Cold Moon Rising (22 page)

As Ahmad let his mind drift, mine starting working overtime. Where had Angelique been during the whole episode? Was she back to normal and released? Was she unconscious, or even dead? I hadn’t thought to ask, which wasn’t very bright of me.

I’d also like to find out more about this Order that Ahmad was thinking about. It might be that he simply didn’t know and was flying blind, or he absolutely knew I was in his head with him and was feeding me misinformation.

He’s sort of like professor Snape in my way of thinking. He might be trustworthy, but he’s definitely suspicious and it might not take much to turn him. Frankly, if he was in Carmine’s group, I’d suggest sending him far away from anything important or sensitive.

Of course, thinking Carmine’s name got me back to planning my strategy for New Jersey. I needed to decide how to approach the whole thing. Not only was I a persona non grata in the state by the mob, but I was also wanted by the cops and presumed dead. I could take Bobby along to do the illusion thing on me, but he’s too well known as my normal partner in crime. It might be better to simply try my hand at a disguise. I used to be pretty good at makeup and hair coloring. Going back to basics might be just the trick to fool a bunch of snakes. Then the only thing left would be my scent. There was no mistaking I was Sazi . . . or was there?

I wondered if there was a way to actually start a conversation with Ahmad mentally, like I could with Sue. It didn’t seem like he knew I was there, but I wondered—

Searching with your mind is a lot like standing in a pitch black room with your feet strapped to the floor and trying to find a particular object by bending and reaching to feel around. If you know what you’re looking for, it doesn’t take long. But when you’re just reaching to find out if something is there, that’s harder. Now, I knew that Sue’s mind was there because in my head it was like a bright, warm spot of sunshine through a window. But if Ahmad’s mind was out there, it was either hidden or dark by nature.

Of course, about the time I gave up and decided to go back to bed, I fell through the looking glass with a suddenness that took my breath away. The hotel room disappeared behind the new reality of concrete walls and a silver door that was sparkling around the edges.

No, wait. Not sparkles. Sparks.

I could smell metal burning. Someone was using a freaking welding torch to cut away the hinges of the door. Either someone upstairs forgot the combination to the high-tech lock I knew was outside, or something really interesting was about to happen.

The scent and bright light brought Ahmad fully back to his head. He began to carefully spit toward his hands, which seemed a sort of strange thing to do under the circumstances. Except . . . ah, I realized what he was doing. He was cutting apart the bindings with his own venom. Pretty slick.

But he apparently hadn’t had anything to drink since they brought him down here, so spit was in short supply. Still, he was able to get enough onto one bracelet and the other chain that he was able to pull them apart and sit up before the cutting stopped.

I was curious to see what the visitors would do next, since the door wasn’t made of balsa. It was meant to withstand a feral, insane, magical creature of unknown ability. Raven and I couldn’t manage it alone when I visited, and he’s one of the more powerful alphas.

Whoever was on the other side of the door was no lightweight either, because dark-skinned male hands appeared around the bars near the top. The door hesitated and then began to move inward, an inch or so off the floor. Ahmad flicked his tongue out repeatedly, trying to catch the scent of the person through the scorched metal. Just before the door swung to the side, he apparently did and his reaction was telling.

I was catapulted inside Ahmad’s head, no longer an outsider watching, as I felt our tongue frantically move around in a dry mouth, trying to find enough fluid to make the venom sacs work. If Nasil found me helpless and in chains—

But it wasn’t the man I’d spent my entire existence loathing and fearing who first came through the door.

I felt my brows raise and a hoarse croak that hurt my throat. “Tuli?”

Her entire face lit up and her taste was filled with both relief and joy. It carried over to the word that was barely loud enough to hear. “Rimush.” She flung herself at me so fast that all I could do was catch her so I didn’t get knocked onto my back. Her lips were on mine before I could react and the taste of her sweet, almost salty venom was enough to make me clutch at her arms desperately. No. I had to push her away before I took leave of my senses the way I used to in the palace. She hissed from the sting of the silver in the cuffs and looked down at the burns struggling to heal at my wrists. She turned her head and whispered. “You see? I told you he was a prisoner.”

