Poison Tree (16 page)

Christian had pulled her from the proverbial frying pan, but it was still sizzling around here.

Sarik did not address the archer on the ground. Threats were generally made by people who were bluffing. “Let’s find
my father,” she said, confirming the whispered speculation that she could hear all around her.

“He’s in his office,” another man chimed in. Sarik looked at him, wondering if she should know who he was. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt that only mostly concealed the results of a recent beating. “I’m Kevin,” he said.

“One of Kral’s flunkies,” Christian told her. “He had fewer bruises last time I saw him, though. Let’s go.”

Kevin led them through the crowd, which parted before them, and then knocked on Kral’s office door.

Kral’s response was barely audible, a growled, “What?”

The sound made the hair on the back of Sarik’s neck stand up. Kevin flinched as well before he said, “Sir. I have your daughter here.”

Silence. Then, after too many rapid hummingbird heartbeats, “Send her in.”

Kevin opened the door and quickly backed away. Christian released Sarik and leaned against the doorjamb. She wasn’t sure if Christian couldn’t stand on his own or if he was blocking her exit in case she panicked and tried to run. She took a few steps into the room. The dim light from the single desk lamp made the office into a cave.

This room had always frightened her. Shapeshifters could heal more than humans could, and Bruja members weren’t the type to call the police or social services, so her father had never needed to use restraint when he disciplined her. This room had meant countless beatings when she was a child.

“Divai, ohne,”
she said. Her voice was soft, but at least it didn’t break. “I’ve come home.”

“Indeed,” Kral said flatly.

The single word raked down her spine like claws.
You’re not sixteen anymore
, she told herself.
You survived on your own. You were a mediator at SingleEarth. You cannot let him control you
.

But she couldn’t seem to find her voice.

Kral looked at Christian. “Are you the one responsible for bringing her home?”

Sarik tensed and was about to protest that she had chosen to return on her own, but Christian asked his own question instead.

“Where is Alysia?”

Kral paused a moment, seeming contemplative. “If you do not know, then I’m sure I don’t.”

“You tried to frame her for the attack on SingleEarth, and then put a number up on her,” Christian said.

“Oh, really?” Kral glanced at Sarik. He knew, or guessed, that at least part of the story Christian told had been her fault, but he had no reason to share that information. He also apparently had no interest in continuing the conversation. “Daughter, there is a rumor going around that you are starting your own tribe. You don’t seriously expect to challenge me, do you?”

“No,” she snapped instinctively. “I mean, yes, but—”
Get a hold of yourself!
She took a deep breath and drew on the calm, controlled persona she had spent the last half decade cultivating. “I have taken in two cubs, and they will remain under my protection. No challenge is implied. Do you have Alysia or don’t you?”

The question spilled out without her thinking about it.
This wasn’t the time or place to ask, not with Kral in this kind of mood, but it was Sarik’s fault that Alysia had been caught up in this in the first place.

“Both of you seem very concerned about the human,” Kral remarked, before again shifting back to the topic he cared about. “You don’t think I should consider your actions a challenge to my authority?”

A day before, she had had an answer to that, hadn’t she? Now she couldn’t seem to find any words. Standing in his presence, she felt like a child again. She fought to keep herself in Sarik’s mind, but it was hard while in this place.

“Mistari law says—”

A backhanded blow to the face sent her stumbling back into Christian, and then an open-handed strike made more vicious by claws tore through her shoulder and sent her to her knees.

Her ears ringing and her eyes watering from pain, she looked up at her father.

“You defied my orders when you went after Cori,” Kral snarled down at her. “You fled into the night without a word, like a coward, and left others to clean up the mess. You allied with strangers and formed your own tribe with children who I guarantee you will have the strength to overthrow you in the next few years. You are the same arrogant, spoiled child who ran away six years ago, but now you think you can quote Mistari law at me and I will forget everything you’ve done?”

