24. Ashe

I arrive at Gates Tower in less than an hour. Even for a Saturday morning, the thirteenth floor was abuzz with witches scurrying about.

But the witch I sought was nowhere in sight.

“Where is he?”

My voice carries in the large whitewashed room and a few witches crane their necks to see what was causing such a commotion. I avoid their stares as I storm to the conference room in the back, murder on my mind as a familiar head of blonde hair is caught in my crosshairs. As I close the distance between myself and my target, the threads of my anger unwind in my chest, writhing like snakes as everything that has happened within the past twenty-four hours comes crashing down around me.

The arrogant vampires who trespassed on gata turf, goading a teenager into shifting and sealing her fate. Lieutenant Kerrigan and the witches from Public Affairs, who held no remorse for the lives that were taken.

Nessa, the Reaper who was supposed to have been cremated after falling at the claws of a wraith while out hunting alone. Dead because I was not there to have my partner's back as I should have been, and yet still very much alive. A broken, breathing shell of the person she once was. Not exactly a puppet, but something more sinister.

The puppetmaster who brought her back, using her as a pawn in some twisted vendetta. Infusing new life into a vessel where life should no longer exist.

The Enlightened and their fanatical attempts to cause trouble. The Tribunal and their ruthless determination to bury loose ends. My hand in all of this, stained with centuries of blood that will never come off no matter how hard I scrubbed. The secrets that bind me to them just as much as the tattooed chains painted on my skin.

And Dani, a human caught in the midst of it all. One misstep would bring my ring to light and yet she still did not fully understand the danger that she summoned with each backdoor she pulled me through. Her life was not the only one at risk, and her continual presence—no, those eyes and the effect they had, the memories they stirred—only further complicated things. She blinded me and made me see things in ways I did not want to.

I reel in my rage as I throw open the door.

“You liar!” My hands are around the collar of Chandler's suit before he can blink, and with ease I lift him out of the chair and shove him against the glass wall. I can feel the eyes of the room on my back but my own are laser-focused on him. I hope he combusts from the intensity. “You fucking liar!”

He lifts his hand but I grab his wrist before he can channel the rune and try to restrain me. Instead, he chokes out, “Ashe, what're you doing?”

“You told me she was dead! You said you burned her body!”

Chairs scrape against the tiled floor as the other occupants in the room rise to their feet, but I block everything out. It was only me and him, and I was hell-bent on getting answers.

“W-who?” Chandler's green eyes are as wide as saucers as they stare openly at me from behind thick-rimmed glasses, but it was not fear that I felt radiating off of him. Surprise danced on the lines of his brow, but there was something else lurking in those glossy depths, something unexpected, that caused me to relax my grip on his throat.

He knew.

My anger surged, even as hands wrapped themselves around my arms and yanked me back. “You lying piece of shit. You knew, didn't you? You knew that Nessa wasn't dead!”

One of the hands tightens their grip and a familiar voice hisses in my ear. “The hell are you going on about, Ashe?”

I did not even bother glancing at her as I snap, “Lay off, Selene, or I'll break your fucking arm this time.”

I can feel her muscles ripple as her Reaper's mark responds to my threat, but before I could make good on my promise another voice as smooth as silk emerges from the back of the conference room.

“Sit down, Ashe, before you do something you'll regret.”

My insides twist as I roll my shoulders, shaking off the hands that held me at bay. “I'll stand,” I say, turning my glare to the vampire seated at the end of the rectangular table. An amused smirk tugs at the corner of her lips and my blood boils. “Did you know, Cat?”

“That we lost a Reaper in the field?” Catalina hums. “Of course, darling. Reapers die all the time, this is nothing new. Replacing them is always such a hassle, though. I hear the last two initiates didn't survive the binding ritual.”

“She's still alive.”

“That's impossible,” Damen growls, his breath hot against my neck as he grabs my arm again. “We held a service for her. She was cremated, as is tradition—”

I jerk my arm out of his grasp and direct my anger toward him. “I saw her, Damen! She was standing as easily as you are now. She was walking, talking, breathing!” I pivot back to Chandler, digging a finger into his chest as I say with an edge of lethality, “That goddamn apostate has her. She's been turned into a fucking puppet.”

