Where The Heart Lives by Marjorie Liu Read Free Book Online Page B

phone call. He hadn’t needed to. Roland had known from the moment
Eddie entered the penthouse, heading for the cage. Some telepaths were like
that.
    “According to you,” Eddie said,
“there’s no one else.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    He set his jaw, warmth finally
trickling back into his hands. “It’s the only answer I need. You taught me
that.”
    Roland stilled. Serena
murmured, “Generous praise. Given that you’re speaking to a man who hasn’t left
his home in over a decade.”
    Roland blinked hard, tearing
his gaze from Eddie. “ You’re certainly free to go.”
    “I wish I could. I have a
grandchild I could be visiting right now, and you smell like a drunk.” Serena
swung away from Roland to stare out the window. “But the new alliance stands. A’Priori wants me here, and I work for them . Not Dirk & Steele.”
    Eddie was already tired, but
hearing those words stole the last of his strength -- whatever was left in his
heart. He couldn’t keep the bitterness off his face, and it made him feel like
a different man. A worse man. Too much like the man who had burned those scars
into his hands.
    “It’s all the same,” he found
himself saying, even though he wanted to stay quiet, and hold in that
bitterness and bury it, again and again as he had been burying it for months. “ A’Priori. Dirk & Steele. It’s just family.”
    Family and lies. And that was
hardest of all to reconcile. 
    A’Priori was one of the
largest, most powerful corporations in the world. Run by a tight-knit family of
men and women who possessed singular gifts of a paranormal nature, gifts that
had been used almost exclusively for material gain.
    But more than sixty years ago,
members of that same family had broken away to form another, much smaller
organization, one founded on values that had nothing to do with money or
power…but instead, helping others.
    That organization had
become Dirk & Steele. To the public, it was nothing but a high-powered
detective agency—but in private it functioned as a refuge. For people like
Eddie. And others, who weren’t human by any stretch of the imagination.
    Until recently, however, almost
no one at Dirk & Steele had been aware that A’Priori existed, or that its
connections to the agency ran so deep.
    And no one, certainly,
had known that Dirk & Steele’s worst enemy, the Consortium -- responsible
for human trafficking and experimentation, bio-terrorism, mass murder—was part
of that same family.
    Your brother , Eddie said
silently, looking at Roland, knowing he could hear his thoughts. Your
brother runs the Consortium. You knew all along that it existed, and why. You
never warned us, not even after it was too late.
    Too late for me.
    Roland flinched, but those
bloodshot eyes showed nothing. And Eddie felt nothing except a dull ache when
he looked at him.
    At the other end of the room, a
shadow detached from the wall: a slow, sinuous flow of movement made of
perfect, dangerous grace.
    Eddie had been aware of that
presence from the moment he entered the room, but he still tensed; and so did
Serena and Roland. It was impossible not to. The old woman who emerged from the
shadows was deadly, in more ways than one.
    Little of her face was visible,
but her eyes glowed with subtle, golden light. She was Chinese, but so old—and
so inhuman—that definitions based on ethnicity held no value.
    “Ma’am,” Eddie said, with
careful respect.
    “Boy,” she replied, and the air
seemed to hiss across his skin with power. “I’ve met immortals with younger
eyes than you.”
    He said nothing. Roland
muttered, “Long Nu. Get on with it.”
    The old woman’s hand flashed
out, trailing light, and touched the corner of Eddie’s mouth. Not with a
finger, but a claw—cool as silk, sliding across his lips, down his jaw. He
smelled stone and ash, and a hint of sandalwood.
    “You know what you have to do?”
Long Nu said to him quietly.
     “You want me to find a girl. A
girl who can