Blacker than Black (43 page)

But for an entirely different reason.

He takes a step forward, toward Garthelle, who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, doesn’t even bother gathering his energy.

The Monsieur of York is calm and unruffled, hands casually slid in his pockets, for Gaia’s sake. His words from the previous afternoon echo in my head.
Your reactions must be authentic.
Echo, and then begin to jumble into mindless nonsense. I want to do something, anything. Can see this heading toward disaster, a granite boulder rolling downhill. Gaining speed. Destructive force. Knowing it will obliterate anything and everything in its path. Indiscriminate. Noire takes another step closer and lifts an aura-muddied hand to point at me. “This is my get. I’m here for what’s mine, and my sister’s body. Don’t try to stop me, or so help me, the bond of friendship in our past won’t keep the peace between us any longer. It’s only in memory of that bond that I leave the other twin here in your care.”

“The Madame of Venice wished her interment to take place in the territory by which she was so loved. I have simply been honoring those wishes, not directly thwarting yours. She certainly wouldn’t have wanted her physical remains employed in your nefarious activities.”

Noire’s aura swirls darker, faster, his left hand a mass of ugliness. He opens his fist slowly, moves his palm toward Leonard’s face. Leonard angles his head a fraction, avoiding the touch, his own aura pulled so close to the skin it’s invisible. The Alpha Premier sneers, feigns a second attempt to touch him, and Leonard has to take a step back to avoid contact with the murky aura.

Retreat, seen as submission. Leonard turns his head away, exposing neck and cheek, eyes closed.

Why doesn’t he defend himself? Why’s he letting the Premier walk all over him? I know what he said yesterday, but there’s such disconnect—never have I seen this kind of blatant submission from him. It chills my skin, leaves me wondering about the precise nature of their childhood friendship. Noire turns his sneer in my direction, and I back away in the direction of the door.

“Don’t, Black. You’ll only make it worse.” Leonard’s voice is flat, devoid of intonation. “Go with him. Please.”

There’s no thread of warmth, no residual softness of intimacy. That isn’t Leonard speaking, it’s the Monsieur of York. So it begins. He wants to hide behind his role, fine. I’ll buy into it. I’m all in anyways, at this point. No backing out. Not even if I wanted to.
I need you there, when I face them down
. Still, not going to make it easy on him. “Give me one good reason why, Monsieur?”

A heartbeat of silence, Garthelle’s aura still as ice, tight and close, almost imperceptible.

“Because I ask it of you. Because if you don’t, he’ll be within his rights to level this entire estate down to the bedrock.”

“He has that kind of power?” The adrenaline is so thick in my veins that the question ends in a squeak.

“It’s what comes of feeding from one’s fellow
lyche
, instead of from humans.” His gaze finds mine, nothing moving but his eyes.

Like sire, like son. I might be a mutt, but I’m more
lyche
than human. And I’ve been feeding off them for decades. I scramble to wrap my brain around that, but it slips away in a seething flood of questions and confusion.

Noire’s hand clamps down around my upper arm. His touch feels like raw sewage sliding through my aura. I choke down the swell of bile in the back of my throat, swallowing convulsively, and squelch the urge to fight. I can’t hope to win, struggling against this
lyche
. Not in a direct battle of wills, not like this.

Noire isn’t inclined much to speaking. He grips my arm with more force than strictly necessary. As if he doesn’t trust the Monsieur of York’s direct assurances that I won’t try to escape. I’m Noire’s flesh and blood, after all. Some things just breed true, beyond the boundaries of nurture. Like deception.

He drags me out of
Dragulhaven
without a guide to lead the way back to the foyer. If he hadn’t intimidated and impressed me previously, this feat alone would be sufficient. I consider dragging my feet for all of a heartbeat before abandoning the idea. It would do nothing but increase the
lyche’s
rage, and one glance down at the angrily swirling mass of muddied energy wrapped around my arm is sufficient deterrent.

Garthelle doesn’t want the castle leveled beneath the force of the Premier’s tantrum. Nor do I, not with Jhez and Blue still beneath his roof, safe in the shelter of the Monsieur of York’s protection. That’s the other reason I don’t resist. And keep my lips firmly closed, tongue clamped between my teeth. If this keeps my sister safe, I’ll submit.

Noire’s chauffeured vehicle is idling at the curb outside. The slanting, late afternoon sun glares off the Hudson River, off the glossed surface of the car. It’s not a limousine, but reminds me more of an old sport utility vehicle. Combined with the sleek, glassy curves of the modern design, the result is more freakish than aesthetically pleasing. The driver waits with the rear door open wide, and Noire releases my arm only to plant his hand in the center of my back and shove me.

“Cooperating here. Rough displays of force and strength are excessive.” I can’t help but glare at him as I right myself on the leather bench seat and watch him settle into the one opposite me. “And unimpressive. You’re twice my size, easily. And a
lyche
. Score three for you.”

“Three?”

“You got what you were after, right? You don’t look too grief-stricken to me.” The rear compartment of the vehicle pops open with an audible hiss from the hydraulics system. Something large and heavy is tossed rather unceremoniously into the cargo space, and the hatch latches back into place. “What a way to treat your sister. Like a slab of meat from the butcher. Totally grief-stricken.”

“Shut up, or I’ll do it for you.” Noire’s face is devoid of expression, save for the slight quirk at one corner of his mouth. As if he’s daring me to keep babbling and call his bluff.

What was that whole show of submission, anyways? The Monsieur of York has never behaved that way before. Even knowing it’s a feint, it was disturbing to witness. Leonard can track me if need be, thanks to our link or whatever the hell it is, and he has no intention of leaving me to whatever fate Premier Noire has planned. So even though I’m not feeling very cooperative—or brave—I just keep reciting those facts over and over again in my head. And it doesn’t much matter if the Alpha Premier thinks there’s anything strange about my cyclic aural patterns. Because, really. How is a mutt supposed to do squat against a
lyche
?

