BROKEN BLADE (8 page)

Even when there was nothing left inside me, I retched. When the spasms finally passed, I rested my head against the marble and waited for the burning sting of shame to fade away.

It would take years, though.

The taste in my mouth, the stink of my own vomit pushed me to move. I straightened up and turned on the water, washing away the evidence of my weakness, while in the back of my mind I heard a familiar, mocking voice.
Useless waste. Pathetic weakling—

“Shut up, you vile old bitch.” Cupping my hands under the stream of water, I splashed it on my burning face. With the water dripping from my hands, cheeks and nose, I straightened up and looked at my reflection. The woman staring back at me was red-eyed, tired.

And she looked weak.

Not entirely broken, but she didn’t look strong.

The tattoos spiraling up my neck were a stark splash of color against the pallor of my skin and I focused on them, on each mark etched on me. The broken blade that I could barely see. The spear. The snake. The fang. Hidden by my shirt was the leopard. Not easily seen by others, but still a mark I carried on me.

I looked at myself and saw something,
somebody
who was broken.

If I acted broken, I was going to be treated that way.

* * * *

Chang had the door open before I reached his office and when I walked inside, he was standing in front of the desk.

When I saw his head lower, I wanted to take off running.

But the anger inside me took over and spilled out.

“I’m getting damn sick and tired of seeing the top of everybody’s head. Am I that fucking hard to look at now? Do you look at me and see
Jude’s Whore
tattooed on my forehead?”

Chang flinched, like I’d stabbed him with silver.

“No, Kit. Of course not.”

And he still stared at his damned feet.

“Then why in the
hell
is everybody suddenly so interested in their shoes when I walk up?” I demanded.

A quiet sigh escaped him and he turned away. As he did, he lifted his head and it was just another lash across my heart. He could look up now. If he wasn’t face-to-face with me, he’d look up. Son of a bitch.

I’d called him my friend—

“It’s not you, Kit,” he said quietly. “It’s us. We failed you.”

Staring at the back of his head, I flexed my hand absently. Even though I
knew
it was a waste of time, it was still a punch in the gut, knowing I couldn’t call her.

Useless…broken
…

Still, I didn’t need a sword to relieve the fury inside me. Pounding my fists against the nearest hard surface might help; Chang’s head would suffice.

“You’re the woman Damon chose for himself.”

I tensed at his voice.

Now
I
was the one to turn away. Averting my head, I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Chang, don’t.”

But it was like he didn’t hear me. “You’re his,” he continued. “And by extension...ours. If you were a shifter, this would translate to different things for us. Had he chosen a shifter for his partner, she may or may not have been somebody who’d been his equal. We don’t hold to any mindset that he has to pick his physical match.”

I snorted. “He’d never find
that
.”

“No. He wouldn’t. But he found somebody who suited him, and somebody who was his match in other ways. It was you. And as you weren’t as strong physically as a shifter, it was up to us, those who hold ourselves loyal to him, to protect you in the ways you couldn’t. If you aren’t as strong as some, we could make up for that. If you aren’t as fast, we are. It was our duty to make sure you were cared for. And we failed. You proved yourself worthy of him, but we’ve proven ourselves not worthy of you.”

I couldn’t even describe what was going through me as those words fell between us.
You’re his…

No. No, I wasn’t. But I guess they didn’t know that. They were beating themselves up over nothing.

Spinning on my heel, I headed over to Chang’s weapons wall. It had always soothed me. Maybe I couldn’t call them anymore, but weapons were my security blanket and just looking at them made me feel better.

There was one katana that had always drawn my eye. He gleamed like silver magic under the lights. Absently, I touched my fingers to his hilt. His music was gone, too.

I’d lost them all. No connection to any of them now.

“You’re all getting worked up over nothing then,” I said, forcing the words out as I continued to stroke my hand down the blade’s hilt. “It ended the night Jude kidnapped me. Damon had dumped me. I guess word didn’t get around. You’re all kicking yourself for no reason, so just stop it already. I’m getting sick and tired of staring at people’s skulls and I don’t care what the reason is.”

