Tempting the Enemy (31 page)

She wasn’t even sure when she slid into unconsciousness.

Pale watched the tree line pass beneath the helicopter, clenching his fists to keep his claws retracted. Kennison had called for a pilot as soon as Pale let him go. It hadn’t been easy to fool the pilot before getting the ride, but Kennison insisted he be able to pass for a human or they’d never let them in the air. Terrified pilots had a tendency to crash, a dry logic that even Pale had to agree with. He’d pulled his claws back in by sheer will and ground his teeth silently to hide the fangs. Kennison had barely glanced at him since giving that order, but Pale’s conscience had yet to flicker. His mate’s safety outweighed anyone’s opinion of his tactics.

The copter’s rotors cut the air above while he visually combed the mountain under the spotlight. Twenty minutes, the pilot estimated when Pale asked how long it would take. The longest twenty minutes of his entire life.

“You have to know this might not be the place,”

Kennison finally said into the microphone on their helmets, having already shown Pale the private frequency so the pilot wouldn’t overhear them.

Brave, Pale thought, to mention the one thought he himself refused to consider.

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“Even if this is the right place, we have to prepare ourselves for what we might find.”

Pale clenched his jaw, surprised further when the other man offered a comforting hand to his shoulder.

“I know we’ve never gotten along, but I want you to know I’m not doing this because you threatened me.”

He fixed Kennison with a doubting look, to which the older man only clicked his teeth.

“Don’t worry, I’m no hypocrite, but I’m not the bigot you think I am, either. I’ve known from the beginning what you are.” Kennison shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I just happen to think you’re an asshole.”

It was almost enough to make Pale laugh. “Then why?”

“Because I’ve lost a wife and, unlike you, we don’t all get the mercy of dying with them.”

He knew about the bonding?

Kennison nodded slightly. He glanced up toward the pilot then back to Pale. “You were right, what you said earlier about the tracking. And the tagging. They’ve been doing it for a while.”

“And you’re part of that?” Pale couldn’t say he was surprised, exactly. Just oddly disappointed.

Until Kennison shook his head. “No, but I was part of the teams that worked so hard to get rid of you. I think they used to call us death squads. We both were.” The wife, Pale assumed. “It wasn’t supposed to be about exterminating people. That wasn’t what we were told. We thought we were hunting down dangerous creatures, protecting innocents. For the most part, we were.

Rampaging males, mostly. Until she was put on a detail that was supposed to be about tracking a rabid female.

The female wasn’t rabid, she was defending her children.

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We didn’t know that until after she was dead. The kids were taken into a research compound—”

“You mean a dissection lab.”

Kennison didn’t argue the correction. “Kelly started questioning every case. Every death. I didn’t believe what she said she found. Didn’t want to admit I was part of something like that. But she couldn’t go on pretending, couldn’t keep looking away from what she knew was wrong. She died freeing those kids. It cost her everything to wash the blood off her hands. That was when I knew she was right. So I got out, started my life over here, where I figured I’d be out of it. Problem was, everywhere I looked, I’d see people I owed. People hiding, because people like me were hunting them down. People
she
gave her life to help.” Kennison’s haggard face tightened and Pale finally saw the regret etched there. “When they started the new program, they contacted me. Thought I’d be willing to put my experience to work.”

“And were you?”

Kennison met his challenge gravely. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

Pale grudgingly accepted that.

“The policies are out of my control, but there’s enough blood on my hands to last ten lifetimes. All I can guarantee you is that the names on the program lists here aren’t what led the Woodsman to his kills. Nothing I’ve compiled for them would lead to anyone except maybe the Easter Bunny.”

No, Jorgensen had made his own list. “That’s not good enough. For all you know, someone else is doing the same thing, guessing what those women can do based on the cases they get assigned.”

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“I can’t change them all, Rysen,” Kennison snapped.

“This is bigger than just me.”

“How much bigger?”

