Alterant (Belador #2)(5)
Storm had visions about me? “Who are you looking for?”
“It’s not safe to speak her name.”
Her? A flare of jealousy that was as unexpected as it was uncomfortable jolted Evalle.
Storm’s gaze glinted with a hint of surprise that vanished in the next blink of his eyes. A smile touched the corner of his mouth.
If she survived the Tribunal meeting, she was going to start playing cards with Tzader and Quinn to improve her poker face.
Men. “I’m a little busy to help you find women, Storm.”
“Talking to you is more challenging than petting a porcupine.” He lost his smile and scrubbed a hand over his face, then seemed to regroup. “This is serious and I’m only asking you to help me find one woman, who’s responsible for my father’s death. And she has something important that belongs to me.”
Oh. Add socially inept to my list of flaws. Evalle didn’t care for the porcupine comment, but she’d let it pass this time. “If I come back, I’ll try to help you.”
“There is no if to it.” Storm’s jaw hardened with determination. “There was another part of the vision where I’m tracking you after the Tribunal meeting.”
“Are you insane? If they lock me away and you come after me”—which sort of made her happy when she thought about it—“Sen and the Tribunal would fight over who could kill you first for daring to defy them.”
“I won’t defy them.”
She rubbed her forehead, pulling away fingers damp from perspiration as she tried to process what he was saying. Pacing helped Tzader think, so she started walking in a short circle and muttered, “I don’t understand.”
“To be honest, neither do I, but I trust my visions because they led me here . . . to you.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “What?”
“Yes. The vision I had two months ago showed me working with a woman riding a motorcycle, but I couldn’t pinpoint her location. I could only tell it was in a city in the United States. When I got an offer to work with VIPER I knew it would lead me to her. I started having visions again the night we met. You may be my only hope to find the woman I’m hunting.”
Like I don’t have enough riding on my shoulders? Evalle doubted Storm was searching for just a human female. “If you can’t tell me her name, then what is she?”
His gaze trailed past her shoulder as if he was working something out in his mind, then he gave a shake of his head. “I’ll tell you more when the time comes, and I won’t let her or anyone else harm you in the meantime.”
“I can take care of myself but I don’t think I can help you, Storm.”
“Because you don’t expect to come back?”
Like she needed to be reminded of that? Again. “That’s a distinct possibility. And you don’t need to come after me.”
He made a sound that came out part growl and part frustration. “The Tribunal is judging you unsafe because other Alterants have shifted into beasts and killed humans. Are you willing to spend the rest of your life locked away for a sin you haven’t committed?”
That struck at the heart of what she’d been trying to avoid thinking about. Day after day, year after year, she’d lived in a twenty-by-twenty underground space as a child. The aunt who’d “owned her” had used the threat of sunlight harming Evalle as an excuse to lock her in a basement with no windows because she’d hated Evalle, her own brother’s bastard child.
Living imprisoned again would be a death sentence.
If Evalle lost her case with the Tribunal, the Beladors had to stand by that decision. Any retaliation or failure to support the ruling would breach the agreement between the Beladors and the VIPER coalition. If the Celtic goddess Macha, who ruled the Beladors, backed out of the VIPER coalition because of Evalle—okay, cue up wild laughter at that possibility—Beladors across the world would become enemies to be attacked without retaliation. Bloodbaths would erupt between pantheons, and the world would turn into the battleground Beladors had spent hundreds of years trying to prevent.
No one would go to war for an Alterant.
But if she could prove VIPER needed an asset with her powers she might earn a reprieve from what she considered a death sentence.
Evalle conceded Storm’s point. She would not willingly accept being put away for a sin she hadn’t committed. “You’re right. I’d rather die than live out my life in a cage, but your life would be forfeit as well if you try to find me.”
“My life was forfeited a long time ago. It’s my father’s death that matters.”
She couldn’t untangle what he meant by that statement, which was clearly Storm’s intention. He wasn’t sharing a thing with her yet that he didn’t have to, and he didn’t give her a chance to question him on it when he threw a new worry at her to juggle.
Storm said, “If the Tribunal locks you away, you do realize Tzader and Quinn will not stand by quietly either. Do you want them to come after you?”
“No.” She hadn’t considered that. “They’d have to break their Belador vows to go against a Tribunal ruling. That would be suicidal.” She could never live with either of them paying the ultimate price for her. She’d do the same for them, but Tzader was the Maistir who led the North American Beladors, and Quinn had family, plus he was one of the financial geniuses that managed the holdings of Beladors around the globe.