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BLOOD
A Werekin Novel
The Ark Trilogy: Book Two
By: Jesse Daro
Text copyright © 2014 Jesse Daro
All Rights Reserved
Second Edition
Cover Photo by Josh Pesavento
Used under Creative Commons license
All Rights Reserved
2
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we
belong to one another.
- Mother Theresa
In memory of my grandmother, Jessie Smith,
the original Daro
3
Table of Contents
Prologue
1: Arisen
2: Deadly Banishment
3: Love Birds
4: Mixed Messages
5: Bloodlines
6: Mea Culpa
7: Bleeding Hearts
8: What Lies Beneath
9: Back Story
10: The Ovid Experiment
11: Betrayal
12: Spaces Between
13: The Ark
14: Chapter and Verse
15: Star Crossed
16: War Dance
17: A Modest Proposal
18: Lost Souls
19: Before the Storm
20: Endgame
21: Last Words
22: Flashback
23: The Black Swan
24: Letting Go
25: Home
Epilogue
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werekin: n.
1. An ancient race of alien shapeshifters with the
ability to transform into animals; once inhabited the lost
continent of Lemuria, before it sank beneath the sea.
2. Genetically re-engineered alien race having both a
human and an animal skin, able to shift between the two at
will. Engineered by Dr. Elijah Bishop and Dr. Ursula
LeRoi, founders of Chimera Enterprises, using alien
genetic material discovered inside Mt. Hokulani.
5
Prologue
Midnight. The witching hour. Clouds drifted across the white
disc of the moon, swallowing the stars; the stately homes of the
Castle Estates subdivision were shuttered for the night.
Seth was sitting on the brick privacy fence around the backyard
of his mother’s house at 706 Kings Lane, the woods he had just
been running through at his back, the house where Lydia and Leigh
slept dark and quiet before him. J.J. was crouched beside him,
balanced on the toes of his black combat boots. The tips of his
nails were sharpened into claws, digging into the mortar between
the bricks; his round golden eyes, like Seth’s, were trained on the
necromancer, who had begun to chant.
Softly at first. Soft as the wind sighing in the spiny branches.
Words that spoke of darkness, and rot. Shadows seeped out of the
trees, flowed over the frosted grass, collecting along the base of the
fence, their spindly fingers stretching toward the glyphs drawn
atop the fresh grave.
A match flared; the shadows momentarily retreated. Seth
hissed. J.J. reached a hand out to steady him; in the flickering light,
Seth saw the pale rosette-shaped spots blooming on his twin’s
forearms, foils to the black spots on his own skin.
The necromancer straightened to his full height. Almost eleven
feet. Membranous black wings like a moth’s spread behind him,
stirring the air. The candle flame began to dance. Red wax bled
into the snow. The spell rose in power and volume, a single refrain
that pulsed through Seth, matching the furious rhythm of his
gonging heart: return; return; return…
Agathon lifted a silver goblet crusted with diamonds and
rubies. An acrid scent, burning sulfur mixed with the sweeter,
hotter scent of fresh blood, stung Seth’s sensitive werekin nose. On
a final, resounding note – return – Agathon tipped the goblet over,
pouring a thick crimson stream onto the trembling mound of earth.
The pressure dropped – Seth’s ears popped – and every
window of every house on Kings Lane exploded outward. Seth
hardly noticed. Soil was fountaining upward from the grave;
something was struggling under the surface, wriggling desperately
to free itself –
6
Seth and J.J. leapt, skinning as they did. Horror had curled into
a fist inside of Seth. He imagined his friend suffocating beneath the
hard-packed earth, where he had buried him less than a fortnight
ago. The tawny jaguar scrabbled at the dirt with his claws, digging
furiously. Beside him, his twin, the black jaguar, did the same.
Lights were coming on next door at the Townsends’, across the
street where Captain McLain had recently moved in, inside Seth’s
own house. Over the shrieking of burglar alarms and the frightened
voices calling to one another on the street, Seth heard a familiar,
welcome sound.
A bark.
7
Chapter One: Arisen
“You didn’t tell me it would be so loud,” Seth complained.
Perched on the edge of the bathroom sink, fluffy white towel
draped around his bare shoulders, his twin, J.J., smirked. “Haven’t
you ever heard the expression ‘enough noise to wake the dead’?”
Captain Hook yipped.
Kneeling beside the Jacuzzi, seventeen-year-old Seth Michael
Sullivan sighed and plunged his hands into the hot suds, working
grapefruit-scented shampoo into the little Dachshund’s reddishbrown fur. They were on their third scrubbing, and Captain Hook
still had dirt caked around his muzzle. “Buddy, you are filthy,”
Seth told him. “We may have to shave you.” Captain Hook
whined.
A door banged across the hall. J.J. tipped his blonde head back
against Seth’s mirror. “Here we go,” he said.
A moment later, the door to the bathroom was flung open, and
their baby sister, Leigh (who was sixteen, actually, not really a
baby), stormed in. The fury in her green eyes was as bright as her
hot-pink robe.
“J.J. Sullivan, if my dog is a zombie, I am holding you
responsible.”
“Leigh,” Seth protested. Seeing her, Captain Hook had made a
valiant attempt at escape, sloshing water over the edge of the tub,
onto Seth’s jeans. “Captain Hook is not a zombie, okay? Look at
him. Does he look like a zombie?”
“Braaaiiins,” J.J. drawled.
Seth glared at him. So not helping. “Anyway, it wasn’t J.J.’s
idea to bring him back – ”
“Yes it was,” J.J. said.
“Seth.” Leigh’s scowl softened as she turned from J.J. to him.
“You don’t have to stand up for him. He already turned our cat into
a warlock.”
She threw J.J. another black look. “For the last time,” J.J. said,
“Poe is a familiar, not a warlock. And she was never ‘your’ cat.
She’s mine. I sent her here to watch over our brother.”
Seth sighed. He had never really wondered how the ping pong
ball felt in a game of table tennis, until recently. That was pretty
8
much how he felt every time he had been in the room with his
siblings at the same time over the past week, since J.J. had come to
live with them. If pitching a tent (literally) in the basement and
dropping by for the occasional meal could be considered living
with them.
He pulled the stopper on the drain, scooped a semi-clean
Captain Hook out of the tub, and deposited him into the towel
Leigh held up. She cradled him, cooing like he was a baby.
Captain Hook licked the underside of her chin.
“Careful,” J.J. warned. “He’s getting a taste for later.”
“J.J., you are such a – ”
“Boys.” Lydia Steward, their mother, appeared in the
doorway, cutting off Leigh’s description of J.J., which would
probably have been quite colorful. Lydia’s usually easy-going
smile had been ironed into a taut frown; she had tugged a red pea
coat on over her satin pajamas when she had gone outside to speak
with their terrified neighbors. Her auburn hair, like Leigh’s, was
ruffled up on one side. “I’d like to see you both in the living room,
now. Leigh,” she glanced disparagingly at the layer of grime in the
bottom of Seth’s tub, “clean this up, and then go to bed.”
“Why do I have to clean it up?” Leigh said. “I didn’t do
anything. I didn’t even know anything was being done.”
“Because you would have blabbed,” J.J. said.
Leigh rounded on him. “I would not! I haven’t told
anybody you’re werekin, have I?”
“Adleigh, Jeremy, just…please.” Lydia sounded tired.
Captain Hook was making little whine-yip noises at her. She
reached out almost absently and patted his sleek head. “And be
quick about it, boys. Will is waiting.”
“Captain McLain is here?” Leigh’s hands flew to her messy
hair. “Mom! You might have said!”
“Leigh, for the last time, Will McLain is twenty-four years
old – ”
“And totally hot,” Leigh said. Lydia put her hands on her
hips; Leigh rolled her eyes. “Relax, Mom. It’s not like I’m talking
about marrying him.”
“I would hope not,” Lydia snipped. Leigh flushed. For a
moment Lydia looked like she might retract the words, but then
she turned on her heel and walked out.
9
“Leave the mess, sis,” Seth said, gently. Leigh was blinking
fast. Any allusion to her parents’ ongoing divorce, however
oblique, was liable to provoke one of two reactions from her:
uncontrollable fury at her father, or uncontrollable crying. Seth
wasn’t up for either. “I’ll get it later. Go back to bed.”
“I’ll do it,” Leigh said. “For you.” Pointed glance at J.J.
She kissed the top of Captain Hook’s head. As soon as she
put him down, he streaked into Seth’s room, hopping on his three
legs and barking shrilly. Poe, their one-eyed calico kitten, observed
him disdainfully from the window ledge.
On his way downstairs, Seth paused to snatch a T-shirt out
of the basket of clean laundry waiting to be folded beside his bed.
Normally Seth wasn’t modest, but he was still adjusting to the ropy
scar slashed across his midsection, hipbone to hipbone – evidence
of the silver bullet that had all but eviscerated him a week ago,
when Ursula LeRoi, founder of Chimera Enterprises, had shot him
at point-blank range during her escape from Fort King.
Besides, although Seth and J.J. were identical – same
chiseled cheekbones, same wedge-shaped jaws, same big, round,
golden eyes – J.J. carried a hard sheath of muscle on his slim frame
that Seth, who had not been raised in the Scholae Bestiarii, lacked.
Next to his brother, Seth felt like Diary of the Wimpy Twin.
There were other differences between them, too, made all
the more striking by their similarities. Seth’s hair was longer, dyed
jet-black with bleached-blonde tips. J.J.’s hair was cut above his
ears, a natural palette of gold, caramel, and butterscotch. Black
rosette-shaped tattoos circled Seth’s right eye, brow to cheekbone.
J.J. had a tattoo as well. His was a brand, on his right palm: 4331-ζ.
A reminder that, for the first seventeen years of their lives, J.J. had
been enslaved to Chimera Enterprises while Seth had lived free, in
the Underground.
In the entryway, wind was whistling through the shattered
windows overlooking the Stewards’ snow-covered law. Through
the fluttering curtains Seth glimpsed a police cruiser driving off
down the street.
They were so grounded.
J.J., who had not bothered with a shirt, sprawled on the
burgundy sofa in their teak-paneled living room, bare feet propped
on the coffee table, arms slung over the sofa-back. Seth curled up
10
in a corner of the couch, feeling miserable. It wasn’t like their
mother didn’t have enough stress without the neighbors thinking
her delinquent sons had detonated a bomb in the backyard.
Lydia sat on the arm of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s recliner,
nursing a cup of herbal tea. Leaning against the doorframe was a
tall, handsome young man with the kind of suntan you only got in
the desert. His dark hair was cropped as militarily short as J.J.’s,
and, at the moment, sticking up like he too had been roused from
sleep. He wore a Nike T-shirt and black sweats that were probably
meant to be pajamas. Seeing the silver swan-shaped charm at his
throat, Seth unconsciously touched the pewter jaguar charm around
his own neck.
Seth was not used to seeing Will McLain out of his camouflage
fatigues. He looked younger than he did stomping around Fort
King, issuing orders to the Marines in the black-ops division he
commanded.
Operation Swan Song, the top-secret military operation
intended to wipe out the remnants of Chimera Enterprises and free
the werekin from Dr. Ursula LeRoi’s tyranny, was largely
McLain’s brainchild. Just a week ago, he had risked being court
martialed (or killed) to help the werekin Resistance win the battle
at Fort King and rescue their mythical savior, the Black Swan.
“All right.” Lydia placed her mug on the hearth. “Whose idea
was it?”
“Mine,” J.J. said, automatically.
“No it wasn’t,” Seth argued. “It was Agathon’s.”
McLain sighed. Agathon was a Gen-0, one of Dr. Elijah
Bishop’s first, and failed, attempts to genetically reengineer the
werekin race from the alien DNA found inside Mt. Hokulani. That
Agathon had been involved put Captain Hook’s resurrection
squarely inside McLain’s sphere of responsibility. The Gen-0
resided at Fort King, the decommissioned military base outside of
Fairfax, and Fort King was where they had agreed to stay. Gen-0
didn’t exactly blend in at the mall. Werekin had a human skin.
Gen-0 didn’t. Giant mothmen and lizardpeople wandering the
streets of Fairfax, Indiana, would no doubt cause a panic.
Agathon was also a necromancer. Communicating with the
dead for him was like texting a friend for anybody else.
11
Resurrecting Seth’s dog? Totally normal Saturday night for
Agathon.
“And where,” Lydia wanted to know, “did Agathon get the
idea?”
“From me,” said J.J., readily. “Seth said the dog died a couple
of weeks ago. I’ve seen necromancers restore spirits when the
body has been dead for six, seven months. Granted, there’s a
certain ick factor in those cases, but the ground was so cold I
doubted the corpse had putrefied – ”
McLain cleared his throat. Lydia had gone white around the
mouth.
“Right.” J.J. scraped a fleck of mud off his cheek with a
fingernail. The backs of his hands were webbed with lacelike scars
– an old injury he had probably sustained in the Arena, where
LeRoi had forced werekin to fight one another to the death, though
Seth hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him about them yet.
“Anyway, it turned out fine. The dog isn’t a zombie. He’s the same
dog you always knew and loved. No dimensional portals got
ripped open – ” clearly Seth needed to read the fine print next time;
he didn’t recall any mention of portal ripping when J.J. had
presented him with the plan “ – so I don’t see what the problem
is.”
“The problem,” Lydia said, “is that your friend Agathon blew
up half our block. The problem is that our backyard looks like a
missile landed in it. The problem, Jeremy Jonathan, is that for the
past hour, I have been convincing a police officer that both of my
sons were asleep in their beds when this happened, and that neither
of you has access to bomb-making materials, while Will has been
convincing General Burke this incident will not in any way
jeopardize the military’s ability to keep the existence of werekin
secret from the rest of the world. Does any of that strike you as a
‘problem’?”
“Maybe that last part, a little,” J.J. said.
“Mom,” Seth intervened, “we’re sorry.” J.J. poked his
shoulder, sending a jolt through him: I am not sorry. Twin
telepathy. Another of their super werekin powers. Super even for
werekin. Seth waved him off. “We’ll clean up the backyard, I
promise. We didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
12
Seth honestly hadn’t. He had envisioned a quiet, intimate
resurrection, Captain Hook yawning as he emerged from his grave,
stretching as though waking from a nice long nap. He had planned
to present him to Lydia and Leigh at breakfast with a pink bow
around his neck.
McLain pushed off the wall. “Maybe we can just agree no
more use of magic without parental consent. And written
authorization from General Burke, just to be safe.”
Lydia seemed to think this was letting them off easy, but she
also seemed too tired to press the point. “Straight to bed, boys,”
she ordered, shooing them off the couch. “No skinning. And J.J.,
don’t forget, we’re going shopping for your school clothes
tomorrow.”
Seth did not need twin telepathy to interpret J.J.’s sigh. Oh joy.
***
Seth had forgotten it was Valentine’s Day until he saw the redand-pink heart-shaped balloons around the mall entrance the next
morning.
Lydia drove them in the Escalade. Leigh came along (Leigh
never missed an opportunity to shop), as did her best friend
Whitney Townsend, younger sister of Seth’s boyfriend Marshall,
who was currently grounded. Seth had not spoken to Marshall
much of late, though he lived just across the driveway. Dr.
Townsend was denying him phone calls and visitors. Seth hoped
he was at least being allowed bread and water in his cell.
Leigh claimed shotgun. Whitney scrunched into the back
between Seth and J.J., wearing her usual sloppy boy’s cardigan and
corduroy skirt, butterfly barrettes holding back her sleek chinlength bob. The moleskin notebook she scribbled poems in was
sticking out of her canvas tote. “Marshall says hi,” she greeted
Seth, after a shy hello to J.J.
“Just ‘hi’?” Leigh twisted around in the seat. Unlike Whitney,
Leigh never left the house in anything less than full couture. Today
she had on a green velvet dress and a pair of thigh-high, spikeheeled boots their friend Cleo would have killed for. Perhaps
literally. “Doesn’t he also say, ‘Oh Seth, I want your hot bod’?”
“Only when we’re alone,” Seth said. J.J. grinned.
13
Being forced to listen to pop princess drivel on their way to the
mall made Seth miss his motorcycle. His Yamaha privileges had
been revoked by Lydia once she learned he had engaged in a
teensy-weensy little car chase with a hunter on the highway. Like
that had been Seth’s fault? Sadly, the Yamaha had been a gift from
his weretiger guru Werner Regent, prior to Regent proving a
psychopathic traitor to the werekin cause, and Seth’s minimum
wage clerk job did not finance vehicle ownership. Thus, for the
time being, he was stuck being chauffeured by his mom.
At the food court, the ladies veered off toward Bath & Body.
Seth led J.J. past Abercrombie, American Eagle, and Hot Topic to
the coolest store in Fairfax’s mall: RE-SPIN – GENTLY USED
CLOTHING, MUSIC AND BOOKS.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” was playing on the stereo. A small,
skinny black boy with a mop of glossy hair hanging in his eyes
was perched cross-legged on the glass-topped counter, beaky nose
almost touching the screen of an über high tech PDA. His jeans
were held up by a pair of striped suspenders. The teenage hippie at
the register, Seth’s best friend and main wererabbit Emery Little,
looked up from his copy of Rolling Stone, oversize ears twitching,
as the brothers strolled in. “Hey, Seth. Hey, J.J.” Emery clasped
Seth’s arm below the elbow – a gladiator handshake. “Cool jacket,
by the way.”
“You like?” Seth catwalk-turned in front of the used-CD bins,
modeling his new blue-and-gold Fairfax High Knights letterman’s
jacket. His number, #4, was stitched on the back. Seth played point
guard. Lydia had ordered the jacket for him on the sly, before he
had raised the dead and wrecked the backyard and half their
subdivision. He turned to the other boy. “How’s it goin’, Baby
Bird?”
Dre Alfaro jerked his chin in greeting without taking his eyes
off the PDA. Knowing Dre, he was probably hacking into the Air
Force Space Command. Though just sixteen – too young to
officially join the Resistance – he was such a tech-wizard McLain
secretly had him on payroll.
Seth explained that they were there to outfit J.J. in something
besides camouflage. “He’s starting school tomorrow,” he added.
“Are you excited?” Emery asked.
“Super excited,” said J.J.
14
Re-Spin sold secondhand clothes of the vintage variety, mostly
rocker tees and gamer getups. In the end, J.J. selected two pairs of
faded jeans and a handful of plain black T-shirts exactly like the
one he was wearing. To appease their mother, who refused to
believe they, like all werekin, didn’t feel the cold, he also picked
out a brown leather jacket with a worn patch on the elbow.
Having grown up in a Chimera laboratory, J.J. hadn’t been
exposed to much American pop culture. Emery and Seth loaded
him up with albums from Re-Spin’s used CD shelves, running the
gamut from folk to heavy metal. “Figure out what you like and you
can trade the rest back in,” Emery told him kindly, ringing them up
with Seth’s employee discount.
J.J. nodded. He was thumbing through a paperback copy of
Lord of the Flies he had taken off the bookshelves in the back.
“Where are you taking Whitney tonight?” Seth asked.
Emery’s nose reddened to match his strawberry-blonde
ponytail. “The movies. I got her a Valentine’s Day present, too. Do
you think it’s too soon?”
“She’ll love it,” Seth predicted. Whitney and Emery were his
It couple.
Seth and J.J. left soon after, with promises to see Emery and
Dre at school the next day. Like most of the werekin in Fairfax, the
Littles and Alfaros lived in Haven Heights, a rundown housing
district along the river. Fairfax High, the city’s largest public high
school, was fed by both Haven and the Stewards’ posh subdivision,
Castle Estates, making for a not-entirely-comfortable mix that
went beyond the haves and the have-nots – try the human and the
alien. Seth had somehow managed to successfully straddle both
worlds, but he didn’t think J.J. would. Werecats were the fiercest
of the warrior breeds. Emery had once told Seth the aura of magic
around him was the strongest he had ever seen. Humans sensed
that magic, even if they didn’t know what it meant. It made them
nervous. And J.J. was a much more potent animal, so to speak,
than Seth was.
Across the street in the Barnes and Noble café, the twins
ordered two blueberry muffins apiece. Seth had coffee, with lots of
milk and extra sugar. J.J. had chai tea. They cornered a table in the
back, facing the door. (J.J. insisted on a clear view of the room.)
15
The cinnamon scent of his tea dredged up unwelcome memories
for Seth, who slowly peeled the paper off his muffin.
“Regent used to drink tea like that,” he said.
“Used to?” J.J. considered him slantwise, his gaze roving the
weekend shoppers browsing the shelves outside the café. “He’s not
dead, you know.”
“I wish he was,” Seth mumbled. He didn’t really mean it like
it sounded, though. He wished Regent had fallen in battle, fighting
by his side against Chimera. Then Seth wouldn’t have felt guilty
for missing him.
“Ah.” J.J.’s golden eyes suddenly brightened. “There she is.”
“She” was a tall, muscular girl with maple-brown hair razorcut to the scalp and eyes of such pale blue they looked purple in
the fluorescent light. “She” was Cleo, J.J.’s partner in the Scholae
Bestiarii, a hunter who had turned on Chimera to protect the
werekin she had been trained to kill.
Cleo’s spike-heeled boots clicked on the tile as she strode
toward them in skintight jeans and a black T-shirt like J.J.’s. J.J.
reached around, snagging a chair from the table next to theirs, and
pulled it over for her. “Did you telepathically invite her?” Seth
asked.
“Yes,” J.J. said.
“Oh, he did not.” Looking sourly at J.J., Cleo plunked down
on her chair. “Being telepathic doesn’t give him access to
everyone’s mind, sweetheart, just yours, because of the twin
connection. Speaking to anyone else requires a complicated spell,
and really only works in dreams.”
Seth raised an eyebrow at J.J., who shrugged. “I called her last
night. Told her to meet us here at ten-thirty.”
Cleo ordered a muffin, and the boys filled her in on Captain
Hook’s resurrection. Then she and J.J. launched into giving Seth
the skinny on Operation Swan Song’s efforts to bring down what
remained of Chimera Enterprises.
“Not much to tell,” J.J. said. “Chimera had dozens of topsecret laboratories all over the country as part of Project Ark.
McLain’s men have raided the ones we knew about, freed the
collared werekin held there, and taken the hunters they could catch
into custody. So far we haven’t found LeRoi. General Burke
believes she kept other facilities that weren’t on the books, where
16
she ran all kinds of unauthorized experiments. Dre is working on
cracking the encryption on her PDA, and we’re hoping that will
tell us where the other facilities are. LeRoi will have at least some
collared werekin there, and as long as she has them, she can breed
more.”
“So what is the Resistance doing to help?” Seth wanted to
know.
Cleo glanced at J.J. and said, “Nothing, yet. The Commanders
haven’t decided on a course of action.”
“But you’ve been meeting all week!” Seth protested. “For
hours.” As of last week, the werekin Resistance had established its
command at Fort King, where the Ark was housed. For his part,
Seth was staying out of werekin politics. He was focused on
passing eleventh grade and leading the Fairfax High Knights to
victory against the Sacred Heart Warriors at sectionals. But J.J. and
Cleo, like Lydia, spent most of their time at Fort King.
“The problem,” Cleo explained, as Seth drug her muffin over
to finish it off, “is that we’ve got two factions. If it was up to
Captain McLain and Ben Schofield, we’d hunt down what’s left of
Chimera on whatever intel we have and finish them off. But on the
other side we’ve got Derek Childers saying McLain can’t be
trusted. He’s insisting we forget about Chimera, locate the Black
Swan, and raise Lemuria so the werekin can return to their
homeland. The whole process is stalled while they go round and
round.”
“Typical Resistance b.s.,” J.J. said. His tone was sour. J.J. had
no patience for the Resistance’s cautious guerilla tactics. J.J. was
one-hundred-percent-in-your-face soldier. Seth was worried about
how he would handle being razzed by idiot jocks like Cam Foss,
Seth’s least-favorite person at Fairfax High.
He leaned back in his chair. “Derek was the werewolf, right?
The tall guy with the silver burn scars on his face?”
“Wanted to run away rather than fight?” J.J. threw in.
Cleo gave him a look. “Derek thinks the Black Swan didn’t
really escape during the battle. He claims McLain stashed her
somewhere and is using us, the Resistance, to bring all of the
werekin in the Underground out of hiding so the military can either
collar them or exterminate them, to be sure they aren’t a threat to
humanity.”
17
Seth was indignant. “How could anyone believe that about
McLain? His family helped found the Underground. And if it
wasn’t for him, the Black Swan would still be in LeRoi’s
clutches!”
“I like McLain, too, sweetheart, but a lot of werekin in the
Resistance were raised in captivity, and before Project Ark was
decertified, Burke’s men were the ones who trained us in the
Scholae Bestiarii. They weren’t all as humane as Captain McLain.”
Cleo glanced at J.J., who, Seth noticed, seemed to have developed
a fascination with his fingernails. “General Burke isn’t what you’d
call a big cuddly teddy bear himself. Werekin are quick to believe
the worst about McLain because of that. And he can’t prove Derek
wrong, since nobody knows where the Black Swan is.”
“Well,” J.J. said, “almost nobody.”
Seth squirmed. A feeling like worms wriggling in his belly had
started up. “Agathon didn’t tell the Commanders about Marshall,
did he? They don’t know he’s the one who helped the Black Swan
escape, do they?”
“No,” J.J. said. “I promised you we wouldn’t tell them, didn’t
I?”
Exacting that promise from his twin had not been easy. As the
smoke had cleared from the battle, the Resistance had clamored for
the return of the Black Swan, prophesied in ancient Lemurian texts
to raise the werekin motherland from the seas, thereby restoring
their connection to the Totems. But the Black Swan was in hiding.
She believed someone inside the Resistance had betrayed her to
Chimera. With LeRoi on the loose, until the traitor’s identity was
discovered, she was safer Underground.
Marshall Townsend had whisked her away from Fairfax during
the battle, vanishing for a day (hence the grounding) and returning
alone. No one, not even Seth, knew where he had taken her. Only a
handful of people knew Marshall had been involved in her
disappearance at all: Seth, J.J., Emery, Lydia, Agathon, and Cleo.
That was how Seth wanted it to stay. If Chimera did have a spy
inside the Resistance, anything they knew, LeRoi would know, and
LeRoi would stop at nothing to force Marshall to give up the
location of the Black Swan. Raising Lemuria, securing the power
of the Totems, had been her obsession since she and Bishop
discovered Mt. Hokulani well over fifty years ago.
18
“What does Ben say?” Seth asked, to change the subject.
“He’s focusing on signing werekin up with the Resistance.”
Cleo swatted J.J.’s hand when he tried to steal part of Seth’s stolen
muffin. J.J. complained. Seth grinned. “He says war with LeRoi is
inevitable. Even Elijah Bishop knew that. More werekin are
arriving at Fort King from the Underground every day. And we’ve
got the Gen-0s. If the Commanders could get their acts together,
we could do some serious damage to Chimera with this much
firepower.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” J.J. said, and made as if to push
back from the table – only to stop, his whole body going still in a
way that warned Seth something was amiss.
“What?” he and Cleo said, together.
Turning, Seth saw what. Or, rather, who.
A boy was making his way toward their table. Dirty blonde
hair scraped the collar of his letterman’s jacket, just long enough to
be rebellious. His worn-soft Levis were set low on his hips,
emphasizing his slenderness. He was almost pretty, especially
when he smiled, warmly, and said, with a slight Texas drawl, “It’s
Seth, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Seth said, looking sideways at J.J. Oblivious to
J.J.’s ice-cold stare, Connor Burke pulled a chair over to their table
and sat down on it backwards. “I didn’t get a chance to
congratulate you after the game the other night. That was some
jump shot you pulled off there at the end.” Connor finally looked
at J.J., one fair eyebrow lifting. “This – must be your brother?”
“Cousin,” Seth lied, quickly. Enrolling J.J. at Fairfax High had
been complicated by the fact that everyone believed Seth’s twin
had died as an infant – drowned in the bathtub, after which
Thomas Sullivan had absconded with Seth, blaming his wife for
her carelessness. J.J. even had a tombstone in the local cemetery.
Thus he would be posing as Seth and Leigh’s cousin, claiming to
have grown up attending boarding school in Connecticut, where
Thomas Sullivan’s non-existent brother lived. “J.J., this is Connor
Burke. He plays for our rivals, Sacred Heart.”
“How you doin’,” Connor said. J.J. just nodded. He had yet to
relax his fighter’s stance. Connor Burke was much more deeply
connected to them all than just being the all-star captain of the
Sacred Heart Warriors – he was the only son of General David
19
Burke, commander of Operation Swan Song. But Connor knew
nothing about the true nature of his father’s work. Seth had asked
McLain about him, and McLain had said Burke didn’t want his son
involved with Chimera Enterprises in any way. It was too
dangerous. Besides, Operation Swan Song was classified above
top-secret. Officially, werekin did not exist.
When Seth had first met Connor a few weeks ago, he had been
taken by his easy charm. Said charm was on full display now as he
turned his green-swirled hazel eyes onto Cleo. “Another cousin?”
he asked, lightly. Maybe a little too lightly. J.J. sat up straighter.
“This is Cleo,” Seth said. “Just a friend.”
“You don’t go to Fairfax High,” Connor said – a statement,
not a question.
“I graduated,” Cleo said, shortly. She glanced at J.J. If Seth
hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that color in her cheeks
was a blush.
“Really?” Connor sounded skeptical. “You don’t look old
enough to be in college.”
“Who said anything about college?”
Seth wasn’t sure Cleo meant it to come out so coyly. She
looked down at the table, definitely blushing now. Connor broke
into one of his easy smiles. “Lemme guess. Military.”
“What – what makes you say that?” Cleo stammered.
“Just the way you carry yourself,” Connor said. “I’m an army
brat. You learn to spot the training.”
This was hitting too close to the mark for comfort. Cleo looked
at Seth for help. “I hear we’ll be meeting again for sectionals,” he
said.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Connor turned to Seth, seeming reluctant to
look away from Cleo. “Brackets should be announced this week.
I’m not looking forward to getting matched up against Montrose
again. They’ve got this new captain, and from what I hear, he’s
pretty good. I hope you’re not benched this time,” he added.
“Wouldn’t it be better for you if I was?”
Connor’s eyes shifted to a deeper green when he laughed.
“Easier, maybe,” he conceded. “But I don’t see the fun in winning
if you aren’t playing against the best.”
It was the kind of thing Marshall would have said, and meant,
as sincerely as Connor obviously did. Seth had never met General
20
Burke face to face, but he had encountered him in a spirit-walk
Cleo had sent him on. Somehow he didn’t think Connor had
inherited his laidback golden boy grooviness from his father any
more than he had his pretty face. David Burke could have been
carved from stone in every sense of the word.
“Well, I should be – ” Connor started, just as Cleo said,
abruptly, “I need to get – ”
They stopped, looked at one another, and laughed. “I’ll walk
you out, then,” Connor offered.
Cleo shrugged and stood up, too quickly for Connor to pull her
chair out for her, which Seth could tell he had been about to do.
“See ya, sweetheart,” she said to Seth, and nodded, brusquely, to
J.J.
They walked out together, Connor’s hands jammed in the
pockets of his red-and-black jacket, Cleo tilting her head back to
look up at him as he shouldered the door open for them both. As it
closed behind them, J.J.’s chair scraped back from the table. His
golden eyes were flat as brass coins.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re late to meet Lydia.”
21
Chapter Two: Deadly Banishment
MoJo’s was the most popular restaurant in Fairfax, a microbrewery with a London pub-style atmosphere and the most delicious deep-dish veggie pizza on the planet. By the time Seth and
J.J. arrived, Leigh and Whitney had secured a booth in the back,
against one of the exposed-brick walls. The brothers weaved
through the packed weekend crowd toward them. “Look what
Whitney bought Emery,” Leigh squealed as they sat down.
She held up a white T-shirt emblazoned with a black Playboy
Bunny logo. “How adorable,” said Seth. J.J. had vanished behind
his menu. “What’s the occasion?”
Leigh thumped him on the head with her menu. “Valentine’s
Day, doofus. Didn’t you get anything for Marshall?”
“Leigh,” Lydia said, warningly.
“Oops.” Leigh bit her lip. “Sorry, Seth.”
Seth smiled to show her it was all right, but he hoped she
wouldn’t make a slip like that at school, especially in earshot of
Cam Foss. Seth’s love affair with the boy next door wasn’t exactly
front page news in Fairfax. Just another of Seth’s many secrets,
until Marshall got comfortable with coming out to his parents.
Which Seth feared might be the Twelfth of Never, but he was
trying to be patient.
“Should I get something for him?” he wondered. “Maybe a file
baked into a pie, so he can pick the lock on his cell?”
Whitney grinned. “I don’t think he’s expecting anything.
However,” she pointed at Seth with a slice of green pepper, “I will
pass along the insider info that Mom is still in Vegas for her girls’
weekend, and Dad is pulling a double shift at Fairfax Memorial
tonight, if you wanted to drop by.”
Lydia put her hands over her ears. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear
that, so I can’t forbid you to go.”
Seth’s mom was the coolest. SuperMom Goddess. He blew her
a kiss across the booth. “J.J., did you want to get something for
Cleo?” he asked.
J.J. peered at him over the menu he was still pretending to read.
“Why would I do that?” He sounded genuinely bewildered.
22
“Uh, maybe because she’s in love with you?” Leigh said –
then yelped and rubbed her shin, glowering at Seth. “Ow! Hey!
What are you kicking me for?”
“Sis,” Seth muttered, “shut-up.”
J.J. didn’t say anything, just nibbled on a crust, his expression
guarded – a curtain drawn across his thoughts, shutting out even
Seth.
***
“I am not going in there,” Leigh declared, folding her arms
obstinately across her chest.
Lydia sighed. “Nobody is asking you to, Leigh.”
The Escalade was idling along the curb in front of the twostory brick building that had been a warehouse until Gavin
Steward, Jack Steward’s father, had converted it to a law firm
decades ago. After lunch, Lydia had announced she had one more
errand to run before they headed home, and Leigh had started to
fume the minute they had exited the expressway for downtown.
Across the street was Sacred Heart, which reminded Seth of a
cathedral (as it used to be) with its domed roof and white spires.
Seth sat forward in the seat. He had never been to his step-father’s
office. THE STEWARD & REGENT LAW FIRM was painted on
the firm’s window in delicate gilt letters, though really, it was just
Steward now.
A campaign poster for Jonathan Steward, candidate for the
United States Senate, beamed at them from the front door. Seth
didn’t know if Jack still planned to run for office now that
Chimera, the company that had orchestrated his senatorial bid, had
fallen from its seat at the highest echelons of governmental power.
He had not spoken to Jack since he had nearly died saving Seth
from Regent before the battle.
“All of you wait here,” Lydia said. “I’ll only be a sec.”
Seth popped open his door. “I’ll go.”
“Seth – ”
“It’s fine, Mom.” Sticking his head back in the car, Seth said,
“Be right back.”
Lydia looked like she wanted to argue, but Seth had already
hightailed it up the sidewalk.
23
The firm’s front door was unlocked. Seth opened it cautiously,
peering around an immaculate lobby dominated by a cherrystained receptionist desk. Leather sofas fronted a stone hearth off
to one side; behind him, bay windows spilled winter light onto the
parquet floor. Brushed brick walls climbed up two stories to a
wraparound walkway edged by an iron railing. Overhead, teardrop
lights ensconced in opaque glass dripped from the wooden rafters.
The space was sunnier, more open, than Seth had expected.
He found Jack’s office down a long hallway behind the
receptionist’s desk. No one answered his knocks, and Seth was
considering picking the lock – a snap for him – when his acute
werekin hearing picked up rustling on the upper floor. Turning, he
climbed the open staircase and followed a red-carpeted hallway
past conference rooms and a small law library to the building’s
east side, which faced the sparkling Ohio River. A door at the end
was ajar. “Knock knock,” Seth said.
“It’s open,” someone called.
Seth pushed the door inward. Jack Steward was setting down a
paint roller, wiping his spackled hands on his jeans. Seth had never
seen his step-father in flannel and sneakers before – usually it was
a suit and tie, at most a Georgetown sweatshirt on the weekends.
Blue paint dotted his trim mustache and goatee.
His right arm was still in a sling. Regent’s claws had all but
severed it. Healing potion and Marshall’s emergency medical
training were all that had saved Jack from being an amputee. When
he saw Seth, he took a step forward. “Seth? Is everything all
right?”
His gray eyes slid over Seth’s shoulder. Looking for Lydia,
probably. Or a pack of bloodthirsty werekin. Take your pick which
would have been more terrifying.
“I came for J.J.’s transcripts,” Seth said.
“Of course.” Jack looked relieved, and maybe something else,
something Seth couldn’t define. “They’re in my office,” he said.
The plastic drop cloth crinkled underfoot as he hurried by,
careful not to linger in swiping range of Seth’s claws. Seth
hesitated, surveying the room. It looked like the entryway to a loftstyle apartment. A single pane of glass comprised the east wall,
overlooking the river; beyond that was the Kentucky shore,
densely foliaged with trees. Through an archway, he could see a
24
large living room with a kitchen and hallway branching off. The
floors were hardwood, the high ceilings supported by white
columns.
The place didn’t look lived-in yet. No furniture. Bare light
bulbs. Primer-smeared walls, prepared for the paint Jack had been
applying. “Renovating?” Seth asked, as he light-footed after Jack
down the stairs.
“My father had the apartment put in when he purchased the
building. He used to stay here when he worked late. It’s been used
for storage since he died.” That had been almost twenty years ago,
during Jack’s last year of law school, Seth recalled. Afterward,
Jack and his friends Thomas Sullivan and Werner Regent had hung
out a shingle together, in Gavin Steward’s former offices.
Gavin Steward had been an agent of Chimera as well.
Jack unlocked the door to his office, which was just as sunny
(and swanky) as the lobby. Seth ghosted his fingers across the
spines of the legal volumes packed onto the bookshelves while
Jack fished a manila envelope from his filing cabinet. “Is this
where you’re going to live now?” he asked.
“As soon as the paint dries.” Jack closed the drawer with his
good shoulder and offered the envelope to Seth. “Tell Lydia
there’s a driver’s license in there as well.”
Seth tucked the envelope inside his jacket. The transcripts Jack
had forged would lend credence to the tale of J.J.’s Connecticut
boarding school past. Seth’s own bogus transcripts from being
“homeschooled” in Philly (as in, many afternoons in the public
library) were already on file at Fairfax High. It helped that the
principal, Ingrid McLain, Captain McLain’s aunt, was one of the
few humans with the ability to recognize werekin auras, and had
helped found the Underground years ago. “Well,” Seth said,
“thanks, Mr. Steward.”
“Seth.” Jack sighed. “You are so damn polite.”
Seth blinked. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll work on being ruder.”
A wry smile twisted Jack’s mouth. “I just meant you shouldn’t
thank me.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. There were more
streaks of gray in it than Seth remembered. “Don’t thank me, is
what I mean.”
25
Outside, a horn honked. Seth backed toward the door; Jack
took a step after him. “You should come back sometime,” he said.
“There are things we should talk about.”
Like why you handed my dad and J.J. over to Chimera, you
backstabbing prick? How was that for polite? “We’ll see,” Seth
said.
His tone was cool. Jack nodded. In the doorway, Seth glanced
back to see his step-father climbing the stairs, shoulders slumped
as though weighted down by the pressure of guilt.
***
“Are you going over to Cleo’s?” Seth asked, hopping up on
Lydia’s sewing table.
“Later.” J.J. fell back on his cot, arching his spine as he
stretched. It was only late afternoon, but being, like all cats,
nocturnal, J.J. was still adjusting to being awake all day, asleep all
night. Seth had suffered the same REM disturbance during his first
weeks in Fairfax.
The twins were in the basement, a cool, damp place that
reminded Seth a little of a cave, if caves had smelled like fabric
softener. It was home to the washer and dryer, Lydia’s sewing
machine, and metal shelves holding junk originally bound for
Goodwill, now commandeered by Leigh for a garage sale to
support The Student Vegan Society, of which she was president.
“It’s not true, you know,” J.J. said.
Seth looked up from the ball of string he had been teasing Poe
with. “What isn’t?”
“What Leigh said. About Cleo being in love with me. It’s not
true.” Beg to differ, brother dear, Seth thought. He had once been
kiss-attacked by Cleo while she was thinking of his twin. “Cleo
and I grew up together, at LeRoi’s estate in Connecticut. She’s a
Gen-7, too.”
J.J.’s golden eyes were very pale in the basement’s dim light.
All werekin had markings that hinted at their animal skin. With
Seth and J.J. it was their eyes, their wedge-shaped chins; with Dre,
his birdlike smallness and pinched beak of a nose; with his brother
Angelo, his size, bigger than a bull, and velvet-black skin; with
Emery, his big ears and pink nose. Cleo wasn’t werekin, but like
26
all hunters, she wasn’t entirely human, either. Hunters were the
offspring of werekin parents for whom the werekin gene, for
reasons Chimera’s scientists could not control, skipped. Hunters
were not shapeshifters, but genetically, they were superior to
humans, possessed of the same preternatural speed, strength, and
agility as werekin.
Elijah Bishop had learned more about werekin genetics than
anyone else before being executed for helping the Gen-1 werekin
escape captivity. Seth had read the doctor’s journal. In it, Bishop
had hypothesized that werekin were chosen by their Totems; their
skin had much more to do with magic than science. Not that that
had stopped Chimera from breeding them in captivity, hoping the
magic would pass from parent to child. When it didn’t, that child
was trained up to be a hunter.
Seth thought of Cleo’s silvery eyes and muscular build. “Do
you know what breeds her parents were?” he asked.
“No. She would have been taken from them when she was a
baby, to be trained in the Scholae Bestiarii. Can’t have hunters
forming attachment to their werekin sires.” J.J.’s lashes lowered,
showing Seth only a sliver of gold. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell
you about it.”
“Cleo isn’t big on heart-to-hearts,” Seth said.
“Yeah, but she’s…different, with you.”
There was an edge to J.J.’s voice Seth didn’t like. “Different
than what?”
“Different than with me,” J.J. said. He was tracing the scars on
the back of his hand. Seth was dying to know how he had gotten
them, but before he could think of a tactful way to broach the
topic, J.J. said, “Are we training later?”
He sounded eager. J.J. had agreed to pick up Seth’s martial arts
lessons where Regent had left off. Stoked as Seth was to learn to
use his new samurai sword, he had other plans for the evening.
“Not tonight,” he said, sliding off the table. “Tonight, I have a
date.”
“Right.” J.J. patted his chest; Poe hopped onto the cot and
curled up there, purring. “Tell Doc I said hi.”
Upstairs, Seth found the door across from his bedroom open.
Madonna was blaring on Leigh’s stereo. Her entire closet seemed
to have exploded onto her polka dot bedspread. Captain Hook was
27
lying on a Burberry skirt, munching a rawhide bone. “How’s the
rebirth going?” Seth asked him. Captain Hook wagged his stubby
tail.
Leigh sauntered out of the bathroom, wearing a slinky applered tank top and painted-on black jeans. Seth’s eyes narrowed. She
wasn’t planning on leaving the house dressed like that, was she?
“Seth, help me out,” she said, holding up two necklaces – a Gothic
cross on a black ribbon and a silver heart choker. “Which do you
like better?”
“Oh, I see. Just because I’m gay, now I’m a fashion expert?”
Leigh raised her eyebrows at his jeans and T-shirt. “Clearly
not,” she said. “I’m asking because you know Bryce. Which do
you think he’ll like?”
Seth stopped petting the dog. “Bryce as in Bryce Heilsdale?”
“Do we know another Bryce?” said Leigh, airily, as she
fastened the choker. “We’re doubling with Emery and Whitney
tonight.”
“When did this happen?” Last Seth had heard, Leigh was
nursing a broken heart over Marshall.
His big brother scowl was noted with an exaggerated eye roll
in the mirror. “It’s one date, Seth. For Valentine’s Day. Anyway,
you like Bryce, remember?”
Seth had liked Bryce. Until about two minutes ago. Now he
might bite his broken leg off in Bio on Monday. “What about
McLain?”
Leigh fluffed her auburn curls. “You mean Captain McLain?”
“Do we know another McLain?”
“Seth, Will McLain is twenty-four years old,” Leigh quipped,
in such a perfect imitation of their mother Seth couldn’t help
laughing. “That’ll be Whitney,” Leigh said, as her cell phone
chirped. She grabbed her purse off the closet-door. “Have fun with
Marshall!” she sang out.
Seth smiled. Oh, he intended to.
***
Bryce Heilsdale tripped over his crutches trying to get ahead of
Leigh to open the door to Archie’s Diner. It was difficult to walk
and ogle at the same time, Whitney was sure, especially with your
28
leg in a cast, but still. God love her supermodel best friend, Leigh
had no sense of practicality when it came to fashion. It was barely
ten degrees outside. She was going to freeze in that tiny little tank
top.
Whitney, on the other hand, was toasty warm in her long red
velvet skirt and chocolate sweater, her feet tucked into rubber
snow boots that squeaked on the diner’s checkered floor. Emery
had claimed the booth near the jukebox, underneath the picture of
Elvis in his blue suede shoes.
Archie’s was Whitney’s favorite hang-out. The theme was
1950s Americana: The old Wurlitzer played “Can’t Buy Me Love”
every third song, and servers in poodle skirts skated out from
behind a chrome counter to serve juicy garden burgers and handdipped milkshakes. Leigh had pitched a fit about eating somewhere
so out of the way – the diner was right off the Interstate, near the
new movie theater. Nobody, she said, would be there. By nobody,
she meant the in-crowd of jocks and cheerleaders, of which Leigh
and Whitney were neither, though their brothers were. The whole
point of getting dressed up, Leigh had explained on the drive, was
to be seen.
A server came by to take their orders, seeming a bit harried.
The diner was hopping, the booths filled with couples. Bryce
wedged his cast under the table to keep from tripping servers as
they skated past. “This place is cool,” he said, sleepy green eyes
taking in the room. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Best garden burgers in town,” Emery said. He and Bryce
didn’t know one another well; as a rule, the Haven kids and the
Castle kids did not mingle, and Bryce was definitely the latter. His
dad owned the largest shipping company in the state. Bryce was
also human, and thus put-off by what Seth called “the werekin
vibe,” but it just so happened he and Emery were both extremely
laidback. They even looked a little alike, both tall and thin, strongfeatured, though Bryce was dark where Emery was fair. So far,
they were getting along fine.
Emery laid his arm across the back of the booth, leaning in to
Whitney while Leigh started asking Bryce who he thought would
make prom court – a not-so-subtle hint that she was still looking
for a date. “Did you like your present?” Emery asked, softly.
29
Whitney tugged the gift, a secondhand collection of
Shakespeare’s sonnets, from her canvas tote. The worn cover was
blue cloth embroidered with silver stars. The pages were thick,
creamy parchment. “I love it,” she said. “Did you really like
yours?”
“I love it,” Emery said. In fact, he was wearing his gift. He had
changed into the Playboy T-shirt in the Townsends’ bathroom
before they had left for Archie’s. Marshall had been in the kitchen,
humming “The Wedding March.” Seth, Whitney thought, was
rubbing off on him.
Their food arrived. Leigh immediately folded one of Bryce’s
fries into her mouth. “You could have at least bought her
something new, Little,” she said.
“Leigh!” Bryce was aghast.
“What?” Leigh snagged another fry. She had ordered a salad
and a Diet Coke, but Leigh had a weakness for fries. She had once
told Whitney her version of heaven was where you could eat all the
grease, salt, and chocolate you wanted and never gain an ounce.
“I’m just saying. How hard is it to buy a new book?”
“This one is special.” Emery opened the book and ran his
thumb along the notes penciled into the margins. “Whoever owned
it before jotted down all these thoughts about the poems. I found it
in with my dad’s stuff. I thought you might like to read them.”
He sat back, twirling his St. Francis medal and looking
hopefully at Whitney. Emery had eyes of very light green shaded
by coppery lashes. Sometimes, like now, they darkened to marblegray, like smoke seen through glass.
Whitney always thought Emery was handsome. But when he
was glamoured, like he was tonight, the whorls of color that
surrounded him, generated by the magic in his blood, were
dampened, and Whitney could see him. “It’s perfect,” she said,
softly. Emery blushed.
“Okay, I admit, you pulled it out there, Little. That’s pretty
neat.” Leigh took a thoughtful sip through her straw. “Unless the
guy wrote a bunch of creepy stuff about ex-girlfriends or whatever.
It’s not anything creepy, is it, Whitney?”
“Leigh, I’m sure – ”
The bell above the door jangled. Whitney cut off, startled. “It’s
Captain McLain,” she said, and promptly blushed. First of all, it
30
wasn’t as if Will McLain didn’t eat and sleep, like any regular
person. Secondly, Bryce, like most of the world, had no idea who
Will McLain was, why he was in Fairfax, or that werekin even
existed. Whitney hadn’t known until a week ago, when she had
been tranqed by one of Chimera’s hunters in her own front yard.
Bryce turned, along with Leigh, as McLain strode up to the
chrome counter and sank onto a stool. He wasn’t alone; Dre Alfaro
was tripping along behind him. Literally: Dre’s eyes were fastened
on a handheld computer, and he stumbled into the jukebox before
righting himself and sitting down beside the captain.
Aside from his combat boots, McLain wasn’t in uniform. He
was in faded jeans and a black hoodie. Still there was something
undeniably soldier-like about him. Two servers competed to be the
first to take his order. A bleached-blonde surfer girl won the race,
and her friend went to pout behind the cash register, sneaking
looks at the dark-haired soldier from under her lashes.
“Who is he?” Bryce asked, turning back around.
“Our neighbor,” answered Leigh, glossing over McLain’s
more mystical connection to the Stewards. “He’s Principal
McLain’s nephew.”
“No way.” Bryce looked astounded. “You mean Will
McLain?”
Emery did one of his funny little hops. “How do you know that
name?” he squeaked.
“Dude, are you serious?” said Bryce. “Will McLain is a
legend. He played center for the Knights when he was in high
school. Led them to three state championships. He was like the
original Marshall Townsend.”
“Oh no, my friend,” Whitney said. “There is only one
Marshall Townsend.” Bryce grinned.
Leigh stood up. “Come on, Whitney. Let’s go say hi.”
“Leigh, no.” Whitney could feel her face glowing. She was no
good at talking to strangers, and she didn’t know Will McLain at
all, other than to say hi on the sidewalk. Although, she would have
liked to know the captain. From what Emery had said, McLain,
like her, could see the auras that haloed werekin. She was curious
to know what the magic looked like to someone else. “We
shouldn’t bug him.”
“We won’t bug him. It would be rude not to say hi.”
31
Leigh got out of the booth, tapping her kitten heels impatiently.
Whitney, with an apologetic shrug at Emery, crawled out after her.
Arguing with Leigh once she had made up her mind was pointless.
You might as well have gone outside and screamed at the storm.
The girls crossed the diner, Leigh in the lead. The stool on
McLain’s right was empty. Leigh plopped down on it. Whitney
hovered behind her, curling her hands inside her long sleeves.
McLain looked up, confusion, then surprise, registering in his
coffee-colored eyes. He quickly tucked something under his
laminated menu. It looked like a photograph. “Hey, Leigh,” he
said. “Hello, Whitney. What are you girls doing here?”
At Leigh’s name, Dre’s chin jerked up. He had drawn his knees
up onto his stool. With affection, Whitney saw that his tennis shoes
had a hole in the toe. She smiled at him.
“We’re with our boyfriends.” Leigh pointed at Emery and
Bryce – whose status, Whitney noted, had just been upped from
first date to going steady. “What about you?”
“Just grabbing a bite before Dre and I head off to work.”
Veiled reference to a top-secret Resistance meeting, Whitney
assumed. She knew from Emery that the meetings weren’t
producing many results. McLain looked tired, and Whitney felt a
pang of sisterly concern for him. If he was like Marshall, he would
hold himself to impossibly high standards for success. He probably
considered Operation Swan Song’s setbacks his own personal
failing. “I understand you’re all classmates?”
Dre nodded eagerly, upsetting the newsboy cap perched on his
glossy hair. Dre had his own sense of style, attested by the striped
suspenders paired with his Star Trek T-shirt. Though they had
gone to school together for two years – they were even in the same
study hall – Leigh barely seemed to know he was alive. She leaned
her elbows on the counter, eyes only for McLain. Her tank top was
very low-cut. McLain kept his gaze on her face.
“Was that a picture of your girlfriend you were looking at?”
she asked, slyly.
“Oh.” McLain hesitated just long enough to tell Whitney this
was not something he really wanted to share before he slid the
picture out from under the menu. “No. My sister.”
The girl in the photo was lovely – young, perhaps twelve, with
lots of glossy black hair and creamy-white skin. The photo had
32
been snapped in the desert. McLain was in it, too, his arms around
his little sister, her dark head tucked sweetly under his chin. They
were both laughing. For just a second, before he slipped the photo
back into his wallet, Whitney felt a tickle in her brain, like she had
just walked out of a dark theater into bright sunlight and her eyes
were trying to adjust.
“Where is she now?” Leigh asked, curiously.
“With friends,” McLain said. “I’m hoping we’ll be back
together soon.”
Absence from those we love is self from self – a deadly
banishment.
McLain and Leigh were both staring at her, and Whitney
realized she had spoken aloud. “Shakespeare,” she said, quickly.
“I’ve got him on the brain, I guess. Emery gave me this book of
sonnets…”
McLain’s smile crinkled the tanned skin around his eyes.
“Well, nobody gets it right quite like the Bard, I always say.”
There was a measure of amusement in his tone. Whitney didn’t
think he was laughing at her, though. She even thought she might
have somehow said just what he needed to hear. She smiled shyly
back at him, and was about to steer Leigh back to their booth when
Dre’s computer suddenly beeped. He nearly jumped off his stool.
“Yes! Cracked it! Look, Captain!”
He shoved the computer at McLain. “That’s great, Dre,”
McLain said, briskly. Dre blushed. He seemed to have just noticed
the looks he was attracting. The bleached-blonde surfer girl was
standing nearby, light eyebrows lifted. Whitney wondered why she
wasn’t wearing skates like the other servers. “We should probably
be going, then. Ladies.” McLain nodded cordially to Whitney and
Leigh. “Have fun on your date.”
He hurried out, Dre tripping after him, talking a mile a minute
in his soft, trilling voice. Leigh looked at Whitney. “What do you
suppose that was all about?” she said.
33
Chapter Three: Love Birds
Marshall Townsend answered his back door barefoot, wearing
threadbare jeans and a Fairfax High Knights T-shirt, and looking,
in Seth’s opinion, good enough to eat with his inky-black hair
tousled. He rarely bothered to comb it after he showered. “Hey,
Philadelphia,” he said, cocking one hip against the doorframe.
“Hey, Indiana.” Seth spun the basketball that perpetually
rested against the Townsends’ garage on his index finger. “Can
you come out and play?”
“Let me get my shoes,” Marshall said.
They shot hoops in the driveway, razzing one another like
street ball players. Marshall was an exceptional athlete – he even
gave Seth a run for his money, and werekin were graced with
natural athleticism. Seth dribbled in for a layup; Marshall stole the
ball, ducked his block, and sank a three-pointer. “Nice,” Seth said,
fist-bumping him. “Hope you play like that on Friday.”
“Me too,” Marshall said. “We got killed without you this
week.”
Seth made a face. Lydia had insisted he sit out the last game,
on account of his brush with death. In his absence, the Knights had
been trounced 65 to 42. They had already secured a spot at
sectionals, but Marshall was being scoped by college scouts (he
was going the med school route, like his father) and he and Seth
both suspected colleges were more impressed by a winning team.
The backboard rattled as Seth dunked – showing off, as he was
only five-nine. “Do you think it’s cheating for me to use my
werekin powers on the court?” he asked, as Marshall rebounded.
Marshall shrugged. “Winning is winning, isn’t it?”
“Indiana, it’s like I don’t even know you.”
“You know what I mean,” Marshall said, wryly. “If you were
using steroids or something, that would be cheating. Your strength
and agility are just part of who you are.”
“True,” Seth agreed. “My fabulousness is all natural.”
“Also, you’re so modest,” Marshall said.
The Stewards’ back door slammed then. Seth turned. J.J.
waved to him as he loped across the lawn, skirting the open grave.
34
At the fence, he skinned, and a black jaguar shot off into the
woods. Headed for Cleo’s, Seth presumed.
Marshall took advantage of his distraction to fire off a basket.
“Whitney tells me you raised the dead last night.”
“Captain Hook is officially back in action,” Seth confirmed.
“Dad thinks you blew up a meth lab. I heard him tell Mom on
the phone that you and J.J. are hoodlums,” Marshall said. Seth
shrugged. He was kind of a hoodlum. “Did your mom give you a
hard time?”
“Not me, so much. She thinks it was all J.J.’s fault.” Seth
dribbled, measuring his next shot. “Search me how I got labeled
the good tw – hey!”
Marshall had snatched the ball out of his hands. He feinted
right; Seth threw up his arms to block the three-pointer –
And doubled over, gasping.
Pain stabbed into his gut, as intense as it was unexpected, an
electric shock along his new scar. Marshall was there in an instant,
his hand on Seth’s back. “Hey, you okay?”
Slowly, Seth straightened. The pain had subsided, leaving a
dull ache under his ribs, but his forehead was clammy with sweat.
He cleaned it with the hem of his shirt.
Marshall slid a hand under his elbow. He was cute when he
was worried, Seth thought. “You should lie down. Do you want me
to get your mom?”
“It’s nothing,” Seth said, with perhaps more surety than he
felt. “I just need a breather. I have been flat on my back for a week,
you know. I’m out of shape. Speaking of,” he bounded up the back
steps, to prove his healthfulness, “do the terms of your parole
allow you to join me on our run in the morning?”
“I don’t see why not,” Marshall said. “I’m allowed out for ball
practice, and running is kind of like practice.”
Satisfied Seth.
While Marshall fished two sodas out of the fridge – Coke for
him, Mountain Dew for Seth – Seth wandered into the living room.
He could tell Marshall was still worried. He insisted on quiet
entertainment, so they agreed to watch a movie.
Marshall kicked back on the wraparound leather sectional,
watching as Seth surveyed the Townsends’ extensive film
35
collection. “How long do you think you’ll be grounded?” Seth
asked.
“According to Dad, until I tell them where I was and who I was
with.”
“So make something up,” Seth said. He was debating between
Die Hard and Aliens. Action or horror, which was more romantic?
“I thought about it, but…” Marshall shrugged. Seth rolled his
eyes. Marshall was such a golden boy. “Anyway, if we win
sectionals, I’m sure all will be forgiven. And by the way,”
Marshall said, “I like your jacket.”
Seth turned, regarding Marshall soberly across the room.
“Indiana, tell me the truth. Do you have a fantasy about us making
out under the bleachers while I’m wearing my letterman’s jacket?”
“I do now,” Marshall grinned.
Kissing Marshall was still new enough to make Seth nervous –
almost shy, which he was not. He slunk over to the sofa, very
aware that they were alone in the house: Dr. Townsend was at the
hospital; Meredith was out of town; Whitney was on her
Valentine’s Day date. Marshall watched him approach through
hooded eyes, baby blues darkening from topaz to sapphire. Taking
his hands, Seth drew him to his feet.
“Are you sure you’re well enough for this?” Marshall asked, a
little breathlessly.
“Depends,” Seth said. “How athletic are you planning ‘this’ to
be?”
He was not prepared for Marshall to lock his arms around his
waist, spinning them around with catlike grace so they tumbled
onto the couch, tangled up with Seth trapped beneath him.
Feverish kisses started on Seth’s lips, slid onto his neck. He
moaned. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t know where this was
coming from. Marshall was the one with boundaries, the one to say
“stop” or “slow down.”
He was not kissing like he intended to stop now.
Seth’s jacket hit the floor, along with Marshall’s shoes, and
then his shirt. Seth sat up enough to look at him, really look at him,
the way he couldn’t at school with the other guys around. He
stretched a hand out to touch the honey-colored skin of Marshall’s
chest, felt his heart slamming against his ribs as he brought their
mouths together again. Marshall’s hands were tracing Seth’s
36
ribcage through his shirt, sliding around to the small of his back,
lifting Seth up against him, kissing deeper, and deeper. Seth
wrapped his fingers up in Marshall’s curls. He felt like he was
drowning in Marshall’s kisses, sinking into warm, thick syrup.
“We need to stop,” Marshall said, raggedly.
He rolled over so he was lying alongside Seth, the two of them
scrunched up long ways on the couch. Seth’s cheek rested on his
hand. Marshall’s head was pillowed on the crook of his arm. His
cheeks were flushed. “Sorry,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”
“Yeah, that was really awful for me. Please don’t ever do it
again.” Marshall grinned. Seth laced their fingers together and
kissed Marshall’s fingertips one at a time. Marshall had beautiful
hands, long and thin and elegant. “Not that I’m complaining, but
do you mind telling me what brought that on? Because if it was the
jacket, I can wear it more often…”
Marshall hid his face in the cushion. He was suddenly
blushing. Really blushing, like the delicate rose of a four-alarm
fire. “Please don’t make me tell you this,” he said, his voice
muffled.
“Hey, you started it,” Seth said. Marshall mumbled something
unintelligible. Seth ran a finger down the line that split his chest,
liking how that made Marshall’s stomach muscles tense. “Well, if
you really don’t want to tell me, you probably could distract me…”
He kissed Marshall’s shoulder. Then his collarbone. Then his
throat. Then his jaw. Marshall tilted his chin up to meet the kisses,
his mouth warm and soft against Seth’s, and Seth started to feel
like his blood was on fire.
They stumbled upstairs. Seth didn’t think either of them had
made a conscious decision to leave the couch.
They did not turn the lights on, but werecats could see just as
well in the dark: Marshall’s bedroom (Seth noted very distantly,
like he was viewing it underwater) was messier than usual –
basketball gear strewn around the bean bag chairs, dirty laundry
piled in front of the closet, college catalogs shifted to the floor to
make way for a heavy, leather-bound book on the bedside table…
Seth’s head hit the pillows – or would have, if Marshall’s hand
hadn’t been in his hair, cupping his neck as his lips worked their
way down Seth’s throat. His other hand was curled inside the
waistband of Seth’s jeans. This was pushing the limits of Seth’s
37
intimacy experience, and truthfully, he had a case of the jitters.
Probably why he started focusing on meaningless details, like the
tear in the Larry Byrd poster beside Marshall’s bed, the blinking
low battery light on his laptop, the Lemurian glyphs on the spine of
the book on his nightstand –
Hang on. Lemurian glyphs?
“Indiana?” Seth said.
“Mmm?”
Marshall was exploring a spot under Seth’s ear that seemed to
be connected to every nerve ending in his body. He struggled to
concentrate. “Indiana, why do you have a book written in
Lemurian?”
“What?” Marshall’s fingers were working at the button on
Seth’s jeans. He glanced at the nightstand. “Oh. Agathon gave that
to me.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Marshall kissed Seth’s jaw, not focused on their
conversation. “I asked him some questions, and he thought the
book might help answer them.”
Seth hadn’t realized his boyfriend was so chummy with their
neighborhood necromancer.
Sliding out from under Marshall, he sat up, adjusting his shirt
to cover his scar. “When did you see Agathon? I thought you were
grounded.”
“I am grounded.” Marshall was still reclined on one elbow,
looking at Seth with eyes of a deep, deep blue. “He gave that to me
last weekend. After I got back.”
After he got back from chauffeuring the Black Swan to
destinations unknown, thereby enmeshing his golden boy self hipdeep in dangerous magical intrigue. “And why,” persisted Seth,
“would Agathon give you a book you can’t even read?”
“He did some translating for me. There are Post-It notes
inside.” Seth was not even touching on the absurdity of that.
Marshall noted his scowl and sat up, too, raking a hand through his
hair, causing little pieces to stick out on the sides. Seth resisted the
urge to smooth them down. “As for the why, that’s a little more
complicated.”
“I’ll try to keep up,” Seth said.
Marshall sighed. “Would you please not act like this?”
38
“Act like what?”
“Overprotective. I’m not your girlfriend, Philadelphia. I don’t
need you to keep the big bad monsters away from me.”
“Is that what this is?” Seth said. “You want to prove you’re the
guy in this relationship?” Marshall’s jaw clenched; he looked
away, glaring, and Seth tucked his hands into his sides, trying to
hide that they were shaking. “This isn’t a video game, Marshall.
You can’t hit reset and start a new level if you die. This is real, and
it’s dangerous. I’ve been dealing with it a lot longer than you have.
And, as previously discussed, Ursula LeRoi is a psychopath with a
hell of a lot of firepower on her side, and I don’t want you getting
hurt because of me. All right?”
“Yeah, well, you may find this hard to believe, since you’re
usually the center of the universe, but this isn’t actually about
you,” Marshall said.
Seth shoved off the bed, so swiftly Marshall gasped. Even in
the dark, Seth knew he could see the changes in him – the black
rosettes on his arms and cheeks, the claw-tips at the ends of his
nails. Magic prickled along Seth’s spine. A shudder rippled under
his skin. Marshall paled.
Discipline, cub, Regent growled in Seth’s mind.
Regent. The magic washed out of Seth, riding a wave of
sorrow. He sank onto the edge of the mattress, staring hollowly out
the window at the twinkling stars. It was not only grief he felt
when he thought of Regent. It was guilt. Guilt because he felt
grief. He never cared about you, Seth told himself. You shouldn’t
care about him.
Arms wrapped around him from behind. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean that.”
“Then why did you say it?” Seth’s voice rang with hurt. He
refused to turn and look at Marshall, whose chin rested on his
shoulder. “You think I like the attention of being hunted down and
collared? You think my life is glamorous because I’m a werecat?”
“No.” Marshall tried to pull Seth down on the pillows with
him. Seth resisted – like all cats, he could be famously stubborn –
and Marshall sighed again. “Look, it’s just that you have this idea I
only want to stop Chimera to protect you, and that’s not true. I
have reasons of my own for wanting to be part of this fight. That’s
all I was trying to say.”
39
“That’s not what you said, though. You said I think I’m the
center of the universe.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, okay? In case you didn’t notice, I
didn’t bring you up here to talk.”
Marshall’s mouth was very close to Seth’s ear when he said
this. Seth was tempted to forget the fight, but he persevered. “I
want to know why you’re so interested in Lemuria,” he said,
“because I seem to remember you telling me you didn’t want to be
a warrior.”
“I don’t want to be a warrior. I can’t do what you do. I know
that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t contribute.” Marshall picked up
the book and handed it to Seth. “Here. See for yourself.”
Reluctantly, still half-wanting to be mad, Seth flipped through
the gilt-leafed pages. He could read the glyphs without translation;
Regent had shown him the trick, letting his eyes slide across the
symbols without trying to make sense of them, until they clicked in
his mind.
The book read like an alchemist’s handbook blended into a
cutting-edge medical journal. Page after page was filled with notes
on the properties of the four elements, processes for transmuting
precious metals into potions, elixirs, and powders. There was a
treatise on something called the Tria Prima, the Three Primes –
mercury, sulfur, and salt – and hand-drawn diagrams of werekin
anatomy, accompanied by extensive marginal notes on the magical
properties of werekin blood. Seth recognized the neat, tidy script as
Elijah Bishop’s.
He looked up. “Planning to use me for your science fair
project, Indiana?”
“More like my entrance essay for med school,” Marshall teased
back. “Agathon calls it a ‘grimoire.’ He said it’s a book of spells,
like a magical diary. It belonged to Dr. Bishop.”
He tossed the grimoire back on the nightstand and the boys
stretched out on the pillows, facing one another. They weren’t
touching, yet Seth was conscious of the heat of Marshall’s bare
skin so close to his. “This interests me,” Marshall said, simply.
“How you heal, naturally, with your own magic. How werekin use
magic to make healing potions. And Bishop’s research is
fascinating. He made advancements in human genetics modern
40
science hasn’t even begun to catch up with. Forget cloning sheep.
He was cloning humans.”
Seth’s forehead wrinkled. “Why would Chimera Enterprises
have been interested in cloning humans?”
“It was a by-product of the reproductive technology that
allowed them to inseminate human mothers with werekin DNA
from the Ark.”
Marshall related this matter-of-factly. “Great,” Seth said. “So
you want to know more about how Chimera breeds us?”
“Look, Seth, I know Bishop and LeRoi did some despicable
things. Unforgivable things, even. But that doesn’t mean every bit
of science to come out of a Chimera laboratory is bad. If I could
learn more about Healing, then the next time there’s a battle, or the
next time you or J.J. or Dre or Emery gets hurt or sick, I could do
something real. Save lives. Do you know much it sucked, sitting by
your bedside hoping you didn’t bleed to death from that hole in
your stomach and not being able to do a damn thing to help you?”
“So this is about me,” Seth said. Marshall groaned. Smirking,
Seth reached out, placing a hand lightly against Marshall’s cheek.
“You did do something real, you know. Protecting the Black Swan
– that was real.”
Abruptly, Marshall rolled onto his back. Seth suspected he had
just inadvertently drawn close to whatever had been making
Marshall so somber lately. “Philadelphia, if I told you a secret,”
Marshall said, “would you not tell it to anyone? Not even J.J.?”
“A secret about you,” Seth asked, “or about werekin?”
“About werekin,” Marshall said.
Seth hesitated. But what could Marshall possibly know about
werekin that J.J., raised by the founder of Chimera Enterprises,
wouldn’t know? “Okay. I won’t tell,” he said.
“Promise?”
“I’ll pinky-swear, if you want me to.”
Marshall took a breath. “The Black Swan told me her parents
weren’t werekin. They were human.” He paused, letting that sink
in, and added, “Both of them.”
For a moment, Seth was too purely astonished to respond. Then
he shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. Werekin magic passes
from parent to child. Even when two hunters have a child, their
children aren’t werekin. There’s no other – ”
41
Downstairs, a door slammed.
Seth was on his feet, between Marshall and the door, in a flash
– unaware that he had skinned until he heard the growl in his throat
and looked down, at his tawny fur, spotted with black rosettes. His
long, banded tail swished the floor.
On the bed, Marshall was gaping at him. He had only seen Seth
in his jaguar skin on two occasions, and he looked somewhat
unnerved. Seth thought of Cleo, how she would sit down right
beside him, like he was a housecat instead of an apex predator, and
sink her fingers into his fur. But that wasn’t fair. Cleo had been
raised among werekin. Marshall hadn’t.
“Marshall?”
The remaining blood drained from Marshall’s cheeks. “Oh,
crap, my father – ”
But Seth, skinned back into a human, was already at the
window, soundlessly lifting the sash. As he stepped onto the roof,
Marshall just managed to catch his wrist. “I’m sorry,” he
whispered, throwing an anxious glance at his bedroom door. “I
don’t want to throw you out…”
“It’s cool,” Seth whispered back. Being discovered, shirtless,
in bed with the hoodlum next door was not the ideal way for
Marshall to come out. “See you tomorrow, for our run?”
“Six o’clock,” Marshall promised. “And Seth?” He leaned out
the window, pulling Seth in for a long, soft kiss. “Happy
Valentine’s Day,” he whispered.
It wasn’t until later, back in his own room with the covers
tucked around his chin, that Seth remembered his letterman’s
jacket. It was still on Marshall’s living room floor, on top of
Marshall’s shoes, and Marshall’s shirt.
***
The guard at Fort King’s gate recognized McLain’s Jeep and
waved him through. Will McLain frowned. He would have to
remind Jensen that the men needed to be checking everyone’s
credentials. Ursula LeRoi had many means of slipping through
Operation Swan Song’s net. They couldn’t risk her finding her way
to the Ark.
42
In the passenger seat, Dre Alfaro had his legs tucked under
him, Ursula LeRoi’s PDA cupped gingerly in his small hands, as
though it was a bomb and one false move could set it off. McLain
had never seen him so still. Fidget was Dre’s default setting.
McLain parked the Jeep in a stretch of gravel along the razortopped fence. “Did you call J.J.?”
Dre bobbed his head. “He’s on his way.”
Starlight dappled the former prison’s liquid-black walls, sliding
across the stone almost as though the building were alive, and
breathing. McLain could feel the deep, deep hum of the Ark in the
soles of his boots as they crossed the courtyard to the main
entrance, where he tapped a code into the keypad. Dre could feel it
also. His small hands fluttered up, swiping his bangs out of his
eyes, which darted this way and that, very much like a bird’s.
“Have you ever seen it?” he asked suddenly. “Have you ever
seen the Ark?”
McLain shook his head. The corrugated steel doors were
rattling upward; he waited for them to finish before he spoke,
ushering Dre inside ahead of him. “LeRoi didn’t publicize that it
was housed here. Now the Alpha Clan guards it.”
“Agathon would let you see it, if you asked,” Dre said, kindly.
“Probably,” McLain agreed. Though he would not ask. Will
McLain was one-hundred-percent human. Just because he could
see werekin did not mean he was a member of their race. As Derek
Childers never tired of reminding him.
Tonight, at least, it was not Derek hurrying toward them down
one of the prison’s many staircases, a fact for which McLain was
grateful. Cleo snapped to attention, arms stiff at her sides. “Sir,”
she said. No matter how many times McLain told her to call him
Will, Cleo insisted on calling him sir.
“Is everyone here?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Cleo said.
Dre and McLain followed her through a twisting maze of
obsidian corridors, past empty cellblocks and across glassed-in
skywalks, to a wing guarded by a pair of Marines. They saluted
McLain, who returned the salute as the glass doors opened on a
pneumatic whoosh.
On the other side was a high-tech surveillance room paneled in
monitors, each one alive with satellite images. Men and women,
43
some in uniforms, some in lab coats, manned the stations around
the room.
Dominating the room through sheer physical size was Ben
Schofield. He was talking to J.J. in the corner, scratching the
whiskers on his much-creased cheeks. The buttons of his XXXL
flannel shirt strained across his massive chest. J.J. looked even
slighter than he really was standing in Ben’s shadow. Of all the
werekin McLain had known, only Werner Regent could rival Ben
Schofield for size.
Ben looked up when McLain entered. “Will.”
