Mercury's War (19 page)

    Most would have suspected Jonas of heading a revolt against Callan and the Ruling Cabinet, but Mercury couldn’t see it happening. Jonas was a sneaky, manipulative son of a bitch, but Sanctuary and the Breed community were his primary concerns. And Mercury had spent enough time as the man’s personal bodyguard to know Jonas didn’t have revolt in mind. Driving everyone insane with his games, yeah, Mercury could see that one coming where Jonas was concerned. But a strike against the security of the community? That wasn’t going to come from Jonas.

    Jonas had no desire to rule. He liked playing puppet master, and he loved poking his nose in where it wasn’t involved, but he didn’t have the temperament to play the games it took to weave such a play for power.

    Jonas would challenge outright. He would never allow a breakdown in authority. And that was what was happening. Someone had waited, watched, and while Callan was occupied with staying alive and then healing from his wounds, they were moving in to disable the power structure the Ruling Cabinet had in place.

    He could sense it. He could feel it, but with his rank stripped now, he had no idea how to identify who or what.

    As he entered the thick forest growth, Lawe and Rule fell in place beside him. They turned to face the cabin, all three silent for long moments.

    “She’s not my mate.” He answered the question he had seen in their eyes.

    Lawe grunted at that.

    “Whatever,” Rule snorted. “I don’t know about this mating bullshit, Mercury. Seems to me there aren’t any rules to it. You act mated.”

    And there had been a few odd moments that he had felt a bond, an unbreakable
something
that he couldn’t put his finger on.

    “Jonas contacted me ten minutes ago,” Lawe murmured. “He’s pulling Shiloh back to Sanctuary before he arrives here. It seems there’s a problem at home base.”

    “What kind of problem?” Mercury swung his gaze to his friend, watching as Lawe leaned against a tree, his expression implacable, his eyes burning with a hard, savage light.

    “He’s going to explain things when he gets here, but notice had gone out that Callan has reinstated your rank. He’ll be bringing your uniform and weapon when he arrives.”

    Mercury shook his head. He didn’t want the rank, he realized. Jonas would have found a way to force Callan to reinstate it. It meant nothing to him that way.

    “There’s something going on,” he said quietly. “There are too many anomalies.”

    “Meaning?” Rule gripped his weapon, his gaze sharper now.

    Mercury shook his head. “I can see the threads of it, sense them, but I can’t put my finger on where they’re going. Ely has targeted me, though, and she’s never done that with another Breed. She needs me out of the way. Or someone does.” It just didn’t work for him that Ely would be in on any kind of deception, but he knew it was possible. It was even probable.

    “Ely?” Lawe straightened and started back at him in disbelief before he shook his head and suspicion began to fill his eyes as well.

    “We need to be careful.” Mercury stared back at the cabin, and thought of the woman inside. “Ria’s not here just to decide whether or not to stop Vanderale funding. The files she’s going through have nothing to do with funding, and everything to do with outgoing transmissions. Ely’s managed to separate me from Sanctuary, but not as far as she could have without Jonas standing in her way. When Jonas arrives, I want you at the meeting.”

    “And Ria?” Lawe asked. “Will she be in on it?”

    He turned back to Lawe. “She’ll be there, or there will be no meeting.”

    She wasn’t his mate. But he didn’t have to mate her to know she belonged to him.

    Ely stared at the test results as she sipped at a bottle of water and felt the anger burning in her mind. She was sitting here, putting together the proof for what she was trying to convince the Ruling Cabinet of, and a part of her already knew they weren’t going to listen to her.

    Mercury was a strong enforcer, and not just in physical strength. His animal qualities were more a part of him than anyone suspected. The Council drugs may have recessed the more violent qualities of his animal, and the senses he had once possessed, but he was still intelligent, and cunning. That animalistic intelligence was by far his most dangerous trait, because it was stronger than other Breeds’ she had run across since the rescues.

    If it hadn’t been for the feral fever, he would have been trained to lead and to command. He could have possibly been a stronger alpha than even Callan. As hard it was to believe that there could be a stronger alpha.

