Forever (18 page)

He didn’t need details. Leo understood. He was going
to be tortured. It was clear he was going to meet death in the process. But he was going to damn well make it as unsatisfying for them as was in his power to do.

Then the man nodded to Chatha and Chatha pounced, grabbing Leo by the hair and pulling hard until his neck was stretched to the limit. Leo struggled to not make a sound as pain and anxiety scraped through him.

And then Chatha used his hunting knife to cut his throat, the knife so sharp it severed everything with ease and purity, like spreading soft butter on bread.

Now Leo couldn’t scream even if he wanted to.

Hours later, Leo woke up. His throat, cut nearly to the bone the last time he was conscious was back in working order. He could breathe and swallow, although both acts felt like he was swallowing razor blades. How was this possible? How was he even alive? Twice now he had experienced what should have been his own death, only to wake up once more …

To the same nightmare. The calm, regarding eyes that were so eerily light blue they bordered on colorless, like the facets of diamonds. His expression was equally as hard and as cold as that particular stone.

“Where were we?” he asked aloud, clearly rhetorically speaking. He didn’t want Leo’s input. “Oh yes. The reason for all of this. You slit the throat of a woman, a very powerful woman whose gloriousness and magnificence so outshines the dingy, pissing existence you call a life. You nearly killed her. Not an easy trick, to kill one of us, and I suppose on some level you are to be commended for your strength and prowess.

“But on the other hand … you have sinned grievously against me and mine and I cannot let that stand.”

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that,” Leo croaked out. Hearing himself was a shock. Maybe it was because he’d worked so hard at his speech and its
patterns, worked to rid himself of the barrio influences that could make him a caricature of his heritage. He was an intelligent Latino and he damn well wanted others to show him the respect he deserved. Hearing himself sound so rough hit him on a level that he would never allow this
pendejo
to ever see. “Anyway, you’re going to have to be more specific. I’ve slit a lot of bitches’ throats in my day. Just which bitch is yours?”

That was a ballsy bit of lying, but he could play this game, too. He’d shot a woman once. Punched one once, too. But in all fairness to him, one had been holding a gun to his head and the other had tried to stab him. Not that he’d blamed them. After all, in both cases he’d just killed their husbands. But hey, that was the risk you took when you hooked up with a drug kingpin and a sadistic mercenary, respectively. The only time he’d cut a woman’s throat had been in his dreams. A very vivid dream at that, he thought with a frown. It’d been a hell of a piece of fantasy fiction with spell-casting bad guys and himself, Ram, and Docia cast as the good guys. That dream had creeped him out in huge ways, mainly because in it Jackson had died.

“The fact is you will only remember the act as a dream. I can tell by the energy surrounding you that your memories have been altered. Let me expedite matter around him and huggedupis by telling you it was not a dream. Everything you did and everything you saw was absolutely real.” The other man stood up and loomed over Leo. What made it so unnerving was that he wasn’t trying to bully him, nor was he interested in convincing him. He was just dropping information for factual purposes. “The way you remember it is of little significance to me. It was what it was. It was a lowborn beast, a
savage
, thinking he had the right to rid the world of a queen. There is recompense to be paid for such things.” Those icy eyes flicked upward to above Leo’s head.

“Again” was all he said.

Chatha pounced, this time the knife slicing so deeply that Leo could almost feel it at the back of his throat. As blood filled his mouth and lungs, as it pumped out of his body once again, he couldn’t keep himself from wondering what kind of fresh hell he had managed to find.

“And now I will wait until you are once more on the brink of death, then I will have Chatha heal you, so that we may begin anew.”

And for the first time in his life, Leo Alvarez came to wish he was dead.

Unlike Chatha, Kamenwati took very little pleasure in what he was doing. After all, that would make him the soulless bastard the Politic liked to accuse him of being. He would not give them the satisfaction of making a stereotype of himself. And yet, punishment was necessary. He could think of no other way to make the human comprehend the heinousness of the act he had perpetrated. Unlike humans, Bodywalkers did not believe in half measures when it came to their criminals. It was far more efficient to make the criminal truly appreciate what he had done. Only then would he think twice before doing the same thing again. They believed there wasr to convince

“Hey honey, can you please, please, please call me when you get this message? It’s extremely important. Do not blow me off, okay? I’m not going to lecture you or anything. It’s just … you need to call me.”

Marissa hung up the phone and—like she had been doing for the last twenty minutes—continued pacing. Seeing that kind of discord and discontent radiating from her was almost as ominous as dark clouds swallowing up the sun. It was the third message she had left for her sister, in his presence that is, and he could tell each failed attempt to reach her sister was only ramping up her distress.

“Marissa.”

She jumped in her own skin, apparently so absorbed in her own whirlwind of thoughts and stress that she hadn’t even heard him approaching. Then, as if his presence had pulled the plug, she began to vent.

“I should never have left town. I shouldn’t have left without at least speaking to her. What if they know who I am and decide to question her? She doesn’t even know she could be in danger. I should never have left!”

“Though I think it highly unlikely that they know who you are or where you live, it is still possible, however remote, that they do know. And considering what
has happened to Leo, we can assume they are hunting me in earnest and that anyone associated with me is in danger.”

She began to pace faster. “If this is your idea of comforting me, it’s really not working!” she hissed vehemently. “What a mess! All of this, everything about you is just a nightmare! Now everything I hold dear, my sister, my home, my job, is all under threat because of you! You knew singling me out could have this effect! You had to know because according to you you’ve done this quite a few times before, this resurrection process and taking on the mantle of this never-ending war you have going on. So how could you do something so stupid like singling me out? How could you just destroy everything in one thoughtless swoop of action?”

“I suppose I could have pretended to be indifferent to you,” he acceded, “but then you’d probably be dead in the woods right now.”

