My Immortal Assassin (15 page)

She looked to Nikodemus. “That accurate?”

“More or less.”

This time she looked to Durian. “I take it you’re already bound over like that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I see the problem, Durian.” She tapped the side of her leg, trying to figure the downside. He could have been a rock, for all the emotion he showed. In her head, it was a different matter. Durian was close to breaking with Nikodemus and she knew she couldn’t let that happen.

“It’s necessary, Big Dog, and you know it.”

“It’s dangerous.” Durian and Nikodemus practically spit sparks at each other. “And you know it.”

“What happens if I don’t get bound over?”

“Nothing,” Durian said.

Nikodemus was pulling again. “You aren’t a warlord yet, Big Dog.”

“That was never my intent.”

The stress between the two climbed again.

“What was your intent?” Nikodemus’s voice got very soft. “Were you looking for a way to break your oath? Is there something going on I need to know about?”

Durian went down on one knee, fingers of one hand pressed to his forehead. “No, warlord.”

“Get up.”

Durian rose, but nothing was resolved yet. He said, “You have a bigger problem than Gray, warlord. Christophe dit Menart meant to take our children and raise them to slavery. She will testify to that.”

Nikodemus was silent. “He took her before the agreement went into effect. What he did was before she was kin. So far, he’s keeping his word, Big Dog. No new magehelds. No attacks on my sworn kin. I don’t like it any better than you, but he’s not in breach of our agreement. Which, you might recall, you helped forge.”

“He is breaching the agreement.”

“Proof.” He leaned forward. “We need proof.”

“He’s using Rasmus Kessler, who, as you are aware, is not bound by any agreement. Kessler’s found a way to overcome the damage done to him, warlord, and he is now working against you, with Christophe’s help.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Proof?”

Durian continued. “Kessler attacked Gray and me using magehelds whose minds had been destroyed. We saw this. I saw Kessler with my own eyes.”

“You saw Kessler with Christophe?”

Durian made a cutting motion with the side of his hand. “If you wait until there is no doubt, it will be too late. Give me dit Menart’s sanction.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Then give me Kessler’s. That’s no breach.”

“Rasmus Kessler and I are negotiating. Obviously, I wasn’t going to ask you to do the honors and you’ve been making yourself scarce lately.” Nikodemus cocked his head. “We can’t go back to the way things were. We can’t. You listen to me, Big Dog. I understand your feelings about Kessler, but I’d fucking talk to Álvaro Magellan if he were still alive.”

The tension bore down on Gray like a weight. The two were at the breaking point, and she didn’t know what to do to stop it from happening. The warlord glanced at her and she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, warlord. I won’t go back to Christophe.”

Nikodemus scowled so hard she took an involuntary step back. “You’re kin. I don’t turn kin over to the magekind. Not for any reason.” He sighed. “If you’re not bonded to me, I don’t have direct authority over you. Christophe knows that. You know that. You’re working with my assassin and, sweetheart, what he’s teaching you to do makes you too dangerous not to have that power bound over to a warlord.” He raised his hands. “If not me, fine. But it’ll have to be Kynan instead.”

Gray snorted. “Hell no.”

The warlord laughed. “Still having trouble making nice, is he?”

Durian stayed intent on the warlord. “Since she is not bound over, under the right circumstances, she can kill Christophe without breaking the agreement.”

The air crackled as Durian’s bonds to Nikodemus stretched to the limit. She knew it. She could feel it. “Don’t do this,” Nikodemus said.

She walked between the two of them and faced Nikodemus. Tigran had taught her that kin social structure was based on a combination of power and the bonds that conferred rank. A fiend with no bonds was almost certainly weak and definitely at risk of existing outside the social structure of a highly social people. The kin didn’t enter into such bonds lightly. As Durian had already pointed out to her, they carried consequences, but they were also a fact of their existence.

“If I’m bound over to you, what does that mean?”

“It means you won’t be able to kill except on my order, in self-defense, or, in your case, in defense of Durian.”

