Page 15 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

Keon sat in a great throne cut of stone, looking formal and dark and a little too modern for Tell’s tastes.

“My daughter tells me that you have information that will not wait through my breakfast,” Keon said. “Though I cannot fathom what it is, given that her mission is complete and your debt is discharged.”

“You are assembling men to take the locations I found for her,” Tell said.

“That is none of your concern,” Keon said.

“I want you to hit Silix first,” Tell said. “The facility in Texas. Absolutely as quickly as you can and before the others.”

Keon lifted his chin.

“She told me that this was your interest. Why would you ask this of me?” he asked. “If I do one before the rest, they may deduce what has happened and manage to escape me. This is a significant tactical exposure you’re asking for.”

“Precisely because if you hit another facility early by mistake, Silix may attempt to scavenge what he can and flee. He took my protégé and is processing her there. I would go in and recover her. I need you to start with him, no more than an hour is necessary , but I don’t care when you start the other attacks so much as I care that you hit that one soon . ”

“How much time has passed?” Keon asked.

“Nineteen days,” Tell said, and Keon nodded slowly.

With another man, Tell would have played more carefully, but Isabella knew nearly everything of the situation and would absolutely tell Keon if Tell left anything out. Even without Isabella, you didn’t go against Keon on a basis of deception.

Well.

Tell didn’t.

“You may not like what you get back,” Keon said. “You are aware of this?”

“I made a promise,” Tell said simply.

“Very well,” Keon said. “You will owe me a debt, as before. I will call upon it as I see fit.”

Tell sighed.

“I understand,” he said. “I need you to tell your men there to let me pass as I please.”

“As you wish,” Keon said.

“You’ll send them quickly?” Tell asked, and Keon nodded.

“Look for them tomorrow night,” he said. “Isabella’s presence will be missed. It will not keep longer than that.”

“Then I will take my leave of you, with your blessing,” he said. “Please know that I have sworn a vendetta against Leonard if she dies.”

The corners of Keon’s mouth twitched as he looked over at Isabella. Humor.

“We will engage that when the time comes,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” Tell said, glancing at Isabella. She gave him a curt nod. There was no more business between them and he was free to go.

“I will arrange a car to take you back to the city, and a plane from there,” Keon said.

It was for Keon’s benefit, not Tell’s, because Tell couldn’t move as quietly as Keon could, but it would go on Tell’s tab all the same.

“Thank you, sir,” Tell said, turning to go.

No fight at all.

Getting into debt was always this easy.

Even if he decided to abort the entire rest of the mission, or send Isabella back to Daryll because he wanted new or different information, Keon would live up to his end of the agreement to hit Silix.

Because he would be able to use Tell in the most delicate and difficult of situations again for the next two hundred years.

If Tina died, death would be too good for Leonard.

Tell left.

Going west was a double-or-nothing compared to going east. Going west, you could stay in shadow for the whole trip, or you could be in sun for twenty hours straight.

Tell was able to leave early enough that the entire trip was very comfortable, with a pair of companion fountains that he didn’t remotely need.

He and Hunter had long had a philosophy that if there was blood to drink, you might as well drink it and enjoy it, but he didn’t have the spirit for it, tonight, and he left the two women to their own entertainment as he crossed the ocean for the second time in thirty hours.

It used to be that the blessed Atlantic was a three-month buffer between himself and the pompous snakes in Europe, but any more it was twelve hours in the belly of a rumbling tin can, little more than separated him from New York or Chicago.

It was all uncomfortably tight, and he was craving his penthouse at Viella more than he could have possibly anticipated, the fortress of it that kept out even the local city better than the world kept out Europe.

He was tired.

Ancient, dry, bone tired.

By the time he landed in San Antonio, going to use his own credit card to rent a car that would take him out into the desert where Silix had set up his fortress, the fury that had been boiling and flowing, keeping him moving to this point, was nearly depleted.

It was too late.

Keon had had mercy, given him an opportunity to rethink his request. This far into the process, there wasn’t much person left inside the vampire body.

Tell had worked as fast as he’d known how to, but he was going back to a creature that wouldn’t have any of her traits.

Maybe he would keep her as a pet. Maybe he would dispatch her himself so that she wouldn’t have to live like that.

He hadn’t felt his age this badly in a long time.

It was strange that he felt exactly as old at four hundred as he had at one hundred and fifty.

Old like he had lived past his window.

Old like there was nothing that mattered.

Old like he wanted to shake a cane at the jet planes and curse them for being all modern and useful.

Old like he missed a world he couldn’t even picture anymore.

But they gave him car keys for a rental and smiled brightly, flirting with him reflexively, and he smiled back.

The hunger.

The hunger was what kept him going, decade after decade.

That he would enjoy , even now , taking her out behind a bush and never even lay fang to her, but to raise her blood to boiling because he could .

The day that he lost that, he would officially be the walking dead.

He took the keys and he drove.

He was once again Tell.

Oscar was gone, and he didn’t know if or when he would be that again.

Hunter changed names like he changed jackets. He would have one that he favored for a time, then something new and fresh would appeal to him and he would forget the old one.

Tell had been Tell for as long as he had been a vampire, near as mattered, and he had seldom taken on new identities, even as they had been pragmatically useful.

Oscar was one that he had toted along with him, though, from continent to continent, a dull man who thought too much of himself and had absolutely everything in common with Tell and absolutely nothing in common with him.

Tell was himself again, completely, now, not hiding.

If Silix was watching for him, so be it.

Tell was accustomed to living a quiet life, to seeing without being seen, to people not knowing his face unless he wanted them to.

But he didn’t often hide who he was, his movements, from people who knew how to track such things in an increasingly digitized and surveilled world.

The fae weren’t interested in a second unseen world, and vampires were slow to adopt such strategies as they intuitively felt like a passing fad that would abandon you at the worst possible moment, but men like Keon, like Silix, even like Isabella had a sense that you used the tools that were there to use.

You just didn’t develop yourself to rely on them.

Because they absolutely would betray you at the worst possible moment and in the least anticipated way.

Before too long, he was going to have to adapt himself to the new reality, that there was something watching him everywhere he went and there was always a way for that knowledge - where he was, who he was, what he was doing - to be used against him, but for a little while longer, he was going to pretend that it didn’t matter.

That he was Tell, not Oscar, and he was the predator and not the prey.

He was tired.

Texas was the kind of state that reminded you what tired felt like. Hot and dry and unending, like the life of the average vampire, he drove mile after mile, waiting for the destination to arrive in front of him.

He didn’t know if Tina was still alive.

She should have been, but if Silix had figured out that she mattered, or if she’d abandoned hope early… it was possible at this stage that she’d been finally processed today, even. It was typically done under high sun.

He had a decent idea where he was going, by a mile-marker sense, but he abandoned the car at the first mile marker he had clocked on his way out and he set off on foot toward the facility, and from here it would be guesswork and relying on his memory of the landscape.

Which was hideously repetitive.

He tried working off of scent, but it had been too long, and it was apparent that this was not the route that Silix’s people used to get into the facility; they would have a local road system, but Tell had been intentionally avoiding it as he had escaped, the first time.

He had the address and a map on his computer, but he had neither with him, here and now.

He had no phone, nothing but a credit card and a driver’s license that would get him from place to place.

And what he could remember.

He had perhaps an hour before dawn, and he wondered if he was being foolhardy, coming out here on his own like this, determined to beat Keon’s men to the facility so that they couldn’t possibly go in without him.

He was either going to have to luck into some kind of man-made structure just randomly sitting out here - unlikely - or sleep in the shade of a rock with nothing more than that to keep the sun off of him.

Even for Tell, that was not going to leave him in fighting shape, tomorrow.

He’d gone this way because he wasn’t there to fight.

He just needed to be there the very first minute to make sure that he got to Tina at the same time as Keon’s fighting force, and not later.

Maybe.

Maybe .

Maybe if they were very distracting, he might go try to find her on his own, because once he got there, he was certain he could find his way to her cell, but… better to be there and exhausted than show up fresh and late.