Deceiving the Protector (4 page)

He turned again, eying Lia a little longer. Still no movement. Still safe. He’d known there was a killer out there. Even known the killer was somehow connected to Lia—the oracle had said as much.

Death hunts the Wanderer, only with the Hunter can the treasure be protected.

That had been reported by Jade, the Sibile his brother had taken for a mate. She hadn’t said anything about sick motherfuckers stringing up people parts like Christmas decorations. Carnage like that—carnage that could affect Betha, of all people—was nothing to shrug at.

But if he didn’t remind Betha to stay emotionally distanced, they’d never find answers. She had to push past the unsettling and see the facts. “Why not? You’ve gone into everything else.”

Betha shook her head, the dark thoughtfulness clouding her expression only settling in deeper. “Whoever’s killing them is a single person, not a squad, or there’d be a hell of a lot more tracks in the woods. I’m barely finding anything but the
victims’
trails, and you know I’m almost as good as you at tracking. But how the hell does a single human take down a shifter running for his life, at close range?”

They didn’t. Humans weren’t as fast, weren’t as strong. That’s why they moved in teams for that kind of thing. He frowned down at his protégé. “What makes you so sure it’s not some shifter playing against the rules? Just the gun?”

When she met his gaze this time, he saw something he really didn’t like in her dark eyes. A hint of fear. He resisted the urge to check Lia again, reminded too well of the same expression on her face.

“These guys weren’t small. The victims were big shifters. I think one was actually a Bear. They would have put up a hell of a fight if they’d known there was a human around them, but there’s no sign of a struggle in the area, just running and the stink of terror. Also, the meat we found didn’t have any marks from the attacker. Shifters claw. Weapons or not, we claw. It’s instinctive. If these were challenge fights, there’d be tracks, there’d be no gun. That’s not it. My best guess is that what we have is some kind of a shifter-hunter. A
sick
one.”

Dead shifters were hardly news, but Tate didn’t like the feeling he had in the pit of his gut, either. As if he’d just stepped in a big, steaming pile of shit. Right in the middle of a fucking minefield.
Damn crazy Sibile. What the hell did she get us into?

“I’ve got my men scouting the area around the next houses those last two travelers are supposed to land at,” Betha continued, eyes on the ground. “Given the time between the previous kills, odds are good that either the killer or the next victim is going to turn up any time now.”

Tate nodded. “I’ll keep this one with me. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s no killer. All the same, clear the track for the houses these two were heading to and get a command out to reroute anyone heading into the state. And I want those next houses guarded. If that last stray shows up, hold him until I or the Alpha give the command. I’m bringing this stray in on foot.” The oracle’s other stipulation. The girl couldn’t be forced to safety. She had to come of her own accord. Sometimes he wondered if that crazy old bat just got her kicks making life difficult.

“Still think you’re not just using her as bait?” The dangerous glint in Betha’s eyes was back.

“Don’t get your fur in a knot, cub,” he grumbled. “I won’t let anything happen to her. It’s just the way it has to be.”

Betha studied him broodingly, her hand toying with the sai on her right thigh. “I don’t like this, Tate. This whole assignment has a stink on it you can smell for miles. Raids and guttings, leaving strays out to get killed? It’s not like the Alpha to risk people this way.”

No, it wasn’t. Pale didn’t risk people, period. Something he had to remind himself of as much as he did Betha. He reached out to touch her hair, flicking the tail of her braid between his fingers, offering reassurance the only way she’d accept. “He’s trusting
us
to find them and protect them. We’re going to find whoever is cutting up our people, cub. And when we do, that bastard’s going to find out how much like animals we can really be.”

Betha stared at him for a long time before relief finally relaxed her features. “So what’s been happening at home?”

He could only shake his head. Betha took mercurial to all new levels.

“Has Jade figured out how to get furry yet?”

He sighed, this question far less palatable. The Alpha’s mate transformed into a creepy, human-shaped body of semi-sentient light when her Sibile gifts got out of hand. Pure power, pure light, but not quite rational. At last count she’d taken down three redwoods, blown up a boulder bigger than his car and burned a three-foot-wide hole through the edge of a granite hillside. “Jade’s still having trouble controlling the shift.”