“You did indeed.” Now I raised angry eyes and pushed Tuli the rest of the way from me, preparing to fight. Nasil looked just the same, except his hair had grown to shoulder-length, the way he’d worn it for so many centuries. He let out a small smirk that could mean nothing, or everything. His voice was likewise quiet, the tone amused. “It appears you could use some help, my prince.”

What in the name of Anu was he doing here? Should I whisper or raise my voice and alert everyone in the clinic? I had to presume they arrived alone or Tuli wouldn’t bother speaking softly, so I followed suit.

“I hardly need help from the likes of you, Nasil. As you can see, I’m nearly free on my own.”

He glanced at the solid steel-and-silver door, still smouldering lightly from the torch cuts, then raised a brow at me. “Oh, without question, my lord. Shall I return the door to its place so you may escape under your own power?”

“Stop it, both of you.” Tuli was in no mood for our banter, which was reasonably friendly at this point. There was no purpose antagonizing him until I had full freedom of movement. He was too fast and too deadly to risk that. “Of course we’re going to help you, my prince. It’s why we came.”

It was? But that journey takes nearly a day, and I haven’t been back long enough for anyone to grow concerned. Or had it been longer than I believed? “I’ve only been gone a day. I told you I would return in several.”

Tuli blushed and stared at the floor, which confused me. I thought at first that the traitor Nasil wasn’t going to answer me, but he raised that single brow again—probably because he knew how much I hated it. “We left only a few hours after you did. Tuli seemed to believe it was critical we reach you before . . . something happened. I have to admit to a certain amount of surprise we found you in chains. It does seem to support Tuli’s . . . feeling.”

I stared at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. That wasn’t like her. “Explain.”

I reached out to grab her arm to make her look at me but she slipped out of my grasp with a speed I hadn’t known her to have before. “We really don’t have time for discussions, my lord. We have little time to get you to safety before they find the cat.”

Had they harmed Amber? Charles would tear the world into bite-sized pieces to find them . . . and me if they had. “What have you done, Nasil?”

He was busy dripping a strong chemical acid on the cuffs on my ankles, and looked up at me with the sort of disdain I expected from him. “Please give me some credit, Ahmad. Do you really think me foolish enough to kill anyone here—much less Charles’s wife? I merely hit Amber with a tranquilizer. But I only used enough for an elephant-sized target, so we probably only have five more minutes before a healer of her stature wakes up. And she’ll have a nasty headache, which won’t make her a pleasant kitty to encounter if she discovers us walking off with a Wolven prisoner.”

Nasil knew Amber nearly better than anyone, so I believed that he’d used a sufficient, but nontoxic dose. He’d been the supposed friend of her brother, Antoine, for more than a decade and had been spying on the council for Sargon without my even knowing. I didn’t trust him, but I couldn’t argue he knew his job.

While Charles would no doubt be displeased that I left custody, I could think of no better scenario for Nasil to find me in than this one. If I truly had been in league with my father, and Wolven discovered it, I would be in this exact same location awaiting trial before the full council. “I presume you have transportation waiting outside? Are there others with you?”

Nasil shook his head as he pulled apart the two pieces of the inch-thick cuff around my leg with a sizzling of flesh that made us both wince. “We came alone and while we have a stolen car outside to take us away from the complex, we flew commercial to get here. We’ll have to figure out some other way to get back before we’re discovered.”

I couldn’t help but smile darkly. It would serve him right for putting me through this level of hell. Nasil looked at me with interest when I swung my legs from the concrete slab and chuckled. “Actually, I may have a solution.”

Chapter Twelve

I CAME BACK into my head with a start as the scene went black at the clinic. I couldn’t seem to figure out why I kept getting these random flashes, yet had no control over them. Worse still, they were starting to make my head ache like I had a pinched nerve. I grabbed my chin and the top of my head to see if I could get my neck to pop and ease some pressure, but the muscles were too tight . . . probably from Ahmad’s struggle against the silver chains.

“Tony? Is something wrong?” Sue’s sleepy question was accompanied by an increase in the warm light in my head and it shook away some of the cotton in my brain.

