Cool Hand (11 page)

Naryn had eased back from the confrontational style. That could be because he was finished testing me. But it could also be that this was the eye of the storm.

“Your…lapse this morning with your former lover,” Naryn said. From the looks he and Bian exchanged, I gathered the conversation they’d had was heated. I was getting the toned-down version. “Any other Aspirant, under normal circumstances, would be under the supervision of a Mentor, in semi-isolation with trained kin attending. Any other Aspirant wouldn’t be liable to turn wolf, wouldn’t have been fighting rogue skinwalkers and rescuing toru,” he waved his hand, “and so on. Putting all that aside, you’re entering a critical phase. You’re a heartbeat away from going rogue.”

If only he knew how complex it was. And getting worse.

I needed Diana to help sort out my head. I needed her now.

“You’re showing borderline stability on your Athanate side. What if you come across other former lovers? What if there’s no one present to restrain you?”

I didn’t have any other lovers in Denver, but I knew that wasn’t the point. I kept my mouth shut—barely. Top would have been proud.

“Anyway,” Naryn went on, “it’s my understanding that in wolf form, any tendency to go rogue is controlled in the presence of the alpha.”

I nodded. Bian had gone very still, and I got a cold feeling down my spine.

“So you should be safer spending more time in the pack environment. Your House will have to do without you from time to time. Since you haven’t bitten any of them yet, that’s not such a problem.”

“But I’ve just taken on Yelena. I have to make sure she’s okay.”

“Yes, your Carpathian recruit. I still haven’t had an opportunity to discuss it fully with Skylur,” he said. “We’ve exchanged a couple of messages. He approves Vylkove’s incorporation into House Farrell on the same basis as the rest of the House—it remains your responsibility to ensure your whole House acts in the manner of a Panethus sub-House of Altau.”

“It’s asking a lot of her, without her full-time leadership and availability for her House,” Bian said.

Naryn gave her a long, cold,
stop interfering
look. “I’m not taking her away completely.” Naryn leaned on the desk, his voice going deceptively quiet. “But if you’re saying they can’t handle this, then I’ll need to take over the running of the House myself. Would you prefer that?”

“No, Diakon,” I said. My mouth had trouble forming the words. The Athanate hormone elethesine was pumping into my system. My body had gone still, but coiled tight like a spring. My jaw throbbed.

Naryn would know exactly what was happening.

I had to sit still and stay calm. I wedged my hands beneath my thighs to hide the trembling.

He waited.

Finally, he shook his head.

“You’re barely under control. Go and stay at Coykuti. Your House can visit you there. Hopefully, Larimer will keep you stable from the wolf side. Tell him the situation and persuade him to make a deal with the Confederation. Maybe he’ll even be able to come to terms with you having a Basilikos in your House.”

I could hardly breathe.

I had a flashback to killing a Naga while I was in wolf form. The feel of his neck under my jaws. The crunch of bone and cartilage. My body felt like a thin wrapper around my wolf, and she wanted out. She wanted to leap across the table and attack Naryn.

Stop!

From his point of view, Naryn was being reasonable, even if he didn’t realize Alex was my alpha, not Felix. Getting me to stay at Coykuti reduced the chances of my losing control and put me with people who could do something about it if it happened.

He hadn’t ordered me locked up.

And if the Denver pack joined the Confederation, the problem with being allied to one side in a Were war disappeared. Neat solution for Altau. Not going to work. He didn’t understand the Were at that fundamental level. When the Denver pack said
no
, I wasn’t going to sway Felix.

But, as Diakon, it was his right to order me to try.

Even if that order was the trigger that sent me rogue.

I couldn’t hear for the roaring in my head.

My vision narrowed down to a tunnel.

Bian was lifting me up.

I couldn’t speak, which was a good thing.

She’d gotten me halfway to the elevator—halfway to safety—when he spoke again, calling out after us. “One last thing, House Farrell.”

Something about the way he said it set off alarms. Bian felt it too. Her hand clamped on my arm so tightly I couldn’t pull away.

