Shadowmaster

“But you expected me to try,” Phoenix said, standing near the bed.

“I don’t know what to make of you, and I don’t like—”

“Not knowing,” Phoenix finished. “Believe me, I understand.”

Brita snorted. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for now,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t be watching.”

“And I’ll keep your secrets as long as you keep mine.”

“And what you just saw this morning?”

“I’m not planning on telling anyone. It might backfire on me, too.” She offered her hand, which Brita pretended not to see.

“The others will be back anytime now,” the lieutenant said. “I suggest you get some rest.”

She left, played with the lock outside—presumably with the intent of hiding the fact that it had never been functional in the first place—and walked away, her footsteps barely audible in the corridor.

Twisting her hair into the usual ponytail and tying it with a scrap of twine, Phoenix considered what she’d learned. There was so much she had yet to understand. Once again she weighed instinct against her orders. If she were to follow her instructions precisely, this would be the time to return to Aegis with the intelligence she had collected...presuming she could escape now that she’d let several opportunities pass. She’d made direct contact with an Opir spy, after all. And more.

But that wasn’t good enough. Even if she could manage to get away, she still didn’t know exactly what role Sammael was playing in the assassination. If she could pin that down, she could return to Aegis having done everything she could.

That meant she had to keep pretending to want to escape the city and still find a way to stay with Sammael until she understood his connection to Drakon. And she couldn’t forget her purpose, though part of her wished she could get away from the Enclave...from duty, from doubt and all the other emotions she shouldn’t be feeling. From wondering if Sammael’s actions with the emigrants had been done out of genuine compassion Opiri weren’t supposed to possess. That no agent of murderers could possess.

She sat on the bed and massaged her temples. Wasn’t the fact that she wanted to believe proof that she hadn’t been the right choice for the job after all? They should have sent someone harder, more focused, more dedicated. Like her father. Someone who wouldn’t be thinking that maybe she wanted to stay with her enemy...not out of necessity, but because she was beginning to—

Care. About an Opir who took in the weak of the Fringe, shared his “take” of profits with the poor, helped human convicts escape and refused to take advantage of a prisoner he badly wanted.

She laughed. She kept assuming all that was true. God help her.

But it wasn’t too late. There was still time to pull herself back from the brink and harden her heart, remembering that Sammael’s supposed goodness to the fugitives and the people of the Fringe meant nothing in the end. His breed had killed Dad, would keep killing until they’d won their war and enslaved all mankind.

Turning off her troubling thoughts, she slept fitfully for the next two hours, trained, as were all agents, to rest whenever the opportunity arose but with senses tuned for any change in the immediate environment. By dawn—which she couldn’t see but sensed as clearly as if she were looking out a window—she woke to the sound of the crew returning to the Hold.

But she didn’t hear Sammael’s voice. She rolled off the bed and half-ran to the door, every muscle tense and heart beating fast. Other voices rose in argument, and she knew something had gone wrong.

Sammael hadn’t returned. Phoenix was struck by the sudden fear that the Enforcers scouring the Fringe, supposedly looking for the treacherous govrat, had taken Sammael against orders, anyway. Could his helping the emigrants have exposed him somehow?

There was another, just as chilling, possibility. Phoenix had heard the very unsubtle threats leveled at Brita by The Preacher’s representative. What if one of his followers, or a whole crew of them, had caught Sammael somewhere alone?

She banged on the door for a good minute before it swung open with a loud creak. Standing in the doorway was a small, wiry man she hadn’t met.

“Brita said to check up on you,” the man said, gazing at her with pointed curiosity.

“Where is she?”

“Busy. You need the bathroom or something?”

“I want to talk to Brita,” she said, trying to balance the tone of her voice between worried concern and stubborn insistence.

“She ain’t available. I’ll tell her you asked after her when she’s free.” He began to close the door, but Phoenix wedged her boot in the crack.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Repo.”

“Where’s Sammael?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve heard a lot of arguing, but not his voice.”

Repo shrugged.

“He didn’t return with your crew, did he?”

“That ain’t none of your business. It ain’t smart to pry into stuff that ain’t your business, not in the Fringe.”

“It’s my business when he’s the one who’s supposed to get me out of the city.”

“He’s Boss. He can do what he wants, and he don’t report to nobody. If your info checks out, he’ll keep his word.”

The door groaned as Repo closed it behind him. Phoenix hardly noticed.

If your info checks out, the man had said. So Brita had been lying about Sammael already knowing that Phoenix had been telling the “truth” about her information.

But why? Just to throw Phoenix off her guard even more? Someone’s voice—a man’s—rose above the others Phoenix could hear in another part of the building.

Sammael’s. He was back. Safe.

Finding her way to the bed, Phoenix sat down heavily. She felt as if she had won a sudden and unexpected reprieve from some terrible punishment, and yet she was ashamed. Ashamed that she’d cared about Sammael’s welfare, not just about losing her chance to learn the nature of his connection to Drakon.

Ashamed that she could imagine his fingers pushing her hair back as tenderly as he had the boy’s, speaking to her just as gently.

Could she make him care for her? Not simply desire her, but care in a way that he wouldn’t want her to leave his side until his work was done?

No. She had to concentrate on what she knew was real...the sexual desire he refused to act on for reasons of his own. If it was weakness he feared, she had to make him believe he was in no danger of falling into a trap by making love to her. If it was her dhampir blood that drew him to her, so much the better. He wouldn’t give himself away by trying to take it, but there still might be a way to use his craving against him.

If Brita hadn’t already told him that Phoenix was part Opir.

* * *

It had been a very close call.

The crew was nervous, exchanging uneasy whispers, fidgeting, glancing right and left as if they expected Enforcers to burst in on the Hold at any moment.

That, Drakon thought, wasn’t going to happen. The men and women who’d finished up with the shipment had narrowly escaped the Enforcers, it was true, but they weren’t anywhere near the Hold, and the crew would settle down once they knew they were safe.

But every moment of the debriefing, as Drakon covered each small error and moment of nearly fatal inattention, he thought of Lark. He had been thinking of her when they had been in the midst of unloading the shipment of produce and hiding it as close to the city Wall as possible, in preparation for bringing it through after the next nightfall made it safer to move the material.