Kiss Of Twilight (13 page)

But he took a deep breath, two, stalling while he tried to figure out what it was he wanted to say. How to say it. "I'm not walking away. I don't have the strength or the will to do that anymore, but you don't really know me. Not yet. I want you to know me before we get to that step."

He couldn't stop himself and turned to glance at the bed, damning his conscious.

When he looked back, her anger had deflated and she set her hand on the door handle. "This isn't over." It was more question than statement.

"Not by a long shot," he agreed.

Kara looked around the room that had become her office with an almost satisfied sigh. It was huge, a second study she supposed, and they'd steadily been carrying out boxes of books and carting them into the new almost completed basement library. Winter had given her an army of hybrids, thank God, and Marcus had thrown in a few of his people too. Now all that was left was the more modern histories of both races, books safe to leave in the light and air, or reproductions that were easily replaced. It was organized except for the boxes piled against one free wall and the three on the table. She'd done a quick search and none of Ben's journals were accounted for, but there was a lifetime's collection of his papers. Sifting through it was going to be a nightmare, but she did love a challenge.

Another table pushed against the wall held the computers, hers and Ben's. She'd spent hours already on his, but she was pretty sure she wasn't going to find anything useful. All that was on the desktop were old reports to the council, membership rosters and compound locations, and some official correspondence between him and the council, none of it sensitive information. There was nothing at all on the laptop. She planned to have Vic look at them, but she wasn't hopeful. She'd have to ferret out Ben's secrets from the physical record, and there was plenty of it to go through. Thankfully the boxes were labeled with dates. There was a box for every year, sometimes two, especially for the last decade or so.

Winter had told her to follow her gut since they had no idea what she was looking for. Gray's message had been cryptic. Kara had been too keyed up last night after the confrontation with Dupree so she'd worked on the computers and contemplated. She figured whatever they were looking for must be recent or from Ben's early years. The problem was defining what that was. Ben was just a squad leader when he met Winter sixty years ago, but he'd moved up fast after that. Within five years he was area commander. That was a lot of time to cover. She looked at the boxes. A lot of junk too. She knew at least eighty percent of this would be useless. Ben had saved
everything.

Something about that thought caught her attention and she walked to the stacks against the wall, looking at the dates written on the outside of the boxes. He'd saved a lot more over the last few years. Why? If he was trying to hide something would he leave less of a paper trail or try to drown it? Kara's money was on drowning it. She felt a surge of excitement, the thrill of the chase. She knew she was on to something.

She returned to the boxes on the table and turned them over. Papers spilled everywhere. God. So much crap. She started separating it into piles. Scribbled notes, calendars, printed emails, handwritten letters. Those surprised her. Who wrote letters in the days of email? And then there were...it took a minute before she realized she was looking at crude, hand drawn maps. But these maps. Oh my God. She'd seen some of this. The stuff she recognized was the old underground city where the hybrids had recently battled the demons. The rest was tunnels and caves. But if Ben's notes were right, they were so much more extensive than the Order or anyone else had realized. Was this what Gray wanted them to find? For some reason, Kara thought not. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Winter.

"Find something?"

"Probably not what we're looking for. Maps, Winter. Five of them of the underground and what I think are tunnels and caves." Her voice quivered with excitement as it began to sink in. Ben had had this information. Ben was hiding somewhere underground and now they had the means to find him.

Winter half laughed, half sighed. "It's about time we got a break. Make copies. At least a couple dozen. I'll have Lance and someone from the lupines contact to you to come in to arrange search parties. You'll be the contact on that project, Kara."

"Okay, no problem." It was just one more thing to add to her list of to do items, but also a sign Winter trusted her to get the job done right. She was smiling when she flipped the phone shut and went back to the papers she'd dumped on the desk.

She kept digging and her fingers shook when she read the anonymous printed email. The maps were a great find, but this...this was something else altogether. There was a message and one reply, both with usernames she'd never seen before. When she tried to email the senders' addresses, they bounced back as undeliverable. It was the words that made her tremble though.

