War Bringer (30 page)

Mercenary.

* * *

“Blade, what have you been able to find in your mom’s papers?” Kit asked as the team reconvened that afternoon. Kelan noticed that Rocco and Angel weren’t back yet.

Blade shook his head. “We haven’t gone through everything. We’re only scratching the surface.” He looked at the different piles of items filling the long conference table. “What’s here is a hodgepodge of systems and beliefs from ancient secret societies. Don’t know yet why they’re important. We found a manual of ceremonies and a manifesto for them.” He looked around at the team. “Some dark stuff here. Over the decades, they’ve developed a rich mythology, full of rituals and hierarchies and odd rules. Maybe they’ve co-opted the ancient societies’ practices.”

Rocco came in from the stairs. Kelan noticed his knuckles were banged up. He didn’t remember those injuries from their fights in the tunnels. He wondered if he’d been pounding one of the punching bags with unprotected fists.

“This”—Blade waved his hand at the stacks of papers as he searched for the right word—“
cabal
is big and well organized. And it’s old. Not as old as all the secret societies it’s absorbed, but maybe a hundred and fifty or sixty years old. Seems to have started somewhere in the South, after the Civil War, instigated by wealthy Southerners stung by their losses in the war. They connected with disenfranchised aristocrats in the nineteenth century in Europe and powerbrokers in the Middle East in the twentieth century. It’s now a global organization.”
 

Kit exchanged a look with Owen.

Rocco joined the discussion. “The cabal’s success is based on their shared interest in power—and the fact that they are a secular group. It appears they care nothing for other member’s religions, only the resources they each bring to the table. Seems since the beginning, they knew their rise to power would come…in time, once their foundation was fully formed. They’ve worked assiduously for generations to make that happen. Each generation, and region, has a governor.”
 

“Their reach appears to have its tendrils in every world government,” Blade added as he nodded at the stack of papers. “At least, it did twenty-thirty years ago. Some of the ledgers show they absorb funds by any means possible, including sex trafficking; drug and weapons trade; antiquities theft; jewelry heists; blackmail; whatever. Once you’re a cog in their wheel, you never get out. They roll over you if you cease to be of use. The structure they’ve set up lets the higher members of the cabal be exempt from persecution/prosecution. If someone has to take a fall for something the ruling class does, that fall guy can be found or bought.”

Rocco’s face tightened. “The journals seem to indicate that they foment war and disease. Their goal is to reduce world population to less than half a billion people.”

Kit took a long minute to absorb their analysis. He looked at Owen. “The Armageddon Lion’s been telling us about.”

Owen nodded, then started a slow prowl around the conference table. “What are the regions you mentioned?”

Blade called out the list. “Region 1: North America; Region 2: Western Europe; Region 3: Pacific Union; Region 4: Latin America; Region 5: Eastern Europe; Region 6: Western Asia; Region 7: Eastern Asia; Region 8: Southern Asia; Region 9: Middle East; Region 10: Africa. They loosely correspond to focus areas identified by the United Nations, except these were compiled in an Omni World Order manifesto decades earlier.”

“Each region has a governor,” Rocco said.

“Where does King come into play?” Val asked.

Blade shook his head. “Don’t know yet. But this stuff is full of hyped-up names that sound like they came straight from some massively multiplayer online role-playing game world.”

“It’s true,” Rocco said. “The mythology they’ve constructed around their organization reads like a script for a game. The king’s virgin daughter is supposed to marry a warrior who will be the king’s hammer, forcing all the regions under the rule of one emperor.”

“Maybe Bladen was scripting a game,” Owen mused.

“Except that’s what really happened with Fiona,” Kelan reminded them. “It wasn’t a game.”

Rocco shook his head. “It does seem like a game, but there are real names here—many of them correspond to the names in the separate ledger that Bladen kept.”

Blade looked at one of the ledgers. “One of the ledgers lists names of people, their country, region, crimes, and punishments. Bladen’s list is a subset of them. Why or how he picked the subset that he did, we don’t yet know. Perhaps he pulled out the pedophiles. Greer was able to identify payments Bladen was receiving from his subset, so maybe he was skimming off the top of this Omni organization, which might have been why one of his own men killed him.”

