BROKEN BLADE (28 page)

Megan didn’t seem impressed.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll have to leave. You’re outnumbered. You’ll either be a help or a hindrance in what we’re dealing with and we will not tolerate a hindrance,” Chang said, his voice neutral. He glanced down at her hand again and his eyes flashed, from dark brown to an eerie, flickering light green . “You should move your hand, Megan.”

“You think you scare me, Chang?”

The words hadn’t even died on the air before she went flying. I didn’t even see Chang move, but Megan was on the floor, landing at Doyle’s feet. He looked like a kid in a candy store; she was surging to her feet but Doyle kicked them out from under her and flipped her over, one of the blades he carried pressed to her neck.

“Right there,” he said, his voice sounding just a little too smug as he dropped his weight down. “You know if I cut you
right
there
with a silver blade, you are going to have a damn awful recovery period. Spinal cord… you might even lose some mobility.”

“He sounds like you,” Damon said, shooting me a look.

I scowled and stood up, staring at Doyle. He had the knife at the right spot. But Megan was older. Probably better trained…

Neither Chang or Damon looked worried, though.

Alisdair was on his feet, staring at Damon. “Call him off.”

“Not doing that.” Damon shook his head. “She’s stupid enough to get in my lieutenant’s face, she can stay where she is or fight her way out of that mess.” He shrugged. “Doyle’s just a kid. She can probably take him. If she gets his knives away. Tell me something, Dair…you train your wolves to fight with weapons? She got any idea
how
?”

You’re not helping
.

A muscle pulsed in Alisdair’s cheek. “She’ll apologize.”

I moved around the table, taking the smart route—the one away from Alisdair. This thing was turning into a clusterfuck. I didn’t know if we needed the wolves with us on this or not. But we
didn’t
need to make enemies of them and that was what would happen if we sent them scurrying away from Orlando with their tails between their legs.

“Doyle.”

He didn’t look up at me but I knew he was listening.

“I think she gets the point,” I said, watching as blood ran along the blade. “No point in putting her in a bed for the next few weeks while the nerves regenerate. We’re going to need all the help we can get on this, right?”

He sighed. Then, before she could move, he was up and by me.

“I don’t need some stupid half-human helping me,” she snarled as she stood. Muscles knotted and flowed under her flesh.

“Yeah? You sure about that? You haven’t even heard the really good parts about my special new friend yet, Lassie.”

She lunged and then stopped.

I don’t know who was more surprised, her or me, but the short sword Damon had given me was between us, just that fast, his tip pressed to her neck. He felt good in my hand. 
Damn
good. I held her gaze.

“Now listen,” I said softly. “I’m not going to toy with you like Doyle did. I’m not a cat. If you keep this up, I’ll just take your damn head off and fuck the consequences.”

“Enough.”

Megan tensed at the low, guttural growl. The tension spiking through the air seemed to hit her harder than me. Her shoulders bowed forward, but then she jerked them back, pride glinting in her eyes. She shoved past me, jamming her elbow into my stomach.

I ignored it.

I didn’t have time for her attitude.

I went back to my seat, settling down.

“I have some questions, starting with…just how do you
know
this woman is Pandora?” MacDonald’s eyes, coppery gold, rested on my face.

“Because when I asked, she didn’t lie.” I met those eyes dead on. “And because I’m good at what I do. Very good. You should be aware of that after all this time.”

Megan opened her mouth. MacDonald silenced her with a look. “Ms. Colbana, if she is who you claim, then I believe you. As you said, you are very good at what you do. What I want to know is this…why does it involve me? Or even any of us?”

There we go. Time to get down to it.

Alisdair just wanted the facts.

“Have you heard of the Blooding?”

None of them moved. None of them changed their expressions. But those words had an impact—I could feel it.

All the knowledge Es had crammed into my head had finally settled into place and I could pick through it, understand it. It made sense in an odd, awful sort of way.

MacDonald continued to watch me, but he hadn’t said a damn thing.

