Page 32 of Griffin Undone
Grim’s mouth tightened as if tasting something bitter. “Not Arik; that’s all I know for certain. She didn’t retain clear pictures of her attackers. There were blurred impressions of more than one—male, presumably, considering the way they were handling her. Definitely shifter. And then, of course, the bite.” He frowned, his anger sweeping through the room like a physical wave. “Brutal. There was no care taken of her at all. She remembers nothing after that.”
The king acknowledged Grim’s words with a nod but clarified, “Then we do not know if they were, indeed, Anigma.”
“So this was one of our own?” Basile asked, hiss’s slurring from one word to the next in displeasure. “An Archai would hurt a female in this way?”
“No, they wouldn’t,” I assured my second before the king’s wrath could land on the basilisk’s hot head, “which is why we need to find the ones who did this.”
“No,” Solomon said.
“Fathe—”
“I will not authorize full-scale patrols.” The king’s voice overrode mine, rising with each word until he was almost shouting. “I will not risk our hard-won peace. This information will not go beyond this room.”
A swell of emotion filled the room as each Archai spilled frustration and anger from their mind. A quick lift of my hand forestalled what was sure to be an equally heated outcry from my council. I, too, fought the urge to argue, to rip the blinders from my father’s stubborn eyes—but those eyes were what convinced me. There would be no give in Solomon’s will.
Instead, I felt a sudden stillness deep in my core. This was it, the fork in the road that I knew had been coming for a while now. The moment was at hand, and without taking a breath of time to consider, I knew my decision had already been made.
That calm allowed me to lower my head to my king, keeping my face impassive. “Yes, Father.”
Solomon narrowed his eyes on me for a long, tense moment. Finally he turned and made his way to the door. “As you were, warriors.”
When the door closed behind the king, the room erupted. I silenced them all with a look.“Wait! Quiet.”When a minute had passed without the king’s return, I signaled Vanessa, Lyris’s young—by Archai standards at least—assistant.“Barriers, please.”
Vanessa raised her hands, and a sudden sense of envelopment rose with them. It was like being inside a bubble, one you couldn’t see but could nonetheless feel. Urgency built in my gut, and when the female lowered her hands, I let that urgency color my orders.
“Full-scale patrols might be out, but that isn’t the only way to get what we need.”
“But—”
I cut off the dissent without noting who spoke. “Basile, organize patrols of the council only, two at a time, citywide. We don’t know how to find the females yet, or even if the choice of Kat was mere coincidence, but we have to be certain who her attackers were and whether they stuck around.”
“Or brought in reinforcements,” James, the oldest member of the council, added, voice rough with age and wisdom.
“Agreed.”
Silence filled the room as each council member considered that scenario.
“Five sets of patrols won’t get us far. Surely there’s a faster way to do this,” Lyris said.
I paced up one side of the table and back as I waited for the others to weigh in.
“Is there a satellite or something we can tap into? There has to be some way we can find these bastards!” Basile thumped a massive fist down on the table, but it was the hiss of his words that caused the Archai seated around him to wince. The male’s animal, a basilisk, could kill with his voice while in animal form, and the phrase “swift as a snake” was made for him. He was also a great strategist, which was how he’d become a general in the Archai army.
Cale cleared his throat. “I have a contact I think might help us in that area.”
“This isn’t one of your women, now is it, Cale?” Jacob asked with a groan, his words finally forming a crack in the tension gripping all our throats. Doran, sitting next to him, relaxed enough to roll his red-tinged eyes.
Cale gave the males a cocky grin. “None other. Hooked up with her a few months ago. She can hack anything—and I do mean anything,” he assured us, his tone a caramel drawl that said he meant sex, not computers. “The city grid has cameras all over; if there are Anigma roaming Nashville, we’ll know it.”
I considered the risks. Cale might be a playboy, but when it came to the safety of our people, he would no more put us at risk than I would. “Make it happen.” Turning to James, I asked, “Where do we stand on supplies?” The clan had to be able to sustain itself in the event of a siege—weapons, food, all of it needed to be available long-term. The absence of an Anigma threat had made us complacent in many ways, though not with training, fortunately.
James smoothed a hand over his still-chiseled jaw. “I can get with Drake and see, though he’ll want to know why if I order him to start stockpiling. Thomas and I can check weaponry and equipment.”
Thomas nodded, already busy typing notes on his electronic tablet.
“Tell Drake whatever you need to, James, but get him going pronto—and quietly. I don’t need to tell you what could happen if Solomon gets wind of this.”
Basile snorted his opinion of that. The faces staring back at me seemed to share my general’s scorn.