“Lobo intercepted several key foreign nationals from some of those regions you mentioned,” Owen said. “We’re trying to unravel how they’re connected to this cabal. Not having much success—they’ve invoked diplomatic immunity or lawyered up.”
 

“Get us their names so we can cross-reference them against these ledgers,” Rocco said. “We still have a ton of records to get through. We’re a long way from finished with our analysis. And we haven’t even tackled the encrypted documents yet.”

Chapter
 
Twenty-Seven

Fiona parked next to Rocco’s just outside the old barn at Mandy’s place. Hopefully, he’d heard her car, but just in case, she called out, “Rocco!” as she entered the dark, old barn. He didn’t answer. “Hey, Rocco!” Still not a peep. Maybe he was somewhere else on Mandy’s ranch?
 

She found stairs at the back of the barn, and started up them. One of the treads was missing. She climbed over it. The upper platform of the barn was not what she was expecting. It was wide open and empty, except for a few pieces of furniture.
 

Rocco was standing by an open dormer window. “Something I can do for you, Fiona?”

It was peaceful here; she could see why he came here for an escape. Maybe she needed to find herself a spot like this at Ty’s. But, of course, she wasn’t going to be staying long, so it probably didn’t matter.

“I was wondering if we could talk.”

“About what?”

She looked at him. “Darkness.”

He turned from the window and looked at her. “I don’t want to talk about darkness with you. You shouldn’t even see the darkness.”

“I didn’t until King took me. He had both my mom and stepdad killed. He kidnapped Lion—my brother—and still holds him somewhere. He killed a friend of mine the same week he killed my mom. He tried to have me raped. The more his noose closes around me, I see less and less of the light.”

Rocco frowned. “Yeah. I guess fate fucked you over too.”

“Kelan says fate’s the life plan we write for ourselves before we come alive.”

Rocco gave her a small smile and shook his head. “Kelan sees things in a different way. I don’t know that he’s right.”

Fiona drew a long breath. “I wouldn’t have written losing my mom the way she went. I wouldn’t have wanted Lion kidnapped. I wouldn’t have had my friend murdered. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked King for my father.” She took a step closer. “I don’t want to live in this dark place. I want to go back to the sunshine, which I still believed in, until a few days ago.”

Rocco nodded. “At least you can still remember the sunshine.”

Fiona blinked at her sudden tears. “How do we get out of this, Rocco?”

He sent a look over her shoulder to the trunk. She looked where he was looking, but saw only the piece of furniture. “They say it’s a choice.”

“What is?” she asked.

“All of it. What we choose to see. What we choose to feel. Life, even.”

“Will it pass on its own?”

Rocco’s face tightened. His nostrils flared. “You ask me like I know the answer.”

“You’ve been in this place longer than I have.”

“It hasn’t passed yet.”

“Do you want it to?”

He stared at her, as if shocked at her question, then looked out the open window. “Maybe not.”

She went to stand beside him and look out at the sunny September afternoon. “Is it guilt, then, that holds us here?”

He frowned. “What are you guilty of?”

“Being King’s daughter.”

“Lion’s King’s kid, too. Do you blame him for his parentage?”

“No.”

“Then why blame yourself?”

“If I weren’t here, if I went away, Kelan wouldn’t be in danger from King anymore.”

“Yes, he would. You’ve seen the ink on his arm, right?” She nodded. “Well, he would bring war to King, the likes of which have never been seen in this world if he lost you because of that bastard.”

Fiona sighed. Maybe it was a choice. Maybe that was the secret cure. “I choose sunshine, Rocco.” She said it, but she didn’t feel it.

“Just like that?”
 

She nodded.
 

“Well, then. Good. Get out while you can.”

“I choose sunshine for you, too.”
 

“Don’t work like that, kiddo.”

“Maybe it does.” Maybe she could will it to be so. She’d have to once she left Kelan.

