Deceiving the Protector (3 page)

Except her ear twitched, the one peeking through the longer hanks of her hair, when he didn’t make a loud enough sound for her to follow.

The rich, sadistic laugh soothed his spinal cord. That was the Betha he’d raised. “Why do you think I keep doing it?”

Because she was evil. “Do you have what I asked for?”

The silence on the other end of the line grounded him again in the grim reason he was on this mission in the first place. “Yeah, I have them. I’m about twenty minutes from your current position. I’ll signal when I’m close.” Betha cut the call, leaving Tate to fold the phone closed and tuck it back in his pocket.

Not much else to do but lie on his own pallet, spread across from his recalcitrant companion. No surprise, she didn’t acknowledge him in the slightest. That was what happened when you spooked a stray. The tiny bit of trust you hadn’t realized you’d earned was yanked back so hard and so fast you had to wonder if they were going to slit your throat in your sleep out of sheer terror.

He wasn’t sure yet if she’d go that far. She’d been silent as the grave since they’d made the turn into the bushes from the road. Since she hadn’t said much before that, he couldn’t really calculate that into her threat-rating, but his gut rumbled that her silence wasn’t the good kind. She’d kept her head down, her eyes averted, while he put dried food packets in front of them both. He was pretty sure she’d been biting her lip, on and off. Which meant she had to be thinking. She sure as hell didn’t eat. The unopened packets remained untouched next to her pallet.

He let his gaze slide over the angles of her face, trying one more time to get a measure on her, but finding nothing he could use to decide about her one way or another. She looked softer at rest, her features not tightened by suspicion. That feisty mouth of hers was actually pretty when she wasn’t flattening it out. The upper lip had the slightest pout to it and the bottom filled out a rich curve from one corner to the other, puffing slightly in the middle. He frowned at the fleeting urge to run his fingertip over it, find out if it was as soft as it looked.

Her eyes, too, looked completely different. No slashing green gaze arrowed his way, waiting for him to attempt to touch her again. Lashes, surprisingly darker than her hair, spread like little fans beneath them, emphasizing the almond arc. Nothing would soften that thin blade of a nose or that pointy chin, but with her heavy bangs falling sideways across her curved brow, she looked…vulnerable.

Something heavy settled in his chest at that realization. He looked away, uncomfortable with the response. Lia Crawford was the least vulnerable female he’d ever come across. Gritty, determined, surly…those words all fit her just fine. She was like a piece of toughened leather and almost impossible to work with. She didn’t need him to protect her from anything and she didn’t want him to try. She wanted him gone. Except…except for those seconds when her eyes went wide and her face lost all its color in less than a heartbeat, all because he’d said his own name. Because he’d almost touched her.

What are you hiding, Lia? What scares
you
that much?

Tate rubbed at his eyes. Even if he hadn’t seen that flash of absolute terror, his acute senses rang from the spike of fear coming off her skin. Those brief moments worried him. There was a reason the Sibile was interested in Lia, and he wasn’t so stupid to imagine it was a little one. Their oracle didn’t
do
little. She did epic, world-changing big.

Tate stared up at the stars through the canopy of trees, rejecting that idea as soon as it formed.

He wasn’t ready to have his world changed again. Least of all by a Sibile.

Or any woman at all.

He turned his head to look at the female across from him once more. She hadn’t moved other than the tiny puff of breath slipping evenly through those slightly parted lips. That heavy hair, jaggedly cut and gleaming in the moonlight, made him want to push it off her face so he could see her better. Trace the arch of her brow, follow the high and rounded shape of her cheekbone to her hairline and back again. Her skin appeared smooth as water, not a single scratch or blemish to mar it. She just looked…touchable, this way. Inviting.

A word Lia most definitely was not. He’d have guessed her part-porcupine before guessing Wolf. Maybe even wolverine. If her eyes opened right now, she was more likely to grab the nearest rock and bash him with it than welcome his attention.

And still, he couldn’t look away.

