Broken Warrior

Treacherous Hearts

Eliza

Bryn stopped at my desk, having come upstairs straight from parking her vehicle beating the rest of the group by a few moments. She gave me a pointed look and rolled her eyes. "They're all on a warpath."

Knight Corp didn't often take prisoners, and considering who this one was, I knew that there was going to be a lot of issues and ethical considerations to mull over in the coming hours and days. The easiest thing to do would be to hand Eirene over to the Head Order on a platter as it would get their criticisms off our backs and remove her from the presence of people she shouldn't be around.

Like Carbry. And Ryker. And Me.

But right now, she was on a specially constructed floor in the centre of the tower that had no windows. For all you could tell while standing within it, it was in a basement, but as New Orleans wasn't the place to go underground, we made do. The elevators didn't even have a button for the floor, Carbry had to enter in a code only known by him, Tim and I into a side panel that most people didn't know about.

Guards would watch from display screens in a different part of the building but there was no ready access to the floor. The walls were made of some material that had been provided and put into place by Timothy's mate.. Much like the armour on our SUVs that could withstand heavy fire and explosions, the floor that they took Eirene to couldn't be broken out of. There were different rooms within it though none of them had been in use until Tim and several other vampires had dragged the woman in and chained her to the floor less than an hour ago.

Only once she was secured by manacles that even Carbry couldn't break through, did a couple of the medical team go in, evaluate her injuries by cutting through the leather and kevlar armour and extracting several rounds that had remained buried in her body. Then they force fed her a couple bottles of blood before leaving her laying in clinical scrubs, unconscious on the stone floor. Through the camera system, I had seen Ryker standing with Carbry at the entrance of the floor, eyes narrowed with an unreadable expression on his face throughout the entire process.

As Bryn was walking away, the second elevator door opened and Daryl, Meri and Sam walked in, none of them looking pleased. Meri scowled at nothing in particular and walked into Carbry's office, closing the door behind her. Sam frowned and gave me a glance and a half smile before walking to Tim's office and sitting down, though she left the door open, allowing me to see her sitting on the couch, staring off into space.

Only Daryl stopped at my desk, his eyes going to the screen as he watched the medical procedure and his mate's odd countenance on different screens. "Hi Eliza."

"Hi Daryl." I glanced at him, letting out a breath as I bit back my own censure for what the trio had done. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that she would have been better bleeding to death before we found her. That he had unnecessarily risked himself through this whole event.

I knew it wasn't my place to tell him just who this woman was.

But I also understood that it would be a long while before Ryker calmed down enough before he was willing to talk about it, even with Daryl. And the look of confusion on Daryl's face was enough to break my heart, so I pulled the old copy of the file from the monastery out of the desk drawer I had stashed it into and slid it across my desk to the man.

"She was the one who turned him, Daryl. Then she handed him over to religious zealots who chained him in a dungeon and spent half a century torturing and starving him, trying to make him into a psychopathic killer like her. She freed him and we responded to the massacre, but it wasn't until she appeared a couple days ago and tried to kill Carbry that Ryker told us what it was. Who she was." I frowned at him, watching him digest the information and clench his jaw while looking at the file.

"Why does she want to kill Carbry? She was questioning Cadman about him before killing him." Daryl picked up the folder, the conflict of what I had told him warring in his eyes.

"Because she thinks Carbry is the incarnation of evil. Carbry turned her a long time ago and she has become obsessed with eradicating him and other supernaturals off the face of the planet. She was indoctrinated by these humans, the Teutonic Knights, and became their weapon." I whispered softly, shivering.

"She became their Hunter." Daryl offered, raising a brow as he watched me. "If they did that to Ryker, what did they do to her, in the centuries she's been with them?"

"It doesn't excuse what she's done." I offered stiffly, refusing to let even an ounce of pity enter my heart for the bitch.

"No." Daryl shook his head and offered a shrug as he considered his words. "But indoctrination is a powerful thing. I was with the Hunters for... what... a couple weeks? They already started breaking me down, making me believe I was... their... weapon, their property. A number. And Ryker has told me how lost he was until you guys found him. Not everything, but he told me how long it took for him to believe you guys weren't going to fuck him over. She didn't have any of that. And yet... she saved us. And that family in the van. If she was obsessed with only killing supernaturals, she would have murdered me and Meri and Vesa and Dever. Or she could have taken off after Cadman immediately. Or she could have let Cadman kill us, then killed him."

"She hurt Ryker. Really bad, Daryl." I shook my head, cutting off his arguments and turning to stare at the screen where Car was gripping Ryker's shoulder, as if holding the man in place.

Daryl sighed softly. "I know. And that makes me unbelievably furious. But she also is the only reason he's here, with me. The only reason he's here with us. And... aren't we all proof that people can be redeemed?"

But he turned away from me and moved off to a corner of the floor where there was an empty desk. I heard him sit down and begin flipping through the folders and steeled myself against his words. I needed to hate her, because holding out hope for someone who had already disarmed me would only cause more strife.

It would be so much easier if I could believe in black and white, good and evil and hate her with no reservation. I didn't need to empathize with our enemies. Instead of thinking about it, I turned to more mundane tasks required by the company that kept running even amongst this chaos. I distracted myself with the paperwork and the calls from the Head Order and their lackeys, letting the mundane routine of it drown out my confused conscience.

Despite the distraction, I was tense as the elevator chimed open to allow the remainder of the team back onto the floor. Shiloh and some of the others strolled by, followed by Carbry and Tim stalking to their offices and closing the doors behind them, probably to prepare for war with their mates. I glanced up to see Ryker standing just off the elevator, looking toward Daryl though his expression was vacant and haunted.
It was that expression that hardened my heart against Reena. If there was any debate, I would push for her to be handed over to the Head Order. She would cause us nothing but heartache here at Knight Corp .

Daryl stood and met Ryker's gaze before the vampire could turn back to the elevator and leave. I saw it then, the silent argument of hurt and going between them before Daryl let out a breath and shrugged. "How about we go to the training rooms. No one is there right now."

Ryker scowled at his mate before he shrugged and turned to the elevator, hitting the button hard enough that I was glad we put in reinforced control panels. Daryl glanced my direction and I nodded. As they got on the elevator, I walked to the desk Daryl had been sitting at and picked up the folder he had read through.