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BONES
A Werekin Novel
The Ark Trilogy: Book Three
By: Jesse Daro
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Text copyright © 2014 Jesse Daro
All Rights Reserved
Second Edition
Cover Photo by Josh Pesavento
Used under Creative Commons license
All Rights Reserved
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What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is
to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
- T.S. Eliot
For my parents
Your love, support, and guidance have given me the courage to live
in my many skins
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Table of Contents
Prologue
1: Of Things to Come
2: What was Given
3: The Prince of Cats
4: Swan Song
5: Diamond in the Rough
6: Moonlight Sonata
7: Checkmate
8: Lost in Translation
9: Blood Moon
10: Elders
11: Love Potion Number Nine
12: Mind Games
13: Thicker Than Water
14: Second Chances
15: Call of the Wild
16: The Stars Are Fire
17: Absolution
18: Genesis
19: As We Become
20: Amor vincit Omnia
21: End of Days
Epilogue
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werekin: n.
1. An ancient alien race of 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.
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Prologue
Every night the dream, if a dream it was, began in the jungle, at the
base of the bowl-shaped tree. A mountain rose up behind it, a tower to
the stars; carved into its side was a temple, its entrance overhung by a
curtain of woody vines. A statue had been erected there, greened by
moss, weathered smooth by centuries of exposure to wind and rain, but
Seth could still make out its shape: the domed shell of its back, its four
stumpy legs, the long stalk of its neck. A tortoise.
Etched into its back were Lemurian glyphs.
Far below, on the beach, the Black Swan had begun to sing, a
haunting melody that mingled with the thunder of the black river
threading between the trees – trees that seemed alive, less friendly than
trees were supposed to be, taller than any trees on Earth. In the distance,
where it plunged over a waterfall, the river began to boil, churning up
foam-capped waves tinged red as blood.
Up above, a shadow moved through the branches. Seth saw it, and
began to climb.
With claw-tipped nails he hacked through the vines and branches
that snatched at him, like the trees really were alive, and holding him
back, until he reached the gaping maw of the Tortoise Clan’s temple. The
black jaguar leapt down from the trees to stand beside him, skinning as
he landed. J.J.’s camouflage fatigues, like Seth’s, were coated in a slimy
paste of mud and leaves.
They were looking into an earthen tunnel that ran straight back into
the mountainside. Moist air, rich with vegetative rot, fanned Seth’s
cheeks. Twenty feet ahead, silver light like starlight outlined a set of steel
doors. J.J. caught his breath. Seth reached back, to steady him, and they
started forward, together.
One step over the threshold and a rumble shook the floor. The swan
song had reached its dying crescendo, silencing the ceaseless jungle
chorus of croaking frogs and whistling birds and rustling leaves. On a
boom that seemed to freeze the marrow in Seth’s bones, the entrance at
their backs sealed shut, as the doors ahead folded inward.
Shapes appeared. Torches had sprung to life on the walls; their
wavering light revealed a dozen men in rough-spun brown robes. Their
skin was gray as chalk dust, their hair, plaited into thin braids, tipped
with slivers of bone. They were chanting, low and sonorous, words in an
alien tongue that resonated inside of Seth like the gonging of an ancient
heart. Just by looking at them he knew they were older, more powerful,
than any other beings on Earth.
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All were slightly stooped, as though used to carrying heavy weight
on their backs.
Their chant quickened, faster and faster, louder and louder; the
starlight glow behind them grew, brighter and brighter, pushing ahead of
it a wall of heat. The skin on Seth’s cheeks began to crisp. J.J. pushed
him to the ground, shielding Seth with his body as the lava raced toward
them from the deep belly of the mountain; but the floor beneath them
split open, and they were falling, losing hold of one another in the
darkness…
It was darkness Seth woke to.
This corridor he recognized from his waking life – the recessed
amber lights, the smooth obsidian walls, the cells off to either side. Most
were empty. The few that were not were occupied only by bleached
bones chained to rusted silver bars. Collars still circled the skeletons’
necks. Seth rose, slowly, sick inside as he stared at his kindred, collected,
betrayed, left to die and rot.
His first thought was: J.J.
He began to run. Shadows danced in crazy configurations across his
path; his footsteps echoed back to him in the eerie silence. Finally, in the
last cell, he found him, shackled hand and foot to the bars by silver
manacles, stripped to the waist, blonde head shaved. Blood crusted the
long, deep cuts the hunters’ whips had made across his back. The ornate
silver torc around his neck glowed with an evil light, draining his life
away.
Seth cried out and ran to him, scrabbling at the shackles with the
claw tips of his nails. Tears tracked through the dirt and sweat on his
cheeks. Hold on, J.J., he pleaded: Hold on, I’ll take you home.
J.J. laughed, a hoarse rasp, like a blade striking bone. Not J.J.’s laugh
at all. Seth stumbled back as the boy shackled to the bars lifted his chin
from his chest. A wave of horror crested over him as he took in the black
rosette-shaped spots tattooed around his own golden eyes.
On the other side of the bars, J.J. smiled at his shackled twin, a cold,
feral smile. “This is how it ends,” he said.
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Chapter One: Of Things to Come
“You know,” Seth said, “I think we’re done.”
Tossing the last pillow onto the king-sized bed, J.J.’s twin collapsed
face-down on the mattress. J.J. Sullivan straightened up from plugging in
his stereo, looked around at the newly-installed bookshelves, the freshlypainted walls, the just-hung curtains, and said, “You know, I think you’re
right.”
Just when J.J. had gotten used to living in his mother’s basement, his
sister Leigh had decided he needed to move to the third floor of their
three-story brick house, across the hall from Seth. Problem was, said
room was already inhabited, by Leigh.
Leigh did not see this as a problem. Leigh saw this as an opportunity
to max out her father’s credit card buying J.J. all new furniture at Ikea,
then to put her big brothers to work renovating her father’s old study into
her new boudoir. J.J. had been dragged out of bed at dawn for all this.
Since, like all cats, he was nocturnal, this would not have improved his
outlook on the venture even if his nights lately hadn’t been plagued by
nightmares.
J.J. liked the basement. It was cool, it was quiet, and above all, it was
private.
Leigh had also done his decorating. His walls were egg-shell white,
his sheets and curtains black, prints of black-and-white polka dots on the
walls. Leigh said it was sophisticated. Seth said he was lucky she hadn’t
gone for shag carpet and lava lamps.
J.J. didn’t care. Just about anything beat the closet-sized cell he had
shared with his hunter partner Cleo in the Scholae Bestiarii for ten years,
or the long pillow at the foot of Ursula LeRoi’s bed where he had been
made to sleep after – a fitting den for a pet werejaguar.
Captain Hook, the Steward-Sullivans’ recently resurrected
Dachshund (long story), hopped up beside J.J.’s twin on the bed. Poe,
their psychic one-eyed calico kitten (even longer story), was napping on
Leigh’s windowsill. His windowsill now, J.J. supposed. The sky outside
was deepening to purple as the sun sank into a ring of molten fire around
the treetops.
“I wonder what Cleo is doing right now,” Seth said.
J.J. started. He was the telepathic one; usually it was him voicing
Seth’s thoughts, not the other way around. “I don’t know,” he said. “Did
she call you yet?”
“I think you should call her,” Seth said.
“If she needed anything, she’d call me.”
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Seth gave him what J.J. had come to think of as The Look. Leigh had
one, too. It meant he was not engaging in normal human teenager
behavior. “You don’t have to call her about the mission, J.J. You could
just call to say hi. You want to talk to her, don’t you?”
J.J. shrugged.
Just over a day had passed since Cleo had boarded a military jet
bound for Roswell, New Mexico, to assist Lieutenant Kate Jensen in
guarding the Source, a relic of Lemuria, the werekin motherland, hidden
for centuries by the Tortoise Clan, deep in the Amazon. Not even the
Gen-0s knew precisely how the Source operated, only that it was
designed to open a portal to the world of the Totems. This was next-gen
alien technology, so advanced the only way to talk about it on Earth was
as magic.
Seth said “the Source” was a poor translation of the Lemurian
glyphs, which actually implied something more profound than a power
source for the Ark. J.J. was taking his word for it. Seth was the one with
the preternatural command of symbols.
That got him thinking. “Are you still starting your training with
Xanthe tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yup,” Seth said. “Right after ball practice.”
His enthusiasm left something to be desired. Xanthe was J.J.’s Gen-0
telepath tutor – the only teacher J.J. had ever respected, aside from his
father, Thomas Sullivan, and Captain Will McLain. Xanthe believed Seth
hadn’t yet begun to tap his psychic powers. He wanted to train him, like
he had trained J.J. At first, Seth had resisted because he hadn’t trusted
Xanthe with his private thoughts. J.J. didn’t think that was the problem
now. Now he thought Seth just didn’t want to be more magical than he
already was. He wanted to play basketball and apply to college and
dance at prom, all of that normal human teenager stuff. He didn’t even
want to add his blood, the blood of the Jaguar Clan, to the Ark, to
complete it.
J.J. didn’t really get it. Then again, J.J. had been raised in captivity,
even more secluded from the human world than Seth. While his twin was
boosting cars for pocket change in the Philadelphia Underground and
teaching himself Russian, Spanish, Italian and French at the public
library, J.J. was training to be a warrior in Chimera Enterprises’ army,
learning absolute control of his thoughts and emotions so he could fool
Ursula LeRoi into believing he was her loyal slave.
Sometimes J.J. thought he had learned those lessons too well. The
Alliance Commanders still didn’t fully trust him, even though LeRoi was
in custody, and J.J. had nearly died helping put her there. It hadn’t helped
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that he had lobbied for her life to be spared. But, like he had told Ben
Schofield, he had his reasons.
“That’ll be Mom,” Seth said, bringing J.J. back to the present. The
front door had just closed downstairs. “We should clean up. Caroline’s
party starts in like twenty minutes.”
J.J. nodded. Seth slunk across the hall, whistling tunelessly; a minute
later, shower water came on, and the whisper-soft tread of their mother’s
footsteps climbed the stairs. She stopped on the second floor. Checking
out Leigh’s new room, probably. J.J. was relieved she wasn’t checking
on him. He never seemed to say the right thing to his mother. She felt
guilty for the years he had lived in captivity, years her ex-husband Jack
Steward had enchanted her into believing J.J. was dead, buried in the
Royal Acres Cemetery outside of Fairfax. It wasn’t like she could have
busted him out of a Chimera facility even if she had known he was alive.
J.J. had told her that a few weeks ago, and it had just made her cry.
Mostly he avoided her. Thinking about him seemed to make her sad,
and he figured she wouldn’t have to if he wasn’t around.
To that end, J.J. crossed to the window, pushed up the sash, and
climbed out onto the roof.
For early March the weather was cool, the unnatural winter heat
wave having been broken by the unearthly storm Chimera had unleashed
on Fairfax a week ago. A gust of wind blew J.J.’s black T-shirt against
his chest. Seth’s room faced the driveway; from his window, it was an
effortless drop, for a werekin, from the roof to the Stewards’ three-car
garage, from the garage to the lawn. Leigh’s room, which J.J. had to
remind himself was his room now, overlooked the in-ground pool and
wooden deck in the backyard, nothing below it but his mother’s
rosebushes. Idly, he wondered if he could make a jump like that.
One way to find out.
It was a longer fall than it looked. J.J. landed on his feet, naturally,
but hissed at a sharp snap in his ankle; staggered; and caught the rose
trellis for balance, snagging his jeans on a thorn.
“Need me to take a look at that?”
J.J. looked up. He had not been unaware of Marshall Townsend
standing beside his brand-new aquamarine convertible, wearing jeans
and a thermal shirt. He just hadn’t expected Marshall to speak to him.
Seth’s boyfriend had never seemed to like him, and J.J. was certain he
didn’t now, what with the small, unresolved issue of J.J. arranging to
have him brought back from the dead between them.
But his ankle was definitely twisted. Possibly broken. And Marshall
was an incredible Healer. “Would you mind?” he said.
Marshall closed the convertible’s trunk. “I don’t mind.”
10
He offered his arm. J.J. waved him off and limped across the
driveway on his own.
No one was home at the Townsends’ posh brick ranch. Marshall’s
sister Whitney spent most of her time these days with her boyfriend,
Emery Little; Mrs. Townsend kept a busy social calendar; and Dr.
Townsend worked long, late hours at Fairfax Memorial. J.J. followed
Marshall through a well-appointed living room and up a flight of stairs.
At the top, Marshall glanced back, as if startled to see J.J. behind him.
“Sorry,” J.J. said. He didn’t mean to be stealthy. He just was.
“I would have brought the first-aid kit down to you,” Marshall said.
J.J. shrugged. A sprained ankle was hardly the worst pain he had
ever been in. That prize went to having his life-force, his animus, drained
through his collar by LeRoi. And there were other kinds of pain, he
thought, looking down at the lacelike scars on the backs of his hands,
that kept hurting long after the wounds had healed.
Marshall’s room was bigger than J.J.’s and Seth’s put together,
though it didn’t look it with cardboard boxes taking up most of the floor
space. The walls were painted Harvard crimson, and at the moment, bare.
Marshall directed J.J. to sit on the stripped mattress and knelt in front of
him, unlacing J.J.’s combat boot. “Moving out, Doc?” J.J. said.
“That’s generally what we call it when someone packs up all of their
belongings.” Marshall paused, then went on, more kindly, “I’m staying
with Mr. Steward until after graduation.”
Seth had told J.J. a little about this, Dr. Townsend forbidding
Marshall to see Seth anymore, even as friends, Marshall refusing. He
hadn’t realized the situation was serious enough for Marshall to move
out.
He wondered if the move didn’t also have something to do with
Marshall’s parents not really being his parents. Eighteen years ago,
Wesley Townsend had cloned himself as part of a top-secret experiment
for Chimera Enterprises, thereby earning himself a spot amongst LeRoi’s
Partners. J.J. didn’t bring it up, since one he wasn’t supposed to know
about the Ovid Experiment, and two, it wasn’t the sort of thing you could
easily work into polite conversation. “What did your parents say when
you decided to leave?” he asked.
“It’s not really up to them, is it?” Marshall said. “I’m eighteen. I can
live on my own if I want. Now.” He had peeled J.J.’s sock off and was
cupping his heel in both hands. “Rotate your ankle for me, clockwise.”
J.J. did. And hissed. “It’s broken,” Marshall pronounced. He tossed
his curls out of his eyes. Seth was always going on about how pretty
Marshall’s blue eyes were, and they were, J.J. supposed, although he
probably wasn’t the best judge, but J.J. found them intriguing for another
11
reason. Marshall was one of the few humans who could see werekin
auras. “Was there a reason you were jumping off your roof?” Marshall
asked.
“Just checking my escape routes,” J.J. said, lightly.
“Well, for future reference, even you can’t fall three stories without
busting an ankle,” Marshall said.
Placing J.J.’s bare foot on the carpet, he started rooting through one
of the boxes.
The glass shelves above Marshall’s windows, once full of basketball
trophies and science fair ribbons, were empty, as were his bookshelves,
his desk, and his dresser, hangars all that remained in the closet where
Caroline McLain, entranced, had been hidden for nearly a month.
Leaning back on his elbows, J.J. closed his eyes. Marshall’s bed was
very comfortable. He was tempted to take a nap.
Six weeks ago, J.J. could have made that jump, literally with his
hands tied behind his back. He was getting soft, J.J. thought. He had been
lax about his training since coming to Fairfax. Not by choice; he would
much rather have been at Fort King drilling with the Marines or
meditating with Xanthe than bored stiff sitting in school all day. But
General Burke wanted the werekin to integrate into human society.
When you were a seventeen-year-old werejaguar, that meant going to
high school.
Besides, Seth had this idea J.J. being in school made their mother
happy.
“No offense, but you look pretty rough. Are you all right?”
J.J. opened his eyes. Marshall was kneeling in front of him again,
winding an Ace bandage around his ankle. He was deft at it. “I haven’t
been sleeping,” J.J. said. “Bad dreams.”
“Those are a big deal for telepaths, aren’t they?”
Doc, J.J. thought, was too smart for his own good. “That will heal on
its own,” he said, in place of an answer. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Actually, the downside of your rapid regeneration is that your
bones can knit back together improperly if they aren’t set right away. I
really should splint it, but if you drink this,” Marshall tossed a glass phial
onto the bed, “and leave the bandage on overnight, you should be good
as new by morning.”
Using a sharp thumbnail, J.J. pried the wax stopper out of the phial
and sniffed its contents. The liquid inside was mint-green, and smelled of
sulfur and jasmine. “What is it?” he asked.
“What does it smell like?”
“Healing potion, but not exactly.”
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“That’s because it’s not. Exactly. It’s something Aphrodisia and I
have been working on. It’s safe, I tested it on – ”
But J.J. had already downed the contents. Blech. He shuddered even
as pleasant warmth trickled into his ankle, relieving the bone-deep ache.
“You haven’t improved the taste any,” he managed, handing the phial
back to Marshall.
“It’s medicine,” Marshall said. “It’s not supposed to taste good.”
J.J. didn’t necessarily see the logic in that, but he pulled his sock
back on and started lacing up his boot. “So what’s the improvement, if
not the taste?”
“Effectiveness, for one.” Finished with the first-aid, Marshall went
to lean against the edge of his desk. He seemed relieved to have hit on a
neutral topic. One that didn’t allude to being kicked out of his house
because he was gay, or being brought back from the dead after
committing suicide. “We’re trying to increase the potency while
decreasing the side-effects.”
“I didn’t realize magic potion had side-effects,” J.J. said.
“This isn’t Hogwarts, J.J. Healers don’t stand around waving wands
and saying ‘abracadabra.’ Alchemy is a science, the distillation of
minerals, a lot of which, like mercury, are toxic. You have to get the
dosage just right or you can do more harm than good. Werekin aren’t as
susceptible, because the magic in your blood burns the toxins off faster,
but for humans, including hunters, the toxins can build up in tissues,
where they become fatal after a while. Even werekin shouldn’t take too
much. An overdose can cause paranoia, hallucinations, dizziness – and
no one but me actually cares about this,” Marshall said, “so I’ll stop
talking.” He reached for the letterman’s jacket draped over his footboard.
“Are you going over to McLain’s?”
J.J. was, so they left the house together. The Castle Estates
subdivision was quiet. In the crisp twilight, J.J. could hear branches
sighing on the wind, underwritten by the sweet, trilling notes of Chopin
drifting through the open windows of the columned white house across
Kings Lane. The curtains had been pulled back, allowing squares of
yellow light to decorate the porch.
“Why humans?”
Marshall cocked an eyebrow. “Is this an existential question, like,
‘why is the sky blue’?”
J.J. laughed. Marshall didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He
and J.J. didn’t spend much time in one another’s company. They
certainly didn’t laugh at one another’s jokes. “I meant why are you
making healing potion more effective for humans. Can they really
survive an injury that would take more than one phial to heal?”
