Edged Blade (6 page)

I rubbed my brow, wondering when all of this had gone down. Well, since the EOS—execute on sight—hadn’t gone out, Allerton House had probably been able to keep it contained.

Justin cut in. “For his trouble, the wolf had to spend a day in custody and he was fined for destroying the window. The girl intervened on his behalf, though. She’s with that activist group, TAP2. I think the cops let him out just to shut her up.”

TAP2—I wanted to groan. The group was a pain in the ass—granted more for human authorities and the anti-NH groups out there than for us, but sometimes they just
got in the way
. TAP2 was short for
They Are People, Too
—and guess who the
they
is?

I don’t guess anybody bothered to explain to them how insulting that was, but what can you do?

“Okay. Dair’s wolf got let out, Spike is on the run, Abraham went after him, and…?”

“Spike is under lock and key.” Padraig’s voice was grim. “From what I’m hearing, nobody can reach him. If they can’t find Icarus, it could be years before he’s stable enough on his own.”

“Years?” I hissed out a breath, my gut twisting as a wave of nausea hit me.
Years
? Held as a prisoner? Memories tried to assault me, but I shoved them back. Spike’s confinement was for different reasons—and he hadn’t been brought in solely for some psychotic asshole’s amusement. Still…

Softly, I said,
“He’d be better off dead.”

“He chose to get bitten. He had inoperable brain cancer—one thing humans still can’t fix. He had a fifteen percent chance of surviving the bite and according the information I read up on him, the drugs were making him sicker every day.” Justin shrugged. “Death isn’t an option for some people. Now…”

The word trailed off and we all looked at his name.

Abruptly, Justin grabbed the sheet of paper and wadded it up. He threw it into the kitchen and I heard the recycler kick on, chewing up the bit of paper. “Nice aim,” I said absently. “So this guy loses it and they figure it out then?”

“Basically.” He shrugged. “It’s all about that door—the one Paddy told you about. Vampires keep their mental doors
closed. The feedback they need from each other is subconscious. They have to actively seek each other out otherwise. When they started tracking up this guy’s line to find out why he went unstable, they couldn’t find Icarus.”

“Nobody reported him missing?”

“Nope.” Justin settled back on the couch, his face grim. “Apparently, he’s known to go into seclusion for short periods. The vamps he’s closest to, his servants, they all assumed he’d taken some
me
time.”

Puffing up my cheeks, I blew out a breath. “Okay.” I thought back to what Justin had said just a minute or so back.
Death isn’t an option for some
. Blocking back the fear that tried to build up inside, I stared hard at the name of the missing vamp. “So this…anchor is gone. How do they know he’s not dead?”

“They’d feel it.” Paddy’s gaze came back to me. “There’s not a
void
there. It’s a disconnect. A death feels different, and they can adjust. It’s how they work. The power flow works around it—the same way a river would adjust to rocks pilling up to block the flow—or those rocks being yanked out the way. They’d adjust—stronger vampires would feel and stabilize the younger ones. But there was no warning, no backlash, no surge to warn them of Icarus’ disappearance so nobody knew to stabilize the younger ones.”

“Are they looking for him?”

Paddy nodded. “Abraham’s been off on a search for over a month.” He gave me a thin smile. “That was when I heard about this—for the record, his hunts have never lasted more than a week. He’s just that good.”

“You sound jealous.”

Paddy chuckled. “I can’t help but admire the man’s skill. But…” He sighed. “I like having a pulse.”

“A pulse is nice.” Brooding, I stared down at the floor. “Is it the same with the vamp from Whittier?”

“Nope.” Justin flicked me a look. “That one’s dead. Missing—but dead. Isaac Whittier reported his disappearance and subsequent death to the Assembly three days ago.”

“No idea where he is?”

“Just that he’s dead. They all felt it. Nobody lost it, though, from what I heard.” Justin shrugged and rose to pace. When he passed by me, there was speculation in his eyes, but I pretended not to notice. I hadn’t killed the idiot. If I was going to kill a vampire, it would be for something more important than him staring at me.

