AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THREE
Talon
“I mean,in a way this is a good thing,” Blaze said, bracing his elbows on the dining table as he tried his best to put a positive spin on the situation. “You found the root of all your problems, and it all comes down to the same guy.”
Dess grimaced as she stalked restlessly through the open concept room. She poked at the rocky wall at one end of the living area that served as a reminder that the house we’d borrowed was literally built into the side of a hill. “It’s not good at all. I got answers, and the main answer is that this Blood Hunter guy has been controlling me from behind the scenes practically my entire life. How many of my decisions have really been my own? He’s had his fingers in everything.”
“He hasn’t managed to get his hands on you, not since you got free,” I felt the need to remind her. I’d seen the tension building in her from the moment we returned here, while she laid out everything the man we’d known as the Hunter had told her.
Some of that tension burst out now with the slam of her first against the top of the sofa. “Small victories. You know what pisses me off the most? He obviously thinks there’s no waywecould ever touch him—that we haven’t got a chance at taking him on if we wanted to. He thinks he can get away with everything because of all his power.”
I didn’t want to think it, but for all we knew, he was right. That thought was clearly weighing on Dess too. I’d never been affected by other people’s emotions much before, but my God, I would have done anything in that moment to lift some of the stress and frustration radiating off her.
She’d finally found out the whole truth about her life, and it’d been more horrible than any of us could have guessed.
Julius shook his head, his jaw tight. “All this secret organization bullshit. We’ll find out exactly what this asshole is up to and work from there. No one’s invincible, fancy aliases or not.”
His voice came out as gruffly commanding as usual, but I knew him well enough to recognize that he was nearly as tense as Dess was. The bulky muscles in his arms flexed, and his hands kept shifting in little increments where they were resting on the top of a chair, like they were feeling for something to hold on to.
Just this once, our leader didn’t have the situation already in hand. He’d found out that we’dallbeen played by the Blood Hunter. The man had been manipulating our actions at every turn, even when Julius had thought he’d been strategic. It had to be eating at him that he hadn’t realized and that he didn’t know exactly how to throw off that yoke immediately.
“We don’t have to change our plans,” he went on. “We were talking about flying home tomorrow. That would give us some distance to regroup—and it’d send him a very clear message about your disinterest in working for him.”
Garrison rubbed his finger over his narrow chin. “It’ll definitely send a message, but I’m not sure that’s the message wewantto send. It could look to him like we’re running scared. And we’ll have a harder time investigating his operations from afar.”
Dess leaned against the sofa and groaned. “I’d like to go home,” she groused, and despite the problem in front of us, something in me lit up at hearing her refer to the crew’s apartment asherhome too.
Blaze lifted his eyebrows. “What, you’re not in love with the unique architecture we’ve been blessed with here?” he teased.
Dess wrinkled her nose at him. It was true that the house’s unusual features, being half embedded in rock, gave it natural air conditioning and built-in defenses against attack. But Dess had at least a few reasons beyond homesickness not to appreciate it.
“There are a lot fewer bugs in the apartment.” She gave a little shudder of disgust.
“He said he’d give Dess two days to decide,” Garrison put in. “What’s he going to do after that? Is he really going to accept a ‘no,’ or will he try to force the issue?”
Blaze frowned. “He obviously doesn’t have any issues with using force. All the attacks we’ve faced since we arrived in the DC area must have been orchestrated by him, right? One more way to cast suspicion on the Maliks while accomplishing his own ends.”
Julius’s eyes darkened. “He was targeting us rather than Dess. Probably hoping he could take as many of us out of commission as possible so we couldn’t influence her decisions away from whathewanted.”
Dess let out a huff that was almost a growl and pushed herself away from the sofa. “Fucking prick. There’s no way in hell I want to work for him, period, but if he hurt any of you… He already has.” She glanced around at us, her gray gaze turned stormy. “I don’t care if he’s the king of the universe. He’s been a threat to me since I was a kid and to all of us for the past few months, and that means we need to take him down.”
“Hey.” Garrison leaned across the table, his normally nonchalant expression turning intent as he tipped his head toward Julius and me. “During one of the attacks, we ran into a guy you two knew. There’s our in. He got dragged into this mess by the Blood Hunter somehow. You’ve got ties to him. We should tug on those and find out what he knows.”
It’d been strange, spotting that familiar face in the middle of the fray, aged by fifteen years since we’d last encountered him. I’d almost thought I was wrong until I’d seen Julius’s momentarily startled reaction. How a guy we’d trained with back in our military days had ended up on the other side of this conflict would definitely be some kind of crazy story.
“I’m not sure we’ll get anywhere with Petrov,” Julius said. “I haven’t spoken to him in over a decade. His loyalties are clearly elsewhere now.”
Garrison rolled his eyes. “You obviously have a history you can lean on. Or we can literally lean on him until he bows under pressure. There are five of us and only one of him. He’s the only person with a connection to the Blood Hunter that we know of.”
I could tell Julius wasn’t happy about this idea either, but I couldn’t think of a better option. We did have a little leverage, and we had nowhere else to start.
Julius balked for a few seconds longer and then nodded. “You’re right. It’s by far our best lead. I’ll reach out to him and see what kind of approach we’ll need to take.”
“When you question him, I want to be there with you,” Dess chimed in. “There’s plenty I’d like to know about the Blood Hunter’s whole set-up, and I’ve seen and heard more about it than the rest of you, so I’ll know the right things to ask.”
That point made sense too, but the thought of her in the same room as a known enemy sent an unexpected jolt of ice through my veins. My chest constricted, and suddenly I was back in the nightclub a couple of hours ago, watching her walk away with the Blood Hunter into his office without any way of following, any way of protecting her. My hands clenched at my sides.
Dess was the strongest person I knew. There was no reason for me to worry, let alone panic, about her taking part in a simple interrogation. So why was this emotion clamping around my lungs when I barely ever felt anything at all?