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“You’d be surprised what we humans can survive,” Marshall said,
dryly. “We use healing potion as an emergency antidote. The more
potent and less toxic it is, the more we can use to stabilize a patient.
After that, it’s strengthening potion, to help the body rebuild as it
regenerates, without constantly depleting itself. We’ve had to use a lot of
both on Connor.”
They had just started up the McLains’ walk, and J.J. braced for a
snide comment about instincts. After all, just before Connor Burke had
been captured and tortured by LeRoi’s lapdogs Derek Childers and
Aaron Gideon, J.J. had told Seth and Marshall he didn’t trust him.
J.J. had witnessed the torture with his own eyes. There was no
denying that even now Connor was lying in the Fort King infirmary,
recovering from his grisly wounds. But, to be honest, J.J. still didn’t trust
him. A feeling of wrongness had coursed through him the first time he
had seen Connor Burke, intensifying every time he had been around him
since. Something lurked behind Connor’s pretty hazel eyes. Something
he was disturbingly adept at hiding, even from a telepath.
Seth dismissed J.J.’s suspicions as jealousy, because Connor made it
no secret that he liked Cleo. Maybe J.J. was jealous, a little. He knew
Cleo would never feel that way about him, but it was harder than he had
thought it would be to see her maybe feel that way about somebody else,
especially someone handsome and smart and athletic. And he had to
admit, he had no concrete reason for distrusting Connor, other than his
instincts, and J.J. wasn’t sure he could trust those anymore. Living in the
human world, suppressing his true nature to hide the magic in his blood,
sometimes made him wonder if his instincts weren’t being clouded.
“Are the potions working?” he asked.
“Not well,” Marshall admitted. “Most of the nerve damage was
along the spine. We put in a subcutaneous delivery system – sorry, that’s
a disc we insert under the skin, to deliver potion continuously as it
dissolves, instead of in a single concentrated dose – ”
J.J., who was feeling that concentrated dose like a vibration along the
bones of his skull, held McLain’s front door open for Marshall to duck
through. “I’ve never heard of that,” he said.
“It’s something I designed, when Seth was sick.” Marshall
announced this medical breakthrough with characteristic modesty. “I
thought his body could use the strengthening potion more effectively if it
wasn’t being burned off in minutes, but was being constantly supplied to
his tissues. I got the idea from LeRoi’s poisoned bullet – leaking silver
into the body to constantly deplete it. But then Seth was healed by your
Totems, so we never had to use it, until now.”
“And?”
14
“And, like I said, it’s not helping much. Aphrodisia had hoped
Connor would be able to walk again, but now it doesn’t look like he will.
He’s been pushing to come back to – ”
“Marshall!”
The trilling music that had grown louder as they entered the airy
foyer abruptly cut off. A slender, ivory-skinned girl jumped up from a
baby grand piano in the living room and rushed toward them. Her glossy
black hair was pulled up in a complicated French twist. Her pink T-shirt
had a rainbow sequined on the front, her jeans were dotted with
rhinestones on the pockets. It was kind of hard for J.J. to imagine that
this twelve-year-old girl was his kindred’s queen.
He thought she would throw her arms around Marshall, the hero who
had spirited her to safety after the battle at Fort King, but she skidded to
a stop on the hardwood, grabbed Marshall’s wrist, and hauled him
toward the kitchen. “Marshall, you have to talk to Will,” Caroline
McLain said. “He’s not letting me go to school…”
The back door slammed behind them, cutting off the rest of her
words. J.J. could have followed, but he hung back, picking out a few
notes of a Mozart nocturne from memory on the ivory keys.
I will play the swan, and die in music. Elijah Bishop had appended
that line from Shakespeare to the coordinates for a galaxy light years
from Earth – the gateway to the Totems’ home dimension. J.J. looked up
at the pictures of Caroline on the mantel. Most had been taken in the
New Mexico desert, where her brother had been stationed before coming
to Fairfax. McLain had also helped train werekin and hunters at LeRoi’s
private estate in Connecticut, where J.J. had been raised, secretly
working for the Resistance all the while, but he would never have
brought Caroline that close to LeRoi. The Black Swan had been left in
Kate Jensen’s care when he was away.
One photograph, very faded, showed a small, happy family: a darkhaired, dark-eyed man with his arm around a pretty, petite woman
holding a newborn baby girl, a proud big brother just on the verge of
adolescent gawkiness beside them. Joseph and Madeline McLain, Will
and Caroline’s parents, had been human. Caroline McLain was the first
werekin child born to two human parents since the Totems had come to
Earth and blessed the ancient shamans on Lemuria eons ago. A new
breed, the first and only of her kind, destined to raise the werekin
motherland from the depths.
Ursula LeRoi’s voice echoed inside J.J.’s head. I know you, Jeremy
Jonathan. I know the future you have seen.
This is how it ends.
15
***
By the time Seth finished his shower, Lydia, Leigh, and J.J. were
already over at McLain’s. He slipped his letterman’s jacket on as he
bounded out the front door, glancing, by habit, at the dark window of
Marshall’s bedroom. It was going to be weird knowing he wasn’t
sleeping just across the driveway anymore.
He wondered what Marshall was planning to tell everyone at school
about the move.
A clunker van was parked behind Ingrid McLain’s Prius, so Seth
wasn’t surprised when Emery Little hopped up to greet him on the
McLains’ back porch. Emery was in his usual hippie gear, hemp T-shirt
and faded jeans and Birkenstocks, St. Francis medal at his throat, but
there was something different about him. It took Seth a moment to
realize Emery wasn’t glamoured. Seth supposed there was no need, with
Ursula LeRoi in custody, Chimera Enterprises officially shutdown. He
unconsciously touched the pewter jaguar charm around his own neck.
“Where is everybody?” he asked, clasping Emery’s arm below the
elbow – a gladiator handshake. “I thought this was a party.”
“Mom got called to the fort on our way out.” Emery motioned Seth
into one of the wicker chairs drawn up in front of the porch swing.
Whitney was helping Ms. McLain hang a WELCOME HOME banner
above a glass-topped oval table at the other end of the porch. Will
McLain was sitting on the railing, sipping iced tea and talking to Seth’s
mother, who was twisting an auburn curl around her index finger.
“Something about an emergency meeting. The Commanders are always
calling those these days,” Emery added, quickly, seeing the look on
Seth’s face. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I called Dre’s house, but he and
Quinn must already be on their way.” Emery grinned. “And you can
probably guess where our guest of honor is.”
Seth could. The sweet notes of a Chopin sonata joined the chorus of
birdsong in the darkening yard. He had waved to Caroline on his way
through the house.
He was about to ask where Leigh was when the music suddenly
ended, the back door opened, and the Black Swan drug his boyfriend
onto the porch.
Marshall. Seth’s heart did a funny skip-beat. Just a week ago, he had
watched the life drain out of those incredible baby blues, cradled
Marshall in his arms as he breathed his last on the blood-sluiced court of
the Fairfax High gymnasium. Every time he had seen him since, he had
wanted to throw his arms around him, just to feel Marshall’s solid
warmth, and know he was alive.
16
He held back, like he always did, waiting to see if Marshall would
come to him. Seth was always cautious with Marshall. He heard the
queer jokes the other guys cracked, read the graffiti on the bathroom
walls. It wasn’t all directed at the two of them, and it wasn’t everybody,
or all the time, but it was enough for Marshall to walk the halls with his
head down, shoulders hunched like he was expecting a blow.
But Marshall had been different since his resurrection. Not in a
zombie, brains-for-breakfast kind of way; it was how he held himself,
spine straight and chin up, like he had at last settled into his own skin.
As if to prove that, he broke away from Caroline, walked straight
over to Seth, and tucked a hand under his chin, tilting Seth’s face up for a
soft kiss hello. Seth’s brain went instantly fuzzy.
“Hi,” he breathed.
“Hi,” Marshall breathed back.
Someone made a retching sound. Seth glared over Marshall’s
shoulder at Leigh.
Baby sister had picked up another two members of their party: Seth’s
twin and Quinn O’Shea, fresh-faced gorgeous as always in a tank top and
fleece pants, her Lady Knights hoodie tied around her waist. Miss Vixen
led J.J. over to the porch swing and folded into it beside him, resting her
coppery head on his chest. J.J. wrapped an arm casually around her
shoulders, plopping his heel on one of the small wicker tables.
“Oooh, what happened?” Whitney eyed the Ace bandage around
J.J.’s ankle with sisterly concern. She was sitting on Emery’s knee. The
butterfly barrettes in her sleek bob sparkled under the porch lights.
“Jumped off the roof,” J.J. confessed, wryly. “Doc here had to patch
me up.”
“And I thought cats always landed on their feet,” Quinn said.
“I did land on my feet. Hence the broken ankle.”
“Poor baby,” Quinn said. But the hand that brushed J.J.’s hair back
from his forehead was gentle.
Seth wanted to snap her fingers off.
Leigh had flounced into her chair with an exaggerated sigh. J.J.
looked wary. Usually when Leigh’s face was full of thunderclouds, he
was the target of her rage. That morning she had flipped out on him
because he had moved her diary from her dresser to her bed during the
Great Room Switch. Leigh had walked in on him holding it, and started
screeching about other people’s privacy. Matters had not been helped
when J.J. had informed her, with typical J.J. tact, that he didn’t care what
she wrote about Blake or Bobby or Whatever-His-Name-Was (Bryce)
she had been dating before he had dumped her to take another girl to
prom.
17
“This is so unfair,” Leigh announced, without preamble. She must
have been upset; she hadn’t even changed out of her paint-spackled
jeans. As a rule, Leigh did not appear in Will McLain’s presence in less
than full couture. “You try to do something nice for somebody, and it
comes back to bite you in the ass.”
“You did something nice for somebody?” J.J. said.
Leigh glared at him. Emery had attempted to stifle a laugh by taking
a giant gulp of tea, and Marshall was now slapping him on the back as he
coughed. “Yes, J.J., I did something nice for you, giving you my room
and helping you decorate it, which is, like, so much better than you
having to sleep on a cot in the basement – ”
“I like the basement,” J.J. said.
“ – but does that matter? No,” Leigh sailed on, speaking right over
J.J.’s interjection. “All that matters is that I used Daddy’s Amex without
permission. Like he doesn’t totally owe us way more than a few new
pieces of furniture? But now Mom is making me get a job to pay him
back.”
Huffing, she folded her arms across her chest.
“We can take the furniture back,” J.J. offered. “I don’t mind
sleeping in the basement.”
“J.J.” Leigh’s green eyes brimmed with sisterly affection. “That’s so
sweet of you. But we are not kicking you out of your room.” J.J. sighed.
“You could work at Re-Spin,” Emery suggested, wiping his damp
cheeks with a napkin. “Seth has had to go off the schedule for the postseason, because of all the extra practices, and Chaz has been off a lot
since his band is finally starting to get some gigs. Dre picks up some
shifts here and there, but McLain keeps him pretty busy with the
Alliance. We could use somebody else part-time.”
At the mention of Andre Alfaro, Leigh’s porcelain skin had flushed
pink. “We’ll see,” she murmured, finger-fixing her curls with a glance
over her shoulder at McLain.
“Where is Baby Bird, anyway?” Seth asked.
This he directed at Quinn, who was busy playing with J.J.’s hands,
tracing the lacelike scars on his knuckles. Seth stiffened. “I don’t know,”
Quinn said. “When I stopped by to pick him and Alfaro up, their nanna
said Dre got called to Fort King.”
Seth and Marshall traded an uneasy look. Before Seth could work up
the nerve to say anything, Ms. McLain summoned them to the table.
Officially, their party was to celebrate Caroline’s homecoming. With
the formation of the new human-werekin Alliance, under the direction of
General David Burke and Ben Schofield, there hadn’t been a chance to
properly welcome Her Majesty home. McLain had ordered pizza from
18
MoJo’s. Seth and J.J. each took six slices, which annoyed Leigh, who
was perpetually on a diet.
“It sucks we have to go back to school tomorrow,” Leigh said,
forgetting their principal was at the table. “Marshall, what are the
Knights doing about ball practice now that Seth and J.J. blew up the
gym?”
“Oi!” Seth was affronted. “J.J. and I didn’t blow anything up. That
was Chimera Enterprises.” Technically.
“Sacred Heart is letting us use their gym,” Marshall said.
J.J. picked a slice of green pepper off his deep-dish veggie supreme.
“I thought you guys were rivals.”
“We are. But we knocked the Warriors out of the post-season the
other night, before all hell broke loose, so they haven’t got anything to
lose if we win state. And, I think Connor talked to his coach on our
behalf,” Marshall said.
“It is so sad about that boy,” Lydia said. “David is simply crushed.”
David was General David Burke, Connor’s father. “Does anyone know
where his mother is?”
No one seemed to. “We won’t be able to hold prom in the gym this
year, either,” Ms. McLain said. “The school board is arranging for us to
have it at the country club instead.”
“That is so romantic,” Leigh sighed. Leigh was the only one of them
who didn’t have a date for the big dance. Or Seth assumed J.J. was
taking Quinn, based on their lovey-doveyness of late. Marshall had
officially asked Seth a couple of weeks ago.
Lydia sat forward, fingers tight around the stem of her wine glass.
“Ingrid, is that wise? You know most of the Partners are members of the
country club. I don’t like the idea of sending our children into enemy
territory.”
“General Burke already cleared the Partners of any wrongdoing in
LeRoi’s latest attack,” Ms. McLain said. “They’ve all disavowed any
connection to her.”
“I wish I could go to prom,” Caroline said suddenly.
She had been quiet most of the meal, picking at her food instead of
eating it. Seth looked over in surprise as Lydia patted Caroline’s hand.
“You’re a bit young, honey,” she said, gently. “Just you wait. In a few
years, boys will be knocking down your door.”
“And I’ll be there,” McLain said. “Armed.” Lydia grinned.
“But Will won’t even let me go to school,” Caroline persisted,
warming up now that she had an audience. “He’s making me do
homeschool.”
“What’s homeschool?” J.J. asked.
19
“I have to stay home all day, and Aunt Ingrid gives me homework to
do,” Caroline said, sulkily.
J.J. looked at Seth, who busied himself feeding Marshall a black
olive. All right, so he might have neglected to mention the homeschool
option to J.J. It was good for his twin to be in school. Even Leigh agreed
it wasn’t healthy for J.J. to spend all his time playing soldier and training
with Xanthe. Lizardman didn’t even talk. He communicated through
these creepy psychic mind-melds. Seth wasn’t even sure he had a tongue.
“It’s safer this way, Caroline,” Ms. McLain insisted, as her nephew
got up to answer his cell phone. “Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon are
still at large. They’re two of LeRoi’s highest-ranking associates. Until
Will tracks them down, we need to keep you close.”
Caroline was unconvinced. “But the Ark isn’t even complete. I’m no
good to anybody until it’s complete, am I?”
The bite of pizza Seth had just taken suddenly felt like glue in his
mouth. He had to work to chew it up, and swallow. Marshall met Seth’s
eyes across the table, a question written on his face: Do you want to tell
them now?
Seth opened his mouth – and was cut off, by McLain returning to the
table. Lydia pursed her lips. “I suppose they need you at the fort?”
“Duty calls,” McLain said, affably. Only the set of his narrow
shoulders was a warning all was probably not well. “Save me a piece of
that cake, all right?”
He kissed the top of Caroline’s head before walking briskly inside.
Lydia frowned after him.
Caroline McLain slumped down in her seat. “I just want to be
normal,” Seth heard her say, but he thought he was the only one who did.
***
After dessert – Lydia’s angel food cake – Seth went to help Marshall
move his boxes over to Jack Steward’s loft. J.J. would have helped, too,
but Marshall reminded him he needed to stay off his broken ankle while
it healed.
They loaded everything in the trunk of Marshall’s new super-sweet
Lotus Elise. He generously offered Seth the keys, but Seth shook his
head and climbed in the passenger’s side. Alt rock blared from the
speakers when the ignition turned over. Seth winced, and Marshall
switched off the radio. “Still the dreams?” he asked, as he backed out of
the Townsends’ drive. Whitney was standing on the porch with Emery,
waving. Seth thought she was crying.
20
“Just the one dream,” he said. “J.J. and I are on Lemuria, in the
jungle, with the Tortoise Clan. The river turns to blood. The Black Swan
sings, Mt. Hokulani erupts, and we all die, horrible, fiery deaths.” He
scrubbed a hand over his face. His eyelids were bruise-tender.
“And you’re sure it’s a premonition – what will happen if Lemuria is
raised?”
“J.J. says seeing the future is an imprecise art. There are too many
variables in any scenario to predict what will happen. But Xanthe thinks
the dreams are a warning.”
If they were dreams. The nightmares felt eerily similar to the dreams
Caroline McLain had sent Seth while she was entranced. He didn’t know
who would be sending him these dreams, or why. He was hoping Xanthe
could show him how to close his mind to them, to make them stop.
Marshall and J.J. were the only ones Seth had told about the dreams.
And he hadn’t told J.J. all of it. How did you tell the brother who loved
you more than his own skin that you woke up every night screaming
from a nightmare that he betrayed you?
“Hey, Philadelphia.”
Seth blinked. He must have dozed off; they were parked on the curb
outside the Steward and Regent Law Firm, in the shadow of Sacred
Heart Academy’s gray spires. At the end of the block, a street light
buzzed like an angry bee. This section of Fairfax had been hard-hit by
the storm damage wrought by the Source. There were still rings of mud
around the outside of most of the office buildings, marking the progress
of the water that had flooded downtown when the levees on the river
broke.
“Sorry.” Seth smiled sleepily around a yawn. “It’s not the company,
I promise.”
Marshall shifted so he was facing him. “I can drive you home, if
you’re tired.”
Seth heard something else in his voice, though. The air in the car had
developed its own gravity; it pressed on him, quickening the breaths he
had to take to fill his lungs as Marshall leaned across the seat, captured
his chin, and covered Seth’s mouth with his.
Even at their most passionate Marshall’s kisses had ever been
somewhat timid, like he was afraid of doing something wrong,
something Seth wouldn’t like. Not now. He parted Seth’s lips with his, in
total control of the kiss, crawling across the console and pressing Seth
back against his door. The body under his jeans and thermal shirt was
leanly muscled; Seth battled the desire to be stretched out underneath it.
The convertible’s top was down; he could smell the river, and the fog
rolling in, and Marshall, that boy-smell of sweat and cologne.
21
Marshall’s hands slid under his shirt. “We are on the street, you
know,” Seth whispered.
“Are you suggesting we go somewhere more private?” Marshall
whispered back.
He sounded devilish. Seth drew back enough to look into his eyes.
Street lights played in them, like twinkling stars. “Are you serious?”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?”
As a matter of fact, Marshall did not. Seth hesitated. It wasn’t that he
didn’t want this – he had wanted it from the first time he had kissed
Marshall, in his bedroom, before Marshall had even known he was
werekin – but right now, Marshall’s trunk was full of boxes, the detritus
of his former life. Seth knew how it felt to wash up on shore after your
entire life had been shipwrecked. Wasn’t the best time to make lifealtering decisions. “Indiana,” he said, “what are you going to tell people
when they ask why you moved out?”
