Harlequin Nocturne March 2014 Bundle: Shadowmaster\Running with Wolves (8 page)

She rolled over again and smiled a sad smile, her hair fanned across the pillow. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I still want you to have the information I was going to trade for my escape, no matter what else happens.”

“I want nothing more from you.”

“But you'll take it, because you can do more good for the people here if you do. And I'll show you. Personally.”

“No.”

“Because you still think I'd betray you.”

Stifling a laugh, he tucked his shirt into his pants. “Strangely enough, I don't.”

She got up, tugged on her pants and came to stand behind him. “Then let me help.”

Drakon knew he was insane for even listening to her. She'd been good. Very good. She'd given him more than any woman ever had. And he'd felt something when he'd been inside her. Something other than mere physical pleasure.

He turned to face her, longing to push the perspiration-damp hair out of her face again, kiss her, fall into bed with her,
into
her....

All he had to do was make one mistake, and it was over.

“I'll consider it,” he said.

“That's all I ask. But...”

“But what?” he said through clenched teeth.

“At least you could stick around a little longer. Talk to me.”

“About what?” he asked. “After you're gone—”

“I told you something about myself,” she said. “Quid pro quo.”

“I'm not interested in talking about myself.”

“At least you could tell me a little more about how you came to be Boss of this outfit and chose to help people the way you do.”

Drakon glanced at the door. There was no earthly reason to stay. The idea of repeating his cover story—so closely built on his own life—one more time seemed like an abomination.

“You already implied that I must have killed to get where I am,” he said.

“If you ever killed anyone, it was in self-defense or to protect someone else.”

In spite of himself—his frank recognition of the dangers of getting to know anything more about her, or vice versa—Drakon found himself responding. “Just how much violence have you seen in
your
life?” he asked.

Chapter 8

A
flicker of some unreadable emotion passed behind Lark's beautiful hazel eyes. Drakon was momentarily distracted by the way they changed, seeming to shift from brown to gray to green all within a few seconds.

“I didn't grow up with the kind of hardship the people here do,” she said, retreating to sit on the bed again. “Before my parents died, we were...well, not exactly rich, but not poor, either. In a regular kind of neighborhood, in the usual middling kind of apartment.”

Like one of the many high-rise apartment buildings that covered the majority of San Francisco, Drakon thought, built after the devastation of the War to replace the many varied neighborhoods of single and two-story family homes. Too many people to cram into one city, every square mile of space needed to house survivors who had lived in countless towns and smaller cities throughout what had once been known as the Bay Area.

“How did you...” He swallowed, almost unable to speak the words. “How did you lose your family?”

“My father was doing a dangerous job for the government, and when he died, my mother...she couldn't bear to go on without him.”

Drakon looked away. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“I moved into a group home until I was old enough to apply for a job,” she said, her face expressionless. “There were many of us living in close quarters, and I didn't have a lot of friends. After my gov application was accepted, I moved to a dorm and lived pretty comfortably with other men and women in my position. I never wanted for anything, really. But I already told you that.” She met his gaze. “Now it's your turn.”

With a sigh, Drakon dragged the chair halfway across the room and straddled it backward, his arms crossed and leaning on its wobbly back. “You want to know how I became Boss?” He smiled in a way meant to chill rather than encourage. “What if you're wrong? What if I
have
killed? Maybe more than once?”

“I don't believe it,” she said.

“Naive,” he said, though he spoke as much of himself as of her. “I did kill someone. The previous Boss.” He hesitated, wondering why he should have to justify himself to Lark at all. “It was necessary.”

“You did it to save someone else.”

“I'm sure Brita will be happy to tell you all about it.”

“Was it her life you saved?” Lark asked with what seemed to be more than mere curiosity.

He couldn't manage to make himself lie to her. “As I said, ask Brita,” he said. “But keep in mind that she tends to embellish.”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Lark said softly. “You pretend not to have ideals, but you do. Ideals and a philosophy that gives you some reason to treat people with decency.”

Drakon realized it really had gone too far. “I have dealings with evil men,” he said. “I trade with them, haggle with them, work with them. What does that make me?”

“Human.”

Drakon came very close to simply walking out of the room again. But somehow, with her voice, with her utter lack of judgment, he felt the urge, the need, to talk of a past long dead.

“I grew up in the Mids, as you did,” he said. “I had a regular job, as you did. But my...” He paused, hardly able to believe he could admit so much to a stranger. “I had a family. I was married. I had a child.”

