The Takeover (35 page)

Without speaking, we shifted back to Mari’s suite where we found Keene pacing the room. He looked better with the short rest and the curequick running through his veins, but not yet fully recovered.

“Any luck?” I asked him. I’d been watching our apartments and had seen a life force come to his door, but it hadn’t entered.

“My contact says everything’s in lockdown mode. No one can leave or enter—except Ropte, who they’re expecting. We can’t get another phone right now.”

“A lockdown actually works into our plans,” I said. “Especially once we’re in place. Until we have this building secure, we don’t want anyone trying to get past Ava’s blockade to help them.”

“Any problem with the relays?” he asked.

Mari shook her head. “Everything looks great.” She removed the tiny remotes from the remaining buttons on her jacket and handed one to each of us. “Press and hold for as long as you want the generators to quit.” I peeled off the back paper and stuck the remote behind my ear.

We stared at each other, and I said, “They won’t cut the power until sixty minutes after Ropte arrives. Now we wait.”

TO PRESERVE MY STRENGTH, I
did my waiting in my own small suite, lying fully dressed in my original clothing on the surprisingly comfortable bed. In order to catch Ropte’s arrival, one part of my mind lingered on the lobby and on the floor leading to the rooftop where they had a helipad. I knew he wouldn’t come alone, so I just had to be aware of a group of life forces arriving. At that point, I’d alert Mari, and she could begin a countdown with her internal clock. What took far more effort was extending my shield around Mari so we could leave our connection open.

Waiting was torture. I felt Ritter’s absence like an ache, as if I’d left an arm behind. Being separated from him by the electric grid surrounding the building made me crazy.

Instead of focusing on that loss, I combed upward through the floors, trying to find my brother. Jace was nowhere in the building, not even on the lowest floor, but I did find a gap on the top floor that made it appear as if half the level didn’t exist. Only another separate electric grid could do that, and it made sense for Stefan to use the new technology in his private quarters, especially to protect him while sleeping. Catrina had seemed to indicate that Jace was somewhere above me, and I had no reason to trust her, but maybe Jace was there.

Time clicked on. I kept my eye on the ornate clock on the wall, breathing deeply and absorbing until I felt my energy at full strength. Even the pain in my chest was completely gone. No one disturbed me. I wouldn’t have eaten anything they might have brought, to prevent being drugged, but their neglect worried me.

I found myself thinking about Edgel and the odd numbers attached to him in my mind. I went after the memory now, searching in the depths of my subconscious where I kept those pieces of Delia. They hadn’t given me much, except the occasional tidbit of knowledge, but maybe this was important. Or maybe it was only a code between Edgel and Delia, long in disuse and no longer valid.

Jeane stared up at me, horror in her eyes. “No. No!” Her voice rose to a scream. “I hate you! I hate you! I will kill you for this. I swear it!”

“You knew the rules, Jeane. He was a Renegade. He’s dead; it’s over. And if you won’t help, I no longer have a use for you.”

Jeane cringed away, trying to hold in her sobs, turning to Lew, whose embrace was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Clean her up.” Delia’s voice held no compassion. “I want to try another insemination. Yours this time. If we could create a sensing Unbounded with the ability to null, we’d be invincible.”

I gasped for air as the memory vanished. Not the one I’d been searching for. I knew Jeane had been abused, but experiencing the utter lack of compassion Delia had shown her was sobering. Had Delia always been this way, or had it happened gradually over the centuries of loving and losing people she cared about?

More troubling was the next thought: if I lived as long as she did, was I fated to become like her? She’d once told me that was my destiny.

No. I wouldn’t believe that. I had Ritter. I had my brothers. I had the Renegades. I cared. These were memories that weren’t mine, however real they felt. I would ask Ava to remove them when this was over. I’d beaten Delia in life, and I wasn’t about to let her steal any more of my happiness in death.

With relief, I felt my attention pulling in another direction. I had no idea how long I’d been caught in Delia’s memory, but Ropte had just arrived with four other life forces.

Begin the countdown,
I told Mari.

ROPTE HAD BEEN IN THE
building thirty minutes before Edgel and two other Unbounded male soldiers appeared at my door. I was glad Edgel was there in case I needed to channel him before Ritter arrived, or until I found Jace. Each soldier wore an additional knife at their belts along with their normal guns and swords. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Were they expecting trouble or just trying to impress someone?

We marched to the elevator in silence, with me hacking away at Edgel’s mental defenses. At least Catrina was nowhere to be found.

“So where is my brother?” I asked Edgel as the elevator closed on us.

His dark, angular face showed no emotion, but I was already in his mind, and I felt his surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Catrina told me he was here.”

A slight widening of his nostrils would have told me little, but his mind registered fear. Of Jace? Of Catrina? Of my knowing Jace was here? No, the fear was definitely of Catrina. I wondered if she’d breached his shield or if he simply and finally understood that his mind was not the sanctuary Delia had led him and the others to believe all these years. That would explain why Stefan now shielded his quarters.

The elevator was fast, the numbers changing as we hurtled upward. “So, where is Jace?”

Edgel’s mouth finally cracked, as if pried open with a crowbar. “You’ll have to take that up with Stefan.”

“Don’t you mean Stefan and David Ropte?”

Edgel didn’t reply. A bell dinged, and the elevator door slid open on the nineteenth floor.