Marshall sat back. Seth was a little disappointed he didn’t press his
offer, but Marshall wasn’t the type to pressure somebody into something
they weren’t ready for. “I was thinking I’d tell them the truth,” he said. “I
don’t see the point in hiding it, do you?”
“No,” Seth said, softly. “I guess not.”
“Besides, I think they have a right to know.”
Seth, who had started to reach for Marshall again, rethinking that
whole take-it-slow approach, stopped, frowning. “Wait. Who has a right
to know what?”
“Everyone at school. At least, everyone in that file Mr. Steward
showed you. They have a right to know what our parents made us. If you
can even call them our parents.”
Marshall looked down at his hands, the blue of his eyes visible even
through his lashes. Seth stared at him, aghast. “Marshall. Marshall, the
Ovid Experiment is classified above top-secret. Jack wasn’t even
supposed to show it to me. You – you can’t just go around telling people
they’re clones! It would be like telling people I’m werekin. ‘Oh, hi, have
you met my boyfriend? He’s a werejaguar. You know, an ancient alien
race resurrected by an evil megacorporation.’”
“What would be so wrong with that? Why shouldn’t people have to
accept you for what you are?”
“Because,” Seth said, angrily. He couldn’t believe they were having
this conversation. He couldn’t believe Marshall was casually discussing
blowing wide open the largest government conspiracy in the history of
humankind, exposing his entire race to the world. “People aren’t ready.”
“How are we ever going to get them ready, if we don’t talk to
them?” Marshall had adopted that unflappable super-reasonable air he
22
always took on when they argued, and which Seth hated. “Seth, it
doesn’t matter what happens with the Ark. The Black Swan could decide
to blow it up and humans would still be terrified by the power werekin
have. Sooner or later, if you want to stay on this planet, you’re going to
have to tell people what you are, and I think it would be better to just get
–”
Screeching brakes startled them both.
Seth whipped around, hissing – a true cat hiss that showed his teeth.
An SUV with blacked-out windows had roared to a stop on the dark,
quiet street alongside the Lotus Elise, and Marines were jumping out of
it. Seth shoved Marshall behind him, rising into a crouch on the seat,
black rosettes blooming on his cheeks and arms.
“Hang on, Seth,” a familiar voice said, as the ranks of heavily-armed
soldiers parted. “It’s all right.”
“McLain?” Seth said, incredulous. Seeing the captain, he had started
to relax – until he saw how grim McLain looked. Seth shrank back, the
claw tips of his nails resting on the seat, clearly visible to the Marines
surrounding Marshall’s car. “What’s going on?”
McLain looked down at him from the curb. His coffee-colored eyes
were almost black. “I need you to come with us,” he said. “Right now.”
“What for?” Fear made Seth’s voice tight. He could smell the silver
bullets in the Marines’ guns.
McLain sighed. Whatever he was doing, it was obvious he did not
want to be doing it. “Because,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”
23
Chapter Two: What Was Given
The armored SUV did not slow for the gate at Fort King; two
Marines rushed out of the guardhouse to roll it open. They saluted as the
vehicle roared past, slamming to a halt beside the three-headed chimera
fountain. Seth was thrown sideways into the door.
McLain steadied him as Marines started jumping out. He was still
wearing the jeans and flannel he’d had on at the party. “It’ll be all right,
Seth,” he promised.
Seth did not respond, just jumped down and marched under the
prison’s corrugated steel doors on his own power.
He had allowed the soldiers to shackle his wrists with silver
manacles, had climbed willingly into the SUV, which had raced off
while Marshall was hammering on the door of the Steward & Regent
Law Firm, trying to raise Jack. Seth could have skinned, run or fought
back, but he had decided to trust McLain, as McLain had once trusted
him with his sister’s life.
There was more activity than Seth was used to on the prison’s upper
walkways. M.P.s guarding the hunters that had been rounded up and
were being held while Operation Swan Song figured out what to do with
them. Seth expected to be marched up to a cell, but McLain steered him
straight ahead, toward the rotunda. Their footsteps rang on the obsidian
floor. Seth could almost feel the weight of the collar around his neck.
Knowing he had defeated the collar’s magic once before was cold
comfort, since he had never fully understood how he had managed to
survive that night in the clearing.
“Will!”
Just inside the rotunda, Seth and McLain turned. Jack Steward was
striding toward them, in his weekend gear of jeans and a Georgetown
sweatshirt. His trim mustache and goatee were more liberally streaked
with gray than they had been on New Year’s Eve, when Seth had turned
up on his doorstep. Marshall was hurrying behind him.
A guard stepped into their path. “Sir, this is a restricted area. You
can’t go in.”
“That is my son.” Jack’s gray eyes were flinty.
McLain sighed. “It’s all right, Corporal. Let them through.”
The guard moved aside. Jack stalked into the rotunda and threw his
briefcase down on the long table where the Alliance Commanders, minus
Ben Schofield, were already assembled, in the shadow of the fifteenfoot-tall black swan statue.
When Seth had first been inside Fort King, Caroline McLain had
been imprisoned under a glass dome where that statue now stood. Then
24
the windows had been barred. Angelo Alfaro had shattered them, to save
their kindred from a cloud of silver powder; they had been replaced by a
single pane of black glass etched with a tree made from Lemurian
glyphs. The word for home burned like a brand against Seth’s eyes. He
looked away. He had never been able to study the tree for long without
feeling an odd buzz in the back of his head, like the sick-dizzy high you
got off too much caffeine and sugar.
Melody Little had risen from her seat. Her small nose was very pink.
The other Commanders – freckle-faced Ozzie Harris; copper-haired
Josephine O’Shea; boorish Clyde Dowling; cat-eyed Logue Ampon – all
appeared similarly ruffled. Logue’s fair hair was downy as fur. “Will, for
God’s sake, take the cuffs off him,” Melody squeaked.
“I’m under orders.”
McLain’s tone was cardboard-stiff, but his eyes pleaded with
Melody to understand. She twitched her mousy braid irritably over her
shoulder.
Marshall and Jack had come to stand beside Seth. “What is it he’s
supposed to have done?” Jack demanded.
Seth had been wondering that himself. The only thing he could think
of made no sense. His blood, Agathon had said. His choice.
McLain’s answer was cut short by a flurry in the corridor. J.J.
padded into the rotunda – the guard didn’t even attempt to stop him –
with Lydia in tow, looking almost as ferocious as Seth’s twin. McLain
looked piqued. “Lydia? Who called you?”
“We noticed you didn’t,” J.J. said. Pale spots were standing out on
his cheeks. McLain tensed. If J.J. skinned, it would not be an accident.
The transformation still threatened to take Seth by surprise sometimes,
when his emotions were running high, but J.J. exerted absolute control
over the magic in his blood. “Does somebody want to tell me what the
hell is going on?”
Before anyone could, the guard at the door snapped to attention,
saluting General David Burke as he marched into the room. The medals
on his uniform caught the light.
With him was the oddly matched pair of Ben Schofield and Andre
Alfaro.
Seth felt a rush of relief. Ben wouldn’t stand for him to be collared.
Ben’s flannel shirt strained over his broad shoulders. His belt buckle
was a snarling bear. Seemed to match his mood at the moment. Ducking
his head, Dre scooted away from him, over to the table, and perched on
the edge. Seth wondered if Baby Bird had actually gotten smaller, or if
the suede jacket he was wearing, probably for Caroline’s party, just made
it seem that way; his quick, dark eyes darted from Seth to Ben as Ben
25
walked over, picked up Seth’s hands, and snapped the silver cuffs with a
single yank.
“Thanks,” Seth said, softly. Ben just nodded. Under his whiskers,
his grizzled cheeks were darkly flushed.
Burke wisely chose not to object. Nobody wanted an angry bear on
their hands.
Taking a seat at the head of the table, Burke waved a hand at Dre,
who hopped to his feet, picked up a remote control, and pointed it at the
wall, shooting an apologetic glance at Seth, as if to say, I’m not part of
this. Mystified, Seth watched the long, flat screen there flicker to life.
He gasped.
They were looking at the Ark, hundreds of feet below this very
room, but an incredible change had been effected in it. The golden liquid
that had flowed out from the central orb, pumping like ichor through the
crystal web, had turned red, red as blood, coloring the sloping obsidian
walls with hellish light. J.J.’s eyes narrowed to metallic slivers, flashing
from the screen to Seth’s face. Seth looked down at his shoes. Oops.
“As you can see,” Burke drawled, “the artifact is complete.”
Logue hissed. Literally. His werelynx eyes were cat-yellow, his
sharp nails digging into the wood of the tabletop. Logue was young, and
completely cool. He always wore shredded jeans and a skull bandana and
motorcycle boots, and he drove a Harley Chopper that made Seth’s
Yamaha look like a tricycle. “The artifact? Is that why you’ve arrested
the specimen whose blood completed it?”
Burke flushed. “The Ark,” he corrected himself. “The Ark is
complete. I was informed of this earlier tonight, when Lieutenant Jensen
called me to report that the glyphs her team had begun translating on the
outside of the Source had mysteriously disappeared.” Glances were
traded among the Commanders, suggesting this was the first they were
hearing about that. “Then I find out this is going on,” Burke jerked a
thumb at the screen, “and it didn’t take much of a leap for me to figure
out Seth Sullivan had given his blood to the Ark.”
Lydia rested a hand on Seth’s back. “Honey, is that true?”
Seth nodded. “Yes, but I – ”
“General.” Ben’s thick Louisiana drawl lent weight to his words.
“No one here wants a war.”
Seth was so taken aback he stumbled into J.J.
Keep quiet. J.J.’s voice was clear and cold inside Seth’s mind. His
whole body was rigid in a way Seth didn’t like. He wished someone
would explain to him why his decision to add his blood to the Ark had
become the basis for an interspecies incident.
26
Burke ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. From Marshall, Seth knew
the general had been spending hours at his son’s bedside, upstairs in the
fort’s infirmary. He looked exhausted. “Commanders, you have to
understand the position I’m in,” he said. “Werekin aren’t the only ones
taking a risk with this Alliance. My government trusts you not to
overpower humankind. Now it looks like you’ve fooled us into leaving
your Gen-0s in charge of the Ark, for the sole purpose of completing it
with this young man’s blood, at which point the so-called weapon you
left in our hands, as a show of good faith for your peaceful intentions,
closes up before we can translate the glyphs that might tell us how it
works. If that’s not a strategy, it’s one damn big coincidence.”
He sat back, waiting on an explanation.
Jack turned to Seth. The lines around his mouth were drawn tight. It
had not been lost on Seth that Jack had called him his son, though Seth
was not. “Seth, maybe you should tell us what happened,” he suggested.
Seth glanced at J.J. When his twin gave no sign either way, Seth
confessed, “It was pretty much spur of the moment. Cleo and I went for a
drive, to talk about her leaving for Roswell, and Marshall was here,
visiting Connor, and I just – decided.”
It sounded so lame when he put it like that, but Seth did not know
how to put into words the series of events that had culminated in his
choice the night before. Marshall sacrificing his life to protect the Black
Swan. Caroline McLain decreeing that the werekin would remain on
Earth, while Lemuria, and the power inside of it, would remain beneath
the seas. J.J. deciding to stay in Fairfax. Cleo, telling Seth she was in
love with him, and it was breaking her in half.
He hadn’t even shared that with Marshall.
Burke folded his hands on the tabletop. Like his son, he had hazel
eyes. Seth could imagine, before it had turned iron-gray, that his hair had
been the same caramel shade of blonde. The resemblance between them
ended there. Connor’s features were delicate as glass, his father’s
chiseled as if from stone. “Then no one instructed you to do this?”
“No,” Seth said. “Who would have ‘instructed’ me to do it? The
Alpha Clan guards the Ark, and Agathon told me it was my blood. My
choice. That’s the only time we ever talked about it.”
“And no one pressured you?”
Bewildered, Seth shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand
what you’re getting at.”
“He thinks I asked you to do it,” J.J. said. “For LeRoi. That’s what
they all think.”
His golden eyes swept the room. Even Melody lowered her gaze.
27
Burke looked at J.J. like a scorpion he had found crawling over his
foot. “You have to admit, it would play into LeRoi’s hands,” he said.
“Complete the Ark, secure the Source. Force a war between werekin and
humans that would inevitably result in the winning side raising Lemuria,
controlling the power of the Totems.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” J.J. said, “Ursula LeRoi is enjoying a
nice long stay in one of this fort’s deepest, darkest dungeons. I don’t see
how anything short of a file baked into a pie is playing into her hands.”
“I understand the vote to spare her life was a close one.” A cool
smile tipped onto Burke’s lips. “You argued for mercy, didn’t you,
Jeremy?”
Seth looked at J.J., astonished. “I had my reasons,” J.J. said.
“Would those be the same reasons you called Ursula LeRoi your
mother for seventeen years? The same reasons you haven’t seemed to
bond very well with your own mother?”
“That is enough.”
Lydia’s voice was brittle, like ice about to crack – right before a
shard of it spears you through the heart. She laid a hand on J.J.’s arm,
facing down Burke with eyes of pure, ferocious emerald.
“My son,” she went on, icily, “was kidnapped from our home as an
infant, reared in captivity, subjected to the stars know what tortures, in
the service of a project under your command.” Burke’s neck flushed red
above his uniform collar. “Ursula LeRoi may be a monster, David, but
much of what she did, she did with the consent of your government. The
only thing my son has ever done is help you stop her from destroying the
world. So I think I’ve had enough of you calling him a traitor.”
J.J.’s posture did not relax. He just stood there, a granite statue of a
boy. Seth wanted so badly to comfort him, except he didn’t know how.
Jack cleared his throat. “While we’re on the subject of charges,” he
said, “I should remind you, General, that whatever else Seth may be, he
is a citizen of the United States. He is not one of your Marines. He is not
subject to military jurisdiction.”
Burke was dismissive. “Project Ark gave clear discretion to the
military in handling all werekin infractions.”
“Which is why,” Jack said, “when Project Ark was disbanded, I
advised the Commanders to insist that article be revised, ensuring
werekin due process outside of military tribunals, in civilian court. It was
a condition of their agreement to the Alliance. I have the paperwork right
here, if you want to review it.” Jack patted his briefcase. Seth tried not to
smirk. There were times having a lawyer for a step-father, particularly
one who was willing to mortgage his own soul to win a case, totally
rocked.
28
Josephine O’Shea leaned forward. She was an older version of
Quinn, if Quinn had worn pencil skirts and tailored blouses. “Personally,
I’d like to know what law Seth is supposed to have broken. He gave
freely what the rest of our kind had forcibly taken from us. How is that a
crime?”
Clyde snorted, something about an excellent question. Ozzie was
bobbing his head.
“Josie, it just complicates things,” McLain said. He sounded tired.
Seth bit his lip, stabbed by sudden guilt. He hadn’t thought through what
completing the Ark would mean for Caroline McLain. The Black Swan’s
blood was now more precious than ever. Meanwhile Regent and Gideon
were still out there, LeRoi was still alive, and someone was sending Seth
dreams about the apocalypse.
Perhaps giving his blood to the Ark hadn’t been the right thing to do
after all.
Like he was reading Seth’s thoughts, Ben growled, “What was given
cannot be taken back. Seth should not be punished for doing what he felt
was right.”
Seth took a breath. Right now, the Alliance was perched on a knife’s
edge. His arrest represented more than a question of his own future. If
the Commanders turned on Burke for collaring one of their own, LeRoi
would get her wish. Humans and werekin would go to war.
“I won’t fight,” Seth said. “If you decide to arrest me, I won’t fight.
I didn’t mean to break any laws, but if I did, I’ll accept the
consequences.”
He could see it was not what Burke had expected him to say. His
eyes widened, then narrowed; after a moment, he rose. Seth was
reminded of nothing so much as an old lion limping away from his pride
at the end of a long, difficult reign.
“Go home, Mr. Sullivan,” Burke said, heavily. “I don’t believe you
intended any harm by your actions, however rash they may have been.
God willing, your part in all of this is finished.”
***
Running without Marshall the next morning felt like the end of an
era. Their running regimen had been interrupted before, but this was
different, a farewell to a part of their past they would never get back,
when Marshall was the boy next door. The sound of his lone footfalls on
the pavement left Seth oddly hollow.
He ran farther than he normally did, leaving the paved trails in Castle
Park for the dirt paths through the woods. Birds sang to him from newly29
budded branches; winter was fast losing ground to spring, though a light
layer of frost glistened on the grass. The storm damage was more
noticeable out here than it was in their subdivision, trees stripped of bark,
saplings uprooted, limbs snapped off. For the past week, Seth and the
rest of his teammates had helped clear away the trees that had blocked
roads and smashed houses. It was a miracle no one had been killed.
Lydia wouldn’t have liked him running this far off the beaten path,
but Seth, for the first time in his life, was unafraid of hunters. He didn’t
even start at sounds in the underbrush. Regent and Gideon might be on
the prowl, hatching plots on LeRoi’s behalf, but Seth no longer saw how
those plots could possibly concern him. He had given his blood to the
Ark. That was all LeRoi had ever really wanted from him. Burke had
said it himself. Seth was of no value to Chimera anymore.
They could decide just to kill him, but Seth wasn’t really worried
about that, either. Regent did not kill without purpose. Even Naomi he
had killed to fuel Seth’s rage against the hunters. Seth had not joined the
Alliance. He was not a soldier like J.J. Whether the werekin chose to
travel beyond the stars or to remain on Earth was out of his hands.
Seth thought of his dream, and Marshall asking if it was a
premonition, what would happen if Lemuria was raised, then suggesting
werekin couldn’t continue to hide their true selves if they wanted to
make their home on Earth. Seth couldn’t see how either future would
play out, but he had started to wonder: If this wasn’t the right time for
Lemuria to be raised, why had the Totems blessed Caroline McLain
now? Why had the jaguar gods chosen Seth and J.J. now? For that matter,
why had the Tortoise Clan shown Elijah Bishop how to find Mt.
Hokulani, setting into motion this whole chain of events?
Regent had once told Seth he was missing the forest for the trees.
Seth was starting to think he had been right.
His thoughts carried him back to Kings Lane, where he slowed for
his cool down, hands on his hips. Almost no one was out and about in
Castle Estates this early, just a utility truck rolling slowly through the
four-way stop at Queens Boulevard, the tinted windows hiding all but the
shape of the driver. Since the storm, the power company had been
working overtime repairing damaged lines.
Lights were on in the Stewards’ kitchen when Seth opened the back
door, stamping grass off his dew-damp shoes onto the monographed rug.
His mother was at the stove. Will McLain was leaning against the
counter, duty cap stuck in the back pocket of his fatigues. His fingers
were curled around a steaming coffee mug.
The phrase “cut the tension with a knife” came to mind.
