My Darkest Passion (6 page)

“Why am I here if you already had the outcome in mind?”

“You’re here because Infante is a liar.” Kynan pointed at her. “You’re not.”

Harsh faced Addison O’Henry again, who was not, after all, going to be an easy problem to dispose of. “Bejar?”

She’d been watching him, not Kynan, which was interesting. Kynan was the one with the power that kept setting her off. “That’s who grabbed me. Or what he told me his name was. I have no idea if that’s true. He could have been lying about everything. What difference does it make what his name was?”

“Bejar was a warlord,” Kynan said. “One of the Entelechy.”

“You knew him?” she said.

Full props to the warlord. He tried to back it down. “Cool your jets, Awesome. That was way before you were born.”

Harsh made a sharp gesture. “You are still not helping. Go on, Ms. O’Henry.”

“Why?” She gave a caustic laugh. “Sounds to me like you already know what you’re going to do about me.”

“Nothing is decided. Nothing.” Harsh never took his eyes off her. Like Kynan, she had undeniable power. She was undeniably kin. One of them. She didn’t yet have the discipline to reliably block herself off when she ought to, which would have been much to his benefit if he were willing to exploit it. He wasn’t. At the moment, skepticism flowed from her, an acid tainted sensation that settled in the pit of his stomach. “I will deal with Nikodemus.”

“The first few days, I thought it was all Bejar’s deal, and I’d end up buried in a ditch somewhere after he worked through whatever fantasy he was trying to make happen.” She gazed a hole into the rug. “I could hear the others, but he never talked about them. Nobody else ever came in. He never mentioned any names expect Infante’s and at the time, that name didn’t mean anything to me.”

“What did he talk about?”

“Not much. His name. The first time, he told me he was sorry. I didn’t believe him. But later, I found out about Infante. That he’d set up everything. All of it.” Her words came out stripped of emotion. Tears would have been easier for him to deal with. He would have preferred that to this stoic testament of what she’d done to survive anything like intact.

She dug her fingers into the arms of the chair so hard the muscles and tendons in her hands and forearms stood out. Harsh moved forward and crouched in front of her. Mindful of her reaction when Kynan had touched her, he made no physical contact. “Addison?”

She cocked her head at him. Silver flecks danced through the glacial blue of her eyes, and he could feel, indisputably, despite her eyes, that she was human. It was obvious, so obvious now, that the part of her that was kin was inseparable from her.

Against his better judgement, Harsh allowed himself to see her as an individual in need. He’d spent too much of his life as a human in hospitals trying to cure his patients. After all this time, it was still his nature to want to treat the injured and cure the ill. He had a duty to see that he did her no harm. No further harm.

“If you destroy my chair, I’m going to send you the bill.” When he was sure she understood the words, he added, “I will use the most expensive upholsterer I can find.”

“Don’t you have insurance?”

“High deductible, Awesome.” When he was sure he had her attention and that she was mentally present, he gave her hands a pointed stare. “And it’s coming right out of your pocket.”

She stared at her hands, puzzled for a moment. Then she relaxed her fingers. “Sorry.”

He returned to his chair. “How did Infante come to be injured?”

“One time, he came in before Bejar was done.” She put up a wall between her words and the events connected to them. He recognized what she was doing; pushing a part of herself away, making it inaccessible to her. And to him. “He was furious. In an absolute rage. He shouted some horrible things, and he yanked Bejar off me.” She drew a steadying breath. “I thought at first I was being rescued. Only, apparently, Infante had told him to kidnap a different woman, my girlfriend, I guess, and he’d only just found out I wasn’t her.”

He felt Kynan’s reaction to that, and Harsh lifted a hand, a sharp motion intended to keep either of them saying from something that would make this harder for her. For once, Kynan stayed silent.

“He had a knife, Infante did.” She closed her eyes and for a time, Harsh wasn’t sure if she was still with them. When she was looking at him again, she was impassive. Clinical, even. “He cut out Bejar’s heart while he was still alive. And, and…I think something went wrong. I could feel it. Infante had Bejar’s heart in his hand, and there was all this pressure, like the air was about to burst into flames. He dropped the knife.”

“Go on.”

