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“Wraith.” Eidolon cleared his throat, but that didn’t rid it of the raw rasp in his voice. “Do you think Sin and Con are dead?” Wraith let out a long, drawn-out breath, and Eidolon’s heart plummeted to his feet. When Wraith finally spoke, his voice was strong and sure. “I found evidence of a skirmish near the Harrowgate. Con hasn’t survived for centuries by being stupid, and Sin’s got instinct. My gut says they got out.”
Since Wraith’s gut was usually right, and it was all they had to go on, Eidolon let himself relax. “Does Lore know?”
“Nope. I called him a few minutes ago to see if he’d heard from Sin. He hadn’t, but I didn’t tell him about the house. Didn’t see any reason to freak him out until we know something.” “Agreed.” Eidolon checked his watch. Still several hours until morning, when Wraith would return home and not leave his son and vampire mate until nightfall again. Not unless there was an emergency. “Can you do what you can to track Sin and find out who is behind the attack on Con’s house?”
Wraith nodded. “There’s something else. Whoever blasted the house used infernal fire. I could smell it in the ashes.” Eidolon’s stomach wrenched. “Someone was serious about killing Sin and Con.” “What’s infernal fire?” Kynan asked.
“It’s like underworld napalm,” Wraith said. “The shit is massively powerful, but what’s special about it is that it calls fire spirits in the flames.” “Which hunt down anyone within the range of the heat,” Eidolon finished. “Its use is forbidden in the human realm. So whoever is responsible was willing to risk getting caught and burned alive by Justice Dealers.” Eidolon cursed. “We have to find Sin.”
“I’m on it.” Wraith started out the door, but Eidolon stopped him.
“On your way out, tell Bastien I need to see him.”
“You got it.” Wraith took off, leaving E with Kynan.
Kynan’s eyes were calm, assessing. As Tayla liked to put it, when you looked at him, you knew he was reading the situation about ten seconds into the future. “You calling the R-XR?” While functioning as a local Regent in The Aegis, Kynan had worked with the Army’s paranormal unit, the Ranger-X Regiment, for years after being attacked by a demon while serving in a regular Army unit as a medic.
“They’re going to be in damage-control mode.”
“Yeah,” Kynan sighed. “This is bound to spill over into the human world. The Aegis will need to engage in damage control as well. I’ll head to HQ for a conference.”
“What do you think they’ll do?” “I don’t know.” Kynan ran his hands through his spiky, dark hair, ruffling it even more. “We’ve kept a lot of turned wargs under surveillance to make sure they chain up during the full moon, but we may end up guarding instead of monitoring.” He laughed. “How weird is that? Not long ago we were killing them, and now we might be saving them.”
“You think Guardians will protect werewolves? It’s one thing to not kill them, but another to actively protect them.” Kynan looked troubled. “Yeah. There’s been an incident that is going to make my argument a little harder.” He shifted his feet off the desk, spread his legs, and braced his forearms on his thighs as he leaned forward, his gaze even sharper now, his military conditioning coming to bear. “A Guardian was recently outted as a werewolf. Remember when I asked you if you knew of any wargs that shifted during the new moon? Well, whatever she is, her cell put out the word and chased her into Canada. They lost her, but one Guardian is dead. On top of everything else that’s been going on in The Aegis…”
Eidolon swore. Kynan didn’t need to finish the sentence. A lot of what was going on was Tayla’s fault. Undercurrents of dissent had been filtering through The Aegis’s ranks over the fact that Tayla, a half-demon, was not only a Guardian, but also a Regent in charge of a large cell. Kynan’s marriage to Gem, Tay’s sister, had stirred the pot even more. And then, a couple of months ago, Tay had put a vampire on the payroll—a Guardian named Kaden, who had been turned into a vampire after being captured during an Aegis raid on a nest.
Now Guardians were quitting, while others were calling for change. This werewolf news could cause the already simmering pot to boil over.
“Tayla sure has a way of stirring things up,” Kynan said, as if reading Eidolon’s mind. “Tayla wouldn’t be Tayla if she wasn’t always in the middle of a shitstorm.” And Eidolon wouldn’t have it any other way. “You saved her life, E.” Kynan’s gravelly voice was quiet. “She was headed down a bad road, and you took her off it.”
A sobering, pleasant warmth filled Eidolon’s chest cavity. “She saved me, too.”