“Morning,” Seth said, brightly.
30
Lydia placed the skillet on the stove with a bang. She had belted a
silk robe over her nightgown. “Honey, why don’t you go upstairs and
shower? Breakfast won’t be ready for a bit.”
Trying to get rid of him, was she? Seth grabbed a package of Oreos
out of the cabinet and hopped up on the teak island in the center of the
kitchen. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
Startled, McLain looked up from his mug. The ashen cast to his
suntanned complexion suggested he hadn’t been to bed since seeing Seth
into his mother’s Escalade at the fort last night. He had tried to
apologize, but Lydia had slammed the door in his face and roared off
with Seth and J.J. in the back. “I don’t see how that would be necessary,
Seth,” McLain said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Maybe not, but I didn’t consider the danger I was putting Caroline
in by completing the Ark. I know you just got her back,” Seth said,
“so…I’m sorry.”
Lydia’s eyes cut toward McLain on his sharp intake of breath. “Seth,
Caroline isn’t your responsibility,” he said. “She’s mine. She’s been
mine for a long time. I would have lost her a few weeks ago if it weren’t
for you and J.J. In fact, I’m not sure I ever said thank you for that.”
Will McLain was a Marine. He didn’t make a lot of heartfelt
speeches. Slipping his cap out of his pocket, he slapped it awkwardly
against his leg. “As for the rest of it, like I came over here to tell your
mom, I’m sorry it went so far. Arresting you wasn’t an order I wanted to
follow, but I hoped if I did, instead of refusing and having Burke send
someone else, I could keep the situation under control. Keep you safe. I
understand if that’s too little, too late.”
“I was never mad at you,” Seth said, honestly.
A half-smile caught McLain’s mouth, creasing the tanned skin at the
corners of his eyes. Setting his mug down on the counter, he arranged his
cap over his dark hair. “Well, I should be going. Thank you for the
coffee, ma’am.”
He went out then. As the back door closed behind him, Lydia picked
the coffee mug up as though considering whether to chuck it out the
window, at McLain’s head as he crossed the drive. Smiling knowingly to
himself, Seth loped up the stairs to shower.
***
Seth had expected Lydia to drive them to school, since Marshall
wasn’t next door to carpool with anymore, and he, Leigh, and J.J. all
would have been a tight fit on his Yamaha. But she had left for Fort King
by the time he came downstairs, dressed.
31
Leigh and J.J. were on opposite ends of the couch, J.J. reading Of
Mice and Men, their assignment for Miss Janowitz, Leigh flipping
through Cosmo. This just said so much about his siblings’ outlooks on
life. “Is Jack picking us up?” Seth asked.
“No,” Leigh said. She still wasn’t speaking to her father. “Mom left
pancakes for you on the counter.”
Seth retrieved his plate from the kitchen and collapsed into Jack’s
old recliner. Captain Hook eyed him hopefully from the hearth. “What
are you reading about?” Seth asked. Unless baby sister was a speed
reader, she was leafing through the magazine rather fast.
“Nothing, really.” Leigh turned a page. “Just looking at prom
dresses.”
Seth swallowed the half a chocolate-chip-and-banana pancake he had
just folded into his mouth. “I thought Bryce was taking Yena.”
“Who says Bryce Heilsdale is the only boy on the planet?”
Seth rolled his eyes. “Okay. I’ll bite. Who asked you to prom? And
you better not say Cam,” he added. “We have a deal. You never date
Cam Foss. Ever.”
Leigh was looking all mysterious, prepared to drag out the suspense
(which was just cruel, when your older brother was a cat with a curiosity
complex), but J.J. said, “Dre asked her.”
Leigh whirled on him, so fast an auburn curl came loose from her
ponytail. “How did you know that?”
“I’m psychic,” J.J. said.
“It was the cat, wasn’t it? Evil. Warlock. Kitten.” Leigh looked
around for Poe like she was planning to stab her with her Prada heel.
“For the last time,” J.J. said, “Poe isn’t a warlock. She’s a familiar.
And she didn’t tell me.” He laid his book down. Might have been just the
watery light streaming through the windows, but the shadows under his
round golden eyes looked like streaks of tar. “Dre told me.”
“He did?” Leigh, for some reason, was whispering.
“Yup. And he told me you shot him down. Something about you
don’t date freaks.”
For once, Leigh did not have a snide comeback. She fixed the hem of
her velvet dress over her knees, avoiding her brothers’ eyes. “I didn’t
mean because of the werekin thing. I meant because of how he dresses,
that stupid hat and those dorky suspenders, and how he’s always got his
nose glued to the screen of some laptop. I wouldn’t have said it if I’d
known he was going to take it so personally. I don’t think werekin are
freaks.”
“I’m so relieved,” J.J. said, coldly.
32
Seth gave him a look. Leigh obviously felt bad. “Leigh, just tell him
you’re sorry, and you want to go to prom with him,” he said. “Baby Bird
is groovy. He’ll be okay with it.”
Leigh nodded. She seemed to be trying not to cry, but just then a
horn honked. “That’ll be Jack,” Seth said, forgetting Leigh had said it
wouldn’t be until he was out the front door, sliding his arms through his
letterman’s jacket as he bounded toward –
An aquamarine Lotus Elise.
Whitney was skipping out the Townsends’ front door, the book of
Shakespearean sonnets Emery had given her clutched to her chest. She
dove into the back as Seth vaulted over the door on the passenger’s side.
“Indiana!” he said, at the same time Whitney cried, “Marshall,” and
threw her arms around him from behind, pecking him on the cheek.
Marshall laughed. “I should move out more often,” he said.
J.J. climbed in the back, with Leigh, and braced his combat boots
against Seth’s seat. He only unwillingly doffed the camouflage for jeans
and T-shirts on school days.
They rode with the top down, though it was a little cool for it. This
was the only accommodation Marshall would make to the super-coolness
of his new ride. Seth would have been hot-rodding up and down the
expressway, seeing how many stoplights he could make in a row.
“How’s the ankle?” Marshall asked, looking in the rearview mirror at J.J.
“Fantastic,” J.J. said.
Marshall raised an eyebrow at Seth, who shook his head. Not about
you.
Heads turned as the convertible turned into Fairfax High’s upper lot
– even for the Castle Estates crowd, the Lotus was a high-end car, on par
with somebody turning up in a Lamborghini. Marshall parked in his
usual spot, unofficially reserved for him, the ball team’s golden boy
alpha, though Marshall would have been mortified to know that. Whitney
turned to stare at the school. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
Seth felt that pretty well summed it up. Fairfax High was a
Burtonesque medieval Alice in Wonderland castle, with turrets on its
corners and a white-and-black checkered stone façade. Only now, where
the gym had been was a crater filled with twisted girders and fractured
stones, glass sparkling in the bottom like glitter. Dump trucks and
backhoes were parked around it, the entire east wing roped off with red
CAUTION tape strung between orange barrels. The medieval knight that
guarded the entrance had lost his sword, so now it looked like the threeheaded chimera he had been about to slay was rounding for an attack.
Seth hoped that wasn’t an omen.
33
They all climbed out of the car and started for the school. Seth’s
heart was suddenly in his throat, for Marshall had, quite casually, slipped
his fingers through his.
Seth was sure people were staring at them, but he didn’t really see.
They passed the lower lot, where the Haven kids parked their clunker
cars. He glimpsed Angelo Alfaro’s beaded dreads but just kept walking,
half-aware of Leigh exclaiming about the devastation to the gym, of
Whitney wondering aloud who would be taking Dr. Gideon’s place as
their Bio teacher now. From the corners of his eyes, he saw people
grouping up around lockers, whispering in tight huddles. He checked to
see how Marshall was taking this.
Marshall smiled down at him, popping out the dimple in his cheek.
All of a sudden, Seth was walking on air.
They had lost Whitney and Leigh somewhere. J.J. had branched off
at the lower lot. (It was like he had a homing beacon for Quinn O’Shea.)
They were almost to Marshall’s locker when someone called out,
“Townsend! Where you been, dawg? I heard we’re – ”
Marshall looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Cam.”
Cam had stopped in his tracks. His green eyes had rounded in shock.
Bryce Heilsdale sidestepped him. “Dude, don’t stop in the middle of
the road. You’re blocking traffic. How ya doin’, Philly?”
And he smiled, like there was nothing out of the ordinary at all about
Seth and Marshall holding hands.
Dark-skinned Topher Simmons and gangly Gabe Cochran, the
Knights’ forwards, were right behind him. “You guys see the gym?”
Gabe asked, evenly. “It is seriously thrashed.”
“I was just saying, you know, if a tornado was going to wipe out the
gym, it’s too bad it didn’t take out the whole school,” Topher said. “At
least that way we could’ve gotten longer than a week off from class.”
“Class beats hauling trees off houses,” Bryce rejoined.
Seth could have hugged them all. He had thought Marshall’s pack
would be cool with their alpha dating him, but for them to just go on like
everything was normal, to just let it be normal, was more than he had
dared hope for.
“Is it true we’re practicing at Sacred Heart tonight?” Gabe asked.
“Right after school,” Marshall said. “That’s where the sectionals
championship will be on Saturday, too. I talked to Coach last night.” He
and Seth uncoupled for Marshall to shrug out of his letterman’s jacket.
Seth grinned as Marshall hung it inside his locker. Underneath he was
wearing a Blue Devils shirt. Seth still had the Duke scout’s card in his
wallet.
34
“So where’s the victory party gonna be,” Topher said, “your place,
or Cam’s? ’Cause we got this trophy in the bag, y’all.”
Marshall closed his locker and turned around. “Yeah, about that. I
sort of – moved out.”
Topher and Gabe looked at one another. “Wow,” Bryce said.
“That…that really sucks. Do you need somewhere to stay?”
“No, but thanks. I’m staying with Leigh Steward’s dad. He’s got a
spare room.” Seth was fidgeting with the cuffs on his jacket; Marshall
reached over, taking his hand again. “But the reason I moved out, that’s
something I wanted to talk to you guys about.”
“Marshall,” Seth hissed. Bryce and Topher and Gabe were shuffling
their feet. If they thought Marshall was about to drop the gay bomb, they
had no idea what was really in store. Seth was dumbfounded. He had
nearly gotten black-bagged last night for adding his blood to the Ark.
Had that not shown Marshall the severity of what they were dealing
with? “Marshall, I don’t think we need to talk about this right now,” he
said. Or, you know, ever.
“It’s okay, Philly,” Gabe said, quickly. “We get it. We don’t care.”
“Bullshit, Cochran.”
Seth had been pretending Cam wasn’t standing across the hall,
staring at them with that rattlesnake smirk of his. Now, Cam pushed off
his locker and sauntered through the crowd, which was thinning as the
first bell loomed. He lifted his chin at Marshall. “So this is how it’s
gonna be? You’re just rubbing it in everybody’s faces that you’re a fag?”
Topher stood up straight. He was as lanky as Gabe, but even taller
than Marshall. “You need to watch your mouth, Foss.”
“It’s okay, Topher,” Marshall said, quite calmly, and turned to Cam.
He seemed to have been steeled for this. “Cam, Seth and I are going out.
If I want to hold his hand, like you do with Shanti, what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I’m not a faggot,” Cam said. Gabe put a hand on
Topher’s arm, to restrain him. Cam sneered at them both. “You guys are
really gonna stand here and act like this doesn’t bother you?”
No one said anything. No one seemed to know what to say.
Cam swung back around on Marshall. His smirk was gone; without
it, he just looked mean. “Does this mean you’re over your little crush on
my father?”
Marshall flushed. The others looked confused, but Seth knew that
was a low blow, after how Dr. Foss had acted when Marshall was staying
over at Cam’s last summer. “Cam, I think I was wrong about that,”
Marshall started. “I think something else was going on that night, and
that’s what I wanted to talk to you about – ”
35
“I don’t want to hear it.” Cam’s cheeks, normally as pale as his
gelled-up hair, were painfully red. If he hadn’t been such a creep, Seth
might have felt sorry for him. “It’s not like I haven’t known for a long
time what you are. But if you think I’m going to play ball with a bunch
of flaming queers, get laughed at every time we come out of the locker
room together, you can forget it. I’ll step down from the team today.”
“Cam.” Marshall’s hand was ice-cold in Seth’s. “Don’t do this. It’s
our senior year. Our last chance to win state. We’ve wanted to be state
champs since we were in grade school. Remember? All those hours we
put in practicing, talking about having that blue-and-gold banner hanging
up across the gym, our pictures in the trophy case to show our kids?
We’re almost there.” Cam worked his jaw. Marshall took a half-step
toward him. “You’re my best friend. You’ve always been my best friend.
Don’t you see? It doesn’t have to be like this.”
For a moment, staring into Marshall’s earnest baby blues, Cam
wavered. Seth saw it, saw the struggle that was going on inside of him,
one he wasn’t sure even Cam wholly understood. But whatever it was he
was thinking, when he looked at Seth, his face went hard again.
“Good luck winning state without me,” he said, and walked away.
36
Chapter Three: The Prince of Cats
About the only thing J.J. could say for the cuisine in the Fairfax High
cafeteria was that it offered an abundance of meat, hard to come by in a
vegan household, and a necessity for jaguars. In the lunch line behind
Seth, he loaded up his tray with two double cheeseburgers and two
baskets of fries. “So Calvin really quit the team?” he said.
“Cam,” Seth corrected, reflexively. “And yes. He went to Coach
after first period. That’s why I got called out of English. Coach wanted to
hear from me and Marshall what was going on.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth,” Seth said dully. “That Cam won’t play on a team with
two gay guys.”
“Did Doc punch him again?”
Seth shook his head. “That was kind of a one-time thing. Marshall
doesn’t usually hit people.”
J.J. felt this was a waste of Marshall’s natural talents. He handed his
money to the lunch lady and stepped out of the flow of traffic, waiting
for Seth as he rifled through his pockets for change. “What will you do
about the championship game?” he asked.
“I don’t know. None of the guys on our bench are very good, and I
can’t play circles around the other team when General Burke wants
werekin kept a state secret. But anyway.” Seth picked up his tray. “It’s
just a stupid game, right? I wanted to apologize for not telling you about
giving my you-know-what to the A-r-k.”
Miss Janowitz frowned at him as she passed by, glasses scooted
down to the end of her nose. Even in his letterman’s jacket Seth managed
to look like he had a lock-pick secreted on him somewhere. Maybe it was
the secondhand jeans and the DON’T HATE THE PLAYER Pac-Man Tshirt. Maybe it was that he was a werecat and slunk when he walked,
purred when he laughed. Seth prided himself on blending in with
humans, but no werekin ever did, really. “You don’t have to do that,” J.J.
said.
“Do what?” Seth said.
“Act like the stuff that’s important to you isn’t, just because other
stuff is important to me,” J.J. said. Seth’s lips twitched, the first hint of a
smile J.J. had seen from him since he had gotten called out of class. For
Seth, that was a long time.
Over at the ballplayers’ table, Marshall was huddled up with his
teammates. What’s-His-Face Foss and his snotty little cheerleader
girlfriend were across the room with some of the j.v. guys, laughing too
loudly. J.J. saw Seth look from them to Marshall, his smile dissolving.
37
“Go on,” J.J. urged, gently. “Sit with Doc. Figure out your basketball
strategy. We can talk about the Ark after school. I’ll meet you at Sacred
Heart after your practice, and we can ride out to Fort King together, for
your training with Xanthe. You’re still going, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Seth said.
Fairfax High’s cafeteria was rigidly segregated, humans on one side,
aliens on the other: Castle Estates, Haven Heights, on either side of a
white-columned dividing line. To an outside observer, the divide would
have seemed to be the rich kids and the poor kids. J.J., though a resident
of Castle Estates, blended right in with the Haven crowd – secondhand
jeans and T-shirt, the magic in his blood strong enough to turn heads. As
none of the Haven kids had bothered with glamours today, they were all
attracting more glances than usual.
At Emery Little’s table, J.J. hooked a chair toward him. Quinn
picked her backpack up off the seat and moved it to the floor. “Mind if I
sit here?” J.J. asked, belatedly. These little human niceties still escaped
him.
“I was saving it for you,” Quinn said. She flipped her coppery hair
over her shoulder. There was no magic in her blood to call to his, yet J.J.
felt a different kind of pull when he looked at Quinn.
Angelo Alfaro had the chair across from his. Perched beside him, his
adopted brother Dre looked especially miniature; his signature newsboy
cap was askew on his dark head, his pinstripe pants held up by limegreen suspenders. Alfaro was wearing the Chicago Bulls jersey that
seemed to be his favorite item of clothing, for obvious reasons.
J.J. poured ketchup on his cheeseburger. “Does this bother you?” he
asked, with real interest.
The gap between Aflaro’s front teeth, coupled with the gold bull ring
through his nose, made his grin somewhat unsettling. “Would it bother
you if my shoes were stitched together with cat gut?”
J.J. sighed and reached for his fries.
All anyone wanted to talk about was the Ark. Serena Jensen leaned
in, the light hitting her gray eyes just right to highlight the slit serpentine
pupils. “Kate told me the glyphs on the Source just disappeared, like
that.” She snapped her fingers. “Why do you think the Totems designed
it that way? Don’t we need the Source now that the Ark is complete, if
we ever want to raise Lemuria?”
J.J. had his ideas, but wasn’t ready to share them yet. “Does Burke
know Lieutenant Jensen is your sister?” he asked, instead.
Serena nodded. She was a sinuous girl with brown hair cropped
short, fashioned into piecey spikes above her ears. She and her girlfriend
Zoe Campbell, an olive-skinned wereotter, always dressed in faded jeans
38
and tight rocker-chick T-shirts. The Castle Estates girls all wore
expensive gold charm bracelets their boyfriends bought them from
Cochran Jewelers. Serena’s slender wrists were laddered with the
colorful beaded bracelets Zoe designed herself. She toyed with them as
she answered. “Our mom helped form the Underground. She and Ingrid
McLain are sisters – Will and Caroline are my cousins. That’s how my
parents met. My father is werekin, Gen-2. Kate was born human. If she’d
been born in captivity, she would have been raised a hunter, like Cleo.”
Quinn snuck a fry off J.J.’s tray. She had stiffened almost
imperceptibly. “What effect is this having on the Alliance, Ozzie?”
Ozzie Harris, at eighteen the youngest of the Commanders, scraped
his fingers through his sandy hair. “It’s a bloody mess,” he said, bluntly.
“Clyde wants to pitch the Alliance aside and raise Lemuria before the
humans get it in their heads to wipe us all out. Of course we don’t know
how to do that now that the Source has closed itself off to us, but you
know Clyde. Never one to bother about the details.
“Still, if the Black Swan was willing, I think that’s how the vote
would come down.” Ozzie shook his head. “Burke shouldn’t have
arrested Seth. Treating him like a common criminal for giving his blood
to the Ark, when it was partly on Burke’s orders that all of us were
rounded up and registered against our consent all the years Project Ark
was underway? Shady, mate,” he said, darkly. “Real shady. I called Dre
to come warn you guys, but McLain got to Seth before Dre got to you.”
