Shadowmaster

Phoenix leaned against the wall of the building, taking deep breaths to ease her distress. She had never been so close to one of these unfortunate people. Aegis had kept her protected from such sights, from such thoughts.

Now there was no escape from reality. She had always disliked the practice of deportation, but the situation was complicated and very volatile. That was why the two main political factions, Patterson’s and Shepherd’s, were so hostile to each other. No one wanted deportation, but those who supported Patterson believed an end to it would lead to another devastating war, while Shepherd’s supporters claimed that there had to be another way to negotiate a new, permanent kind of peace.

She turned her troubled attention back to the waiting emigrants. A wealthy-looking couple was clinging to each other, the fiftyish woman with a tearstained face and the man staring about him in apparent confusion, as if he couldn’t guess how he’d come to be in such a place. Their money obviously hadn’t been enough to buy their way out of punishment.

The Mids family, consisting of two young children and a single man, sat together in a small circle of misery. The girl, perhaps ten, simply looked blank. The boy, a few years younger, was crying. The father’s face was wretched with misery.

Was he leaving a wife behind, a wife already condemned? Did he hate this city, one of the last refuges for humanity on the West Coast of the former United States?

“There will be additional supplies waiting for you outside the walls,” Sammael was saying, cutting into her thoughts. “You’ll be in the Zone for the most of the next hundred miles south of the city. Avoid the agricultural Enclaves. There are said to be several unauthorized human settlements between here and the Los Angeles Enclave. I can’t vouch for their safety, but you’ll be better off with other people around you.”

The man with the two children pushed his hand inside his pants pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of A-bills. “I’m sorry I don’t have more,” he whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears. “If I did...”

“Keep it,” Sammael said, stepping back. “You may eventually find them useful, and I don’t need your money.”

“But I understood...”

“I don’t need your money,” Sammael repeated. He knelt to face the little boy, stroking the child’s dirty hair away from his forehead. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. He smiled at the girl. “You’ll take care of your little brother, won’t you?”

The girl’s face lost its blank look, and she focused on Sammael’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll take care of him.”

Sammael took her hand and squeezed it very gently. “That’s a brave girl,” he said. He got up, nodded to the father and turned his attention to the wealthy-looking couple.

“Two hundred A’s are all I need from you,” he said.

The woman’s moist eyes widened. “That’s all?”

“You’ll have a hard enough time adapting as it is,” Sammael said. He hesitated, lowering his voice. “You do understand you may die out there, or be taken by rogue Freebloods.”

“We understand,” the man said. “At least we have a chance.” He held out his hand. “Thank you.”

Sammael ignored the hand, and the man let it fall. “There will be no turning back,” he said.

A series of nods, a sob, a sharp breath followed his announcement, but no one seemed interested in backing out. A few moments later, Sammael joined his crew in chivying the frightened people into what seemed to be a solid stack of concrete blocks.

Phoenix continued to stare long after they had disappeared from view. Her bones seemed to have melted, and only a sheer act of will kept her on her feet.

Sammael had let those people out for nothing, or almost nothing. He’d risked his life and those of his crew out of sheer altruism, just as Brita had described.

No, not just altruism. Compassion. A Daysider showing compassion to his enemies, people he was supposedly willing to help destroy by aiding in the mayor’s assassination.

It was a paradox. He had no stake in these peoples’ lives, no reason to want to help them.

“Only three Bosses smuggle people out,” Brita whispered, “and the price the others charge is very high. With The Preacher, it’s a miracle if you get out at all. Sammael does it because he wants to help.”

Does he? Phoenix thought. Or was all this some kind of trick to upset what Brita believed to be Phoenix’s plan? Was it possible that Sammael was pushing these people right into the arms of bloodsuckers waiting to ambush them outside the walls? Wasn’t that just as likely...more likely coming from an Opir?

No, she thought. Not from a man who had touched the little boy with such gentleness, spoken to the little girl in just the right way to give her a purpose, a reason to go on.

None of it made any sense.

“Come on,” Brita whispered, grabbing Phoenix’s arm again. “We need to get back before they do.”

Phoenix resisted her tug. “You showed me this because you think it would change my mind about exposing Sammael and your crew...if that were my intention, and if I could get out of here alive?”

Brita didn’t answer. She blindfolded Phoenix again and hurried her back to the Hold by the usual circuitous route. But every moment, Phoenix was aware that she was being given a chance to escape, that Brita must have had more than one reason for taking the “guest” out to observe Sammael’s act of apparently selfless philanthropy.

