Tracking the Tempest (15 page)

“Shush, you. You're still hurting. Let me see it.”

I
was
still hurting, damn him. So I pushed my curled fist back into his palm

He gently spread my fingers open with both hands, stroking his thumbs over my palm. I didn't know which was hotter: Anyan's own skin or the healing magics he sent through me. I felt like a child, dwarfed by his imposing frame as he loomed over me, his attention turned inward as he fixed whatever was still wrong with me.

“You took a knife to save Ryu?” he asked, making me start. His voice had gone quiet, if still rough. His fingers tracing over my skin were ridiculously gentle.

“Yeah,” I said, blushing. “And it was a
Crocodile Dundee
‘knoife,‘” I clarified. Then I hung my head. “But Ryu had already jumped clear. So I saved a patch of empty air.”

“It's not what you did, Jane. It's what you intended.”

I frowned.
But I don't know what I intended,
I suddenly wanted to tell Anyan, even though I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was so important he know that.

I was distracted, however, as another warm surge of power went into my hand and I felt—and heard—
something pop. The ache was gone finally, and I suddenly really wanted to stretch my fingers.

“You were very brave,” Anyan told me, his rough voice dark.

I blushed, stretching my hand out underneath his calloused palm.

“Never do something like that again,” he concluded as he ran his calloused thumb one last time over my palm before he turned back to the stove to stir the lentils.

Suddenly too warm, I took my cardigan off as I watched him fiddle with the fire until he got the lentils to simmer just so. My eyes widened as, suddenly, everything fell into place. I was such a moron.

“The cabin,” I breathed. “It's yours, isn't it? Not Nell's.”

He snorted, still facing the stove.

“You thought it was Nell's?”

I glared at his broad back. “Dude, you were a dog when I met you and I thought that's
all
you were. Dogs don't usually own property.”

“Okay, but how did you think Nell reached anything? Levitation?” he asked, as he finally turned back around to face me.

“Stepladders,” I replied automatically.

“Stepladders?”

“Yes, stepladders. Like I have.”

Anyan's big face opened up in a huge smile, and I couldn't help but smile back; it was that infectious. It transformed him.

“Poor little Jane. Your life must be one giant stepladder. When we get back to Rockabill, I'll make you stilts.”

I laughed, looking down at his hands. I'd felt how rough the skin was on them, even if his touch had been gentle. They were scarred and rough and calloused. A working man's hands.

Or an artist who, among other things, sculpted metal.

“Did you make all the stuff in there?” I asked. “Theart?”

He nodded, looking a little embarrassed. “Yeah, most of it. It's what I do. I'm not really good at the human money stuff, like the others, so I do what I've always done. I stick to art. Luckily, I have a few lifetimes' worth of international reputation, so the money's decent.”

“It's beautiful. I love the one in the bathroom,” I admitted before I had time to reflect that that probably sounded a little weird.

He laughed, a big, rich sound that filled the kitchen.

“I knew you would. That you'd get why it was in there.”

I thought about it. “It's one of the stories you told me when I was in the hospital, isn't it?”

He nodded. I leaned forward on my stool. “And those stories about the fighting dog who saved his people, those were really your stories, weren't they?”

I think he actually blushed. “I didn't know any other stories,” he admitted.

“They were good stories,” I told him gently. “I appreciated them very much.”

His big hands clenched into fists and he turned back to the stove to stir the lentils.

“So you saved your people, and you made an iron cartoon about it, and then you hung it in your bathroom.”

He shrugged, silently, in assent.

“How very postmodern of you.” I grinned.

He chuckled and then went to open the refrigeratordoor.

“I'm assuming the mashed garlic was for something different?”

“Yup. Salad. The stuff's in the crisper. I'll help.”

I sliced tomatoes and olives while Anyan grated a carrot and washed lettuce. We worked in companionable silence, only talking when I made the dressing and he wanted to see what went in it. I pointed at where the steaks sat, still wrapped, warming up to room temperature while waiting to be cooked.

“Sorry, we only have two steaks. But you can share mine.”

Anyan smiled at me. “No worries, Jane. I usually don't eat meat unless I catch it myself.”

I frowned at him. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, poking at the steak with one finger as it sat—packaged in cellophane—on its little Styrofoam plate. “This is just not sporting.”

I snorted. “You're a strange man, Anyan. Or dog. Dog-man?”