“It isn’t over for Damon, Kit. His connection to you is permanent.”

Goodbye, Kit
.

I closed my eyes against the ache inside me. “No. It wasn’t. He walked away from me. I was in the middle of a job and I had to see it done. But it was something that was hurting him and he needed something I couldn’t give him. In the end, what he needed and what I needed didn’t meet up and he ended—”

“If I may interrupt,” Chang said and his voice was no longer quite so malleable. No longer quite so gentle and polite. “I’m aware of what the job was.”

I felt a flicker of heat—it was enough of a shock that I turned, hand instinctively going to the Eagle that rode my hip, but Chang was still staring outside. “I’m quite familiar with the Banner job at this point,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter. Damon was angry. But despite his anger, he wouldn’t have stayed that way.”

I absorbed those words and tried to let them settle inside. In the end, though, there was only one thing that I could think of. “What does it matter?” I asked quietly. The thick, lush carpet muffled my footsteps as I crossed over and settled in the seat across from his desk. It was the narrower one, the one he’d often pointed subordinates to when he was questioning them, dressing them down. It was a miserably hard affair, but I couldn’t sit in the other one. It had my back to the door and I couldn’t defend myself as easily from it.

I sat down and focused on his back. “Whether he would have stayed angry or not, whether he and I would have tried to get things to work, none of that matters because that life is no longer mine.” I brushed my fingers along the tattoo on my neck. “The woman who left here five months ago no longer exists, Chang. She died up in the mountains in Canada. I’m not her.”

“No?” He turned around and for the first time, he looked at me. There was sadness in his eyes and it bothered me. I didn’t like seeing my friends sad. I guess I still considered him a friend. “She’s not dead—I see her in front of me, Kit.
You
are still her.”

“No.” I held his gaze. Not that many knew just how much had changed. I wasn’t going to educate them. But the very basic part that made me who I was—she was
gone
. “Jude broke her and then he killed her. I’m all that’s left and I’m still trying to figure out what that is.”

His gaze shifted to the tattoos on my neck, lingering there. Slowly, he nodded and then he looked away again. “If that is how you choose to view it, then very well. Why are you here, Kit?”

Pulling the phone number from my pocket, I held it up for him. “I’m looking for the cat who used to have this number. I was given the name Kent. I was also lied to. But I need to find him.”

“Kent isn’t the name of any shifter I know.” He flicked a look in my direction, studied the number. “Cat, rat or wolf. It’s not the first name or last, to my recollection.”

“It could be a middle name. I don’t know.” Shrugging it off, I tossed the number on his desk. I trusted his recollections but I wasn’t letting it go at that. “As I said, I was lied to. A girl is involved. She’s scared. Said he used to hang around here. She tried to call the Lair and Sam gave her the run around, I’m told. The number is the one thing I have to go on and she wasn’t lying about the number or the fact that he’s a shifter. Can you find out who had that number?” He shifted his gaze to me, his black eyes troubled. Finally, though, he moved to his computer. “Computer, search database,” he said, reciting the number.

“
Working
...”

He tapped something on the keyboard. I couldn’t tell what from where I was sitting.

The skin around his eyes tightened a little and then he looked back up at me. “I believe the cat you need works at the Lair. Whether or not he’s on shift now, I don’t know. Doyle would be of more use to you.”

Doyle
.

I thought of the kid I’d rescued almost seven months ago. The boy who’d
then
rescued me.

“I’ll just call him,” I said woodenly. Shoving out of the seat, I headed for the door.

“Kit. Why did you come here instead of going to the Lair? If Sam knows the number, why not just ask her?”

“Because I didn’t want to go to the fucking Lair,” I snapped, shooting him a dark look.

He watched me soberly. “You have some issue asking Sam for the information you need?”

I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him. “The day that idiot bitch stops me from doing anything is the day I take up knitting.”