“She’ll get it eventually. Who knows, we might even have some of the mountain left when she does.” Betha pounded her fist into his thigh. “Call if you need me. I’ll be in touch.” She backed away, giving him a crooked grin before running up the tree next to him and disappearing into the night with the faintest of rustles.

Shaking his head, Tate turned, rubbing his neck. He didn’t get two steps before he realized something was wrong.

The pallets were empty.

Lia was gone.

Lia let her nose guide her through the brush, scenting being one of the few traits the scientists were never able to take away from her. She smelled water, a small blade of the river, rich earth and grass. She hurried toward it, knowing there wasn’t much time.
He
would be there soon.

She didn’t smell him because his injection regimen kept him from leaving a scent shifters could track, but she could feel him. It was a calculated risk, leaving Tate unprotected. She’d counted on the obsession, the anger that she’d dared to accept a companion, to draw
him
out. As she entered the glade, a spot that would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the pain that was about to fill it, she closed her eyes to gather her courage.

Don’t go blank. Do
not
go blank.
It had been happening lately, no matter how she struggled against it. The past few months, her will to fight had been waning. Weakening under the strain, like the rest of her body. Instead, the fear was getting the better of her. Whenever he came too close, she began to freeze up—sound faded, her fingertips growing numb until that numbness took over every part of her. For those moments lately, she became voiceless, motionless, until he disappeared back into the shadows.

She flexed her fingers, shaking her head to clear it of the fear. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding in her mind this time. She had to find a way to buy time. To shield Tate from a fate he had no idea was already stalking him.

You can protect one more. You can do it. Just like Laurel. You can protect one more. The Underground can
not
lose a general.

Not giving herself a chance to think further than that, she bowed her head, shivering as she stared at the grass at her feet. Her heart beat out a terrified chant her mind couldn’t stop repeating.

Don’t let him kill me. Don’t let him kill me…

She didn’t know who she prayed to anymore, the small bits of faith she’d once been taught left in tatters, but as she shuddered and waited, the prayers repeated without ceasing.

Don’t let him kill me. Don’t let—

Pain exploded in her throat, an icy, relentless grip nearly flattening her windpipe even as it shoved her body down hard enough to whiten her vision in a flash of hurt.

Suddenly,
he
climbed over her, hand still around her neck, straddling her waist, sinking them both into the mud beneath the grass. She looked up at the face that wasn’t a face, not at all surprised by the forbidding mask there. That visage was all she’d ever known of him. Glass-smooth black, with three thin vertical slats where his mouth should be. Two different-sized glass optics covered his eyes, both of them cold and unmoving. The left one formed an oval bubble slightly above the surface of the mask and the right protruded out from a black metal ring, soundlessly turning and focusing as he moved. He blended into the night like smoke, able to hide anywhere. A walking nightmare.

A nightmare that had just sunk to new levels of fear.

She blinked, disbelieving, as her hands grasped his wrist, instinctively pulling at them for air. Cold skin, paper dry but frigid, flexed tight beneath her fingers. Her eyes widened ’til they hurt. His hands were bare…

He’d never touched her skin to skin. Never.

He leaned down into her face, his voice forming digitized whispers of rage though the hard mask remained smooth and expressionless.

“He touched you.” He pounded her into the mud again, punctuating his words with violence. “
No one
touches what’s
mine!
”

Pain speared across her shoulders, the back of her head, but all she could do was hold on and wait for it to be over.

Someday, you’re going to pay for this. On my life, you will pay
, she thought, even as she wiped vengeance from her mind. Hate served no purpose here. The general—the Underground—could not die. If that required sacrifice, so be it. He would strangle her until his sadistic mind deemed it enough, but her mind was whirring again, seeking and disregarding option after option before he deprived it of too much oxygen. No matter what, she had to make him stop. A dead woman protected nothing.