Will said hello, to Ben and to J.J. Dre had turned aside, booting
a corporal out of his station and plugging LeRoi’s PDA into a data
port on the sleek black computer. NASA would have been hardpressed to compete with the computational power in this room,
Operation Swan Song’s beating heart, or its central nervous
system, depending on how you wanted to look at it. It interfaced
with every American satellite in orbit, and thanks to Dre’s hacker
abilities, recently some that weren’t American. It also monitored
geothermal sensors planted in the seabed around Mt. Hokulani and
a high-powered telescope, housed in a small New Mexico facility
called Roswell, that made the Hubble look like a pair of
binoculars.
“You really cracked the encryption?” J.J. said, with interest.
As if in reply, the screens flashed, all of the images dissolving
into a scrolling list of property names and addresses. All owned by
Chimera Enterprises, none officially listed under Project Ark. J.J.
leaned forward, scanning them. The greenish glow of the screen
colored his fair hair a white shade of gold. “Gotcha,” he said,
softly. “Dre, you are brilliant.”
“No big. Once you figure out the algorithm it’s like taking
candy from a baby. But that’s not even the best part.” Dre’s hands
fluttered around the keyboard. His cap was tipped at a jaunty
angle. “Check this puppy out.”
An image flickered onto the screen. J.J. rocked back on his
heels. “Is that – ”
“Uh-huh,” Dre said.
“And is it – ”
“Sure is,” Dre nodded.
44
J.J. swore under his breath. “She found them. She actually
found them.”
Cleo was looking between the two of them like her head was
on a swivel. Ben coughed. “Maybe y’all could let us in on what it
is we’re lookin’ at?” he suggested, in his thick Louisiana drawl.
“Right. Sorry.” Scooting to his feet, Dre walked over and
tapped a long list of numbers on the screen: 03°06′0″S 60°01′0″W.
“These coordinates tell us we’re looking at a satellite image of
Manaus, Brazil.”
“The Amazon Rainforest?” McLain said.
“Yup,” Dre chirped. “If we zoom in,” he tapped the screen
again, and the image zoomed closer, now showing, instead of a
blue-and-green aerial view, the top of a dense jungle canopy
threaded by a blue-black river, “we see that this location is not in
the city of Manaus proper. It’s in the rainforest near Manaus. If we
switch to infrared – ” Dre tapped another button, and the screen
switched from Technicolor to red-and-black, with a heavy
concentration of red in the southeast corner near the river “ – we
see that whatever is out there, it’s giving off one mother of a heat
signature. I’m thinking power source.”
“Nuclear?” Cleo guessed.
“Think bigger. Like next-gen bigger.”
Like alien technology bigger, McLain thought. He had a pretty
good idea what it was, and he suspected Ben Schofield did, too.
The Source.
When Chimera Enterprises recovered the Ark from Mt.
Hokulani, they had also recovered a treasure trove of ancient
Lemurian texts. Once the glyphs were deciphered, it was
discovered that prior to the island’s sinking, the White Swan had
sent one clan, the Tortoise Clan, away from Lemuria to guard what
Elijah Bishop had roughly translated as the Source, the key to
accessing the power of the Totems – an alien craft they had left
behind for their werekin descendants, in case Earth ever proved too
inhospitable a home. The White Swan had destroyed Lemuria, and
her kindred with it, to stop humanity from securing that power, to
protect humankind from its own insatiable thirst for power.
Several millennia later, McLain thought, humankind hadn’t
evolved all that much.
45
“This was listed as one of Chimera’s holdings?” Cleo sounded
puzzled.
Dre shook his head. “No. It was listed under a name. Abraham
Bishop.”
There was an audible intake of breath from Ben.
McLain turned. “Give us the room,” he commanded.
A few people looked startled. After all, McLain was not in
uniform, and not everyone at the fort recognized him on sight. But
he was still a Marine, that much was obvious by his carriage, and
the room quickly cleared, the pneumatic doors sealing with a click.
McLain turned back to Ben. “How do you want to play this?”
The creases in Ben’s cheeks deepened. He was fighting a
smile. “Well, Captain, I assume since we just discovered the
probable location of the Tortoise Clan, you’d need to call General
Burke.”
“And I’d assume you’d need to call the other Commanders,”
McLain rejoined, “but I don’t see you picking up the phone, Papa
Bear.”
The smile broke loose on Ben’s grizzled face. Cleo still looked
bewildered, but J.J. was watching him avidly. “I think we could
handle this ourselves, just this once,” Ben said.
“I’ll go,” J.J. said, automatically.
“You will not,” Ben growled. “You’ll stay right here and keep
an eye on your brother. You know LeRoi won’t rest until she adds
the blood of the Jaguar Clan to the Ark. If anybody can protect
Seth, it’s you. You aren’t to leave him, and that’s an order.”
J.J. scowled. Cleo stepped forward. “I’ll go. I don’t have any
idea what’s going on here, but I’ll go.”
“No.” J.J. spoke flatly. “I need you here. For Seth.”
“J.J. – ”
“I’ll go,” Ben tabled.
“Ben, you can’t!” There was a flash of desperation in J.J.’s
golden eyes. “The only reason the Commanders haven’t turned on
one another completely yet is that you’re here to be the voice of
reason. Without you, I guarantee it will all fall apart in a day.”
“I’m the only Commander in this room, J.J.,” Ben said, firmly.
“I’m the only one who can authorize a mission of this magnitude.”
46
J.J. stiffened. He wasn’t used to having rank pulled on him.
“Fine,” he said, tersely. “But you can’t go by yourself. You should
take Angelo, or Captain McLain, or – ”
“Angelo Alfaro is still recuperating from the injuries he got
during our last battle, and Captain McLain is needed here,” Ben
said Ben Schofield was a big man; when he talked, people tended
to listen. J.J. nodded curtly, and stepped back to stand beside Cleo.
“Now I want you all to swear by the Black Swan you won’t tell
anyone where I’ve gone, or mention anything about Brazil or the
Tortoise Clan. I’ll leave word with Melody and Derek that I’ve
gone on a mission of the utmost import, but if what’s out there is
really what I think is out there, there is no place else on Earth
Ursula LeRoi will be. This may be our only chance to capture her,
and I’ll be danged if her spy in our ranks blows that for us. I don’t
want a word of this breathed to another living soul until I get back.
Ya hear?”
They all nodded to show they understood. Ben clapped McLain
on the shoulder with one paw-like hand. “Rest easy, Will,” he said,
quietly. “Caroline is safe for now. If LeRoi is out there, I’ll find
her.”
McLain just nodded, though deep down, he wondered if, in
luring Ben Schofield, the founder of the Resistance, away from
Fort King right now, Ursula LeRoi didn’t have them right where
she wanted them.
47
Chapter Four: Mixed Messages
At night, the jungle sky was a black sea dotted with stars like
glowing pearls. Steamy heat escaped the verdantly green ferns
clustered around the base of the familiar bowl-shaped tree; in its
shadow was a grave, topped by a concrete statue of a child-sized
angel with praying hands. Moss had grown over the inscription,
leaving only one line visible. Sleeping with the Stars.
Beside the tree rushed a swift-flowing river, blue-black as the
sky above, pouring thunderously over a distant waterfall. Marshall
stood on a tall finger of rock in the center of the white-capped
rapids, wearing a hooded white robe splashed with scarlet glyphs.
His feet were shackled to the rock. In his hands he clasped a
golden orb.
Light flared inside the orb, showing Seth the outlines of the
bones in Marshall’s fingers, like the filament inside a light bulb.
Seth cried out – the light had vanished and Marshall was gone, the
chains that had bound him coiled on the rock like silver snakes.
The golden orb was ascending into the sky. Stars spun crazily
away from it, zigzagging into new constellations. The river began
to churn, the water darkening from midnight-blue to blood-red. A
cacophonous rumble overwhelmed the thundering current. The
rock rose from the river, higher and higher, wider and wider,
splitting J.J.’s empty grave wide open. The rock became a pristine
island populated by green trees, taller than any trees on Earth,
undulating down from a central peak to a beach of sparkling white
sand.
Seth felt the magic of that place singing in his blood. Along the
shore were gathered animals of every species, from lizards to apes,
yet Seth knew these were no animals. They weren’t even werekin.
They were something else, something older, something more
powerful. Something not of this Earth.
The orb’s light grew, awakening the colors of the nighttime
jungle to painful vibrancy. Seth shielded his eyes with his arm. The
stars themselves seemed to be peeling back, as though the sky was
a curtain tearing in two; out of the light came a young girl’s voice,
soft and melodic, the music of wings on the wind.
“This is how it ends.”
48
***
Seth woke to the screeching of his Hello Kitty alarm clock.
Around him, the house was dark and quiet.
Minutes later, dressed in his Gym uniform of shorts and Tshirt, he was in the kitchen lacing up his tennis shoes for his
morning run when the back door opened and J.J. sauntered in,
mud-spattered and dew-damp. Seth choked. “You spent the night
with Cleo?”
“Seth, you have sex on the brain.” J.J. opened the refrigerator.
After a brief and not entirely satisfied appraisal of its veganfriendly contents, he selected a jug of soy milk and chugged
straight from the carton. “We had a late night with McLain and
Ben at Fort King,” he said, swiping his hand across his milk
mustache. “Then I went for a swim in the creek, to decompress.
Fell asleep on the bank.”
“Weren’t you worried about hunters?”
“Do I look worried?”
In point of fact, J.J. looked like he could eat a hunter for
breakfast.
Seth threaded his house key through his shoelace, stalling in
the hope that Marshall was just running late. He always beat Seth
outside for their runs, being one of those annoyingly chipper
morning people, but today, the Townsends’ drive was empty.
“Just FYI,” J.J. said, “Ben’s gone on a mission for the
Resistance. I can’t say more than that, but I thought you’d want to
know. He won’t be around for a while.”
Much as he understood the need for top-secret intel to remain,
well, secret, Seth was starting to find Operation Swan Song’s needto-know policies rather grating. Seth was the closest thing Ben
Schofield had to family. If anyone had a right to know where he
was and what he was doing, it was Seth. But arguing with J.J.
would do no good, so he just said, “Well, FYI, now that we live
under the same roof, you can stop with the freaky mind-meld
dreams.”
J.J. looked up from the banana he was peeling. “I haven’t been
sending you dreams. You heard Cleo. Dream-walking is
complicated. I don’t even have the tools here to perform the
ritual.” He took a giant bite of banana. “Fy? Whash did you
dweam?”
49
Seth hesitated. Last night had been the first time he had
experienced one of his prophetic-feeling nightmares since J.J. had
come to live with them, he realized. But if J.J. hadn’t sent him the
dream, who had? “Nothing,” he said, blowing it off. “Don’t forget
we have school.”
J.J. sighed.
For February, the morning was mild. Seth jogged north along
Kings Lane, dragging his feet the first mile, holding onto the
waning hope that Marshall might still catch up. They followed the
same route every morning. Could be Marshall had overslept and
would trot up behind him any second…
Yeah. Wishful thinking.
The wide sidewalks of Castle Estates soon gave way to the
paved running trails in the local park. Frost glazed the grass,
silvered the swing sets and the merry-go-rounds; a spider web
glittered between the bare branches of a hickory, framing the sickle
moon. Seth’s body tingled into wakefulness, his mind clearing as
his lungs opened and his muscles stretched out.
Running had started on orders from Regent. Seth had resented
it at first – waking at the crack of dawn to poke along in his human
skin, ten times slower than he could run as a jaguar, even as he
clocked five-minute miles. Eventually, though, he had come to
look forward to his runs. They gave him time to think.
Today he thought about the secret Marshall had confided to
him. The Black Swan had said her parents were human. She had to
be mistaken. Werekin magic required a direct blood link. If
grandma was a werekin but your mom or dad wasn’t, sorry,
Charlie, no chance of skinning. Once the magic skipped a
generation, that was that.
Maybe the Black Swan didn’t know her real parents, Seth
mused. All he knew for sure about her was that she had not been
born in captivity; LeRoi would never have let a prize like that slip
through her fingers. She could have been born in the Underground
to werekin parents and handed over to humans to raise, never told
the truth of her heritage.
Still, it was strange. Seth wished he had some way to check out
the story, but he didn’t even know the Black Swan’s name. That
was a secret only the highest-ranking members of the Resistance
were privy to.
50
After his cool-down, Seth practiced his karate stances in the
backyard for half an hour, then pushed himself through a few
roundhouse kicks to be sure he wouldn’t keel over in Gym like he
had playing basketball last night. Cam would be delighted if he
passed out again. Seth could already hear the hairball jokes.
He felt great this morning. No twinges in his scar, no weakness
in the knees, nothing. He turned a back handspring into a spinning
kick just for the hell of it, and as he came down, he heard it. A
footfall, beside the garage.
He spun around, hissing. “Easy, tiger,” someone said.
Marshall stepped out of the shadows, holding something out to
Seth, hooked on his index finger. “Thought you might want this
back,” he said.
It was Seth’s letterman’s jacket. Seth took it and draped it over
his arm. “What did you tell your father?” he asked. He couldn’t
read Marshall’s expression, but he didn’t seem as freaked out as
Seth would have expected had he just come out to his parents.
“I told him you came over to practice and felt sick, so I had
you lie down on the couch,” Marshall said.
He sounded pleased with himself. Seth was impressed. For
Marshall, it was an inspired lie. “Did he buy that?”
“I think so. He gave me back my keys.” Marshall spun the
keys to his Audi TT Coupe around on his index finger. Grinning,
Seth snaked his arms around his boyfriend’s neck for a quick, and
sweaty, congratulatory kiss. Disaster averted. Their hormonal
stupidity had not outed Marshall. Seth was relieved.
Wasn’t he?
***
By the time Seth had showered and dressed, Lydia was gone
for the day – yoga class with the other Castle Estates moms, then
top-secret plotting with the Resistance at Fort King. Leigh and J.J.
were in the kitchen, glaring in opposite directions, when Seth came
in. They both smiled at him. Ping pong time.
“How was your date?” Seth asked Leigh, dropping a
Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart into the toaster. Oh how he missed
Lydia’s blueberry-and-banana pancakes. She hadn’t cooked
51
breakfast for them since Jack had moved out. Or since J.J. had
moved in, if you wanted to slice it that way.
“Oh my God, it was so romantic,” gushed Leigh, and
proceeded into a detailed moment-by-moment account of her
evening with Bryce. J.J. sipped his OJ and ignored her. Only J.J.
could ignore someone so pointedly, Seth thought.
“He even got me a present, see?” Leigh extended her wrist,
displaying a delicate gold bracelet with a basketball charm
dangling from its links. The bracelets were all the rage amongst the
girls at Fairfax High. Leigh had been dying for one, but, according
to girl logic, a boy was supposed to buy it for you. Once again,
Seth thanked the Totems he had been born male.
“What did Emery get Whitney?” he asked.
“A book of poetry. A used book, that somebody else had
written all over.” Leigh’s eye roll conveyed how lame she found
this. Seth thought it was inspired. Whitney was an Audre Lourde in
the making. “Anyway, Bryce is off the crutches as of today, but his
orthopedist says he’s out the rest of the season. His dad is so
furious.”
Basketball was life to the fathers of Seth’s teammates. If
Agathon had promised Dr. Townsend it would ensure the Knights
winning state, Seth thought he would have offered Whitney up as a
human sacrifice. “At least that means he’ll be able to dance at
prom,” he said. Leigh’s catty smile said these were her thoughts
exactly.
“Are you dating Bryan now?” J.J. asked.
Leigh stared at him. Neither she nor Seth had realized he had
been paying any attention to their conversation. “Bryce,” she
corrected, after a moment. “And no. Not, like, officially. Not that it
would be any of your business if I was.”
Be nice, Seth mouthed at her. J.J. didn’t make many overtures
of friendship. Showing an interest in Leigh’s love life, much as it
pained Seth to think those words in combination, was a positive
development. Sighing, Leigh plastered a passably friendly smile in
place. “J.J., do you think you’ll go out for the basketball team?”
J.J. looked horrified.
The Audi’s horn sounded in the drive. Leigh jumped off her
stool, smoothing her short pink dress down over her tights. Seth
grabbed his backpack off the couch, J.J. slipped his arms through
52
his worn leather jacket, and they headed for the door – just as the
phone rang. “Let the machine get it,” Leigh said. “We’re already
late.”
Tardiness would give Dr. Gideon an excuse to assign him
another detention, which would mean Coach would bench him,
again, yet instinct told Seth to pick up the phone. “I’ll be right
behind you,” he promised. Exasperated, Leigh shoved J.J. onto the
porch. “Hey,” Seth heard him protest, as he grabbed the cordless
off the hallway table.
“Hello?”
Static crackled. “Seth Michael?”
“Ben? Is that you?”
Most of the reply was lost in a burst of white noise. Seth held
the phone away from his ear. He caught the word McLain, and
then, “…out of Fairfax,” Ben’s Louisiana drawl faded back in.
“D’ya hear me, runt?”
Seth shook his head, though obviously Ben could not see him.
“Ben, what about Fairfax? Where are you? J.J. said you were on a
mission…”
Crackles and pops, interspersed with “bishop,” “spy,”
“tortoise,” and a name. Caroline. “Who’s Caroline?” Seth asked,
desperately. “Hello? Papa Bear? Ben? Ben?”
Briefly, the static cleared from the line. “They’re coming for
you,” Ben said, just before the phone in Seth’s hand went dead.
53
Chapter Five: Bloodlines
“This is ridiculous,” J.J. griped, for only the eighteenth time in
ten minutes. “I should be at Fort King right now, telling McLain
and Melody – ”
“Shh,” Seth hissed. They had joined the stream of Gap jeans
and Abercrombie shirts flooding from the upper lot, where the
Castle Estates kids parked, toward Fairfax High, a checkered
black-and-white stone edifice that could have doubled as a castle.
The morning was warm; some of the Haven kids were lounging
around the statue that guarded the front doors – a medieval knight
slaying a three-headed monster with a lion’s body and a scorpionstinger tail. Knowing what he knew now about Chimera
Enterprises’ connections to Fairfax via Fort King, that statue
finally made sense to Seth.
He waved to their sandy-haired werehyena Ozzie, who was
sitting on the grass strumming a guitar for a group that included the
olive-skinned wereotter Zoe Campbell, a bushy-haired boy simply
known as Squirrel, and, somewhat to Seth’s annoyance, Quinn
O’Shea. Miss Vixen’s cornflower blue eyes followed J.J. up the
front steps. Seth prodded him to walk faster. “We can’t go
shouting about the werekin Resistance in the hallways, J.J., all
right?”
Especially not when every single person was stopping to gape
at them. After six, going on seven, weeks at Fairfax High, Seth no
longer attracted many stares. His dyed hair and rosette tattoos and
secondhand clothes should have made him a loser freak to the trust
fund Castle Estates crowd. Instead, Marshall, everyone’s favorite
golden boy, had adopted him into his pack. Add in the fact that
Seth was a world-class ballplayer, and he stood a chance of being
elected to Student Council.
Something told him J.J. was not going to mix that well here.
Rumor had already circulated that Seth and Leigh’s long-lost
cousin was in town, recently arrived from boarding school in
Connecticut. Not much about J.J. screamed polo and yacht clubs.
More like machetes and pipe bombs.
54
He had at least given up the camouflage for jeans and a black
T-shirt, though he had insisted on keeping the combat boots. Seth
was certain he had a knife stashed on him someplace.
Marshall, Whitney, and Leigh had veered off to their respective
classrooms. Seth was steering J.J. to the main office. Or trying to.
J.J. was not being cooperative. “If it was important, Ben will call
back,” Seth reasoned, guiding him around a gaggle of bug-eyed
girls. “Besides, we don’t know anything is wrong.”
“Yeah, ‘they’re coming for you,’ that doesn’t sound like a
warning.”
J.J.’s tone was sour. Seth sighed. “We’ll go straight to Fort
King after school, okay? Tell Ms. McLain about it if you want. She
can call McLain and have him run a trace on the phone line, tell us
where Ben called from.”
They had reached the office. Ms. Ingrid McLain, Principal was
lettered on the glass door. J.J. planted his feet, obstinately refusing
to take another step. Seth shifted his backpack to his opposite
shoulder. He was cutting it close to beat the bell to first period.
“Please, J.J.? Let’s just try to have a normal day.”
The look J.J. gave him was almost sympathetic. “You honestly
think that’s possible, don’t you?”
Before Seth could answer, J.J. had stepped inside the office.
Ms. McLain bounced out of her office to greet them. Frizzy
dark hair was poofed around her white headband; she was so petite
the counter hid most of the rest of her from the neck down. “All
recovered from your motorcycle accident, Seth?” she asked, with a
knowing wink.
“Totally up to snuff, Ms. M-C,” Seth said. Wrecking his
Yamaha (Seth stifled a yearning moan) was his cover story for
having missed a week of school, since he couldn’t very well bring
in a note explaining that he had been shot at close range by a silver
bullet during a battle with a super-evil shadow organization bent
on world domination. Of course Ms. McLain knew the truth –
Ingrid McLain had been helping werekin disappear into the
Underground for decades – but she was on Seth’s side. She
wouldn’t say anything.
“Coach will be glad to hear it,” Ms. McLain said now. “And
you.” She beamed at J.J. “You must be Jeremy.”
55
Seth made the introductions and passed off the envelope of
J.J.’s bogus transcripts, which Ms. McLain knew were bogus, just
as she knew Seth and J.J. were really brothers. He promised his
twin he would see him at lunch, and hurried out of the office.
The bell began to ring as he was sprinting down the deserted
hallway to the Bio lab. Should have asked for a hall pass, Seth
berated himself. Pouring on a burst of werekin speed, he vaulted
through the door, hurtled Bryce’s backpack, and landed on the
stool next to his lab partner, pretty little Yena Lee, a half-second
before the bell died.
“Cutting it close, Mr. Sullivan.” Dr. Aaron Gideon turned
from the chalkboard, muddy brown eyes observing Seth through
his thick glasses, the way you might examine slime-mold under a
microscope. “I think you just used one of your nine lives.”
Not-so-veiled reference to Seth’s rebellion against dissecting
cats a few weeks ago. Had Leigh not been petitioning the school
board to ban animal dissection from Fairfax High, Gideon might
have let it go. Then again, maybe not. He loathed ballplayers, as a
consequence of having been a runty evil nerd all of his life.
The transcripts Regent had faked up for Seth portrayed him as
a homeschooled whiz kid, leading Ms. McLain to track him in with
the overachievers. Seth wondered if Jack had made J.J. into a
brainiac, too. It would be cool if they had the same schedule.
From vertebrate anatomy, Gideon’s class had moved on to
genetics. Yena scooted close to Seth, their worksheet between
them. It was filled with blank tables, each divided into four parts: a
Punnett square, a diagram for determining genotype. Seth had read
about them last week when he was confined to bed, once he had
tired of soap operas.
“Sorry about your bike,” Yena whispered, tucking a strand of
hair behind her ear. “Are you getting another one?”
Seth shook his head. “Mom said no more motorcycles.”
“Dude, that sucks,” lamented Bryce, who was seated across
the tall black-topped lab table from Seth with his lab partner, Dre
Alfaro. As usual, Dre was absorbed in his battered MacBook and
spared Seth only a quick wave.
“How was your date?” Seth asked, icily. Bryce colored.
“Listen up, people.” Gideon clapped his hands. Chalk dust
plumed around him. On the board he had written a bunch of words
56
like allele, zygote, homozygous, gametes. Seth’s eyes crossed just
thinking of the vocabulary list he would have to memorize for their
exam. “Today we are studying how traits pass from parent to
offspring. Who can tell me the difference between genotype and
phenotype?” Hands shot up all over the room. Seth’s was not one
of them, so naturally, Gideon said, “Mr. Sullivan?”
Seth sat up straight on his stool. “Genotype is your genetic
makeup. Your DNA. Phenotype is your physical characteristics,
based on your genotype. For instance, I have genes for being
blonde, good-looking, and athletic.”
Yena giggled. Gideon glared at him. Seth smirked. He had
reviewed the chapter after his run, knowing Gideon would call on
him, like he always did.
Gideon went on to lecture about the processes of meiosis and
fertilization, the differences between dominant and recessive
alleles, before finally turning them loose to complete their
worksheets. Some nonsense about figuring the probability of
albino parents having an albino child based on how many capital
and lowercase A’s ended up in the Punnett squares. “You know,”
Bryce said, “I thought making a baby was supposed to be more
stimulating than this.”
If he was thinking about Leigh just then, Seth decided, he
might have to break his other leg.
Stupid as the exercise was, it got Seth thinking about the secret
Marshall had shared with him. Before the battle at Fort King, Seth
had learned Quinn O’Shea was not werekin. Her mother,
Josephine, was, a Commander in the Resistance even, but the
magic had skipped Quinn. Had she been born in captivity, she
would have been raised a hunter, like Cleo. Because she had been
born free, she had lived a relatively normal human life, surrounded
by werekin.
The Black Swan had the opposite experience, if what she had
told Marshall was true: a werekin born to human parents. Could
werekin magic ever be a recessive allele, Seth wondered, covered
over in a generation – your mom never skins, but if you looked at
her genes, you would see she was genetically coded to be a
werecrow? Chimera would probably have picked up on something
like that in their labs, but werekin had been having children in the
Underground for decades. It was possible they might not know
57
everything about werekin genetics. Then again, if the Black Swan
hadn’t been born in captivity, it was possible her parents hadn’t
been, either. Could that explain why she believed she had been
born to human parents? Because they had never skinned, though
the gene was there, waiting to be passed on to their children?
It made a certain amount of sense. Skin wasn’t dependent on
your parents’ – like Seth and J.J.: Thomas Sullivan had been a
werefox, yet here they were, werejaguars. Skin depended on your
mystical connection to the werekin ancestors, the Totems. That
was why some breeds were more rare, and more powerful, than
others.
Blood. It all came back to blood. The question was, if it turned
out the Black Swan had no werekin blood, where had she come by
her magic?
***
Leigh Steward had just slid into her seat in second-period study
hall and was showing her charm bracelet off to Shanti Bruce, who
she used to be friends with, before Shanti had made the
cheerleading squad in ninth grade and Leigh hadn’t, when a pert
voice chirped, “Hi, Leigh.”
Leigh looked up. A small, skinny black boy was hovering
beside her desk, fidgeting with the strap on a beat-up backpack.
Leigh blinked. “What do you want?”
It came out more sharply than she intended, and Dre Alfaro’s
smile faltered. “I – I have study hall now,” he said, softly, his
quick, dark eyes darting from Leigh to Shanti. Shanti had swept
her hair over one shoulder, a cool smile Leigh knew only too well
playing around her pink-frosted lips. There was a reason Shanti
Bruce and Cam Foss were so well-matched as a couple. “I usually
sit back there.” He gestured vaguely to a table behind Leigh’s.
Well. Leigh fumbled for something to say. She knew all about
Dre and the other Haven kids being werekin now, obviously, and
maybe she and Dre had hung out a few times since the battle at
Fort King, at Cleo’s, which seemed to be headquarters for the
teenage Resistance, and maybe he sometimes made her laugh with
his corny bird jokes, but she had never dreamed he would think
58
they were friends. Or that he would, like, expect Leigh to talk to
him, in front of people.
To Leigh’s horror, Dre sat down at the table in front of hers,
plopping his backpack on the floor. What in God’s name was he
thinking, wearing that ridiculous cap to school? And suspenders?
Leigh shook her head. And she thought Seth had no fashion sense.
Shanti fixed one of the pleats in her cheerleading skirt. “Aren’t
you Angelo Alfaro’s brother?” she asked, her disdain obvious.
“Food Stamp Row” was Cam’s name for Haven Heights.
“Yup,” Dre said brightly. He pulled his feet up on his chair
and rested his chin on his knees. He might have been cute if he cut
that stupid floppy hair, but there was no way around the
unmistakable aura of nerd he exuded. “Is that from your
boyfriend?”
He nodded at Leigh’s bracelet. She stuck her hands under her
desk and laced her fingers together. “Bryce isn’t my boyfriend,”
she said, glancing sideways at Shanti, who was listening to every
word.
“But you said he was. At the diner.” Dre looked puzzled. “You
said you were on a date with your boyfriend.”
“I guess Bryce is taking you to prom, then,” Shanti said, slyly.
“Since he’s your boyfriend.”
Leigh could feel the blush creeping up her neck. Shanti would
be going to prom with Cam, like she had gone to Homecoming
with Cam, yet another dance Leigh had not been asked to. (Well,
she had been asked. But she had been waiting for Marshall to ask
her. This was before Seth had moved to town and Leigh had
realized her utter lack of a gay-dar.) “Yes, well,” she snipped, “I
just meant that we were on a date. Okay?”
“So you don’t have a boyfriend?”
Dre sounded baffled, like Seth still was sometimes when
confronted with the intricacy of human high school politics. Leigh
would have felt sorry for him had it not been for Shanti smirking at
the ceiling. “No,” she said, coolly. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Maybe Dre will take you to prom,” Shanti said. “He is an
eleventh-grader.”
She said it sweetly. Anytime Shanti adopted that sugary voice,
Leigh knew she was really being mean. Dre didn’t know that,
though. “Sure I’ll take you, if you want to go,” he agreed eagerly.
59
He had this way of speaking where all the words sort of tumbled
together, like his thoughts were too quick for his tongue. “Did you
want to go?”
“Sorry.” Leigh’s voice was cold, as cold as her cheeks were
hot. “I don’t date freaks.”
She looked pointedly at Dre’s newsboy cap.
He blinked, the insult – and the fact that Leigh, Seth’s sister,
had insulted him – sinking in slowly. Then he turned around,
doffing the cap and dropping it, with a sheepishness that nearly
made Leigh wince, onto his backpack. Shanti smiled
sympathetically at her, like, God, what a loser.
Leigh tried to smile back, but the muscles that controlled her
smile reflex seemed to have frozen.
***
“I feel like I should explain about Leigh,” Bryce said.
He had just settled into his seat in English. Seth’s was in the
back row. Miss Janowitz did not have a prejudice against
ballplayers – just punks from South Philly. She never called on
Seth in class, and she hemorrhaged red ink all over his essays. He
couldn’t place a semicolon to please the woman.
Seth decided to take pity on Bryce, who was looking woeful.
Bryce was a nice guy. He had always been good to Seth, and he
was on Marshall’s side against Cam. If Leigh had to date
somebody, Bryce was an all right choice. “She liked the bracelet
you got her,” he offered.
“Really?” Bryce perked up. “Do you think she’d say yes if I
asked her out again?”
“Hmm, let me consult my crystal ball…” Seth grinned. “Yeah,
man. Go for it.”
“Okay, class.” Miss Janowitz had stepped up to the podium.
Bryce quickly turned around. Miss Janowitz was young, pretty in a
librarianish way, with her plaid skirts and solid-color sweaters, big
dark eyes that made her look like a curious owl. Bryce spent most
of her classes drooling onto his notebook. Seth spent them
mentally rehearsing his karate stances.
Today, however, he was startled into alertness as the classroom
door opened, interrupting Miss Janowitz as she waxed profound on
60
the relationship between Desdemona and Othello. J.J. slunk into
the room. Heads swiveled from the doorway to the back row, every
face conveying the same thought: Hey! They could be twins!
“Excuse me,” said J.J., in his princely fashion. Miss Janowitz
was gaping at him, mouth slightly ajar. No one interrupted her
lectures. “I was told to have you sign this.” He held out his
registration slip. Miss Janowitz was so flabbergasted she signed it.
On Seth’s first day of school, he was sure he had appeared
awkward, trying to remember not to arch his spine when he
stretched, not to purr when he laughed, all of the catlike behavior
that came naturally to him. J.J. didn’t bother with any of that. He
padded down the aisle on the balls of his feet, spine curving as he
settled in next to Seth. Reluctantly, their classmates returned their
attention to the front of the room.
The twins slouched down, feet propped on the backs of the
desks in front of them. Miss Janowitz scowled at them. She always
scowled at Seth, and J.J. would be guilty by association.
After about five minutes, J.J. poked Seth in the arm. I’m bored,
he said, in Seth’s head.
Seth, lacking the capacity to speak back (J.J. was the
transmitter in their psychic setup), nodded. Me too. On his
notebook, he scribbled, Honors? J.J. nodded. At least they could
endure the torture as a unit.
The morning blurred by. In American History, Mr. Talbot, a
bow-tied British expat, welcomed J.J. to the class without making
him introduce himself. Mrs. Clark, their ancient Geometry teacher,
scrawled her signature on J.J.’s registration slip, handed him a
midterm exam along with the rest of the class, and promptly fell
asleep at her desk. Because they were Honors students, nobody
cheated.
J.J. finished ahead of everyone and stared out the window at
the puffy clouds layering over the river. Musing on Ben’s
mysterious phone call, Seth suspected. As was he. He hoped his
old Papa Bear wasn’t in trouble. But this was Ben they were
talking about. He knew how to look after himself.
When the bell released them for lunch at last, Seth caught up to
J.J. in the hall. “Where did you learn math?” he asked.
61
“Xanthe.” Hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, J.J. was
surveying the throngs of students with the vigilance of a predator
scouting its next meal.
“Gen-0 know geometry?” Seth said, surprised.
“Xanthe is a humanist.” J.J. picked up a tray and slipped into
the lunch line. “Like Agathon. They have an interest in human
culture. A reverence for it, you might say.”
It was pizza day. Sadly, cafeteria pizza could not compete with
MoJo’s. Seth took three slices anyway, and was reaching for a
pudding cup when a bright flash brought his head around. Quinn
O’Shea had sidled into line behind him, copper hair spilling out
from under her blue UA beanie.
“Sullivan,” she said.
“O’Shea,” Seth said back, nodding to the pack of sport-o girls
grouped up behind her. Quinn was captain of the girls’ basketball
team. Being human, she hadn’t had to hide out at Fairfax High like
the rest of the Haven kids, who never joined teams, started clubs,
or ran for class office. Angelo Alfaro could have played circles
around Cam Foss, but he had grown up Underground, and in the
Underground, anonymity equaled survival.
“Been practicing up for your big game against Sacred Heart?”
Quinn asked slyly. She was, of course, referencing the Knights’
near-win over the Warriors a couple of weeks ago. A win that
could partially be attributed to one of Vixen O’Shea’s foxy plays,
which she had generously shared, for the sole purpose of rubbing it
in later. “Sure have,” Seth said.
“You better. The Warriors are practically undefeated.”
“I don’t think ‘practically’ counts.”
Up until then, J.J. had seemed to be completely ignoring their
conversation. Quinn’s gaze flicked to him, coolly amused. J.J.
appraised her right back, every inch the cool cat in his leather
jacket and ripped jeans. He and Quinn had met, but Quinn wasn’t
Resistance, and J.J. had yet to show the slightest interest in
anything in Fairfax unrelated to the Resistance.
“What position do you play?” Quinn asked. The basketball
girls smirked at one another, like they had seen their alpha eat boys
for lunch before.
“He’s not on the team,” Seth answered, before J.J. could.
62
“I didn’t think so.” Quinn’s tone was dismissive. Notoriously,
no one outside the jock-sphere registered for her.
“I’m not on the team,” J.J. said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t play.”
The girls whooped. Quinn’s haughty smile faltered for barely a
second. Snatching a napkin off the counter, she produced a pen
from the pocket of her fleece pants and scribbled on it. Seven
digits. Her phone number. “Here you go, player,” she said, offering
it to J.J. like a gauntlet being thrown down.
J.J. took it and stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it. A
response guaranteed to have Quinn O’Shea waiting by the phone.
“Come on, Casanova,” Seth muttered, shooting a dark look at
Quinn over his shoulder as he drug J.J. away. He didn’t care if
Quinn was gorgeous and witty and brave. If J.J. got his flirt on
with anybody, Seth wanted it to be with Cleo.
“Don’t you sit with them?” J.J. asked, twisting around to
watch Quinn plop her tray down with the other Haven kids. The
table looked empty without Alfaro there, taking up more space
than should have been allowed. He had been badly burned by
silver powder during the Fort King battle, and was being kept
home to recover.
“Not all the time,” Seth said, somewhat defensively. He
wasn’t a snob or anything. At school, he just ran with a different
crowd.
He led J.J. over to Marshall’s pack. Besides Bryce, there were
the Knights’ forwards, gangly Gabe Cochran and dark-skinned
Topher Simmons, and Cam Foss, the other guard. Cam was Seth’s
height, five-nine, but seriously bulked up from weight-lifting. His
blonde hair was gelled in a messy bed-head style, his arm
permanently glued to the shoulders of his cheerleader girlfriend,
Shanti Bruce.
Whitney had saved the boys seats beside her, across from
Marshall. Seth’s twin and boyfriend nodded to one another. Seth
sensed a conflict in the making. J.J. and Marshall were both
accustomed to being pack alphas.
“’Sup, kitty-cat?” Cam drawled. “Leigh told us you wiped out
on your big bad motorcycle. I thought cats always landed on their
feet.”
63
“I have a scar,” Seth announced, so of course everyone wanted
to see. They clustered around him as he hiked up his shirt.
Marshall kept his eyes on his tray.
“You gonna be up for Friday night, Philly?” Topher asked.
“You betcha,” Seth said. “I’m ready to bring it.” Bryce wolfhowled.
Seth introduced J.J. to the table as his cousin. J.J., after a polite
hello, lapsed into silence, as removed from the talk of homework
and basketball and prom as if they had been discussing nuclear
fission. “So Townsend,” Gabe said, popping a pepperoni in his
mouth. “You think you’ll be ungrounded in time for graduation?”
Marshall tipped back in his chair. His black dress shirt was
unbuttoned over his white T-shirt, and Seth had a very sudden,
very vivid image of Marshall with no shirt on. “Doubtful,”
Marshall admitted.
“What I want to know,” said Cam, “is what you were doing,
staying out all night. Or who, I should say.”
Marshall blushed, which instigated a chorus of, “Townsend,
you dog,” and, “Tell us, Marshall, tell us!” Marshall laughed and
shook his head, blushing deeper. His foot bumped Seth’s under the
table. Seth bumped him back, both of them grinning into their
sodas.
The teasing was good-natured, on everyone’s part but Cam’s.
“I’ll bet kitty-cat knows,” he wheedled. “C’mon, Sullivan. Tell us
what hot little minx Townsend was pounding last week.”
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, Cam,” Whitney said. “Not
that we’d expect you to know that.”
It was the first time Seth had ever heard Whitney say two
words around Marshall’s friends, and certainly the first time she
had ever stood up to Cam Foss. He saw Leigh’s eyes widen in
astonishment. Leigh would never have rocked the boat with this
crowd. Cam fired a filthy look at Whitney, but even he wasn’t
stupid enough to pick on Marshall’s sister. Their alpha would drop
him for that.
Instead, he switched targets. Jerking his chin at J.J., he said,
“What’s your story, tomcat?”
The table got quiet. At first, Seth wasn’t sure J.J. had heard: He
swigged his Cherry Coke, screwed the cap back on the bottle, and
set it on the table, letting the silence stretch into awkwardness
64
before lifting his golden eyes to Cam’s. Then he smiled, in a
deliberate fashion that showed his teeth.
The noise J.J.’s chair made as he scraped it back seemed very
loud in the silence. “Seth,” he said, “I’m taking off, if you want to
come.”
Taking off? What was he talking about, taking off? Seth
hopped up, loping after his twin across the cafeteria. “J.J., we can’t
just leave!” he hissed. “We have afternoon classes!”
“What are they going to do, collar us?” J.J. pitched his trash
into the bin outside the door and leaned back against a poster
exhorting them to practice PMA, Positive Mental Attitude! “Let’s
go to Fort King. There’s a strand of woods between here and there.
We can run the whole way. You can meet Xanthe, we can ask
McLain what was up with that phone call, and then we’ll go to
Cleo’s to train.”
Focus on what we should be focusing on. The war. He didn’t
say it, but Seth heard it. He scuffed his shoe on the tile floor,
miserably torn. He wanted to stay at school, and he wanted to go
with J.J. “Please stick it out,” he pleaded. “It gets better. I hated
school too, at first – ”
“J.J. Sullivan.”
Seth turned. Leigh was stalking toward them, hands on her
hips. She looked remarkably like Lydia when she did that. “Seth is
not cutting class. If he gets detention, Coach will bench him, and
the team is counting on him.” She linked her arm through Seth’s.
“Come on, Seth. You don’t have to do whatever J.J. does.”
“Of course he doesn’t.” J.J.’s tone was as calm as his flat
metallic eyes. He pushed off the wall, waving aside Seth’s protest.
“It’s cool, little brother. I’ll see you tonight.”
Leigh hauled on Seth’s arm, forcibly dragging him back inside
the cafeteria as J.J. disappeared around the corner. Forget ping
pong, Seth thought wearily. He was the rope in a tug of war.
65
Chapter Six: Mea Culpa
After ball practice that evening, as Seth waited on the bleachers
for Marshall to finish up a top-secret sectionals strategy session
with Coach Evans, he used his new cell phone to call Cleo’s. She
answered on the third ring, yelling at someone in the background,
“If you track mud all over the place again, I am wiping it up with
your hide!”
“I take it J.J. is there,” Seth said.
“He is,” said Cleo. “And he’s in a snit.” J.J. roared indignantly
in the background.
Seth leaned back on the bleacher, gazing up at the stars visible
through the skylight. The gym’s walls were glass, too, darkly
tinted. Through them he could see the headlights of cars passing on
the expressway.
All afternoon, Seth had fretted about J.J. He had spent study
hall with his eyes closed, trying to project his consciousness across
the ether to his twin’s, but either he had no telepathic abilities
whatsoever or J.J. was not in the mood to share his thoughts.
Seth was fretting about Ben, too. They are coming for you. He
repeated the cryptic message for Cleo, and she relayed that she and
J.J. had already discussed Ben’s call with Melody and McLain,
hinting that they knew where Ben was calling from, but apparently
Seth did not have clearance to know that.
As for the name Caroline, McLain had promised to look into it,
she said.
Leaving them back at square one – namely, waiting for Ben to
call back. Seth crooked an arm behind his head, wincing at a slight
twinge in his scar. “Did J.J. say anything about school?”
Cleo repeated a few of J.J.’s more colorful phrases to describe
the American education system. “I don’t think he plans on going
back,” she added, in confidential tones.
Their mother would be so pleased. “I gotta go,” Seth said, for
Marshall, grinning broadly, had just backed out of Coach’s office.
“Call you later?”
“Anytime, sweetheart,” Cleo said.
Coach had worked them hard at practice, and Marshall had
changed into street clothes without showering; a circle of sweat
66
darkened the back of his dress shirt, and his hair was damp at the
temples, curling onto his flushed cheeks. Seth was glad the gym
was empty so he could ogle him openly, as opposed to covertly,
which he did all the time.
Marshall Townsend was six-two and slender, all long lines and
thin bones. As he passed the hoop he grabbed a ball off the
sidelines and fired off a jump shot – popping up on his toes, spine
arched, wrist curved as he followed through, graceful as a Cihuly
glass sculpture. He turned to Seth, still wearing that zany grin, and
the thought hit Seth like a freight train on overdrive: I am in love
with this man.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Philadelphia,” Marshall said.
Seth managed a nod.
He fell into step beside Marshall as they left the gym,
backpacks slung over their shoulders. A gust of cold wind greeted
them in the parking lot; Marshall pulled in a deep breath, releasing
it on a satisfied sigh. Seth nudged him with a hip. “What’s got you
in such a good mood?”
“Oh, nothing, really. Just that Coach talked to the scout from
Duke.” Marshall paused, drawing out the suspense. Cruel, really,
given that Seth was a cat, and prone to terrible curiosity. “He’s
going to come to the game Friday night, to see me play.”
“Indiana, that is awesome!” Marshall ducked his head, unable
to rein in his cheek-stretching grin. Duke was Number One on his
Top Five list of pre-med programs. “You must be so psyched.”
“My father will be ecstatic.” Marshall unlocked the Audi. The
silver sports car was the only vehicle left in the lot, other than a
black sedan parked in one of the teacher’s spots. Seth’s keen eyes
could just make out someone sitting behind the wheel. “I might
swing by the hospital before we head home, tell him in person.
Would you mind?”
“Actually,” Seth said, “I was wondering if you could drop me
off at Jack’s office.”
Marshall looked up sharply. The key waited in the ignition, but
he made no move to turn it over. “Is that safe?”
“Safe as anything I do,” said Seth. Marshall didn’t look like
that had sold him on the concept. “Relax, Indiana. Jack doesn’t
have any reason to collar me now. Lydia and Leigh are under
McLain’s protection, and so is he. But enough about me,” he said,
67
still smarting a bit from the center-of-the-universe comment.
“Duke. Athletic scholarship. This is big time.”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Marshall cautioned.
“It will.”
Leaning across the seat, Seth kissed Marshall’s cheek –
mindful that they were in the school parking lot, and anyone could
be watching. To his pleasant surprise, Marshall cupped his chin
and kissed him on the lips.
“I still have to graduate high school,” he murmured, grazing
his nose along Seth’s jaw. “I could blow out a knee in the postseason – ” his teeth caught Seth’s earlobe – “fail Advanced Chem.
– ” he kissed that shivery spot below Seth’s ear – “be turned into a
human guinea pig by Chimera…”
“That,” growled Seth, “is not funny.”
Marshall kissed the tip of his nose. “It was a little funny,” he
said.
As they hit the expressway, Seth called his house and left a
message for Lydia saying he was grabbing a bite with Marshall.
(He did not mention Jack.) To make that less of a lie, and because
Seth was starving, they hit a McDonald’s drive-through on their
way downtown.
Traffic was light. Marshall cranked Weezer on the stereo and
they talked basketball, sharing extra-large fries and sipping
chocolate shakes. “It occurs to me,” Seth said, as Marshall braked
for a yellow light Seth would totally have punched through on his
Yamaha, “that we haven’t done this much.”
“Ride in my car?” Marshall said.
“Go out,” Seth clarified.
“Are you trying to say I never take you anywhere,
Philadelphia?”
“I’m just a booty call to you, Indiana, admit it.” Marshall
flipped him off. Seth grinned. He could see his reflection in the
dark glass over Marshall’s shoulder. It surprised him how sharp his
cheekbones looked. Could he be losing weight? Seth ate
everything in his path. “I mean it, though,” he said, as the light
turned green and Marshall tapped the accelerator. “Once you’re
ungrounded, we should do something besides basketball or video
games.”
“Like what?”
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“I don’t know. See a movie. Get coffee. Date stuff.” Seth
glanced at his boyfriend. “Unless you think people will talk.”
“As you saw at lunch today,” said Marshall, wiping salty
fingers on his designer jeans, “people are already talking.”
Seth bit his lip. “Does that bother you?”
“Not as much as I thought it would,” Marshall said. Hey, it
was progress. “Although, that scene with your brother and Cam
today, that was kind of intense. I thought J.J. was going to jump
across the table and eat him.”
They had reached Court Street. Most of the offices were closed
for the evening. Marshall parked along the curb in front of the
Sacred Heart Academy. Seth chewed on the end of his straw. “J.J.
has been through a lot, okay? Cut him some slack.”
“I am cutting him slack, Seth,” Marshall said, patiently. “But
does he have to be so…I don’t know, so – scary?”
“We’re jaguars,” Seth said. “We’re scary. And Cam, in case
you missed the memo, is an asswipe. Since he’s your friend,
maybe you should talk to him about that.”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Are we going inside?”
“I’m going inside,” Seth returned, snippily. Didn’t Marshall
understand how hard it was to adjust to the human world when you
had never lived in it? Seth still struggled, and he had grown up
Underground, not closeted in a Chimera lab like J.J., learning to
kill people with his bare hands. “You’re grounded, remember?
You should get going before you lose your car privileges again.”
He climbed out. So did Marshall, scanning the dark windows.
“Are you sure he’s here?”
“The apartment is around back.” Seth knew he sounded stiff,
and forced himself to take a breath. “Look, I’m sorry I bit your
head off about Cam. Okay?”
“Is this your way of telling me to get lost?” Marshall said.
Seth sighed. “I’m not trying to fight with you, Indiana. But this
thing with Jack, it’s – personal. About my dad.”
“So I’ll wait in the lobby. I have reading material.” Marshall
patted his backpack. The grimoire Agathon had loaned him was
peeking out of the top.
Seth folded his arms. “Let me get this straight. I’m not allowed
to be protective of you, but you’re allowed to be protective of
me?” He shook his head. “We call that a double standard, Indiana.”
69
Marshall stepped up on the sidewalk. “I’ll make you a deal,” he
said. “After you sit by my bedside for a day, praying I don’t die,
you can be as protective of me as you want.”
***
Jack Steward answered the door in jeans and a paint-spackled
work shirt. He did not seem surprised to see his step-son and
former next-door-neighbor on his doorstep. “I just ordered
Chinese,” he said, holding the door open with the hand that wasn’t
in a sling. “If you boys are hungry.”
Seth was always hungry.
Fresh coats of paint glistened on the walls in the apartment’s
entryway. Seth didn’t know what he had been expecting, but the
apartment wasn’t it. A wooden staircase in the living room circled
up to a second unfinished bedroom with a private bath; there was a
fireplace, a granite-topped bar separating the kitchen from the
living room, a Whirlpool in the master bath. The floors were
cherry-stained hardwood, the windows, like the doorways, arched.
Every room had a spectacular view of the nighttime river.
Jack’s new furniture must have just been delivered. A mattress
was propped against the wall in the bedroom, still in the plastic,
couch cushions stacked by the fireplace. After a quick tour, they
fixed their plates at the bar and took seats in the living room, Jack
in his recliner, Marshall and Seth on the floor with their backs
against the sofa.
“How’s your mother?” Jack asked.
“Stressed,” Seth answered, honestly.
“And Leigh?”
“She’s good.” That was less honest, but Jack looked a bit
stressed himself. The shadows under his eyes were like bruises.
“Her animal dissection petition goes before the school board next
week. Guess you’ll see her there,” Seth said. Jack, like Marshall’s
father, was a school board member.
“And you?” Jack forked up some noodles one-handed. “How
are you?”
“I am fantastic,” Seth said. “Thanks for asking.” Like Jack
cared how he was.
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Marshall nibbled his egg roll, looking awkward. The
Townsends and Stewards had been neighbors all of his life; Seth
could see Marshall’s former regard for Jack battling with his desire
to punch him in the face. The situation was equally strained for
Seth, though for different reasons. In their last extended
conversation, Jack had confessed his role in the plot to hand Seth
over to LeRoi. You aren’t anyone to me, he had said. You aren’t
my child.
Coincidentally, that was the reason for Seth’s visit. He put his
plate down on the floor. “I wanted to ask you about my dad,” he
said.
Jack did not seem fazed. “I thought you might.”
Marshall rose. “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” he said.
Seth almost asked him to stay. He didn’t fear Jack. Jack he
could have chomped into kibble. But asking the questions he
needed to ask would make him vulnerable on a whole other level,
like he was opening a vein and bleeding onto his step-father’s new
sofa.
Puzzling over the mystery of the Black Swan’s parentage had
reiterated to Seth how scanty his knowledge of his own werekin
heritage was. All he knew about Thomas Sullivan was that he had
been born and raised in captivity, and that when he had come of
age at seventeen, Chimera Enterprises had paid for his education
and permitted him to live in the human world, provided he told no
one who and what he was and that, if he ever had a child, he
register that child with Chimera as soon as he or she skinned. This
was how Thomas had ended up in the Underground. He had not
wanted his sons, warrior breeds, to be brought up in the Scholae
Bestiarii, where werekin were turned into killers. He had not
wanted Ursula LeRoi to add their blood, the blood of the Jaguar
Clan, to the Ark.
Seth wanted to know who his father’s parents were. Whether
Thomas had brothers and sisters. Lydia could have answered those
questions, but Seth didn’t like to bring up painful subjects to her,
and her late husband was a painful subject. It was also possible she
wouldn’t know. It was possible Thomas hadn’t known; he could
have been taken from his parents in infancy, raised apart from
them in the Scholae Bestiarii. Jack, as a former Chimera agent,
71
might know, or be able to use his connections inside Operation
Swan Song to find out.
The outer door closed behind Marshall with a click. Jack
retrieved a bottle of Amber Bock from the fridge, dropped his sling
on the counter, and returned to his recliner, holding the beer bottle
in both hands. “I know very little about Tommy’s past, you
understand. Those records were kept by LeRoi. I didn’t have
access to them. All I know is what he told me – that his mother
passed away when he was born, and he never knew his father. I
couldn’t tell you if that was true, but it’s not uncommon for
werekin to be orphaned young, as you are well aware. His story
when we met at Georgetown was that he had been raised by
relatives, and his mother had set up a trust fund for him to attend
college.”
“What about Regent? Didn’t Dad tell him about his past?”
Really, that was what Seth had been banking on – Thomas opening
up to Regent, Regent having reported back to Jack, his partner in
Thomas’ betrayal.
“If he did, Werner never told me.” Jack took a long pull from
his beer and placed it on a corner of the hearth, leaning forward
with his injured arm cradled against his chest. The shadows under
his eyes made them look like they were being absorbed into his
skull. “Seth, when I first met Werner and Tommy, I didn’t know
they were werekin. I didn’t know werekin existed. I grew up just
like Leigh, never knowing my father worked for Project Ark.”
Seth met Jack’s gaze coldly. “I didn’t come here to listen to
excuses, Jack.”
“And I won’t offer you any. There is no excuse for what I’ve
done. But I would like to offer an explanation, if you’re willing to
hear me out.”
The baldness of the reply undercut Seth’s anger. After a
moment, partly out of curiosity, partly out of something else he
couldn’t even name, he shrugged his consent.
Jack took a breath. “When I started law school, I had no idea
Werner Regent had been tasked to befriend me, to bring me into
Chimera’s fold,” he said. “I had no idea my father was a Partner in
Chimera Enterprises. I had no idea he was betraying them to the
Resistance.”
72
Bullshit, Seth wanted to cough. Except…Emery Little’s dad,
Aidan McDonagh, had arrived in Fairfax seventeen years ago on
reports that the Ark was being housed at Fort King. Shortly
thereafter, Gavin Steward had keeled over from a heart attack.
Coincidence? Seth did not believe in those. And it made sense. If
Jack’s father had taken the intel on the Ark to the Resistance, and
LeRoi had found him out, he would have needed to be dealt with.
But a senator in her pocket, particularly a senator from Fairfax,
would have been a hard asset to give up, without someone picked
out to replace him.
“What does that have to do with my parents?” he demanded.
“The summer before our last year of law school, Tommy and
Werner came here with me, to clerk in my father’s law office. That
was when your parents met. I was thrilled for Tommy. We had
already talked about going into practice together, just the three of
us, the top three in our class. After my father died, not long after
we returned to school, Tommy and Lydia got engaged, and we
agreed to take over my father’s practice. It seemed…”
“Foolproof,” Seth supplied softly, hearing Regent: Three best
friends in our pal Jackie’s hometown. Tommy and I thought it
would be a foolproof plan for our futures.
“Yes.” Jack seemed satisfied by the word. “Foolproof. It was
only later that I found out the truth, only later that Ursula LeRoi
came to me and told me what Tommy and Regent were, and that
with my father gone, a spot had opened up for me to join the
Partners. She was frustrated with the progress she was making in
D.C. on Project Ark. She wanted politicians loyal to her to smooth
the waters on Capitol Hill, secure funding for her more
questionable experiments. And I thought, why not? Why shouldn’t
I have privilege and wealth and influence? Tommy was a
registered werekin in good standing with Chimera. So was Regent.
LeRoi had no reason to hurt them. I wasn’t betraying them.” Jack
shook his head. “That was how I justified it to myself, but the truth
is, I was young, I was ambitious, and I was naïve. I didn’t
understand…I thought I would just be pushing paper.”
He broke off, but Seth hardly needed him to say more. He had
seen the cellblock inside Fort King. Seen his kindred collared,
awaiting shipment to Chimera’s other facilities, to be trained as
killers, or experimented on like lab rats, or bred like livestock.
73
Someone had helped arrange all of that. Likely someone local, on
the ground. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve been working for the
Resistance all along?” Seth said.
“I wish I could tell you that. I wish I’d had the courage to do
what my father did, once Elijah Bishop was dead and Ursula LeRoi
was left in control. Once he realized what he had really involved
himself in, and that it was not saving the world.” Jack scraped his
fingers down his cheeks, leaving white lines like claw marks that
faded away slowly. “Even after I knew LeRoi meant to collar
Tommy and take his sons, I said nothing. I did nothing. I told
myself there was nothing I could do, but that was just because I
was too cowardly to do the right thing and warn my friend.
“The night the hunters came for you and J.J., I was outside. I
took Lydia away. I convinced LeRoi to alter her memories, leave
her with me. I married her to save her life, that was the only
reason. I was never – She was Tommy’s wife, I had never thought
of her in that way. I just wanted her to be safe, and happy. I
thought if she had another child right away, she might – and you
have to understand, Seth, I was very young back then – I thought it
might make up for losing you, and J.J.”
Jack looked down at his toes.
“So then what?” Seth’s mouth tasted bitter; the words came
out equally so. “You just decided she was happier being lied to?
Believing she had let one son die and didn’t deserve to ever have
the other back?”
“No. I wanted to tell her the truth. So many times, I wanted to
tell her everything. But we had Leigh,” Jack said, simply. “The
second I held my baby girl, I was in love with her. And I knew if I
betrayed Chimera, LeRoi would hurt her, to get to me.
“Then you called.” Jack raised his eyes to Seth’s. They were
the color of slate. “You sounded so desperate, saying you needed a
place to stay. I knew something terrible must have happened. I
wanted to tell you no, stay away, you wouldn’t be safe here, but
you called on our home line. Chimera was listening to every word.
I knew they would be waiting for you when you showed up here. I
knew LeRoi would be watching me, to make sure I didn’t warn
you, and if I did – Seth, don’t you see? It wasn’t about me
anymore. I had to choose, between you and my own daughter.”
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Jack spread his hands, helplessly. “I was as trapped as if I had a
collar around my neck.”
“No, Jack,” Seth said. “You were never that trapped.”
For a long minute, they just looked at one another. Seth could
hear a clock ticking somewhere, and his own heart beating steadily
in his ears.
Finally, Jack leaned back in his recliner, picked up his beer,
and raised it, as though making a toast. “No,” he said. “I suppose I
never was.”
75
Chapter Seven: Bleeding Hearts
Seth didn’t say much on the drive home. Marshall cranked the
stereo, and he laid his head back on the seat, watching the stars
whip by and wondering if the Totems were up there, looking down
on him.
Jack had offered to delve into Thomas Sullivan’s past. He had
access to most of Chimera’s records through Operation Swan
Song, though Dre might first have to decode the encrypted files no
one had yet been able to hack into. Seth had left his cell phone
number so Jack could reach him directly once he found something.
For the time being, Seth wanted their meeting kept secret from
Lydia. Like until he had graduated from high school and moved
out.
Dr. Townsend’s Lexus was not in the garage when they got
home. Marshall walked Seth to his back door, stretching the night
out just a little longer.
He whistled at the aftermath of Captain Hook’s resurrection.
“Lucky he was a small dog. If you’d been raising a Rottweiler, you
might have destroyed the whole house.”
“You know what they say,” said Seth. “It’s not the size of the
dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” He hopped up
on the stoop. For once, this put him at eye level with Marshall.
Wrapping his arms around Marshall’s neck, he sighed
dramatically. “Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet
sorrow – ”
“Okay, Juliet.” Marshall pulled him in for a good night kiss.
His cheeks were cold, his mouth warm; the contrast made Seth
shiver.
“I’m glad for you, Indiana,” he whispered. “About the college
thing. I hope it all works out like you want.”
He was close enough to feel the tremor that passed through
Marshall. He rocked back on his heels. Seth had seen Marshall
furious, terrified, brooding – never tearful. It scared him more than
any hunter ever had. “Marshall, hey,” he said, softly. “Tell me
what’s going on.”
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“It’s stupid.” Marshall’s voice shook. He looked away,
working his bottom lip between his teeth. “You know…you know
how last night, you asked me…you asked why I was so…”
“Horny?” Seth suggested.
“Let’s say passionate,” Marshall said. “It was this dream I had.
About you and me.”
“Oh? Do tell.” Seth wiggled his eyebrows. Marshall shook his
head, color inching up his neck. Seth leaned back against the porch
railing and looked up at him. “Why not? You think I don’t dream
about you?”
“You do?”
Marshall sounded genuinely surprised. “Of course I dream
about you, idiot,” Seth said. But the dream that swam up before his
eyes was Marshall shackled to a rock, disappearing as the glowing
orb rose into the stars and the werekin motherland rose from the
depths. He blinked it away. “But we were talking about your
dream, remember?”
“It wasn’t even that kind of dream,” Marshall said. “It was
more, I don’t know. Freaky.”
“Uh-huh. Go on.”
“Jesus, Philadelphia.” Marshall blushed for real then. “Not like
that.”
He sat down on the step, propped his elbows on his knees, and
linked his fingers together, resting his forehead against them with
his eyes closed. Seth, after a moment, sat down beside him.
“Do you ever think about the future?” Marshall asked.
He said “the future” with a capital T and a capital F: The
Future. A topic Seth’s Fairfax High classmates were obsessed
with. Where will I go to college? Who will I marry? How many
kids will I have? Growing up Underground, Seth’s thoughts on
The Future had stopped at waking up the next day. Each day had
carried with it the possibility of being collared or killed.
That possibility still existed. Was, in fact, more of a
probability, now that LeRoi knew his identity. But Underground,
there had been no real future to think of. No high school
graduation to plan for, no college applications to submit. On the
rare occasions he had thought ahead to what his life would be like
at twenty, or optimistically, thirty, Seth had seen himself at best a
hardened Resistance fighter, at worst a petty criminal.
77
Now he played on a ball team. Studied genetics and
Shakespeare. Was gainfully employed. So yeah, Seth had started to
think about The Future. “Sometimes,” he said. “Did you have a
dream about your future?” And was I in it?
“Sort of,” Marshall said.
“Gee, Indiana, don’t overwhelm me with the details.”
“I dreamed that I died.”
A white haze blurred Seth’s vision. It took him a moment to
realize he had stopped breathing. “How?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.” Marshall’s fingers were clenched so tight Seth
feared his knuckles might break the skin. “In the dream, I was
already dead, and you were holding me, and crying, and I wanted
to tell you not to. That this was something…This was something I
had chosen.”
Seth felt cold all over. Werekin didn’t get cold, thanks to the
magic in their blood. He pushed his hands into his armpits.
“Indiana, if you’re thinking like that, you need to talk to
somebody. Coach, maybe. Or my mom. Your father, even.”
“See why I didn’t want to tell you? I knew you’d think I’m
suicidal, and I’m not.” Marshall lowered his hands from his face.
His complexion had turned ashy gray. “I’m not saying I never
think about it. I’m sure everybody thinks about it.” Seth didn’t.
Seth liked being alive. Very, very much. “But this dream, it made
me realize there are things I want, now, and – ”
Headlight scraped up the Townsends’ drive. Marshall jumped
up. His father’s Lexus rolled to a stop, the driver’s side door
opening immediately; the silhouette cast by the headlights was so
similar to Marshall’s Seth would not have believed it wasn’t his if
Marshall had not been standing right in front of him. He had
always found the resemblance between Wesley Townsend and his
only son uncanny. “I’m not supposed to be over here,” Marshall
muttered, half to himself. He looked up at Seth. “Don’t tell
anybody about this, okay? Promise?”
Marshall was exacting a lot of vows of silence from him lately,
Seth thought, and he was not convinced this was a secret he should
keep. He was not convinced of that at all. But Marshall’s baby
blues were pleading, and Seth told himself they would figure this
out, whatever this was, together.
“Okay,” he said. “I promise.”
78
***
Not often was Seth awakened by screams.
He sat bolt upright, heart pounding. His alarm had not yet
buzzed; it was 5:52a.m. Throwing off the covers, he bolted into the
hallway, where he collided with Leigh, who was scurrying out of
her room with her robe open over her pink-heart pajamas. “Did
you tell Mom about J.J. skipping school?” Seth hissed at her.
“Are you nuts?” Leigh hissed back. “If Mom is pissed, it
makes life harder for all of us.”
The shouting reached eardrum-vibrating decibels as they
descended the steps. Captain Hook was cowering behind the
umbrella stand in the entryway, tail between his legs. He whined,
as if to say, This is bad, guys.
It certainly seemed to be. In the kitchen, J.J. was braced against
the wall, firing-squad style; leaves were caught in his hair,
plastered to the soles of his muddy bare feet, his black T-shirt
damp across the back. Lydia, by the sink, was brandishing a
spatula as though she meant to brain him with it. “And then,” she
ranted, “and then, I call Cleo, and she tells me you left her house at
midnight, so she has no idea where you are!”
“I told you.” J.J.’s tone was tightly controlled. “I went for a
run. What’s the problem? Seth goes for runs.”
“Seth leaves notes! Seth calls and tells me where he’s going to
be! Seth,” Lydia hauled in a breath for her big finale, “does not cut
class in the middle of the day!”
“Crap,” Leigh muttered.
J.J. sent her a suspicious glare. “How did you find out about
that?”
“Because I am your mother, Jeremy Sullivan, and when you
disappear from school grounds, your principal calls me. Then I get
to worry that you’re collared in a cage somewhere, until you
decide to waltz in here, twelve hours later, looking like – like – ”
She gestured helplessly at J.J.’s disheveled appearance.
“Like something the cat dragged in?” purred Leigh.
“Adleigh Jean, do not start with me this morning.” Lydia
dropped the spatula in the sink. Her face was haggard with fatigue;
she must have been up all night, waiting for J.J. to come home.
Seth had noticed her bedroom light on later than usual, but had
79
assumed she was absorbed in a good book. The two of them had
that tendency in common.
As J.J. was examining the mud between his toes, Seth
intervened. “Mom, J.J. had a good reason for cutting class,” he
said, and explained about Ben’s phone call, playing it off as though
J.J. had been compelled to choose between school and the
Resistance.
“Seth couldn’t go, Mom,” chimed in Leigh, cottoning on to his
strategy. “He would have gotten detention, and you know how
Coach feels about detention.”
She moved to stand next to Seth, the three of them presenting a
united front of teenage innocence. J.J., still studying his toes, did
not join in the deception, but nor, Seth noticed, did he contradict
them. Lying to your parents. Source of bonding for siblings of all
species.
Lydia scowled at them. But after a moment, she relented.
“Well, if it was for the Resistance, I suppose I can write you a note
for school,” she said, adding, “But just this once. In the future, you
are not to leave school without Ms. McLain’s permission.
Understood?”
“About that,” J.J. said.
Seth grabbed his elbow. “He can shower in my room,” he said.
To J.J., he hissed, “Not another word.”
He dragged his twin up the stairs, dogged by Captain Hook.
They did not speak again until they were closeted in Seth’s
bathroom, where J.J. began stripping off his muddy clothes. Seth
climbed onto the edge of the sink.
“I know what you’re going to say,” J.J. said. “You want me to
go back to school.”
“No,” Seth said. “That’s not what I’m going to say. I’m going
to say that our mom is having a tough time right now, and maybe
that doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me.”
In the mirror, he saw J.J. glance at him before pulling the
shower curtain closed. “It matters to me,” he said. At least Seth
thought he did; the water came on at that moment, so it was hard to
say for sure. “I just don’t get why she was so mad.”
“She wasn’t mad, J.J. She was scared. You heard her. She
thought you were dead.”
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“She thought I was dead for seventeen years,” J.J. said.
“Shouldn’t be that much of an adjustment.”
Sighing, Seth traced glyphs on the steamed-up mirror –
symbols from the grimoire. The spells were stuck in his head like
song lyrics. He wiped them away with his wrist, noticing, as he
did, that his cheekbones were definitely more prominent than they
had been a week ago. He was losing weight. Must have been all
the basketball and karate. Jaguars did require substantial amounts
of protein, and it wasn’t easy to come by cheesesteaks with Leigh’s
tofu and soy milk diet.
“She kept our baby things, you know,” he said. “In a box
downstairs. Our teddy bears. Locks of our hair.”
“I know. Poe told me.” The water shut off. Seth tossed J.J. a
towel; he fluffed it through his blonde hair, standing it up in the
back, and tossed it back at him. It was times like these Seth
remembered that J.J. was his age, only seventeen. Easy to forget
even though they were twins. “And she’ll be happier, if I go to
school?”
“Yes,” Seth said. “She’ll be happier.”
J.J. muttered a curse in Lemurian. Seth hadn’t even known
there were curses in Lemurian. “Fine,” he said. “If it’s that
important to everybody, I’ll go to school.”
***
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am
not what I am. That was the quotation Miss Janowitz had written
on the board in their English classroom. Dropping his backpack on
the floor in the back row next to J.J.’s, Seth groaned inwardly.
Fabulous. A discussion day.
On the plus side, it would be easy to nod off. Miss Janowitz
wouldn’t call on him even if he volunteered. Tipping his head
back, Seth started counting ceiling tiles.
A talon-like fingernail tapped the board. “Okay, class,” Miss
Janowitz said. Her skirt was plaid today, her sweater mochabrown. Bryce hadn’t stopped staring at her chest for twenty
minutes. “Who can tell me what Shakespeare is trying to convey
about Iago in this quotation?”
“That he’s a traitor.”
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Chair legs squeaked. Everyone in the room had turned to gawk
at the back row. Seth was too shocked that J.J. had spoken in class
to do more than stare right along with them.
“Dude,” Bryce whispered. “You have to raise your hand!”
J.J. looked mystified. “Why?”
“I’ll repeat the question,” Miss Janowitz said, primly. “What is
Shakespeare trying to convey about Iago in this quotation?”
Dutifully raising his hand, J.J. said, more loudly, “It means
Iago is a traitor.” Yeah, he wasn’t getting the concept of raising
your hand. “He’s saying he’ll pretend loyalty to Othello’s face,
because if he were to show his true feelings – wear his heart on his
sleeve – Othello would know how much Iago despises him. But
what he pretends to be, he isn’t, and so you have the last line: ‘I am
not what I am.’”
During this rather eloquent bit of interpretation, Miss Janowitz
had been sizing J.J. up as though deciding what would more
effectively shut him up: being ignored, or receiving detention.
With one finger, she beckoned imperiously to him. “A word, if you
please, Jeremy.”
J.J. rose and padded obligingly up the aisle, stopping in front of
Miss Janowitz’s podium. He waited patiently while she wrote out a
detention slip. Seth was painfully reminded of his dream-walk – a
collared J.J. standing before Ursula LeRoi, forced into obsequious
submission. His fingers curled in toward his palms, sharp nails
pricking the skin.
Miss Janowitz handed him the slip, and J.J. loped back to his
seat. He held the paper out to Seth, reaching over to poke him on
the arm. What does this mean?
On his notebook, Seth wrote, Don’t talk in class.
***
It turned out Seth and J.J. did not have the exact same
schedule. J.J. was in first-period Chemistry, meaning he escaped
the horridness of Dr. Gideon, and after lunch, he had Advanced
French. Seth was in Señor Vasquez’s Spanish class.
“How can you be in Advanced French,” said Leigh, “when you
don’t speak French?”
82
They were in the lunch line, choosing between meatloaf
surprise and cardboard pizza. Seth had taken helpings of both,
determined not to lose any more weight. All Leigh’s tray had on it
was an apple and a Diet Coke. Fairfax High didn’t offer much in
the way of a vegan-friendly menu. “Je parle français,” J.J. said,
picking up an apple and cleaning it on his leather jacket. Leigh
stared at him, and he smirked. “What? I never said I don’t speak
French. Xanthe taught me.”
Now Seth started. “The Gen-0s speak French?”
“I told you, they’re humanists,” J.J. said. “Where else would I
have learned it?”
“From a book,” said Leigh. “Like Seth.”
J.J. turned to Seth. Seth wondered if he knew there were still
flecks of mud behind his ears. “You learned French from a book?”
“Spanish and Italian, too,” Seth said. “And some Russian and
Latin.”
“Nerd,” said Leigh. “Hey, where are you going?”
J.J., who had started away from them, nodded toward Emery’s
table. “I’m sitting over here today,” he said, and walked off,
sliding into the seat beside Quinn O’Shea, who promptly snapped
the apple up off his tray and bit into it with a sly grin.
Seth stood there, staring after his twin. “Come on,” Leigh said,
quietly, and led him over to the ballplayers’ table.
Marshall was his regular golden boy self at lunch, still hyped
up over the Duke scout. His good mood carried over into Gym, his
one and only class with Seth; even he and Cam were getting along,
saying how cool it would be if they both ended up Blue Devils
next year. Seeing Marshall so jazzed to play college ball, Seth
found it easy to dismiss the implications of his dream.
With sectionals staring them in the face, the only thing on
Coach’s mind was basketball. He lined the class up on the sidelines
and numbered them off into teams for scrimmage. J.J. leaned over
to Seth. He was probably the only person alive who could make
blue polyester shorts look menacing. “I asked Emery if he and
some of the others wanted to drop by Cleo’s later to train with us.
Is that okay?”
“Sure.” Seth had seen Emery in battle. He was one kickass
wererabbit.
83
J.J. picked up on the coolness of his tone. “Listen, I’m sorry I
didn’t sit with you at – ”
“Okay, ladies!” Coach blew his whistle. “Now get out there
and show me what a championship team looks like!”
This presented a problem, one Seth had been short-sighted not
to anticipate. He trotted over to Coach, J.J. in tow. Coach scowled
at them. His bald spot looked glazed in the light pouring through
the gym’s skylight. “What’s the problem, Sullivans?”
“Well Coach,” Seth said, “my, uh, my cousin doesn’t know
the rules.”
The whistle slipped out of Coach’s lips. “He doesn’t know how
to play basketball? Where did he grow up, in a cave?”
You know, Coach. In a top-secret military-controlled facility,
training to be a super-soldier. “Connecticut,” Seth said.
“Ah.” Coach nodded like that explained things. “All right. He
can sit out today, but you bring him up to speed by tomorrow,
Philly. Got it?” Seth saluted.
