Read Online Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes by Mark Henwick - Free Book Online

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    ‘LA producer Tanner Forsythe creates another hit reality show…’
    I blinked as the implications sank in.
    Enough.
    I closed the browser and concentrated on calming myself down.
    Forsythe was living and working in Los Angeles.
    Yes, I’d been sleepwalking. Tanner had been someone I knew I had to do something about sometime. He’d be in Washington or New York or Miami. I’d be busy. I’d need to think about what I wanted to do.
    No. He was right here. He might be no more than a couple of miles away from where I was. Right now.
     

Chapter 9
     
    The doors sighed shut and the sense of anticipation, already high, notched up another level.
    “We are now in session,” a suit at the front said to the crowded room. A room crammed with Athanate, so full they were standing in the back.
    Those that could, took their seats.
    I was sitting front and center, going over everything Skylur and I had talked about, worrying about what Ibarre might have up his sleeve, and trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach.
    On my left, Yelena was there, as support.
    On my right was Elizabetta, as Skylur had promised.
    She was trying to distract me with the pretense of feeding me information about the proceedings and getting me up to date on the negotiations for the new Assembly.
    I appreciated it, but it wasn’t working.
    The problem wasn’t Forsythe. I’d managed to pack that away again—for now.
    It wasn’t Correia either, who was sitting in the back with a group of her advisers and a wall of security. I’d expected the antagonism I felt from her and Basilikos.
    Except I wasn’t allowed to call them Basilikos anymore. Correia had changed the name of her party to distance herself from the Matlal faction who’d attempted to attack the Assembly, declared war on Panethus and claimed Los Angeles belonged to them. That faction was still called Basilikos, but Correia had adopted the name of the Hidden Path for her party.
    It was an inspired choice. It appealed to traditionalists, and even progressive Houses felt uncomfortable thinking they stood against the Hidden Path.
    But it wasn’t Forsythe or Correia that were making me jumpy now. It was the almost physical pressure of everyone’s eyes on me.
    It had always been too much to expect that my first appearance after the Carson Park battle in New Mexico would be easy. Rumors of the ritual had gotten out. The Were would obviously focus on that, and I guessed so would the Adepts. I had all that discussion and speculation to look forward to when I was back in full circulation.
    Meanwhile, I was in front of the Athanate and many of them were speculating about the length of time I’d been out of sight since the battle, and the amount of time Diana had been spending with me instead of here. Diana was one of the oldest, most respected Athanate in the world. She was needed here.
    I still had a very basic grasp of the Athanate language, but I could make out that a group of Panethus to my left were discussing Basilikos. Correia’s claims that the Hidden Path party were trying to get the Basilikos renegades to abandon violence and return to the discussion table were dismissed. Most Panethus suspected the Hidden Path party and Basilikos were two heads of the same body, and Correia was simply their representation in the new Assembly.
    They also thought the longer the conference went on, the more likely a Basilikos cell would get through and kill someone. They weren’t happy that the conference was being delayed by this hearing. They weren’t happy Diana wasn’t here.
    And somehow all that was my fault.
    Screw them. Diana was only in LA at all—and free to help either me or the new Assembly—because I’d refused to stay away from New Mexico, or to assume like everyone else that no Athanate would dare to harm her. Amaral had dared. And Diana’s absence had as much to do with her recovery from the harm done to her as it did with my therapy. Not my fault.
    I shook it off and tried to