“Elena,” he whispered.
“Hush,” she murmured, and from behind, a large hand touched her shoulder. A man, pale and dark, lean as a hard winter. Artur.
“Sleep,” said his friend, his Russian accent thick. “Go back to sleep. We are here now.”
“Rikki,” he breathed, his eyes falling shut.
“Safe,” Elena said, and he felt the heat of her healing hands course through his throbbing body, burning to the bone. “Rest, Amiri. You’re all safe.”
Safe. A myth,
he thought, but he fell away into sleep. Deep, dreamless. Aching for Rikki. Needing her with all his heart. Wishing so much for her presence that when he next opened his eyes it felt as though hardly any time had passed.
But he was in a bed with white silk sheets, and there was a woman beside him who was small and warm and smelled like vanilla and spice.
Rikki. Breathing. Alive.
Amiri touched her. He saw a new scar on her side, but the flesh had knitted. His own body was sore, but he reached around and touched a rough patch where he knew there had been holes. The cut in his chest was gone, too.
Elena. Elena had saved them with her magic hands. Ten minutes or twenty-four hours. His friends had arrived.
Amiri smiled to himself and kissed Rikki’s shoulder. She stirred, and opened her eyes. Stared at him for a moment, like he was a ghost…and then, ever so gently, with almost more tenderness than he could bear, she touched his cheek, the corner of his eye, and said, “Hey, there.”
“Mpenzi,”
he whispered. “Rikki.”
“Amiri,” she breathed, smiling. Tears leaked from her eyes. Tears dripped on her chin, but those were from him and he wiped them away with his thumb.
“You are my home and my heart,” he murmured. “Let us not ever frighten each other this way again, Rikki Kinn. No more. My soul could not stand it.”
A breathless teasing smile filled her face. “Scaredy cat. I thought you knew what we are.”
“Dangerous,” he replied, laughing softly. Covering her mouth in a long deep kiss that journeyed down her throat, to her lovely beautiful scars.
“I love you,” she breathed in his ear. “I love you so damn much.”
And that was the last thing he let her say for quite some time after.
All of which was quite confusing to Rikki. Healing gifts aside (and she did not give a rat’s ass if it made Amiri squeamish, but she was going to talk to that woman about running tests) there was no physical way Elena or anyone else could have arrived so quickly at the facility. San Francisco to the Zairean Congo, in less than three hours?
Like hell.
Rikki had tried asking. She’d received, for her trouble, words and names, things like “Dean” and “teleportation” and “Oh, God, he really screwed that one up.” Which made no sense, but then neither did men who transformed into animals, or fellows who could resurrect themselves from the dead with hardly a burp. Life was strange. Her daddy would have loved it.
“You think he’s
really
gone?” Rikki said, to no one in particular.
Rictor grunted. “He said only one man can kill him.”
“That would be me,” said one of the strangers from the agency, one more silent witness who had joined them in the basement. He was a tall and handsome man, dusky-skinned, with black hair and intense eyes. He called himself Blue. Rikki had no idea what his connection was to Broker, just that he had been more than happy to help shove the headless corpse into the cremator.
And he had also shorted out the detonator placed at the base of her skull. Done the same for A’sharia and Kamau Shah. Just with a thought. Rikki never felt a thing, not until they dug it out of her skin and placed it in her palm. Like a grain of rice—if rice exploded inside heads and killed people.
“So,” said Moochie. “Does this qualify as dead? I mean, he’s being incinerated. How the fuck is his body going to heal
that?”
Until we meet again, Doctor Kinn.
“Whatever,” Rikki said, battling a chill. “I give up. My life is going to be an endless array of sequels to bad horror films. I’ll pull back my shower curtain sometime next summer and Broker will be there, naked, with a knife in his hand.”
Amiri frowned. “That is not amusing.”
No. And neither was the idea that an organization was making biological weapons that could change the structure of someone’s DNA. Something Larry needed to know about—the military—the world.
But what then? Betrayal, exposure? The risk of opening Amiri and others like him to the unrelenting scrutiny of strangers? The idea terrified her, in the same way those damn bats and their veins full of Ebola had. Because she knew some would panic at the truth, just like she knew some would want to use those bats—that disease—as a weapon. And who was to say that any government, any military, would not feel the same about shape-shifters and psychics? Who was to say that Amiri and friends would not be locked up for life, or coerced into untenable positions, if the truth was known? This was not some television special with a man claiming to speak to the dead—even if he could. This was blood and guts and magic.
And how…how was she supposed to weigh the lives of potentially millions of victims over what her heart desired?
“Because we’ll take care of it,” Max said softly. He sat beside her, and his voice was for her ears only—though she knew Amiri heard him as well. It was slightly disconcerting that he had read her mind. “We will stop them, Doctor Kinn. It’s a dirty war, but it’s
our
war, and we won’t let the Consortium continue.”