“Well? Have you heard of it or not?” I asked. I damn well knew the answer.

“Who hasn’t?” He gave me a condescending smile, one that was just a little too superior, a little too smug. It settled me, though. Odd how a smirk can make you feel a little more secure. Or maybe it’s just me. “Naturally I know of the Blooding. I received the standard education fitting for the leader of my kind, after all.”

You’re a reject, Kit. We might not say it out loud in polite company—or around Damon—but you weren’t good enough. I am
. He didn’t say those words. But I saw them echoed in the back of his eyes.

Trying to piss me off? I just stared at him. It would take more than a clever little potshot to do it.

The tension in the room was enough to choke me. It was going to get worse, I suspected.

“How many wolves were created during the Blooding?”

“Who knows? It was ages ago and the facts have been lost to—”

“Ballpark figure is two-hundred thousand in Europe and Asia alone,” Damon said, his voice flinty and he gave MacDonald a look that said,
Say anything. I dare you
.

MacDonald’s face turned to stone.

“That’s just the figure for wolves.” Chang sipped from his water. I looked over at him but he was also watching MacDonald. “Asia is almost equal, as far as cats and wolves go, but it’s estimated perhaps one-hundred-fifty thousand cats were made. History says the shifters had to start spreading further out—migrating to Africa, Asia…even America.”

Okay now
that
was interesting, but I didn’t have time to mess with history lessons.

I watched MacDonald. “Do you know anything about the vamp population during that time?”

His lip curled. “Why ever would I care?”

There was no love lost between shifters and vamps. That was nothing new. Still, I suspected he did know the figure. He was a smart guy and smart people tended to cling to that old saw:
know your enemy.

“I’ve heard the figure was pretty damn high. They say vampire numbers skyrocketed. If you increased by a few hundred thousand, I guess it’s safe to say vampires increased by even more.” I watched his eyes as I spoke, saw the minute tightening. Yeah, he knew the numbers, alright. “It’s estimated that anywhere from seventy million to two hundred million humans could have died during the Black Plague. Of course with werewolves, you stand a better chance of surviving it if you’re healthy. If you have a disease, your chances go from about five percent to maybe…what,
half
a percent, even less?”

“I’m not a statistician or a doctor, Ms. Colbana. I don’t know.”

I saw the knowledge burning in his eyes, though.

“You still added a hell of a lot of people.” Leaning forward, I murmured, “Seventy-five million, MacDonald. If even one percent of that number had a chance at surviving the plague and one of your kind, or a vampire showed up in the night…? Panic must have been running high then. You think they made a million new vampires? Two million?”

“It was easily a million.”

I slid Chang a look. He didn’t look at me as he rose from the table. “Vampires all but decimated Europe during the Blooding,” he said quietly, moving to stare outside. “Shifters keep an excellent written history, second only to the historians of the Green Road. We remember our enemies very well. The Black Plague wasn’t solely responsible for all those deaths, Kit. It was vampires ravaging so much of Europe. But they didn’t want the sickly people—those who would die. They wanted a healthier sort for their dungeons. For feeding, for sex. As the plague ravaged the mortal population, they looked to a healthier sort and started targeting weres. I believe the Order of Witches even has data about how their number decreased during those years.”

I stared at him. “Witches would have been able to handle the plague better than mortals. Heal it themselves or be healed by their houses.”

“The plague wasn’t the predator,” he said, looking at me, his liquid eyes full of ugly truths.

It was no wonder most of the world over hated vamps. “They hunted witches, then.”

“I don’t have factual references of that.” He inclined his head. “But we do have a written history going back about our kind. Yes, our numbers increased…they had to, if we wanted to make a defense against the leeches who were trying to enslave any warm-blooded creature they could get their hands on.”

“So it was forced on able-bodied mortals, then.”