She was looking at him, but she wasn’t seeing him. Not really. “I picked it up and stabbed him with it. Infante, I mean. I stabbed Infante.”

She was, he already knew, incredibly sensitive to the kind of psychic links that were common, normal, even, between the kin. She would not, as they’d learned already, react well to anything that could be construed as forcing her cooperation. Going into her head was an unacceptable option for him. He didn’t bother proposing it. A low-level link flashed on. One way, in that he gave her access to his psychic state without any reciprocation from her.

“Easy there, Harsh.”

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment of Kynan’s warning. Well placed. They did not yet know for a fact that she wasn’t a danger to them. “Tell me everything that happened between the time Infante stabbed Bejar and the moment you picked up the knife. Don’t leave out anything.”

“Bejar was on the ground, and Infante was kneeling next to him. He was speaking a language I didn’t recognize.” She lifted her knees, a manoeuver she accomplished while making sure her shirt got tugged down to cover her. “There was an odd cadence to the words. Not poetic, but close. Infante reached into Bejar’s chest and ripped out his heart. I remember feeling sick and dizzy.” Her breath came hard. “The smell of blood. So much blood. The air around them was glowing, I swear it was glowing, and there was this pressure everywhere.” She blinked, slowly. “I knew for a fact Infante was going to kill me next. I made sure he couldn’t.”

“What else?”

“The whole time, Bejar didn’t make a sound.” She put her hands over her ears. “He looked like he was screaming, but there wasn’t any sound except for whatever Infante was saying.”

He’d witnessed more than one killing ritual in his lifetime, and he didn’t care to have those images in his head. His stomach clenched, because he remembered the way the air got dense, the sweet tangy scent of blood. The unbelievable silence of the victim.

“I was not going to stand there doing nothing when I was going to be next.”

He knew what a killing ritual entailed. He knew precisely how the victim suffered, and, with her blank affect, he had no idea what she thought of what had been done to Bejar. Kynan had come around to the other side of the couch and was now sitting down, both forearms along the tops of his spread-apart thighs. Kynan, too, had seen more than his share of such murders.

“And?” Harsh said.

“And what?” She threw her hands into the air and lost her composure. Interestingly, the wall she put up stayed in place. Her psychic state was knowable only from her facial expression and gestures. Harsh, having been raised among humans, had more facility at that than someone like Kynan. Her voice quivered at the edges and for some reason that made things worse.

“It wasn’t an accident. I stabbed Infante even though he never laid a hand on me. I stabbed him because I wasn’t going to be next and because it was obvious he was responsible for what Bejar did to me.” She grabbed the chair arms again and leaned forward, eyes on him. “He wasn’t pissed at Bejar for raping me. He was pissed because Bejar brought back the wrong woman.”

If she’d been anyone else, if she’d been pure kin, he would have touched her. It would have been the obvious and right thing to do, to touch a demon who’d been through something like this. He wanted to comfort her, but touch, so necessary among the kin, was the very last thing she needed. “What happened after you stabbed Infante?”

“He hit the ground and didn’t move.” She shifted her legs and tugged her shirt down to cover herself again.

“And after that?”

“I’m not sure.” She wrapped her hands around her head and didn’t so much as flinch even though her hands had to be clasped over the contusions at the back of her skull. Her lack of response to pain was worrisome. “I might have blanked out for a couple of seconds. I was sick to my stomach, I remember that.”

Harsh gazed at her. “You’re certain that was after you stabbed Infante?”

“Yes. It was after. I’ve never hurt anybody like that. Not ever. I’ve never been a violent person, but I didn’t want to die. Infante was bleeding and screaming at me, and I swear to you he set fire to the air. I saw it. I saw him do it.”

“You’re certain you didn’t blank out until after you stabbed Infante? You’ve implied you might have been hallucinating, after all. Is it possible you’re mistaken about the order of events?”

“No. After I stabbed him, I wanted to run, but I felt like I’d been hit by a bus from the inside. I couldn’t get any air. Or move. If that had happened before, I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the knife, let alone stab anyone with it.”

“Do you need a moment?”

