Inside Straight Read online

  Inside Straight

  An Amber Farrell Novel

  Book 6 of the Bite Back series

  by

  Mark Henwick

  Published by Marque

  Series schedule, reviews & news on

  www.athanate.com

  Bite Back 6 : Inside Straight

  ISBN: 978-1-912499-09-0

  Published in October 2019 by Marque

  Mark Henwick asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.

  © 2019 Mark Henwick

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and events portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, legal entities, incidents or localities is entirely coincidental. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology may not work as depicted.

  Author’s Notes

  Asian names:

  Throughout this series, I use the Western sequence (First, Middle, Last Name) to depict names, so as to match with the majority of characters in the books. Most Asian societies would use Last, First, Middle Name.

  Continuity:

  The Bite Back series is a continuous story rather than a string of episodes. It’s not advised to start anywhere but at the beginning, with Book 1, Sleight of Hand, and read through in order.

  There are three novellas between Bite Back 5 (Angel Stakes) and this book. Two are set in Michigan and explain the background to House Lloyd (The Biting Cold & Winter’s Kiss), and one is set in New York (Change of Regime). It’s not essential to read them before Inside Straight, but they do provide much more information on the side stories that feed into Bite Back at this point.

  Acknowledgment

  For Joanne, whose simple request when we met in NM precipitated a whole character in my head.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Midnight in the heart of the Painted Desert, and the tattered dead rise up like the dust of dreams behind her whispering feet.

  Their features are blurred, the many dead; all the once-proud edges have been caressed into soft, uncertain shapes, the way stone is carved by centuries of wind and rain. Moonlight flows through them as if through troubled water, and they raise a million tangled, untold stories to fly like banners behind them.

  They’re called here, the dead, from their silent graves along the countless sorrowing trails. Here, where the mountains still breathe and the rocks talk. Here, where rain is a blessing on the seared earth, and the sun looks down on the yellow corn as it dances to the desert’s tune.

  Here, where they may find those who may listen, in this sacred place.

  Tullah listens as she steps the circle through the cold depths of the night. Every night. It’s her choice. Her atonement. In exchange, the dead swirl behind, obedient to the summons, and their spirits cloak the kiva in which her family and friends sleep underground.

  She can feel the searchers she hides them from; great, blind monsters snuffling over the hills and through the valleys, flickering spirit tongues testing the city airs, cold spirit hands like spiders creeping across the plains.

  As the days have crept by, there are more of them, instead of less.

  Her family and the others are safe, so long as the legions of dead surround the kiva—around, above, below, and make it a place between the physical world and the spirit world. The searchers slide over them, oblivious, unable sense the kiva and the people within.

  So far.

  This masking is Chatima’s working, a powerful working, shamanic and obscure to the searchers, and without it they would have found her long ago. It is a spell of strange and awful beauty, locked here around this place of power. Tullah maintains the working, treading the circle every night, and takes some pride that she does it well.

  But it cannot last forever. They have reached a point of balance between the dangers of staying here and the dangers of moving.

  She has discussed this with Chatima and with her parents. They’ve waited as long as they dare with the spirit world pressing in so close. Being with the spirits takes its toll: the sun-struck lethargy; the night-long, dreamy disconnection from the physical world; the feeling of being more spirit than flesh.

  Not for the first time, Tullah thinks of the kiva as a grave.

  Much longer inside and it will be; their spirits will untether from their bodies.

  Even before that, the fragile tethers to spirit guides will part, and prevent her from ever getting Kaothos back.

  The thought of that sinks claws into her chest, making it difficult to breathe. If that happens, she might as well become one with the spirit world.

  But not the others. They shouldn’t suffer.

  It’s her the searchers are looking for, because they think she still has Kaothos. Not that it would be a good idea to point out their error: being caught without Kaothos is even worse. They’ll know that they could use her as a way to draw Kaothos into a trap. It would actually be safer for them to do it that way.

  She has to leave. She has to evade the searchers. She has to return things to the way they were before.

  The rest of them won’t be in danger for long, once she’s gone.

  She must prepare herself. She can’t perform Chatima’s workings on her own, nor can this working be moved from this sacred place, but she has concealment spells of her own that might do for the time it takes to get back to Denver. Matt says that’s where Ka
othos and Diana are heading right now.

