Hunted Warrior (14 page)

“I haven't done anything for the last ten years but mitigate disputes, split my time between Greece and Tibet, and target the cartels with every resource at my disposal. Adventure has not been a high priority.”

“Perhaps that's why the Dragon has chosen us. Neither of us knows the world.”

“Are you comparing my responsibilities to your years in Dr. Aster's labs?”

Her slight teasing fled from her expression. That speck of levity was replaced by revulsion so strong that had Mal been a telepath, he would've recoiled and done his best to turn his mind away from hers.

“Nothing compares to the doctor's labs.”

They spent the rest of the flight in silence. No chance to open a window this time, as he had in the hostel. Perhaps he should apologize again, but her vacillation between accessible and impossibly cut off raised his hackles. And he thought
he
was the politician. Now he found himself on the receiving end of the most studied silent treatment he'd ever known.

He didn't want to acknowledge the haunted, stricken pain evident on her face when he'd spoken of Aster's laboratory. He'd seen it. He'd helped blow it to the ground. The horrors contained within those cinder-block walls in the Canadian Yukon were unspeakable. Dragon Kings had been held against their wills in cells akin to slab cabinets at a morgue. Pulled free of their narrow, coffinlike prisons, they'd blinked against the fluorescent light and hadn't known what to do with freedom.

Avyi had lived there as the Pet for . . . how long? He didn't even know. As with most Dragon King women, she was timeless. Her smooth features could've meant she was twenty or eighty. She was in the prime of their people's youth. Had she been in the keeping of the doctor for decades and decades, how was she even functioning? So long spent in the captivity of another person must be crippling.

His skin went cold. He sat up straighter in his seat and stared out to where the mainland of Greece was just coming into view. Although Mal hated giving credence to the idea, he needed to. She could still be in the Asters' service.

*  *  *

Avyi was not used to being waited on.

When she'd accepted a two-piece set of luggage from a woman on the helipad in Athens, she'd done so wearing what must've been a dumbfounded expression. That rankled compared to how easily Malnefoley slipped into his natural skin—that of the head of his clan, and the head of the Dragon Kings. She was reminded of his high-handed ways when he'd whisked her away from the ruined labs. So certain. Arrogantly certain. That same tone had followed her into the holding cells where the questions never ended regarding Aster's next moves, and the details of his crossbreeding program.

What she had offered—the truth about her role in conception—was disregarded as lies. She could lie. She'd been taught by a family adept at them, and she'd lived in the possession of a doctor who lied with every breath. That didn't mean she was lying about being Aster's secret link between the life and death of unborn Dragon Kings.

There was no point to lying now. She had too much to do before the Grievance. She couldn't pinpoint its exact dates until she took a few steps in an unknown direction. Then the future would flow through a vision of ideas into the facts of reality.

That left a smile on her face. Mal thought he knew so much. He'd see.

She always experienced a special moment when what she predicted came true. It was like a dream materializing before her eyes. But that didn't mean it was always happy. On countless occasions, she'd seen the imminent death of a baby or the certainty that a father wouldn't survive to see his child born. To know her gift was still active, true, and strong was reassuring—that she wasn't crazy, and that she wasn't deluding herself when she saw positive outcomes—but heartbreak always hit her twice: once when she saw it as a vision, and again when she saw it take real, immutable shape.

She glanced at Mal as they navigated the corridors below deck on a six-hundred-person ferry called the
Forza
, which would take them from Patra to Venice. From Greece to Italy. At least that hadn't been a trick. He hadn't told his men to shackle her and drag her up the mountains to the Tigony fortress. Her trust was paying off. She wouldn't have been detained long by the vaunted Giva's men, but she didn't have the luxury of time now. It was collapsing in on her.

Mal stopped at a door at the end of a cruise vessel's corridor. “This is it.”

“It? Singular?”

“I said you'd have your own bed.” After setting the cases on the floor, he retrieved one key. “That didn't mean they'd be in two rooms.”

“You're trying very hard to make my prediction come true.”

The key slipped across the face of the lock. He glared at her again. “This isn't about sex,” he said. “This is about being able to get us on the same ship leaving today. As it is, we won't be in Florence until day after tomorrow. I should've thought to have my people make you up a fake passport.”

“You were too busy detaining me.”

“Detaining. You meant something else by that.”

“Interrogating? Getting nowhere with pointless questions?” She dropped her bags and snatched the key from his fingers. “Pick one.”

Avyi opened the door and left her bags in the corridor. If she was going to be waited on hand and foot by a Tigony, she might as well start at the top. She hadn't let go of her anger. He didn't take her seriously, and she dearly wished her gift would align in a way that would prove she wasn't a fraud.

She glanced behind her as Mal rolled her suitcases into the narrow room. She couldn't help but smile.

“Not bad,” he said to himself. “For last-minute tickets.”

He wasn't wrong. The berth was wide enough for a center aisle with a single bed on either side. A miniature closet took up the space between the foot of one bed and the corridor wall, while the mirroring space was a very small bathroom. They wouldn't have to share with other people, but they would have to share with each other.

It's just overnight.