Kennison shook his head. “I don’t know. No one knows. That’s not the point. What I’m trying to tell you is that if we actually find her—”

“She’s there,” he ground out as evenly as he could.

And still alive. As surely as he was.

“Then you need to get your mate and disappear. You want her safe, you get her off the grid. I can keep her out of the files, but it’s only a matter of time for the rest of them.”

“How much time?”

“There’s no way to say. But I wouldn’t think long.

Sibile have been tracked for years. There’s a comprehensive system already in place, an identification list, figuring out which of them are the most dangerous.”

A grunt. “They have no idea.”

Kennison agreed. “No, they don’t. But that’s never stopped them before.”

Pale digested that, already putting it in the back of his mind for later. The human government was about to start a war they couldn’t win. His focus was the war he
had
to win. Kennison fell silent, thankfully, and Pale tried to concentrate on what Jade had been trying to tell him when they were sitting at his desk.

The bodies were
placed
.

The skin in the desk.

The picture, the message on the back.

Placed
.

“He wants us to find him.” To know
who
he was, if not
what
he was. “He wants everyone to know what he’s done.”

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“Why?” Kennison asked. “He’s gotten away with it this far. There was nothing to lead us to him.”

Pale shook his head, unable to explain. A failed Rouge. A failed scarlet. Jorgensen wanted the Order to see what happened to those they threw away. He’d learned the Sibile law too well—what they fear, they revere. Jorgensen would be feared by those who’d rejected him. Or he’d kill them all.

Five more minutes, baby. Hold him off for five more
minutes.

Even as he thought it, a beam of white light, so bright it could be daylight, burst through the trees ahead, blazing up into the sky. A rippling ring of energy came at them in a wave that set the whole helicopter out of kilter.

Alarms beeped and the pilot swore, trying to right them, spinning the entire chopper twice and dipping dangerously close to the trees before regaining control.

All the while, Pale smiled.

He’d found her.

Jade woke screaming. Not that it did her any good. She was strapped to a table, cold beneath her bare skin. It was metal, by the feel, and she was naked. Freezing. Just like the others. Frost stung her cheeks, framing her face where her hair should be. Her teeth chattered so hard she could barely hear past the rattling. And still, the darkness.

Always the darkness. Then she realized why she’d regained consciousness.

He was cutting her tattoo.

“Y-you can’t take that, Challen.” She managed to bite out the words. “I haven’t failed yet.” She screamed Dee Tenorio

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again as the blade dug deeper into her flesh, continuing on its precise path.

“You were
born
a failure, Jade-Scarlet. So much potential, wasting away in this impossible body. And even if you weren’t, you will never be the one to capture me.

The Woodsman case will remain permanently unsolved.

Or at the very least, it will never make it to trial.” He stayed so calm while he flayed her.

Tears choked her, fear and agony scattering her thoughts. Her claws scraped on the metal with squalling shrieks, but no matter how they dug in, there was no purchase to be found.

“I left a gift for them, though. A reward for all their hard work. They’ll have a name for their murderer. By the time they find it, I’ll already be part of the Tribunal. Chris Jorgensen will no longer exist. The Woodsman will have served his purpose and now, so shall you.”

Finally, oh God, finally, he finished the gruesome task, leaving her gasping. Relief from the digging, at least, but the open wound sizzled with torment. She struggled to make her lips form words either of them would understand. “P-P-Pale will h-hunt us. H-he’ll find me.”

“I’m not worried about your Wolf.” His hand caressed her throat. More correctly, her pulse. She couldn’t even turn her face to snap at him with her teeth.

“I’ll pluck his soul right out of him before he has a chance to blink.”

“No.” It wasn’t a sob, but an angry declaration. Pale wouldn’t die because of this monster. Because she didn’t have it in her to fight.

“It’s a much more merciful death than I wanted for him. I wanted to take my time with him. Show him exactly what it means to suffer. Teach him what respect 278

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for power truly is. He’s stubborn, though. It would have taken time. Probably days.”