The words fell on her like hail. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even lift a hand to put pressure on the wound in her
shoulder, from which blood was flowing down her arm in a steady stream.

“Saniet, ohne,”
she whispered.
Mercy, please
.

“Get out,” he snapped. “Your room is still as you left it. I will summon you to talk about your ‘tribe’ when I have time. Christian, stay a minute. We should speak about your misplaced partner.”

“You don’t have her,” Christian said as he offered Sarik a hand up.

The fingers she wrapped around his were numb and streaked with blood. When he helped her up, she could feel how many muscles in her shoulder had been torn open by Kral’s claws.

“Judging by the state of Kevin’s face and how pissed off you are, I’d say you lost her. That means you have nothing to tell me.”

They had barely made it into the hall before Kral said, “Don’t make me fetch you, boy.” Christian hesitated, turning to meet Kral’s gaze. “You may be a witch these days, but that doesn’t mean I can’t smell the stink of exhaustion on you. You’re in no condition to fight me.”

Christian went rigid for a moment, then pointedly stepped away from Sarik. “I’ll meet you in your room,” he said before stepping into Kral’s office and closing the door behind him.

White noise. Sarik’s head was full of static, like a radio station fading in the distance. There were no words, no thoughts. She leaned against the wall outside Kral’s office and was vaguely aware of Kevin as he tended to her shoulder.

Shapeshifters healed fast. Wounds made by another shapeshifter,
especially a blood relative, healed a little more slowly, but she still didn’t have to worry about permanent scarring or muscle damage. Her father had done worse than this to her.

An outraged voice tried to speak up in her mind, to say
This isn’t okay
, but then the voice was muffled.

Her old room. It was cleaner than she’d left it, and someone had fixed the holes she had punched in the black walls, but it still held the attitude of the scared sixteen-year-old brat who had lived there. The antique leather-topped vanity had been stained by a half-dozen colors of nail polish. The elaborately carved handmade ebony headboard had been slashed by an angry adolescent tiger’s claws.

The cubs were safe for the moment, and there was nothing more she could do for Alysia unless Christian learned something new from Kral. There were no old friends waiting in the next room for her to say hi to. There was no part of Sahara’s life that she wanted to reclaim.

There was only exhaustion and despair. Whatever Christian had done to her earlier had taken its toll, as had the new wounds from her father.

There was nothing to do but wait, so she lay down on the bed. There were no sheets beneath the fuchsia goose-down comforter, but that was fine, because she wasn’t in the mood to get that comfortable.

She had barely closed her eyes before she heard the whisper of the door opening and closing, followed by the
snick
of the lock. She didn’t need to look to know it was Christian. She could recognize his scent and the fatigued tread of his steps. Besides, who else would bother her here?

“What now?” she asked, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She started to push herself up but stopped when he climbed into the bed next to her, hooked an arm over her waist, and spooned against her back.

“What did he want?” she asked, almost afraid to know.

“As always, he wants too much,” Christian answered, “but I can’t do anything about that right now. I need rest.”

“Here?”

“No one is going to bother me here, and
you’re
not going to kick me out.”

He was right. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t want to go back to who they had been to each other six years earlier, but at that exact moment, neither of them could be with the person they
did
want to be with.

So she closed her eyes and leaned back against him.

It took her another ten seconds before she thought to ask, “Are you feeding on me?”

“Yes. But I won’t hurt you. Go to sleep.”

And that’s the story of Sahara’s life
, she thought.
Give with one hand, take with the other
.

As she fell asleep, she realized that for the first time, she understood Jason’s refusal to ever feed on her. It didn’t matter that it was safe and she was willing. Their relationship hadn’t been about use and be used, move ahead and survive at all costs. It had been about more.

I miss you, Jason
, she thought.

T
HE NEXT TIME
Alysia woke, she was in a bed, in a nondescript room lit by a basic ceiling light. Next to the bed were six bottles of water, still sealed, and an unopened box of cinnamon-swirl breakfast bars.