Her nails dragging over his dead-cold hands, she finally realized he needed touch. That’s why the gloves were gone. Touch centered him when the bloodlust overwhelmed him. Contact, the scientists said. Usually, it was only pressure, but this time he must have needed to
feel
her life in his hands. Maybe even feel it end.

Use it. Use it…

She lifted her own hand, forcing her mouth into a faint smile, brushing his mask in a caress that would have made her vomit otherwise.

He froze.

She tried again, lifting her other hand to trace the smooth curve where his cheek should have been.

“What are you doing?” His voice never sounded like a man’s. Only his hands showed his emotions and though they were still tight, they lightened. They shuddered.

The curve to her lips this time was real.

It wasn’t much more than a quake, but in that instant, power shifted and she knew it was hers. If she simply played this right…

She drew her hand down over his shoulder, dragging it hard enough for him to feel it through the heavy fabric. She squeezed his biceps on each side, the shudder in his flesh impossible to miss. His hands ripped away from her throat as if she burned him, but he didn’t get off her. He wasn’t about to leave her hold.

Hooked.

“He’s…general.” She pushed the words through a throat that could barely croak, knowing he was as aware as she was of the intelligence on the Underground. “Second…only to…Alpha.”

The masked face above her canted left. “You brought him to me to kill?”

She shook her head. “Don’t…kill.” Swallowing felt as if the bones were resetting into place, choking her again. “Let me…lie to him. He’ll lead us…to Alpha. We give
them
…what they…want…we’re free.”

There was no question who
them
might be. The Shifter Control Task Force. His masters. To them, destroying the Alpha would strategically hasten the genocide. Without a leader, without hope, the shifters would scatter and be easy to pick off. By his pause, she knew he was working that through. Thinking out the possibilities.

No more mask.

No more drugs.

No more holding back.

He’d sold his soul—if he ever had one—long ago for that chance. Would he do it again?

Deep inside, where she hid every secret thought, every desperate dream, Lia shook in true horror. She’d had her rebellions against him, fought her battles as long as she could, but for the first time, she wondered if she’d pushed him too far. Allowing her to stay with Tate, to follow him to the ultimate prize, was not without incredible risk. The price to him would be a steadily rising madness and they both knew it.

He wouldn’t be able to come near her with Tate at her side day and night. The contact he was used to would dribble down to moments like these, and she knew those would be violent. She’d have to absorb his instinctive rages as she had tonight, over and over again. Worse, there’d be no guarantee he’d be able to rein it in without killing her.

But she could see no other way. If she meant to keep Tate—and every person he protected—safe, there was simply no other way. Which meant she’d just gambled her life, and the freedom of the one who meant more to her than any other, on the hunger of a madman.

She knew, by the way he righted his head, the instant she lost.

“You’re only giving yourself to me for
him
.” He might be resentful, but he had yet to pull free of her. It was the slimmest chance, but she had come this far. For the lives of so many—for Laurel, she added, holding back the sob—she would do what she had to.
Whatever
she had to. “Please, Asher. I’ll give to you every night if you spare his life.”

Like a snake, his bare hand lifted and came down on her face. His fingers dragged over her skin, pulling down her eye, her lips, on their way to take her throat in his grip again. Every centimeter stung in its wake. “You play a dangerous game.”

She didn’t dare move, watching him, waiting for the death blow.

Bastard that he was, he made her wait endless moments.

“We’ll play it, but know this, Aurelia. I
will
kill him. I’ll rip his heart out and feast on it when this is over. Get to the Alpha. Until then, every touch he takes, every day you choose him above me, the blood spilt will be on your head. Yours and yours alone.” He shoved her down one more time, then—like the ghost he was—he disappeared, leaving her in the moonlight, shuddering, her empty stomach violently lurching in relief.

“It always is,” she choked, rolling onto her side to quell the sickening fear. The agony in her throat. Those things would fade. Those things she could handle.

She wasn’t dead. As long as she could breathe, could move, there was still a chance to make up for the lives she’d lost.

No. She shook the weight of that hope away. One life was all she could concern herself with right now. Just one.

