Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (22 page)

I cast around for something to say.

“I never did get around to apologizing, Colonel.”

“Apologizing? For what?”

“Well, I screwed the pooch, down in South America. Got you demoted,” I said.

Got myself bitten. Got my squad killed, too. Colonel Laine had been in charge of Ops 4-10 up to that operation. By the time I had recovered, he was only in charge of the medical team observing me. That had to have been a painful demotion, but he’d never once mentioned it.

“Amber, you got it all wrong,” he said. “You did an exceptional job down there.”

“I got them all killed!” I said, and bit my lip. Gods, this was still raw. My squad, my responsibility. I should never have opened this conversation.

“Bullshit.”

My mouth dropped open. I had never heard him swear before.

“We’ll sit down with a drink and talk it through sometime,” he said. “But just for your information, I volunteered for that post. If things went wrong at Hacha del Diablo it was
my
responsibility. The least I could do was figure out what happened and how we could avoid it in the future.”

“Okay,” I said finally. “Okay. That’s a date, Colonel.”

Time to quit the call, but I didn’t want to leave him with Hacha del Diablo on his mind, especially if he felt responsible as well. We hadn’t shared many light conversations. I couldn’t even remember what sports teams he supported. I tried the one other thing about Ops 4-10 that I’d thought of recently, and ended up opening a whole new can of worms.

“Hey, Colonel, I’ve just read a report on a drug lord down Mexico way. I can’t think how he’s still walking. We should’ve taken him out long ago.”

“Name?” He sounded professionally interested.

“Matlal. Luc Matlal,” I spelled it out. Again, we shouldn’t have been naming names, but he’d asked.

The line was quiet.

“You still there, Colonel?”

“Yeah. Look, I realize you probably have secrecy issues, so you don’t need to say anything else about why you’re reading up on him. But just to tell you, Matlal’s name came up all right. I put it forward three or four times myself. No green light.”

“Shit.” I didn’t like the sound of that. The more I thought about the ways this could link up, the more I didn’t like it.

“Yeah. We can’t talk about it now. I’ll see you next week.”

“Okay.”

“Oh…and…” he stumbled.

“Yeah?”

“It’s safe, isn’t it?”

He meant would my Athanate friends bite him and his wife. I’d never heard uncertainty in his voice before. It shook me as much as anything we’d said.

“Nothing’s safe at the moment, but no one I’d hide you with would harm you.”

We ended the call on that and I drove to Monroe Street. Time was getting shorter. I should have done this in the dark, sneaking in over a fence or something. But Larry wasn’t there and neither was anyone else.

All of which left me more frustrated and with three chilling thoughts. Larry had been caught. That was edging towards a sick certainty. And if he had, and he was still alive, he hadn’t told them about Monroe Street, yet. But he would. And lastly, there was nothing I could do about it unless we got lucky.

Regardless of the people in Ops 4-10, some of whom I would’ve still thought of as friends, with it a hot zone, I had some precautions to take before I went to Haven.

I went back into the city, to the storage facility where I kept things I didn’t want to see or wasn’t supposed to have. I took some time checking the place out before going in, but it was clear. At least one person in Ops 4-10 knew of this place. I wasn’t worried about Keith, my former boyfriend from my army days; he wouldn’t betray me, even if we were no longer an item. But he’d been able to trace the locker from the old fake ID I’d kept. Anyone else in Ops 4-10 could follow that lead the same way.

I laid the car back seat flat and emptied both storage units. All the weapons and army equipment went in first, in bags, then I put my old army uniforms on top to hide them. When I was sure it all looked innocent enough, I drove out. My fake ID from my Ops 4-10 days, Mrs. Abigail Welchester, disappeared forever, shredded into a dumpster.

I finally got to head for Haven. I had warned Bian I might be late, but this was pushing it. And now I had things to ask for and lots to think about. I’d gone from my comfortable absolutes, the army and Ops 4-10 among them, to a sense of being completely adrift.

House Altau could have been my new certainty, but I found Skylur too difficult to read. That left Diana. I’d started working on that yesterday and I wondered how it would play out.

