“I don’t want to be taken care of. I don’t want to have to trust anyone totake care of me.”
“I trusted you to take care of me last night.”
Naomi eyed him harshly. “That was one night, Warren. And you didn’t have achoice. Merihim pushed you into that confrontation. If I hadn’t been here, you still would have had to havegone. That’s not trust.”
Knowing that what she said was true pained Warren. He’d made deals with otherkids in foster care. While they’d been together in one house or another, they’dwatched each other’s backs. Trust still hadn’t been easy.
“If you don’t trust me, why do you come here?” Warren asked.
“Because I can learn from you. The way you used to learn from me.”
“What if you couldn’t learn from me?” Warren stared into her eyes.
“Are you telling me you’re not going to teach me?”
“What if I did?”
Naomi’s eyes turned flat and cold. “Then I would find someone else who couldteach me.”
Warren turned from her and walked back to the window to stand in the light. He’d liked her more when she was asleep.
“I don’t have a choice either, Warren,” she told him. “You’re serving ademon. And I’ve got to survive in a city that’s overrun with demons. I have tolearn everything I can every day. Just to stay alive. I can’t control zombiesthe way you can or stand toe-to-toe with demons like Hargastor.”
For a moment Warren thought he heard jealousy in her words and it surprised him. He couldn’t imagine that he had anything anyone else would want.
“I like you,” Naomi said in a softer voice.
“Because I can teach you,” Warren said with soft sarcasm.
“That’s part of it. I have to admit that or I’d be lying to you. But that’snot all of it.”
Warren heard her approach him and he thought about telling her to stay away. He would have if he didn’t dislike being alone so much.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said.
“You didn’t hurt me,” Warren said in that old litany he’d learned in hischildhood. “I was just foolish enough to hurt myself.”
“I’ll go if you want me to.”
Part of him wanted to tell her to go, but he wasn’t strong enough for that.He’d let her into his world, and now he was going to have to suffer theconsequences.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to go.”
Naomi took his hand and held it tightly. It took him a moment to realize that she’d taken the hand that Merihim had given him instead of his human hand.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Standing in the elevator and waiting for the cage to descend, not knowing if it would or if she’d be sprayed with a nerve toxin that would kill her inseconds or vaporized with energy beams, Leah knew she was being surveyed by sophisticated equipment that peeled her clothing and her flesh away, and even scanned her skeleton.
“Leah Creasey,” a mechanical voice said above her.
“I am Leah Creasey,” she said automatically. “I’m a citizen of Great Britainand will lay down my life for my king and my country.”
The response was necessary and allowed the security systems to compare her voiceprints with records on file. She had to update the file on a weekly basis to keep it current.
“Open your suit.”
Leah did, but she took a deep breath and held it in case the elevator cage suddenly filled with gas. It was a ridiculous response to the possibility. If the cage were flooded with gas, she wouldn’t have to breathe it to be dead.
And it would be colorless anyway.
“You can breathe, Leah,” a male voice said.
“Thank you,” Leah said, feeling foolish. Still, she was tense as she breathedin, and maybe a little surprised when she remained conscious.
The elevator cage dropped. For a moment Leah felt weightless. Then gravity returned and tried to claw her to the floor. She knew she’d dropped over threehundred feet.
The Templar weren’t the only ones with secrets.
“I’m powering your suit down,” the male voice said.
Leah felt the extra weight of the suit suddenly pull at her. She knew the exoskeleton built into the suit had a lot of the same designs the Templar armor had. After all, the designs had been lifted from the work the Templar had pioneered, .then reverse-engineered and rendered into something that fit more in with how she was expected to use it.
Despite the outside control, Leah’s suit had been built to deny thepower-down command. That was solely within her discretion. But if she hadn’tpowered down, she’d never have made it out of the elevator alive.
“There is an escort waiting for you,” the male voice said.
“I understand,” Leah said. “But I need to speak to someone in Ops.”
“Go through channels. Speak to your handler.”
“Affirmative.” Leah stood straight and tall.
When the elevator doors separated and opened, six armored men and women stood waiting to receive her. All of them carried small arms naked in their fists. With their helmets in place and their armor unmarked, Leah didn’t know if sheknew them or not.
“Let’s go,” one of them said as he motioned her out of the cage. They tookthe metal tube containing the burned manuscript.
“Be careful with that,” Leah said. “It’s important.”
“We just want to make sure it isn’t a bomb,” the man said.
“If someone thought it might be a bomb, I’d never have been allowed downhere.” Leah knew her voice was tight with anger despite her best intentions notto feel that way.
Leah knew the underground complex wasn’t large. Their operations weren’tmeant to be. They were self-contained units with limited manpower and limited risk of exposure.
The six guards took her by the shortest route to her room. One of the guards even told her that they had her room ready for her.
It was a joke. No one lived in the underground complex. Her quarters was a small room set up with two bunk beds for wounded or unassigned to float until arrangements could be made.
“I need to speak to my handler,” she told the leader of the six-man team.
He was a young man about her age with a
