The Unforgiven (3 page)

“Do us all a favor, Mr. Master and Commander. Choke on that arrogance. There are six of us left.
Six.
That’s assuming . . .” Her voice faltered, then steadied. “That’s assuming Lucas is alive.” Cybele’s brother had been out of touch with the clan for months, and Cade knew she’d been anxious about his silence even before the massacre.

“You want to take more of us out, Artur? Great. Crawl on over to Vaclav Dusek and offer your services as assassin.”

Artur’s expression didn’t change as he absorbed the tirade. When it was done, he simply raised one eyebrow and turned his back.

Cybele’s throat worked. Cade smelled a rush of sour heat. He wasn’t fooled. Cybele wasn’t so much angry as she was hurt. She craved Artur’s fire, not his frost. She loved the bastard. Only the devil in hell knew why. Cade certainly didn’t understand.

He removed Cybele’s hand from his arm. She was right about one thing. Clan Samyaza couldn’t afford to fight among themselves. Hatred among the clans was one aspect of the curse delivered to the original Watcher angels after their fall from grace, and their half-human children had inherited it. Every Nephilim harbored an instinctive mistrust of those not of their own clan’s line. The animosity had only intensified through the ages, as the Watchers’ descendants had fought for survival and for control of mankind. Heaven did not want them banding together.

The original Watcher leaders, Samyaza and Azazel, once as close as brothers, had fought bitterly for supremacy on earth. For millennia, their progeny had continued the feud. The
battle was fierce and unending, with neither clan able to gain the upper hand for long. Many times throughout history, clan loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the clan chieftain had been the primary factor preventing Clan Samyaza’s destruction. Oblivion awaited Cade and his clan now if Clan Samyaza could not face the current threat with a united front.

Though it nearly killed him to do so, Cade faced Artur and bowed. The gesture of fealty left a sour taste in his mouth, but Artur’s acknowledging touch on his head was, thankfully, brief. The scent of the clan’s collective relief took the edge off the humiliation.

The chieftain addressed the room. “Dusek has struck a knife into the heart of our clan. He has stolen our magic. He has won one battle. But make no mistake. He will not win the war. Clan Samyaza will wipe Vaclav Dusek and his sons from the face of the earth. We will consign Clan Azazel to Oblivion.”

Cade had been a part of the clan for little more than a year. Before his transition he’d known nothing of his Watcher heritage; he’d spent the time immediately after his transition—immediately after Cybele had made it clear she did not return his love—learning what he was. He’d learned to master his blood cravings, control his Druid magic, and had sifted through five millennia of ancestral memory. He’d chosen his Watcher surname, as all Samyaza adepts did, from the pantheon of Latinized Celtic deities: Leucetius, god of lightning. He’d listened to tales of Watcher history. There were many things, though, Cade had yet to understand.

“You say Dusek has stolen Samyaza magic,” he asked. “How is that possible?”

Artur and Brax exchanged glances, and a shadow flitted across Cybele’s face. Gareth looked down at his hands. Unlike Cade, all of them had known what they were since birth.

It was Brax who answered. “There’s only one way Dusek
could have done it. By making a slave. By anchoring a Samyaza dormant through transition and afterward retaining the power of mastery rather than setting the new adept free.”

The talk of transition and crisis triggered flashes of unwanted memory in Cade’s brain. Even though more than a year had passed, a hot flush spread up Cade’s neck. Acid flooded his stomach. Slave. Yes, he had been that to Cybele. Still was, in some ways.

“Just imagine, Cade,” Artur taunted softly, as if he’d heard Cade’s thoughts. “It might have been you who were enslaved.” The chieftain’s gaze fell on the woman who had once been his bonded mate. “If Cybele had not been so honorable as to set you free.”

Cybele stiffened. Cade’s fingers curled into fists. Artur, bastard that he was, loved to torment his former mate with the choice she had made that night. Cybele had broken her vows to Artur in order to save the life of a dying kinsman, a stranger she’d stumbled upon completely by chance. In doing so, she’d earned the hatred of the man she loved. Cade was all too aware of how powerless he was to repay the debt he owed her.

