Page 93 of Truthfinder’s Promise

Charmed? Parents murdered at birth, Aspect experimented on, nearly killed in an attempt to make her into the magical equivalent of an atom bomb, but yes. Charmed.

“This century has its flaws, but at least on paper there are rules. We didn’t have many of those when I was born. Such a rare gift, Life. So special.” She sneered. “So special I never had one of my own. By the time I was eight my father was selling me to heal every cut, cold, and disease in the village, all for a pittance so he could drink himself into the ditch.

“But of course, such things draw attention. One day a man came to the village. He offered to buy me. My father refused. The man killed him and I became the property of a wealthy merchant who liked to whore himself into every disease under the sun.

“He was smarter than my father and tried to keep me a secret. But healing is a compulsion for those born to Life. I couldn’t not do it, and one man can only require so much work. And why was it fair that he became whole over and over again, when the women he used and discarded were left to be ravaged by the bodies men used them for? So I started healing them.

“A bit of advice? Never show kindness to a whore. They’ll turn around and sell you to the highest bidder with no remorse. I ended up a prince’s property. He used my abilities to curry political favor. I was fifteen when he decided I was pretty enough to fuck.

“I was nineteen when I realized it was never going to end. I would never have anything more, never be anything more. All I did was give and give, pouring my power into rotting old men and letting them pour themselves into me whenever he decided it would be useful.

“And then one day I was cleaning up the excesses of his alcoholism, feeling the faint flutter of his heartbeat in his chest, and I realized I could simply take it. I drank his life down like water and when he rested on that pivotal threshold between life and death, I held him, and he obeyed.”

Triumph flashed in her eyes at the memory. “He was my very first lovely. Thralls, as I later learned the term. I did a great deal with him until some enterprising chit snuck into his bedchamber and realized he had no heartbeat.

“I’ve been called many things since that day. Vampire. Necromancer. I’ve been chased out of town by mobs with pitchforks and torches. Almost died several times. I can’t turn someone into a thrall at the drop of a hat. It does require a certain connection.” She lifted her hand to the cheek of the thrall next to her and he leaned into the touch.

Meredith’s stomach turned and she tightened her fingers in Jensen’s fur.

“I was somewhat of a magical urban legend by the time I made my way to this continent. I came here around the same time as the Shifter enclaves made a mass exodus from the European shores, hoping for acceptance here, or at least anonymity.” Her fingernails dug into the thrall’s skin, blood trickling down his cheek. “I had no quarrel with them. I never caused them any harm. I thought we were alike in so many ways. Thought as of less than human, as things that shouldn’t exist.

“I thought we could be allies. But apparently I was too much of an abomination for them. People always feel better about their own inferiority as long as there’s someone on the rung beneath them.” Her hand fell away from the thrall. “Would you like to see what they did to me?”

No. No, Meredith wouldn’t. But her throat stayed closed, and Analisa’s features shifted. Lines—claw marks—opened up on her skin, blood pouring from the wounds.

It wasn’t illusion. It was whatever was left of her Aspect, and she was using it to recreate a moment when she’d almost died. The thrall she’d been touching dropped and Meredith stared, horrified, at the ruin of a woman before her.

“Pretty, aren’t I?” The words came out slurred through the chunk of her bottom lip that was missing. As quickly as they’d come on, the wounds closed over, turning to scars that faded and left unblemished skin in their wake. The bits of her that were missing regrew. The second thrall in the room dropped.

Meredith forced herself to think through the horror. Analisa could still heal herself, but it cost her in thralls to do it.

Analisa bent down, her eyes level with Jensen. “And that’s why I hate your kind. That’s why I don’t care if Elijah pulled you apart over and over, or how much your sister screamed when I ripped her claws out.”

Fear gripped Meredith—not for herself, but for Jensen. But though he tensed beneath her hand, he remained rigidly still.

Analisa laughed. “I suppose he must have something of a man left inside him. Because only a man can be broken so completely to a woman.” She straightened, smiling at Meredith. “It’s a rush, isn’t it? Your first conquest? That first time having another life wrapped so completely in your own power.

“I thought that’s what I wanted from the Shifters. If I couldn’t enthrall them, I wanted to break them. But breaking takes a patience and finesse I don’t have where they’re concerned. I thought of wiping them out, next, but eradication goes so quickly.

“But selling them?” Her smile widened. “Letting those of them that remain free wonder when the thief in the night will come for them? Letting that misery trickle down the bloodlines? That is a vengeance worth enacting.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

Analisa fished in the first dead thrall’s pockets for a handkerchief and proceeded to wipe at the blood on her face. “Because I like you. But I’ve learned that little good comes from liking people. A business arrangement is always more suitable, so long as one honors it. And I’m afraid I have a business arrangement with Julian.”

The door behind Meredith opened and six thralls stepped into the room. Meredith’s blood turned to ice. “I see,” she said softly. “And what price did I go for?”

“Oh, all of this has been about you, right from the beginning. The man truly is obsessed. I dislike obsessions, so I gave him an impossible task. Find the Shifters, find your mother’s missing repository, and I would help deliver you to him. But then he went and succeeded, and I owed him. Although, you do have yourself to blame a little. I don’t think he would ever have found your mother’s repository without you.”

Analisa stepped closer. “I always honor my debts. The wolf goes to the holding cages. You go to a room upstairs. Julian will come for you soon. He won’t be able to wait. But my obligation to him ends there.

“Were he to meet a tragic end? Well, I would need a replacement for him. Another individual adept at moving through the higher rungs of Aspect Society.”

Right. “Let me make sure I have this straight. If my wolf walks pliantly into a cage, and if I manage to kill Julian instead of enduring the no doubt many unpleasant things he wants to do to me, then I get his job and my dog back?”

“That is the gist of it, yes.”

Meredith’s gaze darted to the thralls. Jensen could take them. But not the dozens that would pour in after him.

Meredith arched an eyebrow at Analisa. “If you’ve no objection to Julian’s death, I don’t suppose you feel like providing me with a weapon?”

“We are weapons. If you haven’t figured that out by now, perhaps you won’t be as useful to me as Julian. So if you don’t want to live the rest of your life as his plaything, I suggest you figure it out.”

For a moment, Meredith couldn’t move, frozen on the edge of fight or flight. No small part of her thought it might be better to die here. To pick a battle here that she couldn’t win, but which would at least be of her own choosing.

Jensen would fight for her. She had no doubt of that. Even knowing they would lose, knowing he would never reach his sister, she knew he would fight for her. So she wouldn’t do anything less for him.

She knelt and took his face in her hands. “Be a good boy and do what you’re told.” He growled and shook his head. “I’ll miss you too,” she said, willing him not to make an issue of it. He had to know if they made a move right now they were dead. “Everything will be fine, and I’ll see you soon enough.” She rose and locked Analisa’s gaze. “Touch him, and when I’m through taking out your trash I will make you regret it. It might take me a year, or ten, or twenty, but I will see it done.”

She was at the door when Analisa laughed. “You’re in love with it, aren’t you? Does it feel the same way about you? Is that the secret to truly breaking something? Love?”

“I guess you’ll never know.” Meredith walked out and she didn’t look back. She refused to think as the thralls led her to the staircase, herding her up to the second floor while they led Jensen down a hallway on the first. He stopped and swiveled his head back, his eyes boring into hers.

“Go on,” she said softly, knowing he would hear. “I’ll be fine.”

The thrall to her left stopped, opening a door and gesturing her in. She gave running another brief thought, but she had nowhere to run to. She would be dragged back to this room and Jensen would still be in a cage somewhere in this house.

There was one solution, one way out: she had to kill Julian.