10. Chapter 10
10
“ A gain, you have my assurances of the katari’s health.” Harkennr gestured with his remote toward the alcove. “Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to work with her as well. A katari’s abilities are exceedingly rare, as you know. If you like, I’d be happy to provide a demonstration this very moment. I dare say the Roth-Da’al would find great benefit in the additional use of a katari’s teleportation—”
“That’s enough,” Rebecca snapped and kicked herself for losing it. She forced her gaze toward Harkennr anyway, fighting to maintain her composure, and dipped her head. “Thank you, but no. I think we’ll pass on any other demonstrations today.”
The warlock’s offer to show what his technology could do, with Nyx as the subject, was sickening enough. Worse than that, Harkennr assumed Rebecca would become so much more powerful with Nyx’s magic inside her, and she was certain that was what he’d offered.
As far as she was aware, Harkennr still didn’t know her true identity as the Bloodshadow Heir or even as a Bloodshadow Elf, but he’d seen more than enough of her power in action to recognize the possibilities.
The entire idea made her shudder despite the fire’s blazing heat filling the basement.
Rebecca swallowed the bile in her throat and reminded herself they still weren’t out of the woods yet.
Not until they got Nyx out of that chair and left the protection of the Old Joliet Prison’s walls provided to them by Harkennr’s invitation.
“As you wish.” Harkennr dismissed her reply as if he’d already expected it but still had to ask. Like none of this bothered him in the least, because it absolutely didn’t. “Take all the time you need to mull it over. And I do hope you consider my offer for its invaluable possibilities. As I’m sure you can imagine, under your leadership, Roth-Da’al, Shade would also benefit greatly from this new technology. If you would agree to something of a partnership between us, there are a great many things we—”
“We’ve seen enough of this new technology,” Maxwell growled, his silver eyes targeting Harkennr with burning hatred. “And we want nothing to do with it.”
Their host’s cruel smile widened. “Oh, what you’ve seen here today barely scratches the surface, shifter. And do correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you speak for your Roth-Da’al.”
Maxwell’s chest swelled with another deep breath. The audible pop of his cracking knuckles as he clenched his fists told Rebecca he still teetered on the edge of losing it. But he finally averted his gaze from their host and dipped his head toward Rebecca, deferring to her.
“That’s all right,” she told him loud enough for Harkennr to hear. It was all for his benefit, anyway. Then a new idea hit her— a way to gain at least a little more useful information before this was over.
“But now that I think about it,” she continued, turning toward Harkennr, “your technology here does look familiar. I’ve seen something like this recently, though not to the same degree of precision, not to mention discretion. I’d call your devices far more sophisticated, without a doubt.”
When Harkennr’s slender, manicured eyebrow twitched upward, she knew she’d caught him on the hook. The guy couldn’t stand a mystery, and once his interest was piqued, he didn’t let it go until he picked it all apart to study inside and out.
“Interesting,” he said. “You’ve seen my technology before?”
“Well, that’s what I’m wondering. The other night, I came across an augmented explosive set with a proximity detonator embedded in concealed casting circles. Approaching the circles initiated a detonation sequence, though fortunately, I never got to see it go off. There was an element to it that feels similar to your work here. The lights, to start. And the effects that technology seemed to have on its nearby subjects.”
Rebecca dared to hope it meant something to him, which would account for the blank stare Harkennr fixed on her, all expression wiped from his features.
Then he threw his head back to release an explosion of tittering laughter with the same level of etiquette as everything else in his private domain.
“Well,” he said when he finally caught his breath, “I certainly wouldn’t have expected that association. But no, Roth-Da’al, I can assure you I had nothing to do with any of it. Whatever similarities you may have perceived are purely coincidental.”
His surprise and amusement seemed authentic in the moment, but there was no way to tell how far Harkennr’s truths extended. Especially when he clearly had more information, except where that awful augmented torture-bomb machine was concerned. He looked genuinely surprised to hear about that one.
“Not to make myself a broken record,” he continued, grinning as he rubbed his hands together, “but in the event that you and I were to come to an agreement regarding a possible partnership, I’m certain you would confirm that immediately with a more private examination of my technology. I can say with all confidence it is vastly more superior to anything else you’re likely to find on Earth. Or on Xahar’áhsh, for that matter. Perhaps we ought to discuss the possibilities?”
It was everything Rebecca could do not to lash out at him. She plastered another false smile across her face and still had to act relatively pleasant about it. “For now, I’m not prepared to make any decisions just yet.”
“I understand. Why don’t you take a bit more time to consider my offer and everything else that may be possible when the two of us work together, hmm? I’m sure even you would be surprised by the results, Roth-Da’al.”
