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  "How do we know that you won't just kill us as soon as we step into the water regardless of what you say?"

  I shook my head at him. "Careful, if you keep that up you're going to start insulting the honor of my friends. They don't like that. If you push them too far, then they'll refuse to negotiate with you."

  I was riding the ragged edge of what I could get away with from the standpoint of misdirection. That was the biggest reason that I wasn't trying to get them to turn on each other.

  It wasn't a lie to say that Set and the others would take a dim view of Onyx calling them liars, but I was very carefully not telling Onyx that the lamias were particularly sensitive to losses right now because each fallen lamia was one less who would be able to help cloak the enclave from the Consumed.

  Onyx and I locked gazes for nearly a full minute before he finally nodded. "Fine. This is how things are going to go down. I want your friends to promise that they will let us go, and then they are going to all move back behind you and show themselves so that we know we have a clear shot out of here."

  "Set, is that agreeable to you?"

  There was a second there where I was afraid that he hadn't been able to hear us, and then Set stood in the water, appearing less than three feet from the edge of the island I was on, in a spot where I would have sworn the water wasn't deep enough to hide a seven-foot-tall lamia.

  "Broadly, yes. They must turn around and head back the way that they came. They must not stop, they must not return. If they do, we will know and we will ambush them again. Next time we will not fail."

  Onyx looked like he wanted to use his power on Set to put the lamia in his place, but everyone there knew that would just result in Set disappearing underneath the water again. What was more, I was pretty sure that one or more of the other lamias were already creeping forward, preparing to strike from behind if Onyx took the bait Set was offering him.

  "Fine, move your people back out of range and we'll leave."

  Set nodded, hissed something more complex than I was expecting, and then sank back down into the water. Five minutes later he reappeared more than twenty yards away from where he'd last shown himself. He pointed off to his left and then slapped the water.

  Fifty yards away the first lamia rose out of the water at the same time that Set dropped back out of sight. As soon as that lamia was sure Onyx and the rest had seen him, he in turn slapped the water and then sank out of sight as another lamia stood up.

  I counted them all, one by one as they each revealed themselves and then disappeared again. They'd stationed themselves in one long arc that covered nearly a hundred yards. As the last surviving lamia dropped back out of sight, Onyx turned back to me.

  "I was going to ask you to give Celeste a message for me."

  "What message would that be?"

  He pointed at the slender guy who had just pulled himself out of the water minutes before. "That piece of trash belongs to her. If she doesn't show back up at the house in three days, I'll start killing one of her people each day. It shouldn't take me much more than a week and a half to kill every man, woman, and child she's tried to protect from me for the last two decades. After that I'll pack up my things and leave town. She can have her freedom or she can have her pack, but she can't have both."

  "What made you change your mind about that message?"

  "I realized that the snakes can pass it along just as well as you can."

  Onyx hit me with his power again and the pain was even more intense than the other times he'd used it on me. I would have said that wasn't possible, but this time the pain wasn't the only thing on my mind.

  I'd been expecting him to use his power on me again. A guy like Onyx was almost incapable of passing up a chance to double-cross someone. Even more important, he had to be itching to reestablish his authority with the rest of the surviving hybrids from his pack.

  Even before the lamias had moved back out of ambush range, I'd started moving. I'd made a big show—which had only involved a little in the way of theatrics—of staggering around as I forced myself back up onto my feet.

  That moved me several feet closer to the shoreline and I sprang towards the water a split second before Onyx had stopped talking, but even as I went flying through the air I knew I'd failed. I hit the water, inch-deep though it was, with my shoulder, but that wasn't enough. My hip and feet landed in mud, which meant that almost all of my body was still out where Onyx could see me.

  Even more ironic was the fact that as I bounced once and then came to a stop—still not far enough out into the water—I realized that my plan never could have worked in the first place. The pain had driven all of the air out of my lungs, so I wouldn't have been able to stay under the water for any stretch of time even if I'd made it as far as I'd been hoping.

  I could feel the end approaching. Onyx had overestimated just how much strength I had left. Once again, there was no good way to tell time once all of the external stimuli disappeared. My pulse had gone thready and irregular; I figured that I only had a few more beats before my heart was going to give out entirely.

  Dying didn't feel anything like I expected it to. One second I was there consumed by pain, covered in mud, and then something was pulling me down into the darkness, a lukewarm, terrifying black that pressed in on me from all sides.

  It took me nearly two full seconds to realize that the pain was gone. My lungs were now the only part of me screaming for relief.

  Something had grabbed me and pulled me under the water, only it hadn't let go of me. It was still dragging me through the water at such a fast speed that I couldn't seem to get my feet underneath me. Visions of giant alligators burst over me and I reached forward with my free hand, raking my claws across something hard in an attempt to free myself.

  It was the feel of my claws scraping across lamia claws that helped me start to regain a measure of control over myself, but even that might not have been enough to stop me from fighting if the lamia towing me hadn't picked that instant to shove me hard towards the surface of the water.