Chapter 21

The late morning sun was summer-white and haze made Haven insubstantial as a reflection, almost dreamlike.

At the gatehouse, I strolled on the gravel drive while the guards called through for clearance to open the gate. I turned in circles and thought about Ops 4-10, the colonel and Haven’s security issues.

Skylur had said an attack here would meet a surprise. What did he mean?

Apart from not being told things like that, the problem was I didn’t know what level of security was necessary.

The wall, gatehouse and clear lawns around the house itself were an adequate layout to counter singlehanded assassination attempts, or small teams. I knew the building had a basement area which would probably provide sufficient protection against a medium-scale attack, say with rocket-propelled grenades or similar.

But treating this as a mission plan for an Ops 4-10 attack, I could see the defenders lasting between ten minutes and half an hour depending on whether it was a kill or a capture mission. Taking it the other way and treating it as a defense problem, the best solution was that the house itself had to be a decoy with escape or defense options underground. But that scale of work meant difficult requirements for secrecy and expensive adaptations.

The guards themselves were more than adequate for everyday security. But again, a defense force against a serious attack was a completely different beast. I had plenty of ideas about that, if they were needed.

The guards called me back and opened the gates. I drove in and parked in the underground garage, then walked up into the house, searching for the room they’d given me. The place was cool and silent all around me. Not for the first time, I wondered where everyone was. Underground?

A door onto the corridor opened and Bian slunk out like a cat. “Oh! I thought I smelled something nice,” she said.

She was wearing her silky black combat pants, but with a loose white T-shirt advertising a biomedical center for blood donors, showing her leopard skin shoulders and neck. Her feet were bare. Her hair was gathered into a single top knot. Through the door behind her, I could see a couple of people arguing over a complex flowchart on a long board. Yeah, I understood why she wanted out of that.

“Hi, Pussycat,” I said. I didn’t want to rise to her bait, so maybe that wasn’t the right response.

She casually blocked my way, leaning close and sniffing.

“Hmm. No wolf. Are you coming to stay? I’m sure I can find a bed for you.”

“Bian, I’m not staying at Haven.” A moment’s inattention, and my little demon was up and running. “Besides, I’m not sure you have a bed strong enough.” I tried to distract her from that and get her on the defensive. “And what about Mykayla?”

Bian’s eyes lit up. Not distracted in the slightest. “We can have her along as well if you like. She gets tired so easily one on one. And the floor’s plenty strong enough.”

I rolled my eyes. She was completely outrageous, and there wasn’t any way I was going to win this type of conversation.

I pointed through the door she’d come out of. “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on—”

“Oh, I think the security arrangements for catering during the Assembly will go just fine without me,” she purred, leaning in again.

I was saved by Diana’s arrival. “Bian, you have no excuse not to be in that meeting.”

Bian slunk back in, grinning at me over her shoulder. It was impossible not to grin back.

Diana sighed and ushered me down the corridor. “I did warn you that she would get you back for your joke last week.”

She opened a door and we walked into a sitting room.

“She can be so fun and irritating at the same time.” I sat down on the sofa. “Changes direction like the wind in a storm. Tell me, how long does adolescence last for Athanate?”

Diana laughed. “Forever. Or until they come out of it on their own. Don’t be embarrassed, Amber. If Bian can’t get a response out of you, you’re already dead.”

I was more embarrassed that I couldn’t ignore it. And whatever I thought I ought to do, I was being nudged off course by my Athanate reactions.

“How do you manage it?”

“The mock-aggressive intimacy? I don’t fight it.”

“So that stops her? You just stop fighting and she backs off?”

Diana shook her head. “You need to understand, Bian makes no promises, even in fun, that she is not prepared to keep.”

Crap. I’d misread the situation between Bian and Diana. “Are you…”

“Lovers? Yes, occasionally,” Diana said calmly.

I blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Are you mad at me?”