Selene snorts next to me, disbelief coloring her tone. “A corpse doesn't talk or breathe, they're just an empty shell. And what you saw couldn't have been Nessa because there wasn't anything left of her to raise. You would know this if you never left. She may still be alive if you had stayed!”

“I know what I saw!” My anger is on the verge of boiling over and I exhale sharply as I try to wind back the threads. Losing control would do me no good here, no matter how badly I wanted to rip out every last throat in this room. “It was Nessa. She spoke, she said my name. Her mark was broken but it still responded to her as if she were alive. I felt the energy from it as it sliced my side open.”

Selene quirks a brow and glances me over. “You healed quickly enough.” I did not miss the disappointment in her voice, or the way she favored her injured shoulder and bruised body with each move she made.

“If that is what you saw,” Catalina chimes in, “then we have a much bigger problem than we realized.”

“How so?”

The vampire cuts her gaze to Damen. “Puppetry is a perversion of blood magic. From working alongside your handlers, I trust that you're all intimately familiar with the effects of a binding spell. A puppet is nothing more than a tool and the magic is two-fold. First, the puppet is created. Living tissue is usually best for the blood magic to take hold, which is why fresh corpses or preserved body parts are always preferred, but there have been a few reported cases of a puppet being artificially crafted from a bit of blood and wood or clay.

“After the puppet is given a form, it's then tethered to the shadow of their creator and acts as an extension of their will—though an empty husk is much easier to control than a vessel with a soul of its own. It's a form of shadow magic and so the practice is illegal, but the corpse that this puppetmaster purportedly controls was a candidate in the Genesis Project. If her body was raised from the dead and reunited with her soul as claimed, it would have devastating consequences.”

I clench my fist. “What're you saying, Cat?”

“What we've done with the Genesis Project is . . . unprecedented. Genetically altering a human by introducing a demon's essence into their blood is a dangerous gamble.” She leans forward intently, folding her hands over the table as she continues. “Controlling a soulless shell is simple enough and, although a living person makes it difficult, it's not altogether impossible for a puppetmaster to control them, too. But a puppet whose soul has been brought back from the dead is caught somewhere in between. They may retain fragmented memories from when they were alive but a piece of them is always missing and they're no longer who they once were. Reanimation is on the darker side of necromancy and, as such, the soul magic it requires can be fickle. Many who are resurrected end up going insane as their grip on reality fractures.

“Despite this, however, their bodies can still be controlled as they would lack the capacity to fight against it. A lack of free will, so to speak, which is why having one of our Reapers as a puppet would be dangerous—for us just as much as the one pulling the strings, should the puppet start to feed. It's not unlike soulbinding a demon, back when witches still practiced that art before it was lost to history.”

Her gaze flicks to me and even from across the table I can feel the underlying threat buried beneath her words. The hairs on my arms and neck stand on end but I hold my tongue. My secret, and the lives tethered to it, depended on that much.

“Thankfully,” Catalina says as she leans back, “that is not the case here. A Reaper died in the line of duty and, as tragic as that is, her body was properly disposed of as per our protocol. Isn't that right, Chandler?”

All eyes turn to my handler as he pinches the bridge of his nose, an exasperated groan gurgling in his chest. A heavy silence hangs over the air in the room until Catalina prods him again.

“That is what happened, is it not?” Her tone is low, predacious, and when the witch finally lifts his gaze she curses. “You assured us that the situation was handled!”

I snap my head up, a rebuttal poised on my tongue like a serpent prepared to strike, but Selene beats me to it.

“The situation? Nessa was one of us. She died fighting a wraith. There was no 'situation' to handle!”

“Nessa was one of the first to volunteer for the Genesis Project when our precinct was given the green-light.” Chandler sighs, as if he was finally able to let go of a secret he had been carrying, and my blood spikes. What did he know about keeping secrets? “But the serum didn't take with her as it has with Selene and Damen. The demon blood was too concentrated. All that rage, it burned her from the inside until it drove her insane and her handler could no longer control her.”