Was Brita hoping that she could force “Lark” to act recklessly to expose Sammael and the secret passage? Did she want an excuse for a fight and a chance to kill? Phoenix didn’t give her what she wanted. Once they were back at the Hold, Brita escorted Phoenix to her room, followed her in and closed the door.

“You didn’t run,” she said.

“But you expected me to try,” Phoenix said, standing near the bed.

“I don’t know what to make of you, and I don’t like—”

“Not knowing,” Phoenix finished. “Believe me, I understand.”

Brita snorted. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for now,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t be watching.”

“And I’ll keep your secrets as long as you keep mine.”

“And what you just saw this morning?”

“I’m not planning on telling anyone. It might backfire on me, too.” She offered her hand, which Brita pretended not to see.

“The others will be back anytime now,” the lieutenant said. “I suggest you get some rest.”

She left, played with the lock outside—presumably with the intent of hiding the fact that it had never been functional in the first place—and walked away, her footsteps barely audible in the corridor.

Twisting her hair into the usual ponytail and tying it with a scrap of twine, Phoenix considered what she’d learned. There was so much she had yet to understand. Once again she weighed instinct against her orders. If she were to follow her instructions precisely, this would be the time to return to Aegis with the intelligence she had collected...presuming she could escape now that she’d let several opportunities pass. She’d made direct contact with an Opir spy, after all. And more.

But that wasn’t good enough. Even if she could manage to get away, she still didn’t know exactly what role Sammael was playing in the assassination. If she could pin that down, she could return to Aegis having done everything she could.

That meant she had to keep pretending to want to escape the city and still find a way to stay with Sammael until she understood his connection to Drakon. And she couldn’t forget her purpose, though part of her wished she could get away from the Enclave...from duty, from doubt and all the other emotions she shouldn’t be feeling. From wondering if Sammael’s actions with the emigrants had been done out of genuine compassion Opiri weren’t supposed to possess. That no agent of murderers could possess.

She sat on the bed and massaged her temples. Wasn’t the fact that she wanted to believe proof that she hadn’t been the right choice for the job after all? They should have sent someone harder, more focused, more dedicated. Like her father. Someone who wouldn’t be thinking that maybe she wanted to stay with her enemy...not out of necessity, but because she was beginning to—

Care. About an Opir who took in the weak of the Fringe, shared his “take” of profits with the poor, helped human convicts escape and refused to take advantage of a prisoner he badly wanted.

She laughed. She kept assuming all that was true. God help her.

But it wasn’t too late. There was still time to pull herself back from the brink and harden her heart, remembering that Sammael’s supposed goodness to the fugitives and the people of the Fringe meant nothing in the end. His breed had killed Dad, would keep killing until they’d won their war and enslaved all mankind.

Turning off her troubling thoughts, she slept fitfully for the next two hours, trained, as were all agents, to rest whenever the opportunity arose but with senses tuned for any change in the immediate environment. By dawn—which she couldn’t see but sensed as clearly as if she were looking out a window—she woke to the sound of the crew returning to the Hold.

But she didn’t hear Sammael’s voice. She rolled off the bed and half-ran to the door, every muscle tense and heart beating fast. Other voices rose in argument, and she knew something had gone wrong.

Sammael hadn’t returned. Phoenix was struck by the sudden fear that the Enforcers scouring the Fringe, supposedly looking for the treacherous govrat, had taken Sammael against orders, anyway. Could his helping the emigrants have exposed him somehow?

There was another, just as chilling, possibility. Phoenix had heard the very unsubtle threats leveled at Brita by The Preacher’s representative. What if one of his followers, or a whole crew of them, had caught Sammael somewhere alone?

She banged on the door for a good minute before it swung open with a loud creak. Standing in the doorway was a small, wiry man she hadn’t met.

“Brita said to check up on you,” the man said, gazing at her with pointed curiosity.

“Where is she?”

“Busy. You need the bathroom or something?”

“I want to talk to Brita,” she said, trying to balance the tone of her voice between worried concern and stubborn insistence.

“She ain’t available. I’ll tell her you asked after her when she’s free.” He began to close the door, but Phoenix wedged her boot in the crack.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Repo.”

“Where’s Sammael?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve heard a lot of arguing, but not his voice.”

Repo shrugged.

“He didn’t return with your crew, did he?”

“That ain’t none of your business. It ain’t smart to pry into stuff that ain’t your business, not in the Fringe.”