Even her.
No doubt about it, he’d referred to when they’d worked together, in a sense, back when Rebecca hadn’t yet learned any better. But since then, she had.
She forced back another shiver and murmured, “I’ll think on it.”
Pushing her chair gently in beneath the table, she nodded. “For now, I’ll thank you for your hospitality. I think it’s time we took her home.”
She nodded toward Nyx lying motionless in the grotesquely cushioned torture chair.
“Absolutely.” Harkennr nodded. “She’s all yours. The three of you are free to take your leave.”
The second the words left his lips, Rebecca hurried toward the far end of the basement, Maxwell close on her heels. The shifter’s roiling fury, barely contained beneath the surface, spurred her on even faster, crashing into Rebecca from behind like a concussive wave of heat and flame and force. As if the basement had exploded and she was barely going to make it out.
In some ways, that still described this situation perfectly.
She leaped over both wide stairs up to the dais and stumbled to a stop at Nyx’s side, hesitating to touch the katari in case that worsened her condition but more than anxious to check her operative for any signs of further abuse.
Rebecca hadn’t seen Nyx once since the katari had popped back into Shade headquarters the night her transport team had been attacked and Diego, Titus, and Burke were abducted and held as bait in the abandoned amusement park. Even forty-eight hours later, though, the katari was still in bad shape.
Bruises covered her otherwise flawless face, as well as her arms and neck. The split in her bottom lip had stopped bleeding, though dried blood still crusted the area. One of her eyes, normally so bright and luminous with intelligence and compassion, would have been swollen shut if she’d been conscious enough to try opening it.
Only now, up close, did Rebecca note Nyx’s chest slowly rising and falling beneath the depth of her unconsciousness. That was the only sign of life.
If Harkennr had done anything to her at all, if Nyx turned out to be worse off now than before he’d abducted her, Rebecca couldn’t even threaten the warlock with the consequences. She couldn’t retaliate. Not yet. That would breach the truce, then all bets were off. She and Maxwell still had to get Nyx safely out of here.
Maxwell appeared on the other side of the chair, his eyes wide with concern as he warily examined Nyx’s state, also without wanting to touch her. A long, drawn-out sigh hissed through his teeth before Rebecca felt his gaze flickering up toward her.
When she looked up at him across the chair, her first thought was that her Head of Security was about to shift right here in front of her, up close and personal. The righteous fury flaring in his silver eyes said far more than words ever could.
“To avoid any potential misunderstanding,” Harkennr called, his voice echoing from much closer after his silent approach to the dais, though he remained behind on the lower level, “she was already in that state when we…recovered her.”
Maxwell growled but didn’t say a word as he slid both arms beneath Nyx’s tiny, limp, frail form and lifted her from the chair like she weighed nothing. For a shifter, that was probably true.
Rebecca turned from Maxwell’s ginger handling of the katari and hoped she’d successfully eliminated all trace of condemnation from her voice when she asked Harkennr, “That first ambush of my people’s transport vehicle the other night. That wasn’t you either?”
Harkennr’s smirk made her feel like a child who’d just expressed her grand plans for changing the world before receiving only condescending amusement from the adults in response.
“Of course not. The katari was simply the most viable target for redirecting your attention. I had already extended my invitation to you at that point, Roth-Dahl. To willfully attack any of your forces without first having had the pleasure of your company would have been most unseemly. I do still make it a habit of avoiding poor form wherever possible.”
It sounded like a genuine admission of his respect for her position and his desire to start off a new relationship in Chicago without any animosity between them. Rebecca did note, however, that Harkennr mentioned nothing about his decision to take Nyx being unprovoked.
Because it had been provoked—the night she’d gone to investigate this same compound on her own, healed herself, and Maxwell’s wolf had shown up to fail at helping her.
She and Maxwell both had provoked Kordus Harkennr into taking more extreme measures to get Rebecca here. Everything else he’d said, though—that he wasn’t involved in the ambush on the transport convoy or any part of that night at the amusement park—seemed genuine, even for him.
As much as she didn’t like it, Rebecca thought he was telling the truth about that, at least.
Maxwell rounded the chair with Nyx in his arms, pausing beside Rebecca to eye her with silent urgency.
“That’s good to hear,” Rebecca told Harkennr, then gestured toward Maxwell as they both stepped down off the dais. “This has been…an informative discussion.”
Harkennr’s lips twitched as his brilliant green eyes looked her up and down, sparkling with amusement and thinly veiled cruelty. “I’m sure.”