* * *

Val leaned against the driver’s door of his SUV while he waited for Ace. It was ten after one. He wondered if she was going to stand him up.
 

No sooner had he had that thought than her old beater pulled into the small parking lot of the trail.
 

Ace got out of her car, wearing the diner’s apron. “I’m glad you’re still here. We got slammed just as my shift was ending.” She untied her apron and tossed it in the back of her car. Val took in her garb. It wasn’t what he would have selected, but it worked on her. Her platform black-buckle knee-high boots looked like some futuristic girl vamp warrior gear.
 

Made him wonder how kinky she liked to get in the sack.

And that gave him an instant hard-on.
 

He grinned at her, then tried not to, which made his grin bigger. “Hi,” was all he could manage. Of all the girls in the world, why did he get tongue-tied with this one?

She leaned over and braced a foot on the floor of her car so she could unbuckle her boot. Her hips had a gentle curve to them that her low-rise jeans emphasized. Especially with her butt sticking out toward him like that. Her shirt hiked up, revealing a thin strip of ink on her back, but he couldn’t make out the pattern. God, he wanted to lift her shirt and have a good look at the art she’d covered herself with.

When she got her boots off, she sat on the driver’s seat and started lacing up a pair of regular hiking boots. Far less exotic. Val missed the vamp boots.
 

“I’ve been looking forward to this hike for a week. It’s why I only worked a half shift today. I saw some pics of the trail on the internet.” She put her feet down and looked up at him.
 

For a second, he saw her kneeling in front of him, ready to take orders.
Sonofabitch.
It was going to be a whole lot of no fun climbing a mountain with a hard-on, but his had been persistent since she got out of her car, so he was just going to have to deal with it.
 

She tied a light jacket around her waist, grabbed a water bottle and a big camera, then locked her car. “Ready?” She smiled at him, flashing those sharp canines at him.
 

“Oh, yeah.”

She held her camera up and snapped a pic of his face as they walked toward the trailhead. He smiled at her, and she snapped that pic too. Lowering the camera, she caught an image of his boots.
 

“Can you hike in those things?” she asked.

“I got around the Hindu Kush just fine in them.”

“You fought in the war?”

“I did.”

“What branch?”

She took a pic as he said, “Army.”

“What was your MOS?”

It surprised him that she knew to ask what his specialty was using that term. Most civilians just asked what he did in the war. “Sniper.”

They walked a few steps in silence. She seemed pensive now. Gone was her light mood. She was as changeable as a spring storm—and as beautiful to watch.
 

The path was wide and covered in gravel, making the hike an easy one. She caught a pic of the trailhead sign, then turned to look at him. “Are you a good guy, Val?”

He stopped walking. “I guess that depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I try to be.”

She watched him a long minute, then looked away and snapped a few more pics as they started up the trail. “There’s a waterfall halfway up.” That thought seemed to cheer her up.
 

About three miles up, after climbing over fallen logs and following the trail deep into a forest of ponderosa pines and aspen, they found the waterfall. It wasn’t huge, but it was tall enough that the sound of roaring water eclipsed that of the aspen clattering in the breeze.
 

Ace snapped a dozen pictures, getting different angles on the light, with him and without him. He took out his phone and grabbed a pic of her. The green of the forest and the late afternoon sun hitting the water made the glen seem magical. He could have sworn he saw a glow coming off her.
 

She set her camera down and sat on a rock to unlace her boots. In almost no time, she’d shucked her jeans, jacket, and tee, leaving her wearing only a pink and black eyelet bra and panty set. And Jesus Christ, how she filled out that bra.

 
He looked around to see if anyone else was near, but of course there wasn’t. It was midweek on a school day. They had the trail to themselves.
 

She took his hand. An electrical current whispered like a breath up his arms and across his neck. “Come in with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

He shook his head. “I’m carrying. Guns and water aren’t friends.”

She laughed. “Guns plural?”

He locked his mouth in a thin line and glared at her. She turned away and went for her camera. The panties she wore were high cut, baring the most enticing half-moons of her ass cheeks. She brought the camera over to him.