    She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought the rage burning behind her eyelids, fought the screaming warning her own animal was sending through her head. She had never felt like this, and she knew the pressure was beginning to get to her.

    Reaching around, she rubbed at the back of her neck, fighting the headache that seemed to spread there.

    Shaking her head, she opened a bottle of over-the-counter pain medication and washed two down with the water before turning back to her computer.

    She put a tight hold on the anger, forced it back and forced her mind to work on the analysis of the fluids she had taken from Mercury.

    There was something in the semen that she knew was off, something odd. The saliva as well. His blood was corroded with the feral adrenaline, and that terrified her. The images of the videos taken in the labs where he had killed so horrifically continued to run through her mind.

    His hands, the nails thick and curved like claws, had punched right through a man’s chest. The bloody mess of the man’s heart had still been in Mercury’s clenched fist when he drew back. That heart had been ground into the trainer’s face before Mercury ripped his head from his shoulders.

    That shouldn’t have been possible. To just rip flesh and muscle, cartilage and spine away in such a brief span of time and toss the head away.

    She shuddered, imagining Callan or, God forbid, Jonas taken apart in such a way.

    Jonas was her nemesis, but there had always been a sense of fondness between the two of them, until now. He had respected her opinion even if he didn’t always want to believe what she had to say. He pushed her to find other answers, and because of that she had run these tests until her head was about to explode.

    “You bastard!” The snarl surprised her as she jumped from her stool and began to pace the room. “Damn you, Jonas, I can’t find any other answer.”

    And why should she care what she found for him? This was the man who had had his own sister captured. The man who had blackmailed that sister, laid her head on the chopping block of Breed Law, and he would have gone through with it. He would have killed Harmony if she hadn’t done as he ordered.

    Just as he killed others.

    He thought she didn’t know the things he had done. The trips the Breed heli-jet made to an active volcano, one that bubbled and churned and waited with greedy anticipation for the sacrifices he fed to it.

    The bodies he had dropped into it. Council scientists who had been wiped away within the boiling mass of molten stone. He and his pilot, the wild-eyed Jackal.

    Jackal. Damn him. He was protecting Mercury as well, and he was furious with her. And he was just as much a killer as Jonas was himself. Everyone knew it. Even Kane, head of Sanctuary’s security, knew it. Jackal was a murderer. He should have been born a Breed rather than a human.

    She dug her fingers into her neck, trying to rub away the pain there. There had to be a way to convince the Ruling Cabinet that Mercury had to be confined and forced to undergo the testing she needed. It would be easy to duplicate the drug the Council had used to control him. He had lived well then. He would live well again, and there would be no risk of death. No risk of losing those she cared about.

    She breathed in deeply, forcing the calm she needed, and moved back to the computer and testing equipment. She was the scientist. The Ruling Cabinet respected her opinion, and she knew Callan had called the cabinet together for a meeting. A very secretive meeting. She would make certain she was prepared. And she would make certain she saved Mercury. As with the others, she cared for him. He was her friend and losing him would leave a vacant hole inside her. She didn’t want to see him killed. The feral displacement wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of those bastards who created them. And she would find a way to save him. No matter the friends she lost in the process.

    Mercury put away the groceries as Lawe unpacked them, the other Breed’s acute sense of smell going over each item.

    Mercury liked the grocer. The man was a hell of a hunter and always seemed willing to embrace the Breed cause. But Mercury had seen betrayal come from all sides. He was cautious, he told himself.

    When they finished, Lawe left again, locking the door behind him, and Mercury stared at Ria’s closed door. She hadn’t come out, and Lawe had informed him with a hint of amusement that the scent of her anger was filling the house.

    Her anger. And he knew where that anger came from. That damned purr she had convinced herself she heard. He shook his head and moved to the door, opening it slowly and stepping into the bedroom.

    “I thought I’d fix dinner,” he told her, forcing himself to stand in the doorway as he stared at her.