Thus J.J. parked on the bleachers next to Bryce (whom he
ignored) and tracked the game with his round golden eyes, elbows
on his knees, his gaze never leaving the ball. Seth could imagine
him in that jungle from his dreams, pacing through the treetops,
high above an unsuspecting gazelle –
Oomph!
Air blasted out of Seth’s lungs. He staggered, holding his side;
focused on J.J., he had not seen Cam swooping in to steal the ball.
The elbow in the ribs had been unnecessary. Coach must have
thought so, too. He blew his whistle, cheeks a livid purple. “Foul!
Philly, get to the line. Foss, any more cheap shots like that and
you’ll be riding the pine pony all the way to state. Got it?”
“Sorry, Coach,” said Cam, who did not sound sorry. As he
turned away, he made cat-claws at Seth.
Whatever. The teams lined up, Seth at the free throw line,
dribbling as he measured the shot. Sweat pebbled his forehead.
From his spot under the basket, Marshall mouthed, Okay? Seth
nodded. Currents of electricity were chasing along his scar, but he
would not give Cam Foss the satisfaction of sidelining him.
He made both free throws, and scrimmage resumed.
The pain stayed with Seth through the game and down into the
locker room. Turning his back on the other guys, who were
84
heckling each other like always, he eased his shirt up. His scar was
as angry-red as it felt.
A hand cupped his elbow. Expecting Marshall, Seth was
surprised to find J.J. standing beside him. “You’re in pain,” he
said.
“It’s no big deal,” Seth started, but J.J. cut him off.
“Yes it is,” he said. “I can feel it.”
J.J. laid a hand on his own stomach. Seth recalled the blistering
agony in his bones when Ursula LeRoi had used J.J.’s collar to
drain his life-force. Shared pain. The downside of twin telepathy.
“Aw, does it hurt, kitty-cat?” simpered Cam. He was across
the locker room, stripped to his boxers – for someone with so
many hang-ups about homosexuality, he certainly liked
swaggering around half-naked, showing off his massive pecs.
“Need a kiss to make it better?”
He puckered up his lips, making exaggerated smooching
noises. “Cam, lay off,” Marshall said tiredly, appearing beside
Seth. “Are you – ”
He stopped. Seth had tried to yank his shirt back down, but
Marshall had seen the fiery line across his hipbones.
He whirled. Cam had frozen beside his locker. Everything
seemed to freeze – everything but Marshall, who walked, very
calmly, yet also very purposefully, toward Cam. His spine was
straighter than Seth had ever seen it.
“Come on, Townsend.” Cam licked his lips, glancing around
uncertainly. “I was just playing around. You can’t tell me Sullivan
hasn’t been banged harder than that – ”
Marshall punched him.
Just raised his arm, drew back a fist, and wham, before
anybody even understood what he meant to do. There was a
crunching sound, bone striking bone; Cam slumped backwards,
water streaming from his wide green eyes, blood gushing down his
chin. He swayed, and would have fallen if Topher and Gabe hadn’t
gripped him by the elbows, holding him upright – gaping openmouthed at Marshall, as was every other boy in the room.
Seth could not move. It was like he had grown roots into the
cement floor.
85
Cam cupped his hands over his broken nose. His expression
was some combination of shocked and betrayed. “What the hell,
Townsend?” he spat out, his voice snuffly.
“I told you.” Marshall’s voice was so coldly ferocious Seth did
not recognize it as his. “I told you to lay off. You touch Seth again,
and I’ll kill you. You understand? I will kill you.”
He never raised his voice, but there was no dismissing the
threat as idle. Marshall meant every word.
Cam stared at him. Seth didn’t know what he would have said,
if he would have said anything at all, had the locker room door not
slammed open, admitting Coach.
He must have heard the commotion from his office. He looked
from Marshall’s scraped knuckles to Cam’s bloody nose, and the
vein in his forehead stood out like it might burst. “Simmons,
Cochran, get Foss to the nurse,” he barked. “Townsend, my office.
Right now, Captain.”
Without a word, Marshall turned on his heel and stalked out.
J.J. was smiling delightedly, like, Finally! Some bloodshed!
Seth, on the other hand, felt his heart deflate like a balloon.
Fighting meant detention. Detention meant being benched. And the
scout from Duke was coming on Friday.
86
Chapter Eight: What Lies Beneath
“Your scar shouldn’t be hurting like that,” J.J. said.
Seth did not answer. From behind his closed office door,
Coach’s voice rose, a garbled echo in the empty gym. The words
“screw up” came through loud and clear, and Seth winced.
“Seth, are you listening? We need to take you to Fort King,
have Aphrodisia take a look at you.”
Seth gave a noncommittal shrug. He was lying down on a
bleacher, using his letterman’s jacket for a pillow, staring morosely
up at the gym’s skylight. Clouds rolled like thin smoke across the
setting sun. J.J. sat on the bleacher above his, twisting a thread off
his T-shirt.
The entire team had been marched to the main office, lined up
in chairs beside the chrome counter, and called in one at a time to
provide their statements to Ms. McLain. You would have thought
Marshall had knifed somebody. To a man, every boy in the locker
room would have lied, said Cam ran his face into a door; Marshall
was their alpha, and Cam, they all agreed, had it coming. But
Marshall, predictably, had vetoed the idea.
The verdict? Three-day suspension. Effective tomorrow.
Dr. Foss had already driven Cam to the E.R. for X-rays. Dr.
Townsend had been called as well, but the nurse had said he was in
surgery and could not be disturbed. While the rest of the team had
glumly departed, J.J. and Seth had walked Marshall back to the
gym, to meet with Coach.
There was a bang inside Coach’s office now, like a fist
slamming down on a table. Seth draped a forearm across his eyes.
“Who’s Aphrodisia?” he asked.
“A Gen-0, like Agathon and Xanthe,” J.J. said. “A good
Healer.”
Seth traced his scar through his shirt. The pain had subsided
again. “Maybe I lost too much blood when LeRoi shot me,” he
mused. “Maybe I’m not magical enough to regenerate anymore.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. Anyway, I’ve seen werekin lose
more blood than you did and still heal.” J.J. twisted the thread on
his shirt so hard it snapped, just as something banged again in
Coach’s office. His eyes were burning a dark, burnished bronze. “I
87
would have punched him,” he said, “but I didn’t think you wanted
me to.”
“I didn’t,” Seth said. He hadn’t wanted Marshall to punch
Cam, either. But he had a sneaking suspicion Marshall’s issues
with Cam ran deeper than Cam badgering his boyfriend. Bryce had
once told him Marshall and Cam used to be real friends.
Something had changed that.
J.J. stretched the thread across his knuckles, forcing the blood
away from his fingers. It made the scars across the backs of his
hands more prominent, slightly raised from his smooth, fair skin.
Seth sat up. “J.J., did you ever fight in the Arena?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said. “A few times.”
“Is that how you got your scars?”
“These?” J.J. splayed his hands on the bleacher, examining the
lacelike patterns as though he had forgotten all about them. “No.
These I got as a child.”
“How?”
“Had my hands held in a bowl of silver powder, to teach me a
lesson.”
J.J. said this without looking at his twin, and a wave of nausea
broke over Seth. Who hurt you? he wanted to ask. Except he knew
the answer. Regent had told him. Hunters were forced to torture
their werekin partners in the Scholae Bestiarii. If they refused, their
werekin partners were forced to torture them.
“Here he is,” J.J. said.
Seth looked up. Marshall was trudging toward them, shoulders
bowed inward like his stomach had been hollowed out. The
contrast to the elated boy Seth had watched make that same
journey last night was painful. He grabbed up his jacket and loped
down the bleachers to Marshall’s side. “Is he letting you play?”
Marshall shook his head. “You know the rules, Philadelphia.”
Screw the rules. They were talking about Marshall’s future.
Seth couldn’t believe Coach would be so unreasonable. “Yeah, but
the scout from Duke is coming! Can’t Coach make one teensy little
exception, just this once?” Marshall hesitated. Seth glared.
“Indiana, whatever it is you’re not telling me, you better tell me, or
I will break into Coach’s office and read the discipline report.”
“He gave me a choice, all right?” Marshall pushed a stray
basketball along the sideline with his foot, like it was a soccer ball.
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“I can be benched Friday or I can be benched for the first
sectionals game against Sacred Heart.”
“Oh.” Seth brightened. “Well, that’s not so bad. The Duke
scout will see how amazing you are, and – ”
“I told him to bench me Friday.”
Seth felt his jaw drop. He was flummoxed. He didn’t think he
had ever been flummoxed before. “I…you…I don’t understand.
Don’t you want to go to Duke?”
“Yes.” Marshall was mumbling. He must have run his hands
through his hair a lot in Coach’s office; it was standing up all
around his head, inky strands tangled like vines. “But you guys can
beat Elkville without me. Sacred Heart, maybe not. And if we lose
at sectionals, we lose our chance at state.”
Seth sometimes marveled at Marshall’s golden boy saintliness.
Like a true alpha, he had chosen the good of the pack over his own
desires. He put a hand on Marshall’s shoulder. “We’ll figure
something out,” he promised, though he had no idea what.
J.J. landed beside them, having leapt gracefully from bleacher
to bleacher on his way down to the court. “You should have told
me to punch him, Doc. I’ve already got one of those detention
thingies because I answered a question in English class. Seth says
it’s not so bad.”
Yeah, Seth thought, they won’t hold your hands in silver
powder, like some people.
“Thanks,” said Marshall, “but I can’t fight my own fights.”
Seth gave him a look. J.J. offering to punch someone for you was
J.J. being nice. Marshall blew out a long breath. When he spoke
again, his voice was more cheerful, if somewhat forced. “Oh well.
There’s other colleges, right? It’s not like Duke is the only school
that’s been interested in me.” He kicked the ball harder than Seth
thought he meant to; it rolled across the court, smacking into the
stage. “I’m more worried about you, Philadelphia. Aren’t you
supposed to be healed by now?”
J.J. asserted his opinion that Seth was overdue for a checkup,
and Marshall insisted on driving them to the fort. “But you’re
grounded,” Seth protested.
“I’ll be more than grounded once my father gets that
message,” Marshall said. “Let me enjoy my last few hours of
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freedom. Besides,” he patted his backpack, “I need to return
Agathon’s grimoire.”
***
The last time Seth had been inside Fort King had been to fight
a battle. As Marshall’s Audi circled up the long, paved drive,
flashbacks to that awful night stung the backs of his eyes. He could
see Angelo Alfaro, blistered by silver powder, hear his bellows
change over to moans, smell the blood that had sluiced across the
floor of the rotunda, the silver in the bullets that had felled so many
of his kindred. He rested his forehead against the window,
suddenly queasy.
Fort King had been best known for its prison – which had
never been a prison at all, but a top-secret Chimera hub used to
stow werekin captives until they could be shipped to more secure
locations. In the waning light, the prison’s black stone glittered like
an insect carapace. A sense of organicness pervaded the behemoth
structure, like it had been birthed from the pulsing womb of an
underground monster, then had sprouted a labyrinthine series of
wings connected by glassed-in skywalks. A monstrous fountain
guarded the front entrance: a three-headed chimera, water spraying
from three serpents’ heads attached to the body of a lion with a
scorpion-stinger tail. A Marine waved them through the gate. J.J., a
fully-fledged Resistance fighter, had the same credentials as
McLain.
Three sets of stone eyes marked the Audi’s progress as
Marshall parked. It was not an illusion. The fountain was imbued
with the trapped souls of the dead. As a necromancer, Agathon
could communicate with them. Like a magical CC-TV system.
The corrugated steel doors rattled upward when J.J. entered his
passcode into the keypad. Instead of numbers and letters, the keys
were Lemurian glyphs. Seth glanced up at the gun turrets on the
roof as they ducked inside, into a wide corridor overlooked by
walkways on the upper tiers of now-empty cellblocks. Straight
ahead was a set of steel doors, still dented from Alfaro’s horns.
Seth took a deep breath, braced to be struck by a wall of magic –
the prison’s wards, meant to prevent werekin from skinning.
Nothing happened. He blinked. “They took down the wards?”
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J.J. shrugged. “McLain and his men are our allies now. It
would be rude for them not to allow their allies to skin.”
“But Chimera still has collared werekin fighters, right? Aren’t
you worried they might attack?”
J.J. smiled placidly. Right, Seth thought. J.J. did not worry
about attacks. He wished for them.
Looking around the rotunda now, you would never have known
seventy hunters and half that many werekin had died there. The
barred windows had been replaced by a single, oval-shaped pane
of smoke-colored glass; a tree was painted on it, the branches
formed from squiggling lines and curling circles – Lemurian
glyphs. Seth recognized the symbols for star, ancestor, doorway
before looking away, an odd buzz building in the back of his skull.
The Birdcage that had confined the Black Swan was gone as
well. In its place, growing straight out of the floor, was a fifteenfoot-tall obsidian statue. Seth had to study it a moment, like the
abstract sculptures in the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, for
the fluid curves to coalesce into a meaningful shape: a lithe,
distinctly feminine form flowing into a long, supple neck and
feathered wings, human skin and animal skin elegantly fused. A
black swan.
“Beautiful,” Marshall murmured. But he was looking at Seth,
like he was saying Seth was beautiful. Seth blushed.
J.J. coughed. “If you guys need a minute…”
“J.J.,” Marshall said, mildly, “shut-up.”
He slid his fingers into Seth’s. Hand-in-hand, they followed J.J.
through a maze of obsidian corridors, with doors on either side
opening into high-tech offices and sterile-looking labs. Fort King
had been one of Chimera’s primary research facilities, the home of
the Ark they had recovered from Mt. Hokulani, the submerged
volcano that was all that remained of the lost island of Lemuria.
J.J. stopped outside a door marked PRIVATE. Seth recognized
it. This was the office where he and Cleo had first met McLain.
Raised voices came through the door – a high-pitched squeak and a
wolfish growl. Without knocking, J.J. strode inside. “Hey, Mel. Hi,
Captain. Any word on Ben?”
Teeny-tiny Melody Little looked around at them, pale green
eyes shining with anger. She was standing behind the desk,
knuckles pressed onto the stacks of papers scattered there. Mousy
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brown hair was braided down the back of her Grateful Dead Tshirt. Captain McLain, dressed in his desert fatigues, leaned against
the wall, arms folded.
Across the desk from them was Derek Childers, a rangy young
man with silvery blue eyes and a handsome face pockmarked by
burn scars.
As J.J. took up residence on a corner of the desk, McLain
nodded to Seth and Marshall. “I’m afraid we don’t have much to
share. The call placed to your house originated from somewhere in
South America, but we haven’t been able to pin down an exact
location,” he said. “I’ve got Dre working on it.”
South America? What in the name of the stars was Ben
Schofield doing in South America? Seth opened his mouth to ask,
then remembered he didn’t have “clearance” and closed it. “That’s
it?” J.J. said. “You haven’t found out anything about who this
‘Caroline’ is, or – ”
“It’s been less than a day since we started investigating,”
Melody interrupted sharply. “Have patience.”
Mumbling something too low for anyone to hear, J.J. started
picking papers up off the desk and scanning them, one at a time.
Seth thought McLain would tell him to put them down, but
apparently J.J. had pretty high-level security clearance. “Where’s
Agathon?” he asked.
“With the other freaks,” said Derek, “where he belongs.”
J.J. slowly lowered the paper. “You’re not meeting with the
Gen-0s now?”
Derek jerked his chin at McLain. “Not as long as they take
orders from his kind.”
“Melody, this is ridiculous.” J.J. looked exasperated. “We
have the advantage now, and we need to press it. What are we
waiting for? LeRoi to rebuild her werekin army? You think she
isn’t breeding more soldiers right now? You think she doesn’t have
hunters collaring as many warrior breeds from the Underground as
possible? You think she isn’t plotting to attack this fort and take
back the Ark?” J.J. forced himself to take a breath. “Dre cracked
the code. We know where Chimera’s other labs are. What we need
–”
“What we need,” said Derek, “is the Black Swan, but the last
anyone saw of her, she was with Agathon. Whose word do we
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have that she was freed? His?” He pointed at McLain, who was
now standing up straight. “A freak and a human. Not what I call
reliable witnesses. Not what any werekin would call reliable
witnesses.”
J.J. had gone still, like Regent used to do right before he
skinned into a five-hundred-pound tiger and clawed someone’s
face off. “So I’m not werekin enough for you because I was
collared my whole life, is that it, Derek? Would you like to check
my pedigree?”
“J.J., please.” Melody sounded weary. “We voted this
afternoon. The Commanders have decided: Until the Black Swan is
produced, we will not accept General Burke’s alliance.”
There was a moment of stunned silence during which Seth
could hear his heart beating. He had had no idea the divisions in
the Resistance ran this deep.
“So that’s it?” J.J. said. “You’ve decided not to fight, when
we’ve finally got LeRoi cornered? Damn it, Melody, we need – ”
“What we don’t need,” Derek said, “is more advice from
teenagers.”
Whatever J.J. was about to say next, Marshall dispatched it by
saying, “You have my word the Black Swan was freed.”
Seth’s stomach bottomed right into his basketball shoes.
Up until then, Derek had taken no notice of Marshall. Why
should he? Marshall wasn’t werekin; he wasn’t a hunter; he wasn’t
a soldier. He was nobody to the Resistance, which suited Seth fine.
Now, Derek’s eyes fastened on him with wolfish hunger. “What do
you mean, we have your word? Who are you?”
“Marshall Townsend,” Marshall replied. “I’m the one – ”
Seth stepped between them. Not that he was tall enough to
block much of Marshall from Derek’s view. “He’s my boyfriend,”
he said, quickly. “He was here the night of the battle. He saw the
Black Swan leave, under her own power. That’s all he meant.”
He stomped on Marshall’s foot, quelling his protest.
McLain had come to attention against the wall. None of
General Burke’s men knew Marshall had been involved in the
Black Swan’s disappearance, either. That included McLain.
Derek rubbed the stubble on his jaw, appraising Marshall
thoughtfully. “Did she speak to you? Did she tell you where she
was going?”
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“Don’t be stupid.” J.J.’s tone suggested such a feat might be
impossible for Derek. He slid around the desk so he was standing
next to Seth, in front of Marshall. “Why would the Black Swan
trust some random human with her location? She’s in hiding
because she doesn’t trust any of us.”
McLain sucked in a breath. He had become exceptionally pale.
“J.J. is right,” he said. “The Black Swan does not want to be found.
You need to accept that, Mr. Childers. She does not trust the
Resistance.”
Derek sneered. “As well she shouldn’t, if we throw our lot in
with those who work for Chimera.”
“Oh, for the love of the stars.” Melody massaged her temples.
“We’re just talking in circles now. J.J., if you’re here for Agathon,
he’s on the lower level.”
Subtext: Get lost, kids.
“What was all that about?” Marshall demanded, as they
hurried after J.J. back through the maze of corridors moments later.
Seth’s twin stalked ahead of them, veering away from the rotunda.
Seth quickly filled Marshall in on the division in Operation
Swan Song’s ranks, their pro-McLain and anti-McLain factions.
“But that’s an easy fix,” Marshall said. “I’ll just go back there and
explain – ”
“Explain what?” At the end of a stark hallway, J.J. stopped, in
front of an elevator with silver inlaid doors. There were no up or
down buttons, just a keypad with Lemurian glyphs. “Explain that
you helped the Black Swan escape? In case you weren’t listening,
Doc, she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is.”
“I wouldn’t have to say where she is. I’ll just explain that
Agathon is telling the truth. He flew her away from Fort King, I
put her in my car, and we drove away,” Marshall said.
“They won’t believe you,” J.J. said.
“Why? Because I’m not werekin?”
“Basically, yes,” J.J. said. “Besides, look at you. You wear
expensive clothes. You live in a big house. You drive a fancy car.
They’ll assume you’re working for LeRoi. That she paid you off.”
“J.J., I am dating a werekin.” Marshall said this slowly, with
strained patience. “How could I be working for Chimera?”
“You think you’d be the first human to keep one of us as a
pet?”
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Marshall grimaced like J.J. had plunged a knife into him. Seth
knew he was hearing Cam, at Leigh’s Sweet Sixteen party, calling
him Marshall’s new pet. Of course J.J. couldn’t have known that.
He looked at Seth, baffled by the effect of his words. Seth flashed
him a quick smile, trying to let him know it was okay, it wasn’t his
fault.
“Indiana, listen to me.” Tilting Marshall’s chin down, Seth
looked hard into those crystalline baby blues. “Even if you could
make them believe you, it’s too dangerous. We have a spy in the
Resistance, working for LeRoi. Whoever that is could capture you,
force you to tell them the Black Swan’s location.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Marshall said.
“We know that, Doc,” J.J. said, quietly. “But you have to
understand LeRoi. If she couldn’t torture it out of you, she would
go after the people you love.”
The flush faded from Marshall’s cheeks, leaving him quite
pale. “Right,” he said, softly, and took a deep breath. “So, where
are we going?”
Smiling in a way that showed the points of his teeth, J.J. tapped
a sequence into the elevator’s keypad. “Through the looking
glass,” he said.
***
Whiny emo music greeted them as the pneumatic doors
whooshed open. J.J. looked at Seth and shrugged. “Humanists,
remember?”
Okay. Seth was totally introducing the Gen-0s to better bands
than Paramore.
The lower levels looked exactly how Seth pictured a mad
scientist’s lair. The walls were smooth black stone, the tall ceilings
supported by thin stone columns; the overhead fluorescent lights
were encased in wire-mesh, like they needed to be protected from
stampeding monsters. Bolted to the walls were shelves upon
shelves of Lemurian texts and rows upon rows of glass-fronted
cabinets, stocked with potions, powders, and elixirs. Pickled
organs floated in formaldehyde jars. The air was close and dank.
The elevator had opened onto a large, rectangular room. A long
hallway branched off from it, into a web of rooms connected by
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narrow, high-ceilinged corridors, like a network of caves. The
lower levels, once Elijah Bishop’s private lab, were now the
domain of the Alpha Clan, as the Gen-0s had deemed themselves,
being the first of Chimera Enterprises’ experiments.
Agathon and two other Gen-0s were lying on extra-long black
couches by the hearth, sipping dark red liquid from crystal goblets.
Definitely not wine, though the scent, Seth’s jaguar nose discerned,
was too sharp to be human blood.
Seth didn’t judge. He ate animals, too.
The Gen-0s all had hairless bodies, mottled bluish-gray, like
stone, though it was actually paper-soft. Each stood at least ten feet
tall. Their features were pointed, feral, their eyes onyx black with
no whites. Agathon, the largest creature Seth had ever seen,
sprouted membranous black wings from his back and curly
insectile antennae from his temples. Mothman, Seth still thought of
him privately, not without affection.
Xanthe, whom Seth had only seen once, was naked from the
waist up, clad in an ankle-length kilt of forest-green, gossamer
material. Bony ridges protruded from his spine, connected to a
lizard tail that swept the floor behind him. His chest and cheeks
were tattooed with scarlet glyphs. His head was smoothly bald.
Seth didn’t know if that was natural or if he shaved it.
The third Gen-0 was a stranger to Seth. She was extremely
slender, almost delicate; deer antlers rose up from her mass of
curly black hair, a pair of fawn-like hooves peeking out beneath
her hooded white robe. Like the robe Marshall had worn in Seth’s
dream, hers was embroidered with scarlet glyphs.
“Seth.” Agathon set his glass down and rose from his couch.
His black robe swirled around his webbed feet. “Is the canine
well?”
“You mean Captain Hook? Yeah, man, he’s great,” Seth said.
“Thanks again for bringing him back.”
Agathon beamed. His teeth were really pointy, like he filed
them. “And your mother? She was not angry?”
“Nah,” Seth lied. “We’re cool.” Agathon looked relieved. Seth
hoped he wasn’t angling for a sleepover invite. Lydia wasn’t quite
that cool with the necromancer.
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J.J. had made an immediate beeline for Xanthe, who rose and
drew him into a corner. Xanthe leaned in, as though listening
intently, although J.J.’s lips never moved.
Marshall was fishing into his backpack for the grimoire.
Agathon clapped a hand on his shoulder – Marshall went white
around the mouth – and steered him over to the cheerily crackling
fireplace. “Marshall,” he rumbled, “this is my wife, Aphrodisia.
Aphrodisia, Marshall.” In Lemurian, he added, “He is a Healer.”
Aphrodisia inclined her head in a geisha-like bow. “It is an
honor, Healer.”
“You – you too,” Marshall stammered.
Seth was still hung up a few sentences back. “I didn’t know
you were married, Agathon,” he said. Could the Gen-0s reproduce?
he wondered.
Almost immediately, Seth decided there were some questions
you simply did not want answered.
Agathon’s wings opened and closed slowly. He would have
been blushing, were such a thing possible for a Gen-0. “We are
newlyweds,” he admitted.
“Congratulations,” Marshall managed.
“Seth?” J.J. came slinking over to them, Xanthe at his elbow.
They made an odd pair, to say the least. J.J. slung an arm around
Seth’s shoulder, proudly showing him off. “I want you to meet my
teacher, Xanthe.”
My teacher, he said, with something Seth had yet to hear J.J.
show any adult. Respect.
Wordlessly, Xanthe extended a hand, palm-up. Seth recoiled.
The Gen-0 were his kindred; he did not think of them as freaks like
Derek did. But something about Xanthe unnerved him. Something
wholly unrelated to his lizard tail.
“It’s all right,” J.J. said. “He just wants to say hello. Xanthe
communicates like I do, telepathically.”
Tentatively, Seth reached out. Xanthe’s fingertips touched his,
and a spark, cold as a sliver of ice, flared behind Seth’s eyes, as a
voice, soft as silk, said in his mind: You have seen Lemuria.
Images from Seth’s dreams poured forth, as though Xanthe had
ruptured a dam in his mind: the bowl-shaped tree in the graveyard
splitting apart, an island rising from it; the golden orb rising above
the nighttime river; the ancient race of animalistic beings lining the
97
shore…And another, older dream, one Seth had all but forgotten:
the Black Swan walking along the beach, singing a haunting
melody; the mountain at the heart of the island exploding in a fiery
rain of golden lava on the last, dying note; the ocean turned to
blood, churning up the charred bones of the werekin ancestors who
had died to sink Lemuria, and the power of the Totems, beneath
the sea…This is how it ends…
She speaks to you. The Black Swan speaks to you.
Seth jerked his hand back from Xanthe, shoving it into his
pocket. His scalp was stinging like he had been pricked by thorns;
he looked away quickly from the flat black eyes piercing his. J.J.
might have trusted Xanthe, but Seth was not so sure. The telepath
had just delved into his mind, uninvited, and called up precisely
what he wanted to see.
“I’m tired,” Seth said, tightly. “Can we do what we came here
to do and go home?”
“Of course,” J.J. said. It was clear from his puzzled expression
that he had no clue what had just passed between his teacher and
his twin.
He explained to Aphrodisia about the pain in Seth’s scar. She
directed Seth to remove his shirt and lie down on one of the long
metal tables in the corner. Seth obeyed, feeling a little like a
sacrificial lamb. It didn’t help that the table smelled like blood.
Werekin blood.
“Will this hurt?” J.J. asked, voicing the question Seth wanted
to ask, but was afraid would sound wimpy.
“It will not hurt,” Aphrodisia promised. She had a chime-like
voice, like raindrops on glass.
Seth wriggled around, trying to relax. Aphrodisia placed the
tips of her tapered fingers on his scar and closed her eyes.
“Marshall,” she said, holding out a hand. Marshall, who had been
hanging back, stepped forward, placing his fingers in hers. His
eyes widened, pupils expanding so his irises were almost entirely
black. Seth could tell he wasn’t seeing the room anymore. He was
seeing whatever Aphrodisia was seeing, which Seth guessed was
the inside of him.
“Jesus,” Marshall whispered. “What is that?”
“What?” There was a shrill edge to Seth’s voice. He was being
psychically X-rayed by a deer-woman. “What is what?”
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“The wound has not healed.” Releasing Marshall’s hand,
Aphrodisia opened her eyes and frowned down at Seth, small lines
appearing between her eyes. Marshall staggered; Agathon righted
him. “The silver in the bullet has leaked into your tissues. This was
a design of Dr. LeRoi’s, to ensure a wounded werekin could not
crawl away and survive, even if the bullet were to be removed.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you continue to be damaged, on the inside,”
Aphrodisia said. Seth looked down at his stomach, half-expecting
his scar to rip open and his guts to flop out. He really had lost
weight. Above the ridged muscles in his stomach, his ribs were
clearly visible. “Your body is working to heal itself. In time, it
may.”
“It may?” J.J. echoed. “You mean he could still die?”
Aphrodisia nodded.
The shock of this did not really sink in for Seth just then. He
couldn’t be dying. He had just been playing basketball.
“My love, what can be done?” Agathon was still holding on to
Marshall’s elbow. Marshall looked like he might pass out.
Somehow, Seth didn’t think the mind-meld was to blame. He had
gone white as a sheet at Aphrodisia’s nod.
“I have potions. They will strengthen him, increase his natural
abilities to heal.” Aphrodisia smoothed Seth’s brow. She smelled,
not unpleasantly, of honeysuckle and rose. “The magic in your
blood is strong, Seth Michael. Stronger than any I have ever felt.”
Automatically, Seth’s gaze flicked to J.J. Aphrodisia smiled. “Yes.
Stronger even than your brother’s.”
Whoa, Seth thought. No way. J.J. was ten times more powerful
than him, physically and magically.
Aphrodisia hooked him up with a dozen glass phials of
chartreuse-colored liquid – strengthening potion – and told him to
drink one with breakfast, one with dinner, and she would see him
back in a week. The werekin version of take an aspirin and call me
in the morning. She and Marshall wandered over to one of the
couches, deep in discussion about the potion’s magical properties.
Seth slipped his shirt back on, legs hanging over the exam table.
Agathon patted his back. “You will be well,” he promised.
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“Thanks, Agathon.” Seth combed his fingers through his
flattened hair. “Listen, we heard about the Commanders’ vote. I’m
sorry they’re being so difficult.”
Agathon smiled. He was incredibly Zen, for a necromancer.
“The Commanders are distrustful. Werekin have many reasons to
mistrust those who enslaved us. But I believe Captain McLain is
loyal to the Black Swan. My father taught me that we must have
faith in the essential goodness of humankind.”
Seth frowned. “Your – father?”
“Elijah Bishop,” Agathon clarified.
Seth recalled the last line of Bishop’s journal. Faith is not
wanting to know what is true. “I’m sure the Commanders will
come around,” he said, although the truth was, he doubted it.
Melody was in the minority in the Resistance for wanting to ally
with McLain – a vocal minority, but a minority all the same. At the
moment, with Ben and the Black Swan both M.I.A., Derek had all
of the support.
They needed to figure out who the spy was inside the
Resistance. Then the Black Swan could emerge from hiding, and
the werekin could stop fighting one another and focus on their real
enemy. Chimera.
100
Chapter Nine: Back Story
Once upon a time, the lodge-like house that loomed up in the
Audi’s high beams had belonged to Werner Regent. Seth forced
his eyes to remain on the ground, not to snap up automatically to
the second-floor windows in search of Regent’s broad silhouette,
as Marshall killed the engine, and he, Seth, and J.J. trekked across
the lawn, shadows from the sentinel trees rippling across the lawn.
“If you don’t feel up to training,” J.J. said, “we can cancel.”
“Are you kidding?” Seth leapt straight from the frosted grass
onto Regent’s porch. Cleo’s porch, he reminded himself. “I just
downed Superman potion. I am so ready to train.”
Seth really did feel incredible. He didn’t know what the street
value of strengthening potion would be, but he was sure
Aphrodisia could make a mint selling it on the black market.
The others had arrived ahead of them, as Seth had deduced
from the clunker van (their friend Chaz’s) and the battered Jeep
(Vixen O’Shea’s) parked beside the woodpile that fed the great
room’s slate-stone hearth. Dre was perched on one of the two
taupe-colored couches, laptop open on his bony knees, pecking
furiously at the keyboard; every few seconds, he swiped his bangs
out of his eyes. He barely looked up as the newcomers walked in.
Quinn was sitting with Emery on stools at the sunken bar, Emery’s
white gi making him look lankier than ever. They were both
sipping the chai tea that seemed to be the preferred brew of
werekin warriors.
When Regent had lived there, the walls had been adorned by
macabre trophies: the corpses of the werekin Resistance fighters he
had tortured and killed over the years, in his relentless pursuit of
the blood of the Jaguar Clan. Cleo had given those poor souls
proper burials in the acres of woods that surrounded the property.
Otherwise, little had changed, aside from the mess. Regent would
never have piled dishes in the sink or left takeout containers on the
counter. Cats were neat freaks.
Having once been a prisoner in this house, Seth had been
surprised Cleo had chosen to live in it. But Regent’s house did
have two special perks. One, the fully-equipped training studio
belowground, and two, the glass-enclosed big cat playground,
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complete with jungle canopy and babbling creek. The latter was a
plus if you happened to be in love with a werejaguar and wanted to
entice him into daily visits.
Cleo appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed for butt-kicking
in a black gi. J.J.’s eyes brightened at the sight of her. “Miss me?”
he called up.
“Not even a little.” Jumping the last step, Cleo pushed him out
of the way with a smirk.
Marshall had dropped his backpack on the couch beside Dre,
armed with a bag of Doritos and a Coke. Aphrodisia had loaded
him up with two new grimoires. Seth motioned for the others to
head down to the Bat Cave (Dre did not look as though he would
be moving from Cleo’s couch anytime this century; his beaky nose
was so close to the laptop screen his breath was fogging the glass)
and leaned on the back of the sofa. “How you holding up,
Indiana?”
“I might ask the same of you,” Marshall said. “Is karate really
the best idea with a punctured gut?”
“My gut is not punctured,” Seth said.
“I saw your insides, remember?”
Marshall twisted around to steal a kiss. The kind of kiss that
made Seth’s head fuzzy. “Stop changing the subject,” he growled.
Marshall grinned, popping out his dimple. That was almost as
distracting as his kisses. “I’m serious. This basketball thing, it’s a
big deal. If you want to talk about it, I don’t have to train right
now.”
“I’m fine, Philadelphia.” Marshall turned back to the grimoire.
A page of notes was open beside him – Lemurian vocabulary
words. He waved a hand. “Go. Fight with swords. Don’t get
stabbed.”
“You don’t stab with katanas,” Seth told him. “You slice.”
Regent’s Bat Cave reminded Seth of a dojo, with its white mat
stretching from mirrored wall to mirrored wall. An immense
collection of weapons, running the gamut from crossbows to
daggers, hung from iron pegs on one wall, above a table that held
towels and bottled water.
By the time Seth jogged down the steps, J.J. had changed into
his karate gi, which was white, and tied a black headband around
his golden head. He was showing Quinn how to execute a knife102
hand strike. Cleo rather deliberately did not look at them as she
walked over to Seth, who hooked his curved samurai sword on one
of the pegs and started shucking into his gi.
“Guess you heard about the Resistance vote,” he said.
Cleo nodded. “I can’t believe they won’t fight. McLain was
sure, once Dre got us the intel, that they would.”
Cleo always spoke of McLain with a soldier’s ardent reverence
for a commanding officer. McLain had helped train her and J.J. in
the Scholae Bestiarii. Remembering that made Seth remember the
scars on J.J.’s hands, and how he had gotten them. He turned away
from her, limbering up by arching his spine so far it popped.
“There has to be a way to figure out who the spy is. Em, does your
mom have any ideas who it might be?”
Emery said she did not. Quinn, on the other hand, had a
different theory. “My mother says Melody doesn’t want to suspect
any of her fellow Commanders. But if I had to bet, I’d say it has to
be one of them. No one else would have the clearance to know
who the Black Swan was, or where Ben Schofield had been sent on
his mission.”
Snippets of the phone call came back to Seth. Bishop. Spy.
Tortoise. Caroline. They are coming for you. “How’s Alfaro?” he
asked.
“Healing,” Quinn said.
They got down to business then. The Scholae Bestiarii taught
weaponry and martial arts. Regent had inducted Seth into the
school of karate he, as a Gen-3, had been trained in, Wado Ryu.
The Gen-7, like Cleo and J.J., had been trained in a slightly
different style, more focus on weapons, less on hand-to-hand.
Explained why they could fight equally well with swords, daggers,
nun chucks, maces, or axes. Seth had never seen Regent pick up a
weapon. Being a five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger, he hadn’t really
needed to.
They started with floor exercises – strikes, jabs, kicks. J.J.,
their undisputed alpha, led them, out in front with the others
fanned out behind him, imitating his movements, flowing from
stance to stance in a slow-motion ballet.
J.J. was patient and supportive, stepping in a few times to
correct Emery’s technique or show Seth a new move. He did not
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yell at them for being limp noodles or numbskull cubs. He did not
bark, “Now, again.”
Those were silly things to miss, Seth told himself.
Finally, J.J. tossed Seth’s katana to him and selected another
from the weapons wall for himself. They placed them on the mat,
knelt, and bowed to one another before unsheathing their
respective blades.
Seth’s katana had been a gift from Regent, forged specially for
him. The curved blade was etched with a jaguar design: one light,
one dark. It reflected a Mayan myth of two jaguar gods. The light
jaguar ruled the land of the living; the black jaguar ruled the land
of the dead. The myth had bothered Seth when Regent had told it
to him. Now, as he looked into J.J.’s golden eyes, a mirror of his
own, Seth thought how much he didn’t know about J.J. Such as
why he had killed their father, or when he had stopped being loyal
to LeRoi. Or if he ever had been in the first place.
They needed a sit-down brother talk, and soon. Sadly, pinning
J.J. down for a conversation was exactly like trying to lasso a
wildcat.
J.J.’s sword mirrored Seth’s in length and balance, but J.J. held
his like he had been born with it in his hand. The twins faced one
another, blades drawn. Cleo, Quinn and Emery observed from the
wall, Emery in the middle, the girls studiously ignoring one
another. The only word Seth had heard them speak to one another
was hello.
“You’re too stiff,” J.J. said. “Roll your shoulders back. Don’t
fight the weight of the sword. Embrace it.”
“Yes, sensei,” Seth intoned. J.J. snickered.
Seth did as instructed. Instantly his shoulders fell more
comfortably into their sockets, his spine elongating as he sucked
his stomach in. “Good,” J.J. approved. “Now, listen up. Samurai
sword training is not fencing, all right? You’d be sliced and diced
if we just went at one another with blades this sharp. We’re going
to start with the basic cuts, the side cut, which we call the yoko
giri, and the vertical cut, the kesa giri. Then we just practice those
moves over and over, until they’re so deeply ingrained in muscle
memory they become reflexes. Got it?”
“Yoko and Kesa,” Seth nodded. “Muscle memory. Got it.”
“Then we begin,” J.J. said, “slowly.”
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Paralleling one another on the mat, they parted the air with
their swords in slow motion, first across the body (yoko giri), then
straight down to the floor (kesa giri). J.J. was not showy; he didn’t
flourish his sword or throw in fancy footwork. He taught Seth
killing strokes calmly, methodically, using the same words as
Regent. Honor. Courage. Discipline. Always, discipline.
Seth no longer found it fruity, Way of the Warrior crap. He had
fought in a battle. Seen firsthand what it meant to fight with
courage, to die with honor.
When J.J. sheathed his sword at last, their small audience
applauded. Seth had been so focused he had forgotten anyone else
was even in the room; only now did he feel the ache in his
shoulders from wielding a sword nonstop for an hour. “That’s it?”
he pouted, as J.J. returned his katana to the wall. “No sparring?”
“It’s too dangerous,” J.J. said.
Seth made a chicken-clucking noise. J.J. didn’t crack a smile,
but Cleo unhitched from the wall, ice-chip eyes glittering. “I’ll spar
with you, sweetheart,” she said. “I won’t even need a sword.”
“You want some of this, Cleopatra?” Seth spread his arms, the
sword dangling from his fingertips. “Come and get it.”
Cleo smiled. Don’t mind if I do.
Foregoing the nicety of bows, she attacked, in a rapid-fire
series of kicks and jabs Seth had to dance sideways to avoid. A
karate-chop zipped by his ear, a blow that would have knocked
him senseless had it landed; he pivoted, swinging the sword in a
side cut – only to fly backwards, into the wall, as Cleo’s heel
slammed into his solar plexus.
He slid to the mat. Cleo plucked up the sword and leveled the
tip at his throat, pricking his Adam’s apple. J.J. tensed, minutely.
Emery was bouncing on his toes, furry ears twitching, halfway
skinned.
Seth lifted the hand that was not holding his ribs. “I surrender,”
he groaned.
“Smart boy.” Cleo lowered the blade. “You know what your
mistake was?”
“Besides agreeing to fight you?”
Cleo smirked. “You were only fighting with your sword. If you
rely too much on a weapon, it becomes a crutch, not an
instrument.”
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She shot J.J. a look. “Your point?” he drawled, offering Seth a
hand up.
“My point – ” Cleo tossed the sword at him; J.J. caught it onehanded “ – is that if you’re going to teach him, teach him right.”
***
J.J. wanted Seth to stay and romp in the big cat playground.
Seth wanted to; he hadn’t skinned for any length of time in days.
But the potion was wearing off, and his trying day was catching up
to him. “Rain check,” he said. “And don’t forget we have school
tomorrow.”
J.J. sighed.
Emery and Dre had to take off as well. Inventory night at ReSpin. Quinn, her gi traded out for her usual sport-o gear, walked
over to the glass wall and peered inside. J.J. said something to her,
something Seth didn’t hear, but Quinn nodded. J.J. offered her a
hand, stepping backwards through the opening in the glass onto
one of the enormous limbs that arced almost fifty feet above the
creek. Quinn followed him out onto it. Together, they picked their
way down the branches to the creek.
Cleo turned on her heel, glancing at Marshall. He was busy
packing up his grimoires. “I’ll walk you out,” she volunteered to
Seth. He followed her onto the porch.
A light drizzle was falling as they crossed the lawn; the air was
hazy, the moon a misty crescent shrouded by smoky clouds. Cleo
hopped up on the Audi’s trunk. Seth propped a hip against the
fender, twirling his katana. He wanted to say something to reassure
her about J.J. and Quinn, but as he and Cleo had never actually
discussed her feelings for his twin, he wasn’t sure how to. “Have
you heard from Connor Burke?” he asked, instead.
“No. I only met him the one time,” Cleo said. “It’s not like I
gave him my number.”
“Does that mean he asked for it?”
“He was a perfect gentleman,” Cleo said.
Moonlight silvered her eyes as she leaned back on her palms.
The connection was just that simple – and Seth, feeling his
stomach roll over, could not believe he had never made it before.
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“Cleo,” he said, impulsively, “was one of your parents a
werewolf?”
Cleo stared at him, frozen. Then she slid off the car and started
for the house.
“Wait.” Seth grabbed her wrist; Cleo turned, her arms sliding
around his neck as she did, and suddenly it did not matter to Seth
what had happened between her and J.J. in the Scholae Bestiarii –
what Cleo had been made to do, as a child, to survive. Cleo was his
best friend. He wanted to squeeze the hurt right out of her. He
buried his nose in her neck. “I’m sorry – that was thoughtless of
me, I shouldn’t have – ”
“My mother,” Cleo whispered, her lips against Seth’s ear. “I
was taken from her when I was born. All hunters are. I – I never
knew her…”
“Cleo.” Seth hugged her closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Am I interrupting?”
Marshall’s voice was clipped. He was standing a few feet
away, a muscle working in his jaw. Cleo quickly stepped back
from the embrace, cuffing at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Seth rolled his eyes. As if Marshall had reason to be jealous of
Cleo. Now, if he had walked in on Seth cuddling Emery, it would
have been a different story. “You okay?” he asked, softly.
“Of course I am,” Cleo said. Without meeting Marshall’s eyes,
strode back to the house.
**
At lunch the next day, the first day of Marshall’s suspension,
Seth accompanied J.J. to the Haven table. The ballplayers’ table
held little appeal to him without Marshall there, even if Cam was
MIA as well; Topher had reported that his nose was broken so
severely he was seeing a plastic surgeon to have the cartilage
repaired. For a golden boy, Marshall packed one hell of a right
hook.
Whitney had jumped ship as well. She was currently occupying
Dre’s usual seat beside Emery, Dre nowhere to be seen. Seth never
saw Whitney these days without her nose stuck in the book of
sonnets Emery had given her for Valentine’s Day. They made a
cute pair, he thought, Emery in his denim jacket and stonewashed
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jeans, Whitney in her corduroy skirt and sloppy cardigan, both just
a little off-beat.
Leigh, attached at the hip to Bryce, threw J.J. dark looks across
the room for stealing Seth away.
“How was detention?” Quinn asked, as J.J. lowered onto the
chair beside hers. He had been even later than usual coming home
from his romp last night. Seth noticed that he laid his arm across
the back of Quinn’s chair, angling casually toward her.
“No worse than class,” he said. “How’s Doc doing?”
“Okay, I guess.” Whitney pushed her book aside. “Marshall
has never done anything like this before. He’s never even been in a
fight.”
“He has natural talent,” said J.J., helpfully. “He laid Collin
out.”
“Cam,” Emery corrected. J.J. nodded like he cared.
“How hard did your father come down on him?” Seth asked.
“It was ugly.” Whitney sounded bleak. “He screamed at him
for an hour, about how he needs to make better choices, because
Dad won’t always be there to bail him out, and if he doesn’t get his
act together he can forget about med school…”
“Good Christ,” Emery said, pink nose wrinkled in disgust. “It
was one fight.”
“Marshall just sat on the couch with his hands in his lap. He
didn’t say a word. When it was over, he went upstairs and closed
his door. He hadn’t come down before I left this morning.”
Ozzie Harris patted Whitney’s shoulder; her lower lip was
trembling. Seth, his appetite gone, threw his napkin over his tray.
His cell phone rang then. Seth so rarely used it he had to
fumble around in his backpack to find it. He didn’t recognize the
number, and his heart sped up. “Hello?”
“Seth?”
The voice was Jack’s. Seth was disappointed. He had been
hoping for Ben. “Hang on a sec,” he said, and hurried out of the
cafeteria, into the chilly courtyard, for some privacy. He didn’t
think J.J. would rat him out to Lydia for talking to Jack, but Seth
wasn’t ready for J.J. to know their step-father was delving into
Thomas Sullivan’s past. Thomas was an awkward subject between
them.
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The day was drizzly and cold. Only a few twelfth-graders had
braved it, hunkered down by the band room, smoking cigarettes on
the sly. Seth was pretty sure they were about to be busted.
Someone was sitting in the black sedan he had seen parked in the
teachers’ lot the other evening. Probably Dr. Gideon. He seemed
the type to eat lunch alone in his car.
A small figure was hunched under a gray poncho by the gym
doors. Not smoking, just sitting. Seth thought he recognized the
beat-up tennis shoes.
He sat down at one of the picnic tables, running his fingers
through the raindrops beading on the wood. “Okay. What’s up?”
“I looked into Tommy, like you asked,” Jack said. “I have
some information.”
There was a pause. “I’m listening,” Seth said.
“Oh. Did you want me to tell you now?”
No, Jack, I’d like you to dangle this information in front of me
and call back in the morning. “Now is good for me,” Seth said.
“Well, I thought…If you have time this weekend, I thought I
might tell you in person.”
Lydia would quash that in a heartbeat. “Actually, I don’t think
I’m allowed to see you,” Seth said.
“Oh,” Jack said, again. “Well, all right. I – ”
“Wait.” Seth sighed. This was probably a bad idea, but as he
daily proved, most of his ideas were. “Mom has a library board
meeting on Saturday morning. Pick me up at nine.”
It was agreed. Seth said a quick goodbye, tucked the phone into
his pocket, and crossed the damp courtyard. “What’s shakin’, Baby
Bird?”
The small figure under the gray poncho squinted up at him
through the drizzle. Unsurprisingly, a sleek black laptop was
sheltering under the poncho with him. “Hi, Seth,” Dre said.
Something was up with Baby Bird. When Seth had first met
him, Dre had been a live wire of kinetic energy. Now he
looked…droopy. Even his brightly-colored wardrobe had been
watered down to a plain white T-shirt and striped black pants. Seth
sank down on the concrete next to him. “Does McLain know you
do your top-secret ultra-classified hacking on your lunch hour?” he
asked.
“Actually, I was working on my history paper,” Dre said.
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“History, huh? Leigh hates that class.”
Dre’s lashes lowered over his quick, dark eyes. Ah-ha, thought
Seth. “You know, if you want to get a girl’s attention, moping
around in the rain by yourself really isn’t the best way,” he said.
Dre cocked his head inquisitively to one side. “How do you get
a girl’s attention?”
While Seth’s experience with the fairer sex was, admittedly,
limited, he had lived with Leigh for the last two months. And
growing up in the Underground had made him an astute observer
of human behavior. “From what I’ve seen, the more you act like
you don’t know they’re alive, the more girls notice you.”
Dre looked puzzled. “So…if I want Leigh – I mean, if I want a
girl to like me, I should be mean to her?”
“Girls are complex creatures,” Seth said, advice Whitney
Townsend had once given him. “Now.” He leaned in, doublechecking that J.J. hadn’t snuck up behind them. He had a tendency
to do that. Drove Leigh nuts. “Do you know anything about a
Chimera facility in South America?”
Dre jumped like Seth had poked him with a cattle prod. “No! I
mean, uh, not that I…”
“Andre. Andre, Andre, Andre.” Seth shook his head. “Did I or
did I not just do you a solid with the girlfriend advice?”
“Well…that is…yes.” Dre deflated, small hands fluttering
back to his sides. “Okay. But I can only tell you what I know.”
“Which is?”
“It’s not a Chimera facility,” Dre said. “McLain and Ben think
it might be the location of the Tortoise Clan.”
He explained about the coordinates on LeRoi’s PDA, the heat
signature in the Amazon Rainforest, near Manaus, Brazil. “You do
know what McLain and Agathon think is hidden inside Mt.
Hokulani, right?”
Seth nodded. He knew the bell would be ringing soon; he
willed it to hold off just a bit longer, now that he had Baby Bird
singing. “A spaceship.”
“Not just a spaceship. Not really.” Dre was speaking very
quietly and very quickly; as his voice was soft anyway, Seth had to
strain to catch the words. “If you sent a rocket up to Jupiter, you
wouldn’t find the Totems hanging out on one of its moons.
Agathon believes they came from another dimension.”
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“What,” Seth said, “through like a wormhole?”
He was only half-serious, but Dre bobbed his head.
“Something like that, yes. A dimensional door. A portal. Bishop
and LeRoi were convinced if they could raise Lemuria they would
find a device that could carve a doorway in the space-time
continuum, allowing the werekin, or anyone with control of their
magic, to travel to the Totems’ dimension. The Ark is the key to
raising Lemuria, but the Tortoise Clan guards the Source that
operates the device.”
McLain had told Seth some of this prior to the battle at Fort
King, though he had neglected to mention other worlds LeRoi
might try to conquer. “And the Tortoise Clan is...?”
“The only clan to have survived the sinking of Lemuria. If you
believe the legends.”
Dre didn’t sound as though he did. “And Agathon does?”
“Xanthe does.” Ergo, thought Seth, J.J. does. “Elijah Bishop’s
father, Abraham Bishop, was an archaeologist. He made a career
out of studying Mayan ruins. When Elijah Bishop was ten years
old, he went with his father on an expedition into the Amazon. A
year later, he walked out, alone, and Abraham Bishop was never
heard from again. But a decade later,” Dre said, “Elijah Bishop
discovered the remains of Lemuria. Xanthe believes the Bishops
found the Tortoise Clan, and they told them how to raise Lemuria.”
Bishop. Tortoise Clan. They are coming for you. “So Ben went
looking for the Tortoise Clan? Why?”
“Because LeRoi wants what the Tortoise Clan is protecting.
Ben went to the Amazon to find LeRoi, because if we capture
LeRoi, the Black Swan can come out of hiding, and we can all go
home.”
There was a finality to the way Dre said “home.”
The bell rang then, and Dre hopped to his feet. “You won’t tell
anybody I told you all of this, will you?” he said. “Especially not
J.J.?”
He seemed a little afraid J.J. might eat him. Seth vowed to keep
Dre’s breach of national security just between them.
All afternoon, though, he kept returning to what Dre had told
him. He kept thinking about Ben, hunting down LeRoi in the
jungle, and wondering why he had never called back.
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Cleo’s new truck was bitchin’. Her lifestyle was being financed
by Operation Swan Song now; McLain had sprung for her a Ford
F150 Super Crew in Red Candy Metallic, tricked out with a gun
rack in the back window and a stereo system Seth would have
busted a window out for back in Philly. He informed Cleo of this
as she drove him home from training that night. Emery had driven
J.J. to Fort King, to talk to Xanthe about something.
“Thank you,” said Cleo, as she turned into the Stewards’ drive.
She had changed from her karate gi into cotton shorts and a T-shirt
that said KEEP STARING, I’M RELOADING. “You should ask
McLain to give you clearance to drive the Yamaha again.”
Seth sighed wistfully. Ah, the Yamaha. He missed his baby.
Sometimes he went outside to visit her in the garage, under her
tarp. “Mom would flip, though,” he said.
“J.J. says your mom flips over everything.”
“She is a little stressed right now,” Seth admitted.
The street lights winked on, at the same time a light came on in
Marshall’s bedroom. A tall shadow moved behind the curtain.
Lydia and Leigh had planned a girls’ night out with Meredith and
Whitney, Seth recalled, and Dr. Townsend, as Marshall had once
said, never made it home before ten. Meaning his boyfriend, poor
dear, was home alone.
He looked back at Cleo. “Do you think J.J. will stay in Fairfax,
now that the Resistance isn’t fighting?”
“Where else is he going to go?” Cleo said. “J.J. would never
make it Underground. He’s too…J.J.” That was certainly true.
Even without jaguar spot tattoos around his eye, J.J. would never
blend in with humans. Girls still tripped over themselves staring at
him in the halls. Although possibly that had to do with something
other than the werekin vibe. “Anyway, McLain will find out who
the spy is eventually, and then the ball will get rolling on taking
down LeRoi.”
“I still think it’s Derek,” Seth asserted.
“You just think that because you don’t like him,” Cleo said.
“You’ve seen his scars, right? Hunters did that to him. Derek hates
hunters. That’s why he doesn’t trust McLain – because he helped
train hunters for Chimera.”
As if called by her words, in the rearview mirror Seth spied the
young captain jogging up the sidewalk. His sweatshirt was soaked
112
in the back, dark hair stuck to his head; he had obviously been
running hard for several miles. Seth had the sense that the music
pumping through his earphones had a hard beat. He glanced over at
the Stewards’ as he turned up his own walk, saw Cleo’s truck, and
waved.
Seth waved back. “Leigh told me he has a sister.”
“I wouldn’t know. We don’t really talk about that stuff.” Cleo
put the truck in drive, and Seth reached for the door handle. “You
coming over this weekend?”
“Sure,” said Seth. “If you want me to.”
“I want you to.” Cleo leaned over to kiss his cheek. “’Night,
sweetheart.”
Seth climbed out and waved until her taillights disappeared
through the misty rain. Then he snuck around to the Townsends’
backyard, skinned, and leapt onto the roof.
Acutely aware that he was visible from the street, the jaguar
padded across the shingles to Marshall’s window and scratched at
the glass. The curtain twitched. “Jesus!” someone yelped. Seth
waved a paw, whining low. Marshall, it’s Seth! Let me in!
A moment later, the sash opened. Seth padded in, skinning as
he jumped to the floor. “I’m never going to get used to that,”
Marshall sighed.
Seth grinned. Marshall was already in his p.j.s – sweatpants
and a faded Adidas T-shirt. “How goes the incarceration?” he
asked.
“Productive,” Marshall said.
He gestured at his bed. The grimoires Aphrodisia had given
him were open on his pillow, as were three different medical
journals, all open to articles on human cloning. His bedside table
was stacked with yellow legal pads, each covered in his blocky
handwriting. Seth raised an eyebrow. “Indiana, if you were
creating an alien zombie virus to destroy the world, you would tell
me, right?”
“Absolutely, Philadelphia. You’d be the first to know.”
Marshall stretched out on the bed. Seth shrugged out of his
letterman’s jacket, kicked his shoes off, and stretched out next to
him, wishing he had showered at Cleo’s. He smelled more like a
goat than a cat. “Whitney said it was a bad scene with your dad,”
he prompted, gently.
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“That’s putting it mildly. He made me call and apologize to
Cam.”
“Bet that was fun,” Seth grinned.
“Tons.” Marshall scooted closer to him. “Can you stay?”
A little zing shot through Seth’s heart. “You mean, all night?”
“Just to sleep,” Marshall said quickly.
What happened to “carpe diem”? The last time Seth had been
in this bed, Marshall had been taking his clothes off. “What about
your father?”
“I’ll lock the door.” Marshall popped up on an elbow.
“Please?”
Like anyone with a soul could say no to those baby blues.
Seth showered in Marshall’s lavish bathroom – alone, as
Marshall seemed to be firmly back inside his golden boy
boundaries tonight. The T-shirt and sweats he had provided were
three times too big. Seth decided against them and emerged in his
own jeans, shirtless.
Marshall was already under the covers with the lights off. Seth
crawled in beside him and tucked the covers around his chin. His
new scar made him self-conscious.
“Did you call your mom?” Marshall asked.
“Yup. She says she sees no evil, hears no evil, and will
mention nary a word to your mother.” Just another reason, Seth
thought, that Lydia was SuperMom Goddess.
They kissed for a while. When Seth tangled his fingers in
Marshall’s hair, Marshall kicked the covers to the foot of the bed
and rolled over on top of him. “What happened to just sleeping?”
Seth whispered.
“Sorry.” Marshall fell back on his pillow with a groan. “I’ll
behave.”
“I wasn’t telling you to stop,” Seth protested. Marshall
mumbled what sounded like “don’t tempt me.” Seth was all about
tempting him, but first, he had a question. “Indiana, this thing with
Cam – ”
“Cam?” Marshall sat up. “You want to talk about Cam now?”
“Why not now?”
“Fine,” Marshall said, exasperated. “I shouldn’t have punched
him. But he hurt you, because of me. I know you’re going to say
that’s a double standard, that now I know how you feel, and maybe
114
you’re right. But I couldn’t – when I saw your face, and you were
in pain – ”
“I wasn’t in that much pain,” Seth said.
“How much pain do you have to be in before I’m allowed to
care, exactly?”
He had Seth there. Turning Marshall’s hand over, Seth kissed
the pulse point in his wrist. “This conversation we’re having,” he
said. “Does it qualify as a fight?”
Marshall’s lips twitched. “Probably. Why?”
“Because that means we can make up later.” Marshall snorted
with laughter. Seth pulled him back down on the bed, draping an
arm across his chest. Part of him wanted to let the Cam subject
drop, get back to kissing, but he knew something was wrong.
Something that made Marshall’s kisses, sweet as they were, taste a
little sad. “I’m not giving you a hard time for punching Cam, all
right?” he said. “I was just wondering why you did it. And don’t
say it’s about me. I know there’s more to it. Bryce told me you
guys used to be friends.”
For a long time Marshall was quiet, staring at the shadows
drifting across his closet door. Folded laundry was stacked in front
of it, like he hadn’t bothered putting anything away after he had
taken it out of the basket.
Seth waited him out, tracing circles on Marshall’s collarbone,
practicing that stillness Regent had taught him.
At last, Marshall said, “Last summer, right before school
started, I was staying over at Cam’s. No big deal. We practically
lived at each other’s houses growing up. He fell asleep, but I
couldn’t, so I went downstairs to watch TV.
“It was really late. Like two in the morning. Dr. Foss was on
the couch, reading. I hadn’t even realized he was home. Cam’s
mom died a long time ago, and Dr. Foss lives at the hospital, even
more than my father does. Anyway, he asked me to get him a beer.
I could tell he’d had a lot to drink already, but it was none of my
business if he wanted to get plastered in his own house, so I went
out to the kitchen to get him one. And he…came up behind me,
while I was at the fridge.”
Seth swallowed hard. No way this story had a happy ending.
“He put his hands on my shoulders. Like really tight. He was
saying all this stuff, I don’t remember most of it, just stuff about
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how I’d turned out better than anyone had dreamed, how I’d made
good on all of my potential. There wasn’t anything wrong with
what he was saying. It was just the way he was saying it. And the
whole time he was holding me there, like in place or whatever,
rubbing my shoulders. It freaked me out. As soon as he let go of
me, I handed him his beer and went back upstairs.
“The next day, I made the mistake of telling Cam about it. He
blew up. We had this huge fight. I’ve known Cam since we were
born, and we had never, ever fought like that. He told me I had
misunderstood. He said his dad wouldn’t come on to me, or
whatever. And I had to admit, nothing really happened. But I
wouldn’t go over there anymore. And that’s when Cam started
making his little digs about me being gay.”
“What did your father say?” Seth asked, softly.
“I didn’t tell him. I was afraid he would think the same thing
as Cam – that it was something I did that made Dr. Foss act like
that.”
Even in the half-light, Seth could see Marshall was blushing.
Not a blush of embarrassment. A blush of shame. He sat up.
“Indiana, you know that isn’t true. You were seventeen. If a grown
man had done that to Whitney, started touching her when they
were alone in the middle of the night, would you say it was
something she did that made him cross that line?”
“No,” Marshall said. He didn’t seem convinced, though. He
scrubbed a hand across his face. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.
Cam was a jerk and a bully our whole lives. I just never said
anything before because he wasn’t picking on people I cared about.
And now we’re not friends, so I guess that’s that.”
He sounded worn out. Physically and emotionally drained. Seth
lay back down beside him. “Indiana?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d like to make up now.”
Marshall laughed.
***
Later, after Marshall fell asleep, Seth picked up one of the
notepads on his bedside table and flipped through it. A little flower
of unease opened inside his heart.
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Drawn in the margins of every page was the same image, over
and over: a slender female form flowing into a graceful neck and
feathered wings. A black swan.
117
Chapter Ten: The Ovid Experiment
Win or lose, the Fairfax High Knights always retired to MoJo’s
after their games. Friday night, Seth was simply not in the mood
for more quality time with his teammates. When Lydia insisted on
treating him to dinner out, he suggested Raw Fish, a dimly-lit,
hyper-Asian fusion hotspot with ultramarine walls dotted with
round, opaque windows overlooking the river. Tangerine-colored
booths surrounded the central polished bar, behind which mounted
aquariums teemed with colorful fish. Leigh had been dying to try it
out since the restaurant had opened last month. Reservations were
preferred, but the hostess recognized Jack Steward’s wife on sight
and ushered their party to a booth in the back.
Seth linked his arm through Lydia’s, escorting her like a
character in a black-and-white movie. They were woefully
underdressed in their Fairfax High sweatshirts and jeans, having
just come from the game – a heartbreaking 75 to 72 loss for the
Knights. Marshall had cheered his team on from the bench through
every botched play. Of which there had been many: At the buzzer,
Topher had gone up for a three-pointer, a shot that would have tied
the game, and which Marshall could completely have nailed; their
captain had come off the bench, shouting wildly; but the ball had
bounced off the rim, and Marshall had slumped back down,
shoulders hunched like stones were being piled on top of him.
Dr. Townsend had been in the stands, glaring daggers at Seth.
As though Marshall’s fall from grace was all his doing.
Lydia stopped three times on their way across the restaurant to
say hi to people she knew. J.J. did not stick around to be
introduced. He headed straight for their booth, pursued by Leigh,
who plunked down across from him and launched into what
appeared to be a furious tirade.
“Any ideas what they’re fighting about now?” Lydia inquired
of Seth, sotto voice.
Seth’s answer, which was that he had no idea – J.J. could
annoy Leigh simply by breathing – was lost in a tremendous yawn.
Lydia frowned at him. “Seth, honey, are you getting enough rest?”
“Just tired from the game,” Seth assured her. He slid into the
booth across from J.J. and picked up his menu to hide behind,
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fingering the phial of strengthening potion in his pocket. He had
not apprised Lydia or Leigh of Aphrodisia’s diagnosis. Knowing
them, he would have been benched until his Gen-0 Healer wrote
him a clean bill of health. Marshall had sacrificed the scholarship
to Duke to bring home the state title. The Knights were going all
the way this season, if Seth had to be carried out on a stretcher
afterwards.
A server came by to take their order. Seth excused himself to
the restroom straightaway. Alone, he downed the potion, feeling
like the junkie Regent had once painted him as.
In the gilt mirror above the porcelain sinks, he inspected his
scar. It was ropy and raised, a white cord across his lap, tender to
the touch. With a pang Seth noted the concavity between his
hipbones. His eyes were impossibly large in his thin face. Even
with the potion, the constant healing was sapping him.
“You are not dying,” he told his reflection.
The argument between J.J. and Leigh had receded into their
usual sniping by the time he returned to the table. “You know
those fish used to be alive,” Leigh was informing J.J., as she
stabbed at her seaweed salad.
J.J. scooped smoked salmon up with his chopsticks. “Tasty,
wriggly little fishies…”
Leigh looked like she wanted to call him a name she couldn’t
with their mother present. She shifted her attention to Seth, eyes
gentling. “Were you sick?”
“When?” Seth asked innocently.
“Just now, in the bathroom. You were gone a while.”
“I was fixing my hair.” Seth speared a veggie roll off her plate,
and nearly gagged on it. Humus. Yech. All the cream cheese and
red onion in the world couldn’t disguise that cardboard taste. He
wiped his tongue on a napkin.
“So you weren’t getting sick?” Leigh pressed.
“Back off, would you?” J.J. said. The silver-haired couple in
the booth next to theirs frowned at him. J.J. flashed a fanged smirk
and they quickly turned away, whispering to one another. “He said
he was fine. Leave him alone.”
“Just because you don’t care what happens to him doesn’t
mean I can’t be concerned,” Leigh fired back.
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Lydia put her wine glass down rather forcefully. “Is it possible
for the two of you to eat one meal without biting each other’s
heads off?”
“No,” Leigh and J.J. said, in unison. Seth slurped his soup to
stifle a laugh.
For dessert they ordered mitsumame, served in fluted crystal
bowls with individual cups of black syrup. J.J. and Seth had two
helpings apiece, and Seth finished Leigh’s. She was staying skinny
in case Bryce asked her to prom. Emery had already asked
Whitney. The girls were planning a dress shopping extravaganza.
The main event was just weeks away.
On the drive home, Seth sacked out, utterly exhausted, in the
back of the Escalade. Up front, Lydia and Leigh were chatting
about the upcoming school board meeting to vote on her antidissection petition. “What did you need to talk to Xanthe about last
night?” Seth whispered to his twin.
“You,” J.J. said. “He’s interested in your dreams. He wants to
train you, like he did me.”
“You sent me those dreams,” Seth pointed out.
“Not all of them,” J.J. said.
Seth brushed that aside. “You’re the psychic one, J.J. I’m just
tuned into your channel.”
“The asshole channel?” Leigh volunteered.
“Adleigh, enough,” Lydia sighed. “If you keep picking on
your brother, you will be grounded, do you understand?”
“He’s mean to me, too,” Leigh grumbled.
“When?” J.J. demanded. “When am I mean to you? I don’t
bug you at school. I don’t bug you at home. I try to be around you
as little as possible.” Always tactful, Seth’s twin.
“Right,” said Leigh. “Because all you’re here for is Seth.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know what it means.” Leigh spun around in the seat. The
passing street lights pulsed on her porcelain-doll features like a
strobe light. “You want Seth to run off with you and join the
Resistance. You don’t care that he could be killed. When he was
hurt, where were you? At his bedside, like me and Mom? No. You
were off with your soldier friends.” Seth attempted to interrupt, but
Leigh was on a roll. “Now you want him to spend hours training
with you, even though he obviously isn’t well, and you want to
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subject him to some mind experiment with that freakazoid telepath
you love so much, even though he obviously wants no part of it – ”
“Freakazoid, huh?” J.J. said, quietly. “Like Dre Alfaro?”
Leigh colored scarlet, for reasons Seth did not understand.
“Admit it, J.J. You don’t care about Seth. All you care about is
winning your stupid war.”
“You have no idea what I would do to protect Seth,” J.J. said.
“You have no idea the things I’ve already done.”
Leigh’s teeth worked over her bottom lip. She looked down,
her guilty flush creeping higher across her cheekbones.
The silence in the car seemed to be made of water, too dense to
swim through. Seth realized the car had stopped; they were home.
Lydia was clenching the wheel; the dark-tinted windshield showed
Seth her reflection, the agony stamped onto her features as deeply
etched as the engravings on his sword. It was the expression she
had worn in their basement, holding J.J.’s baby booties, believing
him buried in the ground. Sleeping with the stars.
The pop of J.J.’s door opening made them all jump. Seth dove
out after him, chasing him into the backyard. “J.J.! J.J., wait!”
J.J. leapt onto the fence, and stopped there, balanced on his
toes. “Seth, I can’t be here right now.”
“I’ll come with you.” Seth started to climb up. His heart was
thumping inside his chest. He wasn’t sure if he meant just for the
night, or forever.
“No.” J.J. held a hand out to stop him. “You’re exhausted. Get
some sleep. I just – I want to run. Okay?”
His voice faltered. J.J.’s voice never faltered. Seth rested his
palm against the rough brick wall. “Leigh loves you,” he said, a
little desperately. “We all love you, J.J. You know that, right?”
Shadows latticed J.J.’s face, throwing the gold of his eyes into
sharp relief, like captured suns. “Think about working with
Xanthe, all right?” he said. “You need training, Seth. You’re more
powerful than you understand.”
Then he jumped off the wall, leaving Seth alone.
***
Soupy August heat slicked his neck with sweat. Seth was
padding down the sidewalks of South Philly in his human skin,
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smelling garbage and rust, the perfume of his urban jungle. In the
park across the street, some kids were hanging out, listening to
music. They did not call out to Seth, and he did not go over to
them. In the Underground, werekin kept to themselves.
Stars competed with the pinkish-orange glow of the city lights,
pale mirrors in the night sky, as he turned up the walkway of his
row house. A shadow detached from the darkness beside the stoop.
Seth froze, envisioning a hunter, but the shadow materialized
under the street lights as a barrel chest straining against the
buttons of an XXXL flannel shirt, a pair of steel-toed boots, and a
head of bushy salt-and-pepper hair. “Ben,” Seth gasped. His voice
cracked, the too-high voice of a fourteen-year-old cub. “Trying to
give me heart failure, Papa Bear?”
“Prowlin’ kinda late, aren’t ya, runt?”
Mild as his tone was, Seth heard the rebuke. He flopped down
on the step, fingering the narrow metal file in his pocket. “Are you
ratting me out to Naomi?”
“Would it stop you if I did?”
“No,” Seth said. He would just take the lecture and be
sneakier next time, to avoid being caught again. “So what’s up?”
“Came by to show you this.” Ben palmed something from his
pocket – a small, rectangular piece of paper, like a playing card.
He pressed it on Seth, who held it up to the light.
It was a Tarot card. Drawn on it was a man, hanging upside
down, ankle tied to a wooden gallows. “The Hanged Man” was
written across the top. Seth looked up at Ben. “Want to tell me my
future?”
“You know I don’t believe in that juju,” Ben harrumphed.
“Found that on my sidewalk this morning.” He indicated the card
with a jerk of his whiskered chin. Seth looked back down at it. A
pentagram was drawn on the hanged man’s flank, an Egyptian
ankh and a Christian cross beside it. Symbols of resurrection.
“Just lying there, like somebody dropped it. My wife, God rest her,
was Creole, ya know. She had a Tarot deck. I remember her tellin’
me the Hanged Man was a card about sacrifice. Surrendering your
life for the good of all, like Osiris or Christ. Then this afternoon,
what do you know but I find out an old friend of mine did just that,
fightin’ for the Resistance.”
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The Resistance? Ben never talked about the Resistance. Other
than to warn Seth off from joining it. Puzzled, he offered the card
back to him. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said.
“I don’t need it back.” Ben stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Keep it, throw it away, whichever. I just wanted to show it to you.
I wanted to tell you about my friend. He was a good man. When
I’m dead and buried someday, maybe you’ll remember me telling
you about him, and then it won’t be like either of us is really
gone.”
Seth’s eyes flew open like someone had shaken him awake. He
glanced at his alarm clock. Only 5:31, a whole half-hour before his
alarm would buzz.
Going back to sleep was impossible. He slipped downstairs,
opened the back door to let Captain Hook out, and poured himself
a bowl of Cornflakes. He ate at the kitchen sink without tasting
anything.
The dream had not been a dream. It had been a memory,
pushed down by time, inconsequential in the moment. Seth had
pitched that Tarot card into the wastebasket as soon as he had
stepped inside, chalking Ben’s uncharacteristically maudlin display
up to grief over his friend.
Now he realized who that friend must have been. Thomas
Sullivan.
Leaving his bowl in the sink, Seth tiptoed down to the
basement. Poe was curled up on J.J.’s neatly-made cot, which
clearly had not been slept in. “Tell him to come home,” Seth said.
Poe meowed like she wasn’t making any promises.
When he got outside, Marshall was waiting on him in the
driveway, wearing sweats and a skullcap and light knit gloves. In
silence they jogged down Kings Lane, preoccupied with their
individual problems.
Winter’s fist was loosening; a few eager shoots of green grass
poked up along the fencerows, and their breaths no longer vapored
in the air. Seth wondered if summers in Indiana were as sweltering
as summers in Pennsylvania. He hoped he would be around to find
out.
“How are things at home?” he asked.
“Dad and I aren’t speaking,” Marshall said, “so, better. He did
lift my grounding for me to go to the library this afternoon.”
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“Library” being code for “Fort King.” Marshall was now
officially apprenticing with Aphrodisia, getting a jumpstart on med
school. Seth told him J.J.’s suggestion that he work with Xanthe.
“I’m not sure I want to,” he confessed, as they finished their cooldown.
“If you don’t want to, then don’t.”
“Oh sure, make it sound all easy.” Marshall grinned. They
parted ways with promises to see each other that evening. It was
Saturday, and Dr. Townsend was pulling yet another double shift
at the hospital.
