Chapter 29
Nox
I leaned one shoulder against a decorative column and kept my eyes on the perimeter of the room. That was my job tonight.
That was when I saw Commander Dane.
He slipped through a side entrance wearing a dark coat, his hair neat, surrounded by a handful of men. His movements seemed purposeful. He was up to something and I didn’t like that.
He shouldn’t be here.
I straightened slightly, not enough to draw attention to myself. He scanned the room once, taking in the crowd, the dais, the wolves scattered through the hall. His gaze didn’t stop on any of us. Either he didn’t see us, or he pretended not to.
Then he turned and began to lead his little group toward a narrow service corridor I knew damned well didn’t lead to more canapés.
I swore under my breath.
From across the floor, Tamsin caught my gaze. Her brow flicked, a question glimmering in her eyes.
I tipped my chin toward the corridor, then toward Dane.
Her expression went flat for a heartbeat before it sparked with recognition. Elias, standing a few feet away from her, shifted just enough to follow her line of sight.
I pushed off the column and slipped off after Dane.
The service door swallowed me into a cooler, darker passage that smelled of dust and old oil. The sounds of the hall dulled to a muffled hum.
Dane’s footsteps were ahead, brisk but not rushed. His men kept tight formation around him. I hung back just far enough that if one of them glanced over a shoulder, they’d see nothing but shadow.
They took a turn I’d scouted with Mirae’s notes, the same turn that led down toward the ventilation controls for the upper halls.
I dropped lower, letting my heels land softly, hugging the wall where the light didn’t quite reach. Voices drifted back toward me.
“Are the canisters ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Delivery lines tested?”
“Aye. Pressure’s stable.”
The corridor opened into a cramped, high-ceilinged room full of pipes and metal ribs.
The air was warmer here, tasting faintly of old smoke and metal.
In the center of the space stood a cluster of regulators, wheels and levers attached to a network of thick pipes that ran upward into the stone.
Above them, I knew, were the vents that fed the assembly hall its clean, conditioned air.
Dane stood with his back to me, coat unbuttoned, looking up at the pipes like they were an altar.
Two of his men wrestled steel canisters into brackets attached to the feed lines. Even from the doorway I could see the labels, and I couldn’t help but notice that they were the same style we’d seen in the underground lab, only slimmed down for portability.
My stomach dropped.
Feral aerosol.
Dane glanced at the gauges. “We’ll do a slow release,” he said quietly. “Let it seep into the room. No one will notice until it’s too late. They want to parade their tame wolves in front of us? We’ll see how tame they are when the gas hits their lungs.”
He smiled then, a small, satisfied, hateful thing.
I could have moved then.
I could have stepped out of the shadows, slit the throat of the nearest man, snapped Dane’s neck, and thrown a wrench into the regulator. I could have made it messy and loud and heroic.
I looked at the canisters.
The valves.
The regulators already halfway open.
Even if I took them all out, the release had already started. The system was built to run itself once primed. And if I made enough noise, I’d just add panic to poison.
Tamsin needed information more than she needed a pile of bodies in a boiler room.
I memorized everything. Then I backed away as quietly as I’d come, swallowing the urge to do something satisfying and useless like rip Dane’s head off his shoulders.
By the time I reached the main corridor again, there was just the hint of a faint, wrong taste on the back of my tongue. The feral stimulant was riding the ventilation lines now, carried by steam and pressure into the hall above.
I moved faster then.
The sound of conversation swelled as I slipped through the service door back into the main space.
I moved as quickly as I could and found Tamsin, filling her in on what was happening.
The hall looked the same at first glance.
There were people standing in clumps, drinks in hand, faces pale or flushed depending on how much Bishop’s words had sunk in.
A few humans coughed. One wiped at his eyes, frowning.
Another loosened his scarf, like the air had gotten too warm.
And then I saw a face I’d never expected to see again.
Ashcroft.
I edged along the gallery until I had a clearer line of sight.
His hair was as perfectly arranged as ever. His gloves were spotless. His expression was composed in that way people in power practiced in mirrors. Then he flexed his fingers at his side, and the mask slipped a fraction. His jaw flexed. A muscle in his cheek ticked like it was trying to pull free.
He exhaled once, a little too harshly, and his breath came back in on a hitch, like his lungs had stumbled over something that wasn’t quite air.
Interesting.
I watched Ashcroft’s pupils.
They were… off.
They were too wide for the light in the room, a little too dilated. His gaze flicked across the hall, and for a moment it didn’t look like he saw people so much as shapes, heat, targets, and non-targets.
A low sound escaped him.
Most of the room missed it, buried under the clink of glasses, the murmur of shifting bodies. But I was close enough, and I’d seen and heard enough wolves lose their grip on reality to recognize the beginning of it.
Ashcroft’s hand spasmed at his side. The councilor beside him frowned and leaned in. “Are you—”
Ashcroft jerked away, just slightly, shoulders hunching for a heartbeat before he forced them back straight. Sweat beaded at his temple, catching the lamplight.
And then it hit me.
Ashcroft was a wolf.