Part 8 (2/2)

”When you find her, you must kill her.”

He gave the older a man a sharp look. ”I don't take orders from you.”

Avery's voice immediately turned conciliatory. ”It wasn't an order-it was advice.”

”I don't want to kill her. I want to use her.”

The adept's face had solidified into grim lines. ”But she is stronger than you. Stronger than any of us.”

”And I have a way to make sure she retains only the powers I want her to have,” Falcone clipped out. What he planned to do was illegal, but that had never stopped him before. He had been yanked away from his parents at the age of eight and thrown into a brutal environment. A school where all the children had special talents. And he had been expected to be one of the best-because of his highborn status.

At the end of term compet.i.tions, Rinna bested him more than once. She'd humiliated him in front of the whole school. He'd managed not to let his feelings about it show. He had figured out how to get along with the guardians-and how to make himself the leader of the children his age. The lessons he had learned in that childhood environment had served him well in adult life. Except with Rinna. He silently acknowledged that his anger with her had simmered below the surface all these years. He'd handled things wrong with her. And she'd run away. Now he was expending a lot of energy chasing after her.

He turned his thoughts back to Sun Acres. It was a city of great contrasts. You could live a miserable existence and sleep at night on a straw pallet with a rough blanket, or you could enjoy power and prestige and sleep on a soft mattress with crisp sheets. He had seen the depths, and he had worked hard to stay at the heights.

From his platform on the ruling council, he'd figured out how to rise to a whole new level.

Only he needed Rinna for the plan to work, and she had slipped through his hands.

He kept his face bland. And his mind bland, too, on the off chance that Avery was skillful enough to poke into his head and read his thoughts. He had learned from grim experience, starting when he was a child, that the only person you could trust was yourself. That was the key to survival in Sun Acres-and the rest of this miserable world. n.o.body else must know what he was thinking and planning.

The captain of the crack military team he had sent out was still standing at attention, probably wondering if he was going to be beaten-or worse. Falcone considered various options, but in the end he decided that punishment would only salve his own pride and waste valuable time.

He had sent five men to bring her back. He would need more to find her now.

”You and five others go back through the portal, but make sure you come back before sunrise. I want ten more men searching on this side of the portal. She's resourceful, but she can't get far. Not with the poison from the trap in her leg.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Avery s.h.i.+ft in his seat.

”What?” he bellowed, then instantly regretted the tone. ”What?” he asked again, in a more moderate tone.

”If she got out of the trap, then perhaps she has drawn the poison out of her flesh.”

”And perhaps not,” he answered, punching out the words.

LOGAN'S eyes blinked open again. He hoped against hope that this whole episode had been a dream, starting with the trap and ending with the old man.

Rinna was another matter. He wanted to hang onto her. As he looked around the cave, he saw that he didn't have a choice about keeping the good parts and discarding the rest. He wasn't in Maryland anymore. He was in a primitive environment like something out of the History Channel.

Oil lamps flickered in holders fixed to the stone walls, giving out enough light for him to see that he was in the same d.a.m.n cave where he'd fallen asleep. Half a dozen yards away, the old man was fiddling with some sort of equipment. Like a toaster oven or something. It didn't seem to go well with the oil lamps.

Under the covers, Logan moved his shoulder. It felt tight and a little sore but not hot, which he took to mean that the knife wound was healing and not infected. He eased his leg toward his middle and stretched down his hand, probing at the place where the teeth of the trap had bitten into this flesh. That injury seemed to be healing, too.

When he hauled himself to a sitting position, the old man's head whipped around.

”I'm just going to use the facilities again.”

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