    She was sitting in the middle of the bed, her laptop opened in front of her, a silky robe covering her, the soft, shimmery fabric slipping over one shoulder.

    “Pizza is fine.” There was no accent in her voice, but he could tell she was controlling it ruthlessly. Her expression was smooth, her eyes the color of bitter chocolate as she glanced at him.

    “I’m going to cook,” he said. “You need something more nourishing than pizza.”

    “There’s nothing more nourishing than pizza,” she informed him. “Besides, after drinking the coffee you make, I’m flat terrified of any food you fix.”

    He inhaled slowly and stepped forward, closing the door behind him. “I can cook. I told you I couldn’t make coffee.”

    “If you can’t make coffee, then there’s no hope for even the slightest talent at something as simple as boiling water.” She turned her gaze back to the computer, dismissing him. “Call out for something. That’s what I do.”

    He grimaced before tightening his lips and reining in the natural impulse to do something about the subtle challenge she was throwing out to him.

    He reminded himself that Jonas would be here soon. He would have enough of a battle with her then. And when Vanderale sent that heli-jet for her, then he was going to have the devil’s own battle keeping her here. He couldn’t leave yet. But he had a feeling the battle she would learn they faced might appeal to her more than leaving would.

    “Ria, if you don’t dress and come into the kitchen with me while I cook, then we may end up doing something on this bed that’s only going to make you angrier.”

    Because he was about two seconds from ripping that robe off her body and enjoying some of the more wicked acts he’d considered doing with her.

    “Something could make me angrier?” she asked him then.

    “I’d have to know what made you angry to begin with,” he stated. “And since you don’t seem willing to discuss it…”

    “Who said I wasn’t willing to discuss it?” With that, she closed the laptop and stood from the bed, facing him.

    She crossed her arms over her breasts and that robe barely covered her thighs. He was going to tear it off with his teeth.

    “You were the one that stomped out of the living room,” he pointed out.

    “And you just let me walk out, didn’t you, Mercury?” Her voice was still calm and even, but he could see the shadows of anger and pain in her eyes. “It didn’t matter to you then and it doesn’t matter to you now.”

    “What doesn’t matter?” he growled. “The fact that I’ll never have a mate of my own? Does that make me a robot, Ria? Incapable of caring? The woman that could have been my mate is dead,” he snarled. “Does that change anything between us?”

    He watched her inhale roughly, saw the betraying tremble of her lips as he crossed the room to her.

    “Ria, I’m not dead inside.” He gripped her shoulders and forced her to stare up at him. “What you do to me, no other woman has ever done, even the woman that could have been my mate. She was a child. She was killed. She doesn’t exist any longer. But we do.”

    Her arms uncrossed slowly as her expression clenched, then the confusion and uncertainty he sometimes felt himself crossed it.

    “I don’t know what to do about you,” she whispered then. “I don’t form attachments, Mercury, and you seem determined to make me do that here. When it’s over, where does that leave me? Alone again?”

    “Do you want promises from me?” he asked her, wishing he had so much more than that to give her. “If that heli-jet arrives for you, you’re going to have to fight me to get on it. When it’s time for bed, I won’t be sleeping away from you, you’ll be sleeping in my arms. And when tomorrow comes, and the tomorrow after that, as long as Ely hasn’t had me confined in a damned padded cell and pumped up on drugs, I’ll be curled around you when you wake up. What more can I give you at this point?”

    What more could he give himself?

    Finally, she shook her head. “I knew better than to come here,” she whispered. “I knew you were going to completely mess with my head and my life, Mercury. I knew I should have stayed where I was.”

    “But you came.” He lowered his head, caught her lower lip with his teeth and stroked over it with his tongue. Her eyes darkened then; the anger and bitterness left them and heat began to flicker in them.

    “Come for me again.” He released her lip, only to stroke both lips with his tongue, tasting her, loving her warmth. “One more time, Ria, before both our lives go to hell.”

    He took the kiss he needed then. His lips moved over hers, relished the feel of her, the heat of her, and his tongue pierced the tender seam, sinking into her mouth.