I also wasn’t alone.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I croaked, and a blond head snapped up. The girl had been seated on the other side of the small cage we seemed to be sharing, staring at its iron bars. She stared at me now instead, blue eyes wide.
“You’re alive.” Daniela seemed surprised.
I licked my lips, but couldn’t feel it. “The jury’s still out.”
She grabbed a water bottle that was hanging on the side of the cage. She couldn’t stand up, the cage top was too low, but she scuttled over on hands and knees. “None of the others lasted this long,” she said, as I tried to drink through numb lips.
I spit water all over my shirt. “What others?” I croaked.
“The other Weres who were here. They’re all dead.”
“How, why?”
“Failed experiments,” she said angrily. “Some mages are planning to blow up the clan leaders at the Ulfhring tomorrow.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“I’m the bomb.”
I tried to drag myself into a sitting position, but failed. “Come again?”
“They need me to get past security. That’s why they took the daughters of highly placed members. If I say it’s an emergency, security will let me in. They know me.”
“And they think you’re just going to carry in a bomb for them?”
“They plan to put me under a compulsion.”
“That doesn’t work on Weres,” I pointed out.
“I know that! But they’ve come up with a potion that’s supposed to help the suggestion to take.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“Because it didn’t work! All it did was kill everyone after a couple of hours. They’ve been trying to get the formula right, so I have time to blow myself up before I die.”
“Let me guess. It killed the other high clan girls, so they started using low clan women to experiment on.” The kind they thought no one would miss.
Daniela nodded. “They think they finally have the formula right. I get to find out in a few hours. But I’ve been thinking. I’m the only high clan girl left, and they don’t have time to find a replacement.”
I rolled over onto my side to get a look at her face. “What are you saying?”
“That you need to kill me.”
“Come again?”
“I won’t be responsible for killing my own father! I’d take care of it myself, only”—she glanced around, looking a little lost—“I’m not sure how . . .”
“I came to rescue you, not to kill you.” I grasped one of the bars, and somehow managed to pull myself up with it. My strength ran out almost immediately, and I ended up slumped in a corner, limp as a rag doll.
Daniela eyed me skeptically. “Uh-huh. But seriously, we’re dead anyway—”
“Seriously, I intend to live forever, or die trying,” I told her, parroting one of Cyrus’ borrowed sayings. Speaking of whom, how did he fit into this? Because, okay, he and the council were currently on the outs, but killing all of them seemed a little . . . extreme . . . for the guy I knew. And Daniela had said mages. “Who is behind this again? And why do I feel like I was run over by a convoy?”
“I don’t know who they are. We don’t chat a lot,” she said sarcastically. “And you feel that way because they gave you the treatment. One last test, to make sure it works. And since you’re still alive, they must have got it right.” She gripped my arm. “We have to do something!”
I refrained from pointing out that I was doing something. And at the moment, not falling over felt like a major achievement. “It didn’t work because I’m not a Were,” I said instead.
“But you smell like—”
“I don’t care what I smell like! Just tell me why they’ve targeted only women?”
“Because we’re so much easier to control,” Daniela said with a snarl. It pulled her lips back from her nice, white teeth. It should have looked comical, but somehow, it didn’t. “That’s what one of them kept saying, over and over, when anyone suggested bringing in a guy. We’re weak-minded, more easily influenced. I’ll show them weak, if I ever get out of here!”
“Why can’t you?” The bars were steel, but with Were strength, that shouldn’t have been a problem.
“Because the damn cage is warded!” She slammed her hands into the side, and it didn’t even make the bars rattle.
“Shield charm. Pretty standard.”
“For a mage! Too bad we don’t have one.”
“I’m a war mage,” I informed her, right before I flopped onto my face. After a moment, I got my hands under me and pushed. Nothing happened. Come on; you’re tougher than this, I told myself sternly. War mage tough. Two-hundred-push-ups-before-breakfast tough. Full metal jacket, can’t handle the truth tough. Shot a man in Reno just to watch him—
“Really?” Daniela sounded doubtful.
“Really. Got the certificate and everything.” I somehow got to my knees. “Do you ride?”
“What?”
“Bikes. Motorcycles. Because my piece of shit Honda is around the corner. To the left, after you go out the front. Get it and get out of here.”
“And what are you going to do?”
I fumbled around in my jacket and found the keys. They’d taken my weapons, but left those. Guess no one had thought I’d be using them again. “Crash a party,” I said grimly.
The corridor outside the basement wavered alarmingly. I tried shaking my head, but that only made it worse. I finally found the stairs by stumbling into them.
I gave up looking cool and climbed up on my hands and knees. Daniela had left the door open at the top and the guard dead, his neck slashed, the imprint of paw prints in the blood. Good girl. I took his gun and potion-belt, but didn’t bother strapping either on. I didn’t have enough coordination, and anyway, I was probably going to need them soon.
The telltale signature of the tag I’d left on Cyrus started licking at the back of my neck. It was louder at the end of the corridor, and alarm-like by the time I made it into a well-appointed living room filled with decorations, presents, and a lot of freaked-out party guests. The last probably had something to do with the man waving a gun around. He had his back to me, but I’d recognize that butt anywhere.
“The experiment was a failure,” Gil was saying, his hands in the air. He was wearing a green Christmas sweater with brown reindeer on it, I noticed irrelevantly. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t come to an arrangement. I’ve heard about you. You fought your brother for the title and lost. They kicked you out of the clan, removed their protection, made you an outcast. Wouldn’t you like to get a little of your own back?”
“Give me Lia and I’ll think about it.”
“I thought Were hearing was supposed to be sharp,” Gil said disdainfully. “The bitch is dead. Like you’re shortly going to be if you don’t—”
I blinked, and in the space of time it took to get my eyes back open, Cyrus was gone and a huge black and tan wolf was tearing apart the living room. A moment later, five guards who must have snuck up on the outside of the house decided to hell with discretion and burst through the bow window. Gil dove behind the sofa, Cyrus followed him, and everyone else ran screaming for the door.
Within seconds, the Christmas tree went flying, the presents got mushed, and someone crashed into the cheerfully burning fireplace. It was a mage with his shields up, because he didn’t get so much as singed, but he managed to fling firewood across the floor while climbing out. It turns out that wrapping paper is pretty good kindling, because the scattered presents were soon burning merrily.
A few guys managed to keep enough of their wits about them to try a spell or two, but I emptied the guard’s clip into them. I couldn’t see straight so my aim was off and most of them had shields up anyway, but at least it provided a distraction. Only one of the people it distracted was Cyrus, who glanced at me and then did a swift double take, which looked really strange in wolf form.