The two Unbounded guards standing outside it stepped back, and Edgel gestured me out. He kept pace with me while the other two guards who’d ridden up with us followed several feet behind.

Edgel needed to loosen up. Of course, he wanted to kill me, and that might be why he was so communicative.

“Has Jeane seen her brother?” I pushed. “Ropte seemed very interested in meeting with her when they talked this morning, and strangely enough, she seems to care about him.” Or at least enough that she wanted us to put him in prison instead of killing him.

My comment again surprised Edgel. From his thoughts, I caught a glimpse of Ropte’s face, the handsome features contorted in bloodlust, a sword in his hand. A woman was screaming. I was pretty sure the woman was Jeane. What had happened between her and Ropte? I needed to know.

My curiosity stuttered to a halt as I felt Jace. I’d stopped looking for him, but now he filled my senses. He was here, somewhere close. I reached out to him, but his shield was tight.
Good boy,
I thought, but of course he couldn’t hear. There seemed to be a few life forces near him—no, under him, rather. He must be on the floor above us.

Edgel turned a corner before stopping at a wide door guarded by three men, where he ignored the handprint reader and knocked. A slight rustle, and the door was opened, not by a guard but by Catrina, who was now dressed in tan business slacks and a patterned silk blouse. I should have known she would be here. Lew probably wouldn’t be far behind.

Inside the room, four long couches faced each other in a square, with three feet of open space at the corners. An oversized coffee table, also square, sat in the middle of the couches, where cups and a pot of steaming coffee lay on a tray. The wall on the same side as the door held a large screen, while the opposite had north-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows. The right wall boasted an impressive display of swords that looked only too real, and against the left wall, a well-stocked minibar offered a variety of refreshments. At least twenty feet of bare rock floor separated the couches from the bar and the windows, with less than half that on the two other sides of the couch arrangement. Black pillars filled each of the four corners. It seemed a strange place for a battle, but here the fate of the world would be decided.

Catrina smiled and shut the door behind Edgel and me, leaving the other two guards outside the door. I was glad I’d released Mari for the moment, or Catrina would surely have noticed the trail of my shield as it snaked downward to Mari’s location.

Wait.
Had I still been connected with Mari at my first meeting with Catrina? I couldn’t remember now.

Catrina reached out to Edgel and me, and we both shrank from her touch. Her smile dimmed as she motioned for me to precede her farther into the room. Edgel remained near the door, and I felt his relief at the increasing distance from Catrina.

As I guessed, Lew was present, and also Jeane, sitting across from each other on the couches. Stefan leaned against the bar, and Ropte stood by the windows, staring at dark clouds gathering in the distance, the gray on his temples more pronounced in the light. Next to Ropte was one of the bodyguards from his luncheon, and I decided that the three men in the hallway must be the others who’d accompanied him. Tihalt was nowhere in sight.

Stefan came toward me, swirling a cup of amber liquid in a glass. “Thank you for coming, Erin.” He smiled graciously, the perfect host, exuding confidence and a magnetism that was strong even for an Unbounded. I was glad he wasn’t my real father and that I’d glimpsed inside his mind on our first meeting and knew his heart. If I hadn’t, I might want to believe.

“You’re welcome.” I didn’t try to hide my irritation. “What are they doing here?” I looked over at Jeane and Lew. “My message is for the Triad.”

Stefan’s eyes hardened, and his face lost some of its welcome. “Jeane will be leaving before our meeting.” He glanced across the room at Ropte and then back at me. “Her brother wanted to check on her welfare. However, both my sensing Unbounded will be present. We have to be sure, you know.”

I wasn’t about to open my shield for either of them to check the veracity of my statements, but we’d get to that later. “Where’s Triad McIntyre?” I asked. Tihalt had to be a part of our group for our coup to work at all. If he was buried in some lab with hundreds of soldiers between us, that might be a problem, even with Mari’s ability.

“On his way. But while we wait, let’s get to the introductions. I don’t believe you’ve met David Ropte.” Again, his gaze went to the man by the window, and this time Ropte turned to regard us with hazel eyes that today seemed calculating.

“No, I haven’t had that pleasure.”

“David,” Stefan said, angling his body toward the windows, “meet Erin Radkey.”

Ropte came forward, his hand outstretched in greeting, but Catrina shoved a cup of coffee in my hand, coming so close to touching me that I shied away. Some of the hot coffee sloshed over the cup onto my skin.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, dabbing with the napkin that had come with the cup. Ropte frowned and dropped his hand. I felt a rush of emotion from him, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Would you like a scotch instead?” Stefan’s mocking grin softened the hardness in his eyes and reminded me of Jace.

“No thanks,” I said.

Stefan drank the contents of his glass and crossed to the minibar to pour another before rejoining us. “Are you sure? I thought you might want to toast our pending victory. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To concede the battle and offer the terms of Renegade surrender?”

“Not even close.”

Stefan’s grin vanished, and he barked a laugh. “Whatever you’ve come here for today, you have to know you won’t be leaving us. Not this time.” His hand ran down my arm in an unmistakably sexual way, his eyes slipping over the curves of my body. “Believe me, we have a place for you.”

What?

My world tilted. He’d touched me before, but never in that manner. He might be an evil murderer, but he wasn’t into incest. “I would think,” I said acidly, “with the shared genes between us that I would be afforded more respect.”