  I surfaced coughing and gasping for air, and would have gone back under if Set hadn't surfaced at nearly the same time. He grabbed hold of me, steadying me at the same time that he looked at Onyx. We'd come up far enough away from where we'd gone under the water that Onyx didn't see us immediately.

  Onyx looked at the two of us, and I saw his eyes start to tighten as he summoned up his ability, but before he could send another jolt of pain through my body, his eyes went wide in understanding. I should have been too disoriented to understand what was going through his mind, but it was as though I could read his thoughts.

  The time between when Set had slapped the water and when the last of the lamias had risen to show themselves for a split second before disappearing again hadn't been long. Maybe a minute and a half at the most. That shouldn't have been enough time for Set to cover the twenty yards between where he'd been and where I'd been without making enough turbulence in the water to be seen.

  It should have been impossible, and yet Set had done it. Even worse, it was proof that the lamias were much faster than Onyx had believed. It meant that he had no way of guaranteeing that the rest of Set's people weren't mere seconds from reaching Onyx's island again.

  Onyx could easily kill me if that was what he wanted to do, but doing that would require precious seconds he couldn't afford to spare. He turned and ran, the rest of his people mere feet behind him.

  I collapsed two seconds later.

  Chapter 24

  Isaac Nazir

  The Lamia Enclave

  I woke up a few hours later battered and more exhausted than I should have been, but still alive and once again safely back inside the enclave. After everything I'd been through, I just wanted to go back to sleep and put off dealing with whatever the universe was going to throw at me next, but after fifteen minutes of trying to sleep, I finally threw in the towel and rolled out of bed.

  I wouldn't have thought that the introduction of just
one more person into our living space could have made any kind of huge difference in the look and feel of the room, but I would have been completely wrong. The wolf who had been with Onyx, the one who'd been chained by his wrists to the boat and almost drowned earlier, was stretched out on our couch and looking even worse than when I'd last seen him.

  Now that I was close enough to really study him I was struck by the fact that he looked undernourished in a way that was hard to achieve for a shape shifter. Usually if we weren't getting enough food we were in constant danger of losing control of our beasts. The fact that someone had gotten away with starving him like that was pretty strong evidence that he was about as submissive as they came.

  As interesting as that particular tidbit was, it was the bandages across his chest that were the most astonishing. I didn't remember him taking a claw to the chest, so that probably meant that Onyx had cut him while I'd been under the water. Apparently Onyx had figured that a dead wolf would serve just as well as a live wolf when it came to sending Celeste the message that he wanted her back in New Orleans.

  I took one more quiet step into the room which put me in a position where I was able to see Celeste for the first time. She was sprawled out on one of the stone chairs and she looked as bad as I'd ever seen her look.

  Much like starving a shape shifter takes a lot of doing if you wanted to avoid having your head bitten off, it takes a lot to put bags under our eyes. There were bags underneath Celeste's eyes, dark ones that said she hadn't been sleeping well, or possibly even at all, for days. Her hair looked like it hadn't been washed for the better part of a week, and she was wearing the jeans and t-shirt that she'd worn underneath her scrubs when she'd come to the hospital to pick us up. That wasn't a big deal other than the fact they looked like they hadn't been washed recently.

  All of it was out of character and I didn't have an explanation for any of it. There was no reason for her to have fallen apart so completely in such a short time.

  My stomach reminded me that it had been a while since my last meal, so I started making my stealthy way past Celeste and her pack mate. I only made it a couple of steps before his eyes snapped open and he shot me a sickly smile.

  "She just dropped off half an hour ago. I had my eyes closed for an hour before that trying to convince her that it was okay for her to sleep. My name is Jax, by the way."

  His voice was pitched, just loud enough to carry to me, but still quiet enough that it didn't wake Celeste. I wasn't sure that I could have managed that, but then again, I hadn't spent the last couple of decades doing everything I could to avoid the attention of the dominants in my pack.

  Every pack had submissives and there was no arguing with the fact that it sucked taking orders, but only the worst kind of monster would turn actual people into timid animals that were scared of even their own shadows. Jax wasn't in quite that bad of shape, but he was close. Based on the smile he'd flashed and the eye roll he'd used to punctuate how obsessive-compulsive Celeste had been when it came to trying to take care of him, I was pretty sure that only his native good humor had saved him from being pushed down that path.

  I would have said that it wasn't possible for me to dislike Onyx any more than I already did. I would have been wrong. The more I learned about Onyx, the more I wished that Alec had already made a trip down to New Orleans and put the pack's alpha down.

  I shook myself, forcing my mind back to the present. I returned Jax's smile and pitched my voice as close as possible to the same range he'd used.

  "Hey, my name is Isaac. How did she get so tired so quickly? We were only gone for a couple of days and I was pretty sure that she was sleeping okay before I left."

  "Yeah, about that…she started filling me in while she was bandaging me up. There are probably things about the lamias that she hasn't gotten around to telling me, but it's looking like there are even more things that nobody knew. For you, your trip only lasted a few hours. For her you were gone nearly a week. She was totally freaking out because she had no idea what had happened to your group."

