Betrayal's Shadow (3 page)

Focus on the inward breath, hold and release slowly.

Dreams didn’t last forever. Right
? Whatever reason her mind created this image, this cell, this man, she’d seen all she needed and more than she wanted. It was all her illusion. Whatever the man represented, her dreams couldn’t harm her. She could maintain control.

She fought to regain the gray mist that had ushered her into this nightmare and continued to count her breaths, waiting.

Moments? Hours? She couldn’t tell, yet in spite of her awkward pretzeled position, her limbs expanded with a sense of lightness. She lost count and the darkness took control.

CHAPTER 2

Ansgar spun a chair around to straddle it in front of the thick oak desk in Leonis’s office. Arms crossed on the back of the chair rail, he waited for the old man to finish his scrutiny of the ancient parchment.

Fine, take your time
. The conversation they were about to have was one Ansgar would rather avoid. If he were smart, he’d have taken longer to get back to Eden’s Sanctum. Long enough to cleanse the nightmarish images that continued to play in his brain from this last assignment.

With a brief tilt of his head, Ansgar acknowledged Kamau as the man entered the room. Panther at his heels and hawk submissive on the broad, leather-clad shoulder, Kamau radiated Nubian prince as if born to the role. The trio settled beside Ansgar.

The sleek, black feline shifted moss green eyes toward her master. With a ripple of muscle, she sauntered over to Ansgar, and rubbed her head against his leg for attention.

Ansgar worked his fingers in the short, soft fur of the panther’s head until loud purrs rumbled through the windowless granite room. The skull was twice the size of his palm, yet the dangerous and wild creature sat docile and eager beneath his ministrations. He envied Kamau his power, a talent paired with companionship. Animals didn’t talk back, an added benefit. Then again, to a master of beasts they probably had their own way of mouthing off.

At least his power didn’t carry the responsibility of additional lives.

“Two more minutes,” Leonis said without a glance.

Ansgar perused the stacks of fragile books and yellowed parchments tumbled across Leonis’s desk, littered on chairs, and piled on the floor. The tomes covered almost every inch of the sterile, cold room hewn from the rock of Eden’s protective bowl of mountains.

The golden glow from the cylinder of memory crystals on the desk provided the only warmth in the room, besides the heat from the panther’s head beneath his hand.

Leonis’s finger traveled down the ancient pages. Flashes of glowing script illuminated briefly between the written lines of human text. The shimmering bits constituted history hidden by Ansgar’s descendants and secreted into the ancient human documents. With a brief swipe, Leonis gathered the luminescent script, lifted it into the air, and dropped it into the solid glass cylinder housing the crystals. Light sparkled. The script swirled inside the cylinder, searched until it reached some predestined section of crystal, then condensed, and disappeared.

Ansgar shook his head. Human computers handled data storage and retrieval, but Guardians had possessed the intrinsic skill organically for millennia without the use of chips and circuits. Yet it had taken the devastation of plague and death to rip the inherent skill from his people, leaving them with this paltry substitute to search for information.

“You find her?” Kamau’s deep voice was somber. The thick black forearms crossed over his chest contradicted the patience in his words.

“Isabella’s body? Yes and no. I tracked her to a morgue in Tucson. She’d been cremated.” Ansgar had trouble releasing the words and managed a shake of his head at Leonis’s surprise.

“There was nothing to bring back. They have too many bodies. After a few weeks, they need to make room. The police reports were detailed, though disturbing.” Isabella’s cold, mutilated body listed by number, another Jane Doe casualty on the Tucson Police Department’s unsolved roster, was too raw, too painful.

Leonis’s fingers stilled.

Kamau waited for additional explanation, his expression hidden while he pressed folds into his leather falconry gloves. On unspoken command, the panther shifted from Ansgar to settle at Kamau’s feet in a deceptively casual pose. Her head covered one of his feet and her eyes fixed on the open doorway.

The perfect lookout.