As Seth jogged up the drive, he noticed a black sedan parked
across the street, in front of Captain McLain’s. Unless he was
getting paranoid, it looked like the same one he had seen parked in
the teacher’s lot at school. What would one of his teachers be
doing at Will McLain’s house in the predawn hours? Ingrid
McLain, his aunt, drove a Prius. Maybe he’s dating Miss Janowitz,
Seth thought.
He quickened his pace to the front door all the same.
***
Seth mused on the Xanthe conundrum in the Jacuzzi, where he
did his best thinking.
Saying no to training with Xanthe was not as straightforward as
Marshall made it sound. Saying no to Xanthe meant saying no to
J.J.
What freaked Seth out about Xanthe? He slid down in the tub,
turning the water off with the side of his foot. He supposed it was
how Xanthe had introduced himself, reaching into Seth’s mind
uninvited, plucking whatever dreams and memories he wanted
from the gray matter. If he did that again, he could easily stumble
across the fact that Marshall had helped the Black Swan escape.
Agathon had sworn to tell no one, even his fellow members of the
Alpha Clan, that secret.
But Xanthe gave Seth the creeps for other reasons. Aphrodisia
might have X-rayed him, but Xanthe had been the one to look
inside of Seth and reveal a secret even Seth hadn’t known: The
Black Swan had been sending him dreams about Lemuria.
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At precisely nine o’clock, a horn honked in the Stewards’
driveway. Seth grabbed his letterman’s jacket and bounded out the
front door to Jack’s Beamer, hoping to make a getaway before
Leigh woke up and spotted them out her window.
Jack looked more like his old self today in gray slacks and a
navy sweater. Seth looked for the sedan, but the street was empty.
Little was said on the drive across town to the Barnes and
Noble. In the café, Jack ordered them coffee and muffins. Seth
cornered J.J.’s favorite table in the black, with a clear view of the
store. Jack took a manila file folder from his briefcase and placed it
on the table. He left his hand palm-down on top of it. “Here’s what
I found on Tommy,” he said, getting straight to it. A trait of his
Seth appreciated. “He was born in captivity. His mother was a
werelynx, a warrior breed, part of Chimera’s breeding program. He
was taken from her as soon as he presented – ”
“Skinned,” Seth said. “We call it skinned.” Speak the lingo,
dude.
“Once he skinned,” Jack corrected himself. “His mother was
sent back to the Scholae Bestiarii. Her name was Ruth. She was
fourteen years old.”
Seth regretted the bite of muffin he had just swallowed as his
stomach clenched. Fourteen years old, raised up to be a killer, bred
out like a prize sow. Sickening. “His father?”
“That’s where it gets a little strange.” Jack leaned in, lowering
his voice. The café was busy, most of the tables around them full.
The barista, a surfer-blonde chick, was looking harassed. “I have to
tell you, General Burke was very reluctant to release these records
to me. I had to make some campaign promises I may regret once
I’m in office just to get my hands on them, and I did not tell him I
would be showing them to you. You must be very careful who you
share this information with, for your own safety, and theirs. All
right?”
Seth nodded. Jack sat back, absently stroking his goatee. “The
Gen-3 werekin, the generation that included your father and
Regent, were the only generation of werekin, apart from the Gen-0
and the Gen-1 of course, to have no fathers listed in their files. You
know the Gen-0s were grown in test tubes, using genetic material
from the Ark, with no human contribution. When that experiment
failed, human mothers were fertilized with werekin DNA from the
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Ark, and nine months later, the Gen-1s were born. It seems the
procedure was repeated for the Gen-3s, only with werekin mothers
instead of human mothers.”
Seth tipped his chair back, testing the limits of its balance.
“You’re saying LeRoi mixed werekin DNA with DNA straight
from the Ark?”
“Chimera refers to the project as ‘The Ovid Experiment.’ I
imagine it was an attempt to birth the Black Swan. LeRoi was
determined from the outset of Project Ark to raise Lemuria. But it
didn’t work. The Gen-3 showed no more special abilities than the
Gen-1 or the Gen-2, nor did their offspring, except for you and
your brother – who are, by the way, the only known offspring of a
Gen-3 born to a human mother.”
The legs of Seth’s chair came down with a click. People
continued to bustle around them, but he felt as though he had been
transported somewhere far away from the world of non-fat lattes
and half-price sales. “You think that’s why J.J. and I are
werejaguars? Why J.J. is telepathic and prescient?”
“It is possible you share a greater connection to the Totems
than other werekin,” Jack said.
Seth thought of J.J., telling him he was more powerful than he
knew. How much of this had Thomas Sullivan known, he
wondered? How much of it had he told Lydia?
Jack slid a page out of the envelope and passed it to Seth. It
was an approval form, signed by Ursula LeRoi, granting Thomas
Sullivan permission to leave the Chimera facility where he had
been raised and take up residence in the human world. It read like a
legal contract, making it plain that Thomas remained Chimera
Enterprises’ property, and requiring him to present himself and any
offspring he might sire to Chimera immediately if summoned.
“So he was free,” Seth said, softly. “If it hadn’t been for me
and J.J., Dad could have led a normal life.”
“I wouldn’t say a werekin life is ever ‘normal,’” Jack said, not
unkindly.
“I just mean he went to college. Got married. Bought a house.
That’s normal stuff,” Seth said.
“It is.” Jack was studying Seth at an angle. What did he see? A
seventeen-year-old punk with dyed hair growing out ragged, eaten
down to muscle and bone? The reason his picture-perfect suburban
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life had been turned inside-out? “Is that something you would like,
do you think? College? A career?”
“Like that’ll ever happen,” Seth snorted.
“None of us can predict the future, Seth. That doesn’t mean
you aren’t allowed to have dreams.” Jack adopted his matter-offact tone. “Have you considered what you might study, were you
to apply to college?”
Completely thrown, Seth blurted out the first thing that came to
mind. “Languages, maybe.” Could you study languages? Was that
a dumb thing to say?
Apparently it was not. Jack nodded agreeably. “Yes, I
understand from Ingrid that you have a facility in that area. What is
it you speak?”
“French, Italian, Spanish, Russian.” A little Lemurian.
“I can look into schools with notable foreign language
programs. Of course you’d want to do a semester abroad,” Jack
said. Seth nodded. Sure. Why not? Dream big, he always said.
“And I assume you’ll be trying for an athletic scholarship?”
They were really having this conversation. He and Jack were
having The College Talk. “Sure,” Seth said, playing along until he
figured out Jack’s angle here. He would have one. Seth just had to
pin it down.
“Where is Marshall applying?”
Seth choked on lukewarm coffee. “You know about that?”
“I know Marshall is important to you,” Jack said, carefully. “I
assume where he decides to attend college will affect your
decision. Anything else is, obviously, none of my business.”
Jack folded his muffin paper up, very neatly, into a triangle.
Words escaped Seth. Jack Steward knew his step-son was gay, and
did not mind. Huh. “What about this Ovid Experiment?” he asked,
primarily to turn the subject from his love life, and The Future.
“Did Chimera give up on the experiment after the Gen-3s?”
Jack looked down at the envelope. Seth had a feeling he would
not like what came next.
“Dre Alfaro was hard-put to decode the files on this. Ursula
LeRoi guarded the Ovid research as jealously as she guarded the
location of the Ark. You see, it concerns the Partners.”
“I’ve never really understood what that means,” Seth said.
“‘The Partners.’”
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“Partners,” Jack said, “are investors in Chimera Enterprises.
The scientists, politicians, military liaisons, and various
businesspeople that made Chimera’s top-secret operations
possible, right down to the trucking companies that helped ship
collared werekin around the country to Chimera laboratories.
You’ve seen many of them before. They were at our house on New
Year’s Eve, and at Fort King, celebrating the capture of the Black
Swan, the night you met McLain.”
Seth remembered. Middle-aged men and women, elegantly
dressed, toasting Ursula LeRoi’s triumph. “What did the Ovid
Experiment have to do with them?”
“The Gen-3 experiment built on Elijah Bishop’s advancements
in human cloning. Since it did not produce a Black Swan, it was
considered a failure. The project was scrapped after the Gen-3.
Eighteen years ago, it was revived, though in a – different
fashion.” Jack cleared his throat. “Understand, Seth, this has
nothing to do with your ancestry.”
With your ancestry, he said. He did not say it had nothing to do
with Seth.
He lifted his fingers off the file folder. Seth picked it up.
The first page was crammed with complex equations and
geneticist jargon. Seth was no Healer, but he recognized some of
his Bio vocabulary words, gamete, allele, homozygous, enough to
get the gist, and turned the page.
He was looking at a headshot of a boy. A boy with carefullycoifed blonde hair and sea-green eyes. CAMERON ANDREW
FOSS was printed next to it, along with a date of birth, a height
and weight, a serial number; below that was a double helix, and a
catalog of genetic markers. With trembling fingers, Seth flipped
the page.
Another photograph, another name. Gabriel Matthew Cochran.
And on the next: Bryce Emmanuel Heilsdale. Then Yena Sun Lee;
Christopher James Simmons III; Shanti Marie Bruce; and on, and
on, names and faces Seth recognized from the halls of Fairfax
High, until the last: Marshall Jason Townsend.
The page fluttered to the floor. Jack leaned over hurriedly to
pick it up, shooting an anxious glance around the café. The blonde
barista smiled at him as she wiped down the condiment counter
nearby.
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“And none of them know?” Seth croaked. “What they are,
none of them know?”
Jack shook his head.
A horrible thought occurred to Seth. “Leigh. Is Leigh – ”
“She’s mine,” Jack said, firmly. “Mine and Lydia’s.”
Seth was reeling. He felt his claws slide out, stuffed his hands
under his knees. “Everyone we know – everyone we live around –
Dr. Foss, and Dr. Townsend, Mr. and Mrs. Heilsdale…They’re all
part of this?”
“To greater or lesser degrees. Some of them have more
influence, and more knowledge, than others. An undertaking of the
magnitude of Project Ark could not have been accomplished
without the cooperation of many, many people, but LeRoi was
always careful about how she parsed information. Chimera is a
strictly need-to-know organization. For anyone who tried to find
out more than they needed to know, like my father, the
consequences were dire.”
“So Dr. Townsend knows I’m a werekin? He knows Marshall
is a – a – ” Seth couldn’t say it. He gestured instead at the papers
resting under Jack’s folded hands.
Jack tucked them back into the envelope, and slipped the
envelope back into his briefcase. “Wesley Townsend was one of
Chimera Enterprises’ most celebrated medical minds. Resurrecting
the Ovid Experiment was largely his idea.”
“Why isn’t he locked up then?” Seth was breathing hard. The
magic threatened to take hold of him, stinging up and down his
spine like he had fallen into a patch of nettles.
“Because in the eyes of the law, he has committed no crimes,”
Jack said. “Project Ark was, until a week ago, a fully sanctioned
government operation. Wesley’s involvement with them was no
more illegal than mine. Once LeRoi fled from Fort King and went
rogue, the Partners disavowed her. Wesley was the one who
handed these files over to Captain McLain. He has cooperated
fully with Operation Swan Song, his only request being that we
keep the experiment classified.” Jack paused. “Seth, obviously this
information is very sensitive. It could change a lot of people’s
lives. Not even J.J. has clearance to view it. You need to think long
and hard before you decide to share it with anyone.”
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Seth looked up at him. “You’re saying I shouldn’t tell
Marshall?”
“No.” Jack’s gray eyes were unexpectedly kind. “I’m saying
before you do anything, you need to be sure it is the right thing to
do.”
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Chapter Eleven: Betrayal
From Haven Heights to Castle Estates was twelve miles as the
crow flies. Dre Alfaro had never liked that expression. Why did
crows get all the action? Why not as the sparrow flies, or the
hummingbird flies, or the falcon flies? It was speciesist.
The small brown falcon lighted on the roof of the three-car
garage, fixing quick, dark eyes on the red brick house at 706 Kings
Lane. Birds had been used as spies by Chimera Enterprises since
the days of the Gen-1. The Resistance had picked up the trick from
them. Jaguars, tigers, hyenas, and wolves made great warriors, but
they caused a panic if they appeared on quiet suburban avenues;
wererabbits and weremice and weresnakes were less conspicuous,
but got treated like common household pests if discovered, run off
or poisoned or trapped. Nobody noticed one more bird hanging
around. Birds were always just there, in the background, about as
interesting as clouds.
No one, however, had ordered Dre to set up surveillance on the
Steward-Sullivan household. Dre had taken the assignment upon
himself from the first day Seth had arrived in Fairfax. Ursula
LeRoi knew this was the home of her second-biggest prize – the
blood of the Jaguar Clan. Dre had been sure it would be a
temptation she couldn’t resist, and he had been proven right, when
Werner Regent had kidnapped Lydia Steward to draw Seth into a
trap. He had kept up the surveillance, quietly, ever since.
There might have been other reasons Dre didn’t mind hanging
around the Steward house. As he was eyeing a worm wriggling up
beside Mrs. Steward’s rosebushes, the back door opened, and that
reason appeared.
The first time Dre had seen Leigh Steward, he had thought her
the prettiest girl in the world. Auburn curls framing porcelain
cheeks. Slender balletic build. She almost looked like she could
fly, she was so light and quick on her feet. She had been sitting in
the Fairfax High cafeteria, looking awed to be a ninth-grader
invited to eat lunch with the popular kids. Dre had tripped over his
own feet staring at her.
She hadn’t even looked up at him.
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This morning Leigh had on brown tights and a green dress, like
a tree nymph. Bryce Heilsdale followed her out of the house,
limping slightly, shrugged deep into his blue-and-gold letterman’s
jacket. Leigh was toying with the links of the charm bracelet he
had given her.
“…asked Yena,” Bryce was saying. Dre’s werekin hearing
easily picked out the words even from the garage.
“It’s fine, Bryce. Really.” Leigh sat down on the railing. Her
back was to Dre. The falcon picked his way along the gutter,
angling for a better view.
Bryce looked miserable. “It was at Christmas, before you and I
were even talking. I wouldn’t have asked her if…I thought you’d
go with Marshall. But we’re just friends,” he rushed on. “Yena
knows I – I really like you, Leigh.”
The falcon ruffled his feathers.
“Maybe I could talk to her. Yena is cool, she’d understand – ”
“Bryce, you can’t uninvite a girl to prom. It’s cruel.” Leigh
slipped her fingers out of Bryce’s. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m your
girlfriend or anything.”
Bryce’s shoulders slumped.
They talked a while longer, mostly about basketball. Leigh
didn’t seem that enthusiastic. When Bryce finally left, Leigh
turned around, delicate hands gripping the railing. After a moment,
she yanked the charm bracelet viciously off her wrist, popping the
clasp, and shoved it into the pocket of her dress before she
disappeared inside.
Dre soared down to the railing. He almost skinned and knocked
on the door to ask if she was okay, but at the last minute
remembered he was supposed to be ignoring her, to make her
notice him. Instead, he fluttered down to the ground, sharp beak
poised over the hole he had seen the worm wriggling through –
A flash of something caught his eye.
Resting in the shade of the porch, where it must have fallen
when Leigh had yanked her bracelet off, was a gold basketball
charm. Dre cocked his head. There was no sunlight down here;
they were shaded by the porch and the rosebushes. What had
flashed? He hopped closer – and hopped back as it flashed again.
A pinpoint of green light was pulsing inside the charm. Dre
picked it up in his beak – it emitted a faint, electronic hum – and
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crunched down like he was splitting open a seed. The charm broke
open, and a delicate spiral of green circuits and copper wires
spilled out into the grass.
The falcon tucked the mess under one black-quilled wing and
hopped away from the porch, into the Stewards’ garage, just as a
black BMW turned into the drive. There, Dre skinned, turned the
charm over, and stared at the engraving on the back – a tiny glyph.
“Houston,” Dre said, to himself, “we have a problem.”
**
The drive back to Castle Estates was less awkward now that
the ice had thawed a bit. Seth messed with the radio, scanning past
the classical pre-sets in search of some decent tuneage. “So you
decided to go ahead with your campaign?” he asked, as they
passed a VOTE STEWARD sign in the Lees’ front yard.
“I think I could do some good in the Senate,” Jack said. The
Beamer eased up the Stewards’ drive and stopped beside the
mailbox. Seth suddenly felt the urge to escape. There was such
longing in Jack’s eyes as he stared at his old house, but Seth had
nothing to give this man. He wasn’t his child.
Quickly, he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Well, thanks again, Mr.
Steward, for looking into my dad and…everything.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” Jack said. Right, Seth thought.
He was too damn polite. “So I’ll call you when I have that list of
colleges?”
“You don’t have to,” Seth said. “I mean, don’t put yourself out
or anything.”
“I don’t mind,” Jack said. “In fact, I was wondering if you
would mind if I came to your game.”
Okay. Seth was not stupid. He knew Jack had an endgame
here, and he had had his emotional chain yanked quite enough by
Regent. “Look, Jack,” he said, flatly. “You can make nice with me
all you want, but it won’t change things. I can’t convince Mom to
forgive you. I can’t convince Leigh to forgive you. You lied to
them both for a really, really long time, and even if I forgave you,
which I’m not saying I ever would, they – ”
“Seth. Please.”
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Jack spoke through bloodless lips. He sounded so desolate Seth
shut up, watching as Jack’s hand dipped under the seat.
He came up with a pistol.
A Glock .9 millimeter, semiautomatic. Seth could smell the
silver in the bullets. He was too stunned even to skin. This was it?
This was Jack’s endgame? He had orchestrated this father-son
drama, bought Seth a muffin and shared top-secret intel with him
and pretended to care about his future, just so he could splatter his
brains on his mother’s mailbox? As revenge scenarios went, this
one definitely won the award for Most Twisted.
“When I tell you to,” Jack said, “I want you to run.”
The words lodged in Seth’s brain one at a time. Jack wanted
him to run? He wanted the pleasure of shooting him in the back?
What?
“Run for the woods,” Jack said. “As fast as you can. Don’t
stop until you reach Fort King.”
Seth forced his eyes up from the gun. Jack was not looking at
him. His eyes were locked on the rearview mirror.
Seth turned.
Parked behind them, blocking the drive, was a dark sedan. Seth
recognized it; it was the vehicle that had been parked in the
teacher’s lot at school, then outside McLain’s house earlier that
morning. A man was climbing out of the driver’s side. He came
together slowly, like a jigsaw puzzle taking shape in the bright
wash of midday light. Broad shoulders, heavy with muscle beneath
a wool overcoat. Ginger hair capped by a black bowler hat. Red
beard striped white.
“Jack, if I leave you here, he’ll kill you,” Seth said.
“Not,” said Jack, “if I kill him first.”
It was the way he said it, without a shred of remorse, that made
Seth take a second look at his step-father, scraping aside the patina
of refinement like he was scraping paint off an old canvas. What
he saw, underneath, was a man who had sold his soul for wealth
and power. It took a certain amount of inner darkness to do that,
even if you were young and didn’t know the full extent of what
you were avowing yourself to. Over the last twenty years, that
darkness had bloomed inside Jack, a weed burgeoning through the
tracery of his veins, taking root deep within; he hid it well, behind
his tailored clothes and cultured tastes, but it was there.
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Jack Steward was a killer.
A fist rapped on the Beamer’s window. “Open up, Jackie,”
Regent growled.
“Now!” Jack yelled.
Seth bolted. He kicked open the door – skinned as his feet hit
the driveway – blurred past the garage, a blaze of tawny fur and
black spots – and vaulted over the brick fence, touching down on
his paws amongst the trees. Shots rang out behind him, shattering
the quiet. Seth’s heart squeezed inside his snowy chest.
With every passing second he expected to hear a roar at his
back. Surely Regent had evaded Jack. Hopefully he wouldn’t
waste time mauling him. That was why Seth had run: Regent was
in Fairfax for him, not Jack. Regent was far too disciplined to let
his prey escape just to settle a score with an old friend.
Would Regent be alone? Probably not; he might have been
LeRoi’s “most industrious warrior,” but LeRoi left little to chance.
She wouldn’t send Regent to collar Seth without backup. More
than ever Seth wished for telepathy. A way to warn J.J., so he
wouldn’t come home. Xanthe could contact him, he thought, if
only he could reach the fort –
A gentle valley opened up, ringed by close-packed trees.
Moldering leaves carpeted the spongy forest floor, thickest in the
valley’s center. Some deep, instinctual part of Seth noted that this
was a perfect spot for an ambush. He almost circled around, but
just then a branch snapped a half-mile behind him. Someone was
in pursuit.
Pouring on a burst of speed, the jaguar streaked into the valley.
His paws sank into the leaves, and kept on sinking. Where
there should have been ground was only air. Seth tumbled, head
over tail, through empty space, roaring.
He landed on his paws, fifteen feet down, water spraying
around him, soaking his fur; he was standing in ankle-deep,
brackish water. For a moment, he crouched there, panting, fear
alive inside of him.
He had fallen into a pit. A hunter’s trap.
Think, Seth. You can get out of this. Just think.
The trap was not necessarily meant for him. Chimera had been
trapping werekin around Fort King for years; the pit could have
been dug at any time, by hunters hoping to get lucky and catch a
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werekin running in the woods. Most werekin breeds would have
been stuck down here, waiting for a hunter to pull them out.
Jaguars were not most breeds.
Roots like thick ropes were encased in the earthen walls. Seth
coiled his legs, poised to spring as high as he could, meaning to
sink his claws into the roots and climb out; but before he had taken
a step, something black shot up out of the water, wrapping around
his middle.
The net Seth had unwittingly been standing on pulled tight,
rising from the pit with him wrapped inside of it. He tore at it with
his claws and his teeth as he rocketed upward, but his tongue
began to burn, and soon his whole body was on fire – silver
powder, Seth realized, with mounting panic. The net was dusted
with silver powder…
Roars changed over to screams. Forced by pain back into his
human skin, Seth thrashed helplessly. The powder was eating his
skin like acid. He was only half-aware of the net soaring into the
lowest boughs of a hickory and catching there, swinging crazily,
showing him slices of cloudless sky, finger-like branches, brown
grass. Blood dripped onto the carpet of leaves beneath him. Seth
curled into a ball, trying to curl into himself, the fire in his skin so
agonizing he didn’t even think of ducking as the axe hurtled
toward him.
It struck the branch the net was dangling from. With a crack,
the branch snapped in half, and Seth spilled out of the net, choking
on vomit and blood. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he
landed in the dark.
***
“Sorry about that, kitten,” someone purred.
Hands – callused, the nails sharp as talons – forced Seth’s chin
up. He moaned. Fiery ribbons twined his arms and legs; his mouth
tasted of silver and blood. Weakly, he turned his head enough to
spit.
He was looking into an angular, suntanned face curtained by a
lot of sun-bleached blonde hair. Seth blinked. Something about her
was familiar.
136
Behind her, a patch of blue sky was darkening to violet. Sunset.
Seth had been out for half a day. Was anyone looking for him?
Doubtful. He hadn’t been specific about his plans for the day, since
he hadn’t wanted Lydia to know he was meeting Jack.
Jack. Seth’s chest felt heavy. Had he survived his encounter
with Regent? Where was Regent now? Stay calm, Seth told
himself, and think.
Blink by blink, the cobwebs cleared from his mind. He was
lying spread-eagle at the base of a hickory, roughly twenty yards
from the pit he had fallen into – unbound, but too wrecked to
present much of a threat. His letterman’s jacket had been draped
over him like a blanket. It and his jeans had afforded some
protection from the silver powder. The burns, though excruciating,
were superficial. Likely they wouldn’t scar. Assuming he lived
long enough to heal.
The hunter (what else could she be?) was in her early twenties,
athletically built, poured into low-slung jeans and a black T-shirt.
Strapped to her belt were the usual hunter’s tools: combat-grade KBar knife, braided leather whip tipped with silver spikes, ammo
pouch. A rifle was propped against the hickory. A tranq gun. Her
masters at Chimera wanted Seth alive so they could add his blood
to the Ark.
The Ark, which was currently housed at Fort King, under the
protection of a few dozen Marines and the werekin Resistance.
Seth would have liked to know how was LeRoi planning on
overcoming that little problem.
The hunter was speaking into a comm., one of those James
Bond devices that fit invisibly in her ear canal. Hunters always
worked in pairs; she would be reporting in to her partner.
“Regent,” Seth rasped. His mouth was bone-dry, his throat scraped
raw. “Where’s Regent?”
The hunter turned to him. Recognition jolted Seth. He had seen
her before, that very morning, as a matter of fact. She had poured
his coffee in the café.
“You’ll have to speak up, kitten,” Blondie said.
Seth worked up enough saliva to swallow. “Where’s Regent?”
“You mean Werner Regent?” Blondie looked surprised. “I
don’t work for him.”
She was lying, of course.
137
Kneeling, Blondie tipped a glass phial to Seth’s lips. He
twisted feebly away, afraid she would poison him, but she forced
his head back on his neck, her fingers wrapped up in his hair, until
his lips parted in a gasp. Half the potion sloshed down his
shirtfront. The half that slid down his throat tasted so rancid Seth
gagged.
Immediately, the fire in his skin cooled. Recognizing the
effects of healing potion, Seth licked his lips, wishing he hadn’t
wasted so much of it. “That’s right, kitten,” Blondie purred. “Take
your medicine.” She brushed her thumb across the tattoos below
his eye. “Not the kitten I came here for, but my, you are a pretty
one. Don’t fight me and you can stay that way, okay?”
Agreeing seemed wisest. Seth nodded. “Good boy,” Blondie
approved. Like he was a well-trained pet.
Seth had news for her. Jaguars did not housebreak.
Blondie walked away, talking into her comm. Seth
eavesdropped as strength trickled back into his body. “He’s asking
for Regent. Is he still around here? Really. And you didn’t think
that was worth mentioning?” Blondie’s blue eyes scanned the
forest. She seemed edgy. “Look, it’s done. He’s the one we
bagged, so we’ll have to work with it. I’m taking him back to the
cabin. Finish up and meet us there.” She tapped her earpiece,
ending the communique.
“What cabin?”
Seth sat up, using the tree for support. Blondie glanced at him.
“Are you strong enough to walk?”
She was less than three feet away, tranq gun out of reach, knife
sheathed. If Seth was ever going to have an opportunity to get his
claws into her, this was it. “You know,” he said, “I think I am.”
Then he skinned.
Magic scalded his veins – but something was terribly, terribly
wrong. Halfway into the transformation, pressure built in Seth’s
spine; his vertebrae seemed to swell, pushing against his skin like
the bones meant to break through; he was slammed back into his
human skin, prone at the base of the tree, panting up at the first
pale stars of twilight.
A booted heel stamped down on his chest. “I don’t need you
alive,” Blondie warned. “Try that again, and I’ll use this.”
She held up a key. Small. Shiny. Silver.
138
Seth’s hands flew to his throat. An ornate torc circled his neck,
etched with glyphs that burned against his fingertips, vibrating
with magic. His heart slowed to a painful, gonging throb.
He was collared.
All werekin lived in terror of that moment. The awfulness of it
overwhelmed Seth; he lay as still as if he had been knocked out
while Blondie knotted a rope around his wrists, another around his
ankles. It was some time before he found the will to speak again.
“What did you mean, you don’t need me alive?” he said, his voice
practically a croak. “What do you want from me?”
“I mean,” said Blondie, “you weren’t the kitten I was trying to
collar.”
J.J. They were after J.J. The black jaguar ran in these woods all
the time, between their house and Cleo’s. Seth had to warn him.
He tugged at the ropes as Blondie turned away, reaching for her
tranq gun, but she knew her business; the more he pulled, the
tighter the bindings became.
Something glinted on her wrist, attached to a leather cord. Seth
went still again. “You’re Chimera?”
Blondie laughed. “You really are innocent, aren’t you, kitten?”
She knelt. Dirt-matted hair was hanging in Seth’s eyes; she
combed it back, letting her fingernails linger on his cheek. “I don’t
work for Chimera,” she informed him, with a touch of haughty
pride. “Nor do I work with them.”
Seth’s eyes jerked up to meet hers. They were blue as the
ocean; he could see his bedraggled self reflected in them. “You
mean…you’re Resistance?”
“And at last,” said Blondie, “he understands.”
“But – ” Seth was flabbergasted. “We’re on the same side,
lady! What does the Resistance want with J.J.?” What was the
Resistance doing working with hunters?
Blondie shrugged. “The location of the Black Swan, for
starters. We know he’s in league with LeRoi.”
“Right,” Seth spit out, sarcastically. “J.J. is so in league with
LeRoi she tried to kill him at Fort King.” At which point,
demonstrating his typical lack of a brain-mouth filter, he had to
add, “Is this Derek’s latest scheme to avoid getting into a fight? He
makes J.J. out to be a traitor, convinces the Commanders not to act
139
on Dre’s intel, and the big bad wolf doesn’t have to worry about
being sent into any more battles?”
Blondie’s smile was ice. “I hear you have a psychic link with
your twin. Does he feel it, when I hurt you?”
Seth’s expression answered that for her. She outlined Seth’s
lips with one long, blood-red fingernail. “You know the best part
about werekin healing powers? You can regenerate indefinitely.
Tortures you think you couldn’t possibly live through, you can.
The trick is for the torturer to show restraint. To know precisely
how far to push the body before it can’t heal itself.” Blondie, Seth
was sure, possessed remarkable restraint. “Do you really think
your brother won’t surrender the Black Swan to us, to save you?”
We are prepared to die; we will fight on the side of the Black
Swan. No one adhered to that more staunchly than Jeremy
Sullivan. Seth met Blondie’s gaze head-on. “J.J. won’t surrender
anything to you,” he said. “But he will carve out your heart and
serve it to Derek on a platter. I hope I’m around to see it.”
Blondie’s smile twisted in a sneer. She spoke a word in
Lemurian, and the collar around Seth’s throat began to glow.
The marrow of his bones superheated into molten lava. Seth
writhed, screaming, his claw-tipped nails tearing gashes in his neck
as he tried, desperately, to pry the collar loose. He couldn’t.
Nothing on Earth could remove a collar, except its key.
As suddenly as the pain had begun, it ended. Seth hauled air
down in wheezing gasps. His windpipe felt bruised. Greenish
vomit dribbled over his lips.
With her boot, Blondie flipped him onto his back. Seth simply
lay there, too exhausted to struggle, looking around at the shadows
pooling among the trees that surrounded the valley. He had
become aware, as the ringing in his ears faded, of a rustling in the
leaves, though the wind was calm. He glanced at Blondie. Her
brows were drawn together, one hand on her knife-hilt. She had
heard it as well.
J.J. Seth called out silently, with his mind. J.J., is that you?
No response. But from the top of the hickory, a small brown
falcon cackled softly.
Blondie either did not hear it or did not mark it. “That’s just a
taste of what’s coming to you if you don’t mind your manners,”
she said. “Now, we need to get moving. Stand up.”
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She said this as though there was no question Seth would obey.
But collars controlled werekin magic; they did not control you.
Cleo had once told Seth he would be difficult to break, having
lived his whole life knowing what it meant to be free. He had not
really believed her, until now.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “How about you make me?”
Blondie uncoiled her whip. The delight in her smile was cruel.
“You asked for it, kitten.”
Her wrist flicked; the whip came down, rending the air with a
hiss. Seth – who had been whipped once before, and knew what to
expect – curled into a ball, arms over his head. The braided leather
bit into him once, then twice, then again, and again, the silver
barbs gouging quarter-sized holes in his flesh. He lost his fight
against the screams and howled, tasting bile and blood in his
throat. Blondie laughed.
You have to be able to fight in either skin. Equally deadly as
man or beast. Through the agony, Seth heard Regent’s voice, and
it sparked something inside of him.
He rolled over, throwing his bound hands out. The whip curled
around his forearm, the barbs sticking in his skin; before the
startled hunter could pull it back, Seth closed both hands around
the leather, and jerked.
Off-balance, Blondie stumbled, lips rounded in surprise. She
let go of the whip and Seth lunged again, this time in his human
skin, and raked his nails down her arms. She screeched in rage as
he rolled past her, coming up on his tiptoes, balanced on the edge
of the pit.
Baring his teeth in a feral smile, Seth dangled the silver key in
front of his face. It was still hooked through the leather cord that
had been tied around Blondie’s wrist.
Blondie lunged then. For her rifle.
Something swooped down from the hickory, cackling
furiously. Seth was already turning; he saw a streak of black and
orange charge out of the trees, as Blondie threw her arms up, the
falcon’s sharp beak gouging at them like the silver barbs had
gouged Seth’s flesh. The Bengal tiger leapt off the leafy carpet,
swiping his claws at the air. Wings beat in frenzied flight, the small
brown falcon trying to soar away –
141
“Dre!” Seth yelled, but he didn’t see if Dre made it. Blondie’s
finger had touched the trigger. The tranq dart split the air beside
him as he somersaulted backwards, into the pit.
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Chapter Twelve: Spaces Between
It was a long fall. Seth landed face-up in the cold water, a red
haze misting his eyesight, momentarily blotting out the circle of
night sky above.
His shirt was bloody scraps. A distant buzz in his ears told him
he had lost a good deal of blood. Electric currents spiked along his
scar; these new injuries were taxing his healing powers to the limit.
He had to fight to stay awake.
Something was clasped in his hand. Seth remembered that it
was important. He just couldn’t remember why.
It was full dark now. Lydia would be worried. Would she send
J.J. to search for him? Stay away, Seth thought. He didn’t want J.J.
to be collared, too.
Paws thumped into the water. Seth whimpered; powerful arms
dead-lifted him off the ground. A voice was growling in his ear.
Later, Seth would remember it saying, “It’s over now, cub. It’s
over.”
He was slung over a shoulder. His bound wrists were looped
over a corded neck; a wool overcoat scratched his cheek. At the
top, he was shifted to the ground, and more healing potion was
poured down his throat. The iron bands around his temples
loosened. Seth sighed gratefully.
“Hold still, cub.”
A knife flashed. The ropes around Seth’s wrists and ankles fell
away. Seth licked his lips. “Did you kill Jack?” he asked, his voice
as thin and dry as the leaves around them.
“No.” Regent picked Seth’s hand up and squeezed it, once. His
marbled eyes were very bright in the fading light. “I was busy
chasing you.”
Seth was more relieved than he had expected to be. “Did he
shoot you?”
Regent snorted. “Jackie couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn
with buckshot.”
“He tranqed you once,” Seth reminded him. Regent grunted.
“How’d you find me?”
“Followed the caterwauling. You were making quite a racket.”
143
Sure, thought Seth, poke fun at the half-dead cub. He looked
around. Brown feathers littered the ground, which was spotted with
blood – his own, Blondie’s, Dre’s, he didn’t know. He didn’t see
any bodies. “What happened to the hunter?”
“She ran. Smart girl.”
“And Dre?”
“That’s the things about birds,” Regent said, dryly. “They fly
away.”
Seth was relieved. Until he realized Dre’s instinct would be to
fly straight back to the nest – Fort King. Straight to Derek Childers
and whoever else in the Resistance believed J.J. was part of some
dastardly plot to…Seth didn’t know to what. Why would J.J. have
turned on LeRoi, freeing the Black Swan, if he was really working
for her? Did Derek think J.J. and McLain were running their own
game, independent of Chimera Enterprises? Seth was too weak and
sick to figure it all out.
Regent carried him. He chose a deer path hedged by hickories
and elms. Here and there it crossed a stream, a feeder for King’s
Creek. Seth floated in a waking stupor, head resting against
Regent’s chest. He didn’t know how much time passed before a
ramshackle cabin came into view, sheet metal with a wooden
porch. On the backside, a stone chimney belched a thin stream of
smoke.
Bedsprings creaked. Seth forced his eyes open again. Time
seemed to be jumping; he didn’t remember coming inside the
cabin, but Regent had just placed him on a cot with a spindled
brass headboard. Seth huddled there, arms circling his knees,
wanting desperately to sleep but knowing he was not out of danger
yet. Not by a long shot.
The cabin was sparsely furnished. Bed. Straightback chair.
Rusted footlocker. Dust covered every surface; grass had sprouted
between the plank floorboards. Blondie had mentioned a cabin.
Was this her home base? Seth was sure Regent would not be
camping out here. He liked his creature comforts too much.
A fire was burning in the small hearth. Regent fed scraps of
kindling to it, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Seth was
shaking so hard his teeth chattered – aftereffects of pain. Every
time he moved, the collar hugged his throat, a sinister, inescapable
weight.
144
“You took the key,” he said, hoarsely. “I had it, when I fell in
the pit. You took it from me.”
When he had thought Regent was holding his hand, comforting
him. Would he never learn?
Regent stepped over the bearskin rug in front of the hearth and
tossed another phial of healing potion onto the bed. “Drink that.
You’ll feel better.”
“Drop the paternal bullshit, okay, Regent? I know you want
something from me. Just tell me what it is, so I can say no and you
can kill me.”
“I keep telling you. You’re no good to me dead.” Regent,
unruffled, began unloading first-aid supplies from the footlocker.
When Seth remained motionless, he glanced over at him, his
expression impossible to read in the dark. “I’m not here to hurt
you, all right?”
Seth did not even slightly believe this, but he downed the
phial’s contents anyway. Was it possible to overdose on magic
potion? He was already hopped up on Aphrodisia’s strengthening
brew; now he felt buzzed, his hands shaking, his pulse skittering.
He longed for a sip of water, to rinse the taste of blood and bile
from his mouth, but he wouldn’t ask Regent for any favors.
At Regent’s command, he stripped off the remnants of his shirt,
and Regent went to work on the lash-marks across his stomach
with peroxide and gauze. “I would like the My Little Pony BandAids, please,” Seth said.
Regent chuckled. “I’ve missed you, cub.”
What was Seth supposed to say to that? I’ve missed you, too?
He leaned back, bracing his shoulders against the brass
spindles. Regent’s gaze flicked to the inflamed scar across his
belly, then up to Seth’s face, a question in his tiger’s eyes. Seth
drew the blanket over his lap, offering no answers. “So, I’m
confused,” he said. “Where is the cavalry to pack me off to a
Chimera facility?”
“We’ll get to that.” Regent hauled the chair over to Seth’s
bedside and lowered onto it, ankle resting on his knee. He had shed
his overcoat; his sweater and slacks were mud-stained. “Tell me
something, cub. How much do you know about the Black Swan?”
Marshall. Seth schooled his features into blankness. Let Regent
skin him alive. He would never put LeRoi onto Marshall’s scent.
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“You’re the traitor who collared her, aren’t you? You tell me about
her.”
“Here’s what’ll really cook your noodle. I wasn’t even looking
for her. I was looking for you.” Regent shifted in his chair. “When
Tommy took you Underground, I was ordered to find you. Both of
you. LeRoi wanted to study Tommy’s blood, determine if there
was a magical connection that could be traced back to the Jaguar
Clan. I know Jackie told you about the experiment on the Gen-3.
LeRoi wanted to know if the Ovid Experiment had produced better
results than she’d believed, albeit with some delay. So I started
capturing Resistance fighters. I knew they had helped Tommy
escape with you, and I assumed someone in the Resistance would
know where he’d holed up. Took me five years, but I finally
tracked down someone who did. She said you were living in
Harlem. I wasn’t as thorough back then as I am now. I let her go.
She ran straight back to Tommy, of course, and before Chimera
could collar you, she got you away.”
Naomi. He was talking about Naomi Franklin. Seth could not
imagine what Regent would have had to do to Naomi to make her
betray Thomas, but he wanted to scratch his eyes out for it.
“The hunters only bagged Tommy that night. I told LeRoi he
would have arranged things so if he was ever collared, he wouldn’t
know how to find you, in case he broke under torture. That turned
out to be true. But I kept my ear to the ground from then on,
collared Resistance fighters whenever the opportunity presented
itself, and questioned them about the werejaguar cub. None of
them knew anything about you, though once I loosened their
tongues, a few told me the Black Swan had been born, and the
Resistance was hiding her, with humans. I reported that back to
LeRoi. She told me to keep searching, for both of you.
“Eventually I realized I was wasting my time. When I
managed to collar someone high-ranking enough to know anything
useful, they would die before they would tell me anything. I
needed a plant, a spy inside the Resistance. I could never have
gained access. The Commanders were too suspicious of me.”
“Gee,” said Seth. “I wonder why?”
Regent grinned, remorseless. “I needed someone loyal to me,
someone the Resistance wouldn’t suspect, who could earn his way
up through the ranks. Lots of lost young cubs in the Underground
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looking for homes. I found one to suit my purposes, trained him
up, and sent him to the Resistance. Took a few years for him to
finagle a command, but you know what they say.” Regent sat back,
powerful arms folded across his chest. “Good things come to those
who wait.”
He was like a fat black spider, sitting back, spinning out webs.
“Your spy found me in Philly,” Seth said, “and then he found the
Black Swan, is that it?”
“You’re not as stupid as you look, cub,” Regent said. “There I
was, on the cusp of freedom – real freedom, no strings attached. I
was training you up for Chimera, I had collared Ben Schofield, the
founder of the Resistance and its most influential Commander, and
I was hot on the Black Swan’s trail. I knew the human family she
had been living with. I knew the young soldier they had tasked to
protect her. I knew her name. Caroline.”
By force of will, Seth did not react to this, though in his mind’s
eye, he was seeing her – a girl of twelve or thirteen, glossy black
hair spilling around her graceful neck, eyes black as coffee against
her creamy skin. The Black Swan’s name was Caroline. The name
Ben had said. They are coming for you.
“Finally I tracked her down,” Regent said, “and delivered her
to LeRoi. You were coming along fast. Soon we would have
everything we needed to complete the Ark and raise Lemuria.”
“Then why torture Cleo?” Seth demanded. “If you were never
interested in rescuing J.J., why didn’t you spare her, like you
spared Snowman?”
“Two reasons.” Regent held up two fingers. “One, that girl
didn’t know me, and I could see that was my angle with you. You
didn’t really trust me, but if you thought I was helping you save
your brother, you would.”
Seth looked away, shame creeping up his neck in a prickly
flush. He had been so blinded by his desire to rescue J.J. he hadn’t
seen through Regent’s lies. “You shouldn’t regret what you were
willing to do for your brother,” Regent said, like he could read
Seth’s thoughts. “Jeremy is your blood. The two of you are more
connected than any other werekin have ever been.”
Hyperbole, not Regent’s style. Seth looked up sharply. “There
must have been other werekin twins. Not jaguars, maybe, because
we’re rare, but there must have been others.”
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“Once. Only once. The first werekin ever to be born to the
Jaguar Clan, on Lemuria, were twins. One light. One dark. The
first clan members – direct descendants of the Totems.”
The engravings on his sword – two jaguars, one light, one dark;
neither good nor evil, both very powerful. Seth remembered the
night Regent had presented him with his katana – the night he had
told him the myth of the jaguar gods. You’re trying to tell me
something, aren’t you? Seth had said; Something about J.J. And
Regent had said, Actually, cub, I’m trying to tell you something
about you.
Seth had lost his breath; cold sweat had gathered under his
collar. “You’re saying…What are you saying?”
Regent held his gaze. “I’m saying you and your brother are as
close to gods as werkein get.”
Admittedly, Seth was kind of godlike. But Regent had taken
him to the mat a dozen times. Blondie had just whipped his spots
off. LeRoi had shot him in the gut. And he was collared, for
Christ’s sake. J.J. had been collared for seventeen years. You
couldn’t collar a god. “Okaaaay,” Seth said. “Then what was the
second reason?”
“Well.” Regent scratched his beard. “I didn’t have the Black
Swan yet when you dumped that hunter at my door, and I knew
your little girlfriend had a connection to Will McLain, the man
protecting our prize swan. I thought she might know where he was
keeping her, so I pressed her on it. She didn’t know much, just
something about New Mexico, but it turned out to be enough.”
It was like one of those optical illusions where you looked at a
picture of two vases and it became a lady’s face – that was how
Seth felt as understanding dawned on him. The silver swan charm
Will McLain always wore. The look on his face when he had said
the Black Swan didn’t trust anyone in the Resistance. Cleo’s
evasiveness when Seth had asked about the captain’s sister.
Caroline.
Seth pressed his hands against his burning eyes, so tired he
wanted to cry. “I want to understand why. Why do you want
Chimera to win?”
You owe me that much, he didn’t have to say.
Regent answered gruffly. “Chimera has already won. I told you
that the day we met. The Resistance doesn’t stand a chance against
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an organization as powerful as Chimera Enterprises. You think
even werekin could stand up against the entire United States
military? You think every human nation on this planet wouldn’t
throw in against us, squashing the alien rebellion? That’s what
happened to the werekin on Lemuria, you know.”
“We’re winning now,” Seth said. “Hadn’t you heard?”
“Has your brother been filling your head with that nonsense?
Jeremy knows better. Your big battle accomplished nothing. The
Partners haven’t turned their backs on LeRoi. Chimera has hunters
out collecting werekin right now. LeRoi will rebuild her army. And
even if she doesn’t, do you really believe your new Marine pals,
the United States government, will give their permission for an
alien species to raise a spaceship from the bottom of the ocean? Do
you think human beings would ever risk giving another race that
much power? Hell, cub, look at how they kill one another!”
I was young and foolish to believe Project Ark was ever
anything other than a design to finish what Lemuria’s invaders
began millennia ago: to conquer the werekin and harness the
power of the Totems for humanity’s dark purposes. And General
Burke, Seth couldn’t help remembering, had suggested ending
Project Ark by exterminating every werekin in existence.
He lifted his chin. “If McLain and his men wanted to kill us,
they could do it anytime. What are they waiting for?”
“Lemuria,” Regent said, simply. “They want us to raise
Lemuria. They want the power of the Totems. Until they raise
Lemuria, they can’t be sure they won’t need us. All of us.”
Rising from his chair, Regent began to pace. Seth slid down on
the pillows. His whole body ached; he felt as raw as he had after
being tranqed. With LeRoi’s silver poison still eating away at him,
the analogy wasn’t that far off.
“Did you ever think it odd that LeRoi insisted on registering
even useless breeds like your pal Emery?”
Seth bristled. Emery wasn’t useless. But that was beside the
point. “Chimera is evil,” he said. “LeRoi likes making us into
slaves.”
“When you’re a little older, cub, maybe you’ll figure out very
few things in this world actually come down to who is ‘good’ and
who is ‘evil.’” Regent displayed his brand, four numbers and a
Greek letter, marking him as Gen-3. “Chimera marks werekin
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because these brands draw on the essence of our magic. For
decades they have collected us, one of every breed, and added that
blood to the Ark. Only werekin magic can raise Lemuria. You
need a connection, a strong connection, to all of the Totems to do
that. Chimera is missing just one breed now – you. They had your
brother, but the Jaguar Clan originated from two Totems, the light
jaguar and the dark jaguar. Jeremy’s blood wasn’t enough. Once
your blood is added to the Ark, and we add the blood of the Black
Swan, we can go home.”
Yearning underwrote Regent’s words. Seth had heard it before,
when Dre had spoken of Lemuria. He shook his head in disbelief.
How could Regent believe LeRoi would ever let him, or any
werekin, go home? But the curtain had drawn back from Regent’s
eyes, showing Seth that this was the truth as he believed it.
“Regent, Ursula LeRoi wants to conquer the world. None of us
will be free.”
“LeRoi wants to enslave humans, whom I don’t particularly
care about. Your friends in the military will either collar or kill
every werekin on the planet once they raise Lemuria. I was trained
by Marines, cub. I know how they think. LeRoi has other plans.
Werekin who defy her will die. Those of us who are loyal will be
free, on Lemuria.”
Regent turned, looking out the window. A soft, steady rain had
begun to fall. “Right now, I’ve fallen out of favor. I was meant to
hand you over to LeRoi. Instead, you and your brother freed the
Black Swan, captured the Ark, and sent her into hiding. But if I can
bring you back to her, I’ll be restored to the fold.” His voice
dropped, as though he was talking to himself. “I haven’t come this
far to lose in the last lap.”
“Fine,” Seth said. If Regent was dumb enough to think LeRoi
would set him free, let him find out the hard way how wrong he
was. Seth would much rather put his trust in Will McLain. “Good
luck. I hope the traitor angle works out for you. But since Chimera
doesn’t have the Ark, my blood isn’t going to do LeRoi much
good, is it?”
“We have plans for retrieving the Ark. Don’t you worry.”
Regent stood up, stepping over the bearskin rug as he knelt beside
the bed. “War is coming, cub. Real war, not just a battle. I didn’t
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train you so you could join the Resistance and die in the service of
humans. I came back here to take you with me, where you belong.”
His hand came up, resting lightly on Seth’s cheek, knuckles
like bolts under tufts of reddish-brown fur. Seth looked up into
those marbled eyes, and lunged.
He had been working up the strength to do it for the last ten
minutes, sitting absolutely still, letting Regent talk while he rallied
for one last grasp at survival. It was a lesson Regent had drilled
into him: mudana no waza. No wasted movements.
He hurtled into Regent’s chest, ripping ragged lines down his
cheeks with his nails. Grunting, Regent closed one hand around
both of Seth’s wrists – Regent had massive hands, each one large
enough to span Seth’s skull – and seized him by the belt loops,
flipping Seth onto the floor. Splinters landed amidst the dying
embers in the fireplace, stirring a shower of sparks, as the chair got
kicked into the wall.
Regent buried a knee in Seth’s sternum, forcing him to stop
squirming. “Did you get that out of your system, cub?” he said.
“I hate you,” Seth managed to spit back. Regent chuckled.
Straddling Seth’s thighs, he set back on his haunches, keeping
Seth’s wrists pinioned in one hand. Seth made himself lie still.
Struggling would only waste energy. He would not get off this
floor until Regent decided to let him up.
Regent’s free hand slipped into his pocket, drawing out the
small, silver key. Seth stared at it. Astonishing, that something so
tiny could end his life.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” Regent said. “Wouldn’t have
done my job if you’d just come along quietly. But it’s over now.
We’re leaving here, tonight. I’ve got a plane waiting. It’ll take us
to LeRoi. You see, cub, you don’t really have a choice here.”
“You’re wrong,” Seth said. “I do have a choice. It’s the same
choice you had. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can’t defeat
Chimera. Maybe we’ll never be free. But winning isn’t the only
reason to fight.”
The steel in his voice surprised even him. There was a flicker
behind Regent’s impassive eyes. Seth thought it might have been
his humanity.
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He moved to sit up. Regent allowed him, halfway, keeping
hold of his wrists. “You still have a choice. You could help us. Join
the Resistance. Regent,” Seth said, “you could stay.”
***
Seth’s chest was aching like he had run a long way in the cold.
Asking Regent to stay, with him, for him, was admitting he didn’t
hate him, not all the way down like he should have. He thought of
that line from Shakespeare. I will wear my heart upon my sleeve.
I am not what I am.
Regent had betrayed Thomas. He had killed Naomi. He had
captured the Black Swan. Lying on the floor of this filthy cabin,
close enough to smell the fresh blood on that bearskin rug, Seth
was pretty sure what he had done to Ben. For those things, Seth
despised him. But there was no way around the fact that in six
weeks, Regent had exerted more influence on Seth’s life than any
other adult before him.
Naomi had been his protector, his mother, the one who listened
to his complaints and patched his old jeans. Ben had been his Papa
Bear, always ready with advice, always willing to bail him out of
trouble. Ben Schofield and Naomi Franklin had comprised the
length and breadth of Seth’s world since he was five years old.
Losing Naomi had unmoored him. In a single night Seth had
lost the only family, the only home, he had ever known. He had
landed in Fairfax on a snowy New Year’s Eve, carrying the debris
of his former life in an old gray backpack, and there Regent had
been, offering to train him. Like anyone adrift at sea suddenly
tossed a lifeline, Seth had clung to him.
Until Regent, Seth hadn’t realized he missed more than his dad,
the person. He had missing having a dad, period. Someone to
knock him upside the head for his numbskull cub shenanigans.
Someone to teach him about life, instead of always sheltering him
from it.
He had been weak. He had been soft. Regent had molded him,
shown him he was strong enough to protect himself. Regent had
taught him stillness, and for that, Seth would forever be grateful.
Deep down he wished for Regent to be what he had claimed to
be – a werekin honorably retired from the Arena, a loyal old friend
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of his dad’s. But Regent had never been those things. He was a liar
and a murderer and a traitor, and Seth would not follow him down
that path. Between death and enslavement, death was the easy
choice. Between saving his own skin and dying for a cause, the
choice was grayer. Regent had chosen the former. Seth chose to
fight.
That lesson he had learned from Thomas, and Naomi, and Ben.
Rain struck the roof. Regent blinked, and whatever Seth had
seen in his eyes winked out, a candle snuffed by the wind. “All
right,” he growled, hauling Seth to his feet. “I see what you’re up
to. Quit stalling.”
Seth swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, hoping
Regent wouldn’t notice. “Stalling for what?”
“For your twin. I’m sure your little birdie flew straight to him,
if Jackie hadn’t run there already.”
Seth had not thought of that, honestly. He glanced out the
window, hoping to see a black shape stalking the treetops, but the
rectangle of forest he could see was an empty expanse of rainlashed trees. He closed his eyes, willing some dormant telepathic
ability to kick in. Regent grunted. “Give it up, cub. That collar
disrupts your little mental bridge. But that hunter girlfriend of
yours will find that pit sooner or later, and she’ll track us from
there. We better get moving.”
He bustled about, rifling through the footlocker for supplies:
more phials of potion, extra rolls of gauze. He stuffed everything
in a duffel bag he pulled from under the cot. Seth curled up
submissively on the foot of the bed and watched. Regent seemed to
know his way around the place, right down to the envelope of cash
stashed under a loose board by the hearth. “Blondie had a partner,”
Seth said.
“Who’s Blondie?”
“That hunter lady. I heard her talking on her comm. She told
him to meet us at ‘the cabin.’ She meant this cabin, didn’t she?”
Regent said nothing. He was counting out Ben Franklins from the
envelope-o’-getaway-cash. “But she swore she wasn’t working
with you, and you tried to eat her, so…Help me out here, General.
What am I missing?”
“As usual, cub, the forest for the trees.” Regent shoved two
thousand dollars into his pocket and returned the rest to its hiding
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place. “All right. We got a walk ahead of us. You need me to carry
you?”
Seth lowered his head onto his arm. Sleep beckoned, and
beyond that, a peace deeper still.
If he gave Regent what he wanted – his blood – there was
every chance LeRoi would someday succeed in raising Lemuria
and conquering the world. Everything Thomas and Naomi had died
for would come to nothing. Everyone Seth loved would be a slave.
“I told you,” he said. “I won’t give you what you want. I won’t
go with you. You know that, or you would have taken this collar
off me already.”
Seth went on lying there, eyes closed. An invisible cord
seemed to connect the collar around his neck to the key in Regent’s
hand.
He pictured Marshall, standing under the trees along Regent’s
drive, telling him he would not change how he felt about him. He
vowed to hold onto that memory, no matter how much dying hurt.
A hand came down, gently, on his forehead. Regent spoke a
word, one simple, burning word, in Lemurian; instantly, an electric
band tightened around Seth’s throat, sucking the very essence of
his soul into the collar. He arched up off the bed, screaming.
There is a kind of pain that undoes a person. Seth wasn’t even
aware of sliding off the cot and crawling out the door; of slithering
down the rickety steps into the swampy yard; of tearing his nails to
bloody shreds as he sank his fingers into the dirt, hauling his body
forward. Trying, futilely, to escape.
Rain pelted his back. He was belly-down in the muck, inhaling
water and mud; drowning seemed like a good option at the
moment, so he dropped his face into the puddle, and breathed in.
But no; someone grabbed his shoulders and rolled him over,
pounding on his back. Light fractured against Seth’s pupils.
Ripples moved along the surface of his mind, creating waves
across his vision that distorted J.J.’s face…His twin was holding
him, rocking him, pouring words into his ear, but all Seth could
hear were his own screams. I love you, he wanted to say, but
couldn’t.
Seth stared up at the stars. Somewhere inside he realized he
could not be seeing stars, not really, not through this downpour of
rain, and yet there they were. Millions of brilliant, diamond-like
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stars, close enough he could have plucked them from their velvet
fields.
Then, miraculously, the pain fell away, and he was leaping
amongst the treetops, claws digging into the soft bark of trees taller
than any trees on Earth. A brilliant canopy of leaves arched
overhead, the colors purer than he could describe: amethyst, coral,
saffron, rose. Flowers like jewels dripped from vines woven
among the leaves. Far below thundered a river, blue and silver in
the golden rays of the sun – for, incredibly, the sun was shining in
the night sky, bathing Seth in warmth and light.
Here was a jungle that could have existed in only one place.
Lemuria.
The trees ended in a valley between two lushly green
mountains. A pyramid rose up before Seth, carved into the
mountainside. Charcoal-colored stone glittered with deposits of
mica, giant pillars forming an entrance hung with more of the
verdantly hued flowers, like royal flags. Sunning on the pyramid’s
wide stone steps were two jaguars, one light, one dark. Like the
beings Seth had seen in his dream, they were neither animal nor
werekin. They were progenitor. The Totems.
Both jaguars turned toward him, roaring as they fused into a
single, unspeakably potent force – a blinding flash of magic that
crashed into Seth, then through him, melding to the magic in his
blood. Power and strength flooded his hollowed-out bones, and
Seth threw his head back and roared.
In that moment he was human and he was animal, he was light
and he was dark: two skins, joined.
For the briefest pause that stretched toward eternity, he hovered
there, in the space between the worlds. He could see his body lying
in the clearing beside the ramshackle cabin, the torc around his
neck glowing red-hot. J.J. was cradling him. Cleo was holding
them both. Dre and Emery knelt beside them in the mud. Emery
was holding his St. Francis medal, lips working in prayer.
Regent was not there. He had fled, taking the key to the collar
with him. From the place where Seth floated, he could have seen
him, but he was no longer interested in Werner Regent.
Out of the void he heard a voice, beautiful and strange, soft as
wings on the wind. It isn’t finished yet, the Black Swan said. I still
need you, Seth. Go back.
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Chapter Thirteen: The Ark
“Cleo,” Seth said, “do I look different to you?”
Cleo shifted sideways, cheek resting on her hand. “Maybe a
little taller.”
“Really?”
“No, sweetheart, not really.”
Seth stuck his tongue out at her.
A mere twelve hours had passed since he had kick-started to
life in that rain-soaked clearing, the collar around his neck
crumbling away to harmless dust. Even Agathon, who knew as
much about werekin magic as anyone, was at a loss to explain that.
For Regent had taken the key.
Seth had been hoping that miraculously surviving a spell no
other werekin ever had might have upped his fearsome factor a bit.
Apparently, he was the same old Seth Sullivan. With, however,
one notable improvement. He ran his hand over his stomach,
marveling at the smooth, flat skin under his palm. The ropy scar
across his hipbones had vanished. As though it had never been.
He had not been home yet. Hadn’t talked to Lydia or Leigh or
Marshall. He had been taken straight from the cabin to the fort for
a magical checkup with Aphrodisia. At the time, Seth had felt
incredible, magic thrumming in his veins, heart thundering in his
chest; his words had tripped over one another as he had described
his dream-walk to Lemuria, becoming one with the Jaguar
Totems…
And then, he had crashed. Like that killer high you get from
guzzling a six-pack of Red Bull to chase a bag of Oreos, but when
the sugar and caffeine wears off, boom, you’re down for the count.
McLain had carried him to the infirmary on the fort’s second floor.
Or so Cleo had told him ten minutes ago, when Seth had awoken to
her perched on the side of his bed.
She had also told him that Lydia, assured of his recovery, had
gone home to sleep. J.J. was conferring with the Commanders in
an emergency meeting called because of Seth’s collaring. Seth was
due to tell his tale once he had showered; dirt was still matted in
his hair, and he reeked of sweat and vomit. But he was having
trouble getting motivated. Lazing in a patch of winter sunlight
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pouring through the window above his cot, he was tempted to
sneak in another cat-nap.
Cleo had stretched out next to him, on the last in a long row of
cots. “Tell me again how you found me,” Seth said. A lot about the
previous night was still murky.
“J.J. and I were here, talking to Xanthe, and Dre came
swooping in, chattering about Regent being on your tail. Jack was
about two seconds behind him, in his car. We all went looking for
you – Melody, Emery, McLain, everybody. We started at your
house. It took a while to find your trail, but I happened onto that
hunter’s pit, with your jacket next to it. J.J. and I tracked you to the
cabin from there.”
“And Regent had bonvyaged?”
Cleo nodded. “But don’t worry, sweetheart.” Her smile was
deadly. “J.J. will find him.”
“Bet your ass I will.”
Seth’s twin had appeared in the doorway, geared up for battle
in familiar black camouflage. Seth wiggled his fingers at him. “I’m
being lazy,” he confessed.
“You’re allowed, after a scene like that,” J.J. said.
He slunk over to the windowsill and stretched out on a patch of
sun-warmed wood. Afternoon light turned his golden hair into a
halo. He looked wearier than Seth felt – pale around the mouth,
pink streaks under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept. According to
Cleo, he hadn’t. He and Lydia had held vigil at Seth’s bedside all
night. Bet that was evening filled with stimulating conversation,
Seth mused.
His stomach gurgled, and Cleo hopped up. “I’ll hunt you down
some breakfast,” she offered.
“I would love eggs,” said Seth. “And bacon. Biscuits, too.
With honey, please.”
Cleo looked at J.J. “Any requests, monsieur?”
“If you’re cooking, I request not to eat.”
Seth snickered. Cleo swatted his arm, then leaned in, he
thought to kiss his cheek; when her lips grazed his mouth instead,
Seth jerked back in surprise. Before he could say anything, Cleo
was off the bed and out the door.
J.J. turned his head to look out the window. The tautness of his
expression made Seth’s stomach feel squirmy. He rolled his
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shoulders in their sockets, wishing his neck would stop aching.
“It’s from the collar,” J.J. said, watching him sidelong in the glass.
“My neck still hurts in the mornings.”
A stiff neck Seth could handle. Strength was humming in him;
he felt healthier than he had since the battle. The silver powder
burns and lash-marks, like his scar, had healed overnight.
Someone, he assumed Aphrodisia, had removed the bandages from
his stomach.
Presumably that same someone had dressed him in a dorky
white pajama shirt with buttons up the front, patterned with blue
moons and yellow stars. It hung off his wrists and past his knees.
Seth thought he looked like Oliver Twist, filthy and ragged in his
too-large nightshirt. Emery had kindly volunteered an outfit of his
for Seth to change into, jeans and a BIKES NOT BOMBS T-shirt.
The clothes were draped over the footboard, along with Seth’s
letterman’s jacket, rescued from the hunter’s pit by Cleo.
Taking a blanket with him, Seth joined J.J. on the windowsill,
seated at the opposite end with their legs paralleled. The infirmary
opened onto a stone terrace with a metal railing. Looking down on
the miles of evergreen trees around the prison, Seth felt a pang of
longing for the Lemurian jungle he had run in.
“Tell me about Ben,” he said.
J.J.’s mouth thinned. “We’re working on the theory that
LeRoi’s spy inside the Resistance found out he was headed to
Brazil, to check out the Tortoise Clan, and intercepted him.
McLain thinks LeRoi may have set Ben up. There may have been
information only he could get from the Tortoise Clan, information
they would only give a werekin, and she wanted it.” J.J. was
obviously editing out the top-secret parts. Seth, as promised, did
not mention what Dre had told him about the Source. “We think
Werner Regent was the one she sent after him. He usually did her
interrogations.”
“And Regent killed him?” Seth asked, simply to have it
confirmed.
“It looks that way,” J.J. said.
For a while, Seth was quiet. J.J. kept glancing at him as the
tears slid silently from under Seth’s lashes. Did death ever get
easier, he wondered, or did each person you lost take another little
piece of you with them?
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Once he had his voice under control again, he asked, “Did you
tell the Commanders about Blondie?”
“Yes.” J.J. unsheathed the bone-handled dagger from his belt
and corkscrewed the tip into the wood beside his knee, burrowing a
tiny hole. “Her real name is Druscilla Langford. Derek admitted to
giving her the order to collar me.”
Cleo would have to pay up. Seth had been right about
wolfman. “What are the Commanders doing to him,” Seth asked,
“and can I watch?”
J.J. extended the hole into a sloping curve – a J. “Nothing,” he
said. “They aren’t doing anything to him.”
“Nothing? How can they do nothing?” Seth was equal parts
astounded and furious. “He tasked a hunter to collar one of our
own! He’s a traitor!”
“In the eyes of our esteemed Commanders,” said J.J., “he is a
patriot. Doing what he thought was best for the cause.” Having
added another J beside the first, he sheathed his dagger and met
Seth’s gaze levelly. “Druscilla isn’t a hunter. She’s human, like
Quinn, born and raised free by werekin parents. Derek would never
work with a hunter. He hates them.”
“But – he collared me!”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t after you. He was after me. And the
Commanders don’t trust me. Well, Melody does, but the rest of
them are listening to Derek, and he’s convinced I’m the proverbial
fox in the henhouse.”
“But Regent told me he has a plant inside the Resistance,”
Seth insisted. “Obviously it isn’t you. You’re doing everything you
can to help us win.”
“That’s not how the Commanders see it. They see that I was
raised by Ursula LeRoi, as her own son. They see that I was spared
when every other suspected werekin traitor inside Chimera was
executed. My best friend is a hunter. I incited the battle that freed
the Black Swan, and now, no one knows where she is. They see
this,” J.J. held up his branded palm, “and they think I’m a traitor.
They don’t really care if I’m working for LeRoi or working for
Burke, or if LeRoi and Burke are working together. Bottom line,
they think I’m loyal to humans over my own kindred.”
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His tone was bald, but Seth was angry enough for the both of
them. “I still don’t understand. What do they think Burke’s
endgame is?”
“I’m not sure they know. But they know McLain is trying to
convince all of the werekin in the Underground to come out of
hiding, and that feels a lot like asking them to be registered with a
whole new set of human masters. They know Burke once lobbied
to have us all destroyed, along with the Ark. Even if they trust
McLain – which most of them don’t – they know the chain of
command. Ultimately, McLain won’t make the call on what
happens to werekin. If the Black Swan were here, to speak up for
the alliance, the Commanders would listen, but she’s not, so…”
J.J. shrugged. Seth threw his hands up. “So what? We’re stuck
dancing to the same old tune – do nothing while Chimera grows
stronger?”
“Sounds like the record they had spinning when I left,” J.J.
said.
“But Regent made it sound like LeRoi had plans to come after
the Ark!”
“I’m sure she does,” J.J. said. “LeRoi only answered to the
government in name. She had plenty of labs and plenty of
technology and plenty of plans they knew nothing about. McLain
told me it’s partly why General Burke was so eager to shut Project
Ark down. He trusted Bishop, but he never trusted LeRoi. And
what’s really disturbing is I think Regent may be right. The
Partners may never have disavowed LeRoi.”
The hair stood up on the back of Seth’s neck. “You think
they’re still working for her?”
“I think at least some of them are. You know that bracelet
thingie What’s-His-Face gave Leigh for Valentine’s Day?”
“Bryce,” Seth said, bewildered. “What about it?”
“It was low-jacked. Dre found a tracker and a recording device
inside of it.”
Seth almost fell off the windowsill. “Bryce bugged our sister?”
“Depends. Does Bryce have a PhD in advanced
nanotechnology?”
“Not that I know of,” said Seth, not to be out-sarcasmed.
“Then I’d say we’re dealing with a slightly larger conspiracy
here. LeRoi requires her Partners to wear devices like that – that
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way, she always knows where they are, and she hears every word
they say. Puts a kibosh on treachery. The devices are usually
hidden in a piece of jewelry.”
“Like…a ring?” A memory came back to Seth: Jack, yanking
the diamond ring off his pinkie finger, flinging it into the creek in
Regent’s jungle enclosure.
“A ring could work,” J.J. said. “LeRoi has cornered the market
on microfabrication technology. Chimera Enterprises may not have
werekin magic on their side, but they have cutting-edge science
that could give magic a run for its money.” J.J. tipped his blonde
head back, lashes lowering. His eyelids were bruised-looking from
fatigue. “It’s like the Commanders don’t see what easy targets we
are, just sitting here. We need to stamp out the rest of LeRoi’s
laboratories, start running to ground anyone still working for her.
Chop the snake’s head off before she strikes again. LeRoi knows
that’s what Ben would have been pushing for, and she knows how
much influence he had with the Commanders. I’d bet anything she
lured him off on his own for the sole purpose of taking him out.”
Seth worked the tip of his pinkie in the loop of the J his twin
had bored. It was all such a tangled web. “What do you think we
should do?”
He said “we” like he was part of the Resistance, though he
wasn’t. Seth was an eleventh grader, a starter on the varsity
basketball team – possibly a jaguar god, one of two, though he had
not dropped that bombshell yet. Nor had he mentioned that
McLain had been the one protecting the Black Swan. His sister,
Caroline. He wasn’t sure why. There was just so much going on
right now, so much for everyone to process, so many questions left
unanswered.
“I think Xanthe should look into everyone’s minds, to see who
the spy is,” J.J. said.
“I’m assuming you didn’t have many takers for that.”
“They aren’t exactly lining up,” J.J. admitted. “Melody wants
you and I to go Underground. She says Derek won’t give up. But I
told her if LeRoi has found the Tortoise Clan, I’m guessing she’s
not interested in sitting around the campfire swapping tales about
the werekin ancestors. I’d rather be here, guarding the Ark and
looking my enemies in the eye, not hiding somewhere, looking
over my shoulder.”
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Selfishly, Seth was glad J.J. was staying. He sat back against
the window. “Do you still want me to talk to the Commanders?
Because I will totally blow them off for being pricks to you.”
J.J. grinned. “I think you should talk to them. We have to try to
make them see reason. Some of the Commanders are talking about
splitting off, starting their own revolution.” He scrubbed a hand
over his face. “It’s all falling apart,” he said, softly.
Seth felt for his twin. Now more than ever they needed to find
the spy. Solidify their unity against Chimera before the Resistance,
always a fragile network, splintered completely. But how to do
that? That was the million dollar question, one Seth could not
answer on an empty stomach. He frowned at the clock. “Do you
suppose Cleo is raising those eggs into chickens?” he grumped.
“She’s probably still working out which is the skillet and
which is the saucepan,” J.J. said. They both laughed. Martha
Stewart their Cleo was not.
Seth began scraping splinters out of the knife-hole with his
fingernail, keen to avoid his twin’s eyes. “J.J., I have a question to
ask you.”
J.J. cocked his finger at him and pulled the trigger. “Shoot.”
“Why did you kill Dad?”
J.J. went very still.
Fort King was never quiet. Footsteps rang out on walkways;
buzzers announced the opening of locked doors; somewhere deep,
deep within the prison, the Ark hummed. Seth drank in all of these
sounds before J.J. said, “Because of you.”
Ice, black ice, spilled into Seth’s gut. So that was it. J.J. had
hated their father because he had saved Seth, and J.J. had been
collared. “Oh,” he managed, softly.
“You don’t understand,” J.J. said. “I’m not the first werekin
telepath, but I am the first LeRoi allowed to be extensively trained.
The others she had dissected, to see how their brains worked.
Telepathy, clairvoyance, those are hard gifts to control, since
collars can only suppress that kind of magic so far, and we’re only
useful to Chimera if they can control us. She let me be trained
because Xanthe persuaded her I would be able to find you.
“He was right. I could always feel you, inside of me, like
someone else sharing my skin.” J.J. placed a thin, scarred hand
over his heart. “I never told anyone. I pretended I had no
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connection to you whatsoever. LeRoi believed it, because she
believed I was absolutely loyal to her. If she had ever doubted my
loyalty, she would have found a way to force me to tell her what
she wanted to know. When she ordered me to kill Dad, I knew,
Dad knew, it was the ultimate test. If I hesitated, just for one
second, I would have been killing you both. So I did what Dad
wanted me to do. I killed him, and saved you.”
Now that he had said it, Seth could see it. The flicker in J.J.’s
golden eyes when LeRoi had ordered his collar removed. Thomas
whispering, I love you, Jeremy Jonathan. The dagger plunging,
quickly and painlessly, into his heart. He pulled his knees up to his
chest and hugged them. He wanted to say he was sorry, or thank
you, but nothing he could think of sounded right, and after a
moment, J.J. looked at him. “Seth, if I tell you something, do you
promise not to freak out?”
Seth really hated conversations that started like that. “Okay,”
he said.
“What you saw in your O.B.E. – ”
“My what?”
“O.B.E. Out of Body Experience.”
“We are not calling it that,” Seth said. “Not until I get my
invitation to appear on Oprah, anyway.”
J.J. laughed. It sounded like he had been holding his breath and
had just now released it. “Okay. Your call. But the vision you saw,
of Lemuria and our Totems. I asked Xanthe if that could have been
a dream.”
“J.J., I came back to life,” Seth said, impatiently. “No dream
does that.”
“You weren’t all the way dead. Your heart was beating. I
would have known when it stopped.”
Almost dying wasn’t portentous enough? Seth quietly fumed.
“What did Xanthe think?”
“That it was possible Regent reversed the spell. Changed his
mind, decided to spare you.”
“Sure,” said Seth. “It’s also possible I’ll grow antennae like
Agathon’s, but I kind of doubt it.”
“Well, Xanthe said we could determine if what you saw was a
dream if we peeked into your memories, so…he sort of…did.”
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Seth was aghast. “Xanthe mind-melded me? Without my
permission?” Clearly he and Lizardman needed to have a
discussion about boundaries.
“We-ell, I might have given him permission, on your behalf.
Since you were sleeping.”
J.J.’s bottom lip was folded in his teeth, his round eyes slanted
past Seth, toward the potions and powders on the infirmary’s
shelves. Having never seen J.J. anxious, it took Seth a moment to
realize he was worried. Worried his brother was angry with him.
Seth was, a little. He didn’t trust Xanthe with an all-access pass to
his thoughts. “And?” he demanded.
“And he said it wasn’t a dream,” J.J. admitted. “He wasn’t
sure what it was, but it wasn’t a dream.”
J.J. tucked his chin down on his chest, shoulders squared like
he was braced for Seth to shout at him. Seth plucked the pajama
shirt away from his chest. “Here’s what I need to know,” he said,
sternly. “Whose idea was this?”
Startled, J.J. said, “Agathon’s.”
