Awaken Me Darkly (Alien Huntress 1)

Gasping, she stared at me, hard, searching for any hint that I lied. When she found only a blank slate, shock and fear flitted over her features.

I had to contain my sigh of relief. Until that moment, I hadn’t known the depths of her feelings for her sibling. I’d only known how I would have felt if Dare had been alive and taken captive. Desperate. Knowing Lilla felt the same way about her brother gave me the leverage I needed. As long as she thought I held Kyrin’s life in my hands, I could use her love against her.

“You are lying,” she ground out.

Yes, I was. I held her angry stare.

“Kyrin would never allow himself to be taken.” She gripped the edge of her cot, her knuckles quickly losing all color.

“Allow? Oh, no.” I chuckled. “He allowed nothing. My pyre-gun gave me all the authority I needed. You do remember the effects of stun, don’t you?”

Another pause.

“Is he hurt?” she half growled, half sobbed. She leaned forward, anticipating my answer. “If you hurt him, I swear by your God I will destroy you and all you hold dear.”

“He is unharmed.” Maintaining my casual facade, I leaned against the wall. I stared her straight in the eye when I added, “For now. If he is to remain that way, however, I need an act of good faith from you. A token of your appreciation, if you will.”

“You are a bitch.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” I slowly grinned. “But compliments are not what I want from you.”

Her fists clenched and unclenched, and her pale cheeks brightened with color. “What do you want, then?”

“Information.”

“About William?”

“Yes.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Is that all?”

“For now.”

A long moment passed while she considered my offer. “How can I be sure you will release Kyrin?”

For one brief second, I hesitated in my deception. I’d always prided myself on my honesty, and each time I uttered a lie, a little piece of my integrity melted away. Then, like the click of a camera, an illumination of black and white, a picture of the four missing men, and now the missing Rianne Harte, flashed beneath my thoughts, followed quickly by an image of Dallas, hovering close to death.

“You have my word,” I said in the next instant.

Her neck arched back as she studied the white, patternless ceiling. “Very well, then,” she finally said, and crumpled back onto the cot. “Where shall I begin?”

“Start with the first day you met William and end with you in this cell.” I wanted to know everything. Knowledge was power, and in this situation, power was everything.

“I met him about six months ago. He came to the club. I knew he was married. I knew his wife was pregnant, but I didn’t care,” she added defensively, daring me to challenge her.

“I’m not judging you,” I said. Whether the man had loved Lilla or not, he hadn’t been as happily married as his wife claimed in her report. Jaxon would have to talk to the wife about that. “When did your affair begin?”

“A few days later. He came back to the club.”

“Mark St. John didn’t mind that you and Steele were sleeping together?”

“Oh, please.” She waved a hand through the air. “His opinion matters nothing to me.”

“Then why are you seeing him?”

She gave a dainty shrug. “Because it amuses me. George likes it rough, violence excites him, but Mark likes to be dominated. Sometimes I like one way, sometimes another.”

“Did George Hudson care about the affair?” I stepped forward. Her relationships were about more than sexual preferences, I’d bet.

“Oh, yes. He hates William.”

I closed a little more distance between us. “Did he hate William enough to kill him?”

“He is guilty of many things, but not murder.”

There was conviction in her tone. “What are your feelings for George?”

“He was a means to an end. A bastard, yes, but I must admit it was nice to have an A.I.R. agent at my disposal.” Her expression frosted, and I could tell I was entering territory she didn’t wish to discuss. “Surely I have answered all of your questions. Will you release Kyrin now?”

I ignored her. “At the club, you mentioned that you’d tried to tell Steele he would be hurt if he didn’t leave with you. You said you tried to warn him about them. Who is them?”

A moment passed, then another.

“Who were you talking about, Lilla?”

She wrung her hands in agitation, twisting and untwisting the sheet between her fingers. Finally, she replied, “A group of exiled Arcadians.”

“Exiled from what?”

“Arcadia. What do you think? Idiot,” she muttered.

I’d been called worse. “Why would these people want to hurt Steele?”

More hesitation. “He had something they wanted.”

I almost growled in frustration. The woman refused to elaborate without direct prodding. “I’m tired of prompting you, Lilla. Tell me all of it. What did he have that they wanted?” Edgy tension worked its way into my voice. I was getting close, very close, to the answers I needed. “What did he have that they wanted?”

“Life,” she cried. She jolted to her feet and paced the length of the far wall. “Life.”

“Life. I don’t understand.”

“Then you are stupid.”

My jaw clenched. “Do you know any of the other missing people?” One by one, I ticked off their names.

With the questions now veering away from the exiled Arcadians, her features softened, though she didn’t slow her frenzied pace. “I am only familiar with the last one. SullivanBay.”

“How do you know him?”

“I do not know him. I have heard of him.”

“From the exiled Arcadians?” I couldn’t help but bring us back to them.

Her lips pursed. “Yes. From the leader.”

“And just who is the leader?”

Her lips pressed together in mutinous silence, and her steps became wilder.

Okay, I would come back to that question. “Was your brother involved in any way with Rianne Harte?”

Grinding to a halt, she blinked over at me, and I could tell she was considering each of her coming words. “He spent some time with her, but what they did when they were alone, I know not. So if you want to know if he slept with her, I cannot verify that.”

An image of Kyrin in bed with another woman had me fighting a crest of irritation. With Kyrin and with myself. “Who is the leader of the exiled Arcadians? I’ll need to speak with him.”