“Gray—”

She ignored Durian for now. “My decision, right? Not yours. Not Durian’s.”

Nikodemus nodded.

Her decision meant giving up the revenge she’d promised herself after Christophe murdered Tigran, but if doing so meant keeping Durian from breaking with Nikodemus, well, it felt like the right thing to do. “I say bind me over.”

CHAPTER 17

W
hile Durian waited for this ill-begotten situation to be anything but what it was, Nikodemus faced the door and flicked a hand. The locks clicked shut. The rest of the room sealed off, too. Then he looked at Gray over his shoulder and winked at her. “Don’t want anyone walking in on us.”

“I guess not.” She shoved her hands in her back pockets, trying not to be obvious about watching them. Not that it mattered. Durian had shut himself off from her the minute she agreed to be bound over, and it was bothering her. Gray, on the other hand, wasn’t blocking herself so he and Nikodemus both knew she was worried. Nervous. Uncertain. Afraid. As well she should be.

She was choosing him over killing Christophe, and if it weren’t for the fact that her decision had prevented disaster between him and Nikodemus, Durian would have been angrier than he was. He might not like her decision, but he could not, in conscience, judge it a betrayal.

“Don’t be an ass, Durian.” Nikodemus went to him. He put a hand on Durian’s shoulder. Durian could not help but react. Though the contact soothed him, the effect should have been more immediate. More intense. He wondered how badly his bonds to the warlord were weakened or whether it was his oath to Gray that interfered.

He inclined his head. “Warlord.”

“Durian,” Nikodemus said softly. “I know this isn’t what you want. I understand what you were after.” His hand tightened on Durian’s shoulder. “If I were in your place, I might have done the same. This has to be done. She doesn’t want it to be Kynan and I’m guessing you don’t want that, either. Do you want me to ask one of the others? Huijan maybe?”

“No.” He didn’t want Gray bound to Nikodemus or to anyone else. For any reason. The reaction was irrational, he knew that. Just as this aspect of his power needed to be bound to a warlord, so did hers.

“Let’s get this done.” Nikodemus took a step back and toe-heeled off his boots. He stripped off his shirt next, then his socks and jeans. Naked, he tossed his clothes onto his chair, oblivious to Gray quickly turning her back.

Nikodemus took on his true form.

The room got warmer, the air thicker. The skin down Durian’s back rippled with the magical resonance.

Gray peeked at Durian. Her pupils were huge and her cheeks were bright red. He wanted to reach out to her, but that would only cause problems. “Please tell me I don’t have to take off my clothes for this.”

“Sorry, but yes,” Nikodemus said. Gray’s head whipped around, her eyes wide.

“You don’t.” Durian put a hand on the back of her neck. “He’s being an ass.” He brought her in close.

“You’re no fun,” Nikodemus said. He gave them both an easy grin. “Keep your clothes on, sweetheart.”

Durian slipped off his shoes. As he, too, stripped down, he folded his clothes and placed them on the seat of another chair, out of the way. He kept his one-way link with Gray.

Changing forms wasn’t entirely comfortable. The urge to be naked tended to be overwhelming, and Nikodemus was right. It was much easier, much more natural to be unconfined by human clothing.

Durian stayed where he was, and let his body shift. His surroundings seemed to shift, too, though he knew they hadn’t. In this form, his experience of the world changed. Magic flowed along his skin and through his body without the need to pull for it. Colors were more intense, more vibrant. All his senses sharpened. He no longer had a core of magic encased in a human form. His emotions were bigger. More elemental. More raw.

In this form, Gray’s humanity called to him irresistibly. She was ancient prey. She was female. The object of his intense sexual desire. By extension, Nikodemus would have the same reaction to her. To any human female. Regardless of his bonds to Carson. Gray knew it and was afraid.

Nikodemus walked toward her and Durian immediately found himself holding back from an attack.

He crouched, one hand touching the floor. He growled, twitching with the urge to keep Nikodemus from getting anywhere near her. But he managed himself and stayed where he was.