Ansgar turned his head to the side, stretched his neck, and avoided Leonis’s gaze. “The police report indicated twenty to thirty shallow stab wounds, five deep and fatal. There wasn’t a medical examiner’s report on record.” He gripped the chair rail. “Her personal effects fit in a ziplock bag.”

The crime scene photos had been bad, but he struggled to overlay them with his memories. Isa as an infant. Isa playing with the other Guardian children in the Sanctum’s gardens. Isa, stubborn and innocent, flirting to get her way. She’d possessed spirit and energy, characteristics too much like his sister, Briet.

“Xavier?” Leonis’s question held weariness.

Bristling at the implied assumption, Ansgar fought down a reaction. He knew the purpose here wasn’t to commiserate, only to provide impartial delivery of the facts. Ansgar and Kamau’s job was search and retrieval. It wasn’t Leonis’s fault he got the fun job of asking the hard questions before briefing Salvatore and the rest of the Guardian council.

Better him than me
. “No evidence to link him to her death. Once I got past the human police personnel to search, there was no sign of the creatures Xavier used previously against the Sanctum or his usual attack patterns.” He swallowed back defense of his fallen commander and continued. “Her body was found with a dead undercover cop. Same wounds on him.”

“You conjecture that this is a random act of human violence?” Leonis asked.

Random, hardly. Ansgar ground his teeth on the words. Some details would have to wait. “There’s nothing to prove otherwise.”

“Any remains?” Leonis tapped his fingers on the table.

“They buried the ashes. No risk of exposure for us.”

Leonis and Kamau both grumbled.

The council would be relieved with the lack of exposure. However, the lack of details to probe further into Isa’s death would leave other questions. No help for that.

“Was she …” Kamau’s sour expression and his hand tightened enough around his glove to cause permanent wrinkles in the leather signaled the direction of his comment.

“Report said she bled out, along with the human. No other sign of violation.” No, Isa hadn’t been raped. Just attacked and then left to die slowly in a dark, narrow alley without the comfort of her brethren. Ansgar took a slow breath to battle the anger he seemed unable to lock in place.

His people trained in defense against random human violence, though to repel an assault required diligent training and a mindset to retaliate. Many of the Guardian women were gentle creatures. Isa had been such. His sister still was.

“And Turen?” asked Leonis.

Ansgar caught Kamau’s gaze as his eyes narrowed at the scribe.

“Too much, Leo.” Ansgar didn’t curb the bitterness in his voice. “Turen would
never
have hurt Isabella. He rejected being her mate, but he would have died for her. Any of us would have. Just because we aren’t all tied by blood, doesn’t discount each of us as brothers and sisters for our race.”

Leonis closed his eyes and nodded.

“Turen is too skilled to kill in such a petty, painful fashion. Xavier as well.” Kamau kept his gaze on his gloves, but the hawk rustled its wings and flexed its talons restlessly against Kamau’s leather vest. “If Turen or Xavier were to attack, it would be with one merciful strike. Not that Turen would ever turn on his brethren.”

Leonis blew out a strong breath, scrubbed at his face with one hand and then gave a quick shake of his head. “The question required asking.”

“An
accusation
requires proof.” Ansgar snorted. “It’s disgusting that we jump to credit Turen with Xavier’s sins. One horrible fall from grace doesn’t signal downfall for us all.” The room fell silent.

Ansgar allowed the void to grow. Xavier, the oldest and most admired, had turned on his people and fled. He’d plunged so deep into a life divergent in purpose with the Guardian’s covenant, it rattled every member of their small race, driving each of them further into solitude. Turen had been the single, vocal holdout for the possibility of Xavier’s redemption. Turen’s disappearance for the last several months had resurfaced the old doubts in the council. Now his character and loyalty were in question as well.

Only the warriors of Turen’s personal team refused to give up on him without strong, irrefutable proof.

Leonis shifted. “This issue won’t be resolved before the council without Isabella’s remains. Granted, that is minor compared to the loss of her unique powers and the souls her children would have someday delivered for mankind.”