“Really?” Seth looked down at himself. Moons and stars
seemed kind of pastel, for a necromancer.
“You should have seen the one he wanted to loan you. Think
satin leopard print, with spaghetti straps and lace on the hem. Cleo
thought it was sexy, but I had your back, bro.”
Seth really, really hoped J.J. was putting him on. They shared a
grin. “J.J., about – about the other thing,” Seth said. “I know Dad
was Resistance. Were you, always?”
“Yes,” J.J. said. “Always.”
“Then, when you told me to save ‘her,’ did you mean Cleo, or
the Black Swan? Because…well, I thought maybe you meant Cleo,
because you told me not to kill her in the graveyard that first night,
and then it was like you were mad at me for handing her over to
Regent. You only started talking to me again after I rescued her.”
“Yeah, well.” J.J. swept splinters off the windowsill, grinning
crookedly. “That was a personal favor. To me.”
***
After J.J. went in search of Cleo, and breakfast, Seth finally
showered in the infirmary’s tiny, single-stall bathroom. His cell
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phone was in his jacket pocket, battered but serviceable; he took it
out and punched in Jack’s number, studying his reflection in the
cracked mirror while it rang. His hair was growing out ragged. It
needed a trim. Maybe he should change the color to fit his
demigod status. There was this shade of green called Electric
Lizard he had wanted to try in Philly…
Jack’s voicemail picked up. Seth left a message saying he was
okay, in case Jack cared, and inviting him to the sectionals game
against Sacred Heart, if he still wanted to come. Lydia had already
been clued-in about his play date with Jack. If he was going to be
grounded for sneaking around, Seth figured he might as well do the
thing properly.
As he stepped out of the bathroom in his borrowed threads (the
cuffs of Emery’s jeans were rolled up twice), he smelled familiar
cologne.
Marshall was sitting on his cot, his back to the bathroom door,
holding Seth’s jacket and staring out the window. He was wearing
a gray Henley and old jeans. Seeing him, in the flesh, sent a jolt
through Seth. Marshall’s face had been seared into his mind as his
death had loomed, the one possibility for The Future he had most
regretted losing.
With jaguar stealth, he tiptoed over to the cot. “Philadelphia,
Jesus,” Marshall gasped, as Seth threw his arms around him from
behind. “You really are a ninja.”
“Samurai,” Seth corrected. “Want to see some karate moves?”
“Are you asking me to wrestle?”
Growling under his breath, Seth forced him down on the
pillows, trapped Marshall’s hands in his, and smothered his mouth
with kisses.
It started off playful, both of them laughing. Then Marshall
shifted position, his lips softened under Seth’s, and abruptly, the
tenor changed; Seth was transported, lost in midnight blue eyes
fringed by dark lashes, a lean body stretched flat beneath his. His
hands slid under Marshall’s shirt, up and over his ribs. Marshall
called his name softly – “Seth” – on a gasp.
Something in his voice undid Seth. He rolled them over,
kissing like they were drowning and kisses were oxygen.
Marshall’s hands were in Seth’s hair, his mouth pressed so firmly
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to Seth’s it was almost painful. The words I love you burned on
Seth’s lips. Was it too soon to say them?
“Ahem.”
Marshall sat up, cheeks flaming. Cleo had sauntered in,
breakfast tray in hand. Seth glared at her. Food could definitely
have waited. “Sorry to intrude,” she said.
“I’ll bet,” Marshall muttered, looking at her darkly.
Seth glanced at him, but Cleo was not only bearing breakfast.
She had also picked up a stray.
“Alfaro!” Seth cried.
“How’s it shakin’, lil bro?” Angelo Alfaro bumped his fist
against Seth’s. Had Aphrodisia been feeding him magical MiracleGro? Seth wondered. If possible, Alfaro had gotten taller, and
broader, since Seth had last seen him. His hair was still braided and
strung with gold beads, though, and his gap-toothed grin was the
same. He sat down on the windowsill J.J. had vandalized and
crossed his arms over his chest.
“How’s your back?” Seth asked, as Cleo arranged his tray on
the cot.
“Mostly healed. I’ll be back at school Monday.” Alfaro lifted
his Chicago Bulls jersey, twisting around for them to see the
patchwork of shiny, sand-dollar size scars across his shoulders and
spine. He glanced at Marshall. “What do you think, Doc?”
Marshall reached out, tentatively – he and Alfaro didn’t really
know one another, because of the whole Haven/Castle divide – and
passed a hand clinically over the burns. “We might be able to do
something with skin grafts,” he said. “Werekin regeneration is so
rapid, the surgery wouldn’t mean that much downtime.” He
dropped his hand back into his lap. “I can talk to Aphrodisia, if you
want me to.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Alfaro said, “but I was never that pretty
anyway.”
While Seth ate, the others compared notes on his capture, and
what they thought the Commanders should do about it. Alfaro had
some creative suggestions for what could be done to Derek
Childers. Then Seth accompanied Cleo and Alfaro to the rotunda
while Marshall headed to the lower levels for his alchemy lesson
with Aphrodisia.
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Seth wondered idly how long the library excuse would work
with Dr. Townsend. Thenhe realized Dr. Townsend, if he was
handing files over to Operation Swan Song, probably already knew
where Marshall was going, and what he was doing at Fort King.
Just how long could Seth sit on the secret that Marshall’s father
had been neck-deep in Chimera Enterprises’ science projects? How
long could he keep Marshall in the dark about what his father had
done eighteen years ago – about what Marshall really was?
He didn’t get a chance to work out an answer to that. A
welcoming party waited on them outside the rotunda’s steel doors:
Whitney, arm-in-arm with Emery, who was chewing on his
ponytail as usual, and Leigh, faced in the opposite direction from
Baby Bird, who was pretending not to notice her, and almost
succeeding.
“Seth!” Leigh flew at him, squeezing Seth in a hug so tight he
squeaked. He supposed the short denim skirt and low-cut pink
blouse were for McLain’s benefit.
“Is Mom here?” he asked, massaging his ribs.
“No. She’s crashed out at home. I got a ride with Marshall.”
Leigh rested her hands on Seth’s shoulders. “Aphrodisia said
you’re going to be all right now?”
Seth nodded. He was one-hundred-percent primetime
werejaguar again. His magical Totem bonding had completely
overpowered the effects of LeRoi’s silver poisoning.
Emery and Dre each clasped Seth’s arm in a gladiator
handshake. “Heard you came through for me out there, Baby
Bird,” Seth said.
“You would have done it for me,” Dre said, bashfully.
“How did you know where I – ” Seth started, but the steel
doors opened then, and McLain poked his head out.
“Seth, we’re ready for you,” he said.
Emery steered Seth inside with a hand on his back. “This is
total crap,” he muttered. “Derek should be stripped of his
Command. Here he is, such a purist about the werekin Resistance
he doesn’t even want Captain McLain involved, and he’s sending
someone to collar J.J.? Werekin don’t do that to one another.”
Regent had collared werekin, Seth thought. He had sent two
hunters to Seth’s house to collar him. Hunters with silver swan
charms on them – symbols of the Resistance. Lots of cubs out
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there, looking for homes, Regent had said. And he had found one.
Trained one up.
For the time being, Seth decided to keep his suspicions to
himself. Accusing Derek of working with Regent without proof
would only tip his hand. The Commanders were not going to take
the word of a cub over the word of another Commander.
An oval conference table had been set up in front of the statue
of the Black Swan, covered by a red cloth. The Commanders
seated around it were engaged in a heated debate. Melody was on
her feet, shrilling about the barbarism of Derek’s methods. A
fiftyish man in a tweed suit with a thatch of bristly brown hair, a
snout-like nose, and stout haunches banged his fist on the table,
harrumphing about desperate times and desperate measures.
More tables and chairs had been stacked up on the dais across
the room. J.J. was perched on one of the tables, walking a quarter
across his knuckles and wearing his I-am-so-bored, when-do-wekill-things? expression. Vixen O’Shea had planted her foxy self
beside him. The rest of their troop gathered there as McLain
hurried Seth forward to the head of the conference table. The chair
there was empty. With a pang, Seth thought of Ben.
McLain introduced the Commanders. Ben would have made
seven, counting Derek and Melody. The youngest, to Seth’s
surprise, was sandy-haired, freckle-faced Ozzie Harris, just
eighteen and still a senior at Fairfax High, born and raised in the
Underground. Ozzie seemed too laidback and groovy to be a
warrior, but then again, Seth thought, so did Emery.
Josephine O’Shea, Quinn’s mother, was a slender, fiery-haired
werefox. She offered Seth a neutral smile when he said hello.
Allied with Derek were Logue Ampon and Major Clyde Dowling.
Logue was a werecougar, twentyish like Derek, dishwater blonde
and lithely built; he had been born in captivity, escaped into the
Underground by killing his hunter partner and taking the key to his
collar while on a mission. Clyde was a wereboar, and their only
official werekin military officer. He had been registered, allowed
to live free in the human world, educated at West Point.
Clyde scowled openly at Seth as he recounted the previous
day’s events. Conscious of his sister in the room, Seth glossed over
the gory details. The Commanders understood what it meant to be
whipped and collared.
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Josephine spoke first. “What was done should not have been
done. Druscilla should be disciplined – ”
“Dru was following orders,” growled Derek. “Besides, you’re
assuming she didn’t bag a traitor.”
“Hey. Genius.” J.J. came striding across the room. Melody
made a sound that was either a squeak of fear or a cry of
encouragement as he fell into place beside Seth, glaring at Derek.
“Seth was Underground for seventeen years. He knows less about
the Resistance than anyone else here. Unless you think our
enemies are interested in the high school basketball team’s
playbook, I don’t see what he would have to offer Chimera.” Seth
raised his chin, trying to look like a dignified ignoramus, anyway.
“Besides,” squeaked Melody, “we have the word of Ben
Schofield that Seth was trustworthy. His word is good enough for
me.”
“Me too.” Ozzie dropped Seth a wink, like, Solidarity,
brother.
“I’m not talking about the last seventeen years,” Derek said,
undaunted. “I’m talking about the past two months. Werner Regent
collared the Black Swan, and this boy,” he said boy in a way that
made Alfaro snort angrily, “was his shadow from the day he
arrived in Fairfax. How do we know he wasn’t corrupted? How do
we know those two aren’t a matched set of human pets?”
Melody’s pink nose was wriggling. “Derek, may I remind you,
Seth and J.J. were instrumental in freeing the Black Swan, as, I
might add, was Captain McLain – ”
“Then where is she? If she’s free, where is she? They know.”
Derek pointed at Seth and J.J., silvery eyes dark with hunger. His
ears had elongated to points; his voice was more or less a growl.
“They’re hiding something. They’re traitors, you mark my words,
they’re working for – ”
“Don’t you dare talk about my brothers like that!”
Derek was so astonished he stopped talking.
Leigh had erupted off the dais, ablaze with righteous fury.
Emery was chasing after her, tufts of fur sticking out of his ears.
Dre just looked awed.
“Excuse me,” huffed Clyde, half-rising from his chair. “Who
are you?”
“A human,” Derek started, scathingly.
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“I,” declared Leigh, “am Adleigh Jean Steward, Seth and J.J.’s
sister.” Like she was representing them. Seth wouldn’t have been
surprised if she had whipped out a briefcase and gone Perry Mason
on the shocked Commanders. “And you’re right. I am a human.
From what I understand, so are all of you, in part. You might try
acting like it.”
Derek flushed. “This is war. There are exceptions – ”
“Yes, I’m aware that you’re at war. This is the very spot where
you fought a battle my brothers nearly died helping you win, isn’t
it?” Leigh linked her arm through J.J.’s on one side, Seth’s on the
other. J.J. was staring at her like she had just skinned. “From where
I’m sitting, all you’re doing is pointing fingers at one another while
your real enemies gather strength. If I didn’t know better, Mr.
Childers, I would think you have a vested interest in stalling this
fight.”
“Hear, hear,” approved Melody, clapping her small hands.
Ozzie murmured something about “bloody well put, love.”
“Come along, boys,” Leigh said, turning her brothers away
from the table. “You don’t have to stay here and be interrogated.”
McLain’s black-coffee eyes were crinkled at the corners, like
he was holding back a laugh. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said, to the
Commanders, and led them out of the rotunda, leaving the shocked
Resistance gaping at their backs.
***
“The nerve of those people, calling you and J.J. traitors –
whoa.” Leigh pulled up, blinking, as the elevator doors whooshed
open onto the lower levels. “Okay. This place is a little creepy.”
“You think this is bad,” J.J. said, “you should see the
dungeon.”
Emery’s ears twitched. “There’s a dungeon?”
But J.J. had already brushed by them. Xanthe rose from his
couch as his pupil hurried toward him, drawing him aside for a
psychic huddle. Leigh stared at them. Xanthe’s tail was curled
around J.J.’s feet.
“Does that freak you out?” she whispered.
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“Like you have no idea,” Seth whispered back, and then
smiled. From the far end of the room, Agathon was sweeping
toward them, wings rustling.
“Seth,” he rumbled. “You rested comfortably?”
“Slept like the dead,” Seth replied. Necromancer humor.
Agathon laughed, a sound like paper crumpling.
McLain had left them at the elevator. Leigh walked over to
where Dre was giving Whitney the tour, chirping on about
alchemists’ mixtures and Lemurian grimoires. Seth leaned against
the exam table where Aphrodisia had psychically X-rayed him and
said, without preamble, “Agathon, I want to see the Ark.”
He had decided this last night. Everything that was happening
now had begun with the discovery Elijah Bishop and Ursula LeRoi
had made inside Mt. Hokulani: the Ark. That was what they were
fighting to protect. Before he made his next move, before he
decided what was right, as Jack had said, he needed to see the Ark
for himself.
Agathon’s flat black eyes drifted to Xanthe, who was watching
them like he could hear every word they were saying. “Seth, what
you ask is no small request. Few of our kind have seen the Ark.
Before he died, our father appointed us, the Alpha Clan, to be its
guardians.”
“I know,” Seth said. “Elijah Bishop wanted you to have the
Ark. Not LeRoi.”
“It was our father’s desire to see the werekin freed from their
enslavement. To see Earth protected from the destruction the
power of the Totems could visit upon it, in the wrong hands – a
power that can command wind and wave, land and sea, that can
awaken volcanoes and call fire from the sky, even sink entire
continents beneath the sea.”
Everyone had become quiet, listening to Agathon. “In
communicating with the dead, I see across dimensions,” he
rumbled quietly. “I have seen many worlds. Enough to know Earth
is a special place, blessed with special magic. Our father shared
this belief, as do the others of my Clan.
“Our father studied the Ark for many years. He believed that
only when the power of the Totems once again belonged solely to
werekin, only when Lemuria was raised from the depths and the
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werekin returned to their homeland, would our enslavement end,
and Earth be truly safe.”
Quinn took a step forward. She had been leaning against the
wall with Alfaro. “You’re planning to raise Lemuria, aren’t you?”
she said. “With or without General Burke’s approval.”
Agathon inclined his head. Yes.
Seth drew in a breath. Here, then, was the alien rebellion the
humans so greatly feared. Except Agathon wanted to protect
humanity, not conquer it. Somehow, Seth doubted Burke would
believe that. “Do the Commanders know?” he asked.
Agathon shook his head. “Ben Schofield knew. Your father
knew. J.J. knows. That is all.”
“And Captain McLain?” Seth glanced at Cleo as he said it.
“Yes,” Agathon said. “Captain McLain knows.” He turned
then, sweeping aside his black robes. “If you would come, I will
show you what you wish to see.”
A maze of tunnels spoked off from the main room. Seth had
imagined the lower level as a spider web; in actuality, it was a
beehive, honeycombed with sterile labs, sleeping chambers, and
plenty of locked doors. Staircases descended to even deeper levels,
wafting up chill puffs of air tainted with the sharp scents of metal
and blood. Leigh stuck to Seth’s arm like someone had glued her
there.
Recessed lights in the tall ceilings grew their shadows to
distorted lengths. They shuffled silently past Aphrodisia’s
laboratory; she and Marshall were bent over a table that came up to
Marshall’s chest, a backdrop of mortars, pestles, phials and
canisters on the shelves behind them. A beaker was brewing over
an open flame, bubbling with raspberry-colored liquid.
Marshall had a white lab coat on over his jeans, a pair of safety
glasses stuck on his nose. As they passed, he frowned quizzically
at Seth, who smiled, to show him things were cool.
At last, after what seemed miles, Agathon halted, at a round
metal door crisscrossed with heavy chains and painted with
Lemurian glyphs. He raised his hands. The chains retracted,
slithering into the walls. Cleo and Seth exchanged a look. Agathon
had not spoken the spell to release the wards aloud. Who among
them did he not trust?
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Darkness greeted them, dispelled by a faint glow, like sunlight
filtering through water. The room was cavernous, with a sunken
floor ringed by a stone ledge, ceilinged by metal beams haired with
white roots. Holding tight to Leigh’s icy hand, Seth walked to the
railing and peered over, into a rounded pit with smooth, stone
sides, like a well.
A collective intake of breath swept the room.
The hole extended down indefinitely. Growing inside of it were
layer upon layer of delicate crystal threads, zigzagged across the
pit. It was like looking down into a giant spider web. Seth could
feel its pulse, a heartbeat inside an alien womb.
Encased in the web, twenty feet down, was a small,
champagne-colored orb, exuding traceries of light along the crystal
threads like ichor flowing from a god’s heart. The pulse came from
the orb. The material was unlike anything Seth had ever seen. The
closest comparison would have been sand fused into glass by a
lightning strike, dense yet translucent.
It was an exact replica of the orb Marshall had held in Seth’s
dream.
“This is the Ark.” Agathon’s voice was a deep rumble in the
reverent silence. “When it is complete, it will contain the magical
essence of all werekin. It is our link to the Totems.”
“What do you need,” whispered Leigh, “to complete it?”
Agathon looked at Seth.
Instinctively he backed up, into J.J. His twin steadied him by
the arms. They won’t force you, he promised, in Seth’s mind. Trust
me.
Trusting J.J. was a given. But J.J. was not in charge here. Seth
zeroed in on Agathon, acutely aware of Xanthe standing close by.
“So it’s my choice? To give you my blood or not give you my
blood. It’s my choice?”
His tone was defiant, but Agathon simply nodded. The
wavering light found all of the hollows in his face; he could have
been a statue of an ancient, monstrous god come to life.
“It is your blood,” Agathon said. “It is your choice.”
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Chapter Fourteen: Chapter and Verse
The note for Seth to present himself in the gym post-haste
arrived during first-period Bio, giving Gideon a chance to sneer
about some educators thinking athletics took precedence over
academics. Seth wanted to tell him not to take it so personally.
Coach would have missed his own funeral for a basketball game.
Topher and Gabe were strolling across the court as Seth loped
into the gym. They too were wearing Knights’ basketball T-shirts
and letterman’s jackets, yet Seth had to try very hard not to see
their pictures in one of Ursula LeRoi’s top-secret files, stamped
with serial numbers. “Do you know what’s up?” he asked, as Gabe
slung an arm around his shoulders.
“This will be about Townsend and Foss,” Gabe predicted.
Right. Today was the first day Marshall and Cam would both
be back at school since the fight, what with Marshall’s suspension
and Cam’s rhinoplasty. Coach would be hoping to avoid further
bloodshed.
The detritus of seasons past littered Coach Evans’ office – team
photos and signed basketballs sharing shelf space with
motivational titles like Bobby Knight’s memoir and Norman
Schwarzkopf’s biography. The aroma was eau de gym sock.
Marshall and Cam were already assembled, both glaring at the
floor, when the other three tromped in. “Fall in, ladies,” Coach
barked at them.
His five starters lined up, hands folded at their backs like
grunts at attention. Seth ended up between Gabe and Cam. Cam’s
nose was a purple lump, winding out feelers of yellow and green
across his cheeks.
He leaned in, breathing down Seth’s neck. “My, what big eyes
you have, kitty-cat.”
“My, what a big schnozz you have, grandma,” Seth whispered
back.
“Foss, Philly, shut your yaps,” Coach snapped. He leaned his
knuckles on the desk, glowering at all of them. Coach Evans was a
former Marine – boot camp, basketball, it was all the same to him:
If you popped off or failed to hustle, you dropped and gave him
fifty. “Pay attention, princesses. We have a real chance at a state
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title this year, if you divas put your personal crap aside and play
team ball. But I will not hesitate to bench a single one of you if you
step out of line. And if anyone feels they have a score to settle,” his
gaze lasered on to Seth and Cam, “I want it understood that the
next player to throw a punch will be off my team, permanently.
Understood?”
“Yes, Coach,” they chorused.
“Wonderful. Now get your butts back to class. Philly,” Coach
added, “not you.”
His teammates filed out. Seth remained, shrugging when
Marshall threw him an anxious glance. He didn’t recall committing
any bench-worthy offenses.
“Take a seat, Sullivan.” Coach motioned Seth into a plastic
green chair. He sat down behind his desk, looking stiff and
uncomfortable, like they were about to have The Talk. “So.” He
cleared his throat. “I understand this disagreement between
Townsend and Foss had something to do with you.”
Being gay, hung there, unsaid. Seth looked back at Coach
evenly. He didn’t care if people knew he was gay. “That’s not the
whole story, Coach,” he said.
Coach accepted this with a nod. “Foss has issues, I know.
Townsend used to do an all right job of keeping him in line, but
this year…” He trailed off, waiting for Seth to fill in the blanks.
Because he had promised Marshall not to mention the incident
with Dr. Foss, Seth did not. “You and Townsend are neighbors, is
that right?”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Ever have any run-ins with his father?”
Seth blinked. Did Wesley Townsend having a hand in his
creation count as a run-in? “No. Why?”
“Because he called me at home this weekend. He’s a member
of the school board, you know. He asked me to boot you off the
team.”
“What?” Seth was too shocked to be angry. “Coach, you can’t!
I haven’t done anything!”
Coach twisted the string his whistle was threaded through. “He
mentioned drugs.”
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“So drug test me. Give me the cup. I’ll pee in it right now.” A
trumped-up history as a cokehead. Just one more gift Seth could
thank Werner Regent for.
“I reserve the right to do that,” said Coach, “with all of my
players. Which is exactly what I told Dr. Townsend when I said I
had no intention of cutting you from my team.”
As that sank in, a slow smile spread across Seth’s face. Wesley
Townsend was Chief of Surgery at Fairfax Memorial. Being
stonewalled by a high school basketball coach could not have gone
over well with him. “Thanks, Coach,” he said.
Coach waved that aside. He looked a little embarrassed by
Seth’s gratitude. “You’re a fine ballplayer, Sullivan, and if I’m any
judge of character, you’re not a bad kid. Now.” He leaned back in
his chair. “Tell me, given any thought to college ball?”
***
Seth spent the morning seething. Forget Wesley Townsend’s
connections to Chimera Enterprises. He had clearly underestimated
the lengths Dr. Townsend would go to to keep Seth away from his
son. Their romance was fast becoming an open secret; Seth could
see it in the looks they attracted when Marshall stopped by his
locker, when they walked to his Audi together after school. Fairfax
High had a handful of openly gay couples, among them their
wereotter Zoe Campbell and her girlfriend Serena Jensen, all of
whom had Seth’s total respect, braving as they did the inevitable
graffiti on the bathroom walls and the snide comments in the lunch
line. But two popular ballplayers going out? That would be a
school first.
To tell Marshall or not to tell Marshall, that was the question.
Seth stewed on it all during American History and Geometry. By
the end of fourth period, after much angst-ridden waffling, he had
decided on the not. To tell Marshall about Dr. Townsend’s
campaign to have him cut from the team would be straying very
close to Dr. Townsend’s involvement with LeRoi.
The last thing Seth wanted was to embroil Marshall any deeper
than he already was in dangerous werekin politics. Jack had said to
be sure what the right thing was before he did anything. Seth had
grown up believing it was always better to tell the truth if you
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could, but in this instance, he wasn’t so sure. How could he tell
Marshall the father he idolized wasn’t at all what he thought he
was? What Dr. Townsend had done with the Ovid Experiment was
cruel, as inhumane as collaring werekin, possibly even worse –
“What did Coach want?”
Seth actually tripped. His feet had carried him out of Ms.
Clark’s Geometry classroom without his brain noticing; he had
almost walked straight into Marshall, who had been holding up the
wall outside the door. “Indiana,” he protested.
“Sorry.” Marshall’s hair was sticking up the way it did when
he ran his fingers through it a lot, and his jeans and gray sweater
were wrinkled. Marshall was always handsome, but of late, he had
been looking less put-together than usual. “I didn’t mean to startle
you. I was just – I’ve been worried, all morning.”
“It was nothing,” Seth said. “We talked about athletic
scholarships. Coach thinks I could play college ball, if I wanted
to.”
There was truth to that, and Seth, a skilled liar thanks to years
of practice in the Underground, skipped right over the rest of his
closed-door chat with Coach without batting an eye. Marshall
brightened. “Oh,” he said. “Well, cool.”
Pizza day had come yet again to Fairfax High. J.J. branched off
to the Haven table, where Alfaro was once again in residence;
Marshall and Seth waved as they carried their trays over to their
usual seats, a healthy distance from Cam and Shanti. Leigh was not
sitting next to Bryce. On the drive to school, she had broken the
news that he had asked Yena to prom. Ages ago, apparently, but
she still seemed miffed.
Seth munched his cardboard pizza while everyone else chatted
about prom dresses and tux rentals. Cam and Topher both had
long-time girlfriends. Gabe had asked one of the smokin’-hot girls’
volleyball players to be his date. Thus everyone was paired up
except Seth and Marshall. Seth planned to go stag. Marshall was
being pressured on the home front to secure a date – of the female
persuasion, of course. Seth considered suggesting he ask Leigh, as
a friend. That way she could go, which she was dying to do, and
Dr. Townsend might lay off persecuting his son’s boyfriend for a
while.
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He looked across the cafeteria at J.J. His twin was tipped back
in his chair, talking very seriously with Dre, most definitely not
about prom, or sports, or homework. J.J. chafed at the monotony of
their orderly suburban lives. Seth, on the other hand, had embraced
the mundanity. He liked being a regular kid. Maybe that was why
he had yet to mention their godly potential to his twin, and why he
became absorbed in sorting out the lint from his pockets whenever
J.J. or Emery referenced the Ark.
The pulsating power of that golden orb gave Seth head-to-toe
chills. J.J. did not understand his reluctance to lend his blood to the
raising of Lemuria, just as he did not understand why Seth
preferred studying to soldiering, but so far, he had not pressed the
issue.
His blood, Agathon had said. His choice.
***
After school, Seth camped out in the lawn chair beside J.J.’s
cot, MacBook open on his knees, books and papers strewn around
him as he compiled his bibliography to his essay on Othello for
Miss Janowitz. J.J., lying belly-down on the cot, was sprucing up
Seth’s conclusion. Captain Hook was napping on the pillow, back
leg twitching like he was chasing rabbits. Poe was eyeing him like
she might pounce.
Slowly but surely the basement was acquiring J.J.’s stamp. To
the tent and army cot he had added the lawn chair for visitors and a
quartet of milk crates for storing books, CDs, and weapons. Seth
took these as hopeful signs his twin meant to stay in Fairfax.
“School is so dull,” J.J. complained, typing two-fingered on
his laptop. “I don’t see the point. We just sit there, and the teachers
tell us stuff we could read in a book. Nothing happens.”
“Stuff happens,” Seth said. “We played basketball in Gym.
And you got detention again.” J.J. had picked up the rules of
basketball quite quickly, along with a healthy dose of trash-talk
courtesy of Topher and Gabe. Unfortunately, when Cam had
fouled him, Coach had heard the name J.J. had called him.
“Chuck looked better with a broken nose,” J.J. muttered.
“Cam,” corrected Seth, peering at the screen over J.J.’s
shoulder. “J.J., I don’t think I would use the phrase ‘xenophobic
178
proclivity.’ As a matter of fact, I know I wouldn’t, since I have no
idea what it means.”
Sighing, J.J. backspaced. “I’m just saying, wouldn’t you rather
be training?”
“We train,” Seth insisted.
“Not this week. You have basketball all this week. And if you
weren’t in school, you could work with Xanthe. He’s a great
teacher.”
Subtle hint that Seth had not yet agreed to study under J.J.’s
Gen-0 guru. He shuffled some papers around, avoiding J.J.’s gaze.
“What would I learn?”
“Divination. Augury. Astral projection.”
Meanwhile, Xanthe would be at liberty to paw through Seth’s
innermost thoughts. No thank you. “We’ll see after the season is
over,” he hedged. J.J. frowned, and Seth was relieved when Lydia
summoned them to dinner shortly thereafter.
Prior to the initiation of divorce proceedings, meals in the
Steward household had been formal affairs in the dining room,
around a mahogany table built to seat an army. Now, on the rare
occasions they were all home at the same time for meals, they ate
in the living room, Lydia in Jack’s old recliner, Leigh on the floor,
Seth and J.J. on the couch.
Tonight, fresh from a Resistance meeting, Will McLain had
joined them. He pulled a chair in from the kitchen and balanced his
plate of chicken and jasmine rice on his knees, sipping a Heineken,
part of Jack’s old stash.
Seth had made up his mind to tell no one, not even J.J., that
Caroline McLain was the Black Swan, her older brother Will her
protector. Derek might think that meant McLain knew where she
was now, and Seth did not trust the Resistance any more than he
trusted Chimera at the moment. He hadn’t even told McLain that
he knew.
Prom was once again the hot topic. Leigh, somewhat to Seth’s
surprise, seemed genuinely happy for Whitney to have a date; a
mother-daughter shopping spree with the Steward and Townsend
women was being planned for the weekend. Dresses, shoes,
jewelry. You would have thought they were planning Whitney’s
wedding. All Seth had to do was rent a tux.
“Who are you inviting, J.J.?” McLain asked.
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J.J. looked up from his copy of Lord of the Flies. J.J. did not do
family time. “I have to go?”
“Of course you don’t have to, honey,” Lydia said. “But don’t
you want to?”
J.J. shrugged. “I wouldn’t know who to ask.”
“Invite Cleo,” Seth suggested.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” J.J. said. McLain laughed. Cleo
in a ball gown was kind of hard to envision. Maybe they could find
her something in leather, with a thigh sheath for her dagger.
“Whatever, J.J.,” snipped Leigh, though without her usual
venom. Since she had taken their part against the Commanders, she
and J.J. had declared an unofficial truce. “Cleo is so into you. She
looks at you like she wants to rip your clothes off.”
Lydia choked. Probably thinking of all the hours J.J. spent
training at Cleo’s. Seth was thankful his cell phone rang then and
spared them all the awkwardness.
He fumbled it from his pocket. “Hello?”
“Seth? It’s Jack. How are you?”
“I’m good.” Shooting a furtive look at his mother, Seth hurried
out through the kitchen into their newly-refurbished backyard.
Next door he could hear the thump-bump-swish of Marshall
shooting hoops. Bounding onto the brick fence, he cat-walked
along the edge. An owl in a nearby tree soared off with a hoot. “I
heard Mom kicked you out of Fort King the other night. Don’t you
have the same security clearance she does?”
“Your mother was in enough turmoil over your condition
without me adding to it,” Jack said. A burst of background noise
suggested he wasn’t at home. A bar, perhaps? Jack raised his voice
over the din. “Listen, I did that research we discussed, into foreign
language programs. I’d like to meet soon, to discuss your options.”
Thump-bump-swish. Seth matched his steps to the rhythm.
Through the kitchen window, he could see Lydia and McLain
washing dishes together, laughing. Lydia hadn’t forbidden him to
see Jack, but she was not jazzed by the idea. Seth didn’t want to
tell Jack that, though. It would hurt his feelings. “I’m really busy
right now,” he evaded. “Getting ready for playoffs.”
“What about Sunday? I’ll take you for brunch at the country
club. Bring Marshall.”
Seth sighed. “Let me ask Mom.” So she can say no.
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He sat down on the fence, enjoying the evening breeze. The
weather had turned almost balmy, for February.
They talked basketball a while. Jack was planning to come to
the Sacred Heart game. Seth would need to prep Lydia for that as
well. Divorce was really complicated.
Before they hung up, he asked Jack for one more favor. A bit
of research. Jack promised to get back with him when he had
something.
Marshall was measuring a free throw when Seth hopped the
shrub-fence. “Hey, Philadelphia. Up for a game of P.I.G.?”
Seth shook his head. Content to observe, he slouched against
the garage. Marshall in tattered sweats, hair plastered to his scalp,
was supremely ogle-worthy. Although he looked exhausted. Seth
wondered how long he had been out here. “I hear we’re tux
shopping Saturday,” he said.
“I was informed.” Marshall’s free throw bounced off the rim.
He grabbed the ball, dribbling it hard. “Damn. I keep missing
those.
“Maybe you should take a break,” Seth suggested. “We did
practice for two hours after school.”
“It’s the post-season,” Marshall said, like that explained
everything. “And speaking of prom – ”
Headlights turned down the drive. Both boys looked up. It was
Dr. Townsend’s Lexus. Marshall balanced the ball on his hip,
shoulders squared for battle, but Seth pushed off the garage. “I’ll
go,” he said.
“You don’t have to leave,” Marshall protested, but Seth just
smiled at him and kept walking. Because they both knew he did.
***
Sitting on the corner of the big white house’s porch, Whitney
Townsend watched Seth slink in the Stewards’ back door. Her
father and brother were now standing beside the Lexus, arguing.
She could gauge this by the straightness of Marshall’s spine,
though she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Wesley
Townsend would never shout on the front lawn. What would the
neighbors think?
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Whitney remembered nights of sitting on the couch with
Marshall, waiting to hear their father’s car turn in the drive. Nights
when report cards had been sent home, and a B had been mixed in
with Marshall’s As. The night in ninth grade when he had been
passed over for the Student Council. The night in seventh grade
when he had been bumped from a starting position on the
basketball team after an abysmal try-out. As soon as the headlights
frosted the windows, Marshall would make her go upstairs, and
Whitney would pull a pillow over her head to muffle her father’s
shouting, her mother’s crying.
Later, Whitney would slip down to Marshall’s room and crawl
into his bed, wriggling into his arms like she was the one in need
of comfort.
Since the day after the Black Swan’s rescue, the worst fight
Whitney had ever seen her father and her brother have – the only
time Marshall had ever shouted back, and the only time their father
had ever raised a hand to him – Marshall’s bedroom door was
always locked at night.
The Stewards’ front door opened now. In the slant of light from
the entryway, the tall figure of Will McLain was outlined. Whitney
hopped up, back pressed against the siding, the book she had been
thumbing through clutched to her chest. She was shivering in her
sweater and tights, wishing she had brought her coat.
McLain crossed the street, whistling as he mounted the porch
steps. Whitney stepped out of the shadows. “Captain?”
He swung around, hand dropping to his hip like he had a gun
holstered there. He probably did. Seeing Whitney, he froze.
“Whitney? Is something wrong?”
“I’m – not sure.” Whitney held out the book. “I found
something I thought you should see.”
McLain glanced across the street at her house. Her father had
gone inside; Marshall was still shooting hoops. “All right,” he said.
“Come in.”
The house was dark. When McLain flipped the light switch,
Whitney found herself in an airy foyer with hardwood floors and
white-washed walls. Cardboard boxes were stacked on the
staircase; other than an old-fashioned gilt-framed mirror, the walls
were bare. McLain dropped his keys and his patrol cap on the
claw-foot table beneath the mirror and motioned for Whitney to
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follow him down the hall. She did, taking note of the baby grand
piano in the living room, the sheets and pillows on the couch,
suggesting the captain slept there rather than upstairs.
The kitchen had a tile floor and chrome countertops. The blinds
were pulled above the sink, and Whitney realized why the house
seemed so dark. Every window was shuttered.
McLain gestured at a chair. “Have a seat. Want a soda?”
“Sure.” Whitney sat down, dropping her canvas tote on the
chair beside her. McLain took two Cokes out of the fridge and sat
down across from her. The front of the refrigerator was covered in
photos of his family. His sister, Caroline, featured in most of them,
sitting at the bench of the baby grand piano in a tasteful living
room, pushing off a swing in a backyard, the red rocks of the New
Mexico desert outlined behind her. Again Whitney felt that tickle
in her brain –
“So, what can I help you with, Whitney?”
McLain’s tone was polite, but expectant. Whitney pushed the
book over to him. “Emery gave this to me. For Valentine’s Day.”
McLain read the spine. “Shakespeare. Good choice.”
“He thought I would like it because of the notes whoever
owned it before made in the margins. When I was reading it today,
I found this.”
Opening the page she had marked with a Student Vegan
Society brochure, Whitney placed her fingertip over a handwritten
line in the margins of Sonnet 18: I will play the swan, and die in
music. At the end of the penciled-in verse was a series of numbers
and a strange symbol, like a glyph.
“I looked the line up,” Whitney said. “It’s from Othello, but the
numbers at the end don’t match the line numbers in the play. And
that symbol is Lemurian, isn’t it? It looks like the glyphs in the
grimoires Marshall brings home.”
Will McLain drew the book toward him, brow furrowed. He
had learned to always be controlled – in his line of work, a spy for
the Resistance inside Chimera, a tell would have spelled the end of
him. Even so, cagey excitement was running through him. His
fingers trembled as he picked the book up. The handwriting was
neat and tidy, distinctly masculine.
Whitney was gnawing on the chipped pink polish on her
fingernails. “Where did Emery get this?” McLain asked.
183
“He said it belonged to his father. Aidan McDonagh.”
“Did you tell him what you found?”
Whitney shook her head. “I wasn’t sure what I had found.”
“This,” McLain laid his thumb down by the glyph, “is the
Lemurian word for doorway.”
Whitney’s eyes widened. She had very blue eyes, like her
brother’s. McLain suspected the Townsend siblings were also
equally observant. “Like, a doorway to Lemuria?” she said.
“Possibly.”
“Do you know what the numbers mean?” Whitney was
whispering.
“Well, that depends,” McLain said. “Do you know anything
about astronomy?”
“Is that the one you use for reading horoscopes, or the one you
can get a degree in?”
McLain grinned. “Get your coat. We’re taking a field trip.”
***
Whitney had heard the term “war room” before, but she had
never truly grasped what one would look like until the guards
inside Fort King stepped aside for Captain McLain and the glass
double doors slid open, admitting her to a room paneled in
monitors all clicking through various satellite images. Uniformed
officers hunched over sophisticated computer stations. “It’s like
NORAD,” she said.
“You’re not that far off, actually.” Dre Alfaro popped up from
behind one of the stations like a chick from an egg. Unless
Whitney was mistaken, that was the same T-shirt and jeans he had
worn yesterday. Dre all but lived at Fort King. Both he and Emery
always seemed to be on assignment these days. Whitney didn’t
begrudge them their missions. She just wished she wasn’t quite so
useless.
Dre sat down at one of the stations, toggling switches like he
was operating a video game console. He stuck a headset over his
unruly hair, just as one of the screens flickered from a satellite
view of the desert to a live feed, grainy but in color, of a young
woman in fatigues like McLain’s. Into the mouthpiece, Dre said,
“Evening, Jensen.”
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Jensen’s mouth moved. McLain nudged Dre. “Put her on
speaker.”
“Right. Sorry…” Dre flipped a switch, and Jensen’s voice
came through the speakers: “…for the repositioning?”
“The book,” McLain whispered.
Whitney jumped. She hadn’t realized until then that she had an
actual purpose here. Quickly, she handed the book to Dre.
He opened it to the marked page and rattled off the long
sequence of numbers. On her end, Jensen, who appeared to be
ensconced at a station identical to Dre’s, tapped on her keyboard.
“Okay,” she said. “It’ll just take a minute for the telescope to find
that location.” She looked away from her computer. “I heard about
Ben. I’m sorry, Will.”
McLain nodded brusquely.
“Ah. Here we are.” Jensen flipped a switch; the central screens
winked out, blinking back as an image of the starry night sky.
Digitized blue lines picked out a constellation, and Whitney
understood what the numbers had been: celestial coordinates,
designating the position of stars based on ascension and
declination.
As one, Whitney, Dre, and McLain leaned forward, like they
could bring the image on the screen closer though it was hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of light years away. “Captain,” Dre said, “do
you recognize that constellation?”
McLain shook his head. “That’s because it’s never been
charted,” Jensen said. She sounded almost smug. “We just put your
coordinates through every one of our databases. Right now, you
are looking at one of the furthest galaxies a telescope on Earth has
ever seen.”
As though to prove that, the image fritzed.
Doorway. The Totems had come from the stars, and now,
someone had written out the coordinates to a far-off, undiscovered
galaxy appended by the Lemurian glyph for doorway. Whitney’s
hand fluttered to her throat, her gaze lighting on the silver swan
charm Captain McLain always wore, her mind jumping back to the
lovely dark-haired girl in the photographs on his refrigerator. I will
play the swan, and die in music.
Dre’s eyes were on the frozen image of the unnamed
constellation. “Is it just me, or does that look a little like a – ”
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“Swan,” McLain and Whitney said, at the same time. Whitney
blushed. McLain picked up the book of sonnets. “I know this
handwriting,” he said. “It’s Elijah Bishop’s. But Bishop was
executed before any telescope had been built that could have seen
stars that far away.”
Dre frowned. “Uh, sir, that’s impossible. You can’t draw a star
chart for stars you can’t see.”
“No,” McLain agreed. “You can’t.” Without explaining
further, he placed the book back in Whitney’s hands. His
expression was solemn. “Thank you, Whitney, for showing me
this. I don’t mind if you tell Emery, but would you keep it to
yourself otherwise?”
Whitney, somewhat taken aback, said, “Does that mean I can
keep the book?”
McLain smiled. “Please do. With you, I’ll know it’s in good
hands.”
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Chapter Fifteen: Star Crossed
The hair care aisle of Fairfax’s largest drugstore had a decent
selection of punk colors, although, disappointingly, Electric Lizard
was not among them. Seth called Cleo for advice.
“What are the choices?” she asked. Kisschassy was thumping
on her stereo. Emery had introduced her to Australian rock.
Seth tucked the phone against his shoulder and surveyed the
labels. Lydia had loaned him the Escalade to drive into town; J.J.
was off doing whatever J.J. did, Leigh and Whitney were doing
their Vegan Society thing, Marshall had gotten roped into some
father-son dinner with his dad after practice, Emery was playing
roadie for their friend Chaz’s band – in sum, Seth was the odd man
out all around tonight.
He picked up one of the bottles. “Do I strike you as a Deadly
Nightshade?”
“I recommend against colors named after poisons,” Cleo said.
“Sage advice, Obi-Wan.” Seth moved on down the line. “How
about Pretty Flamingo?”
“Won’t it clash with your tutu?”
Laughing, Seth put the bottle back.
Eventually, they settled on Arctic Blue. Cleo urged him to
come over. “I’m bored,” she said. “Now that the Resistance isn’t
fighting – ”
“ – except with each other,” Seth said.
“Well, right, but that’s not very exciting. And I never see you
anymore.”
This was true, Seth had to admit, and not entirely accidental.
He had been sort of avoiding Cleo since that not-quite-platonic kiss
she had planted on him at Fort King the night after Blondie
collared him. But there didn’t seem to be any weirdness between
them now, and anyway, Seth missed hanging out with her. Cleo
was one of the first friends he had ever made.
He promised to pick her up in twenty. They would go to his
house and she could punkify him.
Twenty minutes later, crossing the wooden bridge onto
Regent’s drive, Seth felt the familiar twang of betrayal. Cleo was
waiting on the porch, wearing skintight jeans and a white sweater
187
that made her eyes look silvery-blue. She hopped into the Escalade
as soon as Seth slowed down and pitched a bag of Oreos into his
lap. Cleo rocked.
They munched cookies and griped about the Resistance on
their way to Castle Estates, where they found a note from Lydia
saying she had gone out to dinner with Ingrid McLain. Operation
Swan Song had put Lydia in charge of the relocation program for
the werekin filtering in to Fort King from the Underground; she
was helping to fix them up with new identities, jobs that paid
enough to live on, decent housing – and school, for their children.
Hence the dinner with their principal, Ms. McLain. The influx had
been slow but steady; werekin didn’t readily present themselves
for registering with humans after decades of hiding from Chimera,
but word was getting out that times had changed. It felt like
progress on some front, anyway.
Upstairs, Cleo spread towels on the bathroom floor, while Seth
changed into old sweats. No shirt, as the dye would ruin it. Cleo
folded her legs up under her on the sink as he gummed dye into his
blonde locks. “Aphrodisia doesn’t know what to make of your
recovery,” she said, eyeing the smooth, flat skin on his stomach,
where his scar had been.
“Cleo, I am not just recovered. I am supercharged,” Seth said.
“You should see me on the ball court. I almost shattered the
backboard today at practice when I dunked.”
“I will see you,” Cleo said. “At your game. It’s Thursday,
right?”
Seth looked over at her, surprised. “You’re coming to my
game?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Cleo said.
Seth was touched. Basketball wasn’t high on Cleo’s list of
priorities. “Anxious to see Connor Burke again?” he teased. Cleo
made a face at him.
The timer dinged. Cleo positioned him on the floor, Seth’s
shoulders hanging over the edge of the tub, head tipped back for
her to rinse his hair with the extendable shower nozzle. Warm
water trickled down Seth’s back, soaking the waistband of his
pants. He shut his eyes against wayward streams of ammoniatainted water as Cleo massaged the dye into his scalp, as it said to
on the package.
188
“This is very relaxing,” Seth told her. “Cats enjoy being
groomed, you know.”
“I can tell.” A smile was obvious in Cleo’s voice. “You’re
purring.”
“I am not,” Seth said, though he might have been, a little. “So
did you hear anything about some major discovery Whitney made
in astrophysics?”
“I think Elijah Bishop was the one who made the discovery,”
Cleo said, “and I didn’t think anyone besides Emery was supposed
to know about that.”
“And yet, you know about it.”
“Yes, well, I have clearance. You just know a wererabbit with
a big mouth.” The water shut off. “Okay. Keep your eyes closed
until I dry you off.”
A towel was fluffed over Seth’s head, then across his chest and
back, soaking up stray water droplets. He tried not to notice how
Cleo’s hands lingered on his arms as she helped him sit up, or how
close her nose was to his as she finger-fixed his sopping locks.
Somewhere in the last sixty seconds, the vibe in the room had
changed. “Give it to me straight, Cleo,” Seth said, trying for levity.
“Am I punkalicious?”
“Sweetheart, you are gorgeous,” Cleo said.
Then her arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him.
She tasted like salt and bubblegum. They had kissed once
before, Cleo and Seth – an encounter neither of them ever
referenced. Afterwards Cleo had said kissing him was gross,
because he was an animal.
It was a fight they had never formally resolved.
In that kiss, Cleo had been fierce, bruising Seth’s lips with
hers, sliding her hands all over his body. This kiss was so tender
Seth would have questioned whether it was a real kiss had it not
been for Cleo molding herself to him, pressing him back against
the tub.
Seth sat statue-still, lips parted. When Cleo finally drew back,
her eyes were searching his, her cheeks lightly flushed. She looked
– vulnerable. Cleo, who could take down a werejaguar with her
bare hands. Seth felt a sting in the center of his chest.
“Hi,” he said, gently. “You must be looking for my brother,
J.J. I’m Seth. The gay twin.”
189
Cleo’s eyes dropped back to his lips. “Care to test that theory?”
She moved to kiss him again. This time Seth pushed her away
and gained his feet, turning his back on her with his arms hugged
around the hole that had suddenly opened up in his middle.
Theory? Cleo thought him being gay was a theory? Cleo was his
best friend. How could she not recognize such an essential part of
his makeup? It’s like your skin, Marshall had said. You can’t hide
it, and you can’t change it.
In the mirror, Seth watched her scoop up damp towels and
pitch them into the hamper. He couldn’t even appreciate how
awesome his new hair color looked. He felt sick inside. “Cleo, it’s
not a theory,” he said. “I’m in love with Marshall. That’s not a
theory.”
“Okay, okay. Don’t get all dramatic on me, sweetheart. I was
just messing around.”
The words were light enough, but brittle as snapping twigs.
Seth turned around. “Cleo – ”
“Look, Seth, let’s just – ” Cleo blew out a breath between her
lips. Then, suddenly, she dropped the towels in a heap and hurried
into Seth’s bedroom. Escaping.
Seth sprinted ahead of her and blocked the doorway with his
arms outstretched, one hand gripping either side of the frame. Cleo
glared at him. Her ice-chip eyes were frozen solid. Now she was
mad. Mad on Cleo could be deadly.
“Sweetheart, I can move you,” she warned.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Seth said. “But either way, we are
talking about this.”
“Fine.” Cleo bit out the word. “I’m sorry I kissed you. Have
we talked it out?”
“No.” Seth shifted his weight when she attempted to duck by
him. “I want to know why you kissed me.”
“Oh please,” Cleo said. “Like you don’t know you’re cute?”
“You think of me that way? As…cute?”
“Here’s a tip, sweetheart. Just because you like boys doesn’t
mean girls don’t notice you.”
Seth ran a hand through his wet hair. He knew that. Obviously
he knew that. He had seen girls look at him as he walked down the
halls at school. Had even had a few come up to him, give him their
190
numbers, invite him to parties. But this was Cleo. “I don’t
understand,” he said, softly.
Cleo looked away. After a moment, seeming to decide it wasn’t
worth the trouble to move him, she flounced over to Seth’s bed and
flopped down. Seth joined her, leaving a wedge of space between
them. Seth despised that wedge of space. Despised the sudden need
for it.
“You wanting to kiss me, that’s about J.J., isn’t it?” he said.
Cleo buried her face in her hands. As of now, Seth decided, he
was officially hating this conversation. “I can tell the two of you
apart, you know,” she said, through her fingers.
“I’m the scrawny one with the blue hair and tattoos,” Seth
said.
Cleo laughed. Thinly, but it broke the tension.
Lowering her hands from her face, she scooted back to sit
against the headboard. Seth scooted up beside her. Cleo took a
breath. “How I feel about J.J. is – complicated,” she said. “With
you, it’s easier. You let me care for you. Comfort you. You let me
in. J.J. doesn’t let anyone in.”
Seth could not deny that. For a psychic, his twin was a very
closed-off person. “Cleo, he cares about you. He wanted me to
save you, as a favor to him.”
“I know. I know he cares.”
Cleo confessed this on a puff of air. Seth violated their notouching zone by bumping her shoulder with his. “Then what’s the
problem? Go forth, woman. Declare thyself.”
She tried to smile, but it fragmented, dissolving like pixels on a
screen. Had she been any girl but Cleo, Seth would have said she
was trying not to cry. “Did J.J. ever tell you how he got his scars?”
Tactfully, Seth said, “He said it happened when he was a
child.”
“He would think of it that way. The last day we were
children.” Cleo curled her hands against her sides, like the lacelike
patterns were even then being burned into her flesh. “Werekin and
hunters finish their training in the Scholae Bestiarii between the
ages of thirteen and fourteen – breeding age, for werekin. After
that, they have to be separated, except on missions. On the day you
graduate, if you want to call it that, partners have to fight in the
Arena, against one another, to the death. It’s kill or be killed,
191
against the partner you’ve been paired with your entire childhood.
For hunters, it’s proof we don’t see werekin as human. For
werekin, it’s proof your essential peacefulness has been eradicated
by years of brutality. LeRoi was willing to sacrifice one of every
partnered pair, because neither hunters nor werekin were of any
use to her if we weren’t absolutely willing to follow her orders.”
Whatever the square root of evil was, Seth thought, Ursula
LeRoi was it. “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” he said.
“Whenever that was,” Cleo said; but she closed her eyes, and
began.
**
“From the time he was collared, J.J. lived in Ursula LeRoi’s
household – unheard of, for a werekin, but LeRoi was always
fascinated by J.J. She sent him to the Scholae Bestiarii for training
when he was four years old. Up until then, J.J. had been a prince. I,
like all hunter children, was born a slave – taken from my mother
as soon as I was born, kept in a cage under observation until
LeRoi’s scientists were certain I wouldn’t skin. But once J.J. and I
were paired, the tables turned. He became the slave, I became the
master. He was collared. I held the key.
“That first night, when the trainers showed us into our cell, we
had one cot, one blanket.” Cleo toyed with the edge of Seth’s plain
brown bedspread. Her eyes were half-closed, but Seth couldn’t
stop staring at her. Her story seemed to have frozen him in place.
“They ordered me to sleep on the bed. I offered to share, but J.J.
refused and slept on the floor. In the morning, the trainers marched
us down to the Arena. One of the new hunters had given his
blanket to his partner in the night, so they tied him to the whipping
post and beat him bloody. Left him there, all day, in the sun. He
was four years old.
“J.J. knew that would happen, you see. He had been raised by
LeRoi. He had already started training with Xanthe. He knew the
rules, and he was protecting me. I wanted to protect him, too, but
he wouldn’t allow it. The trainers ordered us to break our partners.
To torture them. When I refused, J.J. called me weak and did it
himself – cut himself, starved himself, burned himself. The trainers
never questioned that I was following orders. Why would they?”
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Cleo sounded bitter now. “I followed every other order they ever
gave me, and J.J. was so – feral. You can’t imagine – the things
they made us do, the live victims…”
She swallowed hard. Seth shifted. Cleo turned her head to look
at him. “Seth, when I told you not to trust J.J., I meant it. I saw him
kill again and again in the Arena. I saw him plunge that knife into
your father without a shred of remorse. I never knew Xanthe was
working with the Resistance. I never knew he was training J.J.,
from birth, to be LeRoi’s worst enemy – a werekin with such
absolute control of his own thoughts and emotions he could
deceive anyone; a telepath so powerful he could reach across space
and time and connect to the mind of any werekin, anywhere. I
never knew Captain McLain was protecting the Black Swan. J.J.
never told me. As far as I knew, he was still a prince. Still
absolutely loyal to LeRoi.
“That last night, the night before we graduated, the trainers
separated us. I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t slept in a room without J.J.
in ten years. Our cells were next to one another, so he talked to me
through the wall. We recited lines from old movies Xanthe had
shown us. J.J.’s favorite was Casablanca. We could quote the
whole thing.
“The next day, when it was our turn in the Arena, I fought
hard, but it was just a show. I knew I couldn’t beat him. No one
had ever beaten J.J. in the Arena.
“The Partners were all there, and General Burke, and Captain
McLain, and of course Dr. LeRoi. Even Xanthe was there. When it
was over, J.J. was kneeling over me with a knife, and I…Seth, I
called him an animal.” Cleo was all but whispering. Seth could
picture it, just as she described – could hear the roar of the crowd,
smell the blood-soaked sand of the Arena, taste terror like copper
pennies on his tongue. “I hated him right then. Because if it had
been reversed, if I had won, I couldn’t have killed him. I was in
love with him. I’d been in love with him since we were four years
old.”
“What happened?” Seth asked, in a whisper.
“McLain intervened.” Cleo leaned back against the headboard
and looked at her feet, stretched out in front of her. “He told LeRoi
I was one of the most gifted hunters he had ever trained, and asked
her to spare me. LeRoi said she would indulge this ‘whim,’ as she
193
put it, if I could prove my worth as a hunter. So the trainers carried
out a bowl of silver powder, and they ordered me to hold J.J.’s
hands in it, and – I did. I held him there, while he screamed, while
the silver powder ate his skin all the way down to the bone. I had
never heard J.J. scream before. I had never seen him cry. I told
myself I didn’t care. I could be just as savage as he was. It was the
first and only time I ever hurt him.
“After that, J.J. went back to LeRoi’s household, and McLain
assigned me a hunter partner, Stefan. J.J. was a prince again. He
treated me like he always had, like we were warriors in the same
cause, and I tried to do the same. What was the point of loving
him? Even if he could have loved me back, and he never acted like
he did, it would never have been allowed. Hunters and werekin are
never allowed to mate. LeRoi would have punished us, horribly.
Probably killed us. So I did my best to think of him as an animal.
A beautiful, deadly animal.
“Then I met you, and you were so like him, and so not like
him. You could have killed me in the graveyard that night, but you
chose not to. And I could see you hated leaving me at Regent’s.
When you came back for me, you said J.J. had told you to save me,
and I was convinced he wanted me to collar you, for LeRoi. That
was what I was coming here to do, the night I saved you from
those hunters. But I couldn’t. You trusted me. You lay down to
sleep right next to me. When I kissed you that night, I was thinking
of J.J., I admit it. But I was thinking of him and wishing he was
you, not the other way around. I was wishing he was someone
good.”
Cleo folded in on herself, gripping her elbows, rocking back
and forth. This was too much for Seth; he circled his arms around
her shoulders, resting his cheek against her back. He still felt sick
inside, frozen all the way to his core, though now for very different
reasons. Paris, he remembered Cleo and J.J. saying, as they had
prepared for the battle at Fort King. We’ll always have Paris. Their
inside joke. Their mantra for a lost cause.
Except it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Cleo and J.J. belonged
together. Seth knew it, all the way down in his bones. Sometimes
people were just so right for each other it didn’t matter if all the
stars in the universe lined up against them, they would find a way
to one another. Like Seth had found Marshall.
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“J.J. is good, Cleo,” he said, softly. “He and McLain must
have arranged your last fight. J.J. would never kill you. He had to
know McLain was going to step in – ”
“Don’t you think I know that now?” Cleo sounded broken.
“He saved me on our last day as partners just like he did on our
first. Seth, don’t you see? J.J. is always a step ahead of everyone.
He knew LeRoi would order me to torture him, and he knew I
would do it, to save myself. Now every time I look at his scars, I
have to remember that he saved me, knowing I would hurt him in
the end.”
The tears she had been holding back finally escaped. She tried
to turn away, but Seth pulled her down onto the pillows and held
her, stroking her hair, aching inside for her, and for his twin. Had
my hands held in a bowl of silver powder, J.J. had said, to teach me
a lesson. A lesson in the cost of loving someone – a pound of flesh,
dearly bought.
195
Chapter Sixteen: War Dance
Fairfax High tradition held that every male student rent his
prom tux from Monique’s Bridal & Formalwear Boutique, housed
in a Victorian-style mansion on Riverside Drive in Fairfax’s
historic downtown district. Marshall parked the Audi on a
cobblestone street behind Lydia’s Escalade, and he, Seth, and J.J.
trailed the womenfolk up the leaf-strewn sidewalk to the oak front
door. Marshall had something of a skip back in his step this
morning. As of last night, his grounding had been officially
revoked. The father-son dinner must have gone well, Seth thought.
Monique – a spray-tanned, super-skinny, bottle-blonde goddess
of Armani, neither French nor female – glided out from behind a
counter overhung by lace garters and jeweled veils to greet them.
He took one look at Seth’s jaguar tattoos and Arctic Blue hair, and
declared him dahvine, dahling.
Monique positioned his customers in front of a bank of fulllength oval mirrors by the dressing rooms. Leigh and Whitney
flitted around, rifling through racks of prom dresses, gushing over
weddings gowns – the one and only time Seth had ever seen
Whitney behave like an actual girl. Lydia and Meredith sipped tea
on a damask-upholstered divan, looking on dewily as Monique
measured inseams, a stub of pencil stuck behind his ear.
Dates had not been mentioned, but you could tell Monique got
it. Seth heard him humming Barbara Streisand under his breath as
he vanished into the back.
Monique’s was the first stop on the Magical Prom Express,
and, thankfully, the only one the male members of their party
would be making. J.J. had tagged along only because from here the
boys were headed to Cleo’s for training. Adopting a catlike air of
superiority, he plopped down in a chintz armchair by the windows
to sun himself.
Monique soon emerged from the stockroom with vests, ties,
and jackets, and Marshall and Seth changed in a fitting room that
looked like a racy boudoir. Crushed velvet chairs. Black carpet.
Crystal chandeliers. Could have had possibilities if their mothers
hadn’t been present. “I’m not sure I tied this right,” Seth
196
complained as he stepped out of his fitting room, tugging on his
bowtie.
“Looks right,” Marshall said, glancing up at him in the fulllength mirror.
Seth didn’t answer. He had stepped up beside Marshall, and
was staring at their reflections.
Monique had outfitted them both in basic black – a long coat
for Marshall, accentuating the leanness of his frame,
complemented by a silver-checkered vest and tie that picked out
the gray in his baby blues; for Seth, a gold cummerbund and
matching bowtie, and a fitted jack that somehow made him look
taller. They looked good together, Seth thought. They looked right.
“You clean up nice, Philadelphia,” Marshall said, with careful
politeness.
“You too, Indiana,” Seth said, with equal care.
“What about you, dahling?” Marshall turned to J.J., eyeing
him like an especially juicy steak. “Any preferences on color?”
J.J., flangdang across his chair, addressed his sardonic smirk to
the frescoed ceiling. “I’m not going,” he said.
Meredith squealed. She was either completely clueless about
her son’s romance or completely clued-in, Seth couldn’t decide
which – Dr. Townsend kept her pretty well-medicated. She had
smiled at Seth drippily all morning, like always. “But sweetie,” she
said to J.J. now, “it’s prom!”
Lydia settled her tea cup on its saucer with a definitive click.
“Monique, I think something in ivory, don’t you?”
“With hair like that? Absolument!” Clapping his hands,
Monique rushed off to the stockroom.
J.J. had sat up straight, staring at Lydia, golden eyes bright
with betrayal. “You said I didn’t have to go!”
“Yes, well, I changed my mind.” Lydia was remorseless. “You
are, as of now, required to go to prom.”
J.J. glared at her.
Seth’s twin submitted to his fitting with ill grace, but he still
ended up with an ivory tux, paired with a black tie and vest. The
tux was fitted, like Seth’s, with a mandarin collar – very debonair,
though on J.J., it was more James Bond than Cary Grant.
The late February day was ripe with the promise of springtime:
cloudless blue sky like a stretch of tropical sea, breeze smelling of
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last night’s rain and this morning’s sunshine. Birds chirped at them
from the weeping willow in Monique’s front yard as the boys
climbed back into the Audi.
J.J. braced his boots against the back of Seth’s seat. He still
looked irritated. “If I get expelled, they won’t let me go to prom,
right? Because I could blow up the Chem lab. All the materials are
right there.”
“But sweetie,” Seth said, “it’s prom!”
J.J. muttered about high school. Marshall grated a glance at
him in the rearview mirror.
Since they were already in town, Seth suggested dropping in at
Re-Spin. Emery was their mainline to the Resistance now that J.J.
was on the outs with the Commanders, and Seth was anxious to
hear if there had been any developments on the alliance with
McLain.
The sweet aroma of cinnamon and yeast drew them to the food
court for coffees and Cinnabons. The mall was crowded with
weekend shoppers. As prom season was in full swing, most of the
shoppers were teenage girls. The storefront mannequins were all
showing off yards and yards of sequined satin. Seth tried,
unsuccessfully, to picture Cleo in a faerie princess confection with
a puffy skirt and bell sleeves.
“Hey player.”
Seth looked around, startled. Who should be sashaying toward
them in her Lady Knights hoodie and fleece athletic pants but
Vixen O’Shea.
J.J.’s lashes lowered as he watched her approach, hands in the
pockets of his worn-out leather jacket. Seth glowered at him. “You
invited her?” he said. “Why?”
J.J. looked puzzled. “She’s going to train with us,” he said.
Quinn and Marshall fell into an animated discussion about
Connor Burke’s defensive zone strategy on their way to Re-Spin.
The front window was papered over with flyers for the upcoming
concert by Listening Korn, the indie rock band headed up by the
store’s only full-time employee, Charles Bonaparte, a.k.a. Chaz.
J.J. studied the signage with a wrinkled brow. “Listening Korn?
What does that even mean?”
198
“It means Chaz smokes too much weed,” Marshall said. J.J.
glanced at him. Marshall had been even terser than usual with him
this morning.
They found Emery sorting through invoices in the combo
stockroom, office, and employee lounge. They circled up folding
chairs and passed around the box of Cinnabons, eating with their
fingers. Quinn had slipped her UA beanie off; J.J. was watching
her wind her hair up into a knot on top of her head. Seth was
tempted to throw coffee on her.
“The Commanders are as divided as ever,” Emery reported,
bleakly. “Ozzie and Josephine are on Mom’s side, more or less.
They trust Agathon. Clyde and Logue are with Derek, refusing to
work with McLain until the Black Swan is produced. Ben would
have been the tie-breaker, but LeRoi took care of that.”
“Ben wouldn’t have broken the tie,” Quinn said. “He would
have talked them all around to a unanimous decision.” Seth could
see the logic of that. Declaring open war against Chimera was a
huge departure from the Resistance’s former guerilla tactics;
without the steadfast support of all of the Commanders, the
fighters might decide it was too great a risk. The Resistance was
not the Marines. No court martials, no weekend furloughs, no
paychecks. Fighters could refuse a mission anytime they pleased.
Marshall licked icing off his knuckle. He had draped his jacket
over the back of his chair; his Nike T-shirt was so faded Seth could
only make out the N. “Do the Commanders always squabble this
much?”
“Yes,” J.J. said. He had no patience for decisions by
committee. Attack first, discuss later, that was J.J.’s outlook on
life. “Tell them what McLain found, Emery.”
Emery leaned forward. “You remember that book of poems I
gave Whitney for Valentine’s Day?” he said. When everyone
looked blank, he sighed. “Well, anyway, I gave her this book of
sonnets that used to belong to my dad. He was Resistance, sent to
Fairfax on reports that the Ark was being housed at Fort King.
After the hunters caught up to him, Mom kept the things he had
left behind, just for sentimental purposes, but it turns out there
were coordinates encoded in that book. Celestial coordinates,
pointing to an undiscovered constellation, and a Lemurian glyph
that translates into doorway.”
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Seth had had the sense before that he was looking at a puzzle
laid out by Chimera but not seeing how the pieces fit together.
What had Regent said? He was missing the forest for the trees? He
put his coffee cup down beside his chair. “J.J., what do you think
LeRoi is up to?”
J.J. crossed his arms. Seth saw Quinn glance at him, and
suddenly wished J.J.’s black camouflage didn’t fit him quite so
well. “What she’s always been up to,” J.J. said, oblivious to
anything but the mission. “Raising Lemuria. But for that, she needs
the Ark.” He turned to Emery. “If I tell them this, you won’t tell
your mother?”
Emery was so affronted his nose twitched. “Of course I won’t.”
J.J. looked at Quinn, the same question in his eyes. Quinn
shook her head. J.J. said, “The mission Ben went on was to the
Amazon Rainforest. The intel we got off LeRoi’s PDA indicated
she had found the Tortoise Clan, the only werekin clan that dates
back to Lemuria. Our satellite images showed a power source deep
in the rainforest, much too strong to be anything manmade. I think
it’s the Source – the key to unlocking the power of the Totems
once Lemuria is raised. So did Ben. I volunteered to check it out,
but he insisted on going himself, to intercept LeRoi before she
could recover whatever it is. But the thing is,” J.J. looked up, at
Seth, “I think LeRoi wanted us to find those coordinates, because
she wanted Ben out of the way. She knew he wanted me here, to
watch you, and he wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to capture
her. Ben founded the Resistance. It was a good bet the
Commanders would fall apart without him. LeRoi may be evil, but
more than anything, she’s clever, and she’s patient. Why attack us
when she can let us destroy ourselves?
“What Whitney found in that book was written by Elijah
Bishop. McLain had the handwriting analyzed, and it matched. I
think Elijah Bishop found the Tortoise Clan, years ago, with his
father, on Abraham Bishop’s last expedition to the Amazon. I think
they told him how to find the Ark, and I think they showed him
where the Totems came from. They gave him the means to raise
Lemuria and the map of how to send the werekin home, but they
kept the Source as a final safeguard against humans trying to take
the power of the Totems for themselves.”
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J.J. sat back. “We can’t be sure how much of that Bishop told
LeRoi before he stopped trusting her, but she knows she can’t raise
Lemuria without the Ark, and she can’t access the power of the
Totems without the Source. I think she used Ben to get the Source
for her, and now, she’s going to take the Ark back.”
“But the Ark is protected,” Seth said. “There are Marines, and
the Gen-0s – ”
“Seth, LeRoi designed Fort King. There isn’t a square inch of it
she doesn’t know. Sooner or later she will come for the Ark. The
only way to stop her may be to complete it and raise Lemuria
ourselves, before she kills all of us.” J.J. fell back. He looked
weary, much older than seventeen. “Not that anyone cares what I
think.”
He picked at his roll. Quinn rested a hand, lightly, on his wrist.
J.J. smiled at her, with just the corner of his mouth.
“Well, in the category of good news,” Emery said, “the
Commanders did sign an oath not to collar werekin in the future.”
“Wow,” Seth said. “That was big of them.”
Emery shrugged. “It’s a step in the right direction, Mom says.
At least this way Derek can’t get away with doing to any other
werekin what he did to you, and what he wanted to do to J.J.”
Marshall leaned back in his chair, thumbs hooked through his
belt loops. He had not stopped staring at J.J. this whole time.
“What would happen,” he asked, “if the Commanders found out
Agathon is planning to secretly raise Lemuria, and he hasn’t
brought the Resistance in on the plan?”
“Ever hear of all hell breaking loose?” J.J. said.
Emery nodded vigorously. “You got it. Derek would see it as
proof the Gen-0 have been playing the Resistance, using them to
raise Lemuria for their human masters. Right now, with Ben gone
and the Black Swan missing, I think just about everyone would
agree with him.”
“And what about General Burke?” Marshall pressed. “What
would he do, what would the government do, if the werekin tried
to raise their homeland on their own?”
“Probably exterminate us,” Emery said, “and take Lemuria for
themselves.”
“So what you’re really talking about is a war, werekin against
humans, and what you need to make that war a reality is for the
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Black Swan to talk to the Commanders, give the idea her approval,
right? You want her back so she can tell the Commanders this is
what the werekin should do?”
Marshall was getting at something. J.J. seemed to know what it
was. Placing his feet flat on the floor, he braced his elbows on his
knees, eyes narrowed to golden slivers. “Your point?”
“That was your original plan, wasn’t it? You sent Agathon and
McLain to meet Seth at Fort King the night you knew we were
breaking in. You wanted the Resistance to free the Black Swan.
Then you would have had everything you needed, all in one place,
to take control of the Ark from LeRoi, add Seth’s blood to it, and
raise Lemuria before Burke had a chance to stop you.”
“Not bad, Doc.” J.J.’s smirk had a nasty edge. “Did you work
that out all by yourself?”
“I catch on quick.” Marshall’s smile matched J.J.’s for razorthinness. “Only it didn’t work out like you intended, did it?
Because Caroline didn’t trust you. She went into hiding.” Seth had
started at Marshall’s casual use of the Black Swan’s first name – a
jolting reminder that Marshall Townsend had spent eight hours on
the road, alone, with the werekin’s mythical savior. Eight hours
during which Caroline McLain had confided in him that her
parents were not werekin. “The Black Swan isn’t here now to issue
orders, so your little scheme is stuck in limbo. Must be frustrating
for you.”
“Indiana,” Seth said, sharply. “Chill out, okay?” J.J.’s lips
were curled up in a way that showed his canines. Emery was
bouncing on his chair like he was about to skin.
“I am chilled out, Philadelphia.” Marshall sounded ready to
throw another punch, actually. “I’m just asking J.J. for a little
clarification.”
Seth was lost. “Clarification on what?”
“We had to guard information,” J.J. growled, ignoring Seth
while glaring daggers at Marshall. There was just a hint of pale
spots across his cheeks.
“Information on what?” Seth demanded, desperately, as Quinn
said, firmly, “How about everybody take a breath and tell us what
you’re talking about.”
J.J. folded his arms again. It looked to Seth like he was hiding
the tips of his claws. “Doc here thinks I should have told the
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Commanders what Agathon was planning to do with the Ark
before the battle. In other words, he doesn’t trust me.”
“Yes he does,” Seth said, automatically.
“No,” Marshall said. “I don’t.” His voice was ice-cold. A wire
seemed to be strung between his eyes and J.J.’s, tying their gazes
together. “I see what you do. You and Xanthe. You’re chess
masters. You can see a few moves ahead, and you don’t mind
sacrificing a few pawns to win the game.”
J.J. winced. Seth knew he was thinking of their father, and his
heart turned over in his chest. He laid a restraining hand on
Marshall’s arm. “Indiana, seriously, leave it.”
Marshall shook him off. His temper ran right under the surface
these days; at the moment, it was seething to the boiling point.
“Seth, you may not want to hear this, but someone needs to say it.
J.J. positioned the Resistance to boot Chimera out of power, and he
did it without telling the Commanders his endgame – without
letting them decide if raising Lemuria, even if that means going to
war against humankind, is a course of action they even want to
take, all because he and Xanthe are convinced they know best.”
“And what makes you think we don’t?” J.J.’s words were
undercut by a sharpness that sounded surprisingly human, despite
the hiss in his voice. “Is clairvoyance one of your superhuman
powers, Doc?”
Emphasis on the human. Quinn looked away.
Marshall’s eyes had darkened to the blue of the ocean at
midnight. Only Seth’s hand on his arm was keeping him in his
seat; if he got to his feet, Seth wasn’t sure he could keep this from
coming to blows. “You think you can manipulate all the pieces
here, J.J., but you can’t. Regent got to the Black Swan. He got to
Seth just last week. LeRoi knows where the Ark is, and Regent has
a spy inside the Resistance. You just said yourself she’s coming for
it – ”
“I can protect Seth,” J.J. said, through his teeth. Although Seth
was not sure what protecting him had to do with anything, the
effect of J.J.’s words on Marshall was undeniable: He sat back, the
anger seeming to leak out of him. Suddenly, he looked as weary as
J.J.
“You’re not invincible, you know,” he said. Marshall sounded
tired. “And you’re not omniscient, either.”
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“I know that.” J.J. spoke stiffly.
“Do you, J.J.? Do you really? Because if one whisper of your
plot leaks out,” Marshall said, “you’re going to have an enemy on
your hands even bigger and scarier than Chimera – the United
States military. I don’t think I have to tell you what happens then.”
He did not have to tell Seth. Operation Swan Song would be
over, General Burke would execute J.J. as a traitor, and the rest of
their kindred would go down in flames right along with him.