“Barghest,” he clarified, giving the filet mignon one last contemptuous poke.

“Barghest,” I repeated, as he smiled into my eyes and I was suddenly glad I'd taken my cardigan off. What with all the cooking, it had gotten really warm in the kitchen.

“So what do you eat?” I asked.

“Well, I hunt. There's great hunting around our area. And there are a few people I'll buy meat from around Rockabill. But otherwise, I'll just not eat meat. With two exceptions I can't resist.”

“What are the exceptions?”

“Haggis and White Castle.”

“What is haggis?”

“It's the Scottish national dish. The pluck of a sheep—meaning the heart, liver, and lungs—all diced up with oatmeal and spices and then baked in the sheep's stomach.”

I thought about that. I had but one question.

“How the hell can you eat White Castle?”

He chuckled. “Sliders are little pellets of greasy love, Jane. Don't knock 'em.”

I shuddered just as the door to the apartment swung open.

“Honey,” Ryu called. “I'm home!”

Anyan and I turned toward the door. Ryu stood, arms outstretched, holding the largest bouquet of flowers I'd ever seen. He was staring at Anyan. The vampire didn't look at all happy.

I put on my cardigan.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

D
inner was very, very awkward, although the lentils were delicious. When we'd finished eating and had cleared away the plates, we returned to Ryu's dining table to get down to business.

“What exactly are you doing here, Anyan?”

“I was sent. After everything that happened with Jimmu, I decided I'd been out of the game too long. So for the past few months I've been working for the Alfar, sniffing out leads, keeping an eye on the powers that be,” Anyan said, not looking at me. I knew how much he'd valued his secret life in Rockabill, and I regretted that he'd lost his hard-won independence. “Something's cropped up at the Compound, and I was sent to assist you. And by Morrigan herself.”

Ryu and I exchanged glances. “You're not the only one who's been sent as ‘assistance,’” Ryu replied.

“Alfar named Phaedra is here,” I interrupted. “Sent by Jarl.”

Anyan's eyes met mine, and he nodded. He knew I was touching on our little secret. Ryu didn't entirely understand the implications of Jarl's involvement, as he didn't know about Jarl's attack on me at the Compound. Ryu knew that Jarl was bad news, but not quite
how
bad. He didn't know Jarl definitely blamed me for the loss of his foster son, or that he'd tried to kill me, and that, due to his failure, there were two witnesses to his attack. I had the feeling Anyan and I were going to have to tell Ryu the truth very soon, and I wasn't looking forward to that conversation. Those two had enough alpha-male issues as it was, without Ryu thinking I was keeping secrets. Secrets I shared with the other top dog, no less.

“I know. That's partially why I'm here. But who did Phaedra bring?” Anyan asked Ryu.

“Kaya and Kaori. Fugwat. And Graeme.”

Anyan's frown transformed him back to Sam the Eagle. “Graeme?”

Ryu only nodded as Anyan stared at him.

“I know,” my lover said quietly. “I'll keep her away from him.”

I shivered, knowing that they were talking about Graeme's unhealthy interest in my breakability. Uncomfortable, I muscled through the moment with my usual delicacy.

“And it gets worse. There's the possibility of more murders, in the Borderlands, that may or may not have been done by Conleth,” I informed Anyan.

“Of course they were done by Conleth,” Ryu said, rolling his eyes. I shrugged. I wasn't going to argue with Ryu about this issue but, like Silver, I wasn't convinced it was Con who committed the other crimes. He'd been so clumsy with that knife, for one thing. And I could have sworn he was genuinely horrified when he saw it sticking through my hand. He was somebody who blasted at people, who roasted them from afar or who set their house on fire while they slept. Conleth didn't walk up topeople and carve them up, or at least he hadn't until last night.

And there'd been no pleasure in his eyes when his knife had sunk deep.

“Actually,” Anyan said, shifting his long legs, “those ‘other' murders are the reason I'm here.” The big man stretched, sitting a bit sideways in his chair so he could extend his long legs. “One of Nyx's pals is a baobhan sith, a famous surgeon in both the human and supernatural worlds. His lover was a human, another doctor, from Chicago, who spent half her time in Boston. Name was Brenda Donovan.”

Ryu and I blinked in surprise. “That's Silver's contact with the corporation that funded his lab,” I told Anyan, and then I explained to him who Silver was.

