Enemies(3)

“Stow it,” I said. “I’m not looking to trust you on anything other than a limited basis. But you want Winter dead, and I can deliver.”

“Ah, but in point of fact I don’t care whether Erich Winter lives or dies at present,” Janus said, “so long as he continues to stay out of my way. Out of Omega’s way.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are they one and the same—your way and Omega’s?”

He shrugged again. “Not necessarily. I am hardly the Alpha of Omega, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

I rolled my eyes. “As I understand it, you have an entirely different Alpha trying to batter down Omega at present.”

His expression darkened though only briefly. “An unfortunate group of upstarts and malcontents who suffer from delusions of being a far greater danger than the nuisance they actually represent to us.”

“That’s not how I hear it.”

“Yes, well,” Janus said with a little bit of snap, “when you only hear one side of the story, you shouldn’t be surprised when it turns out one-sided.”

“Rather than two-faced, you mean?” I ignored the heavy sigh that Janus let out in response. “I’ll give you credit, it was clever,” I said. “Did you come up with that one all by your lonesome?”

He gave me a wary look. “We can’t all be as witty as you. But … you want Winter, then? To fit him for a coffin, I expect, like you did with the others?”

I stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Which former Directorate employee told you about them?”

To his credit, he didn’t blink away. “None of them. One of our cleverer technical fellows managed to get coroner reports for Clary and Parks, as well as a crime scene report for Kappler’s condominium.” His words came out slowly, almost as though he were chiding me. “That one was quite messy, as I understand it. Bullets in the walls, blood everywhere, two women missing.”

“One’s alive,” I said coolly.

He cocked his eyebrow again. “Ah, the fabled Ariadne lives on to provide guidance to the next one to try and get out of the maze.” He waited for me to respond, and when I didn’t, he went on. “Because, you see, the original Ariadne, from myth—”

“I got it.” I thought about it for a second. “But that wasn’t her—”

“No,” he agreed. “The original was quite a bit … huskier than you might have imagined.” He shrugged. “Theseus did what he had to do, you know.” His hands came to rest on his knees, and I watched his fingers knead them. “So, Winter. You want him dead, and you think I can help you in some way.”

I let my gaze drift from Fries’s inert body to Janus. “Can you?”

He stood. “I could, but I would only do it if you give me a compelling reason, not out of any need Omega has for him to be dead.” He looked at me carefully. “If you want Winter, you must negotiate for him.”

I let out an impatient sigh. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Everything in life is a negotiation,” Janus said. “If we were to decide to go out for breakfast—” My stomach rumbled at his suggestion—“and you wanted Chinese but I wanted Greek, which would we decide on?”

“I generally don’t think of egg drop soup when considering breakfast,” I said warily. “I prefer real eggs.”

He waved a hand at me dismissively. “You know what I am saying. We would discuss back and forth, have a bit of give and take, if we were reasonable people. I would try to persuade you to my way of thinking, you would try to persuade me to yours. The give and take, yes? I’d like this, you’d like that—”

“I’d like medical attention,” Fries said in a low moan from the couch.

“You’re about to get my attention again,” I said and pointed the gun at him. “Will that suffice?”

“No,” he croaked.

“No is a good word,” I said, “You should learn what it means when a woman says it to you.”

Fries looked up at me. “I—”

I pointed the gun at him, refining my aim to put the white dot of the center sight just below the middle of his forehead. “Choose your next words carefully, James.” I waited, and he said nothing. “Good choice.” I looked back to Janus. “What do you want from me?”

He smiled, his teeth showing only the slightest bit of yellowing. “I want you to come to London, to Omega headquarters. I want you to see how we work, the scale of what we’re currently involved in fighting.” His smile faded but only slightly. “I want you to join us.”