She wasn’t beautiful, though that word kept popping up in his mind. She was too raw for that. Too hardened. But he still had the urge to touch her and see if it was all his imagination. Or was he simply covering her in a patina of beauty to explain why he cared about what frightened her? It wasn’t his job to care. He needed to get her from point A to point B, alive. Nothing more, nothing less. A cold reminder, maybe, but one he needed. She was only a pawn in an old woman’s game, just like him. A rough, ungrateful, unpleasant pawn.

One he had to clench his hands to turn away from.

For what had to be the fiftieth time since leaving the hidden shifter town of Resurrection, Tate asked himself how he’d gotten into this situation. The answer was always the same. Because Pale put him here.

From the first night they’d found themselves on their own twelve years ago, their home a pile of rubble, freedom won by the blood of the dead Sibile at their feet, Tate had never doubted Pale. As either his brother or his Alpha. Not when Pale began the first stray rescues, finding those lost shifters whose families had been destroyed by the hundred years of genocide humans had waged against them. Not even when he’d told them it was time to search out the old legends in the mountains of Southern California, to make a safe haven for themselves and maybe, just maybe, gain a chance at survival. He’d thought Pale was crazy, but he had never doubted him.

Not until two nights ago, when the Sibile grand-high oracle—
damn meddling old woman
—pulled one of her tricks and delivered some kind of psychic message.

Now Tate was out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, protecting a begrudging stray like she was the holy-fucking-grail when there were hundreds of other strays desperate to find somewhere in the world where they could be safe. The only reason he was given? Because this particular stray would lead him to some kind of a treasure. Like he was a damn pirate and she was his new pet parrot. Who bit.

He stifled a frustrated growl. It just didn’t make any sense and he hated things that didn’t make sense.

Calculated risk, he understood.

Protecting life? That he could get behind.

Looking for a needle they didn’t even need in a haystack literally the size of Pennsylvania did not serve logic, sense or anything else he could think of.

It just served the Sibile, and that set his teeth to grinding.

For some reason, Pale was taking orders from the same mercenary witches who’d once thought to bury them alive. In this world, with people whose loyalty was at best temporary, Tate couldn’t help but feel like his brother was playing Russian Roulette with everything they’d built. Not since the Cataclysm—when humans had first discovered beings stronger than them, namely shifters and the Sibile—had there been anything close to a pack, but they had one now. In Resurrection. Because of Pale. Because they’d all sacrificed everything they had to bring it to fruition. The knot in his gut, the instinct he lived by even more than the voice that had guided him in his survival, wouldn’t let him stop wondering why. Because Pale wouldn’t do this without a damn good reason…

Okay, maybe he wasn’t totally riddled with doubt, but he sure as hell wasn’t filled with absolute allegiance, and that didn’t sit well.

As if to save him from that dangerous line of thought, a familiar scent drifted toward him from the eastern side of their little camp. Earthen, dark, a touch of musk, gun oil and leather. He smiled, tipping his hat down over his face so Betha wouldn’t see it. She’d get it in her head he was happy to see her and that just wouldn’t do anyone any good.

It wasn’t long before he felt the hard smack of a small rock hitting his chest. Glancing up where it came from, he found his favorite student scowling down at him from a branch almost directly overhead.

“Any other time,” she hissed, voice almost too soft a whisper to hear, “you’d have had one of those throwing knives of yours between my eyes already.”

“What can I say? I missed you.”

Her snort of disbelief relayed her opinion of that remark. She jumped down, her long hair bound with leather to the point that it looked more like a rope as it dropped behind her. Maybe more like her tail. “You getting soft on me?”

“Would you have been happier with a blade between your eyes?” When she flicked a brow upward, he had to keep from shaking his head as he led her to the farthest part of the clearing where they wouldn’t wake Lia.

She smirked at him before leveling a friendly rough punch to his arm in place of a hug. Betha didn’t do cute and cuddly any better than he did, the little hellcat. But anyone would know that just looking at her.

