Days later...
I felt Marcone long before I saw him. The moment I stepped into the castle I was hit by a melange of conflicting emotions. Scalding rage. Enough fear to make my skin crawl. Suspicion. Doubt. Others I had no name for. It was a struggle to put one foot in front of the other when every instinct told me to run away. Nothing good could come from this visit, and yet I was here anyway. Ms. Demeter, or rather Helen was right about one thing. I cared just enough about Marcone to give him the truth. At least then he'd know she hadn't been carried off and executed by his enemies.
Unless he decided to consider me an enemy, in which case I'd never leave the room. I wondered how much he paid the staff that would scrub my brains off the wall.
Marcone's voice carried down the hall, even with his office door closed. I could picture him red in the face, half-shouting orders into his phone. Again, I stopped short, wondering what the hell I was doing. Poor, poor foolish girl indeed.
"I don't care," he seethed, voice even louder when I cracked his office door open. "Search again. She has to be traveling by car, which means she can't be more than eight hours away at this point. Search every motel, RV park, low-rent motel, or storage containers you find. I want the culprit found and dealt with."
Gulp.
Marcone twitched once in my direction when I stepped inside his office but didn't look up from the papers fanned out across his desk. He was white-knuckling his cell phone and let out a curse when the call disconnected abruptly. Smoke tendrils rose from the casing and I winced. I usually fouled up technology when I was running high on emotion, which was most of the time these days. Marcone dropped the ruined phone into the trash and produced another from inside his coat. A contingency phone for times such as this.
"Leave," he snapped. "Gard will approve any expenses, supplies, or backup you need to accomplish your goal. I have calls to make, and you'll only destroy my phone."
When I didn't leave or respond, he glanced up, annoyance clear in the set of his shoulders. It drained away as he took me in, replaced by a fury so cold that it sank into my bones, making me shiver. I wasn't sure what he'd seen on my face, but it was enough. His hands dropped to his desk, clutching the edges until the wood creaked.
"What. Did. You. Do?" he asked, biting off every word.
"What you should have done a long time ago," I said, surprised when my voice mirrored his. He didn't have any right to the anger in the first place. This whole thing was his fault after all.
Marcone released the edge of his desk and rounded it so quickly that I actually stepped toward the open door, ready to attack or take cover depending on whatever he did next. He stalked forward, stopping when I was at arm's length. He didn't make any sudden, aggressive moves though I could feel the violence welling inside him, seeking a target. He was pissed.
"You have no idea what you're talking about." His voice had dropped to a deadly whisper, the calm before the storm landed, obliterating everything in its path. "This wasn't any of your concern."
"It was, actually. The whole point of the convention was to lure the servitors and figure out who was leaking information. I found her. If she hadn't told me about Amanda, we'd be having a different conversation. I originally went to her office intending to cut her throat."
Marcone stilled, absorbing the information. His expression was blank, but unguarded emotion roiled just beneath the surface. A nonsensical stab of betrayal twisted beneath his ribs, and I fought not to wrap my arms around my chest. I didn't want to live his pain beside him. He'd made his bed and now he could suffer in it.
"Helen?"
"Helen," I confirmed. "She dug past your dummy corporations and found the private hospital. She knew she wasn't going to be able to best your security, so she'd settle for a little vengeance. Ruin or kill you and steal her daughter away while your organization floundered."
The lines around his eyes tightened and he took another step toward me. My hand dropped to the hilt of my sword on reflex. His gaze flicked to my hand and then up to my face. I could see the mental calculations churning behind his eyes. If it came to blows, could he get in close enough to make a thrust messy or next to impossible? How fast would he need to be to avoid me? Would I die quickly enough to prevent me from aiming my death curse at him? Could he afford to kill me without a backup warlock in place?
"You had no right," he said quietly.
Something inside me snapped and I stepped closer to him, pushing up on tiptoe so I could shove my face into his. We were inches apart, so close that I could feel his breath on my cheek and see the solid line of green-brown that ringed his irises.
"No, you had no right! Who the hell were you to play God? That's her daughter, and you let her think she was dead in the ground for years!"
"It was for her own good!" Marcone snapped. The anger was close to the surface now, hotter, rolling out and hitting me in the face like the superheated air from a blast furnace. "Losing Amanda once almost killed her. Do you really think it's better to know that her daughter is in a coma and will never wake up? It would shatter her into a million pieces. My way was better."
"Oh don't you dare give me any of that infantilizing bullshit! She's an adult and you took away her choices. Some hope is better than none at all! Now she knows that she missed out on years of her daughter's life, that she didn't get to see her grow, read stories to her, or hold her hand every once in a while. How fucking galling it was to find out that you were doing all those things behind her back? Sleeping with her and then turning around to visit Amanda. It's disgusting. It should have been you in that bed. You weren't keeping her away from Helen to spare her pain, you were just trying to ease your own guilty conscience, playing surrogate daddy after your antics put her parents in jail. How fucking dare you play God, you selfish, arrogant prick-"
Marcone lunged. I expected him to spin me toward his desk, draw his gun, and put two in my gut, ready to finish the job when I slumped to the floor. He did back me into a wall, knocking the breath from my lungs on impact. His arms caged me before I could reach for my sword. One hand gripped the nape of my neck with implacable strength and then-
Marcone kissed me. His mouth was hard and demanding, never giving me a chance to breathe, let alone think. His nails dug into my skin. Fury and need hit me like a blow, almost buckling my knees. He wasn't sure if he wanted to tear my hair out or tear my clothes off. Some sick part of me wanted it. My fucked up brain had linked violence with sex from the very start. His lips were warm, his hands rough, the bite of his nails intriguing. And wrong. So, so wrong.
He released one of my hands when I kissed him back, dropping his free hand to undo the buttons on my shirt. I wound my fingers into his hair, tugging until it came out at the roots. I tore at his lower lip until blood filled my mouth and ran in rivulets down my chin. He reared back. I wiped my mouth and showed him the smear of crimson on my palm, and the hairs clutched in the other. He went very white.
"I've got parts of you, which means I can do some truly unspeakable things to you now. Back the fuck off."
"Tell me where they are."
"Even if you found their hiding place the person I tasked to protect them would squash you like a bug. So I repeat, back the fuck off."
His lips mashed into a furious line and he jabbed a finger at the door. "Get out!"
I didn't argue. I backed out the door, only dropping the hairs and smearing the blood off my hand when I reached the doorway. He could have shot me then, but he didn't. I felt his glare on my back until I rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. The ache that blossomed in my chest when I stepped outside Castle Marcone was my own. Fool. Poor, poor fool, always trusting monsters.
Maybe someday I'd learn.