Her eyes burned with tears she couldn’t shed, and her body ached with pains she had to find a way to disguise before she went back to the man she’d just wagered so much to save. She closed her eyes to rest, but the truth kept her from a much-needed healing sleep.

“It always is.”

Find her.

Tate pushed though the break in the bushes, his senses spread out, searching for a threat that didn’t seem to be anywhere near. The woods were silent. Even the small scurrying sounds of insects and tiny creatures stilled. As if, like him, they sensed a predator.

A predator that wasn’t him.

And it wasn’t Lia.

He hadn’t spared more than a half glance to the sparse pallet where Lia had been faking sleep. She was gone, of her own volition. Had she been so spooked she’d leave everything behind? Worse, her scent was somehow already cold, though he knew she could only be a few minutes ahead of him. For some reason, her scent faded faster than anyone he’d ever met, but he didn’t need that specific spring flavor to track her this time. The acrid bite of fear hung in the air where her scent should have been. He could practically hear her screaming at the top of her lungs but there wasn’t a sound to follow.

The urgency in him rose to new levels, sending his heart racing.

Find her!

He didn’t need the Instinct railing at him right then. As it was, he could feel fur rising on his spine with primal anticipation, the Instinct riding him to shift. There was something in these woods. Something dark and venomous…and she was out here with it.

He pulled the hunting knife from the leather sheath he kept at the small of his back. There were more hidden on his body, smaller throwing blades balanced perfectly for lethal release, but this blade, this one had the secondary advantage of scaring the shit out of people. At the very least, it might make whatever was out here think twice before attacking.

He followed her carefully, weighing speed against the chance of losing her. When he heard the flow of water, he frowned, needing to focus his hearing around it. Still no trace of her, though the scent of fear was growing.

Through the trees, he saw an open glade, the grass uneven and the scent like a whiteout of terror. Something had happened here. To
her
.

Rage spiked his blood, hot and merciless. She was under his protection and someone had dared harm her. His hand tightened on the knife, the sound of his skin twisting against the leather grip dragging him back to his purpose. Large prints dented the muddy grass, likely boots. He passed through the bushes as quietly as possible, crouching low to try to track the imprints. The ground had been trampled, the thick grass rucked this way and that, not long enough ago for the blades to start rising back to their natural angle. Someone had been thrown down hard, tearing into the moist earth, someone small. He ran his hand over the impression, well aware who it was.

A growl escaped him, low and rough, his fangs descending almost without him realizing it.

She hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t made a sound that would carry, though it was clear someone had hurt her. Why?

A splash from the nearby water brought his head up. His night vision sharpened the landscape until it might as well have been under a spotlight, but he still needed two passes before he found her. Submerged almost completely in the black water, pale hair flattened to her scalp, it was her eyes that finally made her discernible amongst the logs and rocks in the small flow. Irises glowing eerily at him, her gaze was centered on him, flat and defensive.

They stared at each other, neither moving, for a suspended moment. The relief in him would have swamped him if he weren’t considering throttling her. The middle of the fucking night, violence marking the air everywhere, and she was taking a goddamned
bath?
His growl this time was meant. It didn’t do shit to relieve the pressure building in his head, but it kept him from stomping over and dragging her ass out of the water.

“Are you all right?”

No answer. Of course, no answer.

“What the fuck are you doing out here? What the hell happened?”

Her eyes shuttered into little more than glimmering slits above the water line.

He knew that look. He didn’t need to see the rest of her face to recognize it as the feminine haughtiness every woman he’d ever met—shifter, Sibile or plain human—was capable of using to explain sheer, skull-cracking stupidity. Oh, they had their reasons. Reasons they could talk themselves blue in the face trying to make sound feasible, but not once did any of them back down once they had it on their faces. Buildings might crumble around them, floods come crashing in, or fires lick at their feet, but nothing would budge them.

Lia Crawford wouldn’t be any different. He wasn’t about to waste time fighting with her about it.

“Hurry up and finish,” he bit out, turning his back on her, feigning indifference. If nothing else ever worked with a woman, not caring always seemed to do the job. “It’s not safe out here.”