***
On the drive to Cleo’s, Marshall cranked the music,
discouraging conversation. J.J. slumped in the back, answering
Seth’s attempts at conversation with a few grunts and growls until,
finally, Seth gave up and endured the ride in silence.
Quinn had taken off after they left Re-Spin. J.J. had walked her
to her Jeep. Whatever had been said between them had not
improved his mood.
Cleo was still pajama-clad when the boys strolled in. (For Cleo,
this meant cotton shorts and a T-shirt with a bull’s eye on the
back.) She hugged Seth hello, all elbows and wrists, and teased
him about his newly-blue hair. No weirdness this morning, to
Seth’s relief. “J.J. is going to prom,” he informed her.
“Is he now?” Cleo turned to J.J., ice-chip eyes sparkling.
“Unless I decide to blow up the Chem lab first,” J.J. said.
He slouched against the counter, tracking Cleo with his eyes as
she poured herself a cup of coffee. Was he comparing her to Vixen
O’Shea? Seth wondered. Both girls were both gorgeous, in
different ways: Cleo more striking than pretty, with strong features
and a dancer’s lean, muscular build; Quinn classically beautiful,
delicate and petite, freckles like a suntan across her vulpine
features.
Seth still preferred Cleo.
“What’s got you in a snit?” Cleo demanded, when J.J. turned
his nose up at her offer to make tea.
“Me,” said Marshall, equably, from the couch. A half-dozen
grimoires were piled on the coffee table, along with an exhaustive
supply of yellow legal pads, and a box of ballpoint pens.
Aphrodisia assigned more homework than Dr. Gideon.
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Cleo turned to Seth, who shook his head. “Long story,” he said.
“Okaaay.” Cleo poured a cup of coffee for Marshall as well –
black, one sugar – and joined him on the couch. J.J. slunk toward
the Bat Cave’s entrance, looking decidedly pouty. “You’re not
training with us?” he said.
“Not when you’re in a snit,” Cleo said. “It’s too early in the
day for me to have to kick your tail.”
J.J. stalked down the steps. Unperturbed, Cleo plopped her feet
on the coffee table and curled her hands around her mug. “Don’t
hit on my boyfriend,” Seth warned.
“Your fault if you can’t hold on to your man,” Cleo teased
back. Seth grinned.
J.J. was already in his karate gi when Seth trotted down the
stairs. While he changed, he saw J.J. slip his hand in his pocket and
take out a napkin – the one with Quinn O’Shea’s number written
on it. Seth hadn’t realized he had kept it. “Are you going to call
her?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” J.J. tucked the napkin under his jeans and
straightened up, stretching his cold muscles. “I’m not sure what to
say to her.”
Seemed like he had known what to say the other day, with that
I know how to play line, Seth thought. “It’s simple. You say ‘hi,’
she says ‘hi.’ You say, ‘Feel like grabbing coffee?’ And you go
from there.”
“Was that how it was for you and Marshall?”
“Sort of.” Seth placed his katana, inside its sheath, on the long
table beneath the weapons wall. “We were friends first. Played
basketball and video games. The kissing part came later.” A
thought struck him then, and he sat down on the table. “J.J., have
you ever kissed anyone?”
“No,” J.J. said. “Who was I going to kiss, LeRoi?”
“Ew!” Seth wrinkled up his nose. “I thought maybe you and
Quinn had…you know.” J.J. just shrugged. “You could have
kissed Cleo,” Seth said.
“Seth, Cleo doesn’t want to kiss me. I don’t know where you
and Leigh get that from.”
Leigh was right. J.J. was clueless. “Well, do you want to kiss
her?” he asked.
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“I don’t know. Sometimes.” Almost unconsciously, J.J. flexed
his fingers, standing out the scars on the backs of his hands.
“Growing up together like we did, there were times I thought about
it. Especially as she got – older.”
“So you thought about it, as in the past tense, or you think
about it, as in the present tense?”
“Both.” J.J. tied his black bandana around his head. “There’s
something about her, don’t you think? Quinn, I mean.”
“It’s called a rack,” Seth said. J.J. snorted. “So are you going
to ask her to prom? Quinn, I mean.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Wasn’t a yes, Seth thought. He slid off the table and began
limbering up, clasping his elbows and turning side-to-side. “Listen,
J.J., about what Marshall said.” In the mirrored walls, Seth saw J.J.
cut his eyes to him. Quickly, he said, “I trust you. You know that.
But are you sure? Are you absolutely sure this is what the Black
Swan wants us to do – to raise Lemuria even if it means going to
war against humankind? Because I thought Agathon’s whole point
was to protect humans, because Earth is special and all that.”
“That is the point. We’re just not protecting humankind from
us. We’re protecting them from themselves. And yes,” J.J. said.
“I’m sure this is what the Black Swan wants. Now.” He tossed
Seth his katana. “Let’s see if you’ve been practicing.”
Seth had been, each morning after his run and each night
before bed. J.J. positioned him on the mat and observed from every
angle as he walked through the cuts he had learned so far, feet
planted on the floor, for balance; hands slightly open, for control;
stomach in and spine straight, for strength. “Excellent,” J.J.
approved. “Now I’ll show you some footwork.”
Seth stepped off the mat. J.J. had taken a katana from the
weapons wall; it was elegant, like all of Regent’s weapons, the
silver blade etched with Lemurian glyphs. The handle was carved
into a star. J.J. held it in his left hand. He closed his eyes. Stillness
settled over him like a blanket.
As though responding to silent music, he began to move.
Slowly, at first, then with quickening speed, his feet barely
touching the mat before lifting off again – graceful as the sloping
lines of the glyphs on his sword, flowing through kicks, jabs,
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strikes, and punches, his sword parting the air like water all the
while.
Savage, Cleo had called him. A beautiful, deadly animal.
Leaning against the wall, Seth pictured the jaguar gods sunning
themselves on the stone steps of their jungle pyramid. One light,
one dark. Twins. Their skins had fused as they had leapt into the
trees, becoming one. Different as they were, Seth wondered, how
much were he and J.J. the same?
J.J. stopped, abruptly, and opened his eyes. “What?” he said.
Seth quickly dropped his gaze. “Nothing.”
For a second, as J.J.’s forehead wrinkled, he thought J.J. would
press him, but he let it go. “In the Scholae Bestiarii, we were
taught to combine martial arts and weaponry. Like Cleo told you,
your sword should be part of your arsenal, not the length and
breadth of it.” He demonstrated the moves again, this time in slow
motion, and moved aside to observe as Seth took his place on the
mat.
It took several tries for Seth to memorize the stances correctly.
Then they did them together, side by side. The soft slap of their
feet on the mat vibrated in Seth’s chest, the beat of a tribal drum.
Blood was crashing in his veins, loud as a thundering waterfall.
Maybe it was leftover tension from the argument at Re-Spin.
Maybe it was that he hadn’t skinned in days, and magic was
shuddering through him, begging for release. Maybe it was that his
werekin senses had been on overdrive since he had bonded with
the Totems, every sense amplified, as though he had rebooted to
life from black-and-white to Technicolor. Maybe it was being a
seventeen-year-old werejaguar with impulse control problems.
Seth was itching for a fight.
He angled his stance slightly, so he and J.J. were paralleling
one another like dancers. Then circling one another, like cats in a
ring. J.J. shook his head. He never sparred with Seth. “You don’t
want to do this,” he said. “Seth, you do not want to fight me.”
Oh, but Seth did. He really, really did.
He ran at him, yelling, “Hi-YAH!” and swinging his blade in a
wicked curve at J.J.’s head. He knew J.J. could dodge it, and J.J.
did; Seth’s sword whistled by his ear, slicing off a golden lock. He
caught sight of J.J.’s expression in the mirror. He could see that
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had irritated him, for someone to come so near to slipping past his
guard.
He paced him, staying out of striking range. “Seth, think it
through,” J.J. said. “I’ve been training longer – ” he deflected a
sword-slash with an effortless flick of his wrist “ – I’ve fought in
the Arena – ” he ducked under a jab “ – I could hurt you, Seth,
come on.”
Seth darted in, feigning a roundhouse kick J.J. could have
easily blocked, but transforming it into a vertical cut at the last
second. J.J. somersaulted backwards like he was attached to wires
and landed lightly on his feet, sword raised. “You know, big
brother,” Seth said, “I think I can take you.”
Yup. That did it.
J.J.’s eyes narrowed; launching off the mat, he kicked at Seth’s
chest. Seth pivoted, cutting the sword at his twin’s ankles; but J.J.
cartwheeled, executing a backhand slice, and the tip of his blade
nicked Seth’s cheek. That drew a hiss from Seth, a true cat hiss
that showed his teeth. He lunged, jabbing his fist twice into J.J.’s
gut, rapid-fire. J.J. countered with a punch that snapped Seth’s
head back, sending him staggering.
Seth slumped to the mat. J.J. threw his sword down. He was
very pale. “Seth, damn it, I told you – you don’t understand, you
don’t know what I’m like when – ”
Seth raised his chin off his chest, grinning madly, and skinned.
The next second, J.J. had skinned as well.
The jaguars collided in midair. J.J. and Seth were small for
jaguars, only five-and-a-half-feet long, but deadly nonetheless.
J.J.’s fur was coal-black, overlain with ivory rosettes, like a faded
outline on dark paper; Seth’s fur was tawny, covered in inky spots.
Even in their separate skins, you could see they were twins. Same
wedge-shaped heads. Same round golden eyes.
Sliding out of J.J.’s attempt to pin him – not a chance, big
brother – Seth streaked up the steps, J.J. a bound behind. Their
paws skidded on the polished floor of the great room, scoring
grooves in the hardwood. “Jesus!” Marshall yelled, leaping up
from the couch as the jaguars raced around it, snapping at one
another with teeth that could literally crunch through bone.
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Cleo just laughed and kicked back to enjoy the show. She had
been raised with werekin. She could distinguish a romp from a
brawl.
J.J. pounced. Seth batted his snout with a paw – the big cat
equivalent of a punch to the nose. Snarling, the black jaguar
backed away. Seth laid his ears back and rose up on his hind legs,
taking a swipe at J.J.’s flank before racing up the stairs, to the
second floor. J.J. overtook him at the top and pinned him that time,
briefly, only to be shaken off by a neat heave of Seth’s shoulders.
Seth rounded on him, roaring, and the black jaguar sprang
effortlessly onto the banister, coiled his legs under him, and
jumped, skinning in midair.
Marshall cried out. Even Cleo gasped.
J.J.’s hand shot out, catching the base of the iron chandelier.
He swung onto it, and with inhuman grace, leapt onto the sunken
bar.
His eyes were dancing, bandana askew on his golden head.
“Well?” he called up. “Are you coming down, or do I have to
come up and get you?”
Seth roared, then skinned – raced down the steps – and leapt
onto the bar, scissor-kicking as he came down.
They fought along the countertops, kicks, jabs, punches, the
movements a blur. Seth stumbled into the dish drainer, smashing
plates and cups into powdery shards; J.J.’s elbow connected with
his ribs, and before Seth knew it, his legs had been swept out from
under him and he was crashing to the floor, flat on his back amidst
broken crockery. He groaned, rolling onto his side as he waited for
the room to stop spinning.
The kitchen was a shambles. Broken dishes in the sink.
Chinese takeout splattered on the walls. Cupboard doors hanging
off their hinges.
Bare feet appeared. J.J. knelt, offering him a hand up. Like
Seth, he was sweat-soaked, bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts –
and grinning, ear to ear.
“Just to clarify,” he said, “was that you ‘taking’ me, little
brother?”
“Your nose is bleeding, brother dear,” Seth said.
“So is your head,” J.J. said. Seth fingered his scalp. His hand
came away coated in blood; the cut was pretty deep. A human
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would have needed stitches. J.J. hauled him up by an elbow.
“C’mon. We’ll get Doc to look at you.”
“I think I’m broken,” Seth confessed on a groan, feeling every
one of his cuts and bruises now that he was on his feet again,
adrenaline gone.
“Well, I hope you heal fast, sweetheart,” Cleo said, surveying
the destruction of her kitchen with her hands on her hips. “Because
you two have one hell of a mess to clean up.”
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Chapter Seventeen: A Modest Proposal
“You know,” Marshall said, “tonight was the first time I’d ever
seen you fight.”
Seth turned sideways in the Audi’s seat, sliding the shoulder
strap behind him. It was late; cleaning up the kitchen had taken
several hours, and then, as the jaguars were starving, they had
driven into town for some MoJo’s deep-dish supreme.
Marshall was driving Seth home. J.J. had opted to go back to
Cleo’s. Seth was hoping he would ask her to prom.
Passing headlights showed Seth flashes of blue eyes, an offcenter nose, angular cheekbones – not enough to discern
Marshall’s thoughts. It had not occurred to him during his romp
that Marshall had never seen him in battle-mode. He had walked in
on the end of Seth’s fight against Rambo in the Stewards’ kitchen,
but by then Seth had been backed into a corner. At Fort King, he
had stayed outside, far from the action of the battle.
“How’s the freak-out meter doing?” Seth asked, lightly.
“You don’t freak me out, Philadelphia. I’m aware you’re part
cat.” Marshall paused, looking left and right before proceeding
through the four-way stop at Queens Boulevard, onto Kings Lane.
“I just didn’t realize how much you enjoy fighting.”
He didn’t sound like he was judging. More like he was trying
to square the bloodthirsty werejaguar he had glimpsed tonight with
the happy-go-lucky boy he was used to. Seth toyed with a raveling
on his jacket sleeve as he cast about for a way to explain.
“Werejaguars are warrior breeds,” he said at last. “We aren’t
violent by nature, but we are built to hunt. Built to stalk and
ambush. Built, essentially, to fight. You know how it feels when
you’re on the court, playing an outstanding team, and every shot
you make you know you’ve earned?”
“Hell yeah,” Marshall said. “Nothing like it.”
“Well, for warrior breeds, that’s how it feels to take on a wellmatched opponent. Trumps any high out there. But if you’re in it to
kill somebody,” Seth said, “that kind of takes the fun out of it.”
And he and J.J. had been well-matched, Seth thought.
Although he wondered if they would have been before his dream-
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walk to Lemuria. J.J. was an even better fighter than Regent, and
Regent had never had any problems putting Seth on the mat.
J.J. was better trained. But Seth – Seth was supercharged.
Lydia’s Escalade was not in the drive. Nor was Dr.
Townsend’s Lexus. Marshall, taking full advantage of his
ungrounding, linked his fingers through Seth’s, accompanying him
to his back door. Captain Hook met them in the kitchen, pleased to
have his people home. Seth tossed him a Snausage and Captain
Hook led the way upstairs.
“He doesn’t look like a zombie,” Marshall said.
“But what,” said Seth, “would a zombie dog look like?”
“Good point.” Marshall collapsed on Seth’s bed. Captain
Hook hopped up beside him, sniffed his fingers, and whined. He
probably smelled like magic from handling the grimoires. Which
reminded Seth.
He fished through his backpack, coming up with the list of
Lemurian glyphs he had translated for Marshall. It was a project he
had been working on in study hall, taking supreme satisfaction
from Dr. Gideon glowering at him from the teacher’s desk, irked
by what he had to assume was Seth’s idle doodling.
“Para ti, mi amor,” Seth said, presenting the paper to Marshall
with a bow.
Marshall looked from it to him. “You made this for me?”
“Thought it might help with your alchemy studies,” Seth said.
Marshall’s nose crinkled up in concentration as he bent his
head over the glyphs. Studious on Marshall was sexy, and just as
Seth had been itching for a fight earlier, he was itching for
something else now. He brushed his fingers through Marshall’s
hair, kissed the curve of his ear…
“Does this mean I have your permission to apprentice with
Aphrodisia?”
It was like a slap in the face. Seth recoiled. “You never needed
my permission, Indiana,” he said.
“Seth, wait.” Marshall caught his wrist; Seth had been turning
away, not wanting Marshall to see the hurt in his eyes. “I’m sorry.
Thanks, is what I meant to say. This will really help me out a lot.”
He smiled. Seth squeezed his hand.
Leaving Marshall to his studies, he disappeared into the
bathroom for a quick shower. The hot water relaxed him enough to
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bring out just how banged up he really was; the cut on his scalp
had healed itself over, but his back and chest were mottled with
bruises that, judging by the tenderness in his muscles, penetrated to
the bone. Didn’t stop him from being elated. He had fought J.J. He
might not have won, but he had held his own.
In his absence, Seth discovered, Marshall had switched off the
lights. He was no longer on the bed; he was at the window, staring
across the driveway at his house. The wistfulness of his expression
froze Seth in the doorway: It was like Marshall was many years
older, looking back on the home of his youth with a mixture of
fondness and regret.
“I never painted over that for you.”
Seth jumped. He hadn’t realized Marshall knew he was there.
“Painted over what?” he asked, proceeding boxer-clad into the
room and rooting through his drawers for pajamas.
“That mark on your wall, from punching your dresser. I said
I’d paint over it, remember?”
“I kind of like it,” Seth said. Looking at the scuff brought back
blissful memories of the night Marshall had finally given in to
what they both wanted. “So what’s bugging you, Indiana? And
don’t say nothing. I hate it when you say nothing and I know
there’s something.”
“Prom,” Marshall said.
Seth looked up from stepping into his sweatpants one leg at a
time. “Prom?” he said. “Prom is bugging you?” He didn’t buy it.
Prom would not have made Marshall try to antagonize J.J. into a
fight. Prom would not have made him bite Seth’s head off for
gifting him with translated glyphs.
“Not just prom,” Marshall conceded, leaning back against the
window. Moonlight shone right through the paper-thin fabric of his
shirt, like he wasn’t wearing one at all. “You know Dad has been
hounding me to find a date. Last night, I told him I would ask
somebody.”
So that was why Marshall’s grounding had been lifted.
Turning away, Seth pushed his arms through his T-shirt, glad
to have an excuse not to look at Marshall. You agreed to this, he
reminded himself. Point of fact, he had been the one to make the
offer, bestowing his blessing on Marshall keeping their
213
relationship a secret from his parents. Pretending not to be gay
meant acting straight. Such as, inviting a girl to prom.
“Who are you taking?” he asked. It came out quite evenly,
Seth was pleased to hear.
“I was hoping to take you.”
Seth froze. Okay, he thought. Marshall hadn’t meant it like it
sounded.
He kept his back to Marshall, as this made it easier to maintain
a veneer of detached nonchalance, like he could not have cared less
about being escorted to prom, officially, by the boy he was in love
with. “So you lied to your dad, is that what you mean? We’ll both
go stag, but ride together and sip punch at the same table?”
“No.” A depth of tonality in Marshall’s voice, like a piano
striking a perfect chord, brought Seth around to face him. “I mean
I’ll ring your doorbell, and we’ll take pictures in your living room,
and I’ll hold your hand, and I’ll dance with you, every dance if
you’ll let me, and when we get home, I’ll walk you to your front
door, and I’ll kiss you good night.”
Each word had carried him forward, until they were standing
toe to toe. Seth backed up, stopped only by his shoulders striking
the wall. Marshall placed his hands on either side of him, leaning
in with steady purpose. Seth could hardly breathe.
“Because like I said,” Marshall finished, roughly. “There are
things I want, now.”
His breath touched Seth’s lips on that last word, now, a kind of
growl, overlain with all that was implied by wanting. Seth
managed a nod. Me too. There were things he wanted, too.
Slender fingers circled Seth’s wrists, lifting his arms up so they
twined around Marshall’s neck. Lashes fluttered against his cheek.
Seth’s lips parted, and Marshall did growl then – buried his hands
in Seth’s hair and pressed into him, pinning him against the wall.
The kiss was soft, softer than Seth thought he could stand with
every inch of him aching for Marshall like it was. Marshall’s nose
slid along his jaw, his lips finding the places that made Seth shiver,
and lingering there; his solid weight was all that kept Seth on his
feet as his bones melted right out of his skin.
“I love you,” Marshall whispered.
It did not take a second’s thought for Seth to whisper back: “I
love you, too.”
214
Arms locked around his waist. He gasped as Marshall picked
him up – Seth sometimes forgot how strong Marshall was, stronger
than he gave him credit for. They were kissing again as they fell
across the window seat, scattering throw pillows. The wooden
ledge was cold, as was the air seeping in around the windowpane,
but Seth hardly noticed. Marshall was finally kissing him as deeply
as he could have wanted to be kissed, stealing the breath right off
of his lips.
“Yes,” he found the air to say.
“Yes?” Marshall pushed up, balanced above him on his
elbows. Moonlight filled his eyes with silver fire. “What are you
saying yes to?”
To whatever you’re asking, Seth thought. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll
go to prom with you.”
“Really?” Marshall sat up. “You mean it?”
“No, Indiana, I’m joking.” Seth rolled his eyes. “Yes, really.”
Marshall’s dimple appeared. He touched his lips to Seth’s
jaguar tattoos, each spot, one at a time. Then to his cheekbone.
Then to the corner of his mouth. Seth started to feel like he was
melting again, but he turned away, sitting up and pulling Marshall
up with him. “What?” Marshall asked, a little breathlessly.
Seth swallowed. This was going to be harder than he had
thought it would be. But they had just said I love you for the first
time. You couldn’t keep secrets from someone you loved. Not
secrets like this. You want someone you can be honest with.
Someone you don’t have to pretend for.
“Indiana, did you ever hear of the Ovid Experiment?”
“Yes.”
Mouth open to speak, Seth actually squeaked with surprise. “I
– really?”
“Aphrodisia’s notes mention it here and there. It had
something to do with an initial experiment on the Gen-3s, your
dad’s generation, and a later experiment with human cloning.”
Marshall looked puzzled. “I told you this, remember? I said Dr.
Bishop had made advancements in human genetics that would put
modern science to shame.”
“But that’s all you know?” Seth pressed, cautiously. “You
don’t know what the experiments were?”
215
Marshall shook his head. Stillness eluded Seth; he rose, began
to pace. The house was very quiet with just the two of them in it.
“The first experiment, on the Gen-3s, was inseminating werekin
mothers with DNA straight from the Ark,” he said. “It didn’t seem
to make any difference in their abilities, and it didn’t produce a
Black Swan, so LeRoi scrapped the experiment. Then J.J. and I
were born to a Gen-3 and a human mother, the first werejaguars to
be born since Lemuria sank – twins, direct descendants of our
Totems. That made the Ovid Experiment worth a second look.
“One of LeRoi’s enterprising scientists had already been
messing around with it, at Dr. Bishop’s old lab inside Fort King.
The stated goal was to produce humans with the ability to see
werekin – humans that could easily track down werekin in the
Underground. What those humans really see is our animus, our
life-force. For some reason, hunters are never born with that
ability. It is an entirely human trait.
“But the scientist who pitched reopening the project to the
Partners had another goal as well. He wanted to copy himself. To
clone himself. He offered to do the same for them. He told them it
would be ‘evolutionarily superior’ to having children, because
children are only half of you, half of your genes. These would be
exact copies of themselves, down to the very last chromosome, that
they could raise as their children, and leave behind when they died.
About the closest anyone could come to immortality. The Partners
jumped at it, of course.”
Marshall’s expression showed only that he was listening
closely. The windowpane threw back his reflection in profile, like
he had been doubled. “Did the experiment work?”
“Not quite the way LeRoi had hoped. The scientist in charge
of the project used his own DNA for the first clone, because he had
the ability to see werekin. He used the Partners’ DNA for the
others, or at least the ones that could pay handsomely for the
privilege. But there was no evidence his clone could see auras, so
after a few years, LeRoi shut the experiment down again.” Seth
stopped talking, stopped pacing, and took a breath. “Jack showed
me the files, but the Ovid Experiment is still classified above topsecret. He warned me that telling anyone else could put them in
danger. He said I needed to be absolutely sure what the right thing
to do was before I did anything.”
216
“And now you’re sure?”
Seth nodded. His mouth was very dry. “The scientist in charge
of the Ovid Experiment was made a Partner for his efforts. His
name was Townsend. Wesley Townsend.”
He didn’t know how he had expected Marshall to react to this,
but it was not for him to say, simply, “I know.”
“What?” It came out plosive. “You know? But you said – ”
“I know what I said.”
Marshall got up. Turned around. Looked out the window again,
at his house. The line of his shoulders was very straight. Seth
wanted to go to him, but he stayed where he was, hugging his
elbows.
“The night those hunters broke in here, the night I first saw
you skin, I stayed up until dawn reading Elijah Bishop’s journal.
You remember, you had Emery get it from your room and give it
to me?” Marshall said. Seth nodded. Every detail of that night was
seared into his brain. It was the night he had killed for the first
time. “I knew my father used to be stationed at Fort King, as a
medical officer. Once I knew what Fort King really was, I started
to wonder if he had been involved with Chimera. When I read
what Bishop wrote about cloning – I don’t know, it just clicked for
me. Why my father has always needed everything about me to be
perfect. Why he wanted me to play basketball, like he did, and go
to med school, like he did. Why he can’t stand the thought of me
liking boys.”
“Marshall.” Seth was whispering. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Seth. You don’t have anything to
apologize for. And don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.” Marshall
turned around. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, yet he didn’t seem
angry, or disgusted, or even all that upset. Seth didn’t know what
to make of this. Wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react, when
Marshall was taking this all so calmly.
“So about this prom thing,” Marshall said. “Did you want me
to buy you a corsage?”
Seth flipped him off, and Marshall laughed.
217
Chapter Eighteen: Lost Souls
Nothing much was open in downtown Fairfax on Sunday
morning. On their way to Jack’s, Seth swung the Escalade through
a Dunkin’ Donuts, ordering coffee for himself and his bodyguard
twin. J.J. was becoming a coffee drinker, but they had to monitor
his intake. Caffeine made him edgy.
Sunshine outlined the spires of the Sacred Heart Academy. The
warmer weather had held for the weekend; a few avid runners were
out on the cobblestone sidewalks, and some of the landscaped trees
were eagerly attempting to bud. Seth parked across the street from
Jack’s office, beside the only other car on the street. A ruby-red
Porsche Cayman. Nice.
Lydia had vetoed the country club as enemy territory – most of
the Partners were members – and thus Jack, for the first time in
seventeen years, had foregone his champagne brunch at the club to
meet Seth at his bachelor pad. Just as well. Seth and J.J. looked
like the type of kids who might joyride on golf carts or burn down
the pool house.
Aiming to appear collegiate, Seth had donned his best jeans (no
holes in the knees) and a white button-down shirt. J.J. had on his
all-purpose camouflage. A backpack filled with schoolwork was
slung over his shoulder. J.J. and Jack didn’t know one another
well, a condition J.J. wasn’t keen to remedy; he planned to hole up
in the Escalade, leaving Seth and Jack to talk post-secondary
education. Lydia was the one who had insisted he come along at
all. She seemed to think Jack would be less likely to go homicidal
traitor with J.J. around.
“Check it out.” Seth whistled as he circled the Porsche. Greentinted windows, all-black leather interior, seventeen-inch spoke
rims – two hundred and sixty-five horsepower of pure,
unadulterated mechanical perfection. He almost drooled on the
hood ornament. “Man, I would kill for a ride like this.”
“We could hotwire it,” J.J. said.
He was like the bad angel on Seth’s shoulder. “J.J., I am not
helping you get expelled,” he said. J.J. looked sour. “Speaking of,
did you ask Cleo to prom?”
“No,” was all J.J. said.
218
Seth left him with his cell phone, in case he might be tempted
to do the prom invitation by text message (not that J.J. texted), and
crossed the street. The sign on the door said CLOSED, but the
front door was unlocked. Upstairs, Seth found the apartment door
ajar. Jack, barefoot, wearing slacks and a sweater, was pacing the
living room with his cell phone glued to his ear. He was saying
something about student rights. It seemed like a heated argument;
he was talking fast, gesturing with his hands. Leaving him to it,
Seth indulged his natural curiosity and climbed the living room
staircase to the loft.
Over the last week, Jack had converted the loft into a second
bedroom. The monochromatic color scheme screamed teenager, as
did the flat-screen TV and the cube-style bookcase. A black desk
with spindly chrome legs crouched like a spider in the corner,
topped with a sleek Mac desktop.
Seth hoped Jack didn’t have designs on Leigh crashing here.
She was still refusing to speak her father’s name. Reconciliation
seemed unlikely.
A long, arched window provided a view of the river, buttery
gold in the sunlight like King Midas had dipped his fingers in it.
Seth curled up on the cushioned ledge, feeling the stiffness from
his romp with J.J. as a cord stretched down his spine, connecting
the crown of his head to the small of his back. A pleasant kind of
sore. Overnight his bruises had faded to yellow and green outlines.
Marshall had inventoried them that morning, awed by Seth’s
capacity to heal.
Marshall. Seth traced his boyfriend’s name on the
windowpane.
Over coffee, Marshall, Lydia, and Seth had talked through the
implications of his prom invite. Ultimately, they had decided to
make their announcement after sectionals. Lydia had advised the
delay, and Seth agreed. Anyone could see Marshall was stressed.
Adding coming out to the revelation that he was a clone, on top of
basketball championships and midterm exams, did not seem wise.
A footfall jarred Seth from his reverie. He whirled around – he
had forgotten he wasn’t in his own room, alone.
Jack froze on the threshold. Did he think Seth would just tear
his throat out in cold blood, after he had tried to save him from
Regent and had blown billable hours researching colleges for him?
219
“Sorry,” Seth said, rising from the windowsill with marked
slowness. “You just startled me.” And I don’t generally eat people
for breakfast, just so you know…
“Breakfast is ready,” Jack said.
An eclectic spread of leftovers comprised their brunch menu.
Succulent cuts of prime rib, wrapped in tin foil from one of the
local steakhouses; chocolate eclairs from an upscale patisserie;
Beluga caviar; a wheel of Brie and some sesame crackers.
Especially for Seth, a bag of Oreos, unopened. He took some of
everything, and they ate at the bar.
Jack got right down to business, consulting a page of notes.
“Here’s what I found on that Commander you asked me to look
into,” he said. “Derek Childers joined the Resistance a little over
five years ago, in his late teens. He rose through the ranks pretty
steadily, became a Commander about six months ago, when
Ezekiel Campbell was killed and a seat came open.
“The story he gave the Resistance was that he was born in the
Underground, never collared. His explanation for the silver powder
burns is a near-miss with hunters as a child. The Commanders
never questioned this, because he isn’t branded.” Jack paused to
dip a bite of prime rib in his au jus sauce. “But here’s what the
records we seized from Chimera tell me. Derek’s mother was a
werebird, a nightingale, a Gen-2 werekin. She was permitted to
live in the human world, but when her son was born a werewolf,
she went Underground with him, to keep him from being raised in
the Scholae Bestiarii. Ten years later, hunters tracked her down in
Detroit. She was killed. Her son was captured.”
“And that’s it?” Seth said.
“That’s it,” Jack said. “I don’t know why he lied, and I don’t
know if he’s your spy. I can say it would have been a safe lie to
tell, up until now, since no one in the Resistance has ever had
access to Chimera’s records before. But the really curious piece is
this. There is no indication Derek Childers was ever registered
with Chimera, nor is there any indication he escaped captivity. It’s
like he disappeared from the ages of ten to nineteen, when he
signed up with the Resistance in New York.”
Curiouser and curiouser, thought Seth. He munched a bite of
steak. “Does McLain know anything about him?”
220
Jack shook his head. “But Will – sorry, Captain McLain – was
only directly involved with the Scholae Bestiarii at LeRoi’s estate.
Derek could have been housed in any number of Chimera
facilities, even facilities Project Ark was unaware existed. And
Derek and Will are almost the same age. Werekin graduate from
the Scholae Bestiarii at fourteen, at the oldest, so Will could not
have been one of Derek’s trainers. It’s possible their paths might
simply never have crossed.”
Possible, yes, but Seth had his own theory. He doubted Derek
had been raised by Chimera, same as he doubted it had been
hunters who had killed his mother. Regent had pulled a similar
sleight of hand with Seth, letting him think Naomi had been killed
by hunters when he, in fact, had killed her. By his own admission,
Seth was not Regent’s first adopted cub.
He stowed the envelope of records Jack had tracked down in
his jacket pocket, to share with J.J. later. Hopefully Derek’s lies
would sway the Commanders into trusting McLain more than him.
“More coffee?” Jack offered.
While Jack poured, Seth stacked their plates in the dishwasher.
There was no outward sign today of the man Seth had seen as Jack
had turned his gun on Regent. Jack’s hair was freshly washed,
pants perfectly creased, mustache and goatee neatly trimmed. Yet
Seth’s werekin instincts picked up on what lay beneath, if only
faintly. It was most obvious in Jack’s eyes, windows to the
darkness within.
Seth found he didn’t mind it. This Jack, the Jack who had been
there all along, underneath, was someone he could relate to.
They moved into the living room, Seth on the couch, Jack in
his recliner. “I’ve been meaning to phone your sister,” Jack said.
“Her petition to ban animal dissection was voted down by the
school board. The story will be in the paper tomorrow, but I
thought she should hear it from me first.”
“Is that what you were talking about when I came in?”
“It was.” Jack paused. “Actually, I was on the phone with
Wesley Townsend. He was the petition’s most vocal detractor. He
insists a hands-on introduction to vertebrate anatomy encourages
interest in the biological sciences. Breeds a new generation of
doctors.”
221
Dr. Townsend would know all about that, wouldn’t he? Sourly,
Seth pulled his legs up on the couch. “What’s the next step?”
“I tried, without success as you might have surmised, to
persuade him to reconsider. Our best bet at this point is to involve
the ACLU, make it a student rights’ issue. If Leigh wants me to
pursue it.”
Leigh would want it pursued. Leigh was part pit bull. “I’ll
explain it to her, if you want. Let her know you’re fighting for
her,” Seth said.
“I appreciate that, Seth, but as I keep telling you, you don’t
owe me any favors.” Jack leaned forward, fingers knit around his
mug. “Wesley also expressed some…concerns. About Marshall.”
Oh no. Wesley Townsend did not get to play the concerned
parent card. Seth knew exactly what kind of “father” Wesley
Townsend was. “Yeah? Did he also ‘express’ to you that he asked
Coach to boot me off the team, to keep me away from Marshall?”
“He did what?” If feigned, Jack’s anger was very convincing.
He sloshed coffee onto the chair arm, cursed as he blotted at it with
a white handkerchief. There was still a pale circle around his
pinkie finger where he used to wear his diamond ring. “He must
have neglected to mention that. But he did say Marshall has been
troubled lately. Refusing to sleep, and when he does, waking up
screaming from nightmares. Barely eating, complaining of
headaches and stomachaches. His grades are slipping. Then there
was the incident at school, with Cameron Foss…”
A chisel tapped at Seth’s heart with each word, chipping off
pieces. It wasn’t like he had been blind to Marshall’s suffering.
Begging Seth to stay the night, just to sleep. Picking at his lunch in
the cafeteria, half his food untouched. Slumping on the bench in
the locker room after practice, pale with fatigue. All of these things
Seth had noticed, but hearing them put together like that, and
knowing what Marshall had dreamed…
It’s stress, Seth argued back to himself. The stress of
maintaining his grades for med school, of leading his team to a
championship season. Marshall was his own harshest critic. Couple
that with the stress of dating a werejaguar whose life was in
jeopardy on a weekly basis, and it was a miracle he hadn’t cracked.
“I suppose Dr. Townsend blames me,” Seth said, defensively.
“He is concerned about your influence on Marshall, yes.”
222
“Does he know that Marshall knows I’m werekin?”
“He’s been fully briefed,” Jack said. Whatever that meant.
“But I’m not sure this has anything to do with your…”
He seemed to be searching for a word. “Pedigree?” Seth
suggested.
Jack smiled thinly. “You have to consider how the situation
looks to a parent, Seth. You move in next door, and suddenly, his
son is in a downward spiral.”
“Marshall isn’t spiraling,” Seth snapped. “And if he’s so
worried, why is he being such a jerk? Is grounding a form of
psychotherapy?”
“Wouldn’t be my approach,” Jack agreed, evenly. “But
parenting is an art, not a science. Deciding whether to discipline,
whether to excuse. With Leigh…Well, girls are easier, for fathers.
Your instinct is to protect. With a son, it’s less clear. How do you
help a boy become a man?” Jack shook his head. He sounded like
he had been studying on that question for some time. “Like when
Werner gave you that damn motorcycle. You were so dead-set on
driving it, and I convinced Lydia we had to give you the room to
grow up, make your own mistakes, if that’s what it came to. Really
I wanted to pitch the stupid thing into a ravine.”
In spite of himself, Seth grinned. “Weren’t you planning to
hand me over to Chimera at the time?”
“Yes. I suppose I was.” Jack’s voice was inexorably soft, and
not at all certain. Seth looked away as he reached for a packet
inside his briefcase. “Now,” Jack said. “About those college
applications.”
***
Jack had compiled a Top Five list of foreign language
programs. Duke was at the top, along with NYU, Stanford, John
Hopkins, and UCLA. The list coincided with Marshall’s, down to
the letter. Fortunately Seth’s doctored homeschool transcripts
made him a viable candidate for such top-tier schools, but, Jack
cautioned as he walked Seth out an hour later, he would have to
keep his GPA up, do well on his SATs, and nail the entrance
essays if he wanted to be accepted.
223
“It wouldn’t hurt to do a summer abroad,” Jack went on, as
they stepped out into the fresh sunshine. “I’ll speak to Ingrid about
placement options. It’s probably too late for this year, but there’s
always next. And if it’s really Duke you’re interested in, I’ll call
Coach Evans, have him contact their athletics department.”
Seth dumped the armload of college catalogs in the Escalade’s
backseat. J.J. was not inside of it; a glance down the street showed
him his twin’s blonde head bent over a book inside a coffee shop.
“That’s nice of you to offer,” Seth said, “but you’ve done enough,
really.”
“I don’t mind,” Jack said.
Still, Seth hesitated. Ulterior motives aside – and he was not
yet convinced Jack had no angle here – he wondered if he wasn’t
being hopelessly naïve to even consider going to college. The
Resistance was on the brink of war. But, “Okay,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Seth, did we or did we not agree that you are not supposed to
thank me?”
“I’m too damn polite, right?”
Jack smiled. “Well, as character flaws go, it’s not the worst one
to have. Not as bad as, shall we say, sticky fingers?” He jerked his
chin at the Porsche. “I saw you admiring her earlier.”
“This is yours?” Swinging down from the Escalade’s running
board, Seth ran a hand along the Porsche’s shiny red paintjob.
“What happened to the Beamer? Trade her in for your midlife
crisis car?”
“Just for that,” Jack said, “I might not give you these.”
Keys jangled – a sound like angels singing. Seth looked from
his step-father’s grin to the sleek red Porsche. “You bought this for
me?”
“I thought you might be tired of borrowing your mother’s car.”
Jack pitched the keys to Seth across the hood. “You can drive
manual, can’t you?”
Could he drive manual. “I used to boost cars for a living,
remember?” Seth said.
“I must have repressed that,” Jack grinned. “So? What do you
say we test her out?”
The keys in Seth’s palm seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.
He could not believe he was about to do this. What seventeen-year224
old turned down a free Porsche? But he had to. Accepting a gift
like this implied forgiveness. And Jack could not buy his way out
of betraying Thomas and J.J.
He held the keys out. “Thank you, Mr. Steward, but I can’t take
this,” Seth said. “It’s just too much.”
Jack understood. Seth could see that: He understood perfectly
what Seth’s refusal meant. He nodded, gray eyes the color of iron.
Taking back the keys, he turned, and walked away.
***
J.J. wanted to take the records on Derek straight to Melody at
Fort King. The guard at the gate waved the Escalade through, and
Seth parked next to the three-headed fountain. “I wish they would
take that down,” he grumbled.
“Agathon needs it, remember?” J.J. said. “The fountain is
partly how he surveils the perimeter.”
Right. The whole communing with the trapped souls of the
dead thing. Seth avoided the three sets of stone eyes as they
walked to the prison’s front door.
The fort was quiet this morning. They came upon Agathon in
the rotunda, sitting in front of the Black Swan statue, wings
bunched up like papery accordions. His black robe was spread
across his knees, a book open on his lap. “The Poetical Works of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” Seth read off the spine. “And here
I had you pegged as a Marilyn Manson guy.”
“Lyric poetry is quite dark,” Agathon said. “For instance – ”
clearing his throat, he read “ – ‘life is real, life is earnest, the grave
is not its goal’ – ”
“Dust thou art,” chimed in J.J., from memory, “to dust thou
returneth, was not spoken of the soul.” He patted Agathon on the
head as he slunk past. This caused Agathon’s right antennae to
stand out at a crazy angle. “Yeah man, that’s seriously dark. I may
have to sleep with the lights on now.”
Agathon frowned. Seth hid a smirk behind his hand.
He sat down on the floor beside the necromancer, looking up at
the statue of the Black Swan. “Where are Xanthe and Aphrodisia?”
“Xanthe is meditating. Aphrodisia is sleeping.”
225
Seth glanced over at Agathon. He had closed the book, folding
it in his huge, bluish-gray hands. The Gen-0s were, in a sense, the
werekins’ ancestors, but they were very different from the werekin
born to human mothers. In some ways, they were closer to the
Totems than their shapeshifting kin. Certainly they were more
magical. “Agathon,” Seth said, “do Gen-0s dream?”
Agathon leaned one elbow on his knee, chin cupped in his
hand. Necromancer in Repose, Seth would have titled the painting.
“Seth, do you recall your telepathic fusion with Xanthe?”
“You mean when he mind-melded me?” Seth nodded. “Uhhuh. Sure do.”
“Our minds are unlike yours. The Alpha Clan does not dream,
per se. Dreams are memories stored in human consciousness,
accessed along neural pathways available to you only during your
REM cycle. We, on the other hand, shift our consciousness to a
different plane of existence.”
Seth knew some crackheads who would have paid good money
to do that. “What do you see, on this other plane of existence?”
“It is a blankness. A wiping out of being.”
The stone floor suddenly felt very cold to Seth. “Is that what
being dead is like?”
He didn’t even know why he asked it. Seth didn’t spend much
time musing on the Hereafter. But death had been on his mind
lately, first with Naomi, then the battle, then Ben, and of course,
his O.B.E.
“Death,” said Agathon, “is a transference. The body ceases –
begins, immediately, to decay. But the soul never ceases. It slips
from one plane of existence to another. From one ‘dimension,’ as
some term it, to another.”
“Like heaven and hell?” Seth was thinking of Naomi,
attending Mass, praying to the Virgin and the saints.
“I am not a student of theology. But some planes of existence
are paradisiacal. Others are – not.”
So hell existed. In multiple versions, even. “How do you know
which place you’re going?”
“That is a mystery beyond my reckoning. And it was what
makes resurrection such a delicate ritual. Necromancers do not
undertake it lightly. To create a revenant, you must only animate a
corpse. Any energy will do. But to raise the dead, to return a soul
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to its body, you must call back the soul that has departed, and you
cannot know where that soul has traveled. You cannot know what
form it has taken – if it has inhabited a new body, in another world,
or if it has floated in a void, in oblivion. You cannot be certain
what will return. If it will be the soul as it was, or if it will be
utterly unrecognizable.”
In the dream, I was already dead. You were holding me, and
crying, and I wanted to tell you not to. That this was something I
had chosen. Seth drew his arms around his middle. He felt a
sudden need to look away from the statue, to hide from that gentle,
lovely countenance that gazed down on him so knowingly.
“Then why risk it?” His voice was harsher than he meant it to
be. “Why call a soul back?”
Agathon looked over at him. His eyes were fathomlessly black.
“Because sometimes,” he said, “we cannot let go.”
***
By evening, the sunshine along Kings Lane had been
swallowed by ominous gray clouds. A rumble of thunder
punctuated Seth’s jump shot swishing through the net; Fairfax had
enjoyed an unseasonably warm February, and with the temperature
pushing seventy, thunderstorms were predicted. Seth could smell
the ozone, feel the charge along the fine hairs of his arms.
Marshall missed the rebound. The ball bounced over the shrubfence, rolling up against the Stewards’ porch. He trotted over to
retrieve it. “Hope you nail some of those against Sacred Heart,
Philadelphia,” he said. “We’ll be sending the Warriors home in
tears.”
“That’s the plan,” said Seth, mopping his brow with his arm.
Through the windows he could see Leigh and Whitney in the
Stewards’ kitchen making dinner. Meredith and Lydia were at
parent-teacher conferences. Seth had voted for pizza, but Leigh
wanted to try out one of her vegan recipes.
J.J. hadn’t made it home from Fort King yet. When Seth had
left, he had still been closeted with Melody.
“So, about Connor Burke.” Marshall measured his shot. “Do
you think he knows you’re werekin?”
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“Nope.” Seth rebounded Marshall’s three-pointer, and dunked
it. “McLain swears his dad wants him kept out of all of this.”
“And you don’t think he can ‘see’ werekin?”
“No,” Seth said. “It’s a rare ability. Anyway, last time I saw
him, I was glamoured, remember? And McLain wants me that way
this time, too.” He kissed the pewter jaguar charm Leigh had given
him, etched on the back with glamouring glyphs. Seth thought of
the charm as a kind of talisman against evil, like Emery’s St.
Francis medal, minus the religious overtones. “Do you think it’s
true he’s being recruited by the NBA?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously good.” Ducking under
Seth’s arm, Marshall executed a layup, caught his own rebound,
and fired off a flawless three-pointer. “The rest of the Warriors are
average, though, if that. I was really surprised they beat Montrose
at state last year. Fundamentally, we’re the stronger team. Coach
doesn’t let us rely on just one player. He insists on team ball. And
that,” Marshall said, “is why we are bringing home that state title
this year.”
“Darn skippy,” said Seth.
Marshall’s smile was the definition of thousand-watt.
Overnight, he had reverted to his former golden boy self, casting
off the moody, snappish version of himself for the straight-laced,
kind-hearted boy next door Seth had been so hopelessly taken
with, for whom basketball was life. He and Seth had agreed to put
their magical lives on hold for the post-season; there would be no
more discussion of the Ovid Experiment for now, no further visits
to Fort King, for alchemy lessons or anything else, until the
Knights were dancing in blue-and-gold confetti at the Conseco
Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, hoisting aloft a state trophy.
The thumping of a heavy base brought Seth around, just as
Cleo’s Ford turned into the Stewards’ drive. Emery and J.J. hopped
out of the back. J.J. was looking surly, and a moment later, as the
truck doors opened and Cleo climbed out from behind the wheel,
Seth saw why. Connor Burke was with them.
“Well.” Marshall looked bemused. “Speak of the devil, and
the devil shall appear.”
Seth could not have said why he shivered just then.
Connor lifted a hand in an easy wave. “Gees, don’t you guys
ever get tired of basketball?”
228
“Not when we’ve got worthy opponents to defeat,” Marshall
said. He propped the ball on his hip and shook Connor’s hand, like
enemy officers meeting for a parley on the battlefield, each in their
separate school colors – Fairfax High blue and gold, Sacred Heart
red and black. Marshall was taller, Connor thinner. “What brings
you to Castle Estates, Connie? I thought your dad had that big
place out on King’s Creek.”
“Ran into this one at the mall.” Connor nodded at Cleo. She
must have been at Re-Spin, checking in with Emery. Cleo did not
shop. “It took some convincing, but I managed to wrangle a dinner
invite. I never can pass up a good stir-fry.” Connor pushed up the
sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Mind if I join in? I’d like to see that
jump shot of yours again, Philly.”
“Oh I see,” Seth said. “You’re here to spy on the competition.”
Connor just laughed. J.J. started for the house, brushing
wordlessly past Cleo – but pulled up short beside Lydia’s
rosebushes, every muscle tense. “Did you hear that?” he said.
Seth had – a faint beep, beep, beep. It sounded like it was
coming from inside the house. Cleo’s hand slid into the pocket of
her leather jacket, reaching for the switchblade hidden there;
Emery yanked open the truck door, probably going for a gun under
the seat.
Marshall dropped the ball by his garage. He was grinning.
“What’s up, Doc?” Emery said.
“I would say,” said Marshall, “that dinner is ready.”
Inside, they discovered Leigh at the sink, scrubbing furiously at
a charred mess of peppers, broccoli, and tofu scorched to the
bottom of a wok. Whitney, balanced on the countertop, was prying
the batteries out of the smoke alarm above the fridge.
A nauseating smell, like burnt rubber poured onto rotted meat,
was wafting through the smoke-hazed air. Seth blinked his
watering eyes. Werekin were extremely sensitive to smells. “What
is that?” J.J. demanded, his voice muffled – he had covered his
nose with his sleeve. “I thought we were having stir-fry.”
“It smells like dead skunk,” Emery choked out.
“Dead, rotted skunk,” Seth concurred.
“It’s tofu,” Marshall said.
Leigh banged the wok down on the counter, next to her vegan
cookbook. Her auburn curls were frizzing out; the front of her pink
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sweater was stained with lemon juice. “All of you, shut up,” she
snapped.
Windows were opened to clear out the smell, and Chinese
takeout was ordered; soon they were in the dining room, drinking
soda out of Lydia’s good wine glasses. J.J. slouched down across
from Cleo and Connor, ignoring the food. Cleo did not look at him
as she spooned mu shu pork onto her plate. Her cheeks were tinged
with color.
Having Connor present forestalled any Resistance talk. Seth
was selfishly glad of it. Just once, it was nice to sit around talking
about bands and movies and books, without anybody bringing up
the alien apocalypse.
The college catalogs Jack had given him anchored the far end
of the mahogany table. Emery picked up the Stanford one and
started flipping through it. “What are you doing after graduation,
Emery?” Marshall asked, dumping sweet-and-sour sauce over his
basmati rice. His appetite had improved as well.
“I’m not really sure.” Emery laid the catalog down. “I’ve
thought about the military – ” he meant the Resistance “ – but I
might just stay here, work at Re-Spin.”
“You could join Chaz’s band,” Seth said. “I hear Listening
Korn is in the market for a drummer.”
“Not a lot of cash in that, though,” Emery said.
“Luckily you have an independently wealthy girlfriend.”
Whitney leaned over to kiss his cheek. Emery smiled even as his
big ears turned pink.
Leigh turned her big green eyes on Connor. “Where are you
going to college, Connor?” she asked, sweetly.
Connor put his chopsticks down and stretched his long legs
out, crossing them at the ankle. He really was a beautiful boy, Seth
noted, quite objectively. The window was at his back, dying his
shaggy hair gold when the sun emerged, silver when it vanished
behind a cloud. Tonight his hazel eyes were tinted gray instead of
green. “I wasn’t planning on going to college.”
“Going to be a military man, like your father?”
It was the first time J.J. had spoken since they had come inside,
and there was no denying the baiting edge to the question. Cleo
stiffened. Connor’s gaze passed slowly across J.J.’s face, like he
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was trying to read his expression, but it was almost disconcertingly
blank. “I have no interest in being like my father,” he said.
Marshall looked down at his plate, a light flush topping his
cheekbones. No one seemed to know what to say to such a bald
answer, even J.J., so Seth asked, quickly, “Are you really being
recruited by the NBA?”
When Connor laughed, the light came back into his smile. “I
have no idea where that rumor got started. I still have another year
of high school to go. After that, I thought I might travel. See the
world.”
He waved a hand vaguely at the dining room window. Seth was
perplexed. Lydia was an army brat; she had an endless supply of
stories about trailing her father around the world, from Turkey to
Korea, before he had been stationed at Fort King. “Where did you
live before you came to Fairfax?” Leigh asked, like she was
thinking the same thing.
“Right before I came here, New Mexico. My father was
stationed there, near Roswell. Before that, I lived back East, with
my mother.”
“Your parents are divorced?” Leigh’s voice was full of
genuine sympathy.
“Never married,” Connor said, as he picked up his fortune
cookie and broke it in half. He didn’t seem eager to elaborate, or
possibly he was just discomfited by the way J.J. was staring at him;
in any case, he was the one to say, not long after, that he needed to
get home. “Can I use your phone to call a cab?” he asked.
“I can drive you,” Cleo said. She had barely spoken during
dinner, either, although her silence, Seth felt, was directed at J.J.
“Are you sure? It’s a long ways out of town, and I don’t want
to break up your party…” Connor said.
“I was leaving anyway.” Cleo was firm.
That seemed to signal the end of the evening. Cleo and Connor
walked out to her truck together in the gloaming light, waving
goodbye to Marshall, Emery, and Whitney as they crossed the
drive to the Townsends’. Connor jogged ahead to open Cleo’s
door. J.J. banged a pot down in the sink as he turned away from the
window.
Leigh’s failed attempt at vegan cuisine had made quite a mess
of the kitchen. J.J. washed; Seth rinsed; Leigh dried. Seth wanted
231
to know what Melody had said about Derek’s fabricated past. J.J.
didn’t have much to report; she had promised to present the
records Jack had found to the Commanders, but, he said, she had
also suggested the records could have been fabricated. Jack
Steward had been in LeRoi’s employ for a long while, and LeRoi
had ever been eager to foment discord in the werekin ranks. As if
they needed an outsider’s help to do that.
“I can’t believe Melody trusts Derek,” Seth fumed.
“She doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean she trusts LeRoi, or
anyone who used to work for her,” J.J. said. “Anyway, Derek isn’t
at Fort King right now. He called McLain on not telling them
about the stargate – ”
Leigh coughed. J.J. glanced at her. “What?”
“You’re not really calling it the stargate, are you?” she said.
“Why wouldn’t we?” J.J. was bewildered.
“Because it’s a sci-fi movie. Kurt Russell? James Spader?
Portal to an alien world?” Leigh realized J.J. had no idea what she
was talking about, and rolled her eyes. “Never mind. How did
Derek find out about it?”
“We’re looking into that. But the long and the short of it is, he
insisted McLain can’t expect the Commanders to believe he is
working with them in good faith if he keeps hiding things from
them, so McLain told them about what could be out there in the
rainforest, what Ben went in search of, and Derek packed up
Blondie – I mean Druscilla – and they took a team down to Brazil
this morning.”
J.J. sounded about as thrilled by that plan as Seth was. “Was
McLain at least going to tell General Burke about Derek?”
“I’m sure he will.” J.J. glanced over at the island. The posters
Leigh and Whitney had spent most of the day making, with GO
TOWNSEND! and GO SULLIVAN! written on them in sparkly
blue-and-gold letters, were stacked there, ready to go for the big
game. He looked back at Seth. “You’re serious about all of this,
aren’t you?”
By this, he meant being a regular kid. Who, you know,
happened to be a werecat. And possibly a jaguar god, one of two,
though Seth had not mentioned that to anyone. “Very,” he
confirmed.
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Leigh shoved a plate into the cupboard. It rattled against its
companions. “Don’t you discourage him, J.J. If Seth wants to go to
college, there is no reason why he shouldn’t.”
“Why would I discourage him? I’m anti-school, not antiintellectual,” J.J. said.
“Because.” Leigh slapped her dishtowel down on the counter.
Her temper had not fully recovered from the tofu-stir-fry incident.
“You think it’s selfish for him not to join the Resistance, like
Emery.”
Was Seth invisible? He was standing right there. He tried to
change the subject. “Hey, did anyone hear the one about a termite
who walks into the bar – ”
“I never said Seth was selfish,” J.J. said.
“Not in so many words,” Leigh rejoined, caustically.
Seth slunk over to the island and drug out a stool, back turned
to the brewing fight. J.J. and Leigh, their fragile truce shattered,
went on arguing about him like he wasn’t in the room.
“Oh, you’re telepathic now, is that it?” Water swirled noisily
down the pipes; J.J. had pulled the stopper on the drain. “You can
reach into my mind and see what I’m thinking?”
“I don’t have to be telepathic.” A cupboard banged. “You’re
always badgering him to pay less attention to school and
basketball, so he can train more.”
Note to self, thought Seth: Baby sister eavesdropped on their
brother talks from the top of the stairs. “Leigh, just back off, okay?
J.J. is entitled to his opinion.”
“Well, his opinion sucks.” Leigh plopped down on the stool
beside Seth. “He wants you to leave here. He doesn’t want you to
have a life.” Over his shoulder, Seth saw J.J. fix his eyes on the
ceiling. He appeared to be counting to ten. “You’re happy here,
Seth, I know you are. J.J. won’t even move out of the basement – ”
“I like the basement,” J.J. said, skyward.
“He’s biding his time here,” Leigh soldiered on, talking only
to Seth, “but when he goes, you will too, won’t you? You’re both
planning to run off the instant the Black Swan returns. Off to
Lemuria, the werekin motherland, or even farther away, someplace
that isn’t even Earth, somewhere humans can’t go. We’re never
going to see you again. Do you know what that will do to Mom?
It’s just – it’s just going to break her.”
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Leigh hugged her arms to her chest. Her breathing was shaky.
Seth was stunned. He’d had no idea she was holding all of that in.
“Leigh – ”
“After Dad was collared, he lived in LeRoi’s household.”
As one, Seth and Leigh turned to look at their brother.
J.J. had stepped back, leaning against the counter. He looked at
the floor, not at them, as he went on. “Xanthe was one of LeRoi’s
pets. He arranged for Dad to be brought there, where I was, so I
could see him every day after our lessons. We had to hide how
close we were from LeRoi, but she was gone a lot, and she trusted
Xanthe to keep an eye on me. She didn’t know he was working for
the Resistance the whole time, just like Dad. Anyway, Dad and I
used to play this game. We called it ‘What is Seth Doing.’”
Seth made a low sound in his throat, like a whine. Leigh laid a
hand on his arm. Her touch was soft, as was her voice. “How was
this game played, J.J.?”
“One of us would say, ‘What is Seth doing right now?’, and the
other one would have to guess. If Dad asked, I would say, ‘Seth is
in the park, playing with his friends, taking turns on the slide.’ If I
asked, Dad would say, ‘Seth is watching cartoons and eating
cookies with a big glass of milk.’”
Leigh’s grip tightened on Seth’s arm. He was glad of it. He felt
like a black hole was opening, right through the middle of him, and
only this connection, to his own flesh and blood, could keep him
from being sucked away into it.
“My favorite was our birthday. You had the best birthday
parties. Piñatas bursting with candy. Gallons of ice cream. Tons of
friends. Whatever you wished for when you blew out your candles,
it always came true, like magic. On our eighth birthday, you went
to the beach. Swam in the ocean and built a sandcastle – collected
sea shells – ”
“J.J. Oh, sweetie.”
Leigh had slid off her stool. She crossed the kitchen and placed
her hands over J.J.’s; he allowed this, which proved how upset he
was. “Seth, all I’m saying is, I wanted you to have a normal life.
School, friends, sports. That was the life Dad and I pictured for
you. I know it was naïve. Growing up Underground, I know you
didn’t have any of that…”
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“I had a good life, J.J.,” Seth said, softly. It was the truth. Life
in the Underground had had its trials, but for Seth it had been
happy, because Ben and Naomi had made it that way. “And my
birthdays were awesome.”
“I’m glad.” J.J.’s honesty was undeniable. He was not
resentful that Seth had grown up free while he had been enslaved.
Had the tables been turned, Seth wondered, would he have been as
generous?
“So you don’t think it’s stupid?” he said. “For me to play
basketball and plan for college while the Black Swan is hiding and
the Resistance is crumbling – you don’t think I’m being selfish?”
“No, Seth, I don’t think you’re stupid, and I don’t think you’re
selfish.”
J.J. pushed off from the counter, very gently disentangling his
hands from Leigh’s. “Seth, I can’t promise you this fight won’t
catch you up in it. The other day, at the mall, I know that’s what
Doc was really worrying about, and he has every right to worry
about it. He’s right. I’m not omniscient. I don’t know what’s going
to happen to us all. I can feel something coming, but I don’t know
what, and I don’t know when. I don’t know who to trust, besides
you. If it seems like I push for you to be a part of this it’s only
because I count on you, more than you know. But if you’re happy
here, now, then I’m happy for you. I don’t want to take away your
chance at the life you want to live. I don’t want to take you away
from the people who love you.”
Leigh flinched. J.J. didn’t seem to notice. He walked over,
resting his hands on Seth’s shoulders. “The Ark, the Black Swan,
the Resistance, those are my priorities, little brother,” J.J. said; and
though he could easily have spoken in Seth’s mind, Seth found it
significant that he chose to speak aloud. “Nobody ever said they
had to be yours.”
235
Chapter Nineteen: Before the Storm
Will McLain sat up slowly, jarred into wakefulness by the
shrilling of the telephone, and checked his watch. Five-thirty. How
had it gotten to be five-thirty? He had just sat down for a moment
after lunch, to rest his eyes.
He rose, stretching, from the couch and walked into the
kitchen, to the phone mounted on the wall. He hadn’t bothered to
shower after his morning run; his T-shirt was stiff with dried
sweat. The only perk of living alone was you didn’t have to smell
nice for anyone. “Hello?” he said, into the receiver.
“Will?” Lydia Steward sounded stressed. McLain turned so he
was looking through his front windows at the Stewards’ house.
Lydia’s Escalade was still in the drive.
“Cutting it close on making tipoff, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes, well, that’s why I was calling,” Lydia said. “Our power
has been out,” McLain glanced at his microwave; the green digital
numbers were flashing 12:00, “and Leigh’s hair dryer stopped
working. She isn’t quite ready for the game.”
“I see.” McLain tried not to smile.
“I was wondering – and I hate to ask, I’m so sorry, I know
how busy you are, but I don’t want to be late – it’s sectionals, and
Seth is so excited – ”
“Would you like me to drop her off?”
“You are an angel,” Lydia declared, with feeling. “Thank you
so much. I’ll just have her give you a ring when she’s ready?”
McLain agreed. They said goodbye, and he hung up, sniffed
his T-shirt, and headed upstairs to change. He had been planning
on going to the game anyway. Burke wanted him to keep an eye on
J.J. and Seth.
When he came downstairs, in fresh jeans and a clean
sweatshirt, he took a seat at the kitchen table, pulling his laptop
toward him. It was still open to the medical examiner’s report he
had been studying prior to his cat-nap. McLain tipped back in his
chair and frowned up at his ceiling.
Will McLain was not a man with many illusions left. A few
years in the Scholae Bestiarii had shown him the depravities
humankind could visit upon innocent creatures. Skinning a
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werekin alive was nothing he would have put past Ursula LeRoi, or
her trusty henchman Werner Regent. But something about Ben
Schofield’s disappearance bothered McLain. First it was the phone
call to Seth. Ben could have called Fort King for back-up if he had
been in trouble; if he’d had a warning for Seth, he could have
relayed it through McLain, or Melody, or J.J., all of whom he
trusted. Instead he had placed a cryptic three-minute phone call to
the one person in his inner circle outside of the Resistance.
Then there was that bearskin rug recovered from Werner
Regent’s hideout. The blood had matched Ben Schofield’s exactly
when run through the Gen-1 database. The tissue sample, however,
had been inconclusive. Normally a tissue sample would not have
been run once a blood sample had been matched, but McLain had
insisted. Because when he looked at the bearskin, he did not see
the blurred double image he saw when he looked at a werekin,
living or dead, in person or in a photograph. The medical report he
had stayed up half the night poring over conceded that the bearskin
could be just that – a bear’s skin.
McLain had emailed his suspicions to his C.O. General
Burke’s reply had basically boiled down to this: Ben Schofield’s
whereabouts, living or dead, were not the concern of Operation
Swan Song; Ben had chosen to go off the res on a mission of his
own, without backup, and Burke’s concern now was convincing
the werekin leadership to accept the alliance with the Marines in
his unit. He was being pressured by Washington to show results.
He wanted to know why McLain was reading medical reports
instead of securing the cooperation of the alien race he, Burke, was
supposed to be in control of, and while they were at it, why was
Ursula LeRoi still at large? It was McLain’s job to bring her in –
The doorbell rang.
McLain saw a shadow move on the porch. His heart jumped –
the shadow was slender, like Caroline’s – but that was just his
imagination, he thought; this would be Leigh, sufficiently primped
to show her face at her brother’s big game.
He hurried down the hallway and pulled open the door, smiling
crookedly. “Well, don’t you look – ”
“Hello again, Captain.”
The woman on the porch was most definitely not Leigh
Steward. She wore a long black trench coat over her tailored black
237
suit, and a cold smile that grew as she watched the blood drain out
of McLain’s face.
Ursula LeRoi brought her pistol up to the level of McLain’s
heart. The man standing behind her smiled wolfishly. “Let’s go for
a ride, shall we?”
***
“Who are you looking for?” Marshall asked.
Seth turned from scanning the stands. Marshall was trotting in
from warm-ups, adjusting his lucky wristband.
He had to shout to be heard; the energy in the gym was electric.
Fans in Fairfax High Knights’ blue-and-gold packed the home
side. The other side was a sea of Warriors’ red-and-black. The
Townsend-Sullivan cheering section – which included Cleo, J.J.,
Whitney, and most of the Haven kids, as well as Lydia and
Meredith – had claimed a bleacher near the Pep Band. Whitney
had painted blue and gold streaks on J.J.’s cheekbones, like war
paint. He looked completely bad-ass in black jeans and his old
leather coat.
“I was just wondering where Leigh is,” Seth said, though this
was only half the truth. He had been watching for Jack to arrive
ever since the Knights had come up from the locker room. The
basketball dads had a row directly behind the bench, close enough
to shout their opinions on plays to Coach, which Seth was sure
Coach loved, but Jack was not among them.
Dr. Townsend was there, impeccable as ever in a gray suit of
Italian silk. The color set off his honey-toned skin and ink-black
hair. Seth looked away before their eyes could meet. He was not
supposed to know who Dr. Townsend really was, or what he had
done, and he wasn’t sure he could keep the truth off his face if he
had to look into those sapphire eyes.
“Philadelphia.” Marshall suddenly nudged Seth with his
elbow. “Look.”
Seth immediately looked to the Townsend-Sullivan cheering
section, expecting to see Leigh – and scowled, as he spotted a
mane of fiery hair floating like a battle flag among the sea of blueand-gold. Quinn O’Shea was sitting next to J.J. Correction: Quinn
was sitting practically in J.J.’s lap, holding J.J.’s hand.
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“Oh for the love of -,” he fumed. “Can you believe her? Aren’t
there rules about PDA in high school? Maybe we can get her
thrown out.” He cast around hopefully for Ms. McLain.
Marshall was staring at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Vixen O’Shea.” Seth raised his voice. Cheerleaders were
tumbling off the court, whooping; they were on the countdown to
tipoff. “What are you talking about?”
“Your step-father.” Marshall pointed to the stands. “He came.
And he brought a friend.”
Seth turned. Sure enough, Jack Steward was now wedged in
among the basketball dads, all of whom were gazing, awestruck, at
the balding man in the blue sweatshirt beside him. Seth’s heart did
a slow backwards tumble. The sweatshirt wasn’t just blue. It was a
very distinctive shade of blue.
“Blue Devils,” Seth whispered. “Indiana – ”
“Oh man.” Connor Burke had drifted over from warm-ups,
probably because he had seen what Marshall and Seth were seeing.
Bryce, Topher, Gabe, and half of the Knights’ second string were
right behind him. “Is that…?”
“Uh-huh,” Marshall nodded. “The scout from Duke.” Gabe
whistled.
Jack glanced down at the court, caught Seth’s eye, and winked.
Seth’s throat was too tight to speak. This gift far surpassed a free
Porsche, because it was not a gift for him; it was a gift for
Marshall. His chance to secure that scholarship to Duke. The best
do-over in history.
In unison, the boys all looked at Dr. Townsend, anticipating
how broadly he would be smiling – as broadly as Marshall, whose
grin was stretched across his entire face.
But Dr. Townsend was not smiling. His baby blue eyes,
hooded with lashes as long and dark as Marshall’s, locked onto his
son’s. Very clearly, like the rest of the team wasn’t standing right
there, watching, he mouthed two words.
Don’t choke.
Marshall spun around and walked onto the court, where the
Warriors were assembling. Seth, like the rest of the team, just
stared at his back, mortified by embarrassment.
“I cannot believe he just did that,” Bryce said, softly.
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Seth could. Taking a deep breath, he started toward Marshall.
His mind whirled as he tried to think of what to say. To know that
Marshall understood, completely, what his father’s obsession with
his perfection was…It made Seth sick inside, sicker even than
seeing J.J. collared. A collar you could escape. The chains Wesley
Townsend had bound Marshall with were deeper even than the
skin.
“Townsend. Hold up.” Cam shoved by Seth, knocking him
sideways, into Connor. Seth didn’t think he meant anything by it,
for once. Cam didn’t even seem to see him as his hand came down
on Marshall’s shoulder. Marshall looked around at him, blue eyes
pale as glass.
To Seth’s knowledge, Marshall and Cam had not spoken since
the day of the fight. He was a little worried two of their starters
might be about to get ejected from the game. So he was
sufficiently shocked when Cam, with thuggish eloquence, said,
“Screw him, dawg. What does he know? He washed out before he
ever made it to college ball.” Marshall started to say something in
defense of his father, but Cam cut him off. “This is your night,
man. He doesn’t get to ruin this for you. Not this. Okay?”
A smile edged back on to Marshall’s face. Marshall and Cam
had their issues, but a pack was a pack. Mess with one, you had to
deal with them all.
He looked up to find hazel eyes looking into his. Whatever
expression had been on Connor’s face, it was quickly replaced by
his laidback grin.
“Don’t think this means I’m going easy on you,” he said.
***
Leigh was running late. This was like so not her fault, no
matter what her mother said. Could she help it that the electricity
kept winking in and out? It wasn’t even storming yet, just raining,
a little heat lightning off to the north. Leigh had not planned a
power outage while she was trying to blow-dry her hair.
She scooted Poe off her vanity, suffering a reproachful meow,
which Leigh ignored. Evil warlock kitten. How else would J.J.
have known she had called Dre Alfaro a freak if Poe hadn’t
reported her conversation on that very topic with Whitney? Never
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mind that Leigh had been saying how terrible she felt. She swiped
candy-flavored lip gloss across her mouth, giving her curls one last
fluff. She would have apologized to Dre, if he had ever spoken to
her after that day. She had tried to catch him after school a few
times, but he wouldn’t even make eye contact with her.
The doorbell buzzed. Leigh grabbed her purse off the door and
jogged down the stairs, calling, “Just a minute!” in what she hoped
was a grownup-and-sexy-sounding voice. Her mother was going to
die when she saw the blue tank top and denim miniskirt she had
changed into, but how often was she going to get to ride, alone, in
a car, with Will McLain? Leigh was determined to make an
impression. So what if he was twenty-four? She wasn’t going to be
sixteen forever.
Leigh opened the door, and blanched. “Dre?”
“Get inside!”
Leigh gasped. Dre, soaking wet, shoved her inside and shut the
door, killing the chandelier above the entryway with a flick of the
switch. He pressed his eye to the peephole, gripping Leigh’s wrist
tightly in one small, icy hand. Leigh hadn’t known werekin could
even get cold. Then she noticed the scratches on Dre’s cheeks, like
he had tumbled into a briar patch, and the dark red stain on the
sleeve of his white T-shirt. “Dre! Is that your blood?”
Dre shushed her. “Yes,” he whispered. Before Leigh could ask
if he was all right, swore, in a language she didn’t recognize.
“They’ve got him.”
“Who do they have?” Leigh whispered back. Dre was really
freaking her out.
“Captain McLain.” Dre stepped back from the peephole. He
was ashen, and shaking. How Seth had looked in the infirmary at
Fort King after he had been shot, so small and helpless with the
enormous Gen-0 Healers surrounding him. In the glare of the street
lights filtering through the front windows, Leigh saw the small,
round hole in Dre’s shoulder, and gasped. “Dre, you’ve been
shot!”
“She just clipped my wing,” Dre said, dismissively. “I was on
your roof when I saw them pull up. I tried to fly over, to warn
McLain, but that hunter saw me, and – ” Leigh shook her head
helplessly. Dre was doing that thing where he talked too fast for
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her human ears to catch all of the words. “Lucky for me she
doesn’t have Quinn’s aim. Still hurt like a – ”
“Who, Dre?” Leigh resisted the urge to shake him. “Who has
McLain?”
Dre started to answer, but stopped, as a board creaked on the
porch.
Leigh’s legs turned to jelly. She stared at the doorknob. Had
Dre locked it? It started to turn; oh God, no, he hadn’t –
“Back door,” Dre all but breathed, turning Leigh by the
shoulders and steering her toward the kitchen. About the time they
crossed the threshold, the lights went out.
Leigh screamed. She didn’t mean to; it was instinctive, and
probably would have gotten them killed if Dre hadn’t clamped a
hand over her mouth before a single sound could escape, as though
he had known she was going to scream. Leigh could feel his heart
beating like a sparrow’s wing through his wet shirt. “Quietly,” he
breathed, in her ear. Leigh nodded.
They crept through the pitch-black kitchen. Dre moved
soundlessly; had it not been for his arm around her waist, shuffling
her ahead of him, Leigh would not have known he was behind her.
She didn’t even hear him open the back door, just felt him reach
around her, saw it swing outward on its hinges. Captain Hook
slipped around their legs and streaked off across the yard.
Dre made a beeline for the garage. Lydia’s Escalade was gone;
Leigh experienced a moment of panic – how were they going to
get out of here? – until Dre threw the tarp off something in the
corner.
Seth’s Yamaha practically glowed in the moonlight. Dre swung
a leg over the seat, slotting the key he must have swiped off the
peg by the back door into the ignition. Leigh glanced behind her.
Circles of light danced in the windows of her bedroom. Someone
was inside, searching for her.
“They’ll hear that,” she whispered, turning back to Dre.
“They’ll hear the engine.”
“We’ll just have to drive fast,” Dre whispered back.
Dre didn’t look in the shape to drive fast, or to drive at all, for
that matter. Wet, floppy hair hung in his eyes; his teeth were
chattering, his wounded arm cradled against his chest. “Can’t we
just call for help?” Leigh whispered desperately.
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“I already tried that. The fort’s communications are down.
And if their comms are down,” Dre said, darkly, “they’re down.”
“You mean…” Leigh’s eyes widened. “We’re on our own?”
“Looks like it.”
Leigh stared at him a moment before squaring her shoulders.
“Wait here,” she said.
