good thing for me at the moment.

A thought bubbled up from my murky hindbrain:
There might be a way of saving Olivia without any Adept magic or rituals. Make her a hybrid like me.

I felt the Athanate fangs pulse in my jaw.

She sensed my body stiffening and looked up.

“Oh.” She gulped. I could feel her willing herself to stop trembling, and very deliberately, she rested against me, head tilted back and throat exposed. What was she doing?

“I understand pack means House as well for you, and I understand about the Athanate side of things,” she said, voice strained. “I’m just nervous. I want you to know I’m cool with it.”

“Huh?”

“The Blood…and the other stuff.”

Not content with feeding me werewolf crack, she was now doing the same for the Athanate. She hadn’t been willing to share herself in the pack, but she was committed enough to my pack and House that she was willing to be kin, with all that entailed.

She was safe from me in bed. Her neck, though, maybe not so safe.

Pia was following Nick up the stairs. She could feel what was going on, and she was worried I was going to lose it and start biting.

I forced a brief laugh, and managed to put the fangs away.

“Thanks.” I kissed Olivia’s forehead. “The Blood, yes, in time. The rest? It’s not going to be like that. We’ll have to talk it through sometime.”

Bian came up the stairs as well.

She was wearing her college girl hoodie and jeans. She had a long sports bag slung over her shoulder, hiding her katana no doubt, and she carried her laptop. Prepared for anything.

“Just saw the cutest little truck take off in a hurry. Did I miss all the fun?”

“Yeah.
Pack
business all concluded.”

“Hmm.” Bian stood in front of me and looked thoughtfully between my face and Olivia’s. “I have the impression Olivia’s part of your House.”

“She is.”

“Then that makes it House Farrell business, Amber, and it makes it House Altau business too.”

I nodded. Yup. Complications everywhere. Nothing in isolation.

“If it hadn’t been important in the Athanate sense,” she went on, “you’d have had no grounds for delaying your talk with Naryn. It was only because I convinced Naryn it was House business that he’s not angry. Uh, let me rephrase that. Not any more angry.”

“Thanks. I guess we should hurry out to Haven then.”

“No.” Bian turned her gaze onto Nick. “Since we’re here, we might as well deal with your request for a meeting. That’s Athanate business too, I’m guessing.”

Her nose flared. “We could start with why this building smells of Matlal.”

Nick shrugged.

“It belonged to them. This is one of the places they stayed when they were in Denver itself.”

I’d expected Matlal’s troops to be somewhere more luxurious, but it was well hidden.

Of course, Nick had warned me before what he wanted to talk about with the pair of us.

I’d let him introduce it. I’d pissed Bian off enough for one day.

I guessed he wanted some privacy, so I sent Pia and Olivia down to the car.

“Let’s sit down,” Nick said, and led us back into the apartment.

It was clean and tidy—no mold or scuff marks, and it smelled of pine-scented cleaner and lemony air freshener. Doors off the main room were standing ajar, and showed a small bedroom and bathroom. French windows opened onto a tiny balcony which looked straight down onto the railroad tracks. A breakfast bar cut the room off from a cramped kitchen area, and the main space was taken up by a glass-topped coffee table surrounded by an old leather sofa and chairs.

It was cool, the windows open a crack to let the air in.

Nick detoured through the kitchen area and emerged with an icy six-pack of Fat Tire beer and a beige folder. He dropped them onto the coffee table and sat on the sofa.

I sat opposite him.

“Thanks for protecting Olivia,” I said. “And thanks again for finding Bow Creek.”

He nodded and offered us the beers. No glasses, of course. I twisted the cap off and took a swallow while I watched him and Bian try to outstare each other.

His long black hair was held back with a leather tie. That made his bronzed, sculptured cheeks look even more prominent. His marque was as unrevealing as his brown eyes. It felt a little different somehow. Between the apartment’s cleaning products and the building’s background scent of Matlal, I couldn’t get a good fix on it. I shifted uneasily.

“About finding Bow Creek…” Bian left it hanging.

He snorted. “Insider information, of course.”

“How?”

“In good time.” He pulled a list out of the beige folder. “This is the list of names and faces that Correia handed over, which you passed on to me at the first briefing when we set up the hunt for the remainder of Matlal.”

Bian glanced at it and nodded.

“Everyone on it is accounted for.” He ran his finger down the list. “These are all dead, except for the six highlighted, who took flights out of the country immediately after Matlal’s attempted coup failed at the Assembly. That includes Vega Martine, who traveled to Panama under a false name. She used a private jet from Centennial. In typical Basilikos fashion, Correia didn’t bother to list the toru when she gave it to us, but I believe they were all at Bow Creek.”