  She must go soon. She must go alone. All thoughts of the deadly situation aside, her crippling shame is infecting everyone. Even Matt.

  As the moon slips across the night sky, someone walks beside her on the circle path.

  The dead sometimes do that, so it takes her a while to notice it’s Chatima.

  Whether she’s in her body or she’s spirit walking, Tullah is not entirely sure. Here, in the place between, it’s not always possible to tell.

  “There are many paths to go forward, but none to go back,” Chatima says, as if she hears the thoughts in Tullah’s mind about returning things to the way they were before. “And every path bears death and sorrow and pain and loss.”

  Amber’s words.

  Tullah’s tears fall to the dusty path, to be lost among the dreams of the dead.

  “All the things I’ve ever done,” she whispers. “In balance with all the things I will do. I will make this right.”

  “The world is a maze, child. The way is never straight. But look up sometimes, for the sky remains pure.”

  Tullah raises her eyes. Chatima is right; the light of the crescent moon has a silver purity. It’s calming.

  The shaman Adept is no longer beside her when she looks back down.

  “All the things I’ve ever done,” she repeats to the listening dead. The words seemed so simple when Amber spoke them. She’d heard them with her ears, but she’d not felt them in her heart. The words had seemed so light.

  Now they are like draglines on her soul.

  The dead do not shy away from her shame. The dead stay with her.

  Their thousand, thousand voices rustle like dry leaves. If she let them, they would leech the shame from her. It would be so easy; spirits hunger for the emotions of the living. Yes, it would be so easy to let them feed, but they would take all. And when they finished, she would be one of them.

  Thoughts like that come to her. It’s not a good place, this between, not for anyone, and especially not for her.

  Alongside the thoughts, she sees visions and hears voices.

  She sees Evans sometimes. The man she killed in the battle at Carson Park. Her hands tingle and she feels the snap as his neck breaks, all over again. The sickening, appalling moment of savage pleasure and the following flood of shame and recrimination.

  It’s not about him. He deserved to die. It’s about you.

  It feels as if Amber herself is speaking the words to her, and they do help.

  Sometimes the visions are a comfort as she walks: the cougar, down off her lonely range; the bear, awakened from her sleep; the buffalo, up from the grasslands. The coyote. The fox. The snake. The owl. The raven.

  Sometimes it’s not a comfort: her dragon walks silently with her, a vision of all she’s lost. And often, when the dawn breaks, the strange wolf will stand on the cliff with the rising sun behind her, a vision aflame. Chatima is uneasy about the wolf, though she tries to hide that. Openly, she says it signifies the hope of redemption, but in her heart of hearts, Tullah knows that for her, it’s a vision of shame, and a symbol of forgiveness denied.

  Chapter 1

  “Amber. Amber. Wake up. Sorry. Phone call. You have to deal with this.”

  It was Pia whispering in my ear, shaking me awake in the small hours.

  “From Tullah?” I mumbled, reaching out a hand.

  I was dreaming of her... walking a circle... death and sorrow...

  “No.”

  Alex was rising off the bed, hearing trouble in Pia’s voice, imagining a threat, his eyes halfway to wolf already when Pia held up a hand to stop him.

  Jen rolled over sleepily and tried to drag us both back.

  “Athanate business,” Pia explained. “It’s a House Lloyd. I don’t know her. She apologizes, but says it’s urgent and private. I’ve transferred her to the phone in Jen’s study.”

  I slipped on a bathrobe and frowned as I followed Pia out of the bedroom.

  My House regularly ‘borrowed’ my cell and dealt with callers so I wasn’t disturbed. A middle-of-the-night call from some House that I had to take myself meant trouble. And an unknown House?

  “I thought you knew all the Houses,” I said as we climbed the stairs. “Unless—she’s not from Carpathia or the Empire, is she?”

  That would open a can of worms that I didn’t need right now.

  “With a name like Lloyd?” Pia said. “No, she’s American, from the slight accent. That’s what’s so strange—I thought I knew them all. But she’s a real House; she spoke perfect Athanate and used all the correct protocol.”

  I thought that over. “Diazoun?” I suggested.

  Pia’s eyes widened slightly. “I hope not,” she muttered.

  So did I—that would be another squirmy, messy can of worms.