“You told us she died.” Selene seethes, fury dancing in her almond eyes. “We grieved for her. We watched her body burn!”

“You saw a body burning because that was the narrative we had to spin,” Chandler corrects. “But it wasn't Nessa.” His objective tone prickles my skin and I bristle as he continues. “We knew the moment she had succumbed to the injections because Melissa's rune had fully dissolved. We knew she had died but we couldn't locate the body to properly dispose of it and—”

“Her,” Damen interjects, biting back his own anger. “She was a goddamn person, Chandler. At least have the decency to address her as one.”

“Yes, of course.” Chandler clears his throat. “Her sacrifice has helped us immensely with finding the right dosage but we couldn't let word get out that we had actually lost a Reaper, let alone the circumstances that surrounded her death.”

Lost. As if they had simply misplaced her, like a set of fucking keys. My jaw tightens as my fingernails dig deeper into my palms.

“No, I suppose you couldn't,” Catalina drawls as she pushes herself to her feet. “And now one of our own weapons is in the hands of an unregistered witch. Not your finest moment, Chandler.”

“This puppetmaster has ties to the Enlightened,” I add, fixating my glare once more on my handler. “They've been looking for a way to control demons, using chimeras like that one from the woods as living soul rings to try and bind them to their will. And you go and hand them the perfect vessel on a goddamn platter.”

“They have one unstable subject who is, by all accounts, deceased. We can easily overpower it—her—if it comes to that. This is hardly a cause for concern.”

“We have two very different opinions of that.” Catalina smooths out her dress, heels clicking on the tile as she rounds the table. “We'll discuss it more in depth and devise a plan of action later. This meeting is over.”

“The Tribunal wanted to create cambions,” I mutter, shouldering Damen and Selene aside as I storm out of the room. I needed to get out of there before I did something really stupid. “Nessa's blood, and everything that comes after this, is on their hands.”

***

“Well you certainly know how to make an entrance,” Catalina purrs as she steps inside Chandler's office. Upon seeing my scowl, she clucks her tongue against her teeth the way one would tsk at a child. “Don't fret, love. Chandler will be reprimanded for his negligence and his mishandling of the situation. Though something tells me that this is not the only reason you're still here.”

My scowl deepens.

After the confrontation with my handler hours ago, my rage had reached its boiling point. I could feel the tendrils spreading through my veins like poison, threatening to consume as the demon within me yearned to lash out and quench its lust for bloodshed. Instead, I took my frustration out on the punching bag upstairs. It helped—a little. But now there was one more confrontation that I had to face.

“I spoke with Nadia this morning.”

“Oh?” Catalina lifts a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she leans against the desk and crosses her arms expectantly. “And what did our dear Nadia have to say?”

I run a hand over my face, a breath slipping through my fingers as I sigh. “She may know how to remove the ring. Safely.” I emphasize that last word, cutting the vampire a knowing look. “We leave for the First Precinct tomorrow.”

“We?”

Before I can reply, the office door swings open and the last person I wanted to see shuffles into the room. “What's in the First Precinct?”

“Houston,” I snap sarcastically as he walks past my chair and slides some papers around on his desk. He purposefully avoids my glare. “You know, big cosmopolitan city? Largest in Texas? Teeming with art and traffic and a robust nightlife?”

Chandler grunts, unamused at my response. “I'm well aware of the cities that make up the Fourth Ward, Ashe, and less concerned with their supernatural nighttime affairs. I'm asking why you need to go there.”

I suck in air, letting it whistle between my teeth as I choke down my anger and prepare to deliver the lie I had composed. If I was going to sell this, then I needed to keep a clear head. I could deal with him over Nessa's resurrection later.

“I was followed home after the assignment you sent me on earlier this morning.”

“The puppetmaster?” Chandler pushes his glasses up the length of his nose. “Well that explains how you found out about Nessa, I suppose. But what would that witch want with you?”

“How the hell should I know?” At least that part was not a lie. “But she must've been stalking me for a while and transported herself to my apartment for a little chat.”

“Is that why there was another spike in Veil energy?” At my nod, Chandler shakes his head. “These backdoors have a nasty habit of following you around lately.”