“You’re a big sap,” Kynan said, as he shoved to his feet, and Eidolon nearly laughed. Tayla had accused him more than once of the same thing. “If you need any help with Sin, let me know.” “I might take you up on that. Good luck with the Sigil and your rogue werewolf.” Kynan left, brushing by Bastien on his way out.
Eidolon’s doorway was getting a hell of a workout today. “Bastien. Thanks for stopping by.” The warg nodded, making his mop of curly brown hair bounce into his eyes. “What do you need, sir?”
“I just learned that civil war is breaking out between the pricolici and varcolac. Do you know anything about it?”
Bastien’s fingers tightened on the handle of the toolbox he seemed to always have in his hand, but other than that, he showed no reaction. “No, sir. I have no contact with my pack anymore.” “I just want to make sure you’re safe. And that this won’t affect your job.”
“You mean, will I try to harm the turned wargs who come to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
For a long moment, the werewolf looked down at the floor, and when he finally raised his gaze, his normally soft brown eyes had turned fierce. “My loyalty is to this hospital, Doctor. I won’t let you down.”
Man, Eidolon loved this place. Managing a hospital staffed by dozens of different species, many of whom were natural enemies, could get hairy, but ultimately, they were here because they wanted to help others, and Eidolon took a lot of pride in that. And people like Bastien, who some liked to say was “only” a janitor, were the heart of the facility, and every bit as important as the most talented surgeon.
“Thanks, Bastien. Glad you’re back.”
After the warg limped away, his club foot knocking harder on the floor than his other, Eidolon dialed the phone. Arik, Runa’s brother and a top member of the R-XR, answered on the second ring. “What do you want, demon?”
Arik wasn’t the friendliest guy ever. “I want to know if you’re aware that born wargs are out to commit genocide on the turneds.”
Arik swore. “I was just going to call you about that. We’ve had scattered reports of wargs attacking wargs, but no confirmation yet on whether or not it’s born-on-turned violence.” “Wraith confirmed it, and he doesn’t get shit like this wrong.”
“We’ll look into it,” Arik said. “Got anything new on SF?”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to share anything until I hear from my sister.”
There was a brittle silence. These guys didn’t like being kept in the dark, especially if the one keeping them there was a demon. And even though Arik’s sister, Runa, was mated to Shade, the guy still hadn’t come around all that much.
Finally, Arik blew out a breath. “I think I should bring Runa to D.C.”
“You want to take her to R-XR headquarters?” Eidolon laughed. “Good luck with that. You’ll need an entire armored division to get her away from Shade.” “I’ll get one if I have to.”
Eidolon dumped the cup of paper clips onto his desk and started tossing them back in, one by one. “You know they can’t be separated.”
“Shade and the kids can come, too. I can’t leave her unprotected.” “Trust me. The only place safer than the cave is the hospital, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m getting diseased wargs in by the dozen, they’d be here. You’ve got the same problem there. You might be able to protect her from born wargs, but you’re working with the virus. Can you guarantee that it won’t somehow find its way to her?” Silence was E’s answer. “Exactly.”
“Eidolon… I’m not sure I really have a choice in this.”
A chill went up Eidolon’s spine. “You’ve been ordered to bring her in.”
“It wasn’t an order. More of a strongly worded suggestion.”
“Why?”
“For her own protection,” Arik said, and just as Eidolon was about to call him on that bullshit, Arik added, “and because her ability to shift at will might provide her some resistance to SF or help us find a cure.”
She could shift at will because of the R-XR. They’d used her as a test subject for an experimental cure for lycanthropy, which hadn’t worked but had given her the ability to change into a werewolf any time she wanted to. Eidolon had already considered her altered DNA into the SF equation, had performed tests using her blood and the virus, but hadn’t seen any encouraging results.
“I’ll have Shade send you blood samples. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I have. But don’t you dare try to take her in,” he warned.
Arik cursed. “I’ll stall as long as I can. Update me on the rest as soon as possible.” “You do the same.” Eidolon paused, remembering Ky’s question about the new breed of warg. Could be a lead on a new direction of testing. “Arik… do you know anything about werewolves that shift during the new moon instead of the full?”
“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought. Keep me in the loop about the other shit.”
Arik hung up just as Eidolon’s beeper went off. Three more diseased wargs were incoming. Five more were being brought in… dead. But not because of the disease. Trauma.