“I don’t know you guys,” she said. “You’re asking me to abandon my responsibilities on a leap of faith.”
“Have you not already done that?” Amiri asked.
“More or less,” she said. “But this is something else entirely.”
“Fair enough,” Max said. “But give us a chance first. Help us, even. We’ll need someone with your training. There aren’t too many doctors and scientists in our organization.”
“I’m no psychic,” she said.
“We’re not prejudiced,” Max replied with a smile. “But let’s face it… you’re not entirely normal, either.”
Who is?
Rikki wanted to ask him. But he had a point. And the idea of helping hunt the Consortium—and perhaps studying that virus—made a hot bolt of anger-fueled excitement pass through her gut.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and glanced at Amiri, savoring his quiet smile that was not triumphant, but instead humbling in its reassurance, its support. As though he trusted her. As though he had faith as well.
It made her breathless. She had to blink hard and look away, finally focusing on the discussion going on around them: a somewhat grim and humorous argument about slasher flicks, and about how being hunted by crazed chainsaw-wielding serial killers compared to being hunted by crazed megalomaniac serial killers who hired men to carry the weapons for him.
“We are such tools,” Moochie said, nudging Francis. His cousin smiled, but his face was pale, and he looked like he still hurt.
Rikki caught his eye. “Was it worth it?”
His smile gained strength. “Better than being dead.”
“And now? Have you guys decided what you’re going to do yet?”
“Still working on that better offer,” Moochie replied, glancing at Max. “Isn’t that right’”
Max rubbed the back of his neck. “I think we can come to an agreement. Though there is a certain question of loyalty. Some things can’t be bought.”
“You can trust them,” Rikki said, giving Francis and Moochie long steady looks. “Isn’t that right?”
The men hesitated. Rikki rolled her eyes.
The cremator clicked off, a sound so loud they could hear it in the other room. Rikki tried not to think about how many lives had been tossed into that thing since the construction of this facility. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All the beauty and joy and pain of a human life, reduced to nothing. Less than a memory. Broker’s legacy to the world.
They gathered the ashes and left. It was a long walk upstairs, through the facility. Rikki tried to memorize every step, the scent of the air, the crisp cleanliness of the floors. Amiri touched her hand. Rictor walked on her other side. Blue held the box of ashes. They were all suspicious that way.
Ahead of them all walked Aitan. At his side, Kamau Shah. Immense, striking, powerful. He wore only slacks. Still caught between man and bird, with long golden feathers running up the lengths of his arms, meeting between his shoulders like an odd cape. His hair was tangled with feathers, his fingertips ending in black talons.
No remedy, or so Amiri had told her. If Kamau were to find his way back to one body or the other, it would have to be on his own.
And if he has family? Someone he was taken from? How will he return to the life he had, looking like that?
Questions. Always more questions.
Rikki glanced up at Amiri, and found him watching his father. She tugged on his arm and he bent down, just enough for her to whisper in his ear, “He loves you.”
Amiri took a breath, hesitating. “He is my father.”
But that was all he said, as if the words were caught in his throat. Rikki understood. She squeezed his hand. Sometimes silence was all you had.
He thought he saw Mireille across the main hall, talking to the one of the pregnant women. No doubt preparing an insurrection. He and Rikki had been the ones to release her. She had not been pleased to see them, though the look in her eye had been more of shame than anger. A feeling he shared, when he thought of how he had frightened her. And what might have happened to her, in this place.
“So,” Rikki said, holding his hand. “Big powerful detective agency. What are you going to do about all those people? This facility, even? Are you going to tell anyone, or just…sweep it under the rug?”
“I do not know,” Amiri said, glancing at her. He found the other men doing the same, with troubled frowns.
Aitan gave them all sharp looks. “You must make up your minds. The unborn those women carry…none of them are human.”
Everyone stopped. Moochie said, “What do you mean, not human?”
Kamau Shah rumbled, golden eyes glinting. “They took sperm samples from me. Aitan, as well. No doubt others. And if not shifter blood, then their scientists tinkered in other ways.”
No one else said a word. Amiri went very still inside his heart, trying to wrap his mind around such a thing. He could not. The problems, the questions, were too vast. They all stared at each other, disbelief and a terrible dawning comprehension cutting across their faces.
“What do we do?” Max said. “Do they know what their children are?”
“No,” Aitan replied. “They were never meant to raise them.”
“And if we explained?”
“They will not understand.”
“They might,” Blue said. “My wife is a shape-shifter.”
Aitan’s eyes narrowed. “And would you be willing to risk the safety of your children on the whim of another?”