“Haven is, as you’ve seen it, empty,” said Naryn. “With this emergency, all our kin have been deployed elsewhere, including mine and Bian’s. The last of them will be escorting Matlal’s child toru to Ireland. That’ll leave just Bian and me.”

I knew that. It was a plain statement of fact, delivered casually, and it sent shivers down my spine.

“House Farrell has retained kin,” he said.

Bian’s hand tightened even more.

“They’re not—” I managed to say.

Naryn surged to his feet, eyes narrowed in anger.

“Don’t try that, House Farrell. You have a charter for an Athanate House. Skylur’s decreed that your House operates like an Athanate House, whatever arrangements you make internally. You have human members, and as far as Athanate law’s concerned, they’re kin. I’m forced to remain here at Haven. I can’t go hunting for Blood. I’m calling on you as a subordinate house to share kin while we’re operating under this emergency.”

Damn him. I wanted to scream. Instead, I focused on the pain in my arm from Bian’s grip. Naryn’s voice seemed to come from very far away.

“Your choice, Farrell. Either the humans in your House are kin, in which case I can call on them, or you’re breaking the terms of the charter. Whether you’ve bitten them or not is irrelevant.” He stared at me, challenging me to defy him. “Bian and I will need Blood tomorrow evening. Send your choice of kin.”

Bian’s grip on my arm was like leopard claws digging into the flesh. My legs were rubber and my vision grayed out as I struggled to stop fangs or fur manifesting. I couldn’t remember walking the rest of the way to the elevator.

I started to speak. “I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped.

Inside the elevator, as the doors were still closing, she thrust me against the side and pinned me there with her body.

“Let me go,” I yelled.

Bian was stronger and quicker than me. My body, however, knew I was bigger than her, and I had more reach; I instinctively tried to struggle. A blur of a stomach punch, even one she held back on, was enough to stun me into gasping submission.

“Listen to me, Round-eye,” she hissed in my ear. “We have about forty seconds where he can see us on the security camera, but he can’t hear us. I’m sorry he’s doing this to you, but he has every right to make this demand. You have to suck it up. If you fight him head on, he wins.”

She wrenched my head around and planted a hard kiss on my lips, before pulling me closer so that our faces were pressed against each other’s necks.

“Make it look good,” she whispered.

Look good?

For the camera, dummy,
said Tara.

I hugged Bian. I grabbed her ass. I wasn’t sure what might look good to Naryn if he was watching, but if this was Bian’s idea of a joke…

“Oh, that
is
good,” she purred, rubbing herself against me and chewing my ear. “Now, ignore every frigging thing he told you to do. My gut says he’s making the wrong call about Diana. However you do it, get Felix to cover for you. Go find Diana and bring her back. Call me if you need anything. If it makes the difference in getting her back, I’ll disobey him and come down. Understood?”

I knew she and Diana were close, but the enormity of what she was offering still stunned me. “What if we’re wrong?”

“We’ll get locked up.”

“And what about my House?” My voice sounded shaky. My whole body was burning with a white-hot anger that Naryn could order me around like that and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

“I get tired of saying it, but
trust me
. I’ll find some way.”

“Wha—”

“Shut up. Fifteen seconds. I’m doing this because you and I have a legal loophole here. We’re entitled to access to our Mentor, Diana. Whether that overrides everything else is a matter for discussion, but it’s enough for the moment. Last message: Naryn’s being an ass, but you’re not helping. You’ve got to get yourself under better control.”

“But—”

“Outta time.”

The doors opened with a
ping
.

I followed her out into the corridor. My legs weren’t any less rubbery. I was still burning with rage, but in a short elevator ride, Bian had turned it around in my head. Now there
was
something I could do. Something I could focus my anger on.

The feeling of wolf trying to claw herself out through my skin stopped.

The pulse in my jaw died away.

Bian didn’t head for the front door.

“I’ve messaged David to collect you,” she said, pulling me deeper into Haven. “You can talk to Vera while you wait.”

At the door to the west conservatory, she stopped. She took my arm again to hold me back for a second.

I frowned. “What is it?”

“About Vera. Look, humans have differing reactions to Athanate healing. When you have someone as badly wounded as she was, the problem is twofold. You’ve got to heal the physical damage first, but you also have to deal with the mental damage.”