He waited for his guests to make it halfway back across the room before he said anything else. “Oh, I almost forgot…”
Bullshit. Harkennr’s memory was a steel trap. Unfortunately.
She slowly turned around and waited for his final parting words.
The warlock gestured toward the dais again, as if it contained more than an empty metal chair lined in thick cushions. “You’re welcome to go the route up the back staircase and out through the tunnels. That will offer you much faster access to the surface.”
Right. Because the door at the top of the front staircase was still closed and locked from the other side. No doubt Harkennr could open it himself from this side, but Rebecca didn’t envision him walking them all the way back out to their car.
“Thank you,” she said. “Where can we find this back staircase?”
“Ah, yes.” He withdrew the remote again and pointed it toward the dais and the circular alcove surrounding it. Another rumble of moving stone echoed around the room, this time slightly muted. “In the back up there, behind the black curtain. And don’t concern yourselves over directions. It’s a straight shot back to the surface from here. There’s no chance of losing your way.”
A cold prickle in the back of Rebecca’s mind warned her that there was more to this, maybe that Harkennr had a few more parting comments to offer, but he merely watched them with his prim smile, standing there in his dinner jacket like he’d just successfully hosted the most brilliant social event of the century.
She wasn’t in a hurry to take this special secret route up the back staircase and tunnel system, but they didn’t have a choice. And Harkennr knew that too. He was forcing them to take him at his word and to trust him. The thought made her sick all over again.
He didn’t stop them when she and Maxwell returned to the dais and Rebecca swept aside the curtain of thick black velvet hanging along the alcove’s back wall. When she did, the door of iron bars that could have been pulled from one of the old prison cells above clicked and swung open a few inches on its own before she opened it the rest of the way.
Once again, she and Maxwell stood on one side of an open door, staring into the gaping darkness stretching ahead of them, with no idea what they might find within. But this was how they got out.
“Back to the real world,” she muttered with a nod at Maxwell.
He snorted, unable to do much else with Nyx dangling limply in his arms, then stepped through when she gestured for him to enter first. He didn’t like this either, but until they left the boundaries of Harkennr’s facility, there was nothing they could do but keep moving forward.
As soon as they’d both entered the tunnel, the iron door swung shut behind them with a muted clang. Rebecca looked over her shoulder to see only the reverse side of the thick black velvet she’d dropped back into place. She wouldn’t have put it past Harkennr to have installed automatic mechanisms on all the doors in this place.
Maxwell paused at the sound, then they continued together side by side. “That was foolish of him to reveal these tunnels to us. It may be a faster, easier way out now, sure. But it could also be our way back in.”
“That’s exactly what he wants you to think,” Rebecca murmured before considering the new can of worms her comment might open.
He frowned at her in the tunnel’s semi-darkness as their footsteps echoed all around them. “What makes you say that?”
“Trust me, with someone like Harkennr, anything we see or hear is only because he wants us to see or hear it. It’s useless to try to use it against him.”
“I don’t see why…”
With a snort, she peered around the next bend in the tunnel before motioning him around it with her. “For the same reason fish have a terrible track record of using the worm against the fisherman.”
“Hmm…”
She waited for him to say more, but it didn’t feel like the shifter would be offering his thoughts for free at the moment, and her curiosity overwhelmed her. “Hmm? That’s it?”
“I don’t agree with your analogy,” he said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“To start,” he grumbled, “I can think of several other comparisons more fitting to you and me both than a fish . It doesn’t make sense.”
Of course it didn’t. Not to him. Especially when he still had no idea just how well Rebecca knew Kordus Harkennr. But now that it sure did seem like Harkennr had showed them everything during this meeting, as if he’d revealed his entire hand all at once, Rebecca recognized the sensation only too well. It put her even more on edge.
With a mind like Harkennr’s, any time the various pieces on his personal game board started to feel like they had it all figured out, it was because that was exactly where Harkennr wanted them, feeling exactly what he wanted them to feel.
That was when he struck to cause the most damage possible.
And now Rebecca couldn’t help but worry over everything Harkennr hadn’t revealed to them today. Including the details of whatever arrangements he’d made and agreements he’d come to with Aldous. The former Commander of Shade and the sadistic warlock with his new facility in Chicago made for an undoubtedly volatile combination.
Harkennr had very specifically not divulged the details of their previous “partnership”. Which, if Rebecca didn’t tread with extreme caution from here on out, could absolutely come back to bite Shade in the ass.
Even worse, aside from having recovered Nyx to bring her home, Rebecca had gained very little from their meeting. The lack of information when dealing with Kordus Harkennr was like showing up to a battle in the nude and completely unarmed.
After today, that battle was inevitable.