Brax sent Artur a repressive glance. “We know of no female Samyaza dormants,” he continued pointedly. “They’re very rare. But Dusek must have located one. An unaware dormant, living among humans.”

Cybele met Artur’s gaze. “We can’t allow Clan Azazel to hold one of our kin. We have to free her.”

“A fine goal.” Brax’s cool voice cut in. “For our own sake as well as for our unknown brother’s. But at the moment, the notion is completely unrealistic. With a Samyaza slave under his thumb, Dusek has use of our magic. He can reproduce our spells as well as neutralize them. The slave gives him a clear advantage.”

“For now.” The merciless expression in Artur’s eyes went a long way toward chilling Cade’s blood.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Leucetius, that we will attack Dusek with magic he does not expect. Magic we do not currently possess.”

Cybele paled. “You can’t mean for Clan Samyaza to take slaves of our own.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Cybele, my love.”

She ignored the stain of sarcasm on Artur’s endearment. “But . . . how? We’d need to find a Watcher dormant on the cusp of transition. That’s all but impossible.”

Artur strode to the sideboard and poured a whiskey. He took a long sip before speaking.

“Dusek found a Watcher dormant. And you, Cybele, found Cade.”

“My finding Cade was pure chance. One in a million,” Cybele said tightly. “You know that, Artur. It’s not likely to happen again. Our Druid earth magic provides protection and illusion; we don’t have the advantage of Dusek’s fire alchemy for remote vision and discernment. Even if we did, we have no idea what spells he used to locate his victim.”

Artur tilted his glass toward his brother. “All very true. Even so, Brax has been, shall we say, working his own brand of magic. With great success, I might add. An hour ago, he located a dormant Watcher in the early stage of transition. Better yet, it’s an unaware Watcher, with no inkling what’s to come. All we need to do, my dear Cybele, is be on hand when the crisis strikes.”

The last drops of color drained from Cybele’s face. A seething turmoil of scents slapped at Cade’s nostrils: rage, hurt, bewilderment. Cybele was the clan’s only surviving female. Every Watcher in the room knew what that meant.

“You bastard,” she whispered. “You can forget it. I won’t
anchor him. I won’t become a slaver. You can’t ask it of me. You wouldn’t.”

“You’re right.” Artur’s eyes darkened. “I wouldn’t ask. I would command.”

Cybele flinched as if he’d struck her. “I won’t obey. I won’t whore for you, Artur.”

The whiskey glass clinked on the sideboard. Artur paced forward, slowly, stopping only when the tips of Cybele’s breasts brushed his chest. Cade’s eyes narrowed as Cybele lifted her chin and—foolishly, Cade thought—held her ground.

Artur’s long fingers encircled her slender neck. “You will obey me, Cybele, when my command is spoken. I will make certain of it.”

He pressed the translucent skin just above her windpipe. The scent of her fear spiked.

If that had been the only odor Cade’s nostrils plucked from the air, he would have leaped to Cybele’s defense, and blast the consequences. But it wasn’t. Hard on the heels of her panic came the rushing odor of her desire. So Cade stayed where he was. Cybele had made it clear over and over again: she did not welcome Cade’s interference. Not where Artur was concerned.

After a moment, Artur gave a humorless laugh. Releasing Cybele, as if the tense interlude had never occurred, he strode back to his drink. “Clan Samyaza will counter Dusek’s advantage,” he said, “We will bring new magic under our control, quickly.”

“And what of Clan Samyaza’s honor?” Cybele cried. “Are we to toss our self-respect in the trash and become everything we despise? Everything Jonas Walker believes us to be? Taking slaves will taint every one of us. Issue all the threats you want, Artur, but I, for one, would rather go to Oblivion than anchor a slave.” She rounded on Brax. “You stand with him on this? How could you?”

Brax shifted in his seat. “The way I see it, Cybele, we have two choices. Fight slime with slime, or roll over and show our throats. You might be willing to embrace Oblivion, but I’m not. I agree with Artur. Slave-making is our only option.”

“And you’ve already found our victim.”

“Yes,” Brax said. “I have.”