“Like Jen?”

Bian waggled her hand. “Sort of similar. That was your way of healing for that type of injury; to literally strip out the emotional side. But in Vera’s case, the problem was her mind
knew
she’d been shot fatally; there wasn’t any emotional side to take out. I didn’t want to screw with her memories without a lot more time to study her, which I didn’t have.”

“So…”

“The alternative was to flood her with euphorics, which is what I did.”

I knew what they were. The Athanate glands in me pumped out happy scents when I was contented, and everyone around me got a bit of feel-good. With Bian’s greater control, she could deliver a more potent version in her bite.

“It wears off though, doesn’t it? She seemed okay…”

“It does wear off,” Bian said. “But in different people, the aftereffects can be very different. Even taking that into account, Vera’s recovery is…unusual. I’d call it post-euphoric mania. She’s fine almost all the time, but every now and then she doesn’t make complete sense.”

We stepped inside, and I could see Vera dozing peacefully on a chaise, surrounded by lilies which nodded gently in the breeze from the open doors.

“You’ve been warned,” Bian said. “I’d better get back.”

Before she could go, I pulled her into a hug, and this time she decided it was her turn to grab my ass.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

It was Leopard Bian looking up at me, grinning like a devil. Screwing up my courage, I kissed her. She let me off lightly; there was barely any tongue involved.

I watched her stride away, Leopard Bian turning back to Diakon Bian with every step.

She was scary. She was infuriating. She wasn’t Jen or Alex. She wasn’t kin. She was…great. And I did trust her, even with my House. She understood the principle I wanted in House Farrell—that all of us should do things because we wanted to, not because stronger people compelled us to. Not even because there were rules. What Naryn was trying to get me to do, to pick people out and order them to give him Blood, was against that. If it could be done, Bian would find a way to deflect Naryn.

If the cost of that was getting humped against a wall in the elevator, I’d take it and count it worth the price.

Vera woke as I approached.

“Amber, how lovely.” She touched the coffee pot on the table beside her. “I’m afraid that’s cold, but I know my way around Haven now. Should I make some more?”

“Not unless you’re thirsty.”

“Come on. It must have been a couple of hours since my last cup.”

I carried the tray. I was proud and surprised that I’d gotten my reactions to Naryn under control to the point where the cup and saucer weren’t rattling.

Vera led us to a kitchen area I’d never visited before. Somewhere, hidden below, there had to be an industrial kitchen for catering for Haven when it was full. The one on the ground floor was for show and light refreshments.

She decided against making a fresh pot and opted for the barista machine, which she clearly knew her way around.

“Leave it out—I’ll make some for Naryn and Bian later,” she said as I cleaned the pot.

She saw me flinch, and she’d probably already figured out exactly who’d upset me anyway.

“Not your favorite person?” she said.

“No.” I glanced around. The whole house had security cameras, but I guessed he wouldn’t learn anything he didn’t know already.

Vera spotted that twitch too. Whatever mysterious symptoms Bian was referring to, Vera had made a remarkable recovery. In fact, she was looking better than ever, and certainly wasn’t missing anything.

“He’s a strange man,” she said, handing me my mug of latte. The mug was one of Bian’s little jokes; the print on the side advertised one of the blood donor operations down in Denver. “Naryn doesn’t care for me, but since Jari’s recruitment plan has started to come together—”

“I thought the Colonel was with Skylur in LA?”

“No, he’s in Wyoming. The affiliate House in Cheyenne has a couple of ranches there, out in the middle of nowhere.” She thought about that for a couple of seconds. “He’s there with about fifty former members of the unit, and another hundred say they’ll be there in the next month or so.”

“It’s going well?”

“These things are never quick enough for some people, but it looks like we’ll have a couple of companies recruited to Altau. It’ll be wonderful to see them again. Jari runs them through stages of revealing what’s going on. If they commit fully to join, they get to learn about the Athanate from a couple of Altau he has with him from the local House. It looks like about eighty percent are joining. With their training, it improves our situation so much that even Naryn hasn’t complained that they’re not formally kin.”