Blue said nothing. Max ran his hands through his hair. “How do we handle this? We can’t just…return them home. Even if they weren’t carrying those children, they’ve been through too much. They need help. But to have
shape-shifters
as babies? That affects us, too.”
“They will be called demons,” Aitan said grimly, glancing at Kaumau. “The women
and
the babies, once they begin shifting. They will be killed or turned over to the authorities. You cannot allow that. You must take the children. Raise them with those who will welcome their existence.”
“But where?” Rikki stared. “You’ll have to keep the women here until they give birth. And then what? You’ll steal their children? Are all of you kidnappers now? You’ll be no better than the Consortium!”
“That cannot be allowed,” Amiri said. “You must give the mothers the choice.”
“Are you still naοve?” snapped his father. “Even if you explain, even if by some miracle those women understand and are not frightened, they cannot be trusted. Not in the long term. Not when the child becomes difficult.
Inhuman.”
“It is not just one life at stake, but all of the shifting kind,” Kaumau said. “I abhor the idea of stealing children from their mothers, but what choice do we have? It is not the same as having a mate who loves and protects your young. These women were forced, and even if they wish to keep them, they believe their babies will be human. Like them. Not…different.”
“Oh, my God,” Rikki said. “You realize what you’re saying, don’t you?”
Amiri could not speak. He kept thinking of the mother he had never known, his anger that he could not know her—his fear that even if he had, she would have rejected him.
“They must be given the choice,” he forced himself to say, the words cutting him. With terror, with heartache, with the sudden piercing knowledge that he finally understood why his father had made his choice. Feeling inside himself the desire to do the same. Take the children, run and hide. Protect them from the world.
“But if they choose yes,” hissed his father, “what will you do? Keep them prisoners so they do not betray their children, even by accident’ Send them far away? And how will the children learn? Will they grow up thinking they are freaks? Monsters?”
“There must be a way,” Blue said. “A better way.”
The old man’s face twisted with disdain, and Rictor began to laugh, very quietly. “You poor fucks. Forget turning this shit over to the government. You need this facility, just like you need to step in where the Consortium left off. At least until you have a handle on all that supernatural spawn.”
Max closed his eyes. “I’m going to go look for Elena and Artur. We need to call Roland and talk about this now.”
“Talk all you want,” Rictor said, his smile fading into something dark, serious. “But there’s no right answer. You know that, don’t you? Someone is going to pay. You just have to decide if it will be the children or their mothers.”
Blue balanced the box of ashes under his arm and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re forgetting that the Consortium may want this place back. We’ve got their scientists, their experiments. Do we prepare for a siege?”
“No,” Aitan murmured. “That is one thing you need not concern yourself with. Except for the unborn, little of value was kept in this facility. Notes were electronically transmitted, and biological samples—sperm, genetic material, blood—were regularly flown out. Even the viral weapon was imported.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they would just abandon this place,” Rikki said. “They put so much into it.”
“And it was exposed. Tainted. The Consortium prefers to hide, to avoid direct confrontation, though it occasionally engages in it. Abandoning facilities is not new to them. The Russian lab was destroyed after my son escaped.”
“We tried to go back there,” Blue said. “It had been filled in with concrete.”
Aitan shrugged. “The Consortium has other facilities. Unfortunately, I do not know their locations.”
“You know quite a bit,” Max said, carefully.
Aitan tilted his head. “As Broker would say, I made it my business.”
“And they will not want the women?” Amiri pressed. “Can you be certain?”
His father hesitated. Max gave him a long hard look, then turned away, started walking. Francis stopped him, and glanced at Moochie. “We’ll go with you. We also have some insight into the running of this place.”
“Aitan?” Max glanced over his shoulder. “We could use your help, as well.”
Amiri watched his father hesitate. He expected the old man to say no, but found himself surprised once again. Aitan spared him a quick look—steady, without emotion— and followed Max and the others as they walked off. Kamau joined him, and there was a camaraderie, a friendship between the two shape-shifters that Amiri could not look away from until the men crossed out of sight. He had never seen the old man have a friend, or work with anyone—not until coming here.
Fourteen years. So much had changed. In himself, as well. He was a different man. All the pain, all the hardship—worth it, for bringing him to this point, to be with these people.
He brought Rikki’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. Savored her slow worried smile, her thoughts still clearly on women and babies and impossible questions.
“Come,” he said quietly, his own heart knotted. “We have men to scatter.”
But in the end, all they did was dump the ashes of Broker and Jaaved over the edge of the ravine. Rictor spit on the ground. Blue sighed. Amiri watched Rikki watch the sky, and said nothing at all. Words were inadequate for the uneasiness he felt. The fear that none of this was over.
Of course it is not over,
whispered his father.
Not until you die, cub.