“No, I—” I paused and reconsidered. Sue’s a smart woman. More than once she’s come up with an answer that had been eluding me. She’s been spending a lot of time reading through old records at Wolven headquarters, trying to figure out what was stolen by the mole. “Y’know, actually, yes. There is.”

She patted the bed and pulled back my side of the covers. “Come tell me about it.”

So I did. The trick was not to let the warm press of her skin against me lull me back to sleep. There’s just something about when she’s got one leg curled over my hip, with an arm around my waist and her head on my chest that makes everything right with the world and reality fade away. While I really needed the sleep, I also needed to decide what to do about Ahmad. I didn’t know what his solution was and without that, there wasn’t much to tell anyone if they asked where he went.

It took the better part of an hour just to tell her the highlights of the last few days. “And now I’m back here with you.”

“How weird,” she said. Her brow wrinkled under the fingers I was using to stroke her hair. “Well, let’s go through this. Ahmad thought it might have been the cave that did it, and I’ve read about that sort of thing happening in some of the really old books I’ve found. But why you, and why him? If it should be anyone, it should be Will Kerchee. That would make sense at least. He’s the one you were in contact with in the cave, or even Councilwoman Calibria or the other agent. But Ahmad?”

I shrugged, which moved her head and she had to readjust. “Precisely. But it is what it is. I just need to figure out how to make it work for me. You know Lucas and Charles are going to grill me about what happened now that they know I’m in contact . . . even occasionally, and they’re not going to let me leave to go deal with my job for Carmine. I have to at least get them started on something.”

She let out a slow, “Hmmm” and tapped one fingernail next to my belly button. “What did he think again right at the end? As exactly as you can remember.”

That was easy, so I repeated it. “It would serve him right for putting me through this level of hell. But I don’t know who him is, so I don’t have any idea what it might mean.”

She paused long enough that I felt my eyes starting to close. But I woke up again with a start when I felt her smile against my skin. A moment later, a flash of color jumped into my mind and the scent of triumph filled the air—sort of like bitter orange marmalade to my nose. “I think I know, and you’ve got a call to make.”

A SLEEPY, GRUFF voice answered on the fourth ring. I was already showered and dressed, which I did while Sue explained what she believed happened. I tried to push through an image into Ahmad’s mind. I’d managed a sound while I was standing under the hot water, but no image. Still the loud, whining roar I’d heard was probably enough to ask the question. “Go ahead.”

“It’s five A.M., Lucas. Do you know where your plane is?”

I could hear the confusion in his voice, which told me that either they’d given Amber a bigger dose of tranq than they thought, or he hadn’t answered his phone from several earlier calls. “What? Tony, is that you? What the hell are you talking about?”

He sounded too tired for the long explanation, so I opted for the short one. “I’m pretty sure Ahmad escaped the cell in the basement this morning with some help from Nasil, and is on his way back to the jungle . . . in your jet.”

I could hear sounds of abrupt movement in the background and then his voice wasn’t so sleepy anymore. “Nasil’s captured Ahmad? Did you have another hindsight from him? Was he . . . lucid when they grabbed him?”

I shook my head as I tried to reach my other shoe where it had bounced during last night’s romp. But the landline cord wouldn’t reach. Sue noticed and walked across the room to pick it up and hand it to me on her way to the bathroom with a cosmetic bag tucked under her arm. I made a kissing motion at her before I replied. She smiled and winked. “Lucid, yes, but not captured. He went willingly. In fact, he suggested it. I think he’s ticked at you for putting him in chains and thought having to track down your plane would serve you right. And I’m still not certain whether to call them hindsights. These feel different. I still think they’re real-time.”

I could hear tiny little blips over the phone line. Probably checking his cell phone for missed calls. He must have a high-end model. I can’t do that with mine when I’m talking on it. “Nobody’s called me. Are you certain about this?”

I let out a chuckle. “Oh hell no. I’m not certain about a damned thing lately. But so far, these images have been dead-on, so I figured it was worth calling you. I’m already dressed, so I figured I’d wander back to the clinic with Charles’s car to check it out. Thought you might want to come along. Are you in Boulder or Denver?”