“Any guess on how many shifters have gone missing?” I asked, focusing on the next matter.

“That’s harder to say. And….” Paddy’s brown eyes moved to Justin.

Justin had stopped by the wall, studying my weapons, but when I shifted my attention to him, he looked at me.

Arms crossed over his chest, he pinned me with a hard, direct stare.

“You’re not the only one who’s been in touch with Nova lately, Kit. I hear tell a couple of cats went missing in Georgia.” His eyes gleamed. “I need you to talk to Chang for me.”

I gaped at him.

“
What
?”

Justin shook his head. “He won’t talk to me, you know that. All I need is some concrete info on where they were, where they were going and I can move forward.
We
can move forward.”

“You woke me,” I said slowly. “You came here and woke me up all so I could go and talk to Chang?”

“Well, no. I woke you up because we need you on the job.” He gave me a charming smile and added, “Come on, Kit. He’ll talk to you. You know he will.”

“No.” Hands on my hips, I glared at him. “I
don’t
know that.”

He cocked a brow.

I shoved my hands threw my hair.

He was wrong. Mostly. I didn’t know that Chang would talk to me. I think he would if he
could
.

Justin, though, was shit out of luck. Chang would toy with him the same way he’d toy with any other outsider.

Chang had a last name but nobody used it.

Although, to be honest, not that many people used his name at all. Chang was one of those men who got
yes, sir’ed
and
no, sir’ed
unto death. Half the people who talked to him met his eyes for all of five seconds before looking deferentially down at the floor, hands folded meekly in front, or tucked away behind in a military fashion.

He was a shapeshifter, but I’d yet to figure out what.

That was one thing that drove me insane.

I could usually peg a shifter’s animal within minutes—sometimes within seconds—but Chang had me stumped. He was some sort of cat because he was one of Damon’s lieutenants, but I had absolutely no idea
what
kind and it both annoyed and intrigued me.

I was pretty sure he knew this—and I was equally sure it amused him.

At any given time, Chang could be found at the rec center. When I pulled up in front of the place, one of his men was already moving to meet me. I didn’t bother asking if Chang was around. Of course he was.

I don’t think he slept here, but any time I’d come looking for him, he was here. It wasn’t really a picture that fit, this elegant man presiding over the rough and rowdy lot of shapeshifter children, but over time, I’d come to realize why.

Chang was the self-appointed guardian of the reckless shapeshifter youth in the city. The rec center was a place where both the wolves and the cats hung out, although there were more cats than wolves. The cat clan outnumbered the wolves almost two to one here, but the relationship between the two factions was guardedly friendly, more so in the past year and a half since the previous cat Alpha had died.

Most shifter parents kept their youngest close to home—close and protected—but as they got older, the youth became…restless. It wasn’t just the hormones that any teenager would face—they had
those
hormones, plus the hormonal surges that would eventually precipitate the change that led to their first shift between their human forms and their animal one.

The aggression would come spilling out, but it rarely came coupled with common sense.

The club was a safe place for them to let all of that aggression out, without getting into trouble.

It was also a place where they would be protected.

I’d never seen less than fifteen dominant shifters on guard here. That was practically a platoon in human terms.

One of those guards had escorted me to Chang’s office—I’d been surprised when I’d seen her. I’d been here too often and in all my visits, I’d never seen a wolf standing guard at the gate. It was unusual enough to have me questioning Chang about it—or I would as soon as he got off the phone.

His conversation was inaudible, which told me he was speaking to a shifter.

He had yet to give anything other than a polite nod and smile when I came inside, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d
like
to think it meant he wasn’t talking to Damon and saying something like:
Oh, shit, she’s here and asking questions, what do I do?
Actually, I was almost positive Chang wouldn’t ask anything like that, but something more…urbane?
Kit is here. If she starts asking questions we don’t want to answer, do I stonewall her or just wait for you to arrive?