“I appreciate it all the same,” J.J. said.
“I trust you.” Ozzie’s blue eyes looked levelly into J.J.’s. “You and
Ben Schofield and the Black Swan are about the only ones I do trust. I
certainly don’t trust Burke.”
Emery was chewing on the end of his ponytail – a nervous habit.
Whitney placed a hand over his. “What do you think, J.J.?” she asked.
J.J. spun the cap off his soda bottle on the tabletop. “I think we have
to accept the possibility that the humans may feel threatened enough to
go to war with us.”
A collective intake of breath swept the table. Alfaro sat back slowly.
Before J.J. came along, Angelo Alfaro had been the undisputed leader of
this pack, but werecats were the fiercest of the warrior breeds, naturalborn pack alphas. From the moment of his arrival, the Haven kids had
looked to J.J. to lead them. Alfaro had never seemed to mind. J.J. got the
impression he would have liked to be more like Seth – a normal human
teenager. “Do you really think Burke wants that?”
“Burke? No,” J.J. said, honestly. “But Burke won’t be the one who
decides. He told us to gather our forces, to put on a show of strength that
would make his superiors think twice about attacking us. Remember?”
39
Emery and Dre bobbed their heads in unison. They had both been
present for the Black Swan’s first meeting with General Burke. You were
meant to be united, he had told their queen. If you stand together, no
force on Earth will be able to defeat you.
What J.J. did not say out loud was that he agreed with General
Burke. A war between humans and werekin played right into LeRoi’s
hands. More than anything, LeRoi wanted Lemuria raised. Until that
happened, the power of the Totems would remain beyond her grasp. That
power was her obsession, her life’s work. J.J. didn’t believe the Partners
had truly disavowed her. Just weeks ago, Dre had discovered a recording
device inside the charm bracelet Bryce Heilsdale had given Leigh for
Valentine’s Day, too sophisticated to be anything but Chimera
technology.
Ursula LeRoi had taught J.J. to always think one move ahead. Being
in prison wouldn’t necessarily stop her from carrying out her plans.
The bell rang. J.J. almost jumped. School. J.J. did not understand
school. Why did humans consent to being herded like sheep at the ring of
a bell? Why did their teachers think it helpful to recite to them what they
had assigned them to read out of the book? And what exactly was the
function of a pop quiz? The entire enterprise was arcane. He thought of
spending another year at Fairfax High, and stifled a longsuffering sigh as
he rose with everyone else to pitch his trash into the bin by the door; but
Quinn put a hand on his arm, nodding to where Marshall was threading
through the press toward them, hands balled up in the pockets of his
blue-and-gold jacket.
Alfaro saw him at the same time as J.J. “Hey, Doc,” he said, warily.
Because of Dre, J.J. realized, Alfaro would know Marshall’s father was a
Partner in Chimera, though he didn’t know, no one but Seth and J.J.
knew – and Cleo, because she had made J.J. swear by the Totems not to
keep secrets from her anymore – that Marshall was his father’s clone.
“What can we do for you?”
“I want you to try out for the basketball team.”
Marshall said this with absolutely no lead-up. Alfaro’s mouth fell
open. “I…Are you for real?”
“We had a spot on the starting lineup open up today,” Marshall said.
He did not explain why. “Besides Seth, you’re the best player at this
school. I know you’ve never wanted to join the team before – ” because
Alfaro had been Underground, where keeping your picture off the front
page meant living to see another day, J.J. felt like pointing out “ – but we
could really use you out there.”
Quinn’s light blue eyes zeroed in on Alfaro, like she was trying to
push her thoughts into his brain. J.J. remembered her saying once that
40
Alfaro was no better at resisting the urge to show off than Seth, with his
jaguar tattoos and impossible jump shots. The last thing the fragile
human-werekin Alliance needed was Alfaro charging down the
competition Saturday in a city-wide spectacle.
“Just think about it,” Marshall hurried to say, when Alfaro, seeing
Quinn’s look, hesitated. “We’re practicing at Sacred Heart tonight. You
guys should drop by. If nothing else, you can give us someone worth
beating at scrimmage.”
“Hold on now, Townsend,” Quinn said. “Are you challenging us to
a showdown? Castle versus Haven?”
“Only if you think you’re up for it, O’Shea,” Marshall said.
His tone was amiable enough, yet there was a certain sparkle in his
blue eyes. A challenge. Quinn’s smirk stretched out wide. “Baby,” she
said, “I am always up for it.”
***
Sacred Heart Academy looked like what it was: an old cathedral. The
gym was a separate building attached to the central dome by a river-stone
arcade. Seth squinted up at the gray spires as Marshall parked behind
Quinn’s battered Jeep. They seemed to wink at him in the sunlight,
which was fading as the sun dropped toward the river.
“Indiana, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said.
“Relax, Philadelphia. It’s just a friendly game.” Marshall spun his
key ring around his finger, grinning at Topher and Gabe as they strutted
up the sidewalk. Seth knew that grin. It spelled uh-oh.
“This better not be some plot to out the werekin,” he said.
Marshall caught his keys in his hand. “Do you really think I would
do that?”
“Ready to feel the pain, players?” a sly voice said.
Seth tore his eyes away from Marshall – who was looking truly hurt
– to find that Gabe had shouldered open the gym doors. Quinn O’Shea
was smirking at them from the sidelines of a high-raftered gym with
cinderblock walls checkered red and black, uncannily reminiscent of the
Ark pumping his kindred’s blood through its crystal web.
The Sacred Heart mascot, a generic tomahawk-and-feathered Native
American warrior that anywhere besides Indiana would have made
people cringe, leered at them from a mural above the scoreboard. The
curtains had been drawn back across the stage; the Alfaro brothers,
Emery, Ozzie Harris, and Serena Jensen were gathered there, chatting
with Bryce. Leigh and Whitney were in the stands with Zoe Campbell.
Topher pulled up short. “Jesus,” he whispered.
41
Seth’s own heart had done a tumble. On stage, surrounded by the
Haven kids, was a caramel-haired boy in jeans and a plain white sweater.
The boy spun his wheelchair around, a laidback lopsided grin
playing around his mouth. “You didn’t tell them I’d be here, did you,
Doc?”
“You asked me not to, as I recall,” Marshall said.
He let the gym door fall shut, closing out the syrupy afternoon light.
Seth wanted to throw the door open again; his nose was full of the
metallic tang of silver, his ears echoing with the shot that had ended
Marshall’s life. He looked away from the goal, determined not to see
Marshall hanging from the crossbar in the Fairfax High gym, twine
sinking into his wrists, handsome face twisted with agony as Seth was
made to kneel in front of him, to be tortured until he gave up the Black
Swan…
Shake it off, Sullivan.
Wheels clicking, Connor Burke rolled down the ramp on the side of
the stage toward them. “God, Connie, we heard you got hurt in the storm,
but I had no clue it was this bad,” Topher said, softly.
“What, this?” Connor patted the arms of his wheelchair. Like his
father, Connor had a slight Texas drawl. “This is just temporary while
the nerve damage along my spinal cord heals up. I’ll be back mopping
the court with y’all in no time.” He dropped a wink at Marshall, then
turned to Seth. “Long time no see, Philly.”
“Hey, Connor,” Seth said. Connor’s hazel eyes were sizzlingly
bright. Seth wondered if it was from the magic potion he was hopped up
on, the excitement of finally being released from the fort’s infirmary, or
the revelation that he was in the presence of about a dozen alien shapeshifters. After the attack, there hadn’t been much point hiding the truth
from him any longer, though Marshall had confided to Seth that General
Burke had wanted Xanthe to tamper with Connor’s memories,
enchanting him to believe the cover story that a tree had fallen on his
Mustang during the storm. Xanthe had refused. Lizardman wasn’t
entirely without scruples, it seemed.
Their teams divided up. Emery joined the Castle players. Fearless
wererabbit that he was, his big feet did not do much for coordination, so
they weren’t really gaining much there. But they did have Seth. Haven
had Quinn, all-star MVP of the Lady Knights; Ozzie, about as
coordinated as Emery, but fast; Serena; Dre; and Alfaro, a force to be
reckoned with for sure, as Seth had learned at his own try-out. He looked
like a mountain in his Chicago Bulls jersey and sagging jeans.
Connor rolled onto the sideline to referee.
42
Alfaro and Marshall faced off at half-court. The ball went up;
Marshall tipped it into Seth’s hands, slipping easily under Alfaro’s arm;
Alfaro bellowed, partly from surprise, partly from rage, and Seth
streaked down the court, narrowly outpacing Quinn – Christ she was fast
– and managing to fire off a three-pointer Serena threw her arms up to
block –
Swish.
Bryce jumped up on the bleachers (he was bench-bound, doctor’s
orders on account of his broken leg) and started doing a white boy
chicken-neck version of the moonwalk. “Go Philly, go Philly, go, go, go
Philly!” he chanted. Zoe stared at him, fascinated. Leigh put her face in
her hands.
Ozzie passed in to Quinn. Miss Vixen sized Seth up as she dribbled
toward him; feinted right; dodged; slid around Topher; and threw up a
jump-shot – which Marshall, who had raced ahead of everyone else to
the basket, blocked. Whitney cheered. Marshall passed to Seth and they
ran down the court together, passing back and forth, Seth whipping the
ball away before Baby Bird could snatch it and firing it over to Marshall,
who dribbled in for a picture-perfect layup.
Alfaro pawed the court with his Nike.
Connor was canted forward in his wheelchair. He seemed to be
studying the werekins’ moves more than following the ball. Watching
Dre dribble around Gabe, the ball seeming to leap off his fingertips as he
passed to Quinn, Seth tried to see them all through human eyes – their
preternatural speed and strength, the markings that hinted at their animal
skins: Serena’s sinuous build, Dre’s quick dark eyes, Alfaro’s velvetyblack skin, Seth’s own wedge-shaped chin. Once you knew what they
were, it would be impossible not to –
The whistle blew, shrilly. Seth swung around. Alfaro was throwing
his tree-trunk arms up, like, What? Connor rolled his eyes. “Foul.
Marshall, go to the line.”
Quinn frowned at Alfaro.
Marshall sank both free throws. They were all sweating. This was the
hardest Seth had ever had to work on the basketball court. He had never
played his kindred before.
Ozzie passed in to Quinn. Alfaro shouted to her; she hesitated, but he
was wide open, so she passed to him –
And somehow Marshall was there, in Alfaro’s face. He moved with
cagey energy on the court, nimble as any cat.
Alfaro’s nostrils flared. “Get out of my way, buttercup.”
“Take the shot, cupcake,” Marshall said.
43
Alfaro elbowed him. Probably he didn’t mean to do it so hard:
Marshall was sliding inside to steal the ball right as he threw his elbow
up. Still would have been a cheap shot, and as it was, Marshall caught it
right in the ribs. His feet tangled up – Seth had never seen Marshall even
lose his balance on the court – and he fell, hard, crashing into Connor,
overturning his wheelchair and toppling them both to the ground.
Seth saw red.
Actually what he saw was Marshall, lying face-down on another
court, a court flooded with rainwater and sparkling with silver powder.
He forgot, for the moment, that Alfaro had been there as well, fighting
alongside them, as he had at Fort King, leaping through a cloud of silver
powder that had left him permanently scarred to save all of their lives.
All he saw was Marshall, fallen, not getting back up, and the magic
dumped into his bloodstream like an injection of lava; with a roar he
launched himself at Alfaro, scratching with nails that had sharpened into
claws.
Leigh screamed. Alfaro tried to grab Seth’s arms, to hold him back.
Massive as Alfaro was, Werner Regent had trained Seth; size was no
match for the skill of a well-trained werekin fighter. Seth rammed a knee
into Alfaro’s groin and kicked out as Alfaro stumbled away, sending him
flying into the goal-post. The beads in Alfaro’s long dreads clinked as he
rounded, feet planted shoulder-width apart, seeming to grow broader as
Seth coiled to spring –
A flash of gold appeared between them. Seth recognized his twin
more by instinct than sight. J.J. shouted something at Alfaro as he threw
his arms around Seth, a half-hug of physical restraint that pinned Seth’s
hands at his sides. Topher and Gabe seized Alfaro, shoving him against
the goal post. Alfaro couldn’t really have been struggling as much as he
appeared to be, some part of Seth recognized. Had he been, Topher and
Gabe would have been on the floor.
Seth. J.J.’s voice echoed inside Seth’s mind. Not here, little brother.
Not here.
Seth looked down at himself. His claws were fully extended, rosettes
bruise-black on his cheeks and arms. Bryce had frozen open-mouthed on
the bleachers, gaping at him. Fortunately he was too far away to see
anything for sure, and Topher and Gabe were a little preoccupied
restraining Alfaro from stomping another one of their starters into goo.
But any second now, the cat was quite literally going to be out of the
bag.
Seth closed his eyes, pulling the magic back down inside of himself.
His claws retracted. The rosettes faded from his arms. “Okay now?” J.J.
asked, quietly. Seth nodded.
44
Letting go of him, J.J. walked over to where Marshall and Connor
were still sprawled in a heap – laughing, from the sound of it. The wheel
of Connor’s overturned chair spun sadly. J.J. gripped it by the handlebars
to right it. “Everybody all right?”
“Yeah,” Marshall groaned. He sat up, slowly, one arm hugged
against his ribs. Blood had trickled out of his nose, onto his upper lip.
Deep breaths, Seth told himself. Deep breaths. Emery was hopping
around the court like he might skin.
Dre and Serena together hauled Marshall to his feet. J.J. offered a
hand down to Connor, who looked up at him sheepishly. “I think you’ll
have to pick me up,” he said. “I can’t move my legs at all.”
An odd look stole onto J.J.’s face. He motioned to Quinn. Connor
draped an arm around either of their shoulders. Quinn and J.J. picked
him up, under the knees, and placed him back in his chair. It didn’t seem
to strain either of them, yet Seth saw J.J. flinch. “Sorry,” Connor said,
quickly. “Did I scratch you?”
“No problem.” J.J.’s voice was unreadable. He shoved one hand into
the pocket of his worn-out leather jacket, rubbing at the thin red mark on
his neck with the other.
“Doc, I’m sorry.” Alfaro looked, and sounded, it. He was walking
toward Marshall with a hand extended. His cheek was deeply scratched
from Seth’s claws. Seth was certain he would feel bad about that once
Marshall stopped wincing on every deep breath. “So much for my tryout, huh?”
“Are you kidding?” Marshall was staring at Alfaro with undisguised
delight. “If you play like that on Saturday, there’s no way we aren’t
taking state this year!”
“You mean – ” Alfaro was rendered momentarily speechless. “You
want me on the team?”
“Hell yes we want you on the team,” Marshall said.
He stuck a hand out. Alfaro ducked his head as he shook it. It might
have been the first time Seth had seen Angelo Alfaro look truly pleased
about something. And even if it was a bad idea, which it probably was,
right then, Seth couldn’t help feeling good about it.
***
J.J.’s decision to ride to Fort King with Quinn was annoying, if
unsurprising. Marshall pitched the convertible’s keys to Seth – yeah baby
– and crawled in the passenger’s side. “How are the ribs?” Seth asked.
“Bruised.” Marshall shifted with a grimace. “Alfaro has some sharp
elbows. I’d hate to feel his horns.”
45
“I’d be happy to bite his arms off for you,” Seth offered.
“That’s sweet, Philadelphia. I feel very loved right now.” Marshall
smiled at Seth. The wind blew inky curls in his eyes. He hadn’t cut his
hair in a while. Seth liked it longer. Liked that he could reach over at the
lunch table now and brush it back from Marshall’s brow, touch him,
casually, in front of other people.
“How was your first night staying at Jack’s?” he asked.
“It was good,” Marshall said. “I didn’t set my room up last night,
though. We got home pretty late. I thought you could come over tonight
and lend me your interior decorating expertise.”
“You must be thinking of Leigh,” Seth said. But he didn’t think
Marshall was really inviting him over to help hang his Larry Byrd poster,
and his stomach tickled pleasantly. “Indiana, about what I said earlier. I
want to clarify something.”
“I know you wouldn’t really rip Angelo’s arms off.”
“I might, if he lays you out again like that,” Seth said, archly. “But
that wasn’t it. I wanted you to know that I do trust you. I know you
wouldn’t tell the world about werekin.”
“No,” Marshall agreed, “I wouldn’t.” He laid his head back on the
seat. “I get it, you know. Why this is so hard for you, to tell people a
secret that will change everything. I wouldn’t force you into that.”
“But?” Seth said.
“But,” Marshall allowed, “it’s like you’ve never even considered the
possibility of just living as you are. No more hiding. No more lying.
You’ve convinced yourself the only way humans and werekin can coexist is if humans never know what werekin are.”
He was not wrong. Underground, life had been all about flying under
the radar. Before Fairfax, Seth hadn’t had a single friend his age, werekin
or human. The life he had imagined since then had been one of blending
in, like the Haven kids did – never speaking up with the right answer in
class, never leading the team to victory. Those were the orders Regent
had given him before his first day at Fairfax High. Do not make a
spectacle of yourself. Granted, Seth hadn’t been all that successful at
following those orders, but he had never imagined not needing to follow
them.
“Okay,” he said.
Marshall looked at him. “Okay?”
“Okay, I promise to think about it, if you promise not to do anything
drastic in the meantime, like tell the other guys about the Ovid
Experiment. You can’t explain that to them without getting into the
werekin stuff, too.”
Marshall didn’t seem happy about it, but he promised.
46
The guard at the fort’s gate had to call in their clearance, as neither
Seth nor Marshall were Alliance. Once they were allowed through, Seth
parked and waved to Agathon through the chimera fountain – to the
departed souls trapped there, technically, but he knew they would relay
the message. Mothman was tight with the eternally damned.
By now Seth knew his way through the fort’s mazelike halls well
enough to find the elevator without a single wrong turn. The silver inlaid
doors had been freshly polished. With Operation Swan Song officially
occupying the former prison, Fort King was getting a facelift; the rusted
satellite dishes on the roof had been replaced by state-of-the-art comm
units, the gun turrets outfitted with laser sights, one wing of cellblocks
renovated into barracks for the werekin looking to relocate from the
Underground. Seth tapped the code for the lower levels into the glyph
keypad. It was the only floor he had the access code for. He didn’t even
know how many levels there were to Fort King, or what was on all of
them.
“I wonder which floor they’re keeping LeRoi on,” he said, as the
doors opened.
“The lowest,” Marshall said, adding to Seth’s questioning glance,
“Connor told me.”
General Burke really had gone all out with the full disclosure, Seth
thought. “Connor seems to be taking the whole we-are-not-alone
revelation very well,” he said.
The elevator lights flickered. They did that sometimes, but Seth
thought he saw something flicker across Marshall’s expression as they
did. Maybe not, though. Marshall sounded normal when he said, “I don’t
know why you think humans would hate werekin. What you can do, all
of you, it’s – beautiful.”