I didn’t miss that she’d said ‘we’ll have’ and ‘our situation.’ Vera wasn’t one for sitting on the fence. If she was in, she was all in.

She typed a code on the security pad and opened the door to the gardens.

“Let’s walk outside. The snow is still melting, but the paths are clear.”

I was afraid she might think that there weren’t any listening devices in the garden, but she didn’t make any comments about Naryn. She chatted instead about the unit, what had happened, and her worry for the colonel’s staff.

We sat on garden chairs in a little pavilion sun-trap, surrounded by snow-covered lawns.

“I’m amazed at how calmly you’re taking what’s happened over the last month,” I said. She’d gone from being a respectable army wife in North Carolina to a fugitive from the FBI, and finally to hiding out here in the headquarters of the Panethus Athanate—a people she hadn’t even known existed a few weeks ago.

She smiled. “Not a complete surprise. Of course, I knew Jari’s concerns. And since arriving here, I’ve had nothing to do but doze and think. I had Bian to talk to for a couple of hours, as well.” She sighed. “For Jari and me, this is wonderful. He doesn’t see that yet, but he will.”

“How do you mean?”

I got the distinct feeling she was going to roll her eyes, but she was too dignified to do that.

“Only someone who’s never faced growing old could possibly ask that,” she said instead.

“What, is that it?”

She laughed. “I rest my case.” She flexed her hands, eyes intent on them as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. “When every month takes another thing away from you, when every week sees another compromise with your body, when every day is a struggle, then the offer to be healthy again is more precious than gold. You’re Athanate now. You’ll never understand that, and you’ll never understand how lucky that makes you, Amber.”

“But…”

“Ah, yes. I make it sound as if we’re being bought. How wonderful to be so fortunate to have that option, and how cynical I must sound. Let me put it another way. Think of all the other things we value from further up the hierarchy of needs—esteem, honor, friendship, trust, love, morality and that shabby old carry-all, self-actualization. They all seem devalued somehow when there’s the constant threat that today your hands are going to be so painful that you can’t open the bottle of pills.” She lifted her hands again and rolled her wrists, delight written all over her face. “And that’s before I get to talk about the growing silence, the numbness, and the way that faces, even familiar ones, seem to get vague around the edges, so you’re not sure whether it’s your eyes or your brain that’s getting duller.”

She laughed again; a bright, happy sound on a gloomy afternoon. “Heavens! No wonder Skylur is worried about how to reveal this to the rest of the world. The stampede!”

“Bian seems to have done a good job on you.” It sounded rude and I wished I could snatch the words back, but Vera just laughed. “I mean you’re looking fabulous,” I finished lamely.

“She has. Holes mended, scars fading, body working properly and arthritis just
gone
. I know that’s only a side effect of my treatment from Bian, and it’s not permanent. What I really need to do is to persuade some poor, hapless Athanate that I am worthy to be kin.” She flushed slightly. “I understand the term is, umm, encompassing. We’d have to see how that turns out. And I can’t…well, Jari, you understand. I couldn’t if he didn’t feel completely happy with it.”

She sat straighter and folded her hands precisely in front of her, looking out over the snowy lawns. I knew the colonel was fang-phobic. He was okay working with Altau, but he had a problem about being bitten.

And I believed her. If he said no, she’d turn down an offer to be kin. Give up all the health benefits she’d had.

As House, it was my responsibility to get my damned head out of the sand and plan for that. To deal with it, one way or another. Naryn had made that crystal clear.

Despite Bian’s warnings about post-euphoric mania or whatever, it seemed to me that Vera was thinking more clearly than I was. Was there some way I could utilize that? If she was recovered, maybe it would be okay to move her to Manassah. How should I get her working with my House? I didn’t have an established command structure like Altau. I had no Diakon, no lieutenants. I had no strategy, no plan for growth, not even an idea about how to increase the number of kin to a safe level. Maybe she would have ideas about how that structure and strategy should form.

At that moment, David came around the corner of the building.

“Mrs. Laine, Boss.” He knelt casually in front of us, his eyes focused on me. “I have orders from Naryn to get you out to Coykuti, like right now.”