She sat heavily on the left of the two single beds. “At least I don't snore.”

Mal chuckled. “How would you know?”

“I was rewarded when I stopped.”

With the look of a man weighted by the whole of the ship, he locked the door and let the cases stay where they fell. He sat on the opposite bed and rested his elbows on his thighs. The glance he angled up from beneath his brows was poised between wanting to ask a question . . . and not wanting to hear the answer. That was the story of Avyi's gift.

“Rewarded?” he asked at last.

“By the doctor. He used hypnosis and drugs. Eventually surgery.” She self-consciously rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her random comment had led to revealing just how subjugated she'd been. That wasn't a pattern she wished to continue with. “When I healed, I didn't snore anymore. He let me sleep on a mattress for the first time.”

“He could hear you snoring in the first place?”

Avyi's hands had grown restless, touching the back of her neck. She'd worn a collar once, long ago, but not because she'd fought in the Cages. The doctor had liked how it looked. Mal's scrutiny added to her unease. She didn't like being unable to control physical reactions, but this topic was hitting well below conscious thought. She could smell the old-fashioned shaving soap Dr. Aster whipped to a lather in a cup. She remembered kneeling at his feet, holding on to his leg and smiling at his associates and enemies alike. She even recalled the soft crease he kept in his trousers.

The good pet.

“I slept in his room. After a time. The first few years I was kept in a lab cell. He had to figure out how to control me.”

“Brainwashing.”

“Initially, yes.”

“But you slept without a mattress.”

“On the floor,” she said, grabbing the edges of the mattress to reassure herself of the present.
Stay in the present.
The past was a tangle of evil, and the future was unreliable. “Until the surgery cured my snoring. But he never slept without me in my cage at the foot of his bed.”

“
Cage?
” His voice was shockingly loud in that small space. Avyi flinched, then noticed the flicker of lights and how they matched the electricity in Mal's deep blue eyes and the sparks tingling from his fingertips. “He kept you in a cage?”

“Maybe you're more trusting than is wise. You volunteered to sleep in here with me.” She narrowed her eyes and pinned him with as much ferocity as the memories of Dr. Aster always left her feeling. “Good luck closing your eyes tonight, Giva.”

He stood and paced the three steps to the door, then back. Again. He shoved his hands through the long, straight strands of blond hair that fell across his brow. “Why did you remain with me after the labs were destroyed, when he fled?”

“I didn't want to stay anymore.” She lay back on the mattress and pulled up a blanket. “And I haven't been brainwashed for a long time.”

“How do you know?”

“I was in a lab room, where a Dragon King woman was being inseminated. I was ordered to talk to her and keep her calm. I didn't say much. Didn't have to. That's what pets are for. Be seen, be touched, be talked to. But it didn't matter. She was hopeful in a way I couldn't understand.” She twisted the edge of the blanket around her fingers. “I hadn't known much about hope.”

“Did you . . . ?” He stopped and braced his weight against the narrow width between doors. “Did you see your own future?”

“I know that I will kill Dr. Aster or he will kill me. Other than knowing about you and me, I've never seen another piece of my own future.”

“I don't know what to do with that.”

“Be glad you're the one I'll sleep with rather than kill?”

Mal smiled ruefully and let his head drop, face to the floor. She wanted to touch the place at his nape where the blond hair looked its softest, like corn silk beneath a heavier, thicker layer. “I'll take that, yes. So this woman . . . ?”

“She wasn't just going to conceive a baby. She was going to bear one. I held her hand and saw a moment in the unborn child's future when his father would hold him and hide his tears.” Avyi shivered and curled into herself on the narrow bed. “Dr. Aster couldn't know what I'd seen. He couldn't know what I
knew
. No random hope. It had been a prediction of
joy
. The doctor only wanted the facts. Other predictions followed. The good and the bad. Children who would be successful. Children who would die by accident. Children who would grow up orphans.”

She remained silent for a long time, as did Mal. He took off his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves. That seemed more intimate than if he'd stood before her nude. Rolling up his sleeves was like a prelude to undressing. There was potential and anticipation. He sank onto his mattress and leaned his elbows against his thighs once more.

“You should at least take off your boots,” he said. “I'll be good.”

“I know you will be.”

He crooked a smile. “But these children. How did seeing their future break the spell of Dr. Aster's hold over you?”

“Can't you guess? If they had a future, good or bad, then I might, too. I decided I wasn't going to spend it with him.”

CHAPTER

M
al lay awake for several hours, listening to Avyi sleep. She didn't snore. Remembering their conversation, however, added a layer of anger and sympathy to what would've been a simple fact of physiology. That Dr. Aster had caged her, performed surgery on her, brainwashed her—likely through the use of torture—left Mal antsy and, more honestly,
furious
. The facts of Avyi's existence made the comfort of his life seem ridiculous, even wasteful.

He was the Giva, yet at heart, he didn't feel he was the self-sacrificing leader the Dragon Kings needed in this time of crisis. He talked the part, he oversaw what needed to be done to keep the human cartels in check, but had he truly put his back into the task? Had he done enough?