“Doesn’t sound especially chic.”
“It’s not. It’s cumbersome and ugly. But it’s better than being half blind.”
“Nice to hear brutal honesty.”
“If I tried to sugarcoat it, you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“No,” Leah agreed.
“The headpiece also lacks the ability to see in color, which is going to take some getting used to.”
“Different images for the brain to process.”
“Yes. I’m told that the user will, eventually, layer the two images into one. It gets smoother with use.”
Leah didn’t say anything.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Leah,” Lyra said.
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t have a choice.”
“What will I be allowed to do?”
Lyra regarded her seriously. “When you’re released from the hospital—and I said released, not escaped from or arbitrarily decide to forgo medical treatment—you’ll be evaluated.”
“I’m going to be stuck in a bloody desk job, aren’t I?”
“Support positions are as necessary as any other.”
“I wasn’t trained to be a support person,” Leah said vehemently. “I was trained to be a covert operative. A force to be reckoned with.”
Lyra was silent for a moment. “How long do you think you’re going to need to protest the injustice of the universe and feel sorry for yourself?” Her words were blunt and hard.
Leah looked at the woman with new respect. Although she’d met Lyra Darius only once before, it had been during a time of trouble as well.
“You don’t mess about, do you?” Leah asked.
“We don’t have time to.”
“Good to know.”
“You’re still a valuable operative, Leah. You’ve got qualities and connections that I value highly.”
With her one good eye, Leah glared at the woman. “You don’t know me. We’ve met only the one time.”
“Once was enough.”
Leah studied the woman with more speculation. “Someone like you, someone as high up in the organization as you are, wouldn’t have come down here to offer me a pep talk.”
“Not unless I thought you needed one.”
“I don’t.”
Lyra smiled and the effort pulled a little at the scar tissue on the right side of her face. “Then I’d best get on to the exploitative part of my visit here.”
“What part would that be?”
“You have friends among the Templar.”
Leah didn’t argue. The last time they talked she’d been in trouble for exactly that reason. As much as she dealt with Simon Cross, the organization had believed she’d been compromised.
“I want to exploit the friendship you have with them,” Lyra went on.
“How?”
“Control is wondering how amenable Simon Cross would feel to being sponsored in a bid to put him in charge of all the Templar.”
EIGHTEEN
Warren woke just before the dawn. He’d spent the night with his back to a tree and huddled in a thick quilt he’d gotten from the villagers. An icy glaze from new-fallen snow lay spread over the quilt, but it continued to be warm inside the folds. The heat inside his body was generated by the arcane power he commanded. The quilt helped trap it.
Only a few feet away, wrapped in another quilt and dug into a hillside, Naomi slept with her head covered. Although she’d tried to generate warmth the same way Warren had, she hadn’t been able to maintain it. During the night Warren had lent his strength to hers. He sensed from that connection that she was well.
“You worry about her too much.”
When Warren glanced back up, Lilith stood in front of him. She faced the gray dawn and looked incredibly pale.
“I don’t think I do,” Warren responded.
“Yet you weaken yourself to care for her.”
“She’s an ally.”
Lilith turned and frowned at him. “She’s a dependent. Taking, but not giving.”
“When I passed out after the fight with the demons, who took care of me?”
“The zombies. The demons you held in thrall.”
“They didn’t talk to the villagers and persuade them not to kill me while I was defenseless.”
“Even unconscious, you aren’t defenseless,” Lilith told him. “The hand I gave you takes much better care of you than the one Merihim gave you.”
Talking about his hand like that made Warren uncomfortable. Nightmares about the night four years ago when the Templar Simon Cross cut his original hand from his arm still haunted Warren. And he didn’t like Lilith pointing out that she’d given him the hand. It made the fact that she could take it back even more real.
“Naomi is human,” Warren said. “She can take care of me in ways you can’t.”
Lilith strode toward him and her gown rippled in the cold winter breeze even though snowflakes drifted through her. She clearly wasn’t happy, but Warren didn’t think she would attack him.
“What? Are you talking about the physical relationship she has with you?” Lilith asked.
Warren’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment. Even after all that he’d been through these past four years, after having survived a childhood that was anything but safe or loving, he remained modest about some things.
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Naomi exists on a physical level that you don’t. And she can interface with humans.”
Lilith approached Naomi and hunkered down beside her. Warren’s heart tightened in his chest. He pushed himself to his feet and shrugged out of the quilt as Lilith ran a hand along Naomi’s sleeping form. Lilith couldn’t touch her, though. Her trailing hand didn’t even disturb the wrinkles in the quilt.
“Your concern for her is going to get you into trouble one day,” Lilith said.
“Why?”
“Because she’s here only to use you for her own gain.”
Warren couldn’t dispute that. When Merihim had taken his hand back, Naomi had left him. Of course, he hadn’t been fit to be with at the time, either.
“We use each other.” Warren pinned Lilith with his gaze. “All of us.”
Lilith laughed at him. “It amuses me to think what you would do if I, too, had a physical form.” She looked back at Naomi. “Then one of us would be expendable.”
Not thinking happy thoughts, Warren told himself.
Lilith returned her gaze to him. “Since I lack a physical form and you follow me anyway, I don’t think I would be the one who felt threatened.”
Warren struggled to think of
