Or perhaps yesterday had changed him.
Christan was honest enough to face his many faults. He was not virtuous—there’d been too much blood for virtue. But he thought of himself as just, and what he’d done bore little resemblance to justice. Once, he’d believed that to understand a man, it was necessary to strip away the veneer, get to the core of who he was, where there was neither good or evil, but truth… and what had been his truth yesterday? That he could touch her, feel her body as she struggled to get away and know an anger so strong he could hurt her and not think about it? No, that wasn’t why he’d watched the pain glitter like amber stones in her eyes and hadn’t cared.
Something had happened in those rocks. When Christan had redirected the drone. When he’d watched.
She was meeting with his oldest enemy and all he remembered was that one crystalline moment four centuries ago. Nothing more. Nothing less. Only the grace of her body when she stood in the middle of a moon-shot road that night and betrayed him. The same grace he saw yesterday when she stood in the rocks and that enemy touched her face, dragged his thumb against her cheek as if wiping away tears.
Christan’s one dominant, crushing thought was that, this time, he would decide how she freed herself from him. Not Kace. That was why he’d pushed that magic into her mind without remorse.
Christan readjusted his position in the sand. The sun warmed his flesh. While his mind remained strong, the sensory deprivation within the Void still lingered in his bones, aggravated him to where he needed to feel, to touch, to regain a sense of his physical body. He’d shifted several times, and that helped quell the restlessness. Before he gave into the need to shift again, he rose to his feet. His eyes narrowed as he studied the homestead below, searching for any movement.
“Enforcer.” The mental probing was firm. He recognized the telepathic energy, the ephemeral beauty in pure vibration. He remembered how she always wore opalescent fabrics, shimmering when she moved, as if white would hide the blood on her hands. Only the ignorant ignored her, and his response was to the point.
“Three.” A deliberate pause. “Do you have someone you need me to kill?”
“I sense your hostility. There’s no need.”
“Then why the summons?”
You’re still bound. I’m reminding you of your loyalty. You might be angry”—his mental snort— “but it was necessary to call you back. Are you at full strength?”
“Yes.” Not a complete lie; he needed a few more days. “Are you still waging war?”
“I cannot control what Six does.”
“But blood is blood and you would answer him.”
“A monster lives in all of us, you know that, and yes, I will answer him.” A pause. He could sense her frown. “You’re colder than when you went away.”
“How do you know this?”
“I made you. A mother knows her children.”
“You are hardly a mother.”
“And you are not a son.” The tone was tight. “Have you found your girl, Enforcer?”
“Why ask when you know?”
“Why fight me when I do?”
A deadly silence. He was not in the mood to be polite, and Three probed his mind with more strength, a sharp reminder of who she was. It was part of their unspoken agreement. In public they maintained the hierarchy, in private they were equals up to a point. Three was ancient enough to hold immense power. But she had also created him, made him nearly equal to her in strength. He would allow her to control him up to a line they’d drawn in the sand and no farther.
It seemed she was willing to cross that line.
“It was not an easy choice to bring you back. I wanted to respect your feelings on the matter, but Phillipe insisted.”
“Your new advisor?”
“He’s convinced the magic is out of control. If the girls keep dying the warriors will react and I need you here.”
“Hire someone else for your blood work.”
“It’s not just blood work I want from you, Christan. It’s the threat and the reminder of the past. I thought you understood the full impact you have on immortal society.”
“You wish me to frighten little children out of my sense of duty?” Christan shifted his stance, scanning the horizon. “Even for you, Three, the argument is weak.”
“You used to respect duty.”
“And now I don’t.”
“Honor, then. Do you still possess that trait?”
Silence.
“You must get past what Gemma did.”
“Getting past it would change nothing.”
“You need her.”
“Why?” There was no fucking way he needed her.
“You spent too much time in the Void. I want you more human. She softens you, she always has.”
“I would not be softened.”
“So arrogant. I need this from you, Enforcer.”
“What else do you need, Three?”
“I need her. I need the two of you. Together.”
The single word Christan used was said with enough force to send the birds from the trees.
Lexi ran another search and waited while the choices filled the computer screen. After an hour of scanning web sites and public registries, news stories and business sites, she found nothing. Marge had been right. Arsen did not exist in the electronic world. He was hidden behind a shroud, with no cyber threads she could unravel, not even with the backdoor tactics one of her clients taught her how to use. Oh, there’d been two leads she discovered, followed them as they pinged her around from one IP address to the next. She’d been hopeful, until she realized Arsen’s tech people were playing with her. Lexi should have expected the misdirection since they’d hidden their activities so completely. They would want her to know what they could do.
She closed out her browser, considered using the computer program guaranteed to provide cyber-related privacy, and then thought, what the hell, they’d probably compromised that one, too.
An empty search bar appeared. Lexi started with the myth and a remembered name from the dream, guessed at the spelling. The computer responded with a ‘did you mean ‘Thessalonian King’ message. Links led her to the story of Kyrene. Common knowledge and not the proof she needed.
She searched again, found links to Cyrene. Libya. An ancient city, now an archaeological site decimated by war. Lexi expected the images to be familiar and they were, in a generic way; her grandmother had watched every history channel program available, thought it was like looking into the souls of those who lived in the past. It still wasn’t proof.
“How’s the search going?” Marge asked, setting a white mug on the table. The fragrance of fresh coffee reminded Lexi of Adirondack chairs on a misty deck. She looked back at the arid images on the computer screen.
“You were right about Arsen. I think his tech guys were having fun.”
“There’s only the one guy. Ethan. Nice. He lives in San Francisco.”
“Figures.”
Marge settled into a chair, scooted closer to Lexi’s laptop. “What are you researching now?”
“Ruins in Libya.” Lexi clicked on the image link and scrolled through the photographs. An archaeologist, dressed in a white shirt and brown shorts, was standing with one foot braced on a fallen column. Another image—marble floors with jagged cracks—reminded Lexi of a demolition site she’d once researched for a client. He wanted to raze the existing building and develop an exclusive high-rise complex. Lexi had advised him against the idea. “Find somewhere that doesn’t feel like murder,” she said when his disappointment overruled her evaluation. He did and had been so successful he’d come back to her for another project.
Marge was peering over Lexi’s shoulder, interested. Images of an arid landscape were splashed across the computer screen. Cyrene had a rich history, centuries of influence from many cultures. Lexi stopped scrolling when she came to the image of a stone lion.
Marge said, “The workmanship on that statue is exquisite.”
“The lions were revered,” Lexi agreed. “They were so lifelike that the people believed the gods had created them as protectors.”