  It had once been acceptable to be diazoun: to cut all ties with other Athanate, and live without getting involved in the squabbles of creeds, or the responsibilities of associations. It wasn’t acceptable anymore. Skylur had declared every Athanate in the US had to be associated, directly or through intermediary Houses like me, to House Altau. Diazoun now had the same connotations as epitre, which, though it translated approximately as ‘unorthodox’, really meant ‘unacceptable’.

  Rogues were epitre.

  Rogues were put down.

  A diazoun House wanting my help would put me in a tricky spot, and however patient Skylur had been with me so far, there were limits.

  Pia stopped at the study door. The caller had said private.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said. “Speak cautiously. Call me if you don’t feel you understand the political implications of anything.”

  The Athanate can be picky about how things are asked for and agreed on.

  “You mean like the approved way to ask why the hell she’s requesting an urgent, private conversation in the middle of the night while everyone’s in bed?” I grumbled.

  Pia just ushered me inside and closed the door behind me.

  On the table, the sleek handset’s ‘hold’ light blinked.

  I sat down and, despite the hour, the last traces of sleepiness vanished.

  I picked up the handset and punched the button.

  “This is House Farrell,” I said. My Athanate was still poor, so I spoke in English. Maybe that would cut down on any ambiguities about how things could or should be said.

  I should be so lucky.

  “Thank you for taking my call, House Farrell. I apologize for the hour. My name is Amanda Lloyd, House Lloyd.”

  Her voice was smooth, and despite what Pia had said, I thought it was nearly accentless, but it gave the impression of being tightly controlled. This sounded like a strong woman under considerable stress.

  “House Lloyd,” I said. “May I ask what’s so urgent that you needed to speak to me in the middle of the night? Especially as my Head of Protocol is unfamiliar with your House.”

  I heard her take a breath, and then she said, “We’re diazoun. From Michigan. House Farrell, I’m calling to beg sanctuary from you.”

  Shit!

  I’d gotten it in one guess—a can of worms.

  From what I knew about Athanate protocols, ‘sanctuary’ could mean either simple protection, or becoming a sub-House. It was all trouble, but the amount depended on which she wanted.

  If—for some insane reason—I accepted House Lloyd’s Blood oath and made her my sub-House, then all her problems suddenly became mine. But on the other hand, if I took her diazoun House under my wing without making her part of my House, it would mean I, too, could be declared epitre, along with my entire House.

  In the usual, absolute, Athanate way, there was some balance applied to this situation: in asking for sanctuary, she was offering me the power of life or death over her and her House.

  It wasn’t a move to be considered lightly and I had no idea why she needed sanctuary—and from me in particular—but it couldn’t be good.

  I shivered. Athanate politic
s was deadly and complex. My impulse was to just say no immediately, but I’d already heard something in her voice that stopped me from rejecting her outright. I felt I had to at least listen to the woman.

  Didn’t mean I should go easy on her.

  “Michigan. So, you’re from House Prowser’s territory,” I said. “I have to warn you that I’m a direct sub-house of Altau, and House Prowser is a senior ally and close friend of House Altau. If you’re on the run because you’ve offended or betrayed her in some way, I can’t help you.”

  I was being less than diplomatic, especially by Athanate standards, but it was the middle of the night, and if she needed sanctuary, she was in no position to complain about my manners.

  “We’re not running from House Prowser,” she said. “I don’t believe she will contest our departure.”

  She believed. She didn’t know. And she hadn’t said she wasn’t on the run—just not from Prowser. This wasn’t sounding any better, and I was losing patience.

  “Well then, who are you running from? And why are you proposing to come over a thousand miles to Colorado? There must be dozens of Houses between here and there.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then: “House Farrell, I am desperate, and it can only be you.”

  That iron control was slipping, and a raw need was singing to me down the line.

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Because Scott, my eldest kin…” she paused, a catch in her breath, and I could hear she was gathering herself, fighting to keep her voice level. “Because he’s dying. I lost my other two kin in a car accident a year ago and I thought I’d lost him as well. I... can’t. I can’t lose him too. Not even now I have more kin. He’s been with me all my Athanate life.”

  The sheer power of her simple words held a weight I could not turn aside, and the shock of emotions she’d let slip combined with my guilt over thinking this appeal had been all about Athanate politics.

  I leaned forward over the phone, as if that movement would somehow make a difference to her.