She heard Dre call her name, hoarsely, as she darted back
across the yard. The rain was a fine mist, like a net dropped over
Fairfax; every bit of Leigh’s exposed skin was pebbled with
gooseflesh. In her tank top and miniskirt, that made for rather a lot
of skin. Kicking the Prada heels she had borrowed from her mom’s
closet into the bushes, she tiptoed onto the porch, eased open the
front door, and peeked around the frame.
The entryway was empty. Shadows drifted eerily across the
French doors into the dining room, but that was just the old tree in
their front yard, swaying in the wind. Leigh crept inside, keeping
to the edges of the stairs as she stole up them, her shoulder
brushing the wall where their family portraits had hung before she
had insisted on taking them down.
Her pulse was running a race in her veins. She almost couldn’t
believe she made it to the third floor without hands snatching her
from the dark.
Seth’s bedroom door was ajar. As Leigh slipped inside, she
saw something move, across the hall in her room. She ducked
down beside the bed, heart thumping.
A single green eye glinted under the bed. Poe was hiding out,
too.
“What was that?” a man’s voice growled. It was vaguely
familiar.
“I didn’t hear anything.” The woman who answered sounded
petulant. “She isn’t here, Derek. She must have gotten a ride with
one of her little friends.”
“You heard the phone call. Lydia Steward told McLain to take
her.”
“What does it matter anyway? We’ll have the boyfriend. That
will be enough to make him talk.”
“LeRoi likes to be thorough,” the man growled.
The woman snorted. “More like Gideon wants to play doctor.”
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Leigh shut her eyes. Their footsteps were drawing closer – if
they came in here, there was nowhere for her to hide –
“Come on.” The man sounded resigned. “We’ll have to tell
LeRoi we missed her.”
Their footsteps moved off, down the stairs. Leigh stayed where
she was for a full minute, counting down the seconds, listening
hard to be sure they had really gone.
Jagged bursts of white lightning were strobing out toward Fort
King when she dashed out the back door moments later, Seth’s old
camouflage jacket, the one from Re-Spin with the 101st Airborne
patch on the arm, flapping around her. The katana he kept in a
sheath on his dresser was bouncing between her shoulder blades.
Reaching inside the jacket, she pulled out a shivering Poe and
gently placed the kitten on the grass, beside Captain Hook.
Warlock or not, Poe was still a member of the family. “You guys
stay out of sight,” Leigh ordered them both, in a whisper, before
tiptoeing over to the garage. “Dre?”
“Leigh!” A shadow detached from the corner. Dre stumbled
toward her. The power was out to their whole street; in the dark,
Leigh could see sweat glistening on his forehead. “Where did you
go? I tried to skin and fly after you, but – ”
“The silver poison wouldn’t let you. I know.” Taking him by
the arm, Leigh guided him up against the wall. His skin was now
scalding to the touch, his quick, dark eyes cloudy with fever and
pain. Leigh slid one of the glass phials out of her bra (really, where
else was she going to put it?) and uncorked it. “Drink this.”
Dre blinked. Raindrops slid out of his hair, tracking down his
cheeks. “Where did you get healing potion?”
“Seth has a stash in his room from when he got shot. I got you
one of these, too.” Leigh produced a phial of chartreuse-colored
potion. Dre’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.
“Strengthening potion?” He looked pointedly at her chest.
“Got anything else I should know about in there?”
“Don’t get fresh, Alfaro,” Leigh snipped.
Grinning, Dre let her tip the healing potion to his lips. It was a
deep purple, like the grape cough syrup her parents used to give
her as a child, and from his puckered expression, Leigh guessed it
tasted about as bad. He licked his lips, though, and almost
immediately relaxed. “Did that help?” Leigh asked, anxiously.
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Dre nodded. “Thanks.”
He tossed his bangs out of his eyes. Dre was not very tall –
being a bird, Leigh didn’t see why he would need to be – but he
was as tall as Leigh, anyway. She stepped back, not really sure
why she was blushing all of a sudden. “Will you be all right now?”
“Should be. The bullet passed clean through.” Dre downed the
strengthening potion with a shudder. “I’ll take you to Chaz’s. You
should be as safe there as anywhere.”
A flash of lightning, neon-bright, reflected in Dre’s eyes. Leigh
glanced behind her. Out toward Fort King, she thought she had
seen something, tall and conical, framed against the clouds, but
that was impossible. There were no buildings out by the fort.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, as she turned back.
“Fairfax High. I can’t get any cell reception, so I’ll have to
warn Seth in – hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
Leigh had swung onto the bike. She patted the seat behind her
for Dre to hop on. “I’m going with you,” she said.
“Leigh, I don’t think – ”
“Your brother is at Fairfax High tonight, isn’t he?”
After a pause, Dre bobbed his head. “Well, so are mine,” Leigh
said.
Dre sighed. J.J. was probably going to kill him for this. But, as
he was pretty sure the only way to ensure Leigh stayed behind
would be to tie her up, he swung onto the bike behind her, arms
wrapped loosely around her waist. Leigh cranked the ignition,
knuckles white on the handlebars. The bike roared to life, and they
were off, racing the storm.
245
Chapter Twenty: Endgame
“I would just like to say,” said Marshall, “that we are
awesome.”
Seth lifted his can of Mountain Dew. “I’ll drink to that.”
The two of them were sitting on the gym’s stage, legs hanging
over the edge, the scoreboard smiling down at them: HOME – 65;
VISITORS – 62. The janitors had been through, dust-mopping the
court and clearing trash out from the bleachers; their teammates
had departed almost half an hour ago. Marshall and Seth should
have been at MoJo’s with everyone else, celebrating, but they were
waiting on their parents, who were currently closeted in Coach’s
office discussing the implications of the Duke scout’s visit.
On the vacated court, a portion of the Townsend-Sullivan
cheering section had been organized into a friendly game of
H.O.R.S.E. This also included Connor Burke.
Frankly, Seth couldn’t believe Connor had the energy to still be
on his feet. He had played an unbelievable game, making up for his
teammates’ averageness by zigzagging up and down the court,
stealing the ball from defenders, sinking every shot he put up –
Seth had been the only one able to keep pace with him. He hadn’t
been kidding about not taking it easy on them.
Connor had accepted the Warriors’ loss with such golden boy
grace, if Seth hadn’t known better he would have thought he didn’t
care all that much about basketball. As the gym had exploded in
cheers from the Knights’ fans, he had trotted over to shake
Marshall’s hand, and the instant he had emerged from the locker
room, showered and dressed, he had latched on to Cleo. Not that
Seth believed for a second that last course of action had anything
to do with sportsmanship.
J.J. kept looking at the other boy like he wanted to knife him.
Seth wondered idly if his twin was actually armed.
“Dunk it, Bunny Bread!” Cleo called out. Emery was dribbling
in for a layup – which he missed. He now had both an H and an O.
He flipped the ball to Quinn, who, with smirking confidence,
dribbled in, switched things up at the last second, and dunked.
“Beat that, player,” she said, swishing her coppery hair back as
she passed the ball to J.J.
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Seth wanted to close her up in the bleachers. So Quinn was
gorgeous, athletic, and witty. Seth hated her. Werekin were hardwired for pack mentality, and Miss Vixen was horning in on Cleo’s
turf.
“Philadelphia? Are you still with me?”
Seth tore his eyes away from Flirt-Fest 3000 and looked back
at Marshall, feeling, as he turned his head, a sharp pain in his
temple, like a needle pricking his brain. A dull throb had started
behind his eyes at the final buzzer – a killer tie-breaking threepointer by Marshall, who had popped up on his toes, body curved
into a taut bow as he had measured the shot; Seth didn’t know if
the gym had really gone silent, or if he had simply been to focused
to hear the crowd, but it seemed like the whole school was holding
its breath as the ball dropped off Marshall’s fingertips, falling
straight through the net with a satisfying swish.
Marshall was reclining on the stage now, ankles crossed. Seth
rested his shoulders against the wall, his back to the court. Behind
him the thump-bump-swish continued. It was doing nothing for his
headache.
“Why are you sitting over there?” Marshall complained.
He patted the spot beside him, looking all, come hither. He had
changed into a heather gray sweater and chocolate cords, a color
combo that made his eyes the shade of the sky at twilight. Seth was
sorely tempted to ravish him right there. “Your parents could come
out here any second,” he warned.
Marshall mumbled something that sounded like I hate this.
Seth bit his lip. “Indiana, I know we agreed not to talk about this,
but I was sort of wondering…I mean, if you’re a copy of your dad,
do you think that means you’re, like, exactly the same?”
“You mean do I think my father is gay?”
Seth nodded. Yeah. That was what he meant.
“I don’t know.” Marshall sounded like he had honestly given it
some thought. “I’ve heard the arguments for the ‘gay gene,’ and
I’m not saying there isn’t one, that people aren’t just born a certain
way, but I don’t know if everything about us, everything that
makes us who we are, is coded into our DNA. And I don’t think it
really matters. I don’t think who you love is something you need to
justify with genetics.”
Seth’s reply was cut off by Coach’s office door opening.
247
Lydia stalked out ahead of Jack, clutching her purse like she
might brain somebody with it. Dr. Townsend and Meredith
followed, arm-in-arm. Meredith’s syrupy smile didn’t match her
husband’s stony glare. Coach dawdled behind them, locking his
office, shooting dark looks at Dr. Townsend’s back.
Uh-oh, pretty much summed up the situation. Marshall and
Seth shared a confused look. Wasn’t this supposed to be a happy
night?
The Duke scout had visited the Knights’ locker room after the
game, congratulating the team and introducing himself to Seth and
Marshall. “Real team effort out there, Captain,” he had said,
pumping Marshall’s hand. “Exactly what we’re in the market for –
team players. And you, Mr. Sullivan.” He had turned to Seth with a
slightly awed expression. “Who in the world taught you that jump
shot?”
His card was tucked in Seth’s pocket now. Marshall had one,
too. Seth was planning to frame his and hang it inside his locker.
The Shrine of the Holy Blue Devil.
Marshall levered to his feet, offering Seth a hand up. “Seth,
honey, it’s late,” Lydia said, as she joined them. Her tone was
clipped. “Are you riding home with Marshall?”
Of course Seth was riding home with Marshall. That was like
asking if he was hungry. “Mom? Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” said Jack, in that adults-only voice
grownups used when they were hiding stuff. He stuck his hand out
to Marshall. “Good game, kiddo.”
Seth had never heard anyone call Marshall, their alpha,
“kiddo.” It reminded him that Jack had known Marshall when he
was a little tyke shooting a Nerf basketball at a miniature hoop.
“Mr. Steward, wow.” Marshall pumped Jack’s hand
enthusiastically. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. This
opportunity – ”
“Marshall,” Dr. Townsend called. He and Meredith were
halfway across the gym already. Seth noticed the good doctor
hadn’t offered to shake his hand. “A word, please?”
“Yeah, Dad. Sure.” Marshall smiled sheepishly at Jack,
embarrassed by his father’s rudeness, and jogged off. “What’s
up?” Seth heard him say. Dr. Townsend rested a proprietary hand
248
on his shoulder, steering him out into the lobby by the concession
stand.
Seth rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes. The bompbomp-bomp of J.J. dribbling the ball was drilling into his eardrums.
Suddenly all he wanted was to be home, lying down. “Did Leigh
ever call?” Jack was asking Lydia.
“No.” Lydia’s tone was stiff as cardboard. “But she’s with
Will. She’s fine.”
“All right.” Jack sounded like he was letting it go simply to
avoid a fight. “Seth, good game.”
He stuck his hand out. Seth shook it. “I would thank you,” he
said, “but I’m not allowed.”
Laughing, Jack pulled him in for a one-armed hug. Seth’s
forehead only reached his shoulder; for a second he rested his
cheek there, feeling like he was three years old again and his dad
was picking him up out of the swing, carrying him home because
he was too tired to walk. “It was really cool that you came,” he
said.
“I told you I would.” Jack’s voice was rougher than usual. He
cleared his throat as Seth stepped back from the embrace. “Well, I
have an early day tomorrow, so…I’ll see you this weekend.
Lydia,” he paused, “you take care.”
“You too.” Lydia managed to make the pleasantry sound as
though she was cursing him.
Their postgame party started to break up then. Whitney was
ordered to leave with her parents, which she did grudgingly. Coach
instructed Marshall to lock up when they left. Marshall, looking
drained, flopped down on the stage again. Seth stretched out beside
him. “What was all that about?” he asked, meaning the weirdness
with their parents.
“Nothing that matters,” Marshall said, quietly. He looked up
as Cleo’s spike heels came clicking across the court. J.J. and Quinn
were still shooting around; Emery had plopped down on a bleacher
to watch. Seth looked around for Connor. He spied his blonde head
disappearing out the double doors, cell phone against his ear.
“Doc,” Cleo said. “Can I steal your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “Can you?”
Cleo’s laugh was a bright rill of amusement. J.J. glanced at her.
His golden eyes were nearer to bronze tonight, amber around the
249
pupils. Seth wondered if his euphoria over their win had been
passed along their telepathic connection, like they were hooked up
to the same I.V., or if J.J. was just happy in his own right.
He walked Cleo out to her truck. Just four vehicles remained:
Cleo’s Ford, Marshall’s Audi, Chaz’s clunker van (borrowed by
Emery), and a red Mustang. Connor’s ride, Seth deduced. He
wondered where Connor had gone, if he hadn’t left.
Thunderclouds banked off to the north, black around the edges,
promising wind. As Seth lowered onto the tailgate, a flash of
lightning, jagged as a monster’s tooth, reflected on the school’s
checkered walls. The brightness stabbed his eyeballs.
“No thunder.” Cleo frowned up at the sky. “Lightning, but no
thunder.”
“It’s heat lightning,” Seth said. The midwinter heat wave
continued; the temperature was a balmy sixty-five. He leaned back
on his hands. “Cleo, you don’t have to take off just because of her.
I don’t know what’s going on with them – ”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on with them.” Cleo
ground the heel of her boot into a hole in the asphalt like she was
picturing Quinn O’Shea’s face under it. A few raindrops splashed
onto the asphalt. The looked-for thunder at last growled in the
distance.
“I don’t know why he likes her,” Seth said, darkly.
“I do. She’s exactly his type. Clever. Daring.”
“You’re exactly his type,” Seth insisted.
“Aside from the small fact that I spent years collaring and
killing your kind,” Cleo said.
Her voice was toneless. “Cleo, you heard what J.J. said at Fort
King during the battle,” Seth said. “He said hunters aren’t to blame
for what they’re made to do. He doesn’t hold it against you.”
Cleo’s eyes were mostly blue in the dark. “I should go,” she
said. “Beat the storm home.”
Seth sighed.
Cleo climbed behind the wheel. A gust of wind drove rain
against the side of the truck; leaning in the window, Seth hunched
deeper into his letterman’s jacket. “Cleo, you should talk to J.J.
Tell him you love him. He thinks you don’t, and if he knew you
did, it would change things.”
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Cleo looked at her hands, clenched around the steering wheel.
“Maybe it’s better if things don’t change,” she said.
***
By the time Cleo’s taillights disappeared around the corner, the
rain was blowing horizontally across the parking lot. Emery flung
the gym doors open for Seth. He dashed inside, drenched and
grumbling. Jaguars liked water, but not the cold stinging stuff that
fell from the sky.
Seth, Marshall, J.J., Emery and Quinn grouped up in the foyer,
staring out the glass doors. “It’s like the end of the world,” Quinn
said. Seth had to agree. He could just make out the trees in the
courtyard, tops whipping wildly in the wind. Rapid-fire streaks of
lightning lit the night to noontime brightness, throwing their
reflections back at them like they were standing in front of a bank
of mirrors.
Emery peered upward, scanning the sky for funnel clouds. He
hopped back, as a boom of thunder rattled the doors. There was a
pop, and a shower of sparks as the transformer across the street
exploded in a shower of fireworks; right on cue the overhead lights
went out, plunging the gym into darkness.
“Well this sucks,” J.J. observed, equably.
“We’ll have to wait it out here,” Marshall said. “We can’t
drive in this.”
They tried to call their parents, but nobody’s cell phone could
pick up a signal. “The storm must have knocked out the cell
tower,” Marshall said.
Seth could tell he wasn’t so sure. Still, what could they do?
Emery raided the vending machines for sodas and candy bars, as
Marshall and Seth were starving, and Seth picked the lock on
Coach’s office, in search of a battery-powered radio. Rain crashed
against the skylight, punctuated by roars of thunder. This did little
to ease the pounding in Seth’s head.
They gathered on the stage, sitting in a cross-legged circle
around the radio like it was a campfire. Emergency lights glowed
above the exits, bathing the court in sickly green light. What would
have been just a minor inconvenience in their own homes was, in
the shadowy, echoing gym, the stuff horror movies were made of.
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Marshall tuned the dial, searching for a weather bulletin. All he
could pick up was static.
“That’s some interference.” Emery was chewing on his
ponytail again. “Could that be from the storm, do you think?
’Cause I’ve never heard of a storm shutting down radio
broadcasts.”
Marshall switched the radio off. “We’ll just have to wait it
out,” he said, again.
Quinn was shivering; in the last few minutes, the temperature
outside must have plummeted – the gym was like a meat locker.
J.J. put his arm around her, murmuring something in her ear.
Probably suggesting they go somewhere more private. Seth
scowled.
“So. O’Shea,” he said.
“So. Sullivan.” There was a note of amusement in Quinn’s
voice.
“You may have noticed we beat Sacred Heart this time
without the help of any of your foxy plays. I believe
congratulations are in order, don’t you?”
“Philadelphia,” Marshall protested. “Don’t listen to him,
Quinn. He’s like a grumpy old woman when he’s tired.”
“No, he’s got a point,” Quinn said. “You played very well
tonight. Both of you.”
Slightly mollified, Seth said, “It’s too bad we took down LeRoi
too late in the season for Alfaro to join the team.” Angelo had
cheered louder than anyone during the game, his bellow echoing
off the rafters every time the Knights sank a basket. They would
have pounded Sacred Heart into dust had Alfaro been on the court
with them.
“Be glad it was,” Quinn said, dryly. “I love Angelo, but he has
his temper issues. And while we’re on the subject of tempers, nice
job keeping Foss in line tonight, Doc. He was almost human out
there.”
It was true: Cam had played a clean game. For Cam. “At least
he didn’t knock Connor out again, like last time,” Marshall said.
J.J. grumbled. It sounded like too bad. Marshall looked over at
him. “What’s your problem with Connie, anyway? He’s a nice
guy.”
“I don’t trust him,” J.J. said.
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Seth found it an odd thing to say. J.J. not liking Connor, given
his obvious interest in Cleo, he would have understood. “Why
don’t you trust him?” he asked, truly curious.
“Because he’s Burke’s son,” Marshall said. Because he was
human, being the implication. Quinn looked away.
“You know, Doc,” J.J. said, coldly, “maybe you shouldn’t
stick your nose in things you don’t understand. When I’m around
Connor Burke, I just get this – feeling. I can’t explain it, but
Xanthe always tells me to trust my – ”
Seth cried out. Pain had just lanced through his temples, sharp
enough to make him moan. He fell over sideways, curling into a
ball.
“Seth! Seth, are you hurt?”
Marshall was beside him, rolling him onto his back.
“Headache,” Seth whispered. His lips were numb, like a spike had
been driven into his brain, deadening his nerves. A sense of
impending danger made him want to skin, but when he reached for
the magic, to his horror, it wasn’t there; he felt like he was
struggling against an invisible force, something that pressed down
on him like the clouds he could see pressing down on the city
through the skylight.
He sensed J.J. close by, crouching protectively over him. “Doc,
is he all right?”
“Give me a second to examine him, J.J. Philadelphia, open
your eyes for me.”
Seth, though he had been unaware of closing his eyes, opened
them. Light danced across his vision. “What’s wrong with me?” he
whispered.
“You’re sick,” Marshall said. His silhouette was haloed at the
edges – he was holding a penlight, checking Seth’s pupil reaction.
“I don’t think this is physical in origin, or J.J. would be feeling it,
too. Emery, try your phone again, see if you can get Aphrodis – ”
A sharp crack cut off Marshall’s words, too loud and too close
to be thunder. Glass dusted Seth’s cheeks; it took him a moment to
realize that the skylight had just blown apart, as though a bomb
had detonated inside the school. He heard J.J.’s shout of surprise
become a jaguar roar; heard a wolfish snarl out of the darkness;
heard Emery’s undulating battle cry break off in a gurgling moan.
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Marshall’s face as he turned away from Seth was colorless, his
pupils hugely dilated, black centers covering the blue fields. His
lips formed Seth’s name, but the wind rushing in Seth’s ears
blotted out the sound.
It all seemed to be happening to someone else.
Raindrops stung his cheeks. Seth stared up at the clouds, but he
was not seeing the sky; he was seeing Fort King, the evergreen
trees circling the hillside lashed by wind and rain, lightning strikes
illuminating the black stone like firelight rippling on water…
Dozens upon dozens of hunters in black camouflage poured out
of the trees, into the courtyard, impervious to the driving rain.
Behind them marched an army of collared werekin: bears, wolves,
hyenas, cougars, leopards, alligators.
Seth gasped. His consciousness felt as though it was
narrowing, being squeezed into infinitesimal space – bounded in a
nutshell. Suddenly, he was looking out into the prison’s rotunda,
looking out, he realized, from the eyes of the Black Swan statue
that had seemed to grow up from the floor of the prison overnight.
He could feel the presence of the werekin spirits inside the Ark,
deep, deep belowground, their power reverberating through the
statue, tasting of sunlight and seawater, whispering of stars, and
worlds beyond them.
Footsteps pounded across the marble floor. Marines and
Resistance fighters raced into the rotunda, moving to barricade the
steel doors. Melody Little and Oswald Harris were amongst them;
Ozzie was halfway skinned, a pelt of fur across his back and chest,
freckles blooming into orange spots on his downy cheeks.
Agathon came behind them, speaking in Lemurian, erecting
wards around the foyer. His flat black eyes were lit from within,
the color of dying coals. “Agathon!” Seth screamed. “Agathon!”
He wanted to beat the inside of the statue with his fists, only he
didn’t have fists; he was awareness without form. He experienced
a moment of panicky horror, thinking he might be dead on the gym
floor, imprisoned in this statue like the souls inside the courtyard
fountain; but no, he could still feel his body, somewhere below
him, outside of him…
Xanthe passed across the limited field of Seth’s vision. The
glyphs banding his chest and arms blazed with a fiery light; he was
brandishing a silver sword longer than Seth’s arm. The Resistance
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ranks parted for him as he glided majestically out onto the steps to
meet their enemies.
A flash of lightning revealed a shape on the hillside: a conical
obsidian tower, etched with Lemurian glyphs. The glyphs were
glowing white-hot, as though being carved by fire. A cauldron
bubbled at the base of the tower; the liquid inside was too dark
and too thick to be water, too red to be tar.
A tall, spare figure, stripped to the waist, had been lashed to
the three-headed chimera fountain. Rain drove into his skin like
bullets; he hung limp in his bonds, bronzed skin blackened by
bruises. Seth screamed, “McLain,” at the same time a voice inside
his head, or inside the statue with him, he couldn’t tell which,
screamed, “Will!”
Agathon suddenly turned back, addressing the statue, which
made no sense. Did he know Seth was in there?
“They have come for the Ark,” Agathon said. “We will hold
them, Caroline, for as long as we can.”
“Agathon, we can’t hold them,” Melody squeaked. She seemed
puzzled as to why Agathon was addressing the statue, but then,
Agathon was a little nutty about the statue. He read poetry to it.
“There are too many! We have to run!”
“We cannot.” Agathon’s voice was deeper than the rumbling
thunder rocking the fort to its very foundation. “We must protect
this place, at the cost of all our lives…”
And again Seth’s consciousness expanded. Even as he felt
himself be lifted, the collar of his T-shirt cutting into his neck, his
mind was soaring above the trees, over the city of Fairfax, the
buildings silver specks far below, circled by a ribbon of moonlit
river; he sailed on, above the school, a miniature chessboard castle;
above his own house, and Marshall’s, backyards split by the tall
brick fence; and then, with a rush of feeling that was almost
painful, he felt his mind crashing back toward his body – falling,
falling, falling, like a shooting star toward the Earth.
***
The world was sideways. That was Seth’s first impression.
Then he became aware that he was sideways, his cheek resting
against the tiles of the showers in the boys’ locker room. Yuck.
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Mold sprouted along the grout, and there was stuff inside the drain
he was afraid to even classify.
Water puddled around him, dripping from the shower heads.
Seth’s T-shirt and jeans were suctioned to his skin, unpleasantly
cold. In the moonlight slanting through the beveled windows, he
could just discern the outlines of lockers. Even the emergency
lights had blown.
He raised his head off his arm to assess the situation. He
figured some level of panic was warranted, if his vision had been
real and Fort King really was under attack, but before he
committed to the freak-out, he wanted to determine how much
trouble he was actually in.
Someone was lying in a heap in the next stall over. With his
right eye weeping around a knot the size of Seth’s fist, Seth almost
didn’t recognize him. He was drenched, too, his jeans and
sweatshirt stained with darker red patches. “Connor?” Seth
whispered.
“Good. You’re awake.”
The growling voice out of the darkness was accompanied by a
hand seizing Seth’s hair and hauling him upright. Seth whipped his
claws across his captor’s nose, and was rewarded by a hand
cracking across his cheek, knocking him into the tiled wall. He slid
down it and stayed there, glaring up at the man looming over him.
“Traitor,” he spit out.
“Since history is written by the victors, looks like I’ll be
remembered as a hero, cub.”
The muzzle of a tranq rifle appeared above Derek Childers’
shoulder as he squatted next to Seth. He was dressed for battle in
black camo pants and a long-sleeved black shirt – Chimera gear.
The silver powder scars were glossy patches on his handsome face.
Did he know who was really responsible for those? Did he know
who had killed his mother? Seth didn’t think so.
Seth bared his teeth. Derek freed a long knife from his belt.
“You skin,” he warned, “and I slit your brother’s throat.”
The rosettes on Seth’s arms faded. They had captured J.J.? No
way. “I want to see him,” he said. Seeing it was the only way he
would believe it.
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He wanted to see Marshall, too. But Seth was hoping Marshall
had escaped, and he didn’t want to bring him up to Derek in case
he had.
Derek whistled. Blondie swaggered forward from the shadows,
wearing a dark leather jacket over her jeans. A knife, a pistol, and a
whip were secured to her belt. “Hi, kitten,” she purred.
“Thought you didn’t work for Regent,” Seth said.
“She works for me,” Derek growled.
Blondie prodded Seth to his feet. Derek slung Connor over his
shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Connor moaned. He looked very
young under all of the bruises.
Nobody had mentioned collaring Seth. While he wasn’t going
to suggest it, he thought it was weird. Chimera usually couldn’t
wait to slap a collar on their werekin slaves. His godly reputation
must have gone before him, Seth thought. He had freed himself
from a collar once. For all his captors knew, he could do it again.
Like the locker room, the gym was pitch-black. Seth’s tennis
shoes splashed into something; looking down, he saw that
rainwater had poured through the busted skylight, turning the court
into a shallow lake glittering with shards of broken glass. The rain
was a drizzle now, misting through the skylight with the texture of
fog.
More hunters were fanned out across the sidelines. Seth lost
count at forty-six as Blondie (he just couldn’t think of her as
Druscilla) marched him out to half-court. There was some serious
firepower in this room. Even if he skinned, Seth knew he wouldn’t
make it as far as the bleachers without being mowed down by
silver bullets.
On his knees, wet hair a metallic shade of bronze, was J.J.,
handcuffed to the Knights’ bench. “J.J.!” Seth cried out.
“He’s been tranqed,” Blondie said, as J.J. didn’t stir. His chin
was resting on his chest, but he wasn’t collared either, Seth was
thankful to see. “Don’t worry. We gave him the antidote. LeRoi
wants both of you alive. Now, turn around.”
She prodded him around to face the stage. Seth glimpsed
something hanging from the opposite goal as he turned; he
couldn’t make out what it was in the rain-damp haze of watery
light, but at least he didn’t see Emery or Quinn or Marshall
anywhere, which gave him hope that they had escaped.
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A half-dozen bodies, all hunters, were piled up by the stage,
leaking blood into the puddles of rainwater – evidence that J.J. had
not come along quietly. A long table from the concession stand had
been carried onto the stage. Standing over it, arranging evillooking torture implements straight out of the Inquisition, was a
pudgy, balding man with bulbous eyes the color of weak tea
behind thick, square-framed glasses. Something wrenched inside
Seth’s gut. He was thrown back, to a roomful of euthanized cats
strapped down for dissection, plastic bags stamped with the symbol
of a three-headed monster, a sense of wrongness coursing through
him. Have a soft spot for cats, do you, Mr. Sullivan? Perhaps you
think this specimen might be a relative of yours?
Dr. Aaron Gideon smiled. “Good evening, Mr. Sullivan.”
Seth swallowed hard against mounting panic. The situation, as
he saw it, was dire but manageable: He wasn’t collared, J.J. wasn’t
collared, Connor wasn’t dead, and Emery and Quinn were at large.
They would be back with help, pronto, if they could. With any luck
they had already reached Cleo’s.
Unless they had headed for the fort, Seth thought, the tiny bit
of confidence he had just worked up sapping away. Fort King
would have been the more logical place for recruiting a strike
force. Would they realize the danger before they were swept up in
the battle? Did their enemies possess the Ark yet? What Seth
wouldn’t have given for just a smidge of J.J.’s telepathic abilities
right about now –
Focus, cub, Regent’s voice growled in his ear. Seth pulled in a
breath, clearing his mind of all but the situation in front of him.
The battle at Fort King was not the fight he was in.
Derek had dumped Connor at the top of the key. “What do you
want?” Seth hissed at him.
“The Black Swan, of course.” That was Gideon. He selected
an instrument off the torture table. It looked like a dog collar,
except the spikes faced inward. He considered it, returned it to the
table, and selected an ordinary screwdriver. This was somehow
more disturbing. “We know your boyfriend spirited her away after
the battle.”
Seth managed to scoff. “My human boyfriend? Whose crazy
theory is that?”
“Mine,” said Derek.
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Replacing the screwdriver, Gideon picked up a metal claw.
Strips of leathery skin were stuck to its spiked tips, dried blood
serving as glue.
He handed it to Derek, who advanced on Seth with it, his eyes
silver as moonbeams. “I started to suspect something that day he
vouched for Agathon, insisting the Black Swan had escaped. I did
some asking around. Found out Marshall Jason Townsend, age
eighteen, of 704 Kings Lane, was reported missing by his mother
the night of the battle. Didn’t turn up again for nearly sixteen
hours. Plenty of time to stash our little swan somewhere safe.”
He turned to the stage. “Doctor,” he said, “the lights.”
A switch was flipped. Overhead lights flared, fluorescent bulbs
sizzling in the misty rain. Whitish light illuminated their macabre
tableau, mauled bodies piled up before the stage, Dr. Gideon
presiding over his torture tools like a mad scientist in a bad movie.
Slowly, very slowly, Seth turned.
The something hanging from the goal, ten feet off the floor
with his arms tied above his head, was Marshall. His wrists were
bound with twine; blood welled up around the razor-thin wire as it
sank down to the bone. Seth could see the muscles straining in his
arms as he gripped the crossbar that connected the basket to the
backboard, supporting his weight so his shoulders weren’t jerked
out of socket. Against his gray complexion, a fresh bruise on his
jaw appeared as a smear of paint.
More than anything, Seth wanted to skin. He controlled himself
by force of will. He could not overpower fifty hunters on his own,
supercharged or not. And Marshall was not the only prisoner they
could use against him. They had J.J., too.
Derek held the spiked claw aloft for Marshall to study on.
Seth’s stomach flipped over. “Feel like talking yet?”
“I won’t tell you anything,” Marshall grated out. “I won’t lead
you to her. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“You know, I believe that.” Derek circled under the basket,
tapping the metal claw against his palm. “Dr. Gideon here doesn’t
agree with me on this, but I keep telling him there’s a certain type
of man who can withstand pain, even unendurable pain, in service
of a cause he believes in. Do you know what we call that?”
“Bravery?” Marshall said.
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“Cowardice.” Marshall focused his eyes on the scoreboard,
color striping his cheeks. “That type of man retreats from the pain.
Sinks deep into his mind, waits it out. Because he knows even the
worst pain eventually ends in death. The human body can only take
so much.” Derek brightened as though an idea had struck him.
“Tell you what. Let’s have a demonstration.”
He snapped his fingers. Gideon clambered pudgily off the
stage, waddling over to Blondie as she hauled Connor to his feet.
Seth snarled at them. Blondie flashed him a smile as wolfish as
Derek’s. “You’ll have your turn, kitten,” she promised.
Connor swayed in Derek’s grasp as Blondie shredded his shirt
down the back with her long nails. Marshall was pleading with
them to stop. The more he twisted, the deeper the wire sank into
his wrists. He fought anyway, ignoring the blood running down his
arms, plinking off his elbows into the puddles on the court.
Had the three of them really been playing basketball here less
than two hours ago?
Connor managed to lift his head. Wet hair hung in lank strips
across his brow. He did not seem afraid, though he couldn’t
possibly have understood what was going on. When had Derek
grabbed him, Seth wondered, and why? Did he know Connor was
Burke’s son, or had Connor just been in the wrong place at the
wrong time? “It’s okay, Marshall,” Connor said. “I can take it.
Don’t tell them anything.”
Gideon snorted, like he found loyalty unto death risible. He had
taken the metal claw from Derek. He held it up now, for Marshall
to inspect. “This,” he said, in the same voice he used to lecture in
class, “is a Spanish tickler. So called because it tickles you pink.
Or, rather, red.”
Blondie and Derek seized Connor’s shoulders, holding him in
place as he struggled. Gideon pressed the spiked tips into the small
of Connor’s back – Seth sucked in a breath – and raked upward,
separating flesh from bone all the way up his spine.
Connor’s scream was awful.
“God, please, please stop,” Marshall was begging. “Please.”
“Now that’s the type I had you pegged for.” Derek booted
Connor in the ribs; he lay where he fell, breathing in ragged gulps.
Blood spread in a pool around him. “You’re a Healer, isn’t that
260
right, Doc? Your own pain you can disconnect from, but the pain
of others, that you can’t escape.”
He motioned for Blondie to bring Seth forward. Seth didn’t
struggle. Better him than Connor if they were looking for a torture
victim.
He was made to kneel. Blondie eased his soaked T-shirt off
over his head. “Werekin are not like humans, Mr. Townsend,”
Gideon explained, as Marshall struggled violently against his
bonds. “Werekin are designed to regenerate indefinitely. There is
no escape into death for a werekin.” He ran his fingertips lightly
down Seth’s chest, demonstrating the path the metal claw would
take. “If you do not tell us what we want to know, we will take the
two of you somewhere no one will ever find you, and we will cut
Mr. Sullivan into tiny pieces until you give us the Black Swan’s
location. We will begin every morning with his toenails, and work
up from there. With enough healing potion, he could survive for
years. Probably outlive you.”
Seth wanted to say he was lying, but Marshall had studied
Healing. He knew it was true.
Marshall’s eyes were huge and agonized in his pale face.
“Indiana, you can’t tell them,” Seth said, softly. “This is bigger
than me or you. You know that.”
Seth.
J.J.’s voice was the sweetest music Seth had ever heard. He
glanced at his twin – still handcuffed, chin still resting on his chest,
still unable to skin with the silver poison in his veins, yet the gold
slivers above his cheekbones told Seth his eyes were half-open.
The only way to keep J.J. down would have been to kill him.
LeRoi should have known that.
Help is coming, J.J. said.
Seth filled his mind with those three precious words as Derek
stepped around in front of him, watching Gideon place the tips of
the metal claw just above Seth’s belly button. Seth said, “Where’s
Regent?”
Derek’s wolfish smile dimmed – just for a second, but it
solidified Seth’s strategy. “He’s not around to save you this time,”
Derek growled, “that’s all you need to know.”
“You want to know what I know, Derek? I know how you got
those scars.”
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Derek blanched. Gideon made an impatient noise. “Mr.
Childers, we should really get on with – ”
One vicious glance from Derek shut him up. “What are you
talking about?” he demanded, of Seth.
Seth lifted his chin. “In Philly, I was raised by a woman named
Naomi Franklin. She was like my mother. Regent killed her, to get
to me. A silver bullet through our window. Then he let me believe
hunters did it, and he used that lie to make me trust him.”
The tips of Derek’s ears had elongated into points. Blondie
looked from Seth to him. “Derek, what’s he talking about?”
“Shut up,” Derek snapped. Seth didn’t know if he meant
Blondie or him, but he kept going.
“Regent came back to Fairfax for me,” he said. “He told me I
belong with him. He tried to kill your girlfriend here for whipping
me. He forged a sword for me. Has he ever killed to protect you,
Derek? Has he ever risked his life for yours? Has he ever given
you anything besides those scars – a lesson in what happens if you
defy Chimera?”
Derek stared at him, the awful truth sinking in. It was a lesson
Regent had taught Seth, too, by withholding the antidote he must
have had access to after Snowman had tranqed him. Bleeding the
silver poison from him, drop by drop. Purging him with vile
concoctions that had turned his stomach inside out. For five days,
Regent had watched Seth suffer. For five days, he had waited to
see if Seth would prove himself worth saving by saving himself.
“He wanted to use me,” Seth said, quietly. “Just like he’s been
using you. But now you’ve served your purpose, and he’s done
with you. He ordered you not to collar me, didn’t he? He ordered
you not to kill me. Because I’m the one he cares for. I’m the one
he calls ‘cub.’”
Seth saw the blow coming. He took it. His head snapped to the
side; Marshall made a pleading noise, but Seth shook his head at
him, very slightly. I’m handling this, he conveyed, with his eyes.
“Keep talking, cub,” Derek growled, “and I’ll rip out your
tongue.”
“Might be a bad idea,” Seth said, “because then I couldn’t tell
you what’s happening at the fort.”
Blondie gasped. “How does he – ”
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“How do I know LeRoi is there right now, going after the
Ark?” Seth smiled beatifically. “You’d be astonished at all the
things I know, Blondie. You think I don’t know about the Source
LeRoi found down there in the Amazon? You think I don’t know
that’s what caused this storm tonight, knocked out all the power,
all the phone lines?”
Seth stood up. No one tried to stop him. “I hate to be the bearer
of bad news,” he said, “but it’s not going so well for Chimera.”
One-hundred-percent absolute bluff. Seth had no idea who was
winning the battle at Fort King. But a lifetime of lying, perfected in
the Underground, had given him one hell of a poker face, and
around the walls, the hunters came to attention, looking unsettled.
Gideon dropped the claw back to his side. He glanced at the exit
like he was thinking of making a run for it.
“The Black Swan sends me dreams,” Seth said. “When I was
passed out back there, she showed me Chimera coming for the
Ark. But the Ark isn’t protected by a handful of werekin and
Marines. It’s protected by the Alpha Clan. You know Chimera
didn’t really kill the Gen-0s, Derek. They’re all still there, all
taking orders from Agathon.”
“Those freaks?” Blondie practically squawked. “LeRoi kept
those freaks around?”
Derek was looking at Seth like he wanted to gouge a hole in his
belly and rip out his intestines, but he hesitated, trying to peel back
the layers of Seth’s mind to get at the truth. This was what Seth
was really counting on. Derek was Regent’s protégé, and no one
was more adept at saving his own skin than Werner Regent. If
LeRoi really did lose the battle, Derek’s only chance for survival
would be to go to ground before the Resistance found him. A silver
bullet through the heart would be too merciful a death for a traitor
like him.
Derek drew Blondie into a corner, speaking too softly for Seth
to make out the words. Gideon flapped around them, interjecting
here and there, increasingly hysterical. At last, Blondie nodded,
took the tranq rifle Derek handed her, and raced out the gym doors.
“Seth,” Marshall whispered.
Seth looked up at him. Sweat was rolling in bullet-thick drops
down his boyfriend’s cheeks. “Hang in there, Indiana,” he said.
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Despite the pain he was in, Marshall choked out a laugh. Seth
winked at him. Help is coming, he mouthed.
Actually, said J.J., in Seth’s mind, help is here.
264
Chapter Twenty-One: Last Words
At first, Seth couldn’t figure out what the light growing inside
the smoke-tinted glass of the gym’s double doors could possibly
be. Then it separated into two spheres, and he dove on top of
Connor’s prone form just as the Ford F150 punched straight
through the glass and ploughed over the ticket booths, burning tire
treads into the court as it came to a stop beneath the scoreboard.
If they lived, Coach would tan their hides.
The hunters around the walls let loose a volley of bullets. More
vehicles were ramping through the hole Cleo’s truck had made:
O’Shea’s battered Jeep, Chaz’s clunker van, a Camaro with bald
tires. One very familiar Yamaha FZ1. J.J. rolled underneath the
bench; figures were diving out of the vehicles, something large and
dark looming up in the bed of the Ford. It bellowed with rage.
Connor looked up at Seth. “Go,” he said, through gritted teeth.
Seth launched himself off the court, skinning mid-leap.
Derek saw him coming and drew the knife from his belt,
planting his feet to face the jaguar in his human skin. Seth’s teeth
closed around Derek’s arm, on either side of his elbow; he bit
down, with all of his jaguar strength.
Blood squirted into his mouth. Derek’s scream became a howl.
The wolf limped back, favoring his shattered foreleg. Seth
drew his lips back from his teeth, swallowing down the saltysweetness of Derek’s blood. Derek was a big, rangy wolf, like he
was a big, rangy man. His coat was reddish-brown, brindled with
white; the silver powder scars stood out like melted glass on his
muzzle.
The wolf and the jaguar circled one another at half-court,
growling and snarling.
Around them, battle raged. Cleo had exploded from the truck
pumping a double-barreled shotgun. Emery, armed with what
looked like a guitar stand from the back of Chaz’s van, was
clubbing one hunter upside the head, pivoting to block the whip
another cracked at him. Quinn, standing on the Jeep’s running
board, was firing off arrows from a longbow. A small brown
falcon swooped around, talons slicing through hunters’ flesh like
razors. Olive-skinned Zoe Campbell and her snake-eyed girlfriend
265
Serena Jensen were fighting back-to-back, long knives flashing.
More werekin Seth recognized from the halls of Fairfax High,
some in human skin, some in animal skin, were fighting hunters all
around the gym.
Bellows rebounded off the bleachers as the bull, shoulders and
chest sagging with muscle beneath hide as black as oil, charged
into a line of hunters, goring them with his horns.
Derek lunged. Teeth snapped at Seth’s throat; Seth batted the
wolf aside with a paw, opening a bloody gash along Derek’s neck.
There was a shimmer of air; skinned back into a human, Derek
came at Seth with a knife clutched in his left hand. Seth skinned
too, and leapt into a roundhouse kick – but Regent had trained
Derek, too, and Derek feinted sideways, managing to tackle Seth.
They rolled through the water on the court, tearing with their
fingernails and teeth, until they fetched up hard against the front
tire of the van. Seth had just enough time to see Leigh sloshing
through the water to J.J.’s side, something dark and cylindrical
bouncing against her shoulder blades, and Marshall dropping to the
court as Dre, hanging from the goalpost one-handed, sliced
through his bonds, before Derek grabbed a handful of his hair and
slammed his skull into the van’s fender.
Seth saw a glint of silver inside the red haze across his eyes. He
instinctively threw up his arms, managing to catch the hilt of
Derek’s knife between his crossed wrists. The blade stopped with
the point touching his chest.
“Say hi to Naomi for me, cub,” Derek growled, as he threw all
of his weight down on the knife, mouth open around a triumphant
laugh.
His mouth kept on opening, wider and wider. A rattling wheeze
issued from it. The fingers gripping his knife opened. Seth stared,
uncomprehending, at the crimson stain spreading across Derek’s
dark shirt. The knife clattered to the court. Derek fell after it, and
that was when Seth saw it, square in the middle of Derek’s back,
still smoking: a tiny, perfectly round bullet hole.
Seth looked up. On the free throw line, a white-faced Marshall
Townsend was lowering a pistol. His father’s Colt .38.
Marshall met Seth’s eyes and lifted one shoulder, as if to say,
He left me no choice.
266
The hunters had seen their leader go down – about a dozen
remained – and now sprinted for the exits. The Haven kids took off
after them. Seth saw J.J. and Alfaro, both in their human skins,
start to follow, and shouted, “J.J.! J.J., they’ve attacked the fort!
We have to protect the Ark!”
“I’m afraid you’re too late for that.”
The voice came from the stage.
Seth turned. There, surrounded by another two dozen hunters,
was a slender woman in a tailored black suit. A long fall of dark
hair was braided over one shoulder. Her gray eyes pierced the
darkness like splinters of mica.
The werekin froze. Ursula LeRoi raised her hand to her lips, as
though she meant to blow them a kiss. Her fingers glittered; to the
untrained eye, it might have seemed she was holding a palmful of
faerie dust.
“Take cover!” Cleo screamed.
LeRoi breathed out. The silver powder lifted off her palm,
swirled in the misty air, carried by the wind onto the court in a
deadly, sparkling cloud.
Cleo and Marshall both dove on top of Alfaro, shielding him
with their bodies; the falcon soared above the cloud, to the rafters.
Emery skinned, streaking in a blaze of white fur under the
bleachers. Someone – J.J. – knocked into Seth, shoving him under
the van. They wriggled underneath it as far as they could.
Seth heard screams, smelled the burning scent of silver as the
powder settled onto the rain-soaked court.
J.J. was on top of him. His skin was clammy, his breathing
labored. The antidote had yet to purge the silver poison from his
system; Seth doubted he was able to skin. This meant their only
weapon was the sword, Seth’s katana, sheathed across J.J.’s back.
One sword, against a horde of heavily-armed hunters.
“We can’t win, can we?” Seth said.
J.J. looked away from him, jaw set. Seth read the answer in his
silence and felt his heart turn to stone in his chest. He supposed,
deep down, he had always known this day would come. He just
hadn’t expected to take so many people down with him.
The surviving werekin would be collared. The humans among
them, Cleo and Connor and Quinn and Leigh, would be killed.
LeRoi would dream up some excruciating death for J.J., and Seth
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would be tortured until Marshall revealed the Black Swan’s
location. He doubted he would suffer for long. His pain would be
more than Marshall could stand.
Seth didn’t blame him. It would have been the same for him.
He wriggled out from under the van, surveying the scene.
LeRoi stood on the stage, observing with a hungry gleam in her
eyes as the hunters herded the werekin back onto the court. Some
were down, blistered, writhing in agony. Dre, cradling his arm
against his chest, limped along, supported by Zoe and Serena.
Silver powder dusted the court, sparkling like spilled
diamonds.
LeRoi flicked her fingers at Gideon. He rushed forward,
grabbed Connor by the shoulders, and dragged him over to the
stage. Connor was so still Seth was afraid he might have bled to
death, but when Gideon tipped a phial of potion to his throat, he
moaned.
“Seth.”
Seth’s momentary hope that Marshall had made a run for it
evaporated.
He turned. Marshall was standing at half-court, as calmly as if
he were waiting for tipoff. The pistol was clutched in his hand, but
the angle of the gun was wrong. His wrist was turned inward, the
barrel pressed against his chest, over his heart.
Seth got to his feet. He wasn’t fully aware of standing. He felt
like he was outside of himself again, like he was back in that
clearing having his life-force drained away. “Marshall?”
“Seth,” Marshall said again. It was how Marshall sounded
when he was smiling, though he wasn’t. He was scrutinizing Seth
with an intensity that suggested he was trying to memorize him.
J.J. crawled out from under the truck, grabbing Seth’s arm for
support as he gained his feet. No, he was saying, over and over, in
Seth’s mind. No, no, no.
Or maybe those were Seth’s thoughts. No, this wasn’t the way
out. No, this couldn’t be happening.
Marshall spoke then, words that threw Seth back in time, to a
sunny winter day under the trees in Regent’s yard. This is who I
am, Marshall had said. It’s like your skin. And Seth had asked him
if he would change it, if he could. If he would change his skin.
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The answer Marshall gave now was different than the one he
had given then. “I wouldn’t change it,” he said, and pulled the
trigger.
***
The pistol’s report echoed back, off the bleachers. Someone
screamed – Seth, although her never knew it. Marshall stumbled,
one step, looking almost surprised – like however dying felt, it
wasn’t how he had expected; then he crumpled, not in slow motion
as Seth had seen actors do in movies, but all at once, knees
buckling, heading falling forward, arms hanging loose at his sides.
The pistol smacked into the court with a metallic thud, splashing
water onto the cuffs of his brown cords.
Marshall came to rest on his back. His muscles spasmed, a
single, violent contraction. Seth’s body tensed in response, jarring
him from his horrified stupor. “Marshall!” he cried.
Breaking free of J.J., he ran to Marshall and dropped to his
knees on the rain-soaked court. The silver powder burned his skin
through the rips in his jeans. Marshall clutched at his hand as his
back arched. “Marshall,” Seth whispered, as if the sound of his
name might convince Marshall to stay with him.
Choking sounds gurgled in Marshall’s throat. He gasped (there
were no words in it, though Seth strained to hear) and exhaled, on
a sigh that sprayed blood over his lips.
Seth was looking into Marshall’s eyes as he died. He saw the
light inside of him, the spark that made him Marshall, extinguish
between one moment and the next.
In the dream, I was already dead, and you were holding me,
and crying, and I wanted to tell you not to. That this was
something I had chosen. To save the Black Swan. To save Seth.
Because Marshall had been the only person in the world who could
have told their enemies where to find the Black Swan, and once
they had her, there was nothing to stop LeRoi from conquering the
world. Marshall had chosen to take Caroline’s secret to the grave,
beyond LeRoi’s reach. To save them all.
Distantly, Seth heard Cleo screaming curses at the hunters,
daring them to attack her. Alfaro was bellowing his own
challenges, pawing at the ground with his basketball shoes. Seth
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was too numb to move. J.J.’s hands had closed around his arms; he
was hauling him to his feet, saying something to him, urgently, but
his words were jumbled, Seth’s brain too fogged to sort them out.
The steel hissed as J.J. unsheathed the katana.
“None of that, my pet.”
Regally as a queen at her court, LeRoi stepped off the stage
and stalked toward them, her mass of black hair unwound and
fanning behind her like a cloak. There was a deranged fury in her
eyes. Once again, she had watched her prize slip away from her.
“We will raise him,” she said.
Seth’s insides went colder than a block of ice. “J.J.,” he
whispered, “does she mean Marshall?”
The look J.J. gave him was unmistakable. Not happening.
He rose, wielding the katana as hunters leapt off the stage,
advancing in LeRoi’s wake with their own weapons drawn. The
surviving werekin formed a semi-circle behind J.J. and Seth. Seth
did not have to look down to know jaguar spots were standing out
on his arms and chest. Magic raced up and down his spine, pins
and needles that warred with the numbness of grief at his core.
“We will call back his soul,” LeRoi said.
“You stay away from Doc,” Emery said, tremulously, leveling
his guitar stand like a lance.
LeRoi laughed.
J.J.’s hand found Seth’s in the dark. His fingers were ice-cold;
he was weaker, much weaker, than he was letting on. Seth could
feel his frustration, wanting to skin, unable to, like when he had
been collared. Tears had tracked through the blood on his cheeks.
Seth loved him for that, that he was crying for Marshall.
If J.J. had been at top form, Seth had no doubt he could have
killed LeRoi, even with her pack of hunters at her heels. But J.J.
wasn’t at top form. Having been tranqed once himself, Seth found
it miraculous he was standing upright.
It’s up to you, Philadelphia. Don’t let me down.
LeRoi halted at the half-court line, extending a hand toward
Marshall’s lifeless form. Blood had pooled in a crescent shape
around him. His fingers were curled in toward his palms – long,
slender fingers; gentle, elegant hands. “My necromancers will raise
him,” LeRoi said. Her smile was that of a child about to pluck the
wings off a butterfly. “Then my telepaths will pry the knowledge
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from his mind, and once I have it, I will see to it that his soul is
banished to the blackest void of the darkest dimension, to languish
for eternity.”
She would do it, too. Seth had no doubt of that. Ursula LeRoi
was as vicious as she was obsessed. She had resurrected an extinct
alien race in order to enslave them and use the power of their
magical ancestors to conquer the world. She had bred werekin like
livestock, ripped children from their mothers’ arms, ordered death
and misery for other living creatures on a daily basis. If she had a
soul, it was polluted beyond redemption.
He looked at Marshall, at the rain drizzling on his cheeks like
tears, at his lips still parted around his final breath; and when he
thought of those same lips curved into a smile, and of everything
Marshall would miss – prom, graduation, med school – and the
years stretched out before him that he would have to live without
him, black rage filled the place inside of Seth that grief had
hollowed out. He began to shake, head to toe.
It was the sword in J.J.’s hand, etched with the two jaguars, one
light, one dark, that told Seth what to do; that, and the blood,
Marshall’s blood, tinting the water at his feet red. Blood held such
sway in the lives of werekin. It determined their skins. It called
them to one another, to their kindred. It connected them to the Ark,
and through the Ark, to their Totems. A werekin’s blood was
magic, and Seth simply opened up to the magic in his, to the power
buried beneath Fort King – the power Ursula LeRoi and Elijah
Bishop had resurrected from Mt. Hokulani, but that had never
answered to them: the magical essence of all of Seth’s kindred,
contained inside the Ark.
He felt a snap in his mind, like a door long closed being
opened. His heart began to beat, hard and fast, a tribal drum. J.J.
gasped, and Seth knew he was feeling it too.
The ground groaned, like the earth was crunching up bones.
The gym walls began to buckle, bowing outward, chrome girders
screeching, bending until they snapped; the basketball court
cracked right down the middle. J.J. lost his footing. Together, he
and Seth fell to their knees, splashing into water and blood.
LeRoi’s feral snarl rippled into a grimace of astonishment.
Seth raised a finger, traced a design in the water on the floor –
the glyph he had seen on the jaguar pyramid, on his dream-walk to
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Lemuria. It glowed like it had been written in flame, flaring in
Seth’s eyes as he tipped his head back, looking up through the
shattered skylights at stars that appeared as white sand in a black
sea. Incredibly, they began to dance, forming two new
constellations: one blazed gold, its black spots patches of sky,
visible through its tawny skin; one was outlined in silver, a deadly
shadow against a deeper darkness.
Swirls of light like the tail of a comet smeared the sky, trailing
the twin jaguar gods as they leapt through the stargate, charting a
path across invisible branches. Seth’s vision distorted, like he was
looking through wavy glass. He saw the hunters run for cover,
flinging their hands out in a futile attempt to ward off the giant,
snarling beasts that pounced on them, engulfing them in a swirl of
silver and gold flame. Screams, high and sharp, echoed; when they
ended, all that remained were piles of ash on the rain-swept floor,
billowing around a screaming Ursula LeRoi in a gritty cloud.
The jaguar gods bounded across the gym. J.J. stiffened. The
stars reflected in his wide golden eyes; he made to pull away, but
Seth held onto him tightly, murmuring assurances – they had
nothing to fear; these were their Totem animals. He spread his
arms wide, and the jaguar gods leapt, fusing into a single ball of
silver and gold light as they passed into the brothers – into them
but not through them, joining with their skins.
The marrow of Seth’s bones turned to jelly. He could still see
the gym, but his vision doubled; he could see the fort now as well,
the battle in full sway, Chimera’s army of collared werekin and
hunters slaughtering Resistance fighters around the Black Swan’s
statue. He saw Agathon booming spells, and Xanthe swinging his
massive sword, and Ozzie and Melody dragging wounded werekin
and Marines to safety behind them.
Then he was zooming downward, into the chamber that housed
the Ark. Dozens of figures lined the walls, enormous figures with
mottled blue-and-gray skin and flat black eyes, some with snake
tails, some with bat’s wings, some with spider legs along their
spines. Seth plummeted past them, through the crystal web, inside
the orb, which rotated slowly in its sphere of light. For a moment
all he could see was light, blinding in its brilliance, and he thought,
without much concern, that he might have died, the world
disappeared so completely. But he was alive, and the orb began to
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open, like the petals of a rose, releasing a brilliant pulse of magic
like an imploding star.
The Alpha Clan joined hands. As one, the Gen-0s spoke, words
in Lemurian that crackled in Seth’s ears.
Or perhaps that was the sound of the black flames that leapt
from the heart of the Ark and soared upward, through the
honeycombed corridors, up the elevator shaft, bursting into the
rotunda and engulfing Chimera’s army in an explosion of prismatic
light that utterly wiped away Seth’s vision. The last thing he heard
was a cry of joy from the collared werekin as the silver torcs
slipped off of their necks.
He fell forward, onto his hands.
Seth was aware, dimly, of Leigh saying his name, of Cleo
shouting something at LeRoi. But what he focused on was the
voice that brushed like a gentle wing against his bruised heart.
Find me, Seth, the Black Swan said. Bring me home.
***
What happened next would always be more or less a blur for
Seth.
Alfaro carried Marshall. Seth would have, but the magic he had
called upon had hollowed him out like a gourd; he stumbled from
the gym to the parking lot on someone’s arm – maybe Leigh’s –
while Cleo marched LeRoi ahead of her at dagger-point. The gym
was in ruins, girders warped as if by an inferno, the roof
completely collapsed. Seth hardly noticed. He couldn’t imagine
ever going to school again, or playing basketball, or eating, or
sleeping, or doing anything at all, really.
“Is Connor okay?” he asked, at some point.
Leigh stroked his hair off his brow. He was lying with his head
in her lap in the back of someone’s car. “He’ll be fine,” she said,
softly. “Nothing Healing potion won’t fix.”
Seth nodded and closed his eyes. The next thing he really
knew, he was standing in Aphrodisia’s lab, beneath Fort King.
He looked around, stupefied. He was still in his wet clothes;
they were uncomfortably cold against his ice-cold skin. There was
a phial in his hand – strengthening potion. Given that it was empty,
and the back of his head was buzzing like wasps had been set loose
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inside his skull, Seth guessed he had drunk it. He slipped the empty
phial into the pocket of his torn, bloody jeans, wiping his sweaty
palms down the sides of them.
The fire that usually burned in Aphrodisia’s hearth had gone
cold. A large cauldron was suspended above it, smoking faintly
and giving off green, sulfurous fumes. Xanthe and J.J. were
huddled up in the corner, sharing one of their silent communiques.
Seth looked around for Leigh, but the only other person in the
room was Cleo, who slid her arms around Seth’s waist. Seth
leaned back into her.
“He was strong,” Cleo whispered. “And very, very brave.”
Seth nodded. Speaking would have torn his throat open.
Cleo wiped her eyes as she looked at Marshall. His body had
been placed on the tall stone table where just days before Seth had
watched him crushing herbs for potions with Aphrodisia. His hair
was still damp, curling softly on his cheeks; he might have been
sleeping, had he not been so unnaturally still. His hands were
folded over the wound in his chest. The wound was ugly. Seth tried
not to look at it.
Hands turned him. Seth blinked. He was facing J.J., who
looked as though he might drop right over from exhaustion. Seth
had to concentrate to understand his words.
“Seth, we have to find the Black Swan. Xanthe says there
could be a way to look into Doc’s memories. To see inside his
mind.”
“J.J., he’s dead.” Cleo’s voice was almost a rebuke.
“I know that,” J.J. said, quietly. “But we have to know where
he hid the Black Swan. There’s no other way but this.”
His eyes implored Seth to understand. Seth did, but he had a
condition. “I want to do it,” he said.
J.J.’s lips parted. Cleo rested her chin on Seth’s shoulder.
“Sweetheart, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It can be done, can’t it?” Seth swung around on Xanthe. As
usual, the telepath was shadowed in the corner, silently observing.
Feeling was trickling back into Seth now, like a rusted faucet being
forced open. Mostly he felt angry. “When Aphrodisia looked
inside of me, to examine my wound, she shared what she was
seeing with Marshall. You can do that, too. You can put me inside
Marshall’s mind. I know you can.”
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“Seth, you can trust Xanthe.” J.J. sounded desperate. “He
wouldn’t do anything to Marshall. He wouldn’t lie about what he
sees.”
“I know,” Seth said. And he did. Elijah Bishop had left the
Ark in the Alpha Clan’s hands. He had trusted them, and they had
made good on that faith tonight by coming together to protect the
Ark. “J.J., I have to do this. If I can – if I could see him, one more
time – ”
You will not see him. And he will not see you. You will not be
able to speak with him. He is no longer present to be seen or
spoken with. All that made him the person you knew has left this
body, and it is only that, a body.
Xanthe’s words awoke little flares of pain in Seth’s mind. He
lifted his hands to his head, surprised to find his hair sticky with
blood, probably from Derek bashing his head against the van’s
fender. “Then how…?”
“The brain still functions after death,” J.J. said quickly.
“Electrical impulses. Thought, memory, feeling, those are
impulses. You can access them for a time after death, but we have
to hurry. Even that will fade soon.”
Fade, he said. Not stop. Fade. Seth took comfort in that.
Marshall would not stop. Marshall would fade. It was gentler,
somehow.
“Seth, if you’re doing this,” J.J. said, “I’ll do it with you.”
Seth was too tired to argue, suddenly. He nodded and slumped
against the table, not looking at anyone. The bruise on Marshall’s
jaw was livid purple against his cold, pale skin. Seth reached out –
And hissed; Xanthe had pricked his palm with a pin. He lifted
Seth’s wrist in one papery-soft hand, dripping the blood onto
Marshall’s brow, and flattened Seth’s palm over the scarlet drops.
Seth realized he was shaking.
“What will I see?” he whispered.
Flat black eyes gazed down into his. You will see what he saw.
You will hear what he heard. You will know what he knew, feel
what he felt. That is all.
That, Seth thought, was the world.
J.J. placed his fingertips on the back of Seth’s hand. Xanthe
spoke in Seth’s mind, words in Lemurian: words of remembering,
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words of seeing. The spell rolled over him, and Seth remembered,
and saw.
276
Chapter Twenty-Two: Flashback
Just drive, she says, when I ask, Where to, like a coachman.
So I drive. Looping around Fairfax on the expressway, headed
toward the Interstate, thinking I might go east, away from
Kentucky, toward Ohio. “Are you hungry?” I ask, ten minutes into
silence.
She says she is. I look at her, quickly, as I steer onto the exit
ramp near the movie theater. She wears a simple linen shift under
my letterman’s jacket, which I put on her because it seemed like
the thing to do, though Seth says werekin don’t feel the cold. She
can’t be older than twelve. She fidgets with the cuffs of the jacket
to hide the bracelets of bruises on her wrists.
As soon as she stepped out of the trees back at the fort, in the
company of that – man, I guess, or creature, that giant with the
wings, I knew what she was. Looking at her was like looking at a
photo that had been double-exposed, the imprint of one skin on top
of the other. Like looking at Seth. But no one could ever be as
beautiful to me as Seth. Not even the Black Swan.
Without thinking I have brought us to this diner Whitney likes.
Archie’s. We ate here after we broke into the fort last night. The
night Seth and I kissed, how I’d wanted to kiss him for so long I
can’t remember a time before I wanted to kiss him.
Now he might be dying. He’s fighting a battle, and once again,
I can’t protect him.
The bell above the door jingles as we enter. “Can’t Buy Me
Love” is playing on the Wurlitzer. We’re the only patrons; it’s late,
and the chain-smoking, roller-skating waitress who takes our
order frowns at me like she’s thinking a nice boy like myself ought
to be home in bed. My father would agree, but I’ll have to worry
about that tomorrow.
We’re quiet while we wait for my shake and her salad to
arrive. She opens sugar packets, dumps them onto her fingers,
brushes the crystals onto her napkin. “I don’t have any money,”
she confesses, shyly.
“I’ve got it covered,” I say. “I’m Marshall, by the way.”
“I’m Caroline.”
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Caroline studies me. I’m used to girls looking at me. Happens
when you’re popular. Mom says I could break some hearts if I
wanted to. As always the staring unsettles me, and I’m glad for our
food to arrive, to distract her. Caroline eats like she’s famished. I
order her a plate of fries, too.
“I don’t know where to go,” she announces, out of the blue.
I stir my milkshake, watching the strawberry ice cream melt
into a runny puddle. “Where would be safe?”
“Nowhere,” Caroline says.
“If you have to hide,” I reason, “you should go somewhere no
one would expect to find you.”
“You don’t understand,” she says. She sounds hollow.
“Nowhere is safe. They can find me. Chimera has spies inside the
Resistance and all over the Underground. I thought I was safe,
with my brother, but…Anywhere I go, sooner or later, I’ll be
recognized. Our blood – our blood calls to one another. And I
can’t just run away. My kindred need me. I’m their queen,” she
whispers, in a way that tells me Caroline never wanted to be queen
of anything.
“Caroline.” Her eyes come up to mine. They are large, dark,
and oval, as lustrous as the raven hair spilling down her back.
Magic shudders down her arms. I hold my breath, waiting for her
to shapeshift – skin, Seth calls it – but she recovers her composure.
“Caroline,” I say again, “tell me how I can help.”
Who am I to her? A stranger. Maybe that’s why she trusts me. I
have no reason to betray her.
Her plan is crazy, but no crazier than the rest of what has
occurred these last few days. I pay our check, and we go back to
the car. This time Caroline instructs me to blindfold her. It’s safer,
she says, if even she doesn’t know where she is.
We have to drive across town to find an all-night pharmacy.
Caroline waits in the car. I load up our supply list, as instructed:
incense, candles, matches, sleeping pills. The grandmotherly clerk
squints at me like she’s trying to picture the kinky sex act I need all
of this for. Seth would laugh and buy an extra-large box of
condoms. I resist the urge to make up some story so she doesn’t
think I’m a pervert.
The deepest woods I know is south of Fairfax. Once upon a
time, my father took us picnicking there, and Mom would set her
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easel up by the water and paint us while we swam. I park in a
gravel lot and lead Caroline away from the Audi, supporting her
elbows. Blindfolded, she places her faith in me, utterly. “Marshall,
don’t let me fall,” she gasps.
I guide her to the banks of the same river that splits downtown
Fairfax, spread my jacket under her because the ground is muddy
and girls don’t like messing up their clothes. Nerves and
adrenaline are keeping me running at this point. The sun is a pink
crescent on the horizon. Is the battle over? Is Seth safe?
I light the candles and the incense, then crush the sleeping pills
and feed them to Caroline inside a bottle of Gatorade. She is
shivering. “I could put my arm around you,” I say. She nods. We
sit on the ground together, her head resting on my shoulder, like I
hold Whitney after I have a fight with my father and she crawls
into bed with me, scared and upset, wanting to make things better
for me and not knowing how.
“Tell Agathon,” Caroline says. “Tell him I’ll find someone I
trust to communicate with.”
“You can trust Seth,” I say.
I feel her smile against my neck. “You really love him, don’t
you?”
The intimacy of her question, like she knows Seth, bewilders me
until I remember she has been communicating with his twin. J.J.
and his spy cat have had a front row seat to Seth’s life these last
six weeks. “Yeah,” I say, terrified by how easily the words come.
“I really love him.”
Caroline’s head droops. The drugs are taking effect. “Tell
Agathon to create a central vantage point for my consciousness. I
need,” she yawns, “I need to be able to see and hear. I need a
connection to the Ark. No one else can know, Marshall, okay?
Promise me. No one else can know.”
Her words are slurring. “I understand,” I say. “I’ll protect
you.”
“Marshall?” Caroline clings to my shoulders as I ease her
onto her back. Strands of her hair tickle my cheeks, feather-soft.
“Marshall, my parents,” her voice drifts away as she slips under
the surface of sleep, “my parents were human…”
“That can’t be,” I say. But Caroline is sleeping now, deeply.
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I remove the blindfold. The incense is patchouli; it reminds me
of Re-Spin, and Re-Spin of Seth. Panic stirs, swiftly suppressed.
Seth will be all right. He has to be.
Colorful flat stones line the riverbank. I pick through them for
one sharp enough to slice my palm. I hiss at the sting of pain, like
at Thanksgiving when I plunged my hand into the dishwater and
closed it around the carving knife. Ten stitches, a holiday
afternoon in Fairfax Memorial’s ER. Still beat watching football
with my uncles. My father drove me, sewed me up himself.
Never asked if I did it on purpose.
Blood, my blood, drips onto the ground. I dip my fingers in it,
trace the glyphs Caroline showed me on her forehead. The spell
unties knots in my mind. My brain feels open. Vulnerable. I wonder
if this is how madness comes on, a blend of waking and dreaming,
past and future, hope and despair.
It passes.
Caroline is now more deeply asleep than any drug could
achieve. She weighs even less than Seth; scooping her up in my
arms, I carry her to the car, and we drive slowly out of the woods.
Full daylight washes over the fields. Caroline has left it to me
to hide her living body somewhere safe – somewhere only I will
know to find her. In stasis, she said, she won’t need to eat or drink,
won’t experience cold or hunger or pain. The magic in her blood
will sustain her, she said, until the spell is released.
The streets of Castle Estates are so familiar I traverse them on
autopilot. Princess Lane. Queens Boulevard. Bishop Avenue.
Kings Lane. Like we live in freakin’ Camelot, pretentious suburban
b.s. My house comes into view. No cars in the drive. My parents
and Whitney will be out searching for me, checking everywhere
before involving the police. Bad press, Dr. Wesley Townsend
reporting his son missing. People would talk.
Now that I’m here, I want to be gone again, at the fort to check
on Seth. Quick as I can, I carry Caroline in my back door, through
my kitchen, up my stairs, to my room, which my parents never
enter, because I’m a guy and guys need privacy, my father says. I
move the duffel bag with my basketball gear over by the bed, stack
my shoes under my windowsill, haul a pile of blankets and extra
pillows out of the linen closet and place Caroline on them,
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carefully. Something tells me Seth would find this ironic: his
boyfriend, hiding secrets in his closet.
I’ll keep Caroline close. I’ll watch over her, while she’s
sleeping.
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Chapter Twenty-Three: The Black Swan
Fire trucks roared by on the expressway, red-and-blues
flashing. Cleo steered the borrowed BMW – Jack’s – into the
entrance of a 7-Eleven to let them pass. A tree branch had
obliterated one half of the sign, leaving only the “7” and the “EL.”
“They’ll be headed to the school,” J.J. predicted, as the sirens
faded. He sounded pale, bled dry by exhaustion.
Cleo’s eyes flashed to Seth in the rearview mirror. “Doing
okay, sweetheart?”
Mutely, Seth nodded. He was just peachy. Aside from being an
emotional disaster zone.
The three of them were on their way to Marshall’s house to
collect the Black Swan. Off the sides of the expressway, the
storm’s swath of destruction became visible in sudden flashes. A
blue plastic trashcan floating down a flooded street. An uprooted
tree resting on a sagging roof. Power had been knocked out to the
entire city, cars washed away in flash floods, roofs sheared off by
straight-line winds. Chilling to think this was only a taste of what
the power of the Totems could wreak upon the planet in the wrong
hands.
Up front, Cleo and J.J. were conversing in low tones. J.J. was
slouched down, combat boots propped on the dash – he had
changed into his camouflage at the fort – looking quite feline with
his eyelids half-closed. All three were equally banged up, disaster
refugees with dirt and blood matted in their hair. The only clean
part of Seth was the Manchester United sweatshirt Ozzie had lent
him.
Clean being a relative term. The shirt stank of beer, cigarettes,
and hyena fur.
“You think people will believe a tornado hit the school?” Cleo
asked.
J.J. shrugged. “Look around. Seems plausible. Burke will get
the government involved, if he has to.”
“What about…?” Cleo broke off, her eyes drifting back to
Seth, who curled into a tighter ball. What about Marshall, she
meant. What about explaining how Marshall had died.
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Seth suffered a brief and starkly realistic fantasy of banging on
Marshall’s front door, assembling the Townsends in their living
room, and announcing that Marshall had shot himself. Whitney, he
thought. Oh, Whitney. She had adored her brother. And poor
Meredith was one disaster away from never peeking out of her
Prozac cave.
J.J., Seth noticed, did not answer Cleo’s question.
Every stoplight on the expressway was blinking. As theirs was
the only car on the road, it didn’t matter much. Cleo drove fast,
hesitating at intersections. In record time they reached the wide,
quiet streets of Castle Estates.
The storm had done its damage here as well. Limbs were
strewn across yards; an entire tree had collapsed on the Lees’ front
lawn, flattening a section of their white picket fence. An electric
company bucket truck was parked under a blown transformer at the
end of Kings Lane. Seth stared out his window, seeing the stately
homes and three-car garages as Marshall had seen them, the
morning he had driven home with Caroline McLain asleep across
the Audi’s backseat.
Entranced, J.J. called it. Caroline’s twelve-year-old body was
suspended in a magical stasis similar to death, requiring nothing,
not food or water or light or air, to continue, while her
consciousness was awake inside the Black Swan statue at Fort
King. Only Marshall and Agathon had known she was inside the
statue, observing the Resistance. Even Will McLain hadn’t known.
Cleo parked the Beamer in the Stewards’ driveway. A
flickering orange glow in the kitchen told Seth his mother was
sitting up, drinking tea by candlelight, praying her children had
ridden out the storm safely somewhere. Or had Jack already called
her, to tell her they were all right, all except for Marshall?
By contrast, the Townsend house was sound asleep. No candles
burning. No curtains twitching. Nobody pacing the floor. Seth’s
claws slid out. “How could they just go to bed? Don’t they even
care that Marshall didn’t come home?”
“They’ll think he’s with you,” J.J. said.
Seth kicked the back of his seat. Right. Dr. Townsend would
assume the gay werekin hoodlum next door had enticed his golden
boy son – excuse me, his clone – into late-night debauchery in the
midst of a world-ending storm. He was probably lying in bed right
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this minute, stewing on the awful things he would say to Marshall
when he came home. Things like don’t choke.
Be cool, Philadelphia. Seth squeezed his hands into tighter
fists. Yeah, so he was hearing his dead boyfriend’s voice inside his
head. Probably a bad sign, if he could have worked up the
gumption to care.
Cleo and J.J. kept looking at him, then at one another, like they
expected Seth to come apart any second. It was annoying, though
in their defense, he had lost it pretty good back at the fort after
Xanthe had pulled him up from Marshall’s memories.