“You knew this could happen,” she railed on. “Why would you carry out this … this farce of being human in a human job? Why would you put so many innocent people at risk?”

“Firstly,” he said with more than a little sharpness to his tone as he snagged her by her wrist and with a solid jerk tugged her out of her circuit across the floor, “I was not pretending and it was not a farce. Whatever I have become, I was and
am
Jackson Waverly first. Have I struggled with the right and wrong of it? Have I questioned my own wisdom? Of course I have. So don’t stand there and berate me like I did this on purpose with callous thought toward others.”

“But you—”

“Secondly,” he spoke over her sharply, “you are not the only one here missing a loved one. At least your sister is most likely to be alive, whereas Leo Alvarez is most likely dead in a ditch somewhere, so if you please,
spare me your recriminations because I am full to choking on my own!”

That, finally, seemed to quiet her. She stood, her posture tense and surly.

“And do you really think,” he added on a softer voice as he pulled her closer to the warmth of his body, pulling her in until her feet were between his and her bowstring-taut body was a hairsbreadth away from his own. So close he could feel the heat of her. Close enough to feel the resentment she was feeling toward him all along the surfaces of his flesh. “That I would leave it up to chance whether or not the Templars will try to use others from my former life against me? Asikri was not on the plane with us because, along with obtaining information regarding Leo, I sent him to your house to fetch some of your things and to ensure the safety of your sister. She hasn’t gotten your messages because he has thrown her phone away and given her a new one.”

He withdrew the smartphone from his pocket and, turning it on with a stroke of his thumb, typed in a quick code and turned the screen toward her. On it was a short text message from Asikri.

She grabbed for the phone, wrapping her hands around his and jerking it closer, reading the words again as if there was a great revelation to be found in them.

“Why? Why would you throw away her phone? And why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been sick to death with worry!”

“I did tell you. That text came less than five minutes ago. Until it came there was nothing of comfort I could offer you, other than my complete confidence in Asikri. I didn’t think that would be accepted at face value, so I
waited for contact from him.” He took a breath, timing it and the ones immediately after it in a steady, calming cadence. “He had to discard the phone because it has GPS inside of it. Any smartphone in the world can be traced with the right software, and I assure you, the Templars have an excellent phalanx of geeks at their beck and call.”

“GPS?” she repeated a little numbly, all of the wind knocked out of her self-righteous sails. She rubbed her thumb over the phone in their hands. “I didn’t realize … I mean, I knew, of course, but …”

“If there is one thing we have become masters of in our long lifetimes it is how to live off the grid. Sort of like your friend’s cabin. Self-sustaining and with as little record of ourselves as we can possibly manage. Our wealth is managed through front companies, our investments grow on their own accord and we track and adjust and give around him and huggedan better ourselves great means leaving little more than a ghost of ourselves behind. It is not foolproof of course, but we know how to avoid the most common pitfalls. Now, this phone has GPS as well, but the number is unknown and untraceable by anyone outside of the highest echelons of the Bodywalker governing seat. I want you to trade it for the one in your hand.”

“But …” She lifted the hand holding her phone. “I can’t just—”

“You can, and you must. Surely you see that? You don’t have to like it, but surely you see the logic of it?”

He waited patiently while she thought about it, her lips quivering with tension as she pressed them tightly together, no doubt forcing herself to think before she tried to argue with him. In the end she opened her hand palm up and handed him her phone. He turned it off, pulled the power supply out of the back of it, and pocketed it for their techs to tinker with. They would either
remove the GPS and reuse the phone, or they would simply destroy it.

“I have to ask you to limit your use of this phone while you are in our company. It’s just like witness protection,” he said, his eyes catching her so he could be certain she understood and complied. “You can call any of us and, now, your sister, but you cannot under any circumstances contact anyone outside of our purview. All it takes is one call to lead them here. By giving you this, I am entrusting you with our safety, hummingbird.”

“I understand.” She breathed after a long moment. Emotional pain entered her eyes and he felt guilty for it. She shouldn’t have to go through this. They had done her a powerful injustice. He and Menes. It was their calling to make these sacrifices in the name of his people, and she should never have been involved.

“Jackson, they’re going to think you’re a murderer,” she said on a rush of injured words. “How can you let that happen? Can’t you just call or … or …”

“We’ve been over this,” he said gently, something inside of him filled with warmth, knowing that in a moment like this it was everyone else she was worried about. He had done her yet another injustice by ever thinking her to be a cold and emotionless cog in the wheels of bureaucracy. In truth she spent all of her time worrying about everyone else. He wondered where she fit her own needs in her grand scheme of things. “As of today Jackson Waverly will have disappeared. He will cease to exist. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of him because he will, for all intents and purposes, die the death he was supposed to have died that night three weeks ago.

“You ask me why I didn’t leave right away? Because I needed the time to grieve one of the biggest losses anyone can ever experience. The loss of their entire identity
as they once knew it to be. I know that the important parts of who I am come with me, but that doesn’t stop me from grieving what once was mine and now must be let go of. I’m only sorry I didn’t leave sooner. I thought I was completely anonymous and that it was safe for me to stay … but I was wrong and I’m going to have to live with that knowledge and the knowledge of what it might have cost Leo in the process.” He had been speaking in a calm, steady voice, but it broke on Leo’s name as guilt threatened to swamp him. They must have known Leo was the closest thing he had to family … outside of Docia, who was a Bodywalker and very well protected. It had very likely cost certainly ag.his friend his life, because Leo would rather die than ever give up any information about him. The funny thing was, Leo had been out of the country for the past couple of weeks. He hadn’t even had any idea where Jackson was. He certainly hadn’t known about him Blending with Menes.