“The forty or so of us remaining
are
the council. Don’t you mean Salvatore?” Ansgar let loose his anger. He didn’t intend to direct it at Leonis.

When the man raised a brow in censure, Ansgar dropped his gaze first. This argument would get them nowhere. “We lose Isa’s powers and so what?” he continued. “The likelihood that any of us will find our mates and conceive children has become only a dream. Decades we’ve lived hiding here in the Sanctum, safe from the plague but without a future. Except for Xavier’s brief success, and his blessing ended in tragedy.”

“We can’t give up,” Leonis chided.

“No. We don’t have that option either, since we live for frigging ever without our mates. No normal circle of life, no children, no fulfillment of our covenant. Hell, we can’t even just grow old and die.” Ansgar raised a hand to fend off Leonis’s rebuke with a heavy exhale. “I apologize.”

A creak of wood signaled Kamau’s movement. “Isa’s loss and Turen’s disappearance, both are adding to the schisms in our collective.”

Leonis nodded. “Have Kaax or Grimm found any answers?”

“They’ve both searched for traces of Turen. However, the issues of random failures along the Sanctum’s security field have derailed those efforts. Kaax is working with Tsu on a resolution. Grimm is searching in the human population alone, tracking city by city. It’s impossible.” Kamau frowned and tapped his finger restlessly on his leg. “Where does this leave us?”

Leonis patted the parchment before him and focused his attention on the illuminated cylinder with a frown. “This new information gains us nothing.”

“Perhaps it is time to reconsider our options?” said Kamau.

“Don’t even try. We can’t put the women at risk.” Leonis shook his head. “If Isabella had gone into cryo with the rest of our women, as requested, she’d be alive now. The situation is far worse than when our sisters accepted cryo. Isabella’s request for a mating with Turen will be only the beginning of the problems to surface if the women awaken.”

“You can’t believe that!” Ansgar snapped. “You can’t judge all the women by one situation. Isabella was lucky Turen had the sense to refuse an attempt at mating. The rest of us know it’s not a try-it-on-for-size connection with our people. He bent over backwards to protect her feelings. The women would have supported him. For the record, it was Salvatore who decided Isa could remain out of cryo and
serve
him. Where is his responsibility for her death?”

“Isa was warned to remain within the safety of the Sanctum’s perimeter. Instead, she pursued secret activities in the human cities,” Leonis countered with a frown. “She’d have been safe here.”

Kamau continued despite the argument over Isa. “The cryo option was for our women’s protection, to ease them through the lack of mates, to avoid the fate of Xavier’s mate. None of us intended for it to be a permanent cocoon. Our covenant requires we coexist with humankind, not stay
safe
forever in the Sanctum.”

“It has only been ten years. Why such a strong opposition? You do not even have a sister in cryo, Kamau,” said Leonis.

Ansgar was glad Leonis had the good grace to wince with the callousness of his remark.

“They are all sisters of my heart. As they are to you, Leonis, and to every male warrior of our race. Turen included.” Kamau’s brows pulled together; his jaw clenched. “The years divide us from our true mission. I know our sisters wouldn’t appreciate being considered fragile or their contribution minor. Their loss in our community creates too much disparity.”

“And they deserve a voice,” Ansgar added. As a scowl clouded Leonis’s features, he cut him off. “Be honest, Leo, the women will be angry to find Isabella and Turen are lost to us. That we considered them too
vulnerable
to consider their input.”

“They would never have supported Salvatore’s decision to back Isabella’s request to pursue Turen,” added Kamau.

Ansgar rubbed his chin and looked away. “Ironic, Turen didn’t support the renouncing of Xavier or advocate the cryo option or condone Isa’s pursuit of mating, and now he’s disappeared.”

“Do you have proof of what you imply?” Leonis responded slowly. “Be careful, Ansgar, our people have enough difficulties without unjustified accusations.”

“The accusations against Turen and Xavier have little proof as well, yet they are supported.”