The driver door clicks shut and Noire’s car eases away from the curb, down the winding drive toward the distant York metro. I let a few more minutes pass in silence, and then decide to try again. With a slightly less offensive tack.

“Can I ask a question?” My sire glares at me before nodding curtly. “What is it that your . . . pure
lyche
-get, I assume?” He glares, but nods again. “Right. Your pure get. What is it they’re wanted for that a half-breed mutt makes an acceptable substitution? I assume the alliance you maintain with their mother doesn’t permit for sacrificing your firstborn for personal or professional gain.”

Noire folds his hands in his lap and arches a brow. “Alliance.” He says the word as though it’s derogatory, a concession made by the weak. “You’ve been looking at bloodline charts, I take it. Oldest rule in the history of man. History is written by the winners, not the losers. I wouldn’t have thought you still naïve enough to believe anything of what you read. Especially not if it’s penned by a
lyche
.”

He holds up a hand as if studying the state of his cuticles, but there’s no way he can see anything through the cloudy, muddied swirl of energy he still holds focused there. Noire glances at me, vivid green eyes the only part of him that move. I know he’s breathing, but I can’t see any evidence of it. No nostril flare, no chest or shoulder movement; the
lyche
is utterly still, waiting.

I don’t know what a mutt should be capable or incapable of doing. I don’t know that there’s any particular standard. Is it divulging something to him, if he parses out that I can
see
that thing he calls an aura swirling around his hand? I’ve been kinda staring, despite my best efforts. That shit is nasty looking, and it’s not just that way around his hand. He’s completely shrouded in his own little bubble of smog and . . .

“Why does your aura look that way?”

He preens as though he just won an argument. “What way? You mean the density? How opaque it is? That is the effect of
fin
tapping a fellow
lyche
. You won’t see it on anyone but a
lyche
who feeds that way. The mark of an Alpha.”

And then it sinks in. He was waiting for me to admit I could see his aura, because for him that’s all the necessary proof to substantiate his claim—somehow, it proves to him that I’m not a mutt, after all. That my half-breed heritage is a web of lies. Purported by
lyche
for personal gain? Someone’s attempt to bury the truth. I’ve no idea who my mother was. I doubt anyone knows. The period of time shortly before and during the
lyche
disclosure was turbulent, to say the least. Between the global restructuring of societies, the obliteration of governing bodies as defined thus far in human history . . . one person’s lineage would be an easy enough piece of information to falsify.

What makes one
lyche
, anyways? As opposed to the alternative? I rub absently at the center of my chest, feeling the strain of distance increase with each passing second. My other hand I slide beneath my thigh, clamping it out of sight against the seat to hide the slight tremor. Fear, fed by a steady surge of adrenaline, triggering that primal instinct of fight or flight. It makes it difficult to think clearly. To follow a logical path of thought—or rather, the
lyche
equivalent of such—to a rational conclusion.

My throat convulses when I try to swallow past the tension. Every muscle in my body feels tight, strained to the breaking point. “What makes your second-generation get more valuable than me?”

“The Monsieur of York isn’t the only one who knows how to play games, son.”

“So . . . who’s orchestrating this one? You? Or the one holding your leash?”

The energy swirling around his hand speeds up, darkens. “What could you possibly know of that?”

“You may have done your damnedest to ensure . . . I was shunned from
lyche
society,” I stumble over the singular, but see no reason to remind him of my sister’s existence. Though his earlier use of the plural suggests strongly that he’s aware and simply doesn’t care beyond his immediate requirements, I’m not willing to risk Jhez even that much. “But the Monsieur of York has made a credible effort at educating me.”

Noire chuckles, a sharp wave of laughter that hurts my ears. “He knows less than you do. He always was more of a stick in the mud than a free thinker. You do what you have to in order to survive, right? I’m sure you can appreciate that sentiment.” His gaze flicks over me in the heartbeat of silence. “What have you been doing to survive, anyway?”

Misleading a metro full of
lyche
, from the sounds of it. Especially if Alpha is the only circle that still practices feeding from their fellow
lyche
outside the bounds of alliances and sex. I give a shrug and smile faintly. Two can play his game. “What’s it matter? I’m alive and hale when you’ve need of me, available to serve your purposes, Premier. That’s the only thing of import, yes?”

The energy encircling his hand darkens further as he glares at me.

“So tell me. Who controls you? Modere to Alpha. That’s quite a drastic shift, to put it mildly. Pardon me if it’s a tad unbelievable.”

“I have an alliance to forge. It requires me to share a feeding from one of my own flesh and blood. And my wife’s get—the second generation, as you call it—have strong bonds and alliances already in place that I cannot afford to fracture.”

“Why threaten Soiphe with death when she would serve the purpose? She’s your flesh and blood, right?”

He barks a laugh. “The Madame of Venice would’ve never voluntarily submitted to a
fin
tap. A feeding to the death.”

“Oh.” I swallow, hard. “They do that all the time, down in the metro. There’s a club for it. Someone was telling me about it just recently. You can have your pick of humans and suck them dry.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Noire says, one corner of his mouth twitching up. “Most of their menu is half dead and three-quarters drained already. Not to mention they’re all human. That would never do for this alliance. Kraveons tend to have particular demands.”

“Do tell.”

“Just as Alphas only feed from their fellow
lyche
, Kraveons prefer to feed from those with whom they’ve some emotional attachment or intimate awareness.”

“I don’t believe I’ve met any Kraveons.” Very carefully worded requisites, those.

“Not surprised. My stipulation was that the Kraveon Premier feed from a
lyche
. His was that the
lyche
be someone I have a connection to.”