In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) by Randall Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

false trails that nobody should be able to figure out what happened.
    Enkidu pursed his lips and wondered what he was supposed to do now.  No outsiders lived to tell any tales about the Hunters’ secrets.  That was the Law.  Unfortunately, Enkidu’s weapons were in his car.  All he had was a steak knife.
    One twitch, though, and the Crow would be gone.  On the other hand, Enkidu thought, maybe he could box the Crow in if he sealed the exits of the restaurant.  Perhaps he even knew how…
    “I wonder what Wandering Shade would think if he knew you were here talking to me.  I’m convinced Wandering Shade considers me one of his enemies,” Gilgamesh said.  “Wouldn’t this worry him?”
    “What Wandering Shade thinks about my dealings is none of your business, Gilgamesh,” Enkidu said.  He snorted.  “You’ve become as devious as all the other Crows I’ve been forced to deal with.  None of you Crows will listen to reason.  Hunter leadership is the future!  It’s logically irrefutable.”
    Gilgamesh’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.  “You don’t know, do you?”
    “What?”
    “Your Master, Wandering Shade, is a Crow, one of the real old ones.  You didn’t realize your Hunter Empire is led by a Crow?”
    Enkidu stood and growled.  “You lie!”  His stomach sank, though.  Gilgamesh’s words had cut through the clutter in his mind with the weight of truth.
    The world burst bright around him, overwhelming his metasense with light, colors and shifting patterns.  For an instant, he couldn’t even see .  Enkidu blinked and tried to ignore the dazzle.  Ignoring the dazzle took him a moment, and in that moment Gilgamesh vanished.  Enkidu stood and roared the Terror.  Everyone in the restaurant fled.  He concentrated his metasense and found one of those fleeing who wore a crude disguise, a male Transform.  Enkidu roared Terror again, targeted at the disguised Crow, and threw him to the ground.  No damned Crow would be able to use his speed in the midst of a crowd like this!
    Enkidu made ready to immobilize Gilgamesh by slicing his hamstrings, but he stopped.  The pinned man smelled like a normal human and he was overweight, besides!  He wasn’t a Crow, as Crows didn’t smell like anything at all.  Fooled!
    He roared.
    Fooled twice, he realized.  Gilgamesh had used his Master’s name, Wandering Shade, first.  Not him.  Then he had answered, acknowledging the truth.
    Enkidu roared again and killed the man he had pinned.  The veneer of civilization was thin on him and he lost it completely, slaughtering every human he was able to reach with his steak knife.
    The sound of sirens brought a semblance of thought back to him.  He fled.
     

Chapter 3
    Never interrupt a Crow.
    “The Life of Crows”
     
    Carol Hancock: August 15, 1968 – August 18, 1968
    I toweled off from my shower, reviewing my latest set of recruits.  The Brickman family, I decided, would be perfect fronts for my nascent car dealership project.  They owned a cheap dingy thirty parking space suburban used car lot and the only thing keeping them from expanding was lack of credit, due to a decade old bankruptcy they suffered during the Eisenhower recession.  I would supply them credit, now, on my terms.
    I decided to blow off McMillan Security.  Outwardly, the merc company was a perfect place to recruit and suborn for Keaton’s army, but something about the Dallas security firm made me twitchy.  I wasn’t sure what triggered my reaction, but Keaton wanted me to trust my instincts and to back off based on any suspicion at all.
    Ying politely knocked on my bedroom suite door.  “Here,” I said.
    “Ma’am, phone call from Gilgamesh.  He wants to talk to you in person.”
    Uh huh, it was about time for one of his calls.  That is, after ten at night.  I smiled, settled into the chair by the bedroom phone and stretched my legs out in front of me.
    “Hey there,” I said.  Relaxed.  I worried about Gilgamesh