King's Throne(76)

Shocked silence greeted her words and at least a few of the board members sat back, defeat written on their faces. Chief among those was the man who’d sat in the chairman’s seat at the head of the table.
“I’m Walter Sorenson, the CEO,” he said with great dignity as he stood and adjusted his suit jacket. “I was appointed chairman of this board by Gisli and I’ve never been comfortable in the role he made me play. I recognize the new Tig’Ra and resign my position with the company.”
Mitch seemed to weigh the man’s words and then finally nodded. “I accept. Do any of you feel the same?” A few hands went up around the room, including the woman who was still crying. “Good. You may all be excused to the next room, where you will remain until we have talked with each one of you. Do not leave the building on penalty of death. I know who you are and the Grim can reach you wherever you try to hide.”
The woman started crying even harder and the others looked either hostile or whipped. Slowly, they exited the room, Mandy showing them the way to the chamber next door. Not a single one of them tried to make a run for it. Wise choice, Gina thought.
That just left the trussed-up mage, the mutinous pantera named Horace and one other person…a werewolf if Gina sniffed correctly. And he was growling at Mitch as they faced off across the table.#p#分页标题#e#
“You’re the slimy bastard that poisoned me,” Mitch said in a lethal tone.
Gina was shocked. Mitch had come face-to-face with the man—wolf—who had almost killed him. He was utterly calm on the surface, but Gina knew there had to be a firestorm brewing beneath his placid exterior.
“You should be dead.” The werewolf sealed his own fate with those words of acknowledgment.
“Why? Why did you target him like that? He was only a Royal Guard back then,” Gina wanted to know.
“Because of what he’s become, of course. Foresight is rare, but my friends knew what could happen. They knew Mitch Thorburn would be a threat. They wanted him out of the way and sent me to do it.” The werewolf’s eyes weren’t quite sane.
“Your friends in the Venifucus?” Mitch asked quietly. “It’s no use denying it. I see the evil glyphs on your face, Victor.”
Gina did a mental review of the list of board members she’d studied on the plane ride here. Victor French was listed as the Chief Financial Officer of the company. He had ready access to the billions of dollars at Phelix’s command. The implications were horrific. A Venifucus agent with that kind of entrée could do—and had probably already done—a lot of damage.
The big-cat Clans had been organized into their current political structure during the Renaissance in Europe. The Venifucus went back even further than that. They had once been led by a fey mage named Elspeth, who had come to be known as the Destroyer of Worlds. She and her followers had almost won the last war, but the forces of Light had defeated them and sent Elspeth into the farthest realms, never to return.
Or so everyone hoped. Recently though, the Venifucus—thought gone for centuries—had been making a comeback. The few agents who had been caught all professed one alarming goal. They wanted to rescue Elspeth from the farthest realms and bring her back to the mortal world to wage her evil war once more.
The fact that the Venifucus had someone in its ranks that could see the future was very, very disturbing. The fact that they’d felt so sure of the foreseer’s information as to send someone after Mitch on the theory that he might be important later, was even more alarming. They were acting on the foreseer’s visions. Who knew how many innocents who might’ve done good things were now dead or derailed because of that evilly placed gift of foresight.
The werewolf growled and leapt onto the table in a single bound, baring his fangs and brandishing his claws at Mitch. Everyone reacted in a split second, even as Mitch sprang over Gunnar’s head to meet Victor on the surface of the heavy table. Mitch’s hands were partially shifted, just like the werewolf’s.
The werewolf tried, but he was no match for Mitch without what he now realized had been the magical support of the mage. A group had ambushed Mitch that night when the dojo had burned. He’d only seen the one he’d fought up close and personal—this werewolf—but he’d known there had been at least one or two more behind him. One of them had wielded the needle filled with poison that had almost killed him.
Mitch needed to know more. He leapt at the werewolf, grabbing him around the throat as he slammed the bastard clear off the table against the heavy glass of the large windows. The werewolf whimpered as his head connected hard with the thick glass. Mitch squeezed his airway and though he tried to fight free, he was immobilized. The moment Victor understood that little fact, he stopped fighting.