“Oh,” Lark whispered, drawing her knees up to her chest.

“And you want to know what happened?” he said, hearing his own voice turn harsh again, beating at her as well as himself. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Truly sorry.”

“I made a mistake,” he said. “Someone I trusted turned against me.”

Lark was quiet for a long time, her chin resting on her knees, her eyes downcast. “You trust Brita,” she said slowly.

He stared at her intently. “Is there some reason you think I shouldn't?”

“No. It only proves that whatever happened in your past, you're still able to trust
some
one.”

Drakon wondered if she was speaking more of herself than him. “You never finished
your
story,” he said. “What did you do after you got your job? Obviously, you didn't leave anyone important behind when you ran.”

“No.”

“No lovers?” he asked, meaning to be cruel.

She glanced away. “A few,” she said. “No one who ever meant much to me.”

A strange, disturbing mingling of satisfaction and anger coiled in Drakon's chest. He couldn't bear to think of those other men touching her, caressing her, moving inside her.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said.

“Why?”

“You're beautiful, desirable, good in—”

“Bed?”

“I should have said brave, stubborn, determined, too intelligent to hold a low-level government position.”

“Maybe that's all I wanted. A simple life.”

“I don't think so. Maybe it was ambition that led you to access information above your security rating, not a mistake.”

“I can't make you believe what you don't want to believe,” she said, “but I've never been ambitious.”

“Then what are you, Lark?”

“Like you. Human.”

It was the second time she'd said it, and Drakon no longer trusted his ability to maintain his mask. “Is there anything else you want to know?” he asked, climbing off the chair.

“Everything. But it can wait.” She rose. “Are you going to let me show you what I have for you, Sammael?”

It was his name on her lips that made him decide, though he knew it was sheer madness. He had to know.

Because if his gut was wrong, if she did betray him after all, he would have to escape. He'd find another hiding place, and Lark's treachery would give him the final incentive. All his doubts would be gone forever.

But there was a sickness in him as he thought of it, a feeling that part of him would already be dead. If he had ever been a superstitious man, one prone to believing in the supernatural, he might have believed this woman had bewitched him.

But he had never been superstitious. “We'll do it,” he said. “Tonight, while my crew is handling other business. But only on the condition that you swear not to let yourself be taken by the Enforcers if we meet them.”

“The most important thing is for you to get away if we find ourselves in that position.”

He crossed the space between them and grasped her arms. “You'll do what I tell you. That's the condition.”

“Only if you listen to my advice when it comes to taking risks. When are we leaving?”

“I'll come for you at sunset,” he told her, and finally walked out of the room, his body moving against the pull of his desire. He needed to speak to Brita, find out why it had been necessary for her to convince Lark that he was a merciful man.

He was anything but. And when he was finished, he never could be again.

* * *

Phoenix sat on the bed for a good half-hour before she felt capable of moving again.

It had all been part of the job, she told herself over and over again, their fierce lovemaking. The most potent sex she'd ever had in her life.

But she hadn't been thinking of the mission when she'd responded so ardently to Sammael's aggressive passion. She'd wanted it. Wanted
him
. Had felt nothing but need and indescribable pleasure as he'd moved inside her. Nothing but sheer, thoughtless lust.

She hadn't needed to tell him about
feelings
to get him into bed.
“It's not because I'm attracted to you, though I am,”
she'd said.
“Maybe it's something I just feel for you.”

And he'd mocked her, quite justifiably. Mockery she'd deserved. Twenty-four hours. It wasn't possible, and she didn't know why she'd said something more apt to drive him away than attract him.

But she'd doubled down after they'd finished in bed. He'd called her naive. She'd called him stubborn, and blind.
“There can't be anything more than this,”
he'd replied.

Phoenix dropped her head into her hands. She knew that. Whatever part he was playing in the Citadel's scheme, she knew she couldn't appeal to any compassion he might feel for humanity, even if—as seemed to be the case—Brita, for her own obscure reasons, hadn't told him of Phoenix's true heritage. Of course he might be pretending not to know, but she didn't believe he could fake what had just happened between them.

The problem was, she was now utterly convinced that Sammael was the very opposite of the stereotypical, evil, tyrannical vampire. He'd lost a wife and child.
“At the wrong place at the wrong time.”

