Alarm prickled along her skin.
“Why do you think he’s taking Tara? He wants the truth. He’ll get it with her, whether the wraith likes it or not.”
Moving quietly, she hurriedly toweled off and dressed, leaving the water running to mask her movements.
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
“The guy will either be vetted or he won’t be. You know the drill, Thane.”
“Yeah, I know the drill. And I know if he’s not vetted, nothing will stop Harm from ripping the guy limb from limb.”
Marley stepped out from the screen. “Then you sure as hell better take me to them now before my father adds more unforgivable sins to his list.”
~*~
Ian couldn’t feel Marley. Pacing the tight confines of his cell, he tunneled his fingers through hair that no longer brushed his shoulders. His brain still hadn’t quite readjusted to reality, hadn’t quite grasped the how of what had happened. Between desperate pleas to an Almighty he’d lost the right to speak to centuries before, he wracked his brain, trying to sort it out. The shields he’d thrown up around her during the fire illusion—he hadn’t taken them down. They must have somehow protected her mind from violation. So it had been his nightmare, not hers, that fueled the illusion. But the shields hadn’t been enough to keep her out of it entirely. His mind believed it, and she’d been trapped. No matter that she’d recognized it for an illusion, her body hadn’t been immune. Traces of her blood still covered his hands, his chest. His pants were stiff with it.
The binding hadn’t worked, but she was still breathing when they took her away. He clung to that. He had to or he’d go mad. No one would tell him a fucking thing.
A heavy metal thunk presaged the exterior lock being disengaged. The door swung open, and Marley’s father stalked in, a storm of crimson flashing around him, but his eyes—his feline eyes—were cold with purpose. Ian recognized the cougar in a human skin. He was too charged up, Marley’s energy crackling beneath his skin, to be surprised that he could read Mirus emotion
s now. Another, younger woman trailed behind, followed by the scar-faced shaman who had been on guard outside.
“Where’s Marley?” Ian demanded. “Is she all right?”
The Felis said nothing.
Ian went cold. “Damn you, is she all right?”
When the shaman opened the cell and gestured him out at gunpoint, Ian acquiesced. Going into a rage and fighting his way out of here wouldn’t do Marley any good and might get him shot in the process. He didn’t even know where he was beyond somewhere in a series of caves. He sat in the large wooden chair with suppression runes carved along the back, arms, and legs. Steel manacles for wrists and feet were mounted onto the wood.
As Ian was locked in, the woman grabbed a folding chair from the corner. She set it up in front of him and nodded at Marley’s father. “I’m ready, Harm.”
For what, he wondered. Her voice was hardly above a whisper, and that diminutive stature wasn’t going to intimidate anyone.
“In all your time working for the Council, have you ever dealt with a Truth Taker?” asked Harm.
Ian flicked a glance at the woman in front of him. No one could have been further from his experience of full-blooded sirens. “I have.”
“Then you know how this will work. I ask questions, through Tara. You answer. Corin will maintain his position with a gun to your head. If I suspect you are feeding off Tara or manipulating us in any way, I’ll have him shoot. Understand?”
Tara jolted a little, but said nothing.
Wanting to get on with things, Ian inclined his head in acquiescence. Harm and the shaman put in earplugs.
“Begin,” commanded Harm.
“Who are you?”
Tara didn’t quite sing the words, but manipulated their cadence, modulated her previously soft voice to a tone that cut into Ian’s mind with the precision of a laser. He wasn’t fighting, but he could feel his natural shields stripped until he was laid bare. Exposed, he felt a fresh wave of guilt over forcing Scarlett’s abilities on Marley.
“Ian Ryker. Born Ian Padrig Colquhoun of the clan Colquhoun.”
“What is your affiliation?”
Once, that question would’ve drawn the Council equivalent of name, rank, and serial number. “I am riven. I am affiliated with no one.”
“Do you mean harm to anyone in this compound?”