“Fine,” Bian said. “The contract is concluded. Your fee will be paid as agreed. ”

“Hmm. There’s one more.”

“Your informant?”

He nodded.

When Nick had first approached me, he’d said that informant was requesting asylum in House Farrell. I was dreading Bian’s reaction.

“What does he want?” Bian said. “Safe passage?”

“That’d be kinda dumb. They
couldn’t hide in any Panethus domain, and Basilikos would have a price on their head.”

“Oh, crap,” Bian said. “Stop right there.”

She pulled her laptop out and fetched a breakfast bar stool while it woke up. Then she perched it on the stool and checked that the webcam got all of us.

Damn.
My meeting with Naryn was about to start with a videoconference on the subject I felt most unsure about—a Matlal renegade asking for asylum from House Farrell.

The laptop screen cleared and showed us Naryn. He was seated at a desk, wearing a headset. It looked as if he was working a couple of other computer systems at the same time.

He didn’t look any more pissed than usual, but all we got was a nod of acknowledgment; most of his attention seemed to be focused elsewhere. Bian spoke to him briefly in Athanate before turning back to Nick.

“Okay. So for the record, you have performed according to the contract we set up, and exceeded it in the assistance you provided to House Farrell at Coykuti. Formally, thank you for that. You also found one of the Matlal willing to tell you where the others were, including Bow Creek. Now, what does he want in exchange?”

Bian still hadn’t picked up on who it was.

“Asylum,” Nick replied, and Bian nodded. That was what she’d been expecting. That was why she’d wanted Naryn linked in.

“With House Farrell,” he finished.

It was the first time I’d seen Bian at a complete loss for words.

Naryn wasn’t. “Asylum’s not hers to give,” he said. “This is Altau’s mantle.”

“I understand there is a way,” Nick said. He looked calmer than he was underneath. Of course, he knew he wasn’t fooling Bian and me; we could measure his heart rate.

“Sanctuary,” Bian said, frowning.

“Sanctuary?” Naryn snapped. “That custom predates the Assembly.”

Bian cleared her throat. “Well, I can’t see there being any more meetings of the Assembly for a while. Maybe that puts us back to the old customs.”

Naryn grunted. “Killing unwelcome visitors is an old custom too.” But he didn’t seem to turn it down outright.

“Could someone please explain to me what providing sanctuary means for an Athanate House?” I asked.

“It’s the same basic structure that Skylur described when he allowed you leeway over having the colonel and his wife as part of your House without them needing to be kin,” Bian said. “You remain entirely responsible to Skylur for all the actions of your House.”

“So I take on someone Basilikos in a Panethus House…”

“You become responsible for them acting entirely as if they were Panethus. Or face the consequences.”

“Great.”

Yeah. I couldn’t even be sure
I
wouldn’t start behaving like Basilikos or turning rogue. If I took this on, I’d have someone else to look out for as well.

Nick took a sip of his beer. “I’m prepared to waive all my costs.”

“Why?” Naryn beat Bian to it.

Nick shrugged. “Personal beliefs.”

He’d talked to me about this kind of thing before. He’d been interested that I’d found a solution that scared the Confederation out of Denver without killing any more of them than we had to. He wanted to know why I’d done it and whether I’d do it again.

I guess I’d attracted this problem to myself.

But this attitude fit him; I believed him, I trusted him. He seemed to trust me. Maybe there was a way through this.

I noticed Bian and Naryn didn’t argue his waiving of his fees. But would it influence their decision?

“So…where is this Matlal who’s asking for asylum?” Bian said.

“Close by. Waiting for the all-clear.”

Naryn stopped what he was doing on the side and turned to look right into the webcam. “Secured?”

“Not going anywhere, Diakon. But also not going to be handed over to be killed. I’m waiting for assurances.”

Standoff.

I sat uncomfortably on the fence here.
Kill them all
had been my knee-jerk reaction after Bow Creek. But what would I have done if one of them had surrendered to me? What if that person wasn’t part of what was happening at Bow Creek? Or they’d been compelled?

“Who is it?” Naryn said.

Nick flipped open the beige folder on the table. Inside was one of the flash cards that Bian had printed up for Nick and Verano to use in door-to-door searches.

I already knew it was the silver-haired woman. The one I’d fought in Cheesman Park when Larry had been captured. She’d been beating me until I was rescued by the arrival of the FBI.

It was news to the others.

“Oh, shit,” Bian said, and grabbed her laptop. She started clicking and the screen split between a scowling Naryn and a database application. “Sex?”

“Female.” Nick frowned in puzzlement.

