Page 25 of Dark Gambit Reliance

Sofia frowned. "She will? How?"

"It's a long story, and we need to get moving. I thralled those two to sleep for three hours, and we need to be long gone by the time they wake up."

Sofia nodded. "I should contact Valstar tomorrow and tell him a story to corroborate what Anton and Dima will report about this evening."

"Tell him that your boyfriend and your new best friend, i.e., Eleanor, took you to a private fundraiser." Marcel wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "You mingled with the paranormal community's rich backers, and you learned more about their breeding program by eavesdropping on their conversations."

"What did I learn?"

He chuckled. "That they plan on producing superhumans who will take over the world."

She elbowed him. "Seriously. I need something less vague."

"How about influencing elections?" Turner suggested. "Rich people with no paranormal talents do that, so it will sound reasonable."

"Who do they support?" Sofia asked. "I need specific details to sound truthful."

"I'll check and let you know. I don't know who is running for what in Oregon."

Nodding, Sofia looked at Toven. "How strong is your thralling? Do you think it will hold?"

"I know it will. They were as susceptible to my mind manipulations as humans are. If I can thrall the purebloods as easily, we will have much less trouble freeing the compound."

18

KIAN

"Ineed to go," Onegus said as Kian ended the video call and closed his laptop. "If you need me when Toven calls, you can put me on the line."

"I will." Kian rose to his feet and looked at Turner. "Care to join me on the roof? It will take at least fifteen minutes for Toven to load his and Mia's belongings into the car and get on the road, which gives us enough time to get comfortable on the roof with a couple of cigars and some whiskey."

Turner smiled. "Lead the way."

By the time Toven's call came, the two of them were puffing on their cigars.

"Hello, Toven. I assume that you are on your way to the airport."

"We've just left," Toven said. "Did you have time to discuss what we've learned?"

"Turner and I only talked about it briefly. The bad news is that you still need to interrogate the pureblood guarding the entrance to the tunnel, but the good news is that we've learned most of what we needed to know from the hybrids, so you won't need to ask him a lot of questions, and it won't take long to interrogate him. That means less exposure for you and Mia and the Guardians."

"True," Toven said. "I also need to find out whether the purebloods are susceptible to my thrall. They might not be, and that will leave me with only compulsion to work with, and that's not as safe. The guy will walk around with the knowledge of me and of what I asked him to do, and his facial expressions might give away that something is not right with him."

Turner put his cigar on the lip of the ashtray. "Can't you compel him to act as usual?"

"I can, and it might be enough, but people's expressions often change involuntarily without them giving it any conscious thought."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take." Kian took a small swig from his whiskey. "The problem is what's next? What do we do if the purebloods aren't susceptible to shrouding? Our plan doesn't work without the ability to create convincing illusions."

"We abandon the mission," Turner said. "We can help break Igor's compulsion for Jade, which will give her a short window of opportunity to kill him, but we can't risk giving her earpieces. Since we can't attack the compound by creating an illusion of a larger force, we can't let Igor know that Jade had help. Without the earpieces, there will be no proof of our meddling."

Kian didn't like that.

He'd been opposed to invading the compound, but after listening to the two hybrids, his gut feeling had changed. It wasn't because of sympathy for those males, and it wasn't because of Jade and the other females' plight. There was nothing new about those factors. What was new was the realization that those two young hybrids were not all that different from immortals and that their hopes and aspirations were the same as everyone else's.

Having three Kra-ell hybrids as members of his community should have made him realize that sooner, but up until now, he'd thought about them as the exceptions, and he'd thought about the Kra-ell males in Igor's compound collectively as the enemy, as the other, the alien.

The clan's relationship with the hybrids shouldn't be adversarial, and once Igor was out of the way, they might be able to form an alliance. It also helped that Igor's arsenal was so basic and that getting rid of him might not be as difficult as Kian had assumed. On the other hand, the tracker Julian had removed from Sofia was a sophisticated piece of technology, so there was that.

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