Seth could not explain how incredible that experience had
been. To know Marshall, in a way you could never know
somebody without being inside their skin. To have Marshall’s
every thought, his every feeling, laid open to him for those few
precious minutes, like they were his own.
What made Marshall Townsend tick? Simple. He wanted to
help people. Not in some selfless, Save the Whales sainted martyr
kind of way; there were things, as Marshall had said, he wanted.
But at his core, Marshall had been guided by the belief that life
was about more than accruing wealth and privilege, and he had
been driven by a desire, uncolored by idealism, to use his gifts to
make a difference in the world, even if that was a very small
difference in a very big world.
Therein lay the essential schism between Marshall and his
father – a difference that could not be coded into DNA. Wesley
Townsend was not a good man. Marshall had been. Every
chromosome is its own universe, every living creature the result of
an amazing cosmic accident, Elijah Bishop had written: That these
chromosomes came together to form this creature, with this
consciousness, is a miracle we will never replicate, even through
cloning.
Snap out of it, Philadelphia.
Seth became aware of the silence in the car. With an effort, he
unwound his arms from around his middle. “Guys, what are we
going to say to Marshall’s parents?”
“We aren’t saying anything to them yet,” J.J. said. His voice
was peculiarly edged.
Cleo looked over at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “J.J., we
have to tell them something. It’ll be daylight soon.”
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“The flow of information needs to be handled by Burke,” J.J.
said, shortly. The chain of command was not something Cleo
would argue with. She nodded. “Right now, we need to take the
Black Swan back to headquarters, before anybody does anything
drastic.”
At another time, Seth would have been all over curiosity for
what J.J. meant by that. Now he barely picked up on the anxiety
bridling his twin’s words. He knew General Burke was flying in
from D.C. He knew Clyde Dowling was lobbying for the
Resistance to execute LeRoi, take the Ark, and leave Fairfax
immediately, severing the alliance with the humans. He had the
support of most of the fighters. Melody was attempting to reason
with them, insisting they wait to hear what Burke had to say before
taking a step that would ensure going to war with humanity.
Only the Black Swan could suture the rupture in their ranks.
Head in the game, Philadelphia. “All right, people.” Seth’s hearty
tone made even him cringe. “Let’s do this.”
J.J. looked at Cleo. “Give us a minute?” he said, softly.
“I’ll go explain things to your mother,” Cleo offered. Seth was
impressed by her bravery. He certainly didn’t want to explain to
Lydia that he and J.J. had blown up the school defeating an army
of hunters. She might never let them out of her sight again.
“Come on, little brother.” J.J. climbed out of the car and
opened Seth’s door. “Let’s take a walk.”
Seth didn’t much care where he went or what he did. He loped
after J.J. across the muddy lawn, past the garage, and into their
backyard, refusing to look at the basketball goal in the Townsends’
drive. “I don’t know where you get this ‘little brother’ business,”
he said. “We’re twins.”
“I was born first,” said J.J.
He leapt onto the brick fence. Seth followed him, up and over.
“That makes you older by what, thirty seconds?” he said.
“Two minutes. Lydia told me.”
Seth glanced at him. “You talked to Mom about us being born?
When?”
“The night Regent collared you,” J.J. said. “She was feeling
nostalgic.”
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Seth remembered that his twin and his mother had held vigil at
his bedside that night. Perhaps they had seemed a little less tense
around one another sense then, he thought.
Walking felt good, actually, now that he was doing it. Moving
kept the pain at bay. Seth had discovered that after Naomi’s death.
He fell in step beside J.J., letting him chart their path into the
woods around Castle Estates. “What else did you and Mom talk
about?” he asked.
“She wanted to know about how I grew up. She wanted to hear
about Dad, and tell me about how they met, and make sure I
understood about what Jack had done to her. She’s got this idea
that I think she abandoned me, which is just dumb. She couldn’t
have broken me out even if she had known I was alive.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Yes.” J.J. was flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders, a
sure sign he wanted to skin, but couldn’t yet. Mixed in with the
gold of his irises were specks of silver, remnants of the poison in
the tranq. “I’m not sure it made her feel any better.”
They halted next to a hickory that had split in half, its topmost
branches upside down in the mud. Through the canopy, Seth could
see the slate-colored roof of their house. J.J. lowered onto a rock
while Seth paced, toeing acorns out of the mud. “Seth, I’m sorry to
bring this up right now, but what you did back there – awakening
the Ark, conjuring the Totems – Before the Commanders start
asking questions, I thought we should talk about it. Just me and
you.”
“Sorry about that,” Seth said, abashed. He had definitely
blown the lid on Agathon’s endgame for raising Lemuria. “I guess
it would have been better to ease General Burke into the idea of the
Ark’s power. Introduce it to him subtly, you know, with, like, a
planned demonstration, and maybe some flag-waving…”
“I didn’t even know what you did was possible,” J.J. said.
“Neither did Xanthe. We had always assumed the Ark would only
open for the Black Swan. But it opened for you, because of that
glyph you drew.”
“Not for me. For us,” Seth corrected, and then he told J.J. what
he had not yet told anyone but Marshall: the legend of the twin
werejaguar gods, the first werekin of the Jaguar Clan, and Elijah
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Bishop’s experiment on the Gen-3s, fertilizing their father’s
generation straight from the Ark.
J.J. examined the still-healing wounds on his wrists, left over
from yanking on the handcuffs. Seth wanted to scratch Blondie’s
eyes out for tranqing him, but she had escaped, as, it seemed, had
Gideon and Regent. Seth had looked for them among Chimera’s
ranks as the power of the Totems had swept over them. He had not
seen them.
“Do you know how you did it?” J.J. asked. “How you knew
what would open the Ark?”
“Not in any precise terms,” Seth said. “I saw Marshall’s blood,
and the idea just came to me. That glyph was the one I saw on the
jaguar pyramid when I dream-walked to Lemuria, and I just knew
if you and I were joined, like we were in the clearing that night, it
would call them to us. Basically I was looking for the fastest way
to make LeRoi share my pain.”
“Mission accomplished,” J.J. said, dryly. “But you don’t know
how you connected to the Ark? How you made it open?”
Seth shook his head. With his index finger, J.J. drew a series of
glyphs in the mud. “Can you read these?”
“Why?” Seth said.
“Can you?”
“Yeah,” Seth snapped, losing his fragile hold on patience.
“They say I’m not in the mood for a magical pop quiz.”
Ease up, Philadelphia. He wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
Indiana, you don’t even like J.J., Seth thought back. But, with a
sigh, he focused on the glyphs. Specifically he focused on not
focusing on them, moving his eyes across them right to left and top
to bottom, imagining the symbols as an abstract painting –
something whose meaning could only be seen, not read. As though
a voice was whispering to him, the words became clear: I am she
that controlleth tongues; I am she that maketh the seas to swell and
the skies to open and the earth to shake.
“That’s right,” J.J. said, and Seth realized he had spoken
aloud. “These are the symbols for the White Swan. She was the
queen of the werekin on Lemuria. She could speak all languages in
existences. Her song alone was powerful enough to call up the
dead.”
“But what does that have to do with – ”
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“You think in Lemurian.”
“J.J., that’s like saying I see with my eyes,” Seth said,
impatiently. “All werekin understand Lemurian. Regent told me
that.”
“He lied to you.” J.J. ran a hand through his matted hair. Seth
knew he was itching to shower. Cats hated being dirty. “He gave
you Bishop’s journal as a test, to see if you could read those
glyphs, and you could. Like you taught yourself to speak French
and Spanish and Italian and Russian. When Xanthe looked into
your mind, he saw that words and symbols have instantaneous
meaning to you. Like they speak in your mind.”
“Isn’t it like that for everybody?” Seth was too surprised to be
irked that Xanthe had poked around in his head that first day.
Lizardman was nosier than an old woman.
“No.” J.J.’s tone was flat, final. “It’s a psychic ability, and it is
incredibly rare. Rarer than what I can do, even.”
Seth was unimpressed. “So, what? I’m, like, Super Polyglot
Jaguar? Because in the realm of superpowers, that’s lame. I’d
rather have invisibility, or pyrokinesis, or teleportation.”
You’re a shapeshifter, Philadelphia. That IS a superpower.
Seth made a face at his Marshall voice.
He grabbed a low-hanging branch and swung up, tight-roping
walking along it. Stillness was beyond him at the moment.
Languages had always come easily to Seth. Any language. He
had ascribed it to bibliophile genes: Thomas Sullivan had loved
books, and in Philly, Seth had spent every afternoon in the public
library. Now he remembered Regent handing over Bishop’s
journal and instructing him to look at the glyphs, without trying to
understand them. Seth had chalked it up to more of Regent’s
shogun crap, but had he been testing Seth, seeing if he could read
it? Had he known all along what Seth could do?
Come to think of it, Seth thought, Regent hadn’t told him all
werekin could do what he could. He had just said, “You’re a
magical being,” one of his many non-answers, and Seth, numbskull
cub that he had been, had swallowed it.
He looked down at J.J. “What does speaking Lemurian have to
do with opening the Ark?”
“I think it’s proof we’re a matched set. What you did tonight –
you were right, we did it together. I could feel what you needed me
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to do, the gateway you needed me to open for you contact the
Totems, but you took it from there. You were the one in control.”
J.J. sounded awed. Seth found that to be backward. He was the
one in awe of J.J. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said, quickly. “I’ve
never felt more out of control. If I could have, I would have wiped
out every enemy of ours on the planet.”
“I know the feeling,” J.J. said.
Leaning back on his rock, he looked up at Seth. “Seth, you
know that myth your sword reflects, about the two jaguar gods –
the one that rules the world of the living, the other the world of the
dead?” Seth nodded. It wasn’t a story he could have forgotten even
if he had wanted to. “From the time you and I were born, there
were questions about what we would be. Lydia told me when Dad
contacted the Resistance, they had reservations about letting us
stay together. Twin werekin – nobody knew how powerful we
would be. If LeRoi could have gotten her hands on us both…”
What was J.J. telling him? “I don’t understand,” Seth said.
Afraid, though, that he did.
“Xanthe had seen what I would be. A telepath. He wanted to
train me, but he was duty-bound to stay with the Alpha Clan, to
protect the Ark. He couldn’t come to me. So Dad and Ben decided
I would come to him, and you would stay with Dad.”
Seth actually cried out. “Dad let you be collared?”
“He let me be taken,” J.J. said, “so I could be trained. And he
let Jack Steward deceive Lydia so he could protect you. I don’t
blame him, Seth, and you shouldn’t either. It was war. You have to
make sacrifices in war. You have to hurt people, or let them be
hurt, even though it’s not something you want to do.” Without
giving Seth a chance to answer that, J.J. said, “You know this isn’t
over, right?”
“Sure it is,” Seth said. “We have the Ark. Now you just add
my blood and the Black Swan’s, stir, and Lemuria rises from the
bottom of the sea. Then we plug the Source into Mt. Hokulani, and
everybody goes home a winner. Right?”
“Except we might have to fight a war against humanity to
make that happen,” J.J. said.
It was how he said it that finally clicked the pieces into place
for Seth. He stopped pacing. “J.J., I thought you wanted to raise
Lemuria. Now you don’t?”
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“No. I do. I want to go home.” J.J. said home with a depth of
feeling he had never used for Fairfax. Seth tried not to be hurt by
that. “But you’ve had the dreams, Seth, I know you have. You’ve
seen how that future ends.”
“The beach,” Seth said, softly. “The swan finishes her song,
and we all die.”
“Everything dies,” J.J. stressed. “Not just werekin. All of this,”
he gestured, at the toppled evergreens, leaves fanned across the
churned-up ground, the stately homes visible through the treetops,
“would be gone.
“Maybe there will be a day when humankind is ready to be
stewards of the kind of power the Totems left behind on Lemuria,
but look around. Do you think we’re there yet? Elijah Bishop
didn’t. Humans look at Lemuria, and they see one of two things:
power, or a threat. They either want that power for themselves, or
they want to destroy it so it can’t hurt them. I think that’s why the
White Swan sent the Tortoise Clan away from Lemuria before it
sank. Tortoises live long lives, and they have long memories. She
sent them away with a weapon that could protect the Ark, and she
ordered them to use it if anyone besides werekin ever tried to raise
our homeland from the depths.”
“You’re talking about the Source,” Seth said. On some level,
he was amazed to be having this conversation, or any conversation,
while Marshall was lying dead at Fort King. “Then why would the
Tortoise Clan have given it to LeRoi?”
“I don’t think they did,” J.J. said.
He rose, a signal he would say no more for now. Seth was too
drained to wonder what mystery his twin was caught up in now.
He hopped down from his branch, and they started back through
the trees together.
When they reached the fence around their yard, Seth stopped.
From this angle, he could see Marshall’s bedroom window.
“You know I can do this,” J.J. said, “if you want to stay out
here.”
Seth shook his head. He was doing this. He needed to. For
Marshall. He needed to bring Caroline home.
J.J. touched his arm. I’m sorry.
Seth frowned at him, puzzled. “For what?”
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“You know.” J.J. stuffed his hands in his pockets. “For
everything.”
***
Marshall’s bedroom was dark, the furniture indistinct blobs.
Frozen in the window he had just climbed through, Seth stared
around with a sense of unreality. The room was exactly as
Marshall had left it that morning, still waiting for him to come
home. A television screen frozen on Halo. A rental receipt from
Monique’s Bridal taped, improbably, to the alarm clock.
Handwritten notes for a Trig exam stacked beside a powered-down
laptop.
Seth forced himself over the windowsill. He walked over to the
bed, Marshall’s bed, and took a deep breath before he sat down.
This was what he thought about.
The day before, twenty-four hours ago. Game day. Before they
had defeated Sacred Heart. His last run with Marshall.
A ghostly moon hovered over Castle Park, spindling shadows
around the trees. Seth and Marshall were nearing their last mile,
soon to be on their cool-down. Marshall swiped sweat off his brow.
His T-shirt was soaked. “This is too hot for February,” he
complained.
“Wimp,” Seth teased. Marshall shoved him, playfully, never
breaking stride. They ran in silence a few paces while Seth worked
up the nerve to say, “Indiana, I don’t want to jinx anything, but
you seem better today.”
Unsubtle hint that he had not been doing so well before. Nice
one, Sullivan, Seth thought.
Marshall, however, responded with wry good humor. “Yeah,
well, I decided to stop being miserable about things that make me
happy. To be honest, I was starting to get on my own nerves.”
Seth considered letting it go at that, but curiosity got the better
of him. “What kinds of things?”
“Basketball, for one.” They were jogging up Kings Lane now.
Marshall slowed to a walk, hands on his hips. “I used to love
playing ball. Seeing how you play, just for the fun of being on the
court, reminded me that it’s a game. Why do it if you don’t enjoy
it?”
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“Anything else?” Seth was fishing a little, he could admit it.
“Well, med school. Being a doctor is something I want, but I
forgot that somewhere along the line. Studying with Aphrodisia
made me remember it.”
The warmth in his voice was unmistakable. They had stopped
at the Townsends’ mailbox; Marshall passed Seth his bottle of
water to swig from. “You really like Aphrodisia, don’t you?” Seth
said.
“I do. She’s an incredible teacher. In just a few weeks, I’ve
learned so much about healing. It’s, like, I don’t know, like she
helped me find my passion, or whatever.”
Marshall ducked his head, embarrassed by his own admission,
but Seth understood. Medicine was important to Marshall. Part of
what made him who he was. “So you’re going to keep studying
alchemy with her?”
“Absolutely.”
Marshall downed the last of the water. Seth pushed off the
mailbox, stretching his arms up over his head. “Well, for what it’s
worth, I’m glad you’re happier,” he said.
“Seth. Wait.” Marshall reached out, catching Seth’s wrist. “I
wasn’t finished,” he said, softly.
“Oh,” Seth managed, suddenly out of breath.
“This – this thing we have. You and me.” Marshall paused.
Seth couldn’t look away from him. “I’ve been ruining it for myself,
worrying what people will say instead of just going with it. And
you can’t…Seth, I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to ruin
this.”
And then Marshall leaned in, right there on the street, for God
or anyone to see, and kissed Seth – a long, slow, smoldering kiss
that tasted of salt and promises; and Seth had known this was not
something Marshall had thought about, or planned. It simply was.
Keep moving, Philadelphia. You’re almost there.
Seth wiped his damp cheeks with the back of his hand. Rising
from the bed, he walked over to the walk-in closet, stepping over a
pile of folded laundry. The door was ajar, a blurred outline to
Seth’s misty eyes. He took a steadying breath as he reached for the
handle.
Inside, as he had seen in Marshall’s memories, was a pile of
blankets and pillows. On top of them, lovingly arranged with her
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hands folded and her ankles crossed, as peaceful as if she were
only sleeping, was Caroline McLain.
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Chapter Twenty-Four: Letting Go
Stiff from the beating Derek Childers had given him but
healing, thanks to Aphrodisia’s potion-work, Will McLain slipped
into the rotunda just as J.J. was finishing his account of the fight
against LeRoi for General Burke.
Burke had already made his rounds in the infirmary, checking
first on his son, who was considered critical, then on the werekin
teenagers carried in from what remained of Fairfax High.
Aphrodisia had assured him they would all survive, thank the stars,
though some would carry silver powder scars all of their lives. At
Fort King, twenty-eight Resistance fighters and six United States
Marines had fallen in battle.
In the shadow of the Black Swan statue, the Commanders were
ranged around the long conference table: Melody Little, Josephine
O’Shea, Clyde Dowling, Ozzie Harris, and Logue Ampon, all that
remained now that Marshall Townsend had killed Derek Childers.
Dre Alfaro and Emery Little were seated on either side of J.J.,
across from the Commanders. J.J. was looking surly. Cleo stood
against the wall, watching him, as she always did.
Xanthe and Agathon had drifted in as well. The Gen-0s
remained near the door, Xanthe’s long tail curled around his legs.
The observers who had been allowed in eyed them uneasily.
Some of the observers were there by choice. Jack and Lydia
Steward. Ingrid McLain. Teachers from Fairfax High, who kept
watch over the werekin students in their classes: Evelyn Janowitz,
Sergeant Ray Evans, Geoffrey Talbot. Others, men and women in
expensive suits, had been brought in under military escort, and
would leave again only after they convinced Burke they had had
no contact with Ursula LeRoi over the last four weeks. To a
person, the Partners did not look pleased to be there, Wesley
Townsend less so than any.
He had shed no tears when told about his son. Had not even
asked to see the body.
General David Burke had arrived in fatigues, and looked as big
as a tank even beside Clyde Dowling. “So what you’re telling me,”
Burke said, in his heavy Texas drawl, “is that you and your brother
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were responsible for opening the Ark? The Commanders did not
issue the order for you to do so?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” J.J. did not bother adding “sir” to
his reply.
Burke frowned. “And where is your brother now? Why isn’t
Seth here to speak with us?”
“He’s resting,” J.J. said, tersely. “In the infirmary. The magic
he called up was stronger than anything we’ve ever – ”
“Codswallop,” snorted Clyde, adjusting his bowtie. “None but
the Black Swan can open the Ark! This whole business of Totems
coming down from the sky is pure fancy.”
“Fancy?” Ozzie Harris’ eyebrows shot up; he uttered one of
his distinctive laughs. “Stars rearranging themselves into new
constellations and coming down to immolate your enemies sounds
like a ‘fancy’? I think the phrase you’re searching for is ‘downright
disturbing,’ mate. How do you explain all of those collars falling
off Chimera’s werekin, if the Totems didn’t do it? Have you ever
heard of anything but a key opening a werekin’s collar?”
“Thank you, Ozzie, for providing us with the hyena’s
opinion,” Clyde said. Ozzie volunteered his opinion on boars as
well, which Clyde chose to ignore. “However the Ark was opened,
if it was, the question now is when we will be allowed to raise
Lemuria.”
“I think you’re forgetting,” J.J. said, “that the Ark isn’t
complete. Seth hasn’t agreed to give you his blood.”
Even Melody looked taken aback. The Commanders had all
been assuming Seth would.
Josephine O’Shea folded her hands on the tabletop. A bloody
patch covered her right eye; she had taken a knife-slash to the face
during the battle. “There is the Tortoise Clan – ”
“Oh, bosh,” said Clyde. “I, for one, find it difficult to believe
that such a clan escaped the destruction of Lemuria. I have never
heard of the Tortoise Clan. Has anyone else?”
“Yes,” said J.J., in an icy tone.
“Yes,” said someone, in a thick-as-molasses Louisiana drawl.
Every head at the table came around.
Even McLain started, although he had already worked out the
ruse on his own.
295
Ben Schofield, very much alive, lumbered into the room. His
salt-and-pepper hair was as grizzled as the beard growing wild off
his chin; looking especially delicate in his shadow, a young girl
walked beside him, her dark hair swept up in a ponytail, exposing
the graceful curve of her neck. Someone had dressed her in jeans
and a plain white T-shirt. Her small hand was clasped tightly in
Ben’s bear-like paw.
McLain felt a twist under his heart. His aunt Ingrid leapt up,
rushing forward to throw her arms around her niece; Caroline
hugged her tightly, her dark eyes meeting McLain’s across the
room. She smiled. McLain smiled back.
The Commanders started to rise. Ben waved them back into
their seats. He sat down at the head of the table, in the chair J.J.
had vacated. Emery hopped up to give his chair to Caroline. Dre
remained seated, laptop open on his knees, small hands fluttering
up to swipe at his bangs.
“Ben,” Melody Little managed to squeak. “Thank the stars!
We thought – ”
“You thought what I wanted you to think,” Ben drawled, “and
for that, I am sorry. But we needed to know who the spy was, so
Caroline here could come back to us. And we weren’t gonna find
that out unless we had a prize big enough to flush ’em out of
hiding.”
“You are too big of a prize to pass up, Ben,” Josephine said,
lightly.
Ben smiled at her, creasing his cheeks. “Thank you for that,
Josie. But I wasn’t talking about me.
“The Tortoise Clan exists.” Ben pronounced this decisively, to
murmurs of surprise from the Commanders. Burke pressed the tips
of his fingers to the underside of his chin. David Burke and Ben
Schofield were two men Will McLain respected deeply. They were
very different, in some ways, but in one thing, they were the same.
They always tried to do what was right. “I’ve met with them. For
more years than anyone here can count, they’ve guarded a power
that, as you all saw tonight, could destroy this planet just as
completely as any nuclear bomb. But their time is up. Tortoises
live long lives, but they don’t live forever. That’s what they told
Abraham Bishop when he and his son happened on to them after
years and years of searchin’ through old Mayan pyramids. They
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had read in the stars that the time was right for the Black Swan to
be born, so they told Elijah Bishop how to find the Ark and
resurrect the werekin race, and ever since then they’ve been
waitin’, for the power of the Totems to be safe in the hands of the
werekin again.
“I’m sorry for what happened here tonight.” Ben’s eyes, sunk
deep into their wrinkled sockets, touched on Lydia Steward, who
was dabbing at her eyes. “Any loss of life is to be mourned, but as
I understand it, some very good lives were lost in this fight. And
I’m afraid I had a hand in that. I asked the Tortoise Clan to give
their weapon, the Source, to Ursula LeRoi.”
Only J.J. and Xanthe did not react to this. McLain assumed that
was because they were the only two to have seen it coming –
Xanthe because he had arranged it, J.J. because he was J.J.
Clyde Dowling jumped to his feet, shouting at Ben. Ozzie and
Melody shouted across the table at Clyde. Josephine O’Shea
waved her hands, urging everyone to calm down. Logue Ampon
looked around with mild disgust and said nothing.
Caroline’s big, dark eyes moved anxiously around the room,
never lighting in one place for long.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please.” Burke brought his palm
down, flat, on the table. Silence fell, broken only by Clyde’s
indignant snort. “Mr. Schofield, could you please explain why you
would hand a weapon of this magnitude over to an enemy of the
state?”
“General, Ursula LeRoi is not an enemy of the state. Ursula
LeRoi is an enemy to all humankind, and it’s time you understood
it.” Ben displayed his right hand, branded with four numbers and a
Greek letter. Burke sat back, mouth set in a white line. “I’ve been
around this game a while,” Ben went on, his voice a soft rumble. “I
was one of the first werekin born in captivity. I know what Project
Ark’s backup plan was if it ever seemed the werekin posed a threat
to humankind. Extermination.”
Burke did not deny this.
“You may disagree with my methods, General, and if so, I’m
the one, the only one,” Ben glanced, almost imperceptibly, at
McLain, “you need to hold accountable for that. But I thought it
was time you saw werekin are not your enemies. With the power
of the Totems, your own race will do a fine job of wiping one
297
another out without our help. All we want is the chance to protect
you from a power humans were never meant to control.
“When I founded the Resistance, my goal was to free my
kindred from enslavement. Back then, I thought that meant raising
Lemuria. But I’ve done some living since then, and I can’t say as
that’s still what I believe. I think humans and werekin can share
this planet without either race having to be enslaved or
exterminated. He may have lost faith before the end, but when he
was a young man, Elijah Bishop believed that humankind could
learn something from the werekin about how to live in peace, like
our clans did on Lemuria eons ago. So it seems to me we have a
choice. We can fight a war, and whoever wins can raise Lemuria,
or we can agree to leave Lemuria where she lies, and find a way to
live without war.”
Clyde started to speak, but Burke held up a hand. “And what of
the Ark, Mr. Schofield? What of this weapon Ursula LeRoi
brought here tonight? You must agree that is simply too much
power to leave lying around.”
Ben looked at Dre, who hopped to his feet. His right shoulder
was bandaged, but that didn’t stop him from typing furiously on
his keyboard. An image projected onto the wall from an overhead
projector, and even McLain started. “Jensen?”
“Captain. General Burke.” Kate Jensen saluted. She was
outside; the desert sky spread out like a blue panel behind her, just
beginning to darken to twilight, striped with red around the
horizon. “We had some, uh, interesting visitors here this evening,
sir. They brought us this.”
The camera panned away from her. Inside a strand of razortopped chain link fence that seemed to stretch for miles around a
desert compound, an obsidian cone was being guarded by two
tanks and a dozen M.P.s. Burke grounded his teeth together. “What
the hell is it, Lieutenant?”
“They called it the Source, sir. You can see the sides are
etched with Lemurian glyphs – ” the camera zoomed in; the
obsidian stone was scored with archaic symbols, top to bottom “ –
and we were told that if we translated those, we would have the
ability to operate it. But they, uh, suggested we might want to be
careful about doing that, after what happened in Fairfax tonight.”
The camera panned back to Jensen. “All right there, Will?”
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“For the most part,” McLain said.
“I’m sure Captain McLain will brief you fully later,
Lieutenant.” Burke sounded bemused. “When you say this thing is
a ‘source,’ what does that mean?”
“Not a source,” Dre chirped. “The Source. The source of
werekin magic.”
“And this is what the Tortoise Clan was guarding down there,
in the Amazon?”
“It is,” Ben said.
“And you gave it to humans?” Clyde Dowling’s jowly cheeks
actually jiggled with rage. “After everything they’ve done to us?
Collared us – enslaved us – planned to exterminate us? See here,
Ben, I was trained at West Point, and I’m telling you – ”
“Ursula LeRoi is not humanity.”
Caroline McLain’s voice was like a chime. It silenced the
entire room.
The Black Swan looked painfully small beside Ben, like when
McLain used to pick her up and kiss her scraped knees on the
playground – something she would have been mortified for him to
try now that she was almost a teenager, as she liked to remind him.
She glanced at him. McLain smiled encouragingly.
“All I hear you talking about is how we’re enemies,” Caroline
said. “I don’t see it that way. If humans are our enemies, why did
the Totems choose to bless them all those eons ago? The Totems
came to Earth because they were called from beyond the stars by
shamans. Those shamans were human. The Totems blessed them,
and after that, the children born to the shamans were not human.
They were werekin, born with a human and an animal skin, able to
inhabit either at will.”
It was a story McLain could have quoted along with her. A
story their aunt Ingrid had told them, over and over, since they
were small.
“With all due respect,” Josephine said, quite respectfully, “that
was then, and this is now. The world has changed. Like Ben, I was
born in captivity. A Gen-3. Ben formed the Resistance to fight
Chimera. I saw the struggle of our kindred to live in the human
world. I saw the persecution they would face if they were to reveal
their skins. That is why we formed the Underground – ”
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“ – with the help of my parents,” Caroline broke in, gently,
“who were human. The world may have changed, Commander
O’Shea, but it can’t have changed that much, since the Totems
decided to bless my parents thirteen years ago, just like they did
those original shamans.”
There was a pause while that sank in.
Wesley Townsend got to his feet. It looked almost as though he
couldn’t help himself. “Your parents were human?” he said. “Both
of them?”
Caroline nodded, biting her lower lip as she glanced at McLain.
“We have the blood tests to prove it,” he said.
Dr. Townsend appeared thunderstruck. Ben Schofield looked
coldly at him. “Everything you did for Chimera, Doctor, trying to
force the birth of the Black Swan by manipulating the Ark, if
you’d just bothered to listen to what Elijah Bishop had learned
from the Tortoise Clan, you would have known your experiments
were pointless. No black swan existed on Lemuria. Caroline is the
first of her breed ever to be born. The Ark could not give you
something it did not contain.”
Right then, Wesley Townsend looked like he could have been
knocked over with a feather. He sat down heavily.
Burke was still grinding his teeth, a sure sign he was dying to
light up one of his fat Cuban cigars. He pointed at the projection on
the wall, freeze-framed on the obsidian cone. “You’re giving us
this. Are you giving us the Ark, too?”
“No.”
Burke had asked the question of Ben, but it was Agathon who
answered. His voice was so dry and crackling few of those in the
room realized what it was at first, and looked around like they
thought the ceiling was caving in; then Agathon stepped forward,
tapered fingers folded in front of him. “Our ancestors sacrificed
themselves to stop the power of the Totems from being used to
destroy the Earth. It is a duty and a destiny that we, as their
descendants, must accept. We give you the Source to show you
that we have no interest in destroying you. The Ark and the Source
are two halves of the same whole. The Ark is needed to raise
Lemuria. The Source is needed to power what lies beneath it. For
your own protection, the Ark will remain under the guardianship of
the Alpha Clan, just as our father instructed. If your government
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wishes to take it from us,” Agathon finished, quietly, “they are
welcome to try.”
“That still doesn’t answer what’s going to happen to us.”
Melody Little’s long braid was coming unraveled; she twitched it
impatiently behind her shoulder. “Are werekin to remain
Underground, or will our existence be announced to the world?
What’s to be done with the Partners?” Dre touched a button on his
keyboard; the projection on the wall began to scroll through a list
of names: Simmons & Blackwell Security; Cochran Jewelers
(specializing in silver); Steward & Regent Law Firm; Lee
MicroTek; Heilsdale Shipping & Trucking. The men and women
seated along the wall shifted uncomfortably, looking from Melody
to Burke. “And what about LeRoi? Will she be executed?”
“Now see here, Melody,” Clyde snorted. “We haven’t agreed
not to raise Lemuria. Some of us may have intermarried with
humans, had human children, but some of us want to go home.
This isn’t a decision you can just force on the werekin, you know!”
“He’s right,” Josephine agreed, reluctantly. “We command the
Resistance, but no one elected us to speak for the entirety of our
kindred. We are not kings and queens.”
“One of us is,” J.J. said, with a pointed look at Caroline. For
the last few minutes he had been so uncharacteristically quiet
McLain had forgotten he was in the room.
“What I would like to know,” said Logue Ampon, the first
time he had spoken, “is what the human governments will do if we
choose to raise Lemuria.”
His cat’s eyes were on Burke. The iron-haired general folded
his hands on the table. McLain found that his heart was beating
very hard, pulses seeming to drum against his bruises, like the
breathless moments before a patrol erupted into a firefight.
“I have been authorized to tell you that if the werekin choose
to raise Lemuria, the United States government will consider that
an act of war, and they will respond with all necessary might to
suppress the threat of an alien invasion,” Burke said. The
Commanders looked at one another, their worst fears confirmed,
but Burke was not finished. “What I have not been authorized to
tell you is that the men and women in my unit, who have spilled
their blood alongside you and on your behalf, agreed with me an
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hour ago that each and every one of us would refuse any order to
fire upon the werekin.”
Burke rose. “Commanders, I am not your enemy. Captain
McLain and his men are not your enemies. But we alone cannot
protect you. If you want my advice, here it is. The Underground is
a network, one you know how to access. Use it. Send out word,
gather every werekin on the planet here at Fort King. Warrior
breeds or not, every one of you is powerful.
“I understand you have a saying,” Burke said. “‘Blood calls to
blood.’ I believe there’s a reason for that – a reason you can
recognize one another on sight. You were meant to be united.” The
general turned to Caroline then, and bowed. “Whatever you
choose, Your Highness, if you stand together, no force on Earth
will be able to defeat you.”
***
When Seth woke up, alone, in Fort King’s infirmary, with only
the vaguest memory of Lydia and Jack leading him in there to lie
down on one of the cots, an image was branded behind his eyes, of
a smooth square of plastic with a design drawn on the front – a
Tarot card. The Hanged Man.
My wife was Creole, Seth heard Ben Schofield say, in a dream
that had not been a dream but a memory, from long ago. I
remember her telling me the Hanged Man was a card about
sacrifice. Surrendering your life for the good of all, like Osiris or
Christ. There was another commonality to the story of Osiris and
Christ, Seth thought, as he sat up. Resurrection.
And just like that, without knowing how he knew, he knew
what J.J. had done.
From Fort King to the Royal Acres Cemetery was twenty
miles. In his jaguar skin, running flat out, Seth could cover that
distance in no time. In the west, the sun was sinking, a salmonpink sliver between bare trees; staying out of sight of the highway,
Seth splashed through streams, jumped over rocks, a gold-andblack blur in the forests that ringed Fairfax.
The cemetery gate was unlocked, but Seth leapt the fence,
easily clearing the diamond-shaped spikes, and raced headlong
toward the knot of people gathered around the bowl-shaped tree.
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He recognized Cleo’s muscular frame, Emery’s big ears,
Whitney’s sleek bob, Leigh’s auburn curls, Dre’s narrow
shoulders. The shadows that had followed him through the forest
coalesced around them, stretching their fingers toward the massive
winged creature standing over the shrouded form laid out on top of
J.J.’s empty grave.
Membranous wings stirred the air around Agathon, causing the
flames of the candles at his feet to dance. He was chanting, words
in Lemurian that shook the ground like the beat of a thousand
drums – words that spoke of darkness and rot, a single, simple
refrain beating under it all. Return. Return. Return.
Seth bounded toward him, skirting tombstones. He saw a
blonde head come around, heard J.J. swear, softly. Then his twin
was running toward him, and Seth realized, as J.J. gripped his
arms, that he had returned to his human skin.
“Seth, stop,” J.J. pleaded. “Stay back.”
Just wait, he was saying, in Seth’s mind. Just wait.
“J.J.” Seth choked on the words, his mouth drier than bone.
“J.J., why?”
“Because.” Sunlight burnished J.J.’s deeply shadowed eyes.
His voice was a thin, ragged whisper. “He’s Doc.”
Because sometimes, we cannot let go.
Agathon raised a silver goblet. Even at a distance Seth could
smell the blood inside of it. Flames crackled under the
necromancer’s voice, and on a booming note – return – he spilled
the blood onto the grave. There was an earthshaking crack; the
bowl-shaped tree simply uprooted, toppling backwards with a
mighty crash, as though a giant had reached down from the sky,
grasped its branches, and drug it from the ground. Roots straggled
out from its heart like petrified veins, colored meaty red by the
damp Indiana clay.
Inside its shroud, Marshall’s body twitched.
Leigh screamed. J.J. turned, and as he did, the last ray of
daylight sparked off something in his hand, something Seth, in his
panic, had not noticed before. A bone-handled dagger. J.J. was
holding a dagger, and now he was running away from Seth,
hurtling headstones, running toward the body lying on top of the
grave, his own grave, and it became clear to Seth, all at once, why
J.J. had not told him what he planned to do.
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To raise the dead, to return a soul to its body, you must call
back the soul that has departed, and you cannot know where the
soul has traveled. You can never be certain what will return. If it
will be the soul as it was, or if it will be utterly unrecognizable.
Just wait, J.J. had said. Wait and see if what had come back
was Marshall, or something else. Because if it was something else,
J.J. intended to kill it. Kill it, and bury Marshall’s body in his
grave.
What story would Operation Swan Song pass off about
Marshall’s death? Would they say he had run away? Or, better yet,
would J.J. and Xanthe employ some of Chimera’s tactics, enchant
Whitney and Meredith into believing Marshall had never existed,
as Lydia had been enchanted to believe she had caused J.J. to
drown as an infant? Would they make Seth forget? Would
Marshall Jason Townsend be erased from the world completely?
With a snarl, Seth bounded after his twin.
He caught up to him in two loping strides, slamming into him
from behind and knocking him into the concrete angel. J.J. hissed
as he hit the ground. Cleo shouted, but Seth ignored her, like he
ignored J.J., who was looking up at him and begging him to stop,
just stop, please wait.
Marshall, or the thing that had been Marshall and might not
still be, was struggling inside the thin gray shroud wound around
him, head to toe. Seth knelt, grasped the edge of the cloth, and
ripped it down the side with nails that had sharpened into claws.
Cleo and Emery started forward. Agathon threw out a hand,
warning them away.
Dark hair appeared first. Then angular cheekbones. An offcenter nose. Full lips. Shoulders clad in white silk. Marshall had
been washed and dressed in a white Healer’s robe embroidered
with scarlet glyphs; the robe was open at the throat, revealing a
chest unblemished by any wound, just a tiny, circular scar.
“Marshall!” Seth gasped, the name a question as much as it was a
cry.
Blue eyes blinked at him. “Philadelphia?”
His voice was weak and hoarse, but it was Marshall’s voice.
Unable to speak, Seth nodded.
Marshall pushed a hand through his hair, swiveling around to
take in the scene. Agathon looming over them, clutching a goblet
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half-full of blood. J.J. sprawled on the ground, dagger forgotten
beside him, Cleo resting a hand on his arm. Whitney and Emery
and Leigh and Dre clasping one another like a many-legged beast,
crying and laughing at the same time.
“All right,” Marshall said. “What’d I miss?”
305
Chapter Twenty-Five: Home
“He’s leaving, Seth. Just get used to it,” Leigh said.
Seth stopped tossing his miniature Nerf basketball at his
sister’s ceiling, the more effectively to glower at her. Leigh didn’t
notice. She was too busy glamifying herself for the briefing
McLain had called, for some reason at Cleo’s rather than the fort.
Teenagers only, no adults allowed.
For the past hour, Seth had watched Leigh try on every outfit in
her closet before finally raiding Lydia’s. Her bed looked like a
Vogue magazine had exploded on it. Poe and Captain Hook were
napping on a skirt by the footboard.
“You don’t know he’s leaving,” Seth said. “He hasn’t started
to pack.”
Leigh fluffed her curls. “What does he have to do, roll up his
sleeping bag and fold the tent?”
Although he scowled, Seth feared she was right.
Seth hadn’t seen his twin in days. J.J. haunted the house on
Kings Lane like a ghost more than ever these days, evidence of his
visitations found in an empty box of Pop-Tarts on the counter, a
muddy paw print on the stoop. Since the night of LeRoi’s
takedown, he had been closeted at Fort King with the Black Swan
and her Commanders, plotting the werekin’s next move. Ursula
LeRoi was in custody, but the future of the werekin race was still
very much up in the air, as more and more of their kindred poured
in to Fort King from the Underground, awaiting their queen’s
decision. Would the werekin raise Lemuria, at the risk of going to
war with humankind, or would they remain on Earth, try to find a
new peace?
Ben was advising the latter. But, in the end, like J.J., he would
support whatever the Black Swan decided.
When Ben Schofield had walked through the Stewards’ front
door five days ago, Seth had wanted to pummel him for letting
them believe he was dead, but he had been too relieved to have his
Papa Bear back, safe and sound. And really, without the ruse that
had finally drawn LeRoi and her spy out, Chimera Enterprises
would still be operating in the shadows, Caroline McLain still in
hiding.
306
Seth had been busy himself this past week. Coach had
volunteered the Knights to help the National Guard clear away the
hundreds of trees that had smashed houses and blocked roads.
The Storm of the Century, that was what the media was calling
the bizarre weather event that had descended on Fairfax, leaving
the surrounding counties unscathed – which just went to show,
Seth had told Agathon, that conspiracy theorists weren’t always
whack-jobs. Sometimes the aliens were behind things.
School had been closed for days. The Fairfax High gym would
have to be entirely rebuilt; Seth and J.J.’s magical Totem-bonding
had reduced it to a pile of Pick-Up-Sticks. Thousands were still
without power, property losses estimated in the millions.
To make matters worse, the levees on the Ohio River had
broken, flooding most of downtown. If Seth had ever needed proof
that human civilization could not withstand the power of the
Totems, he had it in the destruction caused by a single, short-lived
assault.
Marshall had not been around for the cleanup. He had been
with his father, volunteering at Fairfax Memorial as patients were
transferred in from other storm-damaged hospitals. The Audi was
gone when Seth woke up in the mornings, still gone when he
collapsed into bed at night, exhausted from chopping limbs and
hauling branches.
Seth rolled onto his side, throwing the ball into the hallway for
Captain Hook to fetch. “Seth, I’m telling you,” Leigh insisted. “If
they vote to raise Lemuria, J.J. will be the first one onboard the
spaceship. If not, he’ll be hopping the first Resistance train out of
Fairfax. You might as well embrace the pain, big brother, and
move – ”
“What pain are we embracing?”
Leigh jumped, squealing as she streaked kohl eyeliner across
her cheekbone. J.J. had appeared soundlessly in the doorway –
stealth, it was a cat thing, but Seth, according to Leigh, had the
decency not to scare the living daylights out of people just for the
fun of it. “Jeremy Jonathan! You could at least have the courtesy
of warning a girl before you sneak up on her,” she snipped. “And
is that what you’re wearing?”
J.J. looked down at his black T-shirt and ripped jeans. “I
always wear this.”
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“That’s not true,” Seth disagreed. “Sometimes you wear
camouflage.”
J.J.’s sigh was somewhat wistful. Leigh glared at them both
and stomped into her bathroom to wipe off the eyeliner smear.
Seth sat up. His own T-shirt was wrinkled from lying down.
“Are you coming to Cleo’s with us?”
“I’m gonna ride with Quinn,” J.J. said. “But since we’re
actually home at the same time, I wanted to give this back to you.”
He held out Seth’s katana, off his fingertips, like the warrior he
was. Seth shook his head. “You keep it,” he said. “I don’t want it
anymore.”
J.J.’s nod said he got it. He did, too, more than even Seth did.
To Seth, giving away the sword was letting go of his attachment to
Werner Regent. Not his memories of him; those would always be
there, in the lessons Regent had taught him – lessons that had
saved Seth’s life more than once. It was the anguish of betrayal
attached to those memories, and the wishing for Regent to be a
better man than he ever had been, Seth was letting go of. The man
Regent was, for good or for ill, he would hold onto. He didn’t need
a sword for that.
To J.J., the laying down of a sword was a symbolic act. The
first step on the path of a life without war. And yet, “Thanks,” was
all he said, slinging the sheathed katana across his back. “And by
the way, you’re wanted downstairs.”
***
Seth was half-hoping it would be Marshall waiting at the
bottom of the stairs, there to surprise him with a ride to the
briefing, but it was not. “Hi, Jack,” he said, doing his best to hide
his disappointment.
Leigh froze on the stair behind him. “What are you doing
here?” she demanded, caustically.
“Adleigh Jean,” Lydia sighed from the living room, but there
wasn’t much traction to the rebuke. She was sitting on the couch in
jeans and a white blouse, gripping a goblet of merlot tight enough
to shatter the delicate stem. “Seth, honey, come in here so we can –
Adleigh! What are you wearing?”
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“What?” Leigh looked down innocently at the little red dress
she had snagged from her mother’s closet. The neckline was, shall
we say, plunging.
“You are not wearing that out of this house,” Lydia said.
Leigh fired up instantly. “Why not? You wear it out of the
house.”
“And I am not sixteen years old,” Lydia said. “Go upstairs and
change.”
“Mom!”
“Leigh.” Jack spoke quietly. “Do as your mother says.”
Seth was sure Leigh was going to tell him off. After a moment,
though, she just sent her eyes skyward, muttered, “Whatever,” and
marched back upstairs.
Lydia and Jack exchanged a quick, bemused look. The wine
had stained Lydia’s lips dark red; it made her look pale. Seth felt
his stomach begin to churn as Jack steered him down the hall,
where he took up residence next to his mother. Jack perched on the
arm of his old recliner, tie loosened.
“This is about Dr. Townsend, isn’t it?” Seth said.
Lydia drew back the hand she had placed over his. “How did
you – ”
“Because he’s not an idiot, Lydia.” Jack sounded weary. His
briefcase was on the floor, beside his jacket, suggesting he had
come here straight from the office. “Seth, we were holding off on
telling you this, because of everything that’s happened this past
week, but school will be starting again Monday, so you need to
know. Wesley has forbidden Marshall to see you. Even as friends.”
As soon as he said it, Seth felt like the World’s Most Clueless
Boyfriend.
Five days without Marshall stopping by. Five days without an
invitation to come over to his place. Five days without a proper
phone call, just text messages to say good night and good morning.
There was a phrase for that. It was called being blown off. “When
did this edict come down?” Seth asked.
“After your sectionals game against Sacred Heart,” Jack said.
So that was what the drama in Coach’s office had been about, Seth
thought. “I’ve spoken to Marshall. He’s very upset.”
Marshall had called Jack, but not Seth? How did that work?
Didn’t Seth even rate being officially dumped? He could not
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believe this. He could not believe he had lost Marshall, as
completely as anyone could be lost, and now he was losing him
again, over his father. When Marshall knew what his father was.
What he had done.
The anger siphoned off almost as swiftly as it had bubbled up.
Maybe this was how it was meant to be, Seth thought, dully.
Maybe this was the break that needed to happen for him to return
to Lemuria with his kindred. Maybe the Totems were using Dr.
Townsend to take away his primary reason for staying in Fairfax,
playing ball, graduating high school, trying to lead a normal human
life. Maybe this was Fate’s way of telling him Marshall would be
safer, happier, without him.
At the end of the day, Marshall was alive. Whether he loved
Seth or didn’t love Seth, whether Seth was with him or far away,
Marshall was alive. And with that thought, Seth found his stillness
again.
He stood up. “We better get going. McLain wanted everybody
there by seven. Mom, would it be okay if we took the bike?”
Lydia looked startled. “I suppose, honey, but – don’t you think
we should talk this out? We could go over there, see if Wesley
would listen to reason…”
Jack coughed once. Let it go, he seemed to be saying. Lydia
pursed her lips, none too pleased, but said nothing as Jack walked
over to Seth, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze. “You kids go
on,” he said, kindly. “Have a good time.”
***
A battered Jeep and a clunker van were parked next to the
woodpile beside Cleo’s garage. As Seth opened the front door for
Leigh, now jean-clad, Cleo looked up from sticking cans of soda
into an ice-filled cooler by the sink. She was wearing black jeans
and a white T-shirt. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Look what the
cat dragged in.”
“Where is everybody?” asked Leigh, meaning McLain.
“Out back. Angelo wanted to cook out.” Cleo handed her a
plate of chocolate chip cookies and nodded at the cooler. “Seth, be
a sweetheart and carry that for me, will you?”
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The scene on the back porch more resembled a party than a
briefing – the werekin’s going away party, Seth assumed. Muse
was playing on the stereo, which was plugged in beside a pine
picnic table laden with plastic cups, paper plates, and bags of corn
chips. Seth placed the cooler at the far end and popped the tab on a
Mountain Dew, waving to Emery and Whitney, who were
canoodling in a whicker loveseat.
It was a gorgeous evening, promising spring just around the
corner. A warm breeze stirred smoke from the grill; airbrushed
clouds streaked the sky in reds and purples, lending a watercolor
quality to the vast lawn and sentinel trees. Haven kids were spread
across the lawn – swaying to the beat, tossing a Frisbee, just
lounging on striped blankets. Zoe Campbell was lying with her
head on Serena Jensen’s knee, having her sleek dark hair braided
into dozens of tiny braids. Ozzie Harris was talking animatedly
with Dre Alfaro, his distinctive high-pitched laugh carrying easily
over the other conversations. They both looked up as Leigh sat
down beside them.
Seth slunk over to the grill. “A bull cooking hamburgers,” he
said. “You know, I think I saw a Far Side T-shirt about this once.”
Angelo Alfaro flashed him a gap-toothed grin. “Dude, you are
one sick pussycat. These,” he flipped one of the burgers on the
charcoal grill, “are soy burgers.” Taking the Coke Seth held out to
him, Alfaro lowered his massive self into his lawn chair with a
sigh. The apron he was wearing over his Chicago Bulls jersey said
Shiitake Happens. “Why isn’t Doc with you?”
Seth shrugged. “He’s at the hospital, I guess.”
“You guess?” Cleo hopped up on the rail beside Seth, studying
his eyes. “You don’t know?”
Before Seth could answer her, an earsplitting bellow nearly
caused him to skin. “Angelo, good grief,” Leigh complained,
scowling at the soda she had just splashed all over her shirt.
Alfaro smirked. “Now that I have your attention,” he said, “my
man here wants to say something.”
Seth turned as Alfaro gestured. Quinn O’Shea and J.J. were
walking across the lawn together, from the direction of the woods.
No denying they made a striking pair, Quinn with her copper hair
blowing across her freckled cheeks, J.J. with his round golden eyes
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and slim warrior’s build. Cleo looked down at her hands, folded
tightly in her lap.
Marching (there was no other word for it) behind them were
Will McLain and a young woman Seth didn’t know, also dressed
in desert fatigues, dark hair swinging in a high ponytail tucked
through the back of her duty cap. JENSEN was stitched onto her
jacket. She hung back with Quinn as McLain and J.J. stopped at
the foot of the steps.
Seth felt like he was frozen in place. Now that it came down to
it, now that he had to choose, he realized the choice had already
been made, the day he had knelt at J.J.’s grave and promised to
bring him home. Wherever J.J. went, Seth would go, too.
At a nod from McLain, J.J. opened his mouth. Deep in the
forest cicadas were singing; the trees were dark giants standing
sentry around the lodge-like house, the sky so brilliantly lit the
clouds appeared to be on fire. A portentous backdrop for a
battlefield speech. “We’re staying,” J.J. said.
Seth blinked. It was not at all what he had been prepared for.
From the looks on everyone else’s faces – Emery’s nose was
actually wiggling – it hadn’t been what they had expected, either.
“You mean,” Dre said, “we’re not raising Lemuria?”
“Not at the moment,” J.J. said, expressionless.
“And the Ark?” Emery had risen from the loveseat. “Did the
government agree that the Gen-0s can remain its guardians?”
“Well, it’s not complete,” J.J. glanced at Seth, “so for now, it
and the Gen-0s are staying here, and the Source will stay at
Roswell, under guard.”
McLain stepped forward as J.J. stepped back. Murmurs were
sweeping the lawn. “I asked General Burke’s permission to share
this information with all of you,” McLain said over them. “The
Partners have been granted a general amnesty, but we’ll keep an
eye on them, to be sure they don’t try to pick up where LeRoi left
off. Besides that, we’ve got a lot of werekin housed at Fort King
right now waiting to be integrated into the human world, so you
can expect to have quite a few new classmates at Fairfax High in
the coming weeks, and new neighbors in Haven Heights. The
Commanders agreed that the time is not right to announce the
existence of werekin to the wider world.
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“In the meantime, the Resistance has been dissolved – ” there
were a few murmurs of astonishment at that “ – and a new body
has been formed. We’re calling it the Alliance. It will be the first
black ops unit to ever officially incorporate both werekin and
human soldiers. Some will remain in Fairfax, to guard the Ark.
Some will accompany Jensen to Roswell, to guard the Source.”
“What about you?”
Seth was looking, not at McLain, but at J.J. J.J.’s golden eyes
jumped from him to Cleo. After a beat, he said, “I’m staying here.”
Someone let out a jubilant squeal. The next second, Leigh had
shoved past McLain, seizing J.J. in a hug so tight he reeled
backwards, steadying himself with an effort. “Hey,” he gasped.
“You’re staying! Oh, J.J., this will be so fun!” Tipping back on
her heels, Leigh beamed up at him. “We’ll fix you up your own
room. You can have mine, across the hall from Seth, and I’ll take
Daddy’s old office on the second floor – ”
“Leigh, I like the basement,” J.J. said. “No one bugs me
there.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Leigh said, with the air of someone who
knows she has already won. J.J. looked to Seth for help, but Seth
just grinned. You’re on your own, big brother.
He turned, to beam at Cleo, only to find that she had risen and
was walking back into the house. Setting his soda down, Seth
chased after her. He caught up to her in the kitchen. “Cleo! Cleo,
what’s…what’s wrong…”
The words trailed off. Because Seth already knew. He knew
before Cleo turned to face him, outlined in fire by the setting sun.
Her smile was wan. “You’re leaving,” Seth said. “You’re going
with Jensen.”
“I was assigned,” Cleo said.
“So ask them to reassign you,” Seth said. Cleo didn’t answer.
Seth took a step closer to her. “Cleo, you can’t leave, just
because…” Just because J.J. has a crush on someone else, he
wanted to say, his eyes straying out the window, to Quinn and J.J.,
reclining together on a blanket under a cherry tree.
Cleo pushed off the counter. “Come on, sweetheart,” she said.
“Let’s go for a drive.”
***
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Twilight bled across the barren fields, slowly deepening to full
night. Damage from the storm was still visible – a barbed wire
fence rolled up like a metal tumbleweed, a red combine upside
down on top of an old barn. Cleo cranked down the Ford’s
windows and hung her hand out the window, fingers curved like
she was hoping to catch fireflies.
“I’m not leaving because of J.J.,” she said.
Seth snorted. “Right. And I’m a weregiraffe.”
Cleo laughed, melting the purple in her eyes into blue, like
paint spilled onto canvas. “Okay, I am leaving because of J.J., but
not how you’re thinking. He has to stay here, to guard the Ark, to
help Ben solidify the Alliance, and to be honest, to protect you.
Even in custody LeRoi could still be dangerous. Regent is still out
there, and Gideon, and no matter how closely Burke monitors the
Partners, there is no guarantee they won’t find a way to continue
LeRoi’s work without us knowing. J.J. needs someone he trusts to
go to Roswell and help guard the Source. That’s killing him,
because he wants to do both – protect the Ark, and protect the
Source. If it was up to J.J., he would take all the risks himself. But
he can’t. And since he can’t, I told him I would go to New Mexico,
do what needs to be done.”
Seth slouched down in his seat. He hated that Cleo’s
explanation was too noble for him to argue with. “What did he say,
when you volunteered?”
“He said there was no one he trusted more to see it through.”
For J.J., that was saying he loved you. Cleo, who understood
J.J. as well as Seth did, had to know that.
She had turned off the highway, onto the long drive that circled
up to Fort King. Before they reached the gate, she put the truck in
park. Cutting the engine, she gazed up the hill at the sprawling
structure, liquid-black in the dying light. Seth looked at it, too. He
had a feeling he knew why she had brought him here.
“Cleo, you can’t leave without telling J.J. how you feel,” he
said. “He deserves to hear you say it.”
“How I feel?”
The words spooled out on a bitter thread. Suddenly, Cleo had
unsnapped Seth’s seatbelt and fisted her hands in his shirt, hauling
him in until they were nose to nose.
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“How I feel, Seth Michael, is like someone laid my heart out
on a chopping block and cleaved it, right down the center. J.J. has
half. He used to have it all, but I never knew he wanted it, until
after I met you. And now you, you’ve got the other half. I know
you don’t want it, I know you’ll never want it, or me, but it’s yours
anyway, and it will be forever because I don’t know how to take it
back from you, so I can give it to someone else.”
There was no ice left in Cleo’s eyes. It was all fire.
No one had ever told Seth they loved him in quite those terms.
No one had ever said he had split their heart in two. He thought
Cleo would kiss him – they were close enough to kiss – and he
didn’t know what to do if she did, how to push her away without
breaking that piece of her heart she had given him; but she pushed
him away, roughly, and stared out the windshield, fists clenched
like she wanted to beat them against the wheel. Seth struggled for
words. How did you respond to a declaration like that: I love you,
and it’s breaking me in half?
“Cleo.” He was whispering. “I never meant to – if I did
something, to make you feel like that about me, if I led you on, I’m
sorry.”
“Seth.” Cleo sighed. “You didn’t have to do anything to make
me love you. Neither did J.J. You both just are. Sometimes I think
you’re the ones who were split in two. One skin, two bodies.
Sometimes I think it would have been impossible for me to love
him as much as I do and not fall in love with you, too.”
Sliding across the seat, Seth cupped Cleo’s chin in his hand,
forcing her to look at him. “Is that why you’re leaving? So you
don’t have to be around me?”
“Sweetheart, don’t think that. Please don’t think that.” Cleo
rested her forehead against Seth’s. Her lashes were long enough to
brush his. “I told you. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave
either of you. I’m leaving because this needs to be done. As soon
as I can, I’ll come back.”
“I’ll miss you,” Seth said, softly.
Cleo did kiss him then, tenderly, on the lips. “I’ll miss you,
too,” she said.
Seth folded her up in a hug. Over the top of her head, he looked
up at the hill, at the fort. He was thinking of J.J., fighting a war at
seventeen; of Cleo, marching off to protect a power source that
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could level the planet; of Marshall, willing to sacrifice his life to
free their kindred. What was Seth doing? Nothing. Hiding. Like he
had hidden his entire life. It didn’t matter whether anyone else saw
that as selfish or cowardly. Seth did.
Your blood, he thought. Your choice.
Sitting back from him, Cleo put the truck in reverse. “Go on,”
she said, motioning for Seth to get out. As though she knew what
he was thinking. As Seth supposed she did. It was why she had
brought him here, where Seth hadn’t even realized he needed to
go. Because that was how well Cleo knew him, too.
***
Among the military vehicles and battered Resistance jalopies
parked around the fountain, the aquamarine convertible was like a
pearl in a bed of sand. Seth trailed his fingers along the hood and
called, without turning, “How much horsepower does she pack?”
The boy standing in the shadows stepped forward. The moon
that a week ago had ridden like a chariot wheel above the swamped
cemetery had waned to a pale sickle; it lengthened his shadow,
making him longer and leaner even than he was. “You tell me,
Philadelphia,” Marshall said. “You’re the car thief. I never cared
about engines.”
“Indiana, do you know what this is? It’s a Lotus Elise. You
cannot own a car like this and not care about engines. Now, listen
up,” Seth said. “She has two-hundred-and-eighty horsepower, rear
wheel drive, and a one-point-eight-liter engine – in short, my
friend, a beauty. An absolute beauty.” To prove his point, Seth
kissed the paintjob. Marshall laughed. “What happened to the
Audi?”
“The Audi,” Marshall pitched the letterman’s jacket that had
been hooked over his index finger into the convertible’s backseat,
“was damaged in the storm. My father does not own things that are
damaged.”
His arms snaked around Seth from behind. Seth tensed;
Marshall noticed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, softly.
What was wrong? Seth stared at Marshall’s reflection in the
dark-tinted window. The black sweater he was wearing did
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wonders for his baby blues, the honey tone of his skin. “What’s
wrong,” he said, “is that you haven’t called me in a week.”
“You haven’t called me either, you know.” Completely
unruffled, Marshall sat down on the hood. He looked tired tonight,
but not brooding or regretful. And not like the boy Seth had met in
the Stewards’ kitchen on New Year’s Eve, either, settled so
awkwardly inside his skin. This Marshall wore his skin like it
belonged to him. “I came by your house earlier. Your mom said I
missed you and Leigh by about five minutes.”
Seth kicked at the tire, half-wanting to believe this, half-afraid
to. “Why didn’t you come to Cleo’s, then?” he asked, grumpily.
“I was on my way. I just stopped by here to check on Connie.”
Connor Burke. Another casualty of LeRoi’s obsession. Seth bit
his lip. “How is he?”
“It’s hard to say. Gideon saved his life by pouring that Healing
potion down him at the last, but he lost a lot of blood, and he has a
lot of nerve and tissue damage around the spine. Aphrodisia is
hopeful he’ll walk again, but it’s going to take time. He probably
won’t ever play basketball again.”
Seth felt sick. He had tried to visit Connor a few times in the
infirmary, but had always been turned away, by Aphrodisia. She
had said Connor needed his rest. Now Seth wondered if he just
didn’t want visitors. “I guess J.J. was wrong about him,” he said.
“I guess so,” Marshall said, softly.
Seth sat down on the hood as well. Breakups were not an area
of expertise for him, but he didn’t think this was how it went when
someone was dumping you. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” he
said, a little stiffly.
“I wasn’t mad,” Marshall said. “We’ve both been busy.”
He smiled at him. Now Seth wanted Marshall to reach for him,
and he didn’t; he fiddled with his keychain – a basketball charm,
#11, his number, painted on it in gold glitter pen. A gift from
Whitney for his sixteenth birthday. Seth knew that from his little
trip down Marshall’s memory lane. “Your parents told you my
father won’t let me see you anymore, didn’t they?”
Seth nodded. He was finding it easier to watch the water splash
in the fountain, suddenly, than to look Marshall in the eye.
“I wanted to tell you,” Marshall said. “I should have told you.
But I thought you might be leaving, depending on what the Black
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Swan decided, and I wanted to give you some space to sort all of
that out.”
Seth leaned back on his elbows. “Indiana, has anyone ever told
you that in the category of awesome boyfriends, you take the
cake?”
“You’re not so bad yourself, Philadelphia.” Marshall dropped
the car keys into his pocket. “So we’re okay?”
Other than the fact that they weren’t allowed to see each other,
Seth supposed they were fabulous. “I’m not leaving,” he said.
“I might be.”
Seth sat up fast. “What?”
“Not leaving, leaving,” Marshall said, quickly. “Just not living
next door anymore. I was late for the briefing tonight because I
was talking to my father. I told him I wasn’t going to stop seeing
you, and when he told me I didn’t have a choice, I told him I was
going to live my own life now, even if that meant moving out. I am
eighteen. And then it just sort of…came out, that I knew what I
was. What he had made me.” Marshall kicked a heel against the
fender.
Seth was glad he was sitting down. “What did he say?” he
whispered.
“He said I’ve always been a disappointment. I decided to take
that as meaning his experiment had failed, because I didn’t share
his ability to see werekin, and that was supposedly the whole point
of cloning himself.”
“But you do,” Seth said, softly, remembering how he had seen
himself through Marshall’s eyes – like the statue the Alpha Clan
had made of the Black Swan, human and animal skin elegantly
fused. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
Marshall leaned back on the hood next to Seth. Clouds scudded
across the moon, playing light and shadow across his angular face.
“When she was little, Whitney started pointing out the people with
the pretty colors. She doesn’t remember it this way – she thinks
our father just took her for a CAT scan – but he put her in the
hospital for a week to run tests. Spinal taps. MRIs. X-rays. She was
three years old. The tests were inconclusive, so when she came
home, I told her not to mention the colors anymore. I didn’t want
her to end up lobotomized like Mom.”
Marshall’s tone was bitter. “Your mom can see werekin, too?”
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“She used to. I’m pretty sure that’s why my father married her.
She used to paint them. The people with the colors.”
Seth mentally took back every snide thought he had ever had
about Meredith Townsend. “Where are you going to go?” he
asked.
“Dunno.” Marshall didn’t sound too concerned about it. “Chaz
has a couch, doesn’t he?”
“I think we can do you one better than that, Indiana,” Seth
said, thinking of the loft above Jack’s bachelor pad living room.
He stood up. There was something he needed to do. Something
he had already put off for far too long. “Marshall, if I needed to go
somewhere, would you come with me?”
Marshall did not hesitate. “Anywhere,” he said.
The front door opened without Seth needing to touch the
keypad. No guards waited inside. Silently, Seth and Marshall
slipped through the maze of corridors. It was almost like a path had
been cleared for them – they encountered no one on their way to
the elevator, which was waiting on them.
On the lower level, the main chamber was deserted. Seth led
Marshall into the warren of tunnels branching off from Dr.
Bishop’s lab. The air was close and damp. Marshall was soon
shivering. “You’re not leading me off down here to axe-murder
me, are you?” he whispered.
“Oh come on,” Seth whispered back. “If I wanted to kill you, I
wouldn’t need an axe. I’d just bite through your skull.”
“That’s very comforting, Philadelphia, thank you.”
Seth grinned.
Although he had been there only once, he found his way to the
round door without a single wrong turn. Silver chains crisscrossed
it, just as he remembered. He studied the glyphs burned into them,
then lifted his hands, palms outward as he had seen Agathon do,
and spoke a word in Lemurian.
With a metallic clang, the chains slithered into the walls.
Pulsing light swept over them as they stepped into the Ark’s
chamber. Marshall, who had never seen the Ark, braced his elbows
on the railing, gaping down at the crystal web. He didn’t ask what
Seth was doing, didn’t suggest that he stop; he merely watched,
entranced, as Seth spoke another word and the orb, like a pebble
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bobbing to the surface of a lake, rose up through the web, and
floated directly into his grasp.
Seth understood that his kindred’s day of reckoning had not yet
come. He didn’t know if it would come during his lifetime; there
were some things no one could predict. The chain of events that
had led Seth to Fairfax, for one – the grand cosmic string that had
somehow spun out from Naomi’s dying words, leading him here,
to his mother, to his sister, to his twin, to Marshall, and to the
blood of the werekin ancestors. That was life – wonderfully
uncertain. That was why the Totems had left a means for the
werekin to escape this planet, if it ever came to that. That was why
Seth had chosen to give his blood to the Ark. Seth was a rare
breed. There was no guarantee another werejaguar would ever be
born.
“Hold out your hands,” he said.
Marshall extended his hands. Seth laid the Ark in them. The
light flared brighter, showing the bones in Marshall’s fingers like
the filament in a light bulb. “I can feel it,” he whispered. “Seth, I
can feel them.”
Seth’s eyes came up to his. “Marshall, where did you go?”
There was a catch in Marshall’s breathing. Seth vowed he
would not ask again; if Marshall chose not to answer, it was a
subject he would seal up forever between them. But Marshall said,
“Nowhere.”
“You mean – ” Seth had to swallow; his throat was dry. “You
mean you don’t remember?”
“No. I mean I went nowhere.” Marshall looked down into the
orb. A crease appeared across his brow. “I didn’t see a white light.
My life didn’t flash before my eyes. There was pain, but it was
quick and then it was gone, and I could feel my body shutting
down, but that was numbness, not pain. Everything went dark,
slowly, like in a theater when they turn the lights down. For a
while I could see shapes and hear noises, distantly, but then that
went away too, and there was nothing. Less than nothing, really. I
didn’t know I was nothing. I didn’t know I was, or ever had been.
And then I was again. I was me. And it was – scary, and it was
wonderful.”
Scary and wonderful. Seth thought he could understand that, in
a way. “Was it bad, for there to be nothing?”
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“No. If that’s what it is, after I’m done here, as long as I live
well, I won’t mind being nothing, after.” Marshall looked up at
Seth. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
“Just this,” Seth said.
Placing the heel of his left hand on the orb, he let his claws
slide out, until they pricked the center of his palm. A bead of blood
tracked down his skin; when it touched the surface of the orb, the
power inside awoke, like the beat of a thousand tiny hearts – like
the flutter of a million tiny wings: a universe inside itself. Seth
closed his eyes and spoke a word in Lemurian. He felt the sear of a
sharp, sudden pain in his heart, over almost before it began. Like
dying, or being born.
Behind his eyelids he saw a jungle, trees taller than any trees
on Earth, and a beach of sparkling white sand ringed by an ocean
of the deepest blue. They were all there, his kindred –Naomi, and
Thomas, and thousands upon thousands of those who had come
before, and whose names Seth did not know. For an instant, he was
there with them.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking into Marshall’s face.
It was then that Seth knew it did not matter whether Lemuria was
ever raised from the sea. He was already home.
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Epilogue
The dungeon of Fort King was deep belowground. Deeper even
than the lair of the Alpha Clan. Deeper than the chamber that
housed the Ark.
When the elevator doors opened with a pneumatic hiss, it was
Will McLain who met J.J., though Ben Schofield was not far
behind. J.J. nodded to them both. Midnight had come and gone;
J.J. was tired, not from the party so much, but from everything that
had come before. It showed in the slight quiver of the hand that
brushed back his golden hair, the shadows under his big, round
eyes.
“Are we ready?” he asked.
Ben hesitated, scratching at his freshly-trimmed beard. Safely
back from the Amazon, he was wearing his ubiquitous XXXL
flannel and steel-toed boots, and smelled vaguely of honey, as was
fitting for a bear. Ben had not been sure about this from the start.
The Commanders’ vote to spare Ursula LeRoi had been close, and
Ben had had to exert a lot of influence to turn things their way.
But, after a moment, he stepped back, and J.J. stepped off the
elevator.
Recessed lights cast an amber glow onto the stone floor.
Condensation beaded on the corridor’s obsidian walls; J.J.’s breath
frosted before him. If Dante was right, he thought, and hell was
cold, this was as close to hell as you could get on Earth. McLain
slid a pair of knit gloves over his hands. They were olive-green,
like his fatigues.
The pane of tempered glass at the end of the corridor showed
their reflections drawing nearer, J.J. flanked by the bulkier Ben and
the taller, sparer McLain. The woman on the other side turned, as
though she had sensed their approach.
In all his years of captivity, J.J. had only ever seen Ursula
LeRoi wear a tailored black suit and a white lab coat. The washedout gray jumpsuit showed how slender she really was. Her mane of
hair had been pulled back, not in its usual braid but in a thick bun,
giving full play to her sculpted features. Her beauty was as sharp
and deadly as fractured glass. “Captain,” LeRoi said, smoothly.
“Your sister is glad to be back with you, I trust?”
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Inside their gloves, McLain’s fingers flexed. J.J. could
appreciate how badly he wanted to wrap them around LeRoi’s
throat. “The Black Swan sends her regards,” he said, drolly.
LeRoi’s smile did not reach her cold gray eyes. Her cell was
sparse – steel cot, toilet, sink. A book rested upside down on her
mattress. She saw J.J. take this all in, and smiled as she approached
the glass. “Come to carry out your mother’s sentence, my pet?”
When J.J. didn’t answer, McLain said, “The Commanders
voted to spare you.” The words seemed to dry up in his mouth; his
throat worked as he said them.
LeRoi’s eyes flickered, or perhaps that was only a trick of the
lights, which tended to sputter this far belowground. “And your
government agreed to that?”
“On the caveat that you never see the light of day again,”
McLain said, grimly.
“How quickly you turn on your allies, Captain. Project Ark
was your government’s doing as much as mine. Do you think I
could have accomplished half of what I accomplished without their
backing? Yet now David Burke is happy to pretend I acted alone.”
LeRoi turned from McLain, laying a palm, lightly, on the glass J.J.
could see himself reflected in. It was almost as though nothing at
all separated them, as though the wall of impenetrable glass was as
meaningless as air.
“Take note of this, my pet.” LeRoi’s voice was soft, and
deadly. “They will do to you what they have done to me, if it suits
their purposes. You cannot trust them, Jeremy. Perhaps the captain
here, because he has a vested interest in protecting your race, but
you understand how the chain of command works. Will McLain
has orders he will have to carry out.”
“I know you’re not suggesting we should trust you,” Ben said.
LeRoi’s shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. “I never lied to
you, Benjamin. My intention has ever been to raise Lemuria, and
to permit every werekin loyal to me to live there, in peace.”
“Maybe you should have thought about whether we wanted to
be ‘permitted’ to live as slaves,” Ben growled.
“Then why spare me, if you hate me so much?” LeRoi actually
sounded wounded. She was unrivaled at games like this. Marshall
had called J.J. a chess master, and he was not wrong. It just wasn’t
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Xanthe who had taught J.J. to think one move ahead of his
opponents. “Did you intercede for me, Captain?”
McLain laughed. “Lady, if it was up to me, the only hole you’d
be dropped into would be your own grave.”
“Then it was you, Jeremy.” LeRoi’s voice softened again. “It
was, I can see it in your eyes. You may hate me, oh yes, my pet,
but you see further than they see. You know one day you will need
me.” Her smile stretched up the corners of her lips. The wrinkles
around her mouth were very fine. “When the Alliance fails, when
everyone else betrays you, you will need me, and I will be here for
you, as I always have.”
She stroked the glass with the tips of her fingers, like she was
stroking J.J.’s skin. Placing one foot behind the other, J.J. took a
single, deliberate step back. “Good,” he said, flatly. “Then if I ever
need you, I’ll know where to find you.”
The smile curdled on LeRoi’s lips.
J.J. turned to go. He heard LeRoi slap the glass, but he kept
walking, even as her gaze bored into him from behind, even when
her voice echoed after him, stripped of its oily timber, rotten with
fury. “I know you, Jeremy Jonathan! I know the future you have
seen.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, standing up the hairs on
J.J.’s arms. “This is how it ends.”
The elevator doors opened. Only then did J.J. turn, meeting
LeRoi’s wild gaze down the length of the corridor. “There’s
something you never understood about the future, Mother,” he
said. “It can be changed.”
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Acknowledgements
Many heartfelt thanks to my big sister, my eternal cheerleader;
to L.J., for insightful criticism, and copious praise; to the readers at
FictionPress.com who took the time to review a much earlier draft
of this book – I hope you like the changes; and to you, reader, for
taking a chance on my books.
To the friends, new and old, physical and virtual, who pull me
out of my own head and make the lonely life of a writer a little less
so: Even if I could do it without you, I wouldn’t want to.
And, of course, to my parents. Mom, Dad, with all of my heart,
thank you for telling me to always be myself, and for being only
partially freaked out when I did.
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About the Author
Jesse Daro spends most of her time writing. Science fiction,
fantasy, and horror are her favorite genres.
She has a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature and writing in
the Midwest.
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