I can feel Catalina's eyes upon me, analyzing Chandler's words as she deciphered their true meaning. I had not yet told her that Dani has already summoned me—twice, now—and I was sure to suffer her wrath for it later. For now, though, I needed to push ahead with this fabricated version of the truth.

I ignore the vampire's piercing stare as I say, “Before the witch fled my apartment, she mentioned a base of operations in Houston. I feel it's only right that I investigate this lead and—”

“Absolutely not.” Chandler squares his gaze with mine and an audacious glint of amusement sparks in his eye. “Didn't you yourself say that recon wasn't in your job description?”

Was he enjoying this?

“It's not.” The muscles in my neck tighten as I add, “But this attack was too personal for me to simply ignore.”

“We have a Public Affairs unit in the First Precinct who can follow up on this lead, and they in turn have more than enough Reapers if the use of force becomes necessary. I see no reason for you to pursue it any further outside of our jurisdiction.”

“I thought the Tribunal had no jurisdiction?”

“They don't. You, however, do. And after your little disappearing act—retirement, I think you called it?—they aren't too inclined to let you out of my sight anytime soon. You're still an asset, after all.” More like a prisoner. “And, given the nature of what you are, I would count my blessings if I were you. Think of it as probation.”

“That implies that I had any freedom to begin with.” I cast a wayward glance at Catalina. The vampire had been alarmingly quiet during our conversation; surely she understood the importance behind why I needed to see Nadia? She was the one who suggested it, after all!

As if reading my mind, Catalina finally purses her lips. “Gia ónoma tou Theoú, Chandler, just let her go. Our precinct survived six months without her before. What's another couple of days?”

“As her handler it's my job to keep her in line. That includes keeping her on top of her duties—which are becoming increasingly difficult, mind you, with everything going on. And I can't do that if she leaves while also overseeing the Genesis Project.”

“Then I'll go in your stead. I'm overdue for a visit to the First Precinct on this trip, anyway.” A devilish grin curls her lips as her eyes flick over to me. “Besides, there's more than one way to tame a cambion.”

Great, they were talking about me as if I was not even here. My fingers dig into the fabric of my jeans as I bite my tongue. Snapping now could very well ruin any chance of Chandler allowing me to leave for Houston unsupervised, if at all. As infuriating as it was, I needed to stay quiet.

After a long moment the witch sighs, his shoulders deflating as he lowers himself into his chair. “Keep loosening your hold on her leash, Catalina, and you may soon find a noose around your own neck.”

Her eyes flash blood-red as she bares her fangs. “Is that a threat?”

He lifts his head and meets her with a gaze that looked tired beyond his years. “Please don't misunderstand me. I respect your status as an Elder and the vitaem's contributions to the alliance have been unparalleled. But you did vouch for Ashe all those years ago, did you not? You swore your life on her obedience and that commitment has been called into question lately.”

“And is it you who questions my allegiance, Chandler?” Catalina growls. “Or is this coming from the High Court?”

My throat tightens. The witches' High Court made up a majority of the Tribunal's ruling council, with the two vampire Elders appointing six members from their respective clans to make up the rest. The ferae had no stomach for politics and instead relied on their own representatives to ensure that the alliance was being fairly upheld. Witches may not be the dominant species here, but even in the North American branch they still maintained their influence on our laws.

If Catalina's allegiance to the Tribunal was being called into question, then things were even worse than I thought. Could she continue to guard our secrets under such scrutiny?

“Does it matter?” Another sigh rattles in Chandler's chest as he rubs the nape of his neck in defeat. “Fine, go. Find out what these Enlightened want with you and then get back here so we can deal with  it. I'll have Public Affairs send a unit out to your apartment tonight to see if they can't trace the energy signature from the backdoor.” He shifts his gaze between us. “I don't know what it is that binds you two together and, frankly, I don't care. But for both of your sakes, I hope it's worth the risk.”

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A/N: I think Ashe needs a nice, long, relaxing vacation after all of this!

As always, thank you for reading! Please don't forget to vote, and I'd love to hear your thoughts/concerns in the comments below! :)