That could mean anything. But he'd lost loved ones, as she had. And it had hurt him, deeply. She had felt it as vividly as she felt her own pain when
she
remembered.

Except that what he'd said...wasn't possible.

She looked up, frozen with realization. Could Daysiders have wives and children? Opiri didn't live like humans. They didn't marry. Their
“children”
were the vassals they created with their own blood. And even if Daysiders were outside the mainstream of Opir life, they still didn't have
normal
relationships.

So he had to be lying. And because he looked and acted so
human,
because she wanted to believe him, she'd fallen into the trap. She'd told him more about herself than she'd ever intended.

Rising, she walked unsteadily around the room.
“No lovers?”
he'd asked, as if it really mattered to him. As if
he
could be jealous.

He had been manipulating her all along, not the other way around. And Brita had almost certainly helped his cause by showing her his
work at the Wall.

Because they still believed she was here to set them up. She'd wanted to be her father's daughter. Instead, she'd failed. Failed completely.

Nearly walking into the wall, she stared at the peeling paint and forced herself to think. There still might be a way of salvaging the situation. What if she could use her bewilderment, her tangled feelings, her desire, in ways that could benefit her mission? Take advantage of Sammael's assumption of her weakness, his knowledge of her background and her apparent willingness to turn herself in to her pursuers to save the lives of those endangered by the Enforcers?

It still troubled her that the Enforcers had pursued Sammael and his crew. Could Sammael and Brita also have been lying when they spoke of his being pursued and nearly taken? Could it be yet another test on Brita's part?

There were still too many variables, too many unknowns. Phoenix had to be ready for attack while pretending to be completely out of her depth in every possible way.

Which she very nearly was.

Casting off her self-pity, Phoenix walked slowly around the room again, frowning at the pockmarked floor. Her main concern now was to determine how going with Sammael to check out her
story
could work to her advantage, how she could continue to seem ready to
“sacrifice”
herself without actually doing it. He'd made her swear not to let herself be taken by the Enforcers, but he'd be ready to stop her if he believed for a second that she might reveal herself to the patrolmen, and him along with her.

With a sigh, Phoenix prepared to wait out the day, listening for voices that might reveal anything of interest. Repo brought her breakfast, and another woman served lunch and dinner. She ate only to maintain her strength, and because her body needed more protein than full-blooded humans. Soon after sunset, Sammael came for her. He deliberately kept his distance from her, seldom meeting her eyes, and explained in a clipped voice what she was to do.

There wasn't quite enough moonlight for an average human to see by, which mean that Sammael had to wear his headlamp, out of necessity as well as for camouflage. Phoenix knew she had to be very careful not to reveal her own very good night vision at any point during their dangerous excursion. She pretended to rely on her own headlamp, moving cautiously even though she could clearly see what lay ahead of them and on every side: the same half-collapsed buildings, the squalor of the poorest citizens trying to survive, the leftovers of society.

It made her as sick to see it now as it had before, but she couldn't let on that she saw it at all. Or that she was aware of the presence of Enforcers in the area at the same time Sammael sensed it. She followed Sammael's lead in dodging them, pretending to defer to his greater knowledge of his stomping grounds.

However, once she and Sammael approached the universally accepted
border
of the Fringe, at the edge of the least prosperous area of the Mids, she could safely act with confidence in leading Sammael to their destination. Before she'd left on her mission, it had been arranged that she should give a certain signal to indicate that she'd come with the man or woman whom she'd convinced to help her
“escape.”
From there, everything should go smoothly, according to plan.

And it did. Phoenix led Sammael through backstreets, conveniently devoid of cops or Enforcers, to a particular bayside warehouse where goods from the Agricultural Enclaves were stored under heavy guard. She'd already explained how the patrol schedules had recently been changed—no less rigid, but altered from the original pattern because of some obscure administrative decision.

Nevertheless, Sammael was extremely cautious as she led him closer to the warehouse. He cast her frequent and suspicious glances, narrow-eyed and undeniably dangerous.

Together they crouched in the nearest safe cover and watched the heavily armed guards pace out their rounds, until, at 3:00 a.m., the relief appeared.

In that brief span of time, there was a moment when a small section of the warehouse was left unguarded. Phoenix moved boldly in spite of Sammael's whispered protest, turning off her headlamp and pretending to rely on the spotlights from the warehouse as she moved closer, paused to find fresh cover and ran closer still.