Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“What’s that?” I asked thickly.
“The report. Useless thing though it is. We were infiltrated,” the voice was as clipped as I’d ever heard it, because Hargroves was pissed.
But he was old-school British, so that meant he just got more.
More straight-laced, more starched-collar uptightness, more angry little gimlet-eyed stares, more of all of it.
It was Hargroves at his irascible best, and I was not here for it.
I wasn’t here for much, as I was already regretting sitting up, but there was nothing for it now. I took the packet, after several tries, because it seemed to be moving around, damn it! But I finally managed and leafed through it.
Surveillance photos, reports on who had come in and out of HQ yesterday for hours before the attack, pics of the aftermath, including a lot of bodies, a chain of custody log for collected evidence, and—
“Not now,” Cyrus said, and took it away.
Just as well; my eyes were crossing, but it set Hargroves off. He had already been all but vibrating with anger or indignation or something, and now it exploded—although in a typical fashion. “Is there any reason why you have to be here?” he asked Cyrus acidly.
A brown eyebrow raised. “It’s my house?”
“I was under the impression that this is Mage de Croisset’s house!”
“We’re engaged.”
“Which has nothing to do with anything! This is a confidential discussion, and you and these others,” a withering stare took in my usual houseful of assorted oddness, “do not have clearance!”
“Funny thing. You didn’t seem to have a problem with that last night.”
“And I have expressed the Corps’ appreciation—”
Bet that had stung.
“—but that does not negate the fact that you should have left her with us, so we could do this in a secure area—”
“Secure?” Somebody said, and somebody else laughed.
“Oh. Should I?” Cyrus asked pleasantly.
And shit.
“Cyrus,” I croaked, but yeah. That wasn’t gonna help.
For a Were, almost losing a mate was... well, it was about as bad as it got, and to lose her at the same time that others of his pack were seriously injured, and Noah had definitely been seriously injured, was—
Dangerous.
Right now, he was dangerous.
I wondered if Hargroves knew it.
Probably not. And I was in no shape to intervene if Cyrus finally lost that vaunted cool of his. And if ever there was a time...
“The last time I left her with you,” Cyrus said, almost casually, “there was some concern about what to do with a war mage who had been dosed with Jenkins’ brew. About how she might need to be dealt with, for the general good. About how she might need to be put down.”
The pack exploded—guess some of them hadn’t known that little tidbit of what had happened a month ago, when all this started. But to his credit, Hargroves didn’t deny it. “That was before we understood the current situation—”
“Which is?”
“That she can think through it. That she can reason, even in that... guise. Otherwise, she was an intolerable threat—”
“And tonight that threat saved your ass!” someone said furiously. I didn’t see who, because I had my eyes on Cyrus’s face and was busy digging my nails into his arm. Hard.
It wasn’t enough.
“I’m tired,” I said loudly, before he could Change and eat my boss’s face, possibly literally. “I need rest.”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes were those of his beast. And both of them knew what I was doing.
But he was more concerned about me than he was furious with Hargroves, so instead of being attacked, the old man got backed into a wall by an Alpha Were who was no longer casting the shadow of a man on the ceiling.
“Lia and I are a pair,” Cyrus said. “If you ever think about moving against her again, remember this: what happens to her will happen to you and your entire Corps. On that, you have my word.”
It was quiet and cold, and said almost without inflection. There was no yelling, no theatrics, no anything. But he meant every word, and Hargroves knew it.
Cyrus got a brief nod in return before he glanced at me. “Five minutes, then I’m throwing them out.”
“Got it.”
I’d be lucky to last that long anyway.
He left, dragging his wolves with him, probably because if he stayed, the Corps would be minus another member.
I waited until they were gone and collapsed back against the bed.
Caleb must have the kids somewhere, because Hargroves and I were alone.
Even the bodyguards the Corps required him to take everywhere, and which were probably going to be doubled after this, were outside, drinking up all the good coffee.
I could smell it, but hadn’t been brought any.
Probably not on the invalid approved list.
I allowed myself a small sigh.
Hargroves stood up straight and adjusted his lapels. “It seems I might have a few things to learn about Weres, after all.”
I blinked at him. Damn, I thought. I’m hallucinating.
And then I knew I was, when he actually sat down on a corner of the bed.
“I’m getting old, Lia,” he told me, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I thought I knew everything worth knowing about magic, but lately...” The silver head shook. “I don’t know this. Perhaps I’m slipping.”
“If you’re slipping, what does that make the rest of us?” I asked hoarsely, and had eyes as sharp as lasers suddenly bore into mine.
They were gray today, to match his suit, or possibly his mood. The face around them certainly appeared thunderous enough. And his voice wasn’t any happier when he spoke.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of any of this. All I know is that the pressure I’ve been getting—and resisting—to use Jenkins’ discovery was substantiated tonight—”
“Resisting?” I sat up straight again. “Was that why you came here yesterday, when you never do that? Was that why you told Caleb that the Corps is thinking about developing a Relic task force? Why you said, and I quote... ‘who could subdue a Relic but another Relic’?”