“Well, Silver's not the only one she told about her concerns. Right before Donovan died, she called her boyfriend, told him she was sending him a package. There was a list of names and an audiotape with her story. Said she was afraid someone was after her. If she disappeared, he should go to the police with the list. She thought he was human, obviously. When she vanished, he knew she was dead. He sat on the information for a week or two, but when he finally laid hands on the autopsy, he discovered she was killed so viciously that he went to Nyx. Nyx eventually went to Morrigan. Morrigan made the connection to Conleth and came to me.”

We chewed on that information for a bit.

“But didn't she know that Jarl had already sent someone to investigate Conleth?” I asked.

“Of course she did,” Anyan replied. “I was there when he volunteered his team. He made a big deal about how he knew a half-human would rise one day to become a problem, and he'd prepared Phaedra to take them out.”

“But Morrigan sent her own people in, too. She didn't trust him? Am I sensing a rift?”

Anyan nodded and Ryu smiled grimly at me. “Orin may be in Jarl's pocket, but Morrigan is in Nyx's. Nyx and Jarl, believe it or not, hate each other.”

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. Nyx was one of the more obnoxious creatures I'd had the displeasure of meeting and I would have pegged her and Jarl as made for each other.

Ryu shrugged. “I know, it's weird. But they've always loathed one another. I think that Nyx recognizes that Jarl will only ever see her as a lesser being, since she's not Alfar. And now Nyx has the ear of the queen.”

“So Morrigan doesn't trust Jarl?” I asked. This was the second time, including the investigation four months ago when I met Ryu, that Morrigan had sent out her own people to investigate.

“Who knows what Morrigan thinks or doesn't think. She's Alfar,” Anyan growled. Ryu arched an eyebrow and smiled at that, making me smile. I liked it when we all got along.

“So what exactly do the Alfar know about this investigation?” Ryu asked.

It was Anyan's turn to shrug. “I've no idea,” he said. “They know what you've reported about the murders here in Boston, and what the deceased doctor said about the deaths of others in Chicago.”

“And what do you know about those murders?” Ryu asked.

“Very little. Donovan didn't have any concrete information, and she wrote down only a few names. She just knew that some of her colleagues had died and others were missing. I found obituaries for all of the people on her list, so she wasn't crazy. But that was as far as I'd gotten before Conleth attacked us in Rockabill. I was home to check on Jane and then I was going to start investigating Donovan's claims.”

Ryu and Anyan stared at each other for a bit until Ryu got up to get the files Silver had given us. He passed Anyan the file with the “other” murders.

“Where'd you get these?” Anyan grunted as he flipped through the contents.

“Silver had them. I don't know how he compiled everything, but he's obviously got a lot of connections. And he's a smart old buzzard.”

“This one—that's Brenda Donovan,” Anyan said, pointing at one of the photos. “The baobhan sith's lover.” He continued flipping until he got to the autopsy. He studied it carefully.

“Do you have the autopsies from the Boston murders?” Anyan asked.

Ryu nodded and then dug them out for the barghest. Anyan flipped through them quickly. There wasn't a lot on them to read, after all. Everyone had been burned up from afar. End of story.

“So we have two groups of murders. We know Conleth is doing one, but the jury's out on the other. I don't understand why he'd alternate between MOs like this. Plus, I chased him. He's fast, and that rocket trick he does is good for a quick getaway. Not least because we have to spend hours glamouring any human witnesses. But he can't sustain it for very long, and it weakens the hell out of him. I don't know if he could get to Chicago and back this quickly. Some of these murders in Chicago overlap with murders in Boston by just a few days.” While he talked, Anyan had made an impromptu time line with some of the police reports. We all three, sporting similar looks of frustration, sat staring at the papers in Anyan's hands.

Finally, the barghest broke the silence. “Have you uncovered any recent leads on your murders?”

Ryu sighed. “We had a lead but Conleth beat us to it.”

I blanched. “Is Hampton dead?”

Ryu nodded. “He was still smoldering when we got there.”

“How the hell did Conleth find him?”

“Silver's missing,” Ryu replied. “As are the people we had watching his house.”

I looked down at my hands, shocked. Everyone so far who Conleth had killed had been just pieces of paper or photos for me. I'd had a drink with Silver. He'd seemed like a nice man. Well, except for the bit where he kept children prisoner for the government.