Another three minutes passed before he wrapped up the conversation, but I didn’t let it get to me. He was the second in command of one monster group of shapeshifters. Clan business would always come before anything else. He tugged the earpiece out and gave it a distasteful look before putting it away and rising from the desk. I rose to meet him as he came to stand in front of me.

“Hello, Kit.”

“Chang.” I cocked my head. “Sorry to crash in like this…sounded like serious stuff. Am I interrupting?”

Chang had an innate courtesy. He’d brush it off.
Of course not. How are you, would you like some tea
—

To my surprise, the only response he made initially was to sigh.

It was a soft, heavy sigh, one that carried a world of weariness. “I had to call a family up north with grim news. An awful sort of call to make.”

“I…” I stopped for a moment. “I’m sorry. Are there…problems?”

An odd question to ask, maybe, but the look on Chang’s face wasn’t one that spoke of somebody who’d lived to see a ripe old age and then died peacefully in his sleep.

From the corner of his eye, he watched me. There was a strange expression to his features, as though he wanted to say something, but then he sighed and said, “No. Sit. I’ll fix tea. You’ll tell me why you’re here.”

There was no point in arguing.

Chang had fallen back on his role of courtesy.

There was no getting out of it now—and no chance of tugging out any details about that phone call, either.

I waited until I had my tea in hand—tea was a personal addiction of mine, almost as bad as the soaps and lotions and other girly things I bought obsessively. Breathing in the sweet and spicy scent, I sighed. I doctored it with sugar and cream. I liked my tea, with just a little more sugar than most people. Or a
lot
more sugar.

“How you can drink it that way confounds me,” Chang said. “I keep trying to break you of that habit, but it doesn’t work.”

“To each their own.” I shrugged and took my first sip. Perfect.

Chang had a look of amusement and revulsion on his face.

“When you spend a good ten years of your life scrapping just to get enough water and food to fill the hole in your belly, you develop odd cravings.” I shrugged it off.

Chang’s eyes fell away.

I scowled inwardly, wished I hadn’t said anything. I’d dealt with more abuse in my life than most people had ever heard of—I’d come to grips with what my family had done and generally dealt with it, in my own unique sort of way.

Sometimes, I was even able to not be ashamed of it. But it made other people uncomfortable. Honestly, that’s just plain stupid to me—it happened to
me
—if I can deal with it, then why can’t they?

But then I had to deal with people looking away, or lapsing into silence…or just…fading away.

“Sorry,” I said, my voice tense.

“Why?” Chang said quietly.

I stared at him, opened my mouth—then snapped it shut. “Fuck it. Never mind.”

But he was too insightful, by far. Unlike many shifters I knew, he didn’t just go by what his senses told him. He
looked
at people. Saw beneath the surface. Sometimes, he saw so deep, it pissed me off.

“I’m not aggravated with you for speaking of your childhood,” he said softly. “In a way, it…humbles me. I know you don’t always speak freely of your past, Kit.”

He rose.

The languid way he moved couldn’t be called pacing, not by any means.

But Chang rarely made wasted moves and the way he moved from the window at the back of his office to his wall of weapons then to his desk to straighten the non-existent clutter there before repeating the circuit was nothing
but
wasted movement. And it was done with all the elegance, grace and speed he did everything else with. “At the same time, the thought that any soul could treat a child as I know you were treated makes me…”

He looked up.

For the first time in all the time I’d known him, I saw a faint glow roll across his eyes.

The flash was gone so fast, I couldn’t even place it—just a glow of color too light to belong in that dark gaze, and then it was gone. “It angers me. Children should be treasured.”

“That’s how the world works sometimes.”

His eyes held mine. “And sometimes, the world sucks.”

“I’ve found myself thinking that a lot lately.”

“Yet another reason I like you, Kit. You are a wise woman.”

At that, I snorted. “I’m a lot of things—wise isn’t one of them.”

He chuckled and the tension in the air passed. He returned to his seat and faced me. “Let’s discuss why you’re here. Not that I’m not delighted to see you, of course.”

He’d never say it, but I suspected he had things to do, secrets to pass on and people who needed to kill or be killed.