“No. I do not need a moment.” But she did. She needed several before she could speak. “I remember thinking Bejar was seeping into me, through my skin and into my bones and inside my head. Except his body was on the floor and his chest was cut open and you could see from his face he’d died horribly. His heart was on the floor, and I remember I felt…sad, and I knew that was crazy after what he’d done.” Her gaze flicked to his and in that brief connection he saw through the control to her despair. “I wanted to put it back, his heart, I mean.” She let out a breath. “As if that would fix all the horrible things he did. But then the door blew open and one of the men who came in did something to Infante, and he was fine. More or less.”

“And then?”

“And then, Infante told his men to hold me down, and I thought I was going to die. I really did. They poured something disgusting down my throat, and he said something else I didn’t understand. They shaved my head and, you know, I just went away while they did things. I think…I think”—she touched the back of her head—”that’s when I got this. Anyway, afterward, Infante seemed to think I would do whatever he told me to. It was pretty damn funny to see his face when I told him to go to hell.”

“What would happen, Kynan,” Harsh said, “if a killing ritual failed to complete as intended?”

Kynan interlaced his fingers. He was thinking too hard about the questions to set her off again, for which Harsh was very grateful. “Infante’s injured, there’s no magehelds with him and no mage there as backup in case things go south. Which they do. Bejar’s heart is gone so no hope of him regaining corporeal form.”

“Agreed. At that point, Bejar is pure animus that went straight for the best available container.”

Kynan’s eyes flicked to her. “That would be you, Awesome.”

“It’s like you’re speaking in code.”

Harsh tapped his fingers on the couch. He addressed Kynan. “Not an indwell?”

“Not possible. Not if it happened the way she said.”

He returned focus to Kynan. “Not an indwell. Not a completed ritual. What the hell was it, then?”

“I don’t know. I never saw a ritual go wrong that way. Even when Magellan was first starting out, he never worked without backup.” Kynan, who didn’t react well when the subject of the mage who’d enslaved him came up, twisted toward Harsh, far calmer than Harsh would have predicted. Kynan pointed at her. “She’s not magekind. You know it. We both know it. The ritual didn’t complete, so there was no binding Bejar to anything. Not an indwell because his heart was gone for too long before she reacted.”

Harsh stared at the ceiling. “Nikodemus isn’t going to be happy about this. At all.”

Kynan went on. “It’s more like a talisman cracking than anything else. Infante tried to take her mageheld too soon.”

She looked from him to Kynan. “What does that mean?”

“I means you’re damned lucky Infante’s an asshole and an idiot. If you ask me, Harsh, she didn’t fully assimilate until sometime after they locked her in the shed.”

“No doubt. Ms. O’Henry. Please go on. What happened after Infante tried, and failed to take you mageheld?” He saw her confusion and explained. “When a mage enslaves one of us, we say they are mageheld. That’s what he thought he was doing to you. Because he knew Bejar’s life had taken refuge in you, and that therefore, you had become quite dangerous to him.”

She drew a deep breath. “I ran. Infante sent his men after me, and I was almost fast enough. But not quite. There was a fight, six against one. When it was over, five of them were dead, and I wasn’t.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how.” She trailed her fingers along her forearm. “My skin was hot. So hot. I couldn’t see right—”

Kynan exploded in his typically ill-advised manner. “She’s a fucking warlord, Harsh. Bejar was one of the Entelechy. How the hell do you think it happened?”

“—drugs, I think, they gave me. I was shaking too hard to get away from the last one.”

Kynan rolled his eyes. “Hundred bucks says those five dead magehelds are one with her now. She’d have taken them on whether she knew what she was doing or not.”

Unthinkable. What she was saying was unthinkable, that she’d have that kind of power so soon afterward. “Not possible.”

“How about you think about that for a second?”

Well. Yes. Kynan was right. He usually was about things like this. But he didn’t feel like giving Kynan the satisfaction of telling him so. He felt sick with rage, and he had to block that away because he didn’t want her to think any of that rage was directed at her.

Kynan had enough rage for everyone. “Giuseppe Infante is running a breeding program.”

“We don’t know that.”

“When Bejar assaulted you,” Kynan said—and Harsh was just grateful he’d not chosen cruder, uglier words—”was he in human form?”

“No.”

“Addison,” Harsh said. He hated himself for what he had to say. To ask. “Do you know if Infante ordered Bejar to have coitus with you for the purpose of impregnating you?”