“And as far as the murders in Chicago are concerned, we're fucked as far as getting info on them. Julian's working on finding recent fire-related deaths in their police records, but…” Ryu shrugged. “There's only so much info we can get from the Borderlands.”

Anyan gave Ryu a long look, as if weighing his options. Finally, he spoke.

“You get me some names and I'll see what I can do.”

His eyes narrowing as his lips pursed, Ryu stared at the barghest. “Are you telling me you have contacts
inside
the Borderlands?”

Anyan merely shrugged.

“Do our king and queen know of this?” Ryu demanded angrily. “If you know things we don't—”

“Cool your britches, baobhan sith,” the barghest replied. “I haven't kept anything that needs to be known from anyone. My life is my own,” he growled, clearly ending Ryu's line of inquiry.

Amen to having our own lives,
I thought, thinking about how I kept getting uprooted. Ryu, however, was far less pleased with Anyan's response than I was, and he glowered at the barghest from the other side of the table.

Always eager to ease tension, I asked Anyan about chasing Conleth. For my efforts, I got a strangely sad smile and then everything that happened after Conleth attacked us in Rockabill. There'd been lots of chasing, a few fights, and finally Anyan had tracked the ifrit halfling down to a squat here in the Boston area. Con had fled, not to return. But at least we now knew where he'd been living.

After Anyan finished, he and Ryu built up how they thought Con had ended up in Maine in the first place.

They figured he'd attacked us in the garden, assuming I was just another human “dinner companion” of Ryu's. Might I add that I managed to keep my face beautifully reposed at this hypothesis. Anyway, when I helped Ryu with his shields and Con saw I was a supe, he'd become interested and hacked Ryu's computer. Apparently, Ryu had downloaded a junk mail game called Elf Bowling, which had contained a malware virus thingy that had eaten into his computer and left a bunch of hardware that spied. Or spyware. Or something. Ryu's explanation, probably originally explained by Julian, was garbled, but I tuned out the minute he started with the jargon, anyway. In my defense, when I'd looked over at Anyan, he was staring out the window like a math major in freshman composition.

A few days after Con had discovered where I lived, he'd set off for Rockabill.

“He must really want to get to me,” Ryu said ruefully, “to attack you like that. I'm sorry, baby.” He raised my hands to his lips to kiss my palm, but was interrupted by a contemptuous grunt from the barghest.

“Oh, he's not interested in you, baobhan sith.”

Ryu frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“You never asked what I found in the squat.”

My lover's eyes narrowed. “Don't be cryptic. What did you find?”

The barghest stood up. “You'll have to see it to believe it. We might as well get this out of the way.” Anyan turned to me, his face gentling. “Jane, this is going to freak you right the hell out. But I'd rather you see it yourself, see how serious it is. And you'll be safe. I'll be there, and Ryu's team's already there. I called Caleb earlier.” Ryu frowned, clearly ticked off at Anyan's intervention with his own men, but the barghest paid no mind.

“Ready?” he asked, standing up.

“No,” I answered, very honestly. “But let's get this over with.”

For, while I wasn't sure what “this” was exactly, I knew it couldn't be good.

* * *

The squat was in Southie, in an abandoned tenement. Anyan was behind us, on a beautifully refurbished Indian motorcycle that I really wanted to get a closer look at.

I was peering back at the barghest in my side mirror when Ryu suddenly lurched the car forward, then backward, and then I swear he made it go directly sideways into a parking spot that would have given a kindergartner on a tricycle trouble. I considered barfing on him to clarify my opinion of his driving. But just then my door was opened, and I was confronted by an enormous penis.

Eventually, the penis moved aside and a large hand descended to help me out of the car.

Caleb,
I thought.

“Pants,” I muttered.

“Hmmm?” the being connected to the schlong asked politely.

“Nothing,” I replied, telling myself that if he was comfortable with the Platonic ideal of going commando, then it was his genitalia and I could get over my human prudishness. So I took the goat-man's hand and let him help me out of the car.

He smiled at me benevolently and I decided I liked him. Until I slipped on a patch of ice, reached out to steady myself, and put my hand directly on his crotch. Horrified at making contact with bare flesh, I let go before I could steady myself… and promptly fell forward, planting my face directly into the concrete sidewalk.

“Jane!” Ryu barked, as four strong sets of hands lifted me off the ground.