She wore the three scars on her face proudly, daring anyone to make mention of the grooves that formed straight lines through her left eyebrow or the two on her cheek just below. People’s reticence probably had less to do with her attitude and more with the sleek black leathers she wore. A shoulder holster kept a sawed-off shotgun strapped to her back, along with three machetes of various length, and strip holsters at each hip kept deadly silver
sai
right at hand’s reach. The rest of her uniform consisted of a black tank top and fingerless gloves for punching the absolute shit out of whatever the hell she felt like killing. She looked like a cross between a street fighter and a ninja and was probably twice as deadly. But when she drew up in front of him, it wasn’t with the usual cocky attitude he’d done very little to curb since taking her in. Instead, she pulled a rubber-banded stack of small bound books from her back waistband, already extending it to him with a grim expression on her face.

“You’re gonna hate this one, old man.”

Tate eyed the notebooks, ignoring her annoying nickname. “These the logs?”

She nodded, leaning against a tree once he took the trio of books. “One from each of the blown safe houses. Decoder is in the flap on each one. The guides knew better than to leave them behind.”

Tate weighed the books in his hand. The guides, those brave few who were willing to make their homes open for travelers and whatever they brought with them, had to have risked their lives for these books. Every second counted when it came to a raid, but they’d done it to protect the marks on the pages. One for every man, woman and child who came through their doors, tracking their progress and where they were headed next. Who knew how many lives he held right then? One hundred? Two? If the government found them, decoded them, they’d have the closest thing to a census for shifters in the northeast region. Ammunition they’d use with visceral efficiency to destroy whoever was left.

If everyone in the Underground made it to Resurrection, they’d be looking at nearly two thousand shifters on the mountain. He couldn’t let himself think about the weight of that. If he did, he might start wondering if they’d ever had a chance to survive, and lying to himself had never been a talent.

He slipped the books into his own back waistband to examine later. “Explain the kills to me. I didn’t see signs of mortal wounds in the safe houses I inspected before tracking down the target.” Panic, running and distraction, yes. But there was no blood. No scent of death. He glanced over his shoulder at Lia, who hadn’t stirred.

“We started finding the bodies a few weeks ago, before the raids came. We didn’t think much because at first, they weren’t so…violent. Just clean executions, nothing we haven’t seen before. The third body set off alarms, otherwise, those houses would have been full up when the squads arrived. All the victims we’ve found were travelers, no humans. There were a total of seven unaccounted for in my region. According to those code books—six males and a female, all traveling separately. Two of them are still out there. A remaining male, who turned northeast, and the female, who headed south. The others turned out to be dead, once we found enough pieces of them for the guides to ID.”

He held in the growl, but distaste still curled the corners of his mouth. So much for ignoring the all-powerful Sibile fortune-teller and her tip that the person hunting their travelers wasn’t what they thought he was. “Great. Just
fucking
great.”

“Hey,
I
didn’t cut them up.” Betha shrugged before reaching into one of the many pockets on her leathers and pulling out a paper-wrapped piece of jerky. She ripped a piece off with her teeth with a relish that was a little disconcerting, given the topic. “All the bodies were close to the safe houses. Found them by smell in the afternoons when the sun and the winds kicked up. I’m guessing they died after each stop so the guides could count them first, buying the killer more time. The strange thing is that all of them were killed by a bullet to the head.”

“What’s strange about that?” Humans preferred to use guns on shifters and it wasn’t like they were impervious to holes in their heads.

“Well, I can’t quite figure out the point of shooting a shifter clean in the head, point blank to the forehead, then dismembering ’em and spreading ’em around the trees like a kid who hates his spaghetti dinner.”

That was…vivid. Tate laughed, despite himself. “You should write children’s books. You could traumatize millions at a time.”

She smiled, transforming herself from ruthless killer to a scrub-faced sixteen-year-old, complete with the sprinkling of freckles over her cheeks. You’d never guess she was twenty-three and had already survived two death squad attacks of her own.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t come up with the shit I’m seeing.” The lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes deepened. Not with humor, but confusion. Maybe even horror. “I’m not kidding, Tate. He cuts them up the way we’d clean a fish. It’s clean. Clinical, even. I mean, humans use power saws to cut through meat like that, but there’s nothing clinical about the violence afterward. It’s all been stomped and crushed, torn apart, thrown all over the place. I won’t even go into all the blood every-fucking-where.”