Perhaps the Order's time has come and gone
, the sender said.
Perhaps that is the way it should be. It's old. Antiquated. Stuck in its ways. How is that serving humanity? That's what I signed on to do.

The response was just as chilling.
So we should abandon a thousand years of history? So be it old friend. You lead. I follow.

But God help them all, who was leading and who was following? Ben or Gray? Someone else? Was Gray as out of control as Ben? Was their trusted Grand Master insane? Or worse, rogue? She forced herself to calm down and ignore all those conjectures. She was getting ahead of herself. She had no way of knowing who these correspondents were. Kara kept digging. It was obvious that in his current condition Ben was a threat to everyone's safety. He knew how to steal powers. He had maps of tunnels and caves neither she nor Gia had been able to dig up. But had he also been preparing to break from the Order?

He'd never made it a secret that he thought they needed to cede to younger members. That he thought they were too conservative in everything from doctrine to recruitment to training. Ben had been strong and young and respected. What if someone had felt threatened by that? She felt more than a little sick. Power plays in the Order weren't historically unusual, even bloody ones. Hell, they
were
Templars. But according to her knowledge it had been a long time since they'd openly warred against each other. One hundred years or so.

Something clicked in her memory. One hundred years.

Her heart racing, already suspecting what she would find, and wondering how it could possibly be significant now, she started digging through the first box. She found an old family bible with birth, marriage and death entries. It belonged to an old hybrid family, well known, that had been assassinated during the last power struggle between hybrid factions. One child survived. Benjamin Alexander, born in 1887 in Camden, Georgia. Ben alone had survived the destruction of his family. Her hands shook as she ran her finger over the entry. Ben hadn't been a single birth. He had a twin sister named Karalyn.

She clutched her head as pain seared her. She'd told Dupree she felt like she was missing the key to unlocking the memories Ben had repressed. Karalyn was the key. Her mother. Ben's twin sister. She sank to the floor and rocked back and forth as the agony ripped through her. Whatever Ben had done
hurt
being undone, but at least she remembered now.

Four years old, her parents dead, she'd been taken to the commander's compound. She'd never met him, but he knew her. She'd been too traumatized at the time to know that. It was days later that her mother's ghost had told her that he was her uncle. She'd gone straight to him of course. So excited to know she wasn't alone after all. She belonged. But he'd shaken her small shoulders and made her swear she'd never tell anyone. Then he'd taken her face in soft, gentle palms, and it was all gone. The belonging. The
security.

She wanted to rage and scream for that lost child. Why would he take that from her? Barely more than a baby, why would he take her only security from her?
Fuck you, Ben. Why did you do this?
Would she ever have remembered who she was if she hadn't gone looking into Ben's history? Would he have ever told her? She wiped bitter angry tears from her eyes and stood. She wanted to know
why.
Why all the damned secrets. Why not tell her who she was? Then she wanted him dead. As dead as her mother and father. As dead as she felt inside. She'd never have that satisfaction. As a rogue, whatever had made Ben human was already dead.

Paper crinkled in her hand. She smoothed it out and stared down at the email. She needed to focus on present needs, on learning what she could of Ben's life and his slide into madness and what it might have to do with what was happening in the Order. There was no way Ben's going rogue could be related to his disagreements with the council. She was just being paranoid. Who could predict that a demon would kill his wife and push Ben over the edge into madness, after all? Unless you happened to have a pet demon. A chill went up her spine and she slumped down into the nearest chair. Totally paranoid, but she couldn't resist following that train of thought.

If
that was possible, who was behind it? Who was behind killing his wife and thereby forcing him to go rogue? For what purpose? And had they done it before? For instance with her parents? Because Kara was damned sure if someone had manipulated Nancy's murder to force Ben out of his mind it wasn't just to remove a thorn from the council's side. She started going through the box but it was almost all dry legal records. Inheritances, taxes, payroll. None of that seemed of much use. She needed a more general history of the Order's conflict in 1900 and current information about the council. She went to her laptop. Opening the browser she typed in the address for the Order's private website, entered her name and password and went to the history section. It was divided by centuries, but she decided to check Ben's bio page before clicking the 1900 link. Maybe there would be something that linked to her mother too.

