“Fair enough. Anyway, back to the Temple. I learned something about them before The Deacon took me out, but I really don’t remember any of it.” Angkor squeezed my arm and stood. He was creaky, but functional. “They kept hitting me in the head. When I have the energy, I’ll find a lab and try to repair the concussion damage. All I know that it was The Deacon who killed the Wolf Grove couple, but he was with someone else. I can’t remember who.”
“I think Lily and Dru had a revelation. They became lucid, and realized what they were doing.” I said. “They tried to break out of the business. They killed the courier from the bratva. Nicolai – the boss of Brighton Beach – was working with The Deacon from August, at least. What could temporarily cure them of this Yen virus?”
“Gift Horse blood, like I said.” Angkor cocked his head. “You know… It’s actually possible that they were out in their changing ground and encountered a Gift Horse in the forest. That’s kind of why Gift Horses exist. They turn up where they’re needed, often without any real idea why they’re there. If they caught a Gift Horse and ate them, they’d have a period of lucidity. Once you have a Horse in an area, they’re generally stuck here until their mission is complete. You Hunted in this area not long ago, didn’t you?”
“Do you count butchering someone after hauling them out of a giant shell to be hunting?” I leaned back, exhaling. I hurt, but I was okay. Walking was a possibility. Running… probably not. “There was a Gift Horse here, but she’s dead. I killed her.”
“Did you eat her?” Angkor’s expression was suddenly very intense, his eyes very steady. The rakishness and anxiety was gone in a flash. There was only a peculiar intimacy, his sense of entitlement to an answer.
I drew a deep breath. “Yes. Just blood. A little.”
Angkor relaxed, leaning back away from me. He nodded, and exhaled heavily. “Alright, that’s good. If you ate part of her, she’s come back to life.”
I digested that news for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. They call it the Pact. Horses heal by dying, and when they’re eaten, they’re reborn. The necessity of the Pact is why they need Hounds.”
Zarya, alive. I couldn’t really believe it. People didn’t just… come back to life when you stabbed them in the chest. But if she was alive… that meant I could find her. And then I could kill her again, for lying about Vassily.
“It sounds like she came to this Cell, this world, in a Rind,” Angkor continued. “Rinds are protective cases… they can travel through some rough seas, so to speak. Where did you find it?”
I snorted. “It turned up in Jersey Bay, of all places. Two Mafia soldiers fished it out while dumping a body off a boat. It killed a bunch of wiseguys when they tried to crack the shell. They needed a Wise Virgin to break in and fish out the woman inside, and I was unlucky enough to be the only viable candidate.”
“Oh my god.” The other man clapped his hand to his mouth and let go of my arm, sitting back. “You’re a virgin? And a mage?”
“Huy na ny,” I groaned. “Not you too.”
“No no, I mean… euhhn… I mean that I’m really sorry for coming on so strong before, you know?” Angkor covered his teeth with a hand, blushing a delicate rose-gold. I noticed, quite arbitrarily, that he had freckles. I hadn’t seen them before, but his skin was not only naturally brown, it was sun-kissed. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have just, you know… I would have not done that.”
I grunted, and jerked my shoulders back. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m mostly just grateful that I don’t have to live with a colostomy bag for the rest of my life, thanks to you and your efforts to heal me more than once.”
“Like I said, I’m a doctor. Hippocratic Oath and all that.”
I drew a deep breath. “You didn’t answer me about Jenner and the other Tigers.”
“Uh… well… they’re due back here any minute now.” Angkor checked the clock on the wall. “So—”
“SCHWARMA, BITCHES!” The door flew in and banged against the opposite wall, admitting a wall of leather, spikes, and combat boots. Jenner was in the lead, a foil-wrapped kebab in each hand. Her face was twisted up in a scar-slashed grimace, the keloid still pink and new. She had an eye-patch on that same side. “Oh, shit. You’re alive!”
Zane was right behind her, and Talya was behind him. She’d changed out the brown wool and tweed for a white tanktop and jeans. To my surprise, she now had tattoos and several piercings: three rings through her bottom lip, and a fall of vertical lines and black-work from just under her mouth all the way around her chin. When she saw me staring, she smiled prettily and flushed.
“Feel like you can eat something, white boy?” Jenner came up to bed and pushed herself up to sit on the end of it. “I didn’t get you anything, but you can have Ang’s.”
“Over my dead body.” Angkor groped for his food, and Jenner held it back and away. I couldn’t deny it: I was glad to see she was still alive.
“So, wanna hear some gossip?” Jenner passed the wrapped kebab to me, and though he pouted, Angkor didn’t stop me from opening it. The sterile room was now redolent with the smell of lamb and garlic sauce as the others took their seats where they could find them. “Not only was John not an Elder, or even a fucking Weeder, he wasn’t Nakota. All the photos of him at Pine Ridge were when he visited once as a tourist. None of the people there know him or kept records of his birth or naming.”
“He didn’t have any degrees or anything.” Talya shook her head. She was cross-legged on the floor, hands gripping her ankles. “The Smithsonian is so pissed off. They’re making everyone go through background checks.”
“He’d faked everything,” Jenner said, cramming food into her face. “So I was right. All these privacy rules in the Laws are total crap. He would have been screened out if people weren’t so prudish about changing and sharing and shit.”
“That degree of deception and persistence is… quite spectacular. Did the Vigiles turn this up?” I knew the ins and outs of using fake identities – it was one of the key survival skills of the career killer, after all. But faking a life, making up achievement after achievement instead of living them?
“Yeah,” Zane said. In contrast to the others, he seemed tired and morose. “Ayashe went digging. He was just a poor white guy from this po-dunk town out West.”
“Sth Drrkota,” Jenner mumbled. Yogurt ran down her chin.
“Pretty amazing how far some people will go for a fantasy.” Zane jerked his shoulders.
Suddenly, I was considerably less hungry. I handed the barely touched shawarma to Angkor, who cocked his head curiously even as he accepted.
I bowed my head. “Jenner. Do you mind if we speak in private for a moment?”
“Sure thing. Scram, kids.” Jenner made a little shoo-shoo motion towards the door.
“Yes, mom.” Talya got to her feet, rolling her eyes, and headed out with Zane in tow. Angkor’s eyes gleamed with interest, but he bowed from the waist to Jenner and then followed the others out, closing the door behind him.
Jenner sighed, and some of the tense energy left her shoulders once the others were gone. “Phew. Well… glad to see you made it, Rex. It was a bit touch and go there.”
“How many of the Tigers survived?” I asked her calmly, hands resting on my lap. They were ungloved, but the cotton blanket was soothing against the smooth skin of my palms. I could tolerate it.