Light altered and bent around the warlord so that at times his body glittered brilliant black or slid into shadow so he was hardly visible at all. Durian’s oaths to Nikodemus burned hot and collided with his obligations to Gray. He held steady when Nikodemus touched her. She was his sworn fiend. What Nikodemus was about to do would not change that.

This must be done.

Gray’s eyes opened wide at the warlord’s touch to her forehead and upper chest. At the contact, the surge of magic from her made for a potent mix of power tinged with her very human fear. She wasn’t going to break because of her emotions, Durian did not doubt that for a moment. She was kin, after all.

He widened his connection with Nikodemus and Gray.

Along his skin, inside him, through the core of what he was, his oaths shifted in weight and realigned. The sensation was odd, disorienting even. For years, he had never wavered in loyalty to Nikodemus, even when they disagreed. Nikodemus had been right to worry about Durian’s allegiance. Now, at this moment, his need to protect Gray took precedence over his oath of fealty to Nikodemus.

He moved closer, concentrating on what Nikodemus was doing while keeping himself in Gray’s head. Enough to be certain she was safe, not enough to interfere with Nikodemus.

The binding required a deft use of power. As Nikodemus shaped his magic, the air around him shattered into prisms that reflected color throughout the room. Nikodemus formed the threads that created the oath that would prevent her from using her killing magic without justified cause. He worked quickly. Deftly and with a precision that made what he did look simple.

When it was done, Gray pressed her hands to her chest and stood motionless, head bowed.

There was no sound in the room but for their breathing.

Nikodemus remained standing over Gray, his head thrown back, his body vanishing into shadows. His chest expanded with his breath. Then, without a word, he turned on his heel and walked out.

Gray lifted her head. Her eyes were wide, icy blue in her pale face, not in reaction to her bond with Nikodemus, but to seeing him in his true form. Her dark lashes and eyebrows made the color of her hair all the more brilliant and unnatural. Her hands remained touching her chest. Their gazes locked and Durian felt his control thin. He didn’t dare move.

Slowly, Gray walked to where Durian stood. He quivered with all the instincts of his kind; the desire to possess, to increase the mental connection they already had, perhaps even to disappear into her. She knew it, too, and knelt in front of him anyway. The magic in the room continued to spread through them both. He curled his taloned fingers toward his palms, resisting the urge to touch her.

She studied him, taking in what he was. “We’ll find another way to take down Christophe, all right?”

CHAPTER 18

A few days later. Broadway near Baker, San Francisco

D
urian crooked his fingers at Iskander. “Come after her. And mean it, fiend.”

Iskander stood there, a smile spreading over his face. “You sure?”

There was only so much a construct offered. Gray needed to go up against the unpredictability of an independent consciousness. Physically, she was far beyond any of the lesser kin, which was why he’d tapped Iskander.

She tapped Iskander’s shin with the toe of one foot. She was much better than Iskander realized, and Durian was looking forward to him finding out just what he was facing. “Do it, big boy.”

Iskander wasted no time. Except he didn’t come after her. He came at Durian hard and fast. Durian centered himself just in time.

Gray’s oath to him required nothing less of her than to lay down her life to protect him, and she went after Iskander with a ferocity that echoed in his bones. Despite everything, there was nothing wrong with her oath. She shouted, and his connection with her flashed through his body. Hot. Intense. Immediate. For a moment, while he was fully in her head, Durian couldn’t see anything at all. The next, he felt Iskander and Gray both with a precision that startled him. His vision returned.

She rolled, turned, grabbed, and had Iskander on his back and one hand around his throat, going for his heart. Iskander laughed and blocked her easily. The tats down his face lit with an inner glow. He damn near took off her head.

Her body bowed backward but she reached for his chest, her fingers inches from a touch. Just when he thought Iskander had forgotten himself, the other fiend released his magic, and she flew off him, sliding several feet on the floor.

“I forgot about her oath,” Iskander said. His eyes stayed a brilliant, unworldly blue.