She raged against the bonds, but nothing gave. She finally had to stop, dragging in deep breaths to calm herself. Control. Control. She would achieve nothing without control.

“But I have different plans for you, something your Wolf doesn’t deserve. A swift death.”

“Why? Why me?” she asked, desperate to keep him talking. Talking meant living. Time to think. “Why am I so special?”

“You’re not, but the light trapped inside you is. To get it, I’m not going to bleed you. I can’t.” His voice lowered, became a rasping whisper she knew would haunt her dreams…if she lived to have any. “I have to take it right from the source.” A fingertip drew a circle between her breasts. “From your heart.”

He knew about the empathy.

“The Order wanted you and feared you all at the same time because of this gift. They lied to you to protect themselves. Crippled you with blind dependence on the moon of all things. In your pathetic weakness, you let them. But the gift is here. Waiting for someone powerful enough to control it. Waiting for
me
.”

“No!” She could feel her power, rising high and wild, but in her fear, it was untouchable. Her focus scattered.

She tried. Desperately. But with every icy breath on her skin, she shuddered and lost it.

She should have been thinking of how to fight, how to stop this, but all she could think of was Pale. The smile she’d never see again. The sense of safety she’d found in his arms. Those eyes, by turns intense or strangely Dee Tenorio

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vulnerable. She wanted to know so many more things about him. Everything about him and how she might fit next to him. Wanted to experience again the light he’d given her in a few stolen hours. For one day, she’d known what it was to love. Just one.

It wasn’t enough.

Wolves live by Instinct,
Pale had said.
It’s kept us
alive when everything else has disappeared. Because we
accept what we are and we give ourselves over to it.

Accept. She sobbed, but clung to the memory of his voice. Give herself over. Closing out the sound of the unholy thing next to her, she tried listening, but in her heart, she knew it wasn’t the same. Accepting meant letting go. Trusting.
It’s not weakness…it’s a strength.

And if it would keep Pale alive, it wasn’t even a question.

She gave, closing her eyes and following wherever the voice would lead.

It started as a whisper. A voice she strained to hear.

Feel.

The sob that escaped her now wasn’t from pain, but relief. She’d almost forgotten the sound of it. A pure voice, one she could trust. One that filled her with security.

Love.

Power surged inside her, bright and streaming with color. The vivid blues she associated with Pale. The brand on her heart, a light all its own. In her mind’s eye, she reached for it. Touched it. Wrapped herself within.

Become light
, the Instinct boomed in her mind.
Love.

Become light.

Finally, she understood what Jalla had tried to tell her.
Believe in the gift he’s given you
. Pale hadn’t given her the Instinct. It wasn’t even the part of him she felt 280

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inside her, warming her soul. He’d shown her love. The purest emotion she’d ever known…the one she’d forgotten along with the Voice and her parents in her desperation to survive.

No longer.

More love, more life, more moments kept deep in her heart. Jalla’s words and comfort. Her father’s hands, holding her high in the air. Her mother’s voice, a song that she would still hear in that moment as sleep took her away. Pale. Emotions flared, light streaming behind her eyes. Light from
inside
. She gave herself over to it, to the wave building with a roar in her ears.

Become light.

Yes, she knew how now. Opening her hands in surrender, she urged it to crest. Overflow. In seconds, it was free, but not as healing water washing her away.

Instead, an inferno burst through her body, swirling into a pillar around her. Every feeling of loss and triumph, pain and power, fueled it to white-hot brilliance.

He’d
tried to take this away. Tried to steal her life.

Dared threaten her mate. The pillar exploded outward, crashing through wood and steel, love and rage at its core.

The table and its bindings disappeared, the torrent of power crumpling it beneath her while she remained suspended in the air. The darkness slashed away, like a great curtain being ripped in two. It tore, but it was still there, an evil force twined around her.

“Give up, Lucescere.” Challen’s voice reverberated with anger. The bonds of dark tightened on all sides of the colors she swirled around herself. “You can’t defeat the dark.”