Her body still ached, but in a tolerable way, as if she were getting over the flu, not recovering from a puncture wound, an explosion, and a beating.

A moment of panic gripped her, and she dragged her sheets aside to check that both legs were still firmly attached. The leg of her jeans had been cut off above her newly injured knee. The ragged edge of denim and the threads hanging down had been stained with blood, but the skin itself was intact. She bent the knee experimentally and found that it
was stiff but functional, with a shiny new scar just above her kneecap.

She stood cautiously, testing her ability to move. Obviously a witch had been here, but what kind of witch? On whose side?

Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth was bone dry, but no matter how carefully someone had set them out, she wasn’t going to help herself to food and water until she knew where she was.

She continued to explore and found a change of clothes on the kitchen counter, a cell phone with a single phone number saved in the contacts list, and, so much more important, all her rank-weapons, with the addition of sheaths for the knives.

The focus on the knives was a good clue about where she was, so she dialed the phone and was rewarded with Ravyn’s sleepy drawl. “Yo. You’re awake.”

“So it seems. Why?”

“You wrecked your stolen car,” Ravyn said. “I had to do some quick work to keep you from waking up with a cop by your side. I think I’ve officially fulfilled my debt to Christian, but the asshole’s cell phone was blown up and I don’t have another number for him. The witch who worked on you says you should eat and drink when you wake up, or you’ll fry your systems and all her work will be wasted.”

“Christian’s okay?”

“Last I heard. Now I’m going back to bed. There are keys in the fridge.”

“Why the fridge?”

“Because I wanted you to call before you split,” Ravyn answered. She yawned and then said, “Look, I’m not normally in the business of protecting people, but Kral crossed some lines to get to you, and I owe the leader of Frost a favor for getting him blown up, so you’re clear to use the safe house as long as you need it. Also, I don’t control members’ decisions, but I’ve strongly suggested to my guild that the number against you is crap. So, I’m done. Have a good day.”

She hung up, leaving Alysia shaking her head at the phone. Alysia hadn’t known Ravyn well before, but she suspected the burgundy-haired mercenary was going to be an interesting leader.

As assured as she possibly could be that she wasn’t going to be poisoned, Alysia double-checked all the packages and seals for any evidence of tampering and then downed two of the energy bars and a bottle of water while she made some phone calls and got the keys from the fridge.

She left messages at the two numbers she knew for Christian, giving him the number of the phone Ravyn had left her and asking him to call. She had half dialed Lynzi before she thought better of it. Until she was sure Kral was off her tail, she didn’t want him to have any reason to believe SingleEarth could be used to track her down.

Underneath the keys in the crisper, she found a map marking the location of the safe house and the nearby Crimson guild hall.

The map was good to have because it showed her where
she was, but Crimson wasn’t her goal. Her goal was a ranchstyle house set well back from the hubbub of the nearest town or major road and surrounded by the forest that seemed to fill so much of New England.

Christian was a city boy at heart, but when it came to his own home, he knew the value of privacy.

His
home. Alysia couldn’t afford to think of it as hers, even if she had lived there for almost four years. She couldn’t automatically assume that she still had any right to it.

Alysia frowned at the sight of the car in the driveway. The shiny silver Prius didn’t look like something Christian would drive, unless he had bought it as part of a cover or “borrowed” it in a pinch.

Maybe he sold the house
, she thought as she walked up to the front door.

Was some white-picket-fence family playing house in the place where she and Christian had trained together, the place she had come home to after a fight, tired and triumphant?

It was past a normal dinner hour, but not so late that most people would be angry at being disturbed, so Alysia rang the bell. When no one answered, she walked around the one-story home, trying to keep out of sight of the large-paned windows facing the backyard just in case someone was inside. At the sliding glass door to the backyard she paused again, this time to listen.
Anyone there?

She thought she heard movement, so before breaking in, she tried knocking again.