The page started to load and then her computer froze up, so she switched to Ben's. But when she clicked on the link she got a "404 page not found" response. Great. Perfect time for the website to get glitchy. Sighing, she stood up. That meant going downstairs to where the majority of the library had been moved. She'd have to figure out a way to get her hands on the private council stuff later.

By training, she was an archivist and researcher. She loved what she did. But, fuck, did she hate that library. She'd grown up in the Order. She knew some pretty damned intimidating people, including Ben and Dupree. None of them gave her the creepy feeling she got every time she walked down into the basement. She stood at the top of the stairs, breathing deep and trying to control her pulse. She wished she could ask someone to come with her, but the only person she'd ever told about the ghosts was Gia. She hadn't even told Dupree. Because who the hell saw ghosts? Who talked to them? Other than her, of course. Usually it was no big deal. Usually they were faint and left her alone or she could tune them out. The ghost inhabiting this basement hadn't shown himself yet, and she hoped he never did because it was one hell of a strong spirit.

Kara opened the basement door.
Please, just give me a night of peace.

"So you've come back." Kara heard the words out loud but she knew no one else would.

She stepped onto the landing, went down the stairs and as she entered the room brushed up against the poltergeist, who looked more like a movie projection than a person. Her whole body shivered at the contact and she silently scolded herself. She knew better than to ever touch a ghost. They couldn't be trusted. They sucked the life out of people and did it oftentimes without even knowing it. How many times had she come across a ghost sobbing over a loved one? Because they needed to be close so desperately they sucked the life right out of them. People didn't will themselves to death. Their dead loved ones did it for them.

"I don't have time for this."

"That is unfortunate." The ghost laughed bitterly and moved to block her path. His clothes were old fashioned and formal like his speech. "I have nothing but time."

"Well, I don't," Kara said, edging by him.

The spirit followed her into the cavernous space, to the area with the recent hybrid histories. Kara found an account of the early 1900s, carried it to a nearby table and sat down to skim through it. She ignored her unwanted guest and he faded away a bit for several minutes.

"Why are all these hybrids in my house?" the ghost asked disdainfully.

"Your house? This is Marcus's house."

"And he wasn't born from the air," he said drily.

He stood on the opposite side of the table and she leaned back in her chair to study him. Huh. He did share a resemblance with Marcus and Luke. She'd never heard a word from either of them about their father though. Weird.

"His mate is a hybrid. My boss. She's the regional hybrid commander."

If a ghost could pale, this one did. "He bonded with a hybrid?"

She really didn't think it was appropriate to be having this conversation with Marcus's father, but who else was he going to talk to?

"Y'all don't have much say in who your mate is, do you?" The way Kara understood it for the nightwalkers and lupines that was a predestined thing.

He thought that over and nodded. "That's true." He looked around the new library. "Was this her idea?"

"I think it was a mutual plan," she said carefully, not wanting to get Winter in trouble. She rolled her eyes. Right. Because Winter would ever be aware her father-in-law's ghost lived in the basement. "You don't approve?"

"It's a great improvement. And...people come down here now. It's the first time I've seen my sons in centuries."

She scowled. "The house isn't nearly that old."

He raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Another house stood here once."

Well, that made sense she guessed and buried her curiosity. She had work to do. "I need to get back to this." She pointed to the book.

He looked disappointed at the dismissal. "What is it?"

"A history of the last internal struggle in the Order."

He tilted his head to one side and seconds before she heard the steps said, "Someone is coming."

"Great," she muttered. "And here I am talking to myself."

The spirit looked at her curiously. "Do you do that often?"

"No," she huffed. "But no one else can see you."

Marcus and Winter stepped into the room. "Who are you talking to?" Winter asked, after looking around and finding the place empty.