“How? You haven’t cast a spell all day. You’ve been staring at that computer.”

Brax drummed his fingers once on the table. “I’ve been hacking police reports on hellfiend activity.”

“Why on earth . . . ?”

“Hellfiends sense the presence of Watchers and typically avoid them. They know they can’t possess us. Quite the opposite, they’re more likely to fall under our control or be slain outright. They know confronting Watchers will only bring trouble. Given that fact, it therefore follows that areas with a minimum of hellfiend crime will coincide with areas of Watcher activity. When these regions occur outside the territory of the known Watcher clans, it’s possible the effect is caused by an unaware Watcher, one who’s just entered the transitioning phase.”

“One who’s recently survived a near-death experience, you mean,” Cybele said.

“Exactly.” Brax tapped a few keys. “In the past, it’s been difficult to track these patterns using only magic, but now, with computers and the Internet . . . All I have to do is cross-reference the crime-free areas with corresponding local hospital records of patients who’ve experienced a near-death trauma.

“Once I assembled a list of NDE survivors under thirty years of age, it was easy enough to search school and medical records and check for typical Watcher characteristics: prematurely dead parent, no full siblings, dysfunction in human society, tall stature, left-handedness. In effect, all the common traits
compatible with Watcher genetics.” He shrugged. “The methodology is tedious but simple enough. I didn’t have to use magic at all.”

“And you’re sure you’ve found a transitioning dormant?” Cade asked.

Brax nodded. “Ninety-eight point two percent certain.” Cybele’s face lost even more color, if that was possible. “And Artur intends to pimp me out to him. So I can bring him back as a slave for the clan.”

“No,” Artur said mildly.

“No? But you said—”

Artur chuckled. “As it happens, Cybele, your services—excellent as they are—won’t be needed just yet.”

Cybele flushed. “Then what—”

“Because the candidate is female.”

She stared. “Brax has located a female? But Watcher females are so rare! One in five hundred.”

Brax spread his hands. “Sometimes a half-percent chance comes through.”

“Who’s going after her?” Cybele demanded. “You, Artur?”

“No.” Artur smiled. “I thought I’d give her to Cade.”

Negev Desert, Israel

The new laborer was tall and broad and bare to the waist. A veritable Adonis. His back muscles rippled beneath an expanse of smooth skin. He was tanned, though he was not nearly so dark as the two Israeli men working with him.

He’d pressed his T-shirt into service as an impromptu bandanna, wrapping it around his head turban-style. A short black ponytail protruded from the faded green fabric. The ends of his hair curled at his nape.

Even from a distance, the sight made Maddie’s skin tingle. An aura of danger seemed to cling to the man, reinforced, no doubt, by his extensive body art: a dark sleeve of Celtic knotwork covered his entire right arm. A nasty-looking dagger was inked on his chest. A third tat—a black and red snake—curled around one calf.

He worked the roped-off area to the north of the main dig site, about thirty feet away. Lifting a substantial stone, he hefted it into a wheelbarrow without apparent effort. He was left-handed, she realized, watching him maneuver a crowbar behind the next boulder. That was a trait only another lefty would notice. She experienced an odd feeling of familiarity.

Then pain stabbed behind her left eye, a light flashed, and all thoughts of the man fled. Panic bled ice water into her veins.

Oh, God, no.

She tore off her glasses. Roughly, desperately, she rubbed
her eyes. But the soft red glow remained, encircling the laborer like a halo.

A full minute passed before the light faded. Too long to pretend she hadn’t seen it. Impossible to pretend it was a trick of the Israeli sun or her overactive imagination. Her head began to pound. She swallowed a bitter taste. Somehow, she managed to keep her breakfast from churning its way up her gullet.

So begins the end.

How long did she have? A couple months? Six? Certainly not more than a year. Oh, God. She’d been feeling so normal, so damn
healthy
. Brain surgery had almost killed her. Weeks of chemo to shrink the remaining cancer had left her weak. But once the poison had stopped dripping into her veins, she’d fought her way back tooth and nail. Her health had rebounded. Her hair had started to grow back. Her strength and sense of well-being had returned with amazing rapidity. She’d clung to every good day.