“Some rather nasty speculation about a powerful immortal in One’s inner circle. I believe you met the man once. Leander certainly knew him. Apparently, he had some questionable friends. Disreputable sort.” Phillipe shook his head with exaggerated sorrow. “Seems like this gentleman disappeared a month ago.”
“How unfortunate. I hope someone finds him.”
“Considering who his enemies are, I suspect that to be very unlikely. Unless his enemies want him found to make a point. Apparently, he had a remote villa in the Piedmont, secured like a fortress, with a full security detail made up of warriors. What do you think about that?”
“That even fortresses can fall, if the Middle Ages taught us anything.” Christan shrugged. “There’s still a lot of deep snow in parts of the Piedmont. If he lost himself up there, they might not find him until spring.”
Phillipe looked as if he wished to smile but didn’t. “I heard another rumor, that you were seen in Florence a month ago.”
Christan remained impassive. “I had some business to take care of.”
“Leander took personal time the same week. You didn’t happen to run in to him while you were there, did you?”
“Didn’t see him. Maybe he took his girl to the beach.”
“Interesting weather for it if he did.” Phillipe shifted his stance. “Three just wanted you to know.”
“About the rumors out of Florence?”
“Yes, and that she fully approves.”
Christan looked at the distant mountains. “Tell her I’m fine.”
Phillipe’s expression sobered.
“I’ve never stood beside you in battle, Christan. We never officially met until you came out of the Void. But I watched you walk into hell and back, in more than one war. I’ve seen who you are. You’re not that man in the jungle. You’re not the man that one word compelled you to be, and you know Three would come in person to tell you that if she didn’t think her energy would trigger the vengeance again. Even now, she’s trying to find a way to reverse the one word she used.”
“That’s the problem with one words, Phillipe. They don’t always do what you expect them to do.”
“I remember the one you gave to Lexi.” Phillipe laughed. “I did enjoy hearing about you writhing on the floor.”
Christan smiled at the memory, how he had been deep in her mind and she’d thrust back with a power so intimate it hadn’t just been the one word that put him down. It was an ongoing joke with those who knew him, but he found he didn’t mind it at all.
They watched together, as Lexi followed the others up the cabin steps. Her hair caught the rays of the sun like a shaft of sunlight in winter. It was a brief, crystalline moment in the cold air. Then she disappeared, walking through the doorway that was within a direct line of sight from where Christan stood.
Phillipe turned to look at him. “She’s good for you.”
“She is.”
“Take care of her.”
“I will.”
“And tell her, Christan.”
“Soon,” he said as he started down the snowy slope. “But right now, I need to learn how to play.”
Three weeks later, Christan was stretched out on the butter-soft couch with his head in Lexi’s lap. She was stroking his hair, complaining that it had grown too long and offering to cut it for him in the morning. Christan was trying to figure out how to decline without offending her, since the last time she’d attempted to cut his hair the results had been unfortunate.
Lexi shifted against him now, and Christan pulled her fingers from his hair to his lips, kissed her palm. The night was cold, while a fire glowed in the fireplace. They were watching the news on the big screen television mounted to the wall, and Christan sat up when the female news reader for CNN International offered the teaser for an unexplained murder in the Piedmont.
The story, itself, was carried near the end of the broadcast, since it was more a curiosity than it was newsworthy. The body of a reclusive financier had been found in a remote home—more fortress than chalet—in a mountainous area in Northern Italy near the medieval town of Vogogna. The actual time of death was difficult to determine do to the frigid temperatures in a building half buried in snow. The medical examiner flown in from Milan suspected some form of catastrophic brain injury, although an autopsy had not been allowed; the financier had an equally reclusive family.
Those with unique knowledge understood the message. It took a frightening amount of power to cause total organ failure in an immortal, to sever the brain stem and obliterate all electrical function in a mind that existed in a slightly elevated, telepathic plane. The protective walls in the mind would shimmer beneath the onslaught, finally giving way, sputtering out like a child’s sparkler on that American holiday called the 4th of July before going dark. The body would crush inward, the way a human body was destroyed by a concussive attack. There would be no healing, no resumption of life. No. Nothing. Only a warning.
However, immortals protected their privacy, so that information was never revealed, and as Christan rose up from the couch and lifted Lexi into his arms, he wondered if his mess, this time, had been clean and neat enough for One.
Then Lexi wiggled out of her shirt and he decided he didn’t care.
But others did. They cared about an enforcer who was once a myth, who disappeared for four hundred years and returned, and now was something more.
An enforcer who possessed the power to destroy a three-story building in Zurich and eliminate an immortal financier in the mountains of the Piedmont.
It was a power he should not have had.
And the Calata was not pleased.