“Then I must assume it’s because of Damon.” He cocked his head. “Why is it a problem for you, though? If it’s over...and the woman you used to be is dead?”

I glared at him for a long moment and then fantasized about drawing my gun and shooting nice, watermelon-sized holes in the walls of his oh-so-lovely office. Instead, I turned on my heel and left.

Still, I carried that image with me all the way down to my car.

I tried to hold on to it even as I drove to the Lair. Going there really shouldn’t be a problem. Not if the woman I’d been was dead. The problem was I that I knew I’d lied.

It was just easier to think about things if the woman I had been was completely dead.

Dead sounded so much better than broken.

* * * *

There had been a time when I couldn’t show up here without Damon being on the walk, coming toward me the minute I parked in the spot that he’d set aside for me, almost always with that faint smile on his face, the one that made my heart skip.

Even now, I was having a hard time controlling my heart and damned if I could figure
that
out.

I drove past the empty spot that had once been mine and turned down one of the side streets, parking nearly a half-mile away. Parking wasn’t exactly substantial around here, but that spot wasn’t mine anymore.

A couple of the cats I saw glanced at me—weird little double-takes and then I got the same damn behavior from them that I’d gotten from Chang and it pissed me off, but what in the hell was I supposed to do about it?

A year ago—hell, six months ago—the Lair had been a quiet place. Heavy with tension, pain and ugliness, the silence broken by the raised voices of those who’d been in good standing with the former Alpha. She’d been a crazy, evil bitch and those who were crazy, evil pieces of work had done well under her hand.

Since her rather timely death, Damon had been doing his best to turn things around and after a few rough months, things had changed. Usually, it was noisier here. He was doing a lot of rebuilding, putting his stamp on the massive building that was known as the Lair. Sounds of construction filled the air, people laughing, shouting.

Some of the cats lived there. I think he had about two hundred people total living at the Lair and a handful were kids. Sometimes, you could hear them laughing. When I’d driven past, I’d heard the faintest strains of voices drifting over the resounding
whack
of a hammer, somebody blasting music.

But the closer I moved to the Lair, the quieter it became.

Nausea churned in my gut as I popped my wrist, wishing like hell that faint tingling I sensed in my palm was something,
anything
that would bring my blade to me, but it wasn’t.

Because I needed to touch something, I rested my hand on my belt and rubbed my thumb over the silver wire worked into the leather.

I wasn’t even afraid of them really.

I was just—

A tiger’s roar ripped through the air and I tensed as I saw the flash of orange just before he came leaping over the fence—that damn thing was eight feet high. He took it like it was a bump on the road.

I came to a halt as Doyle crouched on the ground in front of me, a long, sleek tiger that was nearly double the size of a natural one. He waited there, staring at me with intelligence in his eyes.

Swallowing the knot in my throat, I forced myself to talk.

“Hi, Doyle.”

He stretched out on his belly and rested his head on his paws, eyes on my face, just watching me.

“Ah...is this your way of telling me I can’t go in? Using that giant, tiger-skin rug to block me?”

He sneezed and sat up, still watching me.

I took a step forward and he didn’t do anything, so I moved a little more.

By the time I was even with him, I was almost breathing normal. As he leaned in, he lifted his head to butt it against my chest. It was almost enough to knock me off my feet. Sighing a little, I wrapped my arm around his neck.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you missed me,” I said quietly. It hadn’t been
that
long ago that the overgrown house cat had acted like he couldn’t stand me. And now this?

He rubbed his head against me. Sinking my hand into the thick, dense fur around his neck, I dipped my head and pressed it to his. “Thanks again for finding me, Doyle.”

He’d been the one to track me down. I still didn’t know how. If I could ever get to where—

Just before my mind could take that nasty sideways journey into fear, he made a harsh sound, deep in his chest and then eased away, still watching me with those alien, inhuman eyes.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, darting a glance around. I could do this out here, I thought. If he’d just change—

He moved his big head in a nod and then turned, flicking his tail as he walked.