Gray was on her feet, her mouth pressed closed so tight her lips were white at the edges. Her hands, too, were clenched at her sides. She stood and momentarily towered over Iskander like Godzilla over a fallen Rodin. “This isn’t a game, Iskander. Play it the way Durian said.”

Durian absorbed what she was, how she looked—her svelte body, lean and yet so undeniably female—and Iskander hooked in. Iskander’s reaction to Gray’s humanity and her magic was predictable and entirely normal. The sizzle between the three of them grew insistent.

“Why?” Iskander got to his feet in one motion. He slid a glance at Durian but addressed Gray. “The world out there will not play by your rules. What are you going to do when Nikodemus sends you on your first sanction, little one? Ask him to please hold still while you kill him?”

She closed the distance between them until she was toe-to-toe with Iskander. “Are you trying to be an asshole?”

“I don’t have to try.” He grinned. “It comes naturally.”

Gray looked at Durian. “How the hell do you stand him?”

“We all have our burdens to bear. He is mine.”

“What have you been doing to the Big Dog?” Iskander put one hand on Gray’s shoulder and the other over his heart. Durian held back a growl of protest. “Did you go out and steal him a personality?”

“Lay off, will you?” She poked Iskander in the chest. The tension receded.

Iskander met Durian’s gaze over the top of her head. “My friend. Do you deserve such loyalty?”

“Can we get back to work?” Gray took a step back.

“Anything you want.” Iskander’s smile slowly faded. He cut off his connection with Gray, and Durian did the same because he didn’t want to incidentally help her. She needed to know how to fight alone.

Durian lifted a hand in Iskander’s direction and gave the signal to start. And then Iskander pulled. Hard. His eyes cycled from plain blue to cobalt. The tats down his face deepened in color. A wave of air solidified and shot straight at Gray.

She deflected the attack just in time. Considering who she was up against—there was a reason Nikodemus kept Iskander around—she acquitted herself well. Iskander needed fifteen minutes before he had her immobilized. When she was down, Durian found himself locked out of Iskander’s head. He did not, at first, think much of it. The practice bout was over.

Iskander’s hand gripped her throat, and the sound he made rippled through the air like something that had walked in straight off the savannah. The hint of cobalt in his hair shimmered until there was no mistaking the color for anything natural. He locked gazes with Gray and leaned over her. He released her throat, but still touched her. “You want an animal?” he said softly, his mouth just inches from her face. “Say the word and I’ll do you however you want it. Whatever he won’t.”

“Fuck you,” Gray whispered.

Iskander grinned happily. “That’s the idea.”

“Iskander.” Durian didn’t like the way they were looking at each other. “Behave please.”

“Why?” His hands were wandering. “That isn’t what she wants. Is it?”

She pushed him away, rolled to her feet and without looking at Durian, reset. “Again.” She stared at Iskander. “No link this time.”

The air took on an electricity that rippled along Durian’s skin. The stripes down Iskander’s body glowed. Gray’s eyes did that odd jitter, as her vision changed, but her focus was laser sharp.

They began.

Gray quickly slipped beside Iskander, but he whirled, blocked her as she came at him from the side. Iskander brought a hand down so fast she almost didn’t duck soon enough. Even Durian standing where he was felt the disturbance in the air as Iskander’s hand skimmed past the back of her neck.

Her best hope was getting in behind him; failing that, coming in dangerously close. Durian didn’t doubt that was her intention. Recklessness was a part of who she was now.

And then Iskander dampened his magic.

Durian lost all sense of him magically.

The air around Iskander shimmered, and he vanished.

Gray didn’t react in the slightest. He felt like he was watching his own personal performance. From watching her he could guess where Iskander was or what he might be doing. Twenty minutes later she was still untouched.

His student was brilliant.

Without warning, Gray stopped dead. At first, Durian suspected a ruse, but she didn’t move and that wasn’t like her. Her hands rose to her throat and her eyes opened wide. Her magic lost focus, and the whorls on her arm and temple went from green to cobalt blue.