“You know who you sound like,” Seth teased. “Elijah Bishop.”
“I hope,” Marshall said, “you mean that in a good way.”
His voice had taken on that growling timber that never failed to turn
Seth’s insides to jelly. Shifting his backpack to the floor, Marshall leaned
in and brushed his lips across Seth’s. Something tightened in Seth’s
chest, something that seemed to intensify every time Marshall kissed him
these days. He drew him closer –
Someone coughed.
The elevator doors had opened, and J.J. was standing on the other
side, like he had known they were on their way down. “How did you beat
us here?” Seth demanded, flabbergasted, as Marshall stepped back from
him.
“Quinn’s car wouldn’t start,” J.J. said. “I decided just to run.”
47
“Ah,” Seth said. The Lotus was a marvel, but no mere machine
could compete with jaguar speed.
The lower levels were a cross between Dracula’s parlor and
Frankenstein’s laboratory. In front of a marble hearth, long, low couches
were arranged; the Gen-0s liked to hang out there, sipping animal blood
from crystal goblets. Shelves of Lemurian texts recovered from Mt.
Hokulani and jars of preserved organs harvested from Chimera’s failed
experiments lined the walls. Shadows chased one another across the
black stone floors and long exam tables.
Far below, the hum of the Ark resonated in Seth’s bones, stronger
now than ever before.
Marshall branched off, to Aphrodisia’s lab. J.J. led Seth down a
narrow side passage, ducking a spider web lacing the arched doorway.
“You’re not mad about before, are you?” Seth asked.
“Have I ever been mad at you?” J.J. said. Seth realized that was true.
J.J. never lost his temper with his twin. J.J. never lost his temper. How
did he do that, being a cat? Seth was the epitome of temperamental. But
J.J., he thought, was the prince of cats. You could see it in the proud tilt
of his shoulders, his absolute control over his emotions. Next to him,
Seth felt more than ever like the numbskull cub Regent had accused him
of being. He swiped self-consciously at his sweaty, dyed hair.
J.J. looked over at him. The passage had no lights; the metallic sheen
of his eyes was startling in the total dark. “Seth, you haven’t had my
training,” he said, not unkindly. “Neither has Angelo, for that matter.
We’re warrior breeds. Fighting is in our blood.”
“How do you keep it in check?” Seth couldn’t quite disguise the
envy in his voice. “You never skin without meaning to. You never go too
far and hurt someone. If Alfaro had been human, I could’ve – ”
“He isn’t human,” J.J. said firmly. “You knew that. If he had been,
you wouldn’t have attacked him. Have you ever attacked Cam for all the
stuff he’s said to Doc?”
“No, but – ”
“Look, Seth.” J.J. sighed. “In the Scholae Bestiarii, if you lost
control, you were punished. Severely. The first lesson the trainers taught
us was not to skin unless permitted to. The collar is an ever-present
reminder not to let the magic in your blood control you.” Seth heard
Regent say something very similar: The magic can’t control you. You
have to control it. Regent, who had been raised in the Scholae Bestiarii,
too, and had every ounce of J.J.’s self-control. “Don’t romanticize what I
am, Seth. In more ways than you know, I am what LeRoi set out to make
me. What’s incredible to me is that you can control yourself as well as
you do, without ever having had my training. You don’t not hurt people
48
because it might expose us. You don’t hurt them because you’re a good
person. A peaceful person.”
“So are you,” Seth said. “You’re a good person, J.J. And all werekin
are peaceful.”
A look crossed J.J.’s face that suggested he didn’t wholly agree.
Rather than argue, however, he turned away, to the recessed door they
had stopped in front of, and opened it.
49
Chapter Four: Swan Song
The lair of the Lizardman wasn’t quite what Seth had anticipated. No
shrunken heads spinning on hooks from the low ceiling. Not even a jar of
flies put by for a snack. The curved walls were home to books – dozens
upon dozens of books. Silk cushions appeared to be the only furniture,
suggesting Xanthe either didn’t sleep or didn’t require a bed to do so.
The cushions had been scattered in front of a flickering fire in a metal
grate. Lizardman himself was seated in the lotus position on one of them,
tail curled around his legs. The bony ridges on his spine worked like
individual fingers. In the firelight, the glyphs tattooed on his hairless
chest looked like fresh wounds.
J.J. went straight over and sank down beside him, staring earnestly
into Xanthe’s flat black eyes. Although Seth now knew Xanthe was one
of the good guys, he still found these silent communiques creepy. Plus he
had the feeling they were talking about him. He surreptitiously checked
that his fly was zipped as he wandered around the room.
Books had always been like old friends to Seth. His father had
collected books; he could remember their apartment in Harlem crowded
with books, books balanced beside Thomas Sullivan’s nubby green chair,
books parked two-deep on top of Thomas’ bureau. The titles on Xanthe’s
shelves were mostly in English, some French, some Spanish.
Machiavelli. Plato. Chaucer. The Gen-0s were humanists, holding an
almost spiritual respect for human culture, but still. Seth was getting
Xanthe a library card for his birthday. He needed to read something
published after the Crusades.
“Those belonged to our father.”
Seth yelped. He had not seen Agathon standing in the corner; the
hood of his black necromancer’s robe was drawn up over his bald head,
concealing him perfectly in the shadows. “Agathon! Don’t do that!”
Agathon lowered his hood. His antennae were curling and uncurling
independent of one another; he looked almost sheepish. For, you know,
an eleven-foot Mothman. “I did not mean to startle you,” he rumbled.
“Just make some noise next time you’re lurking in a corner, all
right? Hum or clear your throat or something.” Seth leaned back against
the bookshelf. “How’s married life treating you?”
Agathon, who had recently tied the knot with his Gen-0 girlfriend
Aphrodisia, beamed. “We are very happy,” he said. Seth didn’t ask for
details. He had never been clear on whether the Gen-0s could reproduce.
Their anatomy was a subject he didn’t care to dwell on.
50
He took one of the volumes of The Odyssey off the shelf and held it
up. The cover was blue fabric patterned with silver stars. “This looks just
like the book of sonnets Emery gave Whitney.”
“It was part of our father’s collection,” Agathon said.
The Gen-0s all called Elijah Bishop their father. He was the closest
thing any of them had. “How did Emery’s dad get his hands on one of
Elijah Bishop’s books?” Seth asked.
Agathon’s eyelids lowered. “We do not know. Aidan McDonagh was
born many years after our father left us.”
Hmm, Seth thought. Perhaps it was time for a peek at the personal
effects Emery’s father had left behind when the hunters had executed
him. “Are all of the books like that one?” he asked. “Encoded with
messages?”
“In a sense.” Leaning over Seth’s shoulder, Agathon ran his tapered
fingers over the glyphs penned in the book’s margins. “These were the
instructions our father left for us, to guide us after he was gone. Though
none are as extraordinary as the message Whitney found inside her
book.”
Lit from underneath by the fire, Agathon’s mottled cheeks looked
hollow. Seth thought of his dad, telling him he loved him, telling him to
be brave, as he marched down that alley in Harlem to face the hunters
that had come for his son, and a sudden thought occurred to him.
“Agathon, did Dr. Bishop even try to run away after he helped the Gen1s break out? I mean, he had to know what LeRoi would do to him for
that.”
“Our father did not fear death,” Agathon said, which seemed a
strange answer to Seth, but Agathon was kind of a strange dude. “Now
come. I am keeping you from your lesson.”
He placed the book back on the shelf, steered Seth toward Xanthe,
and swept out in a rustle of robes and wings.
Seth took a seat on a cushion beside J.J. Finished with his psychic
chat, J.J. had already sunk into meditation, eyes closed, head bowed. The
scratch on his neck was still red and raised, the latest in a long line of old
wounds; by morning, it would fade, without leaving a scar. Most of J.J.’s
scars, Seth thought, were underneath the skin.
Smoky incense curled up from the fire. Through the haze, Xanthe
looked more otherworldly than ever. “How do we do this?” Seth asked,
suddenly jumpy with nerves.
Xanthe extended a hand to him. Tentatively, Seth placed his fingers
in his, suppressing a shudder at the papery-soft feel of the Gen-0’s skin,
like the skin of a rotted apple. A cold, sibilant voice pierced his brain. It
is my power that makes you afraid.
51
Seth swallowed hard. Our minds are not like yours, Agathon had told
him once. Coming from a werecat jaguar god, this might have sounded
hypocritical, but Xanthe’s mind was the most alien thing Seth had ever
encountered. No human mind could have been so vast, so impenetrable.
It was like lying outside under the stars and realizing, for the first time,
that the universe goes on forever, infinitely, and you are just one tiny
little speck in the midst of it. “What power?” he whispered.
My gift from the Totems. What humans call “telepathy.” Xanthe
sounded disdainful of the term. Lemurian didn’t translate readily into
English. The glyphs were layered with more meanings than existed in
any human tongue. I could turn your mind against itself, sever the cord
that ties you to reality, unmoor you in a waking nightmare you could
never escape. I could convince you your arm was a viper, and you would
slice it from your body. I could undo every memory you have ever made,
twist it, reshape it, and return it to your mind as if fantasy were reality.
That is the power I have.
“Oh,” Seth got out.
You have no reason to fear me, Seth Michael. Xanthe’s lightless eyes
stared deep into Seth’s. They were not as gentle as Agathon’s, but nor
was there any malice in them. Seth felt his shoulders relax. “Okay,” he
said.
He was saying more than that, which Xanthe of course understood.
Bowing his bald head over Seth’s hand, he lowered the scaly lids over
his eyes. Seth took a breath…
And a key to a locked door turned in his mind. It didn’t hurt this
time, as it had before when Xanthe had mind-melded him; for this time,
Seth unlocked the door for him. Images from his dreams poured forth.
The primordial jungle. The river churned to blood. The swan’s dying
song. The temple carved into the mountainside. Seth gave it all to
Xanthe, even the end of the dream – searching the prison for J.J., finding
himself collared in his brother’s place. He trusted Xanthe not to share
that with J.J. To think Seth didn’t trust him would have skewered J.J. to
the core.
It is a message.
Xanthe released Seth’s hand. Seth blinked. While they were mindmelded, his vision had gone dark, like a curtain had been pulled across
his eyes. Now he rubbed at them hard. “Do you know what it means, or
who is sending it?” he asked. His voice wobbled a bit.
These are answers you must discover for yourself. I can only teach
you to find the hidden rooms of your mind. You must uncover what is
contained there.
52
Seth’s jaw had dropped. His hands were still pressed over his eyes,
but he could hear Xanthe as clearly as if he were speaking aloud. Slowly,
he lowered his hands and looked up. “How…How are you doing that?”
“Once he connects to your mind, it’s easier for him to convey his
thoughts to you,” J.J. said. He lifted his chin from his chest. His golden
eyes gave no hint as to where his mind had been this past half-hour.
“You probably noticed he doesn’t need physical contact to communicate
with me.”
So Lizardman had tuned in to Seth’s frequency. Seth wasn’t sure
how he felt about that. “What’s the range on this thing? Is he going to,
like, psychically page me while we’re at school, or do we have to be in
the same room, or – what? What are you laughing at?”
J.J. shook his head, still grinning. “He’s not a shortwave radio, Seth.
Some kind of contact, whether physical contact or eye contact, will
always be necessary for you to communicate. And you don’t have to
answer him out loud,” he added. “When your minds are connected, he
can hear your thoughts just like you hear his.”
Seth turned to Xanthe. Is that true?
Yes.
Wicked, Seth thought.
“So what’s next?” he asked. Speaking out loud was going to be a
hard habit to break.
“That’s it for today.” J.J. got to his feet. “I’m going to Cleo’s to
train. You in?”
“What do you mean that’s it?” Seth leaned back on his cushion,
perplexed. “We didn’t even do anything!” Regent would never have let
him off this easy. Seth had left their every training session bone-bruised
and almost too weary to crawl to his bike.
“Stand up,” J.J. said.
“J.J. – ”
“Just stand up,” J.J. said.
Exasperated, Seth stood up. And wobbled. Whoa. Head rush.
J.J. smirked at him. “You just used parts of your brain you’ve never
accessed before. Think of it as a mental workout. You have to start slow
or there are side-effects. Memory loss. Confusion. It took me years to get
where I am, and I’m still nowhere near as powerful as Xanthe.” J.J.
looked at his tutor with real affection.
“Can you do what he can do?” Seth asked, suddenly curious. “Take
away somebody’s memories?”
J.J. shook his head. “Only the Gen-0s have that kind of power. Their
connection to the Ark is much stronger than ours. Why do you think
53
LeRoi kept them around?” He slanted a grin at Xanthe, whose spine
ridges rippled like this was a private joke between them.
“But I was hoping there was a way to shut the dreams out,” Seth
said, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Like a telepathic spam filter,
or something.”
“Give it time, little brother. Give it time.”
J.J. spoke softly, rubbing the back of his neck as though it ached. The
dark shadows under his eyes stood out like bruises. Seth couldn’t help
but wonder if his twin’s dreams had been troubled of late, too.
***
J.J. unlocked the door and paused on the threshold, looking around.
No lights were on inside the lodge-like house Cleo had taken over from
Werner Regent, as there shouldn’t have been with Cleo away, yet just for
a moment, he had the sense he was not alone, as though someone had
just vanished from sight on the second-floor balcony.
His hand moved to the dagger hidden under his worn-out leather
jacket. Twin couches crouched in front of the slate-stone hearth, the iron
chandelier dangling overhead like a giant spider. When nothing moved
after several minutes, he felt along the wall until he found the switch.
The bulbs flickered, then blazed up, scattering shadows.
The cuffs of J.J.’s jeans were mud-spattered from running through
the woods. Marshall had offered him a ride, but he and Seth were headed
to Jack’s; driving all the way out here would have been a waste of their
time since J.J. intended to run home anyway. Besides, J.J. could see they
wanted to be alone.
Cleo’s black leather jacket was draped over one of the spindlebacked stools at the bar. J.J. wasn’t sure why she had left it behind. A
reason to come back, maybe? He ran his fingertips over the creased
collar as he crossed to the shuttered wall and tapped a code into the
keypad. 1571. The numbers on Regent’s brand. The brands were how
Chimera Enterprises had catalogued werekin in their databases. The
brand on J.J.’s own palm stung as he stepped back, looking up as the
vertical blinds retracted into the ceiling.
Behind the smoked-glass wall, leafy trees reached high up to metal
girders crisscrossing a domed skylight. The creek was a silver snake
coiling around green ferns far below. J.J. splayed his palms on the glass,
staring past the reflection of a slim teenage boy staring back at him.
Ursula LeRoi had kept a park like this on her private estate, just for
J.J. She had stocked it with live prey. If J.J. wanted to eat, he had had to
hunt. One of many barbed reminders that J.J. had not been LeRoi’s son.
54
He had been her pet, the exotic prize she liked to show off at dinner
parties, the black jaguar pacing the dais behind her at the head of the
table in her opulent dining room. J.J. had dreaded those parties.
Inevitably there had been an Arena match afterwards, to entertain
LeRoi’s guests. J.J. had never lost an Arena match.
At night, he still woke sometimes with the smell of blood-soaked
sand in his nose.
Another reason he preferred sleeping in the basement. No one to hear
you cry out in your sleep.
Tonight J.J. scrambled down the branches, not skinning until he
reached the creek. The rippling water showed him midnight-black fur
spotted with pale rosettes around the snout, a long tail banded with
lighter stripes. Then the black jaguar dove into the water, shattering the
mirrored surface.
For the first seventeen years of his life, J.J. had not been able to skin
at will. This was what he had tried to make Seth understand today; his
control over the magic was not innate, it was a lesson hard-learned.
There had been times, more and more frequent as he entered
adolescence, the magic had burned in the marrow of his bones, aching
for release. All collared werekin suffered that agony, but it was worse for
warrior breeds, and it was why J.J., to the puzzlement of his family,
wanted to spend hours running in the woods, climbing the trees in this
big cat playground. Cleo understood. J.J. thought she had moved into this
house just so he could have somewhere to skin whenever he felt the urge.
He paddled around the creek for a while, snapping playfully at the
colorful fish, then crawled out on the bank and scaled the tall trees just to
leap off the branches into the water. Cleo would usually have been lying
on one of the sandstone rocks, laughing at him. J.J. tried not to care that
she wasn’t there now.
As he was diving into the creek a third time, a glint of something
half-buried in the silt caught his eye. He dove down to the creek bed and
scooped it up in his jaws. Back on the bank, he skinned, shaking water
out of his short hair, and spat it into his hand.
It was a diamond ring, about the right size for a man’s pinkie finger.
J.J. nudged it with his thumb. An inscription was carved into the back.
STEWARD.
On impulse, J.J. slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
He had intended to train, but the house’s emptiness had started to
oppress him. He ended up drying off upstairs, and took a turn through the
many empty rooms just to be sure everything was in its place before
running home through the woods.
55
The moon had risen by the time J.J. reached Castle Estates. He
skinned as he leapt over the brick privacy fence around the Stewards’
backyard, too late remembering his ankle was probably still tender – but
he didn’t even feel a twinge as he landed. In fact, he felt terrific, and had
all evening, a jittery sort of amped that had him humming as he crossed
the backyard, listening for the sound of a basketball thumping against the
pavement in the Townsends’ drive before he remembered Marshall had
moved out.
He was also starving. Debating whether to phone in a takeout order,
he opened the back door.
“J.J.,” Lydia gasped, jumping back from the threshold.
“Sorry,” J.J. said, quickly. He had to work on the stealth thing.
“No, it’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting you.” To come home,
Lydia didn’t say. She finished doing up the last button on her pea coat.
The air was tainted with wood smoke from a backyard barbecue, more
reminiscent of fall than spring. “I was just running out to the store. We’re
out of absolutely everything. I worry I neglect you kids these days. What
kind of mother doesn’t keep Pop-Tarts in the house?”
“You’ve been busy,” J.J. said. He shrugged out of his jacket and
hung it on the peg by the back door. J.J. did not look like his father –
werekin resembled their Totems above all – and it would have surprised
him to know mannerisms like that were very much like Thomas
Sullivan’s. Lydia looked down at the car keys in her hand like she had
forgotten what they were for. “How is it going with resettling werekin
from the Underground, anyway?”
“It’s challenging,” Lydia admitted, closing the back door and
leaning against it. J.J. was rooting through the fridge. Miraculously, he
discovered a package of bacon that had escaped Leigh’s vegan purge.
The expiration date was a week past, but it smelled all right when he
sniffed it, so he started hunting the cabinets for a skillet. “So many of the
children are orphans, their parents collared or killed. They’ve basically
raised themselves, living on couches here and there, catch as catch can.