A disquieting thought. Amiri watched Rikki walk ahead with Blue. He caught snippets of conversation—Eddie’s name. Blue said, “He’s resting, but he’s still not well. He’s having trouble…controlling things.”
“Eddie was changed,” Rictor rumbled, beside Amiri, too quietly for the others to hear. “Broker’s virus. It altered the boy. Not something I could fix.”
“You did what you could,” Amiri said, concerned. He slowed his pace, deliberately putting distance between themselves and the others.
“Ah,” Rictor said. “I sense a Deep Conversation coming on.”
Amiri glanced at him. “You are not alone. You have…friends.”
“Do I now?”
He smiled faintly. “Do not push your luck.”
Rictor also smiled, but it faded, fast. “About why …”
“Excuse me?”
“Why I came to help you.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Elena freed me from the Consortium. You know that.”
“She spoke of a circle made of sand and light. She passed through it, and…something broke. You were free.”
“Free,” Rictor rumbled, as though the word meant something different to him. “Not many could have done what she accomplished. Takes a certain kind of blood. Different from the Magi, from anything mortal. She doesn’t know.”
Amiri felt cold. “And?”
He looked down at his hands. “Her blood, the act of freeing me, created a bond. I don’t know how or why. I tried to get rid of it, but I never could. I… felt her with me all the time. Ever since that moment. It didn’t matter where I went, in this world or others. She was always with me. It was how I knew she was worried about you.” Rictor stopped, and looked at him. “You don’t know what it was like. How much it hurt. To love her and feel her and not… be able to touch her.”
Amiri tried to keep his voice steady. “You speak of the past. What of now?”
“Now,” Rictor whispered, and the pain that entered his gaze was livid, raw. “Now I feel nothing. She’s gone.”
“She is your friend.”
“She belongs to Artur.” Rictor closed his eyes. “I have nothing left of her. And for all the pain it caused me, that is what I miss, Amiri. Nothing else, not even the power. Just that. Just her. Inside of me.”
Amiri tried to imagine loving and losing Rikki in such a way, and the thought was crippling. He would not be strong enough to bear such a burden. But Rictor…
“You are still immortal,” he said. “You are still what you were, even if you are powerless.”
“I suppose,” he said, and gave Amiri a hard look. “If you ever tell anyone what I told you—”
“You will kill me. Yes, I am quite clear on that.”
“And you owe me.”
“We will argue about that some other time.”
“Already scared?”
“With you, always,” Amiri said—and found himself, several minutes later, living within an odd bitter irony when they entered the main hall and found Elena and Artur, pale and dressed in blue, heads bowed close, talking without speaking. Memories surged: the four of them, together, in Russia, depending on each other for their lives.
Elena waved when she saw them, but her smile widened only for Rictor. She smiled at him like there was a rainbow in the sky. Rictor, on the other hand, showed nothing. Heart of stone. Implacable. Dangerous. Master of lies.
Elena hugged him. And Amiri watched Artur watch Rictor, and he knew there were no secrets between the men. Not when it came to her.
“Rictor,” she said.
“Elena,” he said.
Amiri wandered away. He looked for Rikki. Found his father instead.
A’sharia and Kimbareta were with him. He was teaching the children to track. Amiri felt some surprise that the old man was including the boy in the lesson, but his father looked at him and said, “I am not the man I used to be,” which was enough of a shock that Amiri found himself sitting down on a fallen tree, watching his father teach the children with a gentleness that Amiri had never been shown. It made him jealous, but only for a moment. Mostly, it made him sad.
“I thought you would be with the others,” Amiri said.
“I gave them the truth,” replied the old man. “What more is there?”
“Much more,” he said.
Aitan sighed, and looked at the children. “Go and play. Stay close.”
A’sharia smiled—sweet, breathtaking—and led Kimbareta deep into the bush. Leaving the two men alone.
My sister,
Amiri thought, staring after her. Still marveling. All of this, remarkable. And painful.
“Life is painful.” said Aitan, again surprising Amiri. “And yes, I betrayed you. But not in my heart. I had to play a careful game with Broker. He murdered A’sharia’s mother, and then took the child as a way of controlling me.”
Amiri had to struggle with that. “How did he find you?”
Aitan closed his eyes. “When I killed Angelique and drove you away, I went back home to visit with Wambui, your nurse. I believed you kept in contact with her, even after you left.”
“Of course,” Amiri replied. “She was the closest person I had to a mother. It grieved me greatly when she passed away.”
Aitan sighed. “We were not on the best of terms, even at the end. I told her what had transpired between us, and she was so cross with me, so bitterly angry, she cursed me.”
“Wambui?” Amiri frowned. “She was no witch.’
“We kept it from you. She had gifts, powers. That is why I knew she could be trusted with rearing you. But I never expected her to turn on
me.”