Chang stared at me. “I don’t know how they were selected. But if somebody hadn’t stood against the vampires who were killing thousands by the night, then they had to do something. The plague killed
millions
…but it’s suspected that many deaths attributed to the plague were actually people who were killed by vampires. It was just more expedient to blame it on the plague rather than bloodsuckers.”

“This is all very interesting.”

Megan delivered that statement with complete sincerity. The smile on her pretty face was one hundred percent believable. And as I swung my head around to look at her, even though I didn’t see it in her eyes, I knew exactly what she was thinking.

Just get this over with
.

“But again, what does any of this have to do with Pandora…and what does
she
have to do with us?”

I shifted in my chair and debated just what I should say.

Not all that long ago, Es had told me to trust myself. Even thinking of her left a hollow emptiness in my heart. “Pandora took her last body during the Black Plague…and I think you guys got a power charge off it.”

I had their attention now.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I didn’t
quite
get around to telling them that they might be susceptible to whatever weird magics Pandora possessed.

I managed to fill them in on what Es had said happened when she took over a body and they somehow caught the leftover power—maybe it made it easier for the shifters to change sick people, for vampires to successfully bring more humans over, I don’t know. The atmosphere in the room as I finished
that
explanation wasn’t a cheery one.

And it would only get worse. But as I moved onto to tell them about Clara, the sweet, pretty, pregnant girl who was about to become a target—might already
be
a target—a roar echoed from somewhere off in the Lair.

A split second later, there was a cat’s scream, defiant and enraged.

That might not have bothered me.

But I felt the prickle of magic and Damon was already climbing to his feet, a dark, angry look on his face.

Closing my eyes, I rubbed the spot between my brows and stood up, looking over at Damon. “Tell them to stand down.”

A storm gathered in his gaze as he swung his head around to look at me.

“Tell them to stand down, Damon, or you’re not going to like what he does,” I said softly.

Justin wasn’t close to us, not yet. I would have sensed him before now if he was, but I knew the man’s magic.

When Damon didn’t answer me, I said softly, “He will end up killing whoever gets in his way if they aren’t very, very good, Damon. How many cats have you got that can stand up to high magic?”

There was another roar. It was deeper this time—a different were had attacked. The roar went on and on and on—and then, abruptly, it ended. I didn’t like that.

Since he hadn’t answered me, I decided to help him out. “You can do it. Chang could.” I flicked a glance at Doyle. “In time, the kid can. Your enforcers and probably a handful of your more elite fighters can do it. But he’ll cut through as many of them as he has to, just because he feels like it. What’s the point?”

“If he needs to see me, he can make an appointment,” Damon said, his voice flat.

“He’s not here for you. He’s here for me.” I moved away from the table and grabbed my sword as I headed for the door. “I don’t face high magic on my own. He’s working with me.”

I felt his shock, his fury. At the door, I paused and looked back at him. “Didn’t you hear the word
partner
earlier? If I’m back in, I work the jobs with the tools I’ve got at my disposal. Justin’s a damn good tool.”

The ground under my feet trembled. Closing my hand around the door knob, I said, “And that tool just might make the place come down around your ears if you don’t tell your people to stand down.”

I wasn’t surprised when they joined me.

Damon pushed in front of me and I read the rage in every part of his body. Oh, well.

I followed my gut, which usually didn’t steer me wrong, yet somehow managed to get me in a lot of trouble. This time, it led me to the courtyard. It hadn’t even been a year since I’d had my first confrontation with Damon in this very place. It looked different now and not just because Justin had thrown up a barrier ward. They’d done some decent landscaping and it looked lush and welcoming—not like a place only a queen would be allowed.

Not that it was terribly welcoming right now.

The barrier ward shimmered and I wondered if they could see it.

A cat came streaking out of the Lair and lunged for Justin.

He hit the ward, crashing into it with a whine low in his throat.

That answered my question.

“Tell Harry Potter if he fucks up my cats any more, I’m going to rip him apart,” Damon said, his voice just barely above a growl. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood there, legs spread, menace all but pouring from him.

“I’m not your messenger girl, Damon.”