They’re ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Like Seth when he first
came to us. I didn’t understand at the time. The first thing you think is
abuse, but I couldn’t imagine Thomas ever doing anything to hurt
him…”
J.J. started dropping bacon slices into the skillet. Raw meat wasn’t
any more appealing to a werekin than it was to anyone else. “I’m sure
things like that scene last night don’t encourage much trust in them,” he
said, neatly glossing over the ugly family history his mother had just
raised.
Lydia fidgeted with a curl. “Honey, about what David said – ”
56
“Thanks for taking my part,” J.J. said. “I should have thanked you
last night. I’m sorry.”
“I meant what I said. I’m tired of you being called a traitor. None of
what has happened can be blamed on you. You are seventeen years old.
David Burke is an adult. He knew full well what Ursula LeRoi was doing
to your kindred was wrong, just as Jack did, and they allowed it to go on.
Profited from it. Nothing can recompense for that. And they don’t get to
shift the blame onto you.”
Lydia’s green eyes were fierce. J.J.’s bacon had begun to sizzle; he
was glad for the excuse to turn away, to dump it onto a plate. “I don’t
care if they don’t trust me, except it makes it harder to get them to listen
to me,” he said.
“Well, the important thing is that you try,” Lydia said, kindly.
No, what was important was that he succeeded, but J.J. didn’t say
that. Snagging a soda out of the fridge, he backed toward the basement
door. “I think I’ll eat in my – ”
My room, he had started to stay, but stopped, and sighed. Resignedly,
he started for the stairs. He saw his mother grin as she went out the back
door.
***
Poe was curled up on the windowsill of J.J.’s new room. She
meowed as J.J. toed off his boots and scooted back against the
headboard, plate balanced on his knees, devouring the bacon one crispy
strip at a time. He kept looking over at the sleek black phone Leigh had
insisted be installed on his nightstand. Finally, when the last bite was
gone and he had licked his fingers clean, he picked it up and punched in
a number.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” J.J. said.
“J.J.?” Static crackled over Cleo’s voice. The Roswell installation
was an isolated outpost, far out in the desert. Not much cell reception out
there. “Is everything all right? Is Seth okay?”
Seth. She even said his twin’s name like it was precious. J.J. slipped
the ring out of his pocket and folded it in his palm. “He’s fine,” he said.
“Then what is it? You don’t sound like yourself.”
J.J. heard a door close, suggesting Cleo had gotten up to shut it. He
didn’t even have to close his eyes to picture her: super-short brown hair,
silvery-blue eyes, muscular build. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I was
just calling to say hi.”
“Oh.” Cleo was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Hi.”
57
J.J. did shut his eyes then. “Hi,” he said.
There was a long pause. J.J. squeezed the ring in his hand so tight it
dug into his palm. What was going on with him? He did not call Cleo to
say hi. They talked about missions. That was it. Cleo had made it
perfectly clear two years ago there was nothing else for them to talk
about.
He was about to make up an excuse to hang up when she said, “You
sound tired, Jeremy.”
All at once J.J. was glad Cleo wasn’t lying next to him. Dropping the
ring on his nightstand, he rested an arm across his burning eyes. He
couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. That’s not true, he thought.
He remembered perfectly well. When Marshall had squeezed that trigger,
and Seth’s grief had ricocheted across their psychic link into J.J.,
splintering inside of him like shards of glass.
Before that, it had been the day his father died. After Cleo had taken
the bloodstained dagger back from him, every ounce of loathing she felt
for him written into her eyes, to be read there as she had known only J.J.
could. He had sat in a corner of his shower with his knees drawn up,
scalding water beating his naked skin, far away from listening ears and
prying eyes, and sobbed until he had thought he would split himself wide
open. He had wished for that to happen. Wished he could reach into his
chest and rip out his beating heart so he wouldn’t have to feel anymore.
So he would not have to carry his father’s last words, whispered in J.J.’s
ear as he prepared to plunge the dagger into him – a quick, merciful
death. Save her. Save her, and she will save us all.
“Seth started his training with Xanthe today,” he said, cuffing at his
cheeks. Damn it. What was wrong with him tonight? He rolled his
shoulders, working the kinks out of his stiff neck.
“How’d that go?”
Cleo sounded amused. “He asked what the range was on Xanthe’s
telepathy,” J.J. said. Cleo laughed. Pleased by that, J.J. stretched his legs
out, crossing them at the ankle. “He’s got a long way to go, but he’ll get
there. Any changes to the Source?”
“Locked up like a drum,” Cleo reported cheerfully. “Jensen has had
a team out there all day with sensors and gauges and a whole bunch of
other stuff I don’t even know what to call, but for now, the Source is just
a big hunk of black rock.”
“Huh,” J.J. said. But he was only half-listening. First of all, if
anything had changed with the Source, Cleo would have called him.
Secondly, footsteps were climbing the stairs, a quick light tread he knew
was not Seth’s or Leigh’s or Lydia’s. His eyes moved across the room, to
the katana on top of his dresser.
58
Before he could move, Quinn O’Shea sashayed into his room.
J.J. stared at her. He had not even noticed the Jeep parked in the
drive. That was not like him. J.J. noticed everything.
Quinn had not changed out of the tank top and fleece athletic pants
she had worn for the Sacred Heart scrimmage. Copper hair spilled out
from under her blue UA beanie, shot through with streaks of gold like
rippling flame. From under his lashes, J.J. watched her saunter around
his new room, checking out the books on his shelves (poetry, mostly),
the CDs alphabetized beside his stereo, Beethoven to Mozart. Emery had
tried getting him into grunge rock, but J.J. was a music snob, raised by
LeRoi on symphony and opera. He preferred music you had to think
about to appreciate.
A volume of Tennyson was turned upside down on his desk. Quinn
picked it up, scanned the page J.J. had marked, and laid it back down.
“J.J.?”
J.J. glanced at the phone still in his hand. “Sorry, I…uh, what were
you saying?”
“I asked what the Commanders are doing to guard Caroline McLain
now that the Ark is complete.” From Cleo’s voice he knew her brow was
furrowed. J.J. never lost focus or fumbled for words. Cleo knew him too
well not to realize something was up. The whole point of raising hunters
with werekin partners was for the hunters to come to know their prey.
Made them easier to run to ground.
“They’ve doubled guard duty on her,” J.J. said. He had seen the
spotted owl on McLain’s roof as he had jumped the fence. “McLain is
keeping her close to the house. Although we may have to put an ankle
bracelet on her to keep her there.”
“Wouldn’t she be safer at the fort?”
“Maybe,” J.J. said, “but LeRoi is being held at Fort King for now,
and McLain doesn’t want his sister within a hundred miles of her. Has
there been any talk about moving the Source?”
Quinn glanced sharply at him. She had taken down the katana from
his dresser, unsheathing it with a hiss; now she posed, samurai-style, and
kicked out, a judo kick that brought her leg up over her head. J.J. raised
his eyebrows. She giggled.
“I haven’t heard anything about it, but Jensen doesn’t exactly brief –
Is someone there?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said. “Quinn is practicing for the invisible ninja
Olympics.” Quinn made a face at him.
“Oh. I should let you go, then.” Cleo sounded crisp. “I’ll call you
when I have something to report.”
59
“Okay.” J.J. felt like he should say something more, but couldn’t
think of anything except, “Be safe out there.”
“You too,” Cleo said, and the line went dead.
Quinn leveled the katana at the bed. “Was that Cleo?”
“Yup.” J.J. dropped the phone back in its cradle. “You know that’s a
real blade, not a prop, don’t you?”
“Am I making you nervous, player?” Quinn twirled the sword like a
baton. “Do you really think Burke would try to hide the Source from
us?”
“It’s what I would do,” J.J. said. “We can raise Lemuria, but we
can’t open the stargate without the Source.”
“So you sent Cleo to Roswell to be your eyes and ears. Crafty,
Sullivan, very crafty.” Quinn tossed the sword into the air, like she meant
to catch it with the other hand; quick as a blink, J.J. was there, snatching
it from over her head by the handle. He fell gracefully back onto the bed,
the sword’s razor-sharp tip pointed away from his body. Quinn put her
hands on her hips. “My mother taught me how to handle a sword, J.J.,”
she said.
“Then don’t treat it like a toy,” he shot back.
“You’re no fun, you know that?” Quinn climbed onto the bed. J.J.
laid back, the sword resting across his stomach. Quinn traced the black
jaguar etched into the curved blade. “This is beautiful,” she said.
“Thank you. Regent made it for Seth, and Seth gave it to me.”
Laying down his sword. A more symbolic act than Seth had even
realized.
Plucking the sword by the hilt, Quinn moved it to J.J.’s nightstand.
She scooted down so she was facing him on the pillow, one freckled
hand resting close to his cheek. “Leigh said she helped you decorate your
room.”
“I’m not sure how much I helped,” J.J. said, and tilted his head.
“When were you talking to Leigh?”
“I came over to see you, but you weren’t home yet. She wanted my
opinion on prom dresses.”
“I’m sorry,” J.J. said, and winced. Quinn had kicked him in the
ankle. “What did you need to see me for?”
“I just wanted to. I went by the fort looking for you after Dre got my
Jeep running, but McLain said you’d already left.”
Her fingertip brushed the scratch above J.J.’s collar. J.J. fought off a
shiver.
Lately J.J. had found himself thinking about Quinn at random times.
On his evening runs. When he was supposed to be meditating. In class,
unable to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, he would find
60
himself remembering something she had said, and the curve of her lips
when she had said it, and he would have to shake himself out of the
memory, like he sometimes had to shake himself out of counting the
freckles patterned like a thousand stars across her cheeks, sprinkled onto
her shoulders and arms.
This being one of those times. He folded his arms behind his head
again, eyes on his ceiling. “I went for a run,” he explained, instinctively
recognizing that he should not mention his stopover at Cleo’s empty
house to Quinn. “I’m surprised the guards let you past security, seeing as
you’re a known associate of mine. I am plotting to bring down the
Alliance from within, did you know?”
“I’m human,” Quinn shrugged. “Not much of a threat.”
“You don’t like being human?”
It wasn’t a question, really. Quinn’s eyes lowered. “Do you ever
wonder why you’re not?”
“You mean do I ever wonder why the Totems chose me, but not
you?”
Quinn nodded. J.J. rolled onto his side again, facing her. He
understood this was a bad idea. He did not have a rein on his emotions
tonight, and taking this – flirtation, or whatever it was, with Quinn to the
next level was a complication his life did not need, and one hers
definitely didn’t. Look what had happened to his mother because
Thomas Sullivan hadn’t walked away from his feelings for her.
“Do you know why the Gen-0 experiment failed?” J.J. asked.
“No.” Quinn was not looking at him. She was looking at his
pillowcase.
“Because they weren’t born to human mothers. Bishop tried to
fashion them entirely from the DNA inside the Ark, but the Totems’
magic doesn’t work like that. Werekin have two skins – animal and
human. Those skins can’t be separated.”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m special because I’m human?”
“No,” J.J. said. “I’m telling you that I’m human, too.”
Quinn breathed out. J.J. felt it fan his lips. He held very still as her
eyes came back up to his, struggling to cool the heat that had flashed
across his skin, and that he was sure she could see in his eyes. It wasn’t
magic, this heat, but J.J. had learned to suppress it like the magic in his
blood. He had had to, to keep LeRoi from guessing how he really felt
about his huntress partner.
“I saw the poem,” Quinn said. “On your desk. ‘The Dying Swan.’”
J.J. quoted: “The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul of that waste
place with joy hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear the warble was low,
and full and clear; but anon her awful jubilant voice, with a music
61
strange and manifold, flow’d forth on a carol free and bold; as when a
mighty people rejoice with shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of
gold.”
“Bravo.” Quinn’s tone was dry. “I have Miss Janowitz for English,
too. I don’t remember her assigning Lord Tennyson.”
Against the backs of J.J.’s eyes burned the glyphs he kept seeing in
his dreams, dreams of a jungle older than any jungle on Earth, dreams of
stars raining fire and oceans boiling blood. Xanthe had looked into his
mind and translated the glyphs. 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. The Hymn of the White Swan.
“It’s not for school,” he said.
Those shrewd blue eyes studied his expression carefully, undaunted
by his determined neutrality. “Okay, player,” Quinn said. “Keep your
secrets. Just remember I’m here if you want somebody to kick around
ideas with. I have been told I’m rather clever.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” J.J. said.
Quinn scooted down on the pillow. “I can stay, if you want me to.”
Heat flared on J.J.’s skin again. “Stay?” he said, unevenly.
“While you sleep. I know you’re tired.” Quinn trailed her fingers
over the purple half-moons topping J.J.’s cheekbones. Her touch was like
a feather brushed over sensitive nerves; J.J. shivered. “When I can’t
sleep, it helps to have someone with me. Just to know I’m not alone.”
In ways J.J. couldn’t even name, this was a bad idea. He nodded
anyway.
Quinn got up. Closed his bedroom door. Switched the light off.
Turned his stereo on, low, to Schubert. Poe rose up on the windowsill,
stretching; looked over at them; and lay back down, purring. The
mattress sank as Quinn climbed in beside J.J. again.
She draped her arm across him, her thumb just inside the hem of his
shirt, stroking the jut of his hipbone. J.J. let his cheek rest against the top
of her head. His eyelids lowered, heavier and heavier; the music soared,
and J.J. soared with it, into the stars. Into the land beyond dreams.
62
Chapter Five: Diamond in the Rough
Bio sans Dr. Gideon was as cool as Seth had always suspected it
could be. Their sub, Ms. Krughman, an old battle-axe Navy nurse who
usually oversaw detention, passed out blood type cards and pricked their
fingers, then regaled them with stories of gruesome battlefield traumas to
convince them all to be blood donors.
“Does anyone know what happened to Dr. Gideon?” Seth’s lab
partner, pretty little Yena Lee, asked, leaning forward on her tall stool.
There had not been a cloud in the sky this morning; sunlight turned the
tops of the tall black lab tables into sparkling lakes.
Their table included Bryce Heilsdale and his lab partner, Dre Alfaro.
Baby Bird’s beaky nose, as ever, was glued to the screen of the new
MacBook Operation Swan Song had gifted him with. Every two seconds
he swiped at his glossy bangs, threatening to knock his newsboy cap off
his head. His suspenders were rainbow-striped today, over khaki cords
and a yellow Big Bird T-shirt. He didn’t seem to have marked the
question.
Seth said, “Maybe aliens abducted him.”
“They’d bring him back,” Bryce muttered. Yena grinned. She had
dyed the red streaks in her hair blue and gold in anticipation of their
championship game Saturday. Her just-friends prom date Bryce seemed
pleased by that. As if reading Seth’s mind, or possibly because basketball
was the front-running topic on Bryce’s brain twenty-four-seven, he said,
“Marshall talked Coach into putting Alfaro on the team.”
He said it carefully, like Seth might ’roid out on them again. “At
least he’ll be on our side,” Seth said.
“You know Cam will make a thing of it.” Bryce handed his blood
type card to Ms. Krughman. Yena was sucking on her index finger where
it had been pricked. “He can’t stand Alfaro.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Dre said.
They all glanced at him in surprise. Dre rarely spoke in class. He was
the only Haven kid in any of Seth’s Honors classes; the others weren’t
stupid, they just couldn’t risk excelling academically and popping up on
Chimera’s radar. Even registered werekin had been collared and put to
LeRoi’s uses. Warrior breeds weren’t the only ones she enslaved.
Closing his laptop, Dre canted forward on his stool, ankles hooked
around the legs. He was so small and fluttery Seth sometimes expected
him to simply take flight. “Angelo feels really bad for what happened
yesterday, Seth. He didn’t mean to hurt Marshall.”
“I know,” Seth said. Now that he had calmed down, he had
remembered all of the times Alfaro had risked his life for their kindred’s
63
cause. He felt like a heel for attacking him like that. “Has Leigh talked to
you yet?”
Dre blinked. “About what?”
“Oh, nothing,” Seth said, airily, as the bell rang.
Second period was English with Miss Janowitz. Yawn. Seth and J.J.
sat in the back row, their place of banishment, with their feet up on the
chairs in front of them. Miss Janowitz was walking up and down the
rows passing back the class’ essays on Othello. In all the madness of
Marshall dying and the Black Swan returning, Seth had forgotten what
he had written.
“Has Leigh said anything to you about prom?” Bryce asked. He was
working his pencil through a hole in the knee of his jeans. Dark hair fell
in his sleepy green eyes. Seth tried not to see his picture in the top-secret
file Jack had shown him, stamped with a serial number not unlike J.J.’s
brand.
“Other than that she’s pissed at you?” he said.
Bryce sighed. “I knew it. She hasn’t returned any of my calls. And
she doesn’t wear the bracelet I gave her anymore.”
“I think the clasp broke,” Seth said, quickly. J.J.’s golden eyes had
slanted toward Bryce. He was fidgeting with something in the pocket of
his jeans; he had been wired all morning, snapping at Leigh for taking
too long in the shower, glaring at Cam as they passed him in the parking
lot. They were going to have to adjust his caffeine intake again.
“How about things with you and Marshall?” Bryce asked. “Is that all
going okay?”
Seth was pleased to be asked. “We set up his room at Jack’s
yesterday. You guys should come over tomorrow night to check it out.
Jack even got him this awesome Wii – ”
He broke off. Miss Janowitz had made her way back to them. Square
glasses amplifying her owlish eyes, she placed Seth’s essay face-down
on the desk with some finality. Bryce was already scanning his
comments. He was always trying to impress Miss Janowitz with what a
big vocabulary he had. She was kind of pretty, Seth supposed, though
Leigh despaired of all the plaid skirts and solid-color sweaters.
He turned his essay over. B–? Really? Resisting the urge to call Miss
Janowitz a name that started with that letter, he leaned over to J.J.
“What’d you get?” he asked, whispering because Miss Janowitz was
calling them primly to order.
J.J. held up his paper. A+ was circled in the corner, above, literally, a
gold star. Testing out his new telepathic skills, Seth looked straight into
his twin’s eyes. You suck.
J.J. smirked.
64
***
A lean figure in black jeans and a white T-shirt was waiting on Seth
outside Ms. Clark’s Geometry classroom after fourth period. “Hi,”
Marshall said, unsticking his stunningly attractive self from the wall.
“Hi yourself, Indiana.” Seth fell into step beside him. Across the
hall, a couple of the meathead j.v. guys, defectors to Cam’s new pack,
stared them down as they passed.
There was a traffic jam outside the cafeteria. Seth looked around for
J.J.; he spotted Quinn’s fiery tresses near the water fountain first, then
J.J. standing next to her, talking to Baby Bird. It looked like J.J. pressed
something into Dre’s hand, but Seth couldn’t be sure, because just then
Emery came hopping up to them with his arm around Whitney’s
shoulders. His big ears were red. Should have been Seth’s first clue all
was not well. “We still on for your place tonight, Rabbit-E?” he asked.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Emery smoothed the front of his PlayBoy Bunny
T-shirt – his Valentine’s Day gift from Whitney. Whitney was wearing a
corduroy skirt and a sloppy cardigan. Her hands seemed to be balled up
in the cardigan’s pockets. “So, uh, it’s such a nice day we, uh, we
thought we might eat outside, if you guys want to join us…”
Seth started to say sure, but they needed to actually get their food
first, if the line ever started moving. Then he saw Marshall staring over
Emery’s shoulder, a hard look crystallizing in his blue eyes. Seth looked
where he was looking, and felt a zing of anger along his spine.