  My mind was still trying to process what Jax had just said, but he didn't wait for me to catch up.

  "She said that she went to the guards outside of the main cave and asked them for answers something like a hundred times, but none of them would admit to speaking any English."

  I nodded. "Yeah, that actually makes sense. Only the consorts speak our language and I'm pretty sure that Set brought them all with us. They are the best fighters the enclave has. Not only that, he probably wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of leaving both Celeste and his queen here alone with one of them. There have been some…problems in that area recently."

  "Are you like some kind of lamia whisperer or something? How did you even know that?"

  I shrugged uncomfortably. It didn't seem right to accept any kind of praise for what little I knew about the lamias.

  "Set is actually very willing to explain stuff. Usually the biggest problem is figuring out what you need to know."

  Even as I said it I realized that my answer wasn't strictly true. Set had said something about his queen telling him to answer all of my questions. I thought about elaborating, but I didn't know Jax well enough to just tell him everything I knew about the lamias. Besides, it seemed like he'd already moved on.

  "Still, I'm impressed. That's very cool that you've got such a good in with them."

  I gave him what I hoped was a humble nod and then neither of us seemed to have anything else to say. I was eyeing one of the fruits still hanging from the vines on the far wall when Jax started to sit up and then grimaced in pain.

  "That will teach me to get excited about something right now. Sorry, I was going to say that there is one more thing I should tell you. Celeste talked like you guys have been here for a while, but back in the real world it's only been two days since you disappeared."

  "Interesting. So there are multiple instances where time doesn't seem to be behaving the way it should. Every time I think that I have a decent idea of what the lamias are capable of they turn around and do something else I can't even begin to explain."

  "Yeah, that's pretty much what Celeste said too."

  I shook my head in disbelief and then looked back over at Jax. "Are you doing okay? Do you need anything before I leave? I'd stay and keep an eye on you, but I should go find Set and see if he will shed any light on all of this craziness."

  "Don't worry about me. I'm doing pretty well for a guy who nearly drowned and then had Onyx do a half-hearted job of trying to rip his heart out of his chest. I don't need anything, but if you have a second could you grab a blanket for Celeste? She's been shivering off and on ever since she fell asleep."

  "Sure thing, I'll be right back."

  It didn't even cross my mind that I might be violating Celeste's privacy by ducking into her room to grab the thin blanket from her bed. I was only two steps into her room when I saw the pictures. There were six of them, all wallet-sized, of nine or ten different people.

  I'd never seen any of the pictures and Celeste hadn't had any luggage when we'd jumped into the boat, so all I could figure was that she must have been carrying them in her jeans when she'd left to go to the hospital.

  Jax was in one of the shots, but he was the only one I recognized. A few of the people in the photos were obviously related to each other by blood, but the only other common denominator was the fact that they all had the furtive look of people whom life had been especially unkind to, people who weren't entirely sure that they would see next month.

  I studied the pictures for nearly a minute before I pulled the blanket off of the bed and carried it back out to Jax.

  "You seem pretty concerned about Celeste."

  Jax looked confused for a moment before nodding. "I guess you're right. Mostly we just do the absolute minimum we can get away with for the dominants, but that's not how we think of Celeste. She gets kicked around just as much as we do, she's one of us in a way that most hybrids never could be, beggin
g your pardon."

  "No offense taken here. Can you tell me more about what things are like inside of your pack?"

  "Not much to tell. Onyx and his guys make life a living hell for all of the rest of us on their good days. When they have a bad day they tend to put people in the hospital as a way of blowing off steam. Half of the submissives inside of the pack probably would have died five years ago if Celeste hadn't laid down the law back before her brother disappeared."

  "How'd she lay down the law to someone like Onyx? He's completely out of her league."

  "She used the one advantage she has over him. He wants her alive more than she wants to be alive. Back when she was still in her twenties, a year or so after Onyx killed her mother, one of Onyx's guys got carried away and accidentally killed Patty. Celeste challenged that guy to a fight and killed him. It was an amazing fight—she was younger, less experienced, and she gave up more than sixty pounds to him, but she ripped his heart out of his chest and threw it down at Onyx's feet."

  "That can't have gone over well."

  "Nope, Onyx beat her to within an inch of her life. We were all terrified, none of us thought she was going to recover from the beating he'd given her, but she did. Once she recovered he told her he'd do the same thing again if she killed another one of his guys. She just looked at him without blinking and then told him, loud enough that his guys could all hear, that the next time one of his people killed or maimed one of us she wouldn't even give them the formality of a challenge match. She'd just kill them one night when they weren't expecting it."

  "She called his bluff."

  "Yeah. She knew he didn't want to kill her and risk losing out on all of that money. After that, things got a little better. There was still a lot of bad stuff that happened, but the dominants all knew that there were some things that they couldn't get away with."

  "She never had to kill any of the other dominants after that?"

  Jax looked supremely uncomfortable. "I shouldn't be saying anything, but some of us think she killed another of the dominants a short time after her brother disappeared. I think Onyx suspected as much too, but he never had any proof. If she did, then I say good riddance.