I broke off panting because that had taken a lot out of me, but my fury from last night, which had gotten me to the Corps’ HQ in the first place, lent me strength. My God, I was just as angry now, and for a moment, we glared at each other.
Then Hargroves’ thin lips got even thinner, to the point that I was surprised he could answer at all. “I hate this,” he announced.
“What?”
“All of it! The slaughter at HQ—we’ll be digging flesh out of the walls for weeks, some of it ours!
In the area we’re supposed to be safest. Safest!
” he looked disgusted. “We’re not supposed to need safety; we’re supposed to be the ones protecting others.
But who can trust us to do that when we can’t even protect ourselves?
“We lost six good men last night, and may lose a seventh before this is over. And the toll would have been much higher than that, would have been all of us, if you hadn’t burst in like—” he broke off and stared at me for a moment, searching my face for something, probably the same thing I had searched my counterpart’s for. He didn’t seem to find it.
“We don’t even know how they got in,” he added, after a moment. “The wards weren’t overcome, they were switched off. Meaning we have a traitor among us. When we can least afford it!
“So I came here to ask if you noticed anything—anything at all—that could help. Point me toward the man, Lia,” he said, leaning forward, his face terrible. “Tell me who to look for, before he does this again. Or something worse!”
I’d never seen Hargroves like this. I wasn’t sure many had. He was always so starched, so prim and proper, so old school Corps—
But then, maybe he still was. There were rumors of how things had been done back in the day. Of Corpsmen who just... disappeared... and nobody wanted to talk about it afterward. I wondered if the same thing would happen to the traitor.
I thought about Noah and wondered if I cared.
“Think,” he told me. “You must have had better senses than we did, in that other guise. You must have seen something, heard something, smelled something—”
“I mostly smelled blood,” I said, but I tried anyway.
The problem was that the other mind I’d been in for most of the attack hadn’t thought like a modern human, or a human at all.
But it hadn’t been like the animal mind I had glimpsed at times with my wolf, either.
It was fully Other, something so alien, so strange that I didn’t know how to explain it to him, or even to myself.
She had felt pleasure in her pack; that was familiar enough. She had enjoyed savaging her enemies; I could get behind that. She had understood her role as Lupa better than I ever had, accepting the leadership role with a calmness that had persisted even up to the moment of her death.
She hadn’t been thinking about her own demise then, but was just happy that the pack would live on and remember her.
It had literally been the only thing in her mind.
And later, when we’d met... wherever we’d met, assuming that I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing, she had been equally inscrutable.
She’d never asked whether we would live, or be crippled for life, or anything at all. She’d only wanted to talk about some dead mage who wasn’t us. Someone who—
I stopped, my thoughts all piling up on each other, like a wolf who tries to turn too fast and ends up with its haunches around its ears.
“What?” Hargroves’ voice came immediately. He’d been watching me and seen my expression change.
I held up a finger, my eyes going to the same spot where I’d been standing yesterday, when he was here last. And where I’d fought something, what had Jen called it? “A Chindi?”
“What?” Hargroves’ voice sharpened, and it had already been honed enough to cut glass.
“What Jen was talking about yesterday,” I said. “That thing we fought in here. What if the spirit that attacked you... wasn’t the only one? What if there was a backup in case you detected yours?”
“What are you talking about?”
I swallowed; it was getting exhausting to talk.
“The spirit I pulled off you... I don’t think I noticed it.
.. I think she did. The other version of me.
She must have been close enough to the surface.
.. after what happened at the grocery store to see it or smell it or something.
.. and she alerted me. Cyrus couldn’t even detect it, and his nose is better than mine. But not better... than hers.”
I held up a finger again when he tried to interrupt, because I was fading and needed to get this out.
“And she told me something when I was out... That a ‘dead war mage did this.’ I didn’t... know what she meant, but what if she noticed another Chindi? And not just any spirit... but one of ours? A ‘dead war mage’?”
Hargroves stared at me like I might be crazy. “A spirit can’t deactivate wards!”
“No, but whoever they’re controlling can.
” I swallowed and breathed for a second, gathering strength to puzzle it out.
“You were wearing one when you came in here... and didn’t know it, because it hadn’t tried to attack you.
Maybe it was hitching a ride... waiting until you went down to the right levels at HQ.
.. where the talismans for the wards are—”
“And then what?” he looked furious. “I wouldn’t have deactivated them! No matter what it did to me!”
“Not consciously, no. But what if it could take over... for a second? You’ve turned them on and off before.
.. for maintenance or recalibration... so it wouldn’t be out of character.
And a war mage... would know what they were, so maybe its chindi.
.. could recognize them. But it had to wait. .. until you were close—”
Hargroves said a very bad word that didn’t go with the fine tailoring at all. “That’s absurd! War mages can’t be influenced. You know that!”
“I’m not sure what... I know anymore,” I told him, and saw it hit.
Because neither did he.