Iskander, who could never really be trusted, had taken possession of Gray’s physical body, and she was panicking. His heart thudded against his ribs and without conscious thought his magic was at his fingertips.

“Iskander.”

The fiend reappeared. His tats glowed searing blue as he dropped to one knee, swept her feet beneath her and that was it. She went down hard.

Iskander touched her shoulder. “You’re dead, human.”

Gray lay on her back, panting. The traceries on her arm faded as she lost contact with her magic. Her eyes went blank.

“Enough,” Durian said.

Iskander put his face close to hers, his hair falling forward, and growled. But the sound wasn’t meant to intimidate as it had been before. She pushed him away, except Iskander didn’t budge. He kept his hand on her.

She glared up at him. “You going to kill me now?”

“I’d rather kill Durian.” He released her, though, and very deliberately snarled at Durian. She shot up like she was on fire. The next thing Durian knew, Iskander was on his back and Gray was straddling him, her hands pressed hard to his chest. Her upper arms trembled.

She leaned over him. “The hell you will, fiend.”

“It’s not Durian I want.” He smiled at her. “But remember, Gray,” he said softly. He cupped the side of her face. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

“More practice then.” She remained straddling him, her breathing more normal. But now her magic was disorganized. Something had happened when Iskander took possession, and she hadn’t shaken it off yet. Still she looked over her shoulder at Durian. “Again?”

“No,” he said. He let go of his psychic blocks, though. Gray and Iskander resonated with magic. The connection between her and Iskander went deeper than the normal casual link, though.

One hand still on Iskander’s chest, she dipped her head to her other arm to wipe sweat off her forehead. “He’s right. I’m still not ready.”

“Babycakes,” Iskander said, “was that as good for you as it was for me?”

“Shut up.”

Even with Durian’s superficial link with her, her response to Iskander was unmistakably normal for the kin. Perhaps not lust but not nothing, either. Iskander had relaxed enough that Durian was aware of his state of arousal, too, and that
was
lust.

Gray set her palms on Iskander’s chest. “You’re a freak, you know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

They were all three of them on edge, and the three-way connection was back, flowing between them. Durian considered dropping out of the link, but found he did not wish to cede anything to Iskander. Doing so was the same as telling Iskander he felt no claim on her but that of her oath.

“Do you do social media?” Iskander said. He put a palm on the middle of her back, turned his hand and slid his fingers down the back of her workout pants. “What’s your Twitter id? We’ll follow each other and I’ll DM you my home address so you can come over. Whenever you want. You can do whatever you want to me.” His hand delved and he waggled his eyebrows. “Tonight?”

Durian clenched his teeth. The asshole was coming on to her.

“Perv.” But she was laughing.

“Oh, yeah, Gray.” Iskander’s voice fell a notch. “Oh, yeah.”

Durian, willing or not, was pulled along with the two of them. Iskander was sparking off her humanity—and he could not blame the fiend for it.

She got off him and extended a hand. He took it and she helped him up. He straightened his shirt and adjusted his jeans while she turned around to face Durian.

From behind her, Iskander’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, and then he dropped his chin to her shoulder. She closed her eyes, and Durian was pulled along. He let it happen even though he knew it was foolish.

The heat between the three of them racheted up. Iskander circled an arm around Gray and with a swipe of a now taloned fingertip, opened a cut along the side of her throat. He drew in a deep breath. “Sweet,” he whispered.

Durian took her hand in his and from nowhere, Iskander’s fingers wrapped around their joined hands. The three of them might well have ended up on the damn floor, except that the magic turned ugly on them.

An explosion from downstairs shook the floor and rattled the windows.

They didn’t make it two steps toward the stairs when something screeched like a dying beast. They shoved on their shoes and raced down the stairs with the smell of ozone wafting toward them.

Magic burned around them when they reached the center of the magic. They were under attack from a mage.

Durian watched the entire bank of windows along the far wall bow inward and shatter.

Shards of glass flew through the air.