The ballplayers’ table, primo real estate in the farthest corner, had
been overturned. Its top had been graffitied with some pretty offensive
slurs, of which “queer” was the tamest.
The mural of the Knights’ mascot behind it had also been defaced, an
anatomically correct drawing of what was under the knight’s armor
aimed at –
Seth squinted. “Is that supposed to be a…?”
“I think so.” Marshall’s tone was neutral. “Excuse me.” He
squeezed Seth’s hand before he let it go, maneuvering through the crowd
into the cafeteria, where Ms. McLain was conferring with Coach Evans
and Miss Janowitz. With her dark hair frizzed out wildly around her
white headband, their principal looked as vicious as a jaguar.
“It was Cam.” Whitney sounded positively vicious herself. “I know
it was Cam. If they don’t expel him for this – ”
“They’ll have to have evidence,” Seth said. His blood had turned to
ash, a bitter taste filling the back of his throat. How had he not been
prepared for a juvenile stunt like this? It wouldn’t be enough for Cam to
have his own pack. He would need to run Marshall entirely out of his
territory. The beta had finally moved against the alpha.
65
“We don’t have to have evidence to punch his face off.”
That was J.J., who, with typical werecat stealth, he had padded
soundlessly through the throng to Emery’s side. Emery edged closer to
Whitney. In his defense, J.J. was looking rather murderous.
“J.J., it’s okay,” Seth said. “Cam isn’t worth it.”
“I don’t care. I’m sick of this shit.” J.J.’s golden eyes were much too
bright. If Seth hadn’t known better, he would have thought his twin was
on something. “Why do these idiots care if you and Doc are together? Is
it hurting them?”
“Come on, player,” Quinn urged. “Tone it down.” Cam’s pack
brothers were looking over at them. J.J. was making no effort to keep his
comments private.
He looked ready to say more, but Marshall walked back to them,
hands deep in his jacket pockets. He wasn’t hunching, though. His chin
was high. “Ms. McLain said they’re questioning some kids who saw
somebody sneaking out the side door after third period,” he reported. “It
wasn’t like this before school. Right now, that’s all anybody really
knows.”
“Did they search Cam’s locker?” Whitney demanded. “Because I
bet you anything they’d find cans of spray paint there.”
“Cam wouldn’t do something like this,” Marshall said.
Um, hell-o! Seth wanted to say. Cam had quit the ball team because
their captain was gay. Sabotaging the Knights’ chances at winning state
would be his mission in life now. “That’s a bit generous, don’t you think,
Doc?” J.J. said.
A menacing softness ran under the words, not quite a purr, but along
those lines. How Seth imagined a jaguar would speak right before it bit
through its prey’s skull. Marshall shrugged. He had never shown any fear
of J.J. “Cam and I have been friends for a long time. Whatever his
problem is with me, I can’t see him taking it to this level. And even if
I’m wrong,” he said, “I don’t accuse somebody without proof.”
J.J. flushed – such a rare thing Seth had never witnessed it before. It
seemed to bring J.J. back to himself. As though rubbing away a
headache, he rubbed a hand through his short hair. “What do you want to
do?” he asked, wearily.
“Right now,” Marshall said, “I want to eat lunch.”
With that, he took Seth’s hand, and they walked into the cafeteria.
***
It wasn’t like Leigh Steward thought she was too good to have a job,
okay? She didn’t. It was just that she had a life. She was president of the
66
Student Vegan Society, which now had thirteen members, a respectable
number no matter what Seth said, and she was spearheading the
campaign to have animal dissection banned at Fairfax High, and she had
to keep her 4.0 GPA if she wanted a shot at a decent law school
someday. Add in that her brothers were werecats enmeshed in a topsecret government alien conspiracy-slash-cover-up, landing Leigh in lifeand-death situations every other week, and how could her mother
honestly expect her to work retail?
Charles Bonaparte, Re-Spin’s only full-time employee, nodded in
solemn sympathy as Leigh presented her case to him, sitting on a tall
stool behind the register to observe her filling out her application. Of
course she left out the alien stuff. She just said her brothers got into
trouble a lot, and she, despite a sixteen-year clean record, seemed to get
swept up in it.
Seth and Marshall had dropped her off at the mall on their way to
Sacred Heart for ball practice, their first with Angelo Alfaro officially a
Fairfax High Knight. Leigh was still fuming over the vandalism to the
cafeteria. She had put a call in about it to her dad’s law firm, left a
message for him with his receptionist. She could have spoken to him
directly, but she wasn’t ready for that yet.
Chaz, who, like all hippies, seemed to have an aversion to soap and
shampoo, was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley
screen-printed on the back. Leigh hoped Melody Little would not require
her to don Re-Spin attire for her shifts. She had taken a turn through the
secondhand racks in the center of the store, and nothing there was as cute
as her chocolate leggings and turquoise tunic. Although the beaded
bracelets they were selling on the metal racks alongside the incense and
Tarot decks were cool. Leigh picked one up, fingering the clay beads.
They made her think of ancient tribal medicine women dancing around a
bonfire in the jungle.
“Beautiful, aren’t they, mon?” Chaz intoned. “Zoe makes them.
Melody just started selling them here.”
“Zoe Campbell?” Leigh said, surprised.
“Do you know her?”
“We go to school together.” Leigh didn’t add that though Zoe was
also in the tenth grade they had never had, like, an actual conversation.
Only recently had Leigh begun to question the Castle-Haven divide. It
was like you could grow up thinking you knew exactly how the world
worked and where you fit into it, and one day, out of nowhere, you were
hit by the revelation that the world was a much bigger place than you had
been led to believe, and you hadn’t even started to figure out your place
67
in it. Or if you even had one, she thought, thinking, with a little stab in
the region of her heart, of Seth and J.J.
“Zoe is a great artist,” Chaz enthused. “Such a tragedy about her
dad, you know?”
Leigh laid the bracelet on the counter, fishing through her Coach bag
for her wallet. No reason not to put her employee discount to good use.
“What happened to her dad?”
“He died, about a year ago. Mysterious circumstances. Maybe you
read about it in the papers. Ezekiel Campbell? Found him in the river,
drowned?”
Leigh did not read newspapers, but she did remember overhearing
J.J. say to Cleo one night (she hadn’t mean to eavesdrop, okay? she just
sometimes happened to pick up the phone while her brother happened to
be on it) that he didn’t think Ezekiel Campbell had been killed by
hunters. He thought Derek Childers had wanted his seat at the
Commanders’ table, so he could discover the identity of the Black Swan.
That name, Derek Childers, conjured images of a rangy man with a
handsome face ravaged by silver powder scars. The last time Leigh had
seen him, he had been about to drive a knife into Seth’s heart, right
before Marshall had shot him.
Derek had been a spy for Werner Regent inside the Resistance. Had
anyone bothered to ask her, Leigh could have told them Regent was a
bad guy. Those poor dead creatures he had hung up on his walls like
trophies had sickened her even before she had known they were werekin.
Saddest of all had been the lioness over his mantle, as harshly beautiful
in death as in life.
“Here you go.”
Leigh jerked back to reality. Chaz was handing her back her change.
She slipped the bills into her wallet, slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.
“When do I start?” she asked.
“Melody said you could start tonight, if you want. I’ve got a gig, but
my replacement should be here soon,” Chaz said.
“Your band – what are they called again?”
“Listening Korn.” Chaz pointed to a flyer in the window advertising
a concert at MoJo’s Friday night. The brewery pub always booked live
music on the weekends. Leigh had begged her mom to let her go, like the
other girls did, but Lydia had this notion that sixteen was too young to be
at a place they served beer on a Friday night.
Maybe she could talk Will McLain into taking them. His little sister
had to get out of the house sometimes, and it wasn’t good for anybody to
be on duty as much as McLain was. He needed a night out. She would
get Seth onboard, Leigh decided. Their mother couldn’t say no to Seth.
68
***
Emery answered his door in jeans and bare feet, a towel draped
around his shoulders. With some appreciation, Seth noted that Emery
was not as much of a scarecrow as he looked with his clothes on.
“Hello,” he said. Marshall elbowed him in the side.
“Sorry, sorry. Come in.” Holding the door wide, Emery motioned the
pair of them into the Littles’ apartment. “J.J. wanted to train at Cleo’s
after school. I thought I’d be done before you guys were finished with
practice, but he really put us through the paces tonight. He was still at it
when I left.” He started through the living room, toward a paneled
hallway. The carpet was brown shag, the couch and recliners green, like
the dinged-up ’70s era appliances in the small kitchen. “How’d Angelo
do tonight?”
“He didn’t break anybody’s ribs,” Seth said. “So that’s a plus.”
“My ribs,” said Marshall, “were not broken. They were bruised. And
Alfaro did awesome, as I knew he would. We are going to kill on
Saturday.” With which pronouncement he fell back into one of the
recliners, wincing at his “bruised” ribs, and pulled one of the grimoires
Aphrodisia had given him yesterday out of his backpack. Seth touched
his shoulder lightly as he passed.
Seth had been inside Emery’s apartment before, but never Emery’s
room. Organized chaos was the phrase that came to mind, heavy on the
chaos, light on the organized. Half of one wall had been painted olivegreen, suggesting whoever the Picasso was, he had lost interest partway
through. Hemp T-shirts and faded jeans were draped over the footboard
of a futon bed. CDs spilled off the dresser, onto the low-pile gray carpet,
around a stereo with gigantic speakers. The only things on the desk were
a box of Cliff bars and a photo of Whitney in a plastic frame. “I love
what you’ve done with the place,” Seth said, picking his way on tiptoe
through the film of gum wrappers and smelly laundry around the bed.
“There’s this new invention you might want to invest in. It’s called a
vacuum.”
“Just because you’re a neat freak,” Emery said. His voice was
muffled because his head was stuck in his closet.
Seth glanced at the unmade bed, decided against it, and swung his
legs over the folding chair at the desk, arms hooked over the back.
“Where’s Whitney?”
“McLain asked her to hang with Caroline for a while,” Emery said.
Her Majesty was not loving the house arrest. Seth couldn’t blame
her. “Leigh texted me about some gig Listening Korn is playing Friday
night. She thinks we should take Caroline. Like early release for good
behavior.”
69
“You mean she wants McLain to come along?”
“Exactly,” Seth grinned.
“Good luck convincing him of that. Ah. Here it is.” Emery emerged
from the closet at last with a cardboard box in his hands, pulling the
accordion door closed behind him. The metal screeched against its track
like claws on a chalkboard. “This is all I have of my dad’s. It was what
he left at Mom’s the day he was killed.”
He put the box on the desk, took the items out one at a time. Seth
thought of the keepsake box of his and his twin’s baby things above his
mother’s sewing table. Two locks of golden hair in a silver locket.
The box did not contain much, as Emery had warned. A faded
flannel shirt. A stack of yellowed letters. An empty leather wallet. Two
photographs, one of a teenage Melody Little (she looked exactly the
same) sitting on the steps of Fairfax High in a blue jacket, the other of a
boy, probably in his late teens, and a girl a little older than him sitting on
a bench against a backdrop of a green river. Seth didn’t think the picture
had been taken in Fairfax. Shops and restaurants lined either side of the
river, and a sign, in Spanish, warned pedestrians not to feed the pigeons.
The boy was tall and lanky, like Emery, with similar strong bone
structure, though darker complected, which only served to heighten the
silvery-blueness of his eyes. The girl was muscular, like Cleo, with dark
eyes and a mane of tawny hair. The boy wore a flannel shirt, dusty jeans,
and cowboy boots; the girl was dressed in similar Southwestern style, a
short denim skirt and a fringed vest, long feathered earrings in her ears.
Seth knew instantly they were werekin. Their blood called to his even in
a photograph.
Emery had taken a seat on the edge of the bed and was twisting the
T-shirt he had meant to put on in his bony hands. “That’s the only picture
we have of Dad. I used to keep it by my bed, but Mom cried every time
she looked at it, so I put it away.”
His cheeks were paler than usual. The night Seth had discovered
Emery was werekin, they had sat in the Littles’ kitchen swapping
histories. Then Emery had told him Melody Little had met Aidan
McDonagh, a werewolf serving in the Resistance, assigned to Fairfax on
reports the Ark was being housed at Fort King, what the Resistance had
always thought of as just another hub, when she was sixteen. Months
later, Aidan had gotten too close to the truth, and LeRoi had sent her
hunters to deal with him. Melody had watched helplessly as he was
executed in the woods near King’s Creek. She hadn’t even known yet
she was pregnant.
70
She had never married. Seth would have been the same, had
Marshall stayed dead. You only found your soulmate once. Nothing else
would ever compare.
“Where was this taken?” he asked, waving the picture.
“San Antonio. Dad was raised in the Texas Underground. That’s his
sister. She was Resistance, too. She disappeared around the time I was
born.” Emery finally pulled his shirt on. “See anything there that
explains how Dad got his hands on one of Elijah Bishop’s books?”
No, was the answer. Seth sorted through it all again, hoping he might
have missed something. His great lead was starting to feel like a dead
end. The letters were all from Melody, the typical love letters of a
teenage girl to her hunky bad-boy soldier beau. No secrets of the
universe there.
As Seth was refolding the last one, he noticed something jotted in the
margin, in a script too neat and tidy to be Melody’s, which looped and
curled all over the page. “Hey,” he said. “What’s this?”
Emery looked at the letter over his shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said.
He took the letter and smoothed it out on the tabletop. “JJS,” he read
aloud. “I don’t know what that means. But could this be an address?”
He ran his finger over the rest of the note, written on the next line:
CR 7003. Seth shrugged. “It doesn’t look like one. There aren’t any
street names.”
“Hang on.” Emery picked the letter up and hurried back down the
hall with it. Seth padded after him, pushing the sleeves of his letterman’s
jacket up past his elbows. “Doc, do you have a web browser on your
phone?”
“Sure.” Marshall laid the grimoire he had been reading down and
pulled his phone out of his pocket. A pencil was stuck behind his ear,
notes spread across his knees. “If my father hasn’t turned my service
off…Nope. We’re good.”
Emery took the phone and walked over to the window. The curtains
were open. Seth could see the brick façade of the pawn shop next door,
and Emery’s ghostly reflection in the pane. Sitting down on the arm of
Marshall’s recliner, he picked his boyfriend’s hand up.
“You’re not upset about what happened at lunch, are you,
Philadelphia?” Marshall asked. Seth shook his head. A few bullies didn’t
get to him. Seeing Aidan McDonagh’s things had just brought back the
awfulness of those hours when he had believed Marshall gone forever,
when he had stood in his darkened bedroom looking around at the
evidence of a life unfinished and wondered how he would get through
the next five minutes without Marshall, let alone the next fifty years.
“Aha!” Emery said.
71
“What are we ‘aha’-ing?” Seth asked, grateful for the distraction.
“It is an address. CR stands for county road. It’s a road number. And
according to Google Maps,” Emery said, “in Fairfax, Indiana, the only
thing on County Road 7003 is the Royal Acres Cemetery.”
In unison, Seth and Marshall groaned.
“What?” Emery looked between them, puzzled.
Seth just shook his head. “We’ll have to drive,” he said. “It’s too far
to walk.”
***
Chaz showed Leigh Re-Spin’s back room, a stockroom that doubled
as an employee lounge. Nothing a few scented candles and perhaps a
beaded curtain couldn’t fix right up. When they came back out, Dre
Alfaro was coming in.
Cap tipped at a jaunty angle, he smiled shyly at Leigh. “I didn’t
know you shopped here,” he said.
What, like she was a snob or something? Leigh didn’t have a
problem with consignment shops. Rocker tees and ripped jeans just
weren’t her style. “I work here,” she told him.
“Cool,” Dre said.
Chaz had to head off to his gig, so Dre showed Leigh how to operate
the cash register, gave her a tour of the used book and CD sections, and
explained how trade-ins worked. They made it through this with no
interruptions from customers. Leigh didn’t feel that boded well for her
job security. “What this place needs,” she declared, sitting down on the
stool behind the register as Dre swung up on the counter, turning
something over in his small hands, “is a marketing plan. And a better
soundtrack.”
“We’re vintage,” Dre protested. “The Doors are vintage.”
“The Doors are not vintage. They’re just a crappy old band,” Leigh
said. “Try mixing it up a little. Throw in some punk and hip hop now and
then, put up a few more of these grindhouse posters, maybe dress that
mannequin in the window up with a mod dress instead of that Black
Sabbath T-shirt, and you could actually attract paying customers.”
“I don’t think Mel has much time to worry about the store these
days,” Dre said.
Leigh did not reply. She had just noticed what it was he was playing
with. “Is that real?”
Dre glanced at her, hearing something in her voice. Their eyes met,
and Leigh was jarringly reminded of looking up into those dark eyes in
her garage, both of them soaked to the skin from the rain falling in icy
72
gray sheets: rain dripping off the ends of Dre’s glossy black hair, his long
eyelashes, his pointed chin…
She looked down at the counter, blushing.
“Here.” Dre was blushing a little himself, though his dark skin made
it hard to see. He held his hand out. Leigh opened her palm, and he
dropped a diamond ring into it. “It was your father’s,” he said.
Leigh had suspected as much. Not a day had gone by she hadn’t seen
the ring on Jack Steward’s smallest finger, until after the battle at Fort
King. Years ago, when Leigh had admired it, he had told her it had
belonged to his father. Leigh had thought that meant family heirloom.
Now she knew Grandpa Steward had worked for Chimera, too, but he
had betrayed LeRoi to the Resistance, for which he had been killed
before Leigh was born. She held the inscription up to the light.
STEWARD. The name felt like an accusation, like she had been the one
working for Chimera. “Why do you have this?” she asked, not very
nicely.
“J.J. asked me to take a look at it. He found it at Cleo’s, in the creek.
I guess your father must have lost it the day he got hurt.”
“Are you going to pawn it or something?”
“No. All of the Partners had to wear these. See?” From the pocket of
his khaki cords, Dre produced a tiny screwdriver, the kind you used to
fix the screws in eyeglasses. He pressed it against a knob on the ring
Leigh hadn’t even seen, cleverly concealed by one of the prongs; the
diamond popped out of its setting, exposing a mishmash of intricate
copper wires and green circuits, all in miniature. Leigh caught her breath.
“Is it – ”
“A recording device,” Dre chirped. When he was excited, he talked
even softer and faster. “It’s okay, I shut it off, but this was how LeRoi
kept tabs on her associates. Anyone high up enough to wear one of these
was required to have it on at all times. If they took it off or tampered
with it, LeRoi would know they were hiding something, and…” He drew
a finger across his throat.
“That’s horