Free Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance Page B

implying?”
    “I’m not implying anything,” Marlowe told her, his eyes never leaving mine. “I am stating it outright. Eleven masters and one dhampir went out, and only the dhampir returned.
And I want to know why.
”
    “You know why.” The voice was Louis-Cesare’s, from the doorway. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but apparently it had been long enough, judging by his expression.
    “No, I do not!” Marlowe said, turning on him. “I know how she got out of that hellhole. I don’t know how she got
in
, or why. They kill Lawrence, someone with knowledge of the inner workings of my family, of the intelligence department, of the Senate itself, yet leave a
dhampir
alive?”
    Angry dark eyes swerved back to mine, but I didn’t respond because I was trying to comprehend that ridiculous number.
“Eleven?”
I repeated, certain I’d heard wrong.
    “Kit is exaggerating,” Mircea told me. “But only slightly. Most were found as he said, although two teams remain missing. But they did not report in and no one can contact them, including their former masters.”
    And that wasn’t good. Mental communication within a family was a given, even after a Child reached a high enough status to be emancipated from his master’scontrol. Their makers should have been able to reach them—if there was anything left to reach.
    “By ‘senior masters’ you mean what?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around it.
    “None under second level. Most were first.”
    I just stared. “No.”
    “I didn’t believe it either,” Radu said quietly. “When they told me. It just seemed…” He trailed off with a flutter of his hand, because he didn’t have adequate words for it.
    Unfortunately, someone else did.
    “Seems what?” Claire asked, looking around, obviously confused. “It’s a tragedy, yes, but we’re only talking about eleven—”
    Marlowe made a retching sound, like someone had just kicked him in the stomach, probably because he couldn’t attack her.
    “Claire,” I said. Provoking him right now was not a good idea. Not that I thought she would deliberately do that—she was normally far more sensitive to others’ feelings than I was. But Marlowe was likely to take it that way. If brown eyes could burn, his were doing it.
    But Claire either didn’t notice or didn’t understand. “But eleven men—”
    “Not men,” I told her, as Radu moved to Marlowe’s side. “Senior masters.”
    “And that makes a difference?”
    “I…Yes,” I said helplessly, because trying to explain would take too long and I wanted to get back to the point.
    But that clearly wasn’t happening.
    Something cracked, loud as a gunshot, and I jumped, before I realized it was the counter under Marlowe’s hands. “Tell her,” he said harshly.
    “I don’t think—”
    “Tell her!”
    I glanced at Mircea, who didn’t see it because his eyes were on the chief spy. Like his brother’s hand, which had slipped onto Marlowe’s shoulder. Probably in case he lost his shit and tried to go for Claire across the table.
    Not that that was likely. He wasn’t an idiot, and despite appearances, he didn’t really suffer from a lack of impulse control. He was just furious. And only one thing caused that kind of impotent rage in a senior master.
    “Lawrence was one of yours,” I guessed.
    There was no spoken acknowledgment; Marlowe looked like he might be past it at this point. But his head jerked down in a half nod. And at least a few things started to make sense.
    I glanced at Claire, who had figured out that she’d stepped in it, but wasn’t sure how. “Senior masters are like…supernatural tanks,” I told her, even though it was a lousy analogy. In a contest between the two, the tank would be toast. “They have abilities that are hard to explain—”
    “I know what vampires can do,” she said quietly.
    “No. You really don’t.” I glanced around, but no one was stopping me—or helping, and this