“Why? Am I jealous? No. I love the butterfly. That doesn’t make me jealous of the flowers.” Diana frowned. “No, perhaps it’s not fair to dismiss it like that. Of course, Athanate have all the human emotions, including jealousy. But with our needs, and over time, we’re unlikely to get jealous over something like that. Bian and I are not exclusive.”

“Why…” I paused. Diana was old. I didn’t know how old, but the last time we’d spoken about kin, I knew she’d survived many of them and it had taken its toll. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s not polite to ask. Why do you need any more partners? You have kin. Aren’t they your partners?”

“Athanate endure,” she responded, her voice dropping and her great eyes going dark. “Athanate endure, when kin do not.”

She turned away, and I gave myself a little shake. Talking to Diana was always unsettling.

“This is Bian’s way with people she likes,” she said eventually. “She hides serious points behind joking.”

“What was the point in what she just did?”

“Well, what have you been talking about recently?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, everything that happened yesterday...”

“And…” Diana prompted.

“Kin.”

“Ahh. She may feel your needs are changing more quickly than your comfort zone.” Diana shrugged. “Perhaps she’s trying to make you realize fully that, as an Athanate, you’ll experience relationships differently. And as House Farrell, it’ll be even more complex. You got a taste of that at David’s house on Monday.”

I nodded, remembering the feeling.

Despite what she said, I was sure that Bian had layers to her behavior and I had a strong feeling there was at least one layer I wasn’t seeing. A feeling that something deep watched me, and that it was neither the sexually playful Bian nor the serious Diakon.

“And she
is
making a serious point,” Diana said. “We’ll have to talk this through. Maybe we should talk about Athanate politics and the Assembly later this afternoon. We have a lot of important things to cover today. None more important than how you changed your marque, and why your Blood had the effect it did with David, even though I have no plan in place, yet, to investigate that. But first, you have to make time for the Judicator.”

“What is he going to do?”

“Some tests, nothing more. Tests that provide a sensory stimulus and measure how your body and brain react.”

“What do these tests prove?”

“Well, this is the method the Warders consider the best way to independently determine your Athanate status. It’s nothing really, Amber. And the independent Warders’ assessment cannot easily be challenged.”

I didn’t think Diana would actually lie to me, but I didn’t like the sound of these tests.

The Warders had a strange position, brought about by the creation of the Assembly. They were effectively a large Athanate House, independent of Panethus and Basilikos, with embassies in most countries and guaranteed free passage throughout the Assembly domains. They were intended to police the Assembly and provide escorts for representatives when they traveled on Assembly business. They provided neutral venues for small meetings between Houses on opposite sides. They prized their neutrality and tended to claim ownership and responsibility for everything that they deemed to be for the common good or advancement of the whole Athanate. I hadn’t heard a good word for them yet.

“How does he do these tests?”

On cue, a funny little man pushing a cart full of equipment came into the room. I took one look at the contents of the cart and my skin started to crawl. It was a horror of wires and tubes and that cloying antiseptic smell. Something about it made the Obs tests look like a Sunday stroll.

Chapter 22

Diana’s hand rested on my arm as if I might run away. That didn’t look like a bad option.

“Welcome, Philippe. Amber, this is Philippe Remy, Judicator of the Warders from their Belgian office. Philippe, Amber Farrell.”

“Of course,” he said, his voice heavily accented.
“Mesdames, enchanté.”
He bowed over our hands. “At your service.”

He was a short, fussy man with flat, black hair that looked as if it was starched in position. My nose quickly told me he was kin, not Athanate. His round face would have looked jolly, but the eyes were too sharp.

“I understand, Ms. Farrell, that this appears daunting.” He plugged a cord into the wall socket and baleful red LEDs started to glow on parts of the gray equipment as the demons inside it woke up.

“Yeah,” I replied. “You could say that.”

Diana looked at me as if I was a specimen in a lab. “Fascinating,” she said. “You are almost contemptuous of physical danger, but this harmless equipment concerns you.”

“Associations,” I muttered. Dad, Top, Obs. Nothing good ever came of equipment like this.

Remy noted my concern and fluttered around me, settling me into a chair and bringing a drink of water, all of which had the effect of making me more antsy.