“It’s my business when he’s the one who’s supposed to get me out of the city.”

“He’s Boss. He can do what he wants, and he don’t report to nobody. If your info checks out, he’ll keep his word.”

The door groaned as Repo closed it behind him. Phoenix hardly noticed.

If your info checks out, the man had said. So Brita had been lying about Sammael already knowing that Phoenix had been telling the “truth” about her information.

But why? Just to throw Phoenix off her guard even more? Someone’s voice—a man’s—rose above the others Phoenix could hear in another part of the building.

Sammael’s. He was back. Safe.

Finding her way to the bed, Phoenix sat down heavily. She felt as if she had won a sudden and unexpected reprieve from some terrible punishment, and yet she was ashamed. Ashamed that she’d cared about Sammael’s welfare, not just about losing her chance to learn the nature of his connection to Drakon.

Ashamed that she could imagine his fingers pushing her hair back as tenderly as he had the boy’s, speaking to her just as gently.

Could she make him care for her? Not simply desire her, but care in a way that he wouldn’t want her to leave his side until his work was done?

No. She had to concentrate on what she knew was real...the sexual desire he refused to act on for reasons of his own. If it was weakness he feared, she had to make him believe he was in no danger of falling into a trap by making love to her. If it was her dhampir blood that drew him to her, so much the better. He wouldn’t give himself away by trying to take it, but there still might be a way to use his craving against him.

If Brita hadn’t already told him that Phoenix was part Opir.

* * *

It had been a very close call.

The crew was nervous, exchanging uneasy whispers, fidgeting, glancing right and left as if they expected Enforcers to burst in on the Hold at any moment.

That, Drakon thought, wasn’t going to happen. The men and women who’d finished up with the shipment had narrowly escaped the Enforcers, it was true, but they weren’t anywhere near the Hold, and the crew would settle down once they knew they were safe.

But every moment of the debriefing, as Drakon covered each small error and moment of nearly fatal inattention, he thought of Lark. He had been thinking of her when they had been in the midst of unloading the shipment of produce and hiding it as close to the city Wall as possible, in preparation for bringing it through after the next nightfall made it safer to move the material.

He’d been thinking of her when they’d run into the Enforcer patrol soon after releasing the fugitive humans. He’d thought of her when he had come so very close to capture—to losing his life, since he was required and intended to die first—after he’d deliberately caught the Enforcers’ attention and led them on what once had been commonly known as a “wild-goose chase.”

And he’d imagined her body, her warm lips, her welcoming arms as he made it to the Hold just before dawn, half regretting that he had survived. Knowing that she had, at best, offered herself to him only because it was a way of buying her escape from the Enclave.

Knowing, too, that she might even have been behind the Enforcers’ attack.

Now, as he discussed the operation with his crew, he could think only of going to her. Brita had moved Lark to new quarters—ignoring Drakon’s express orders to keep her firmly locked up in his room—and had reported that their guest had been very cooperative ever since.

Perhaps too cooperative.

Recalling himself to the task at hand, Drakon finished the debriefing. “Go eat and rest,” he said, rising as he dismissed the crew. Brita and most of the others left, but a few lingered.

“What you gonna do now?” Shank said with a leering glance. “Go check on the client, maybe give her a little personal attention?” He glanced around the table at the others who had remained. “It’s her fault there’re so many Enforcers around, whether they’re really chasing her or she brought them with her.”

Drakon walked around the table and backhanded the human, sending him flying halfway across the room. It was always a risk to display his more-than-human strength, but he had to keep Shank in line before he encouraged others to defy his Boss.

When Shank lifted himself off the floor, groaning and swearing, Drakon was standing over him.

“You can leave now,” he said, “or stay and keep your mouth shut. But if you run and pass on information that can damage this Hold or any of the crew, I will personally hunt you down. Understand?”

Shank wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “I get it,” he said sullenly.

For a moment all Drakon could do was stare at the blood on Shank’s mouth. Fresh blood. So long since he’d had it. So easy to take.

So deadly to his purpose.

“Sleep,” he told the others, quickly backing away. “I’m sending most of you out tonight to finish the job. Those who don’t want to risk it and forfeit their share of the profit are free to do so.”

With many glances at the unfortunate Shank, the last of the crew filed out of the meeting room. Drakon spent a good half-hour walking aimlessly through the corridors, trying to convince himself not to go to Lark’s new quarters. He didn’t succeed.

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