Bian glared at him, while her fingers continued to click and type. “I got that, idiot. I probably have her bra size and favorite food in my files. I’m asking if you’ve had sex with her.”

“That’s not relevant,” Nick said. It was the first time I’d seen him knocked off his stride.

“I’ll take that as yes, then. And it’s very relevant, because if she’s screwed with your head, that’s when she did it.”

Alice Emerson, the Adept that served House Altau, had warned me about that. ‘Aural sex,’ she had joked; sex with eukori.

“I am not under a compulsion,” Nick said. “She didn’t try anything like that.”

“You say.” Bian stopped hammering away at her laptop. “We’re talking about Yelena Belyevolosova?”

On the laptop screen, Naryn frowned even more and leaned in toward the webcam. “Russian? Belyevolosova? Is that a real name? Yelena White-hair? How did that not raise an alert?”

Bian queried her computer again. “Files say she’s a transfer from a Russian Basilikos House, Volkov. Before that, Chazov in Kursk.” She snorted without humor. “Who did she piss off?”

Then she went still and clicked away for a couple more seconds, looking more and more unhappy at what she found in her intelligence files. “These entries were approved, but there’s no certification. What the hell? Where is this information from?”

Basilikos Houses transferred members occasionally as a sign of good faith. I remembered Matlal had wanted me to be transferred to his House in Mexico when he first met me at the McIntire-Harriman charity ball. It made my skin crawl to remember. I felt the first shiver of sympathy for this woman, Yelena.

“Shit,” Bian said, reaching some deep level of detail in her data. “Marlon.”

Marlon Pruitt, her second-in-command, who’d sold out, or been duped and then compelled by Matlal’s Diakon, Vega Martine. Everything he’d done in the last few days before the Assembly was suspect.

“Shit,” she said again. “We can’t assume we know anything about her.”

“What can we deduce?” Naryn said. “Why has this woman named you, House Farrell?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s because of Larry.” Naryn might not have been completely up to date, so I went on. “Before the Assembly, I found one of Matlal’s Athanate was House Romero, working under compulsion. I was trying to get him out, but it went wrong. He died. I guess making the attempt might show I’m open to alternatives.”

“I’m aware of that situation.” Naryn sat back. “One more thing we need to discuss.”

Crap. I thought that had been accepted.

“Assuming she’s from Russia and she was transferred into Matlal...” Bian and Naryn started to dissect what that might indicate about her intentions and reliability.

I sat back and thought about the tiny amount I knew about her. She was better than me at fighting. If Agent Ingram hadn’t come along that night at Cheesman, I’d have been caught. That made her both a danger and an opportunity.

She’d given us the information about Bow Creek, if you looked at it one way. Or she’d sold out her companions, looked at another. Difficult weighing that.

“There’s one other thing,” Nick interrupted. “You’ve kinda assumed I was the one responsible for killing the last two Matlal in Denver while you were out at the ranch. That’s not what happened. Those two were from the elite squad, coming here to kill her. They found me instead and they were damn good. She saved me.”

Bian and Naryn took that on board and went back to their quickfire discussion in Athanate.

I stood up, restless.

Put myself in her position.

You’re not supposed to do that. It messes with your objective assessment of the situation.

There’s nothing objective about killing someone who’s trying to surrender. That’s what Naryn and Bian are talking about.

What should I do? I owed Nick. He owed her, and he’d made some kind of commitment to her. Why should I pick up that commitment?

Because Nick is Pack. Well, sort of. We hadn’t discussed it; it just felt right.

Because if I’m co-alpha of the pack, his commitments are mine. Yeah,
if
.

Because I owe Nick for what he did at Coykuti. And the pair of them, him and this renegade, put their trust in me.

Damn it! I had enough going wrong.

I could feel the decision in my gut: I couldn’t let Naryn hunt her down, or order me to do it. I had to take this on and forestall any decision by them.

As for where she was…

What would I do? Where would I be?

I knew. And it was time to get off the pot.

I walked to the French windows that led to the narrow balcony. The windows that had been left open a crack to let the fresh air in. I opened them all the way.

There was a sudden silence behind me as Bian and Nick looked around at what I was doing.

“Providing you had nothing to do with killing Larry or what went on at Bow Creek, I accept your request for sanctuary, Yelena,” I spoke to the uninterested railroad tracks below. “Might as well come in now and swear. But I warn you, if you were part of either of those, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

I stepped back inside, turned and waited, my back to the cold air wafting in from outside. And any weapon that came through those windows.

Nothing like making a grand gesture.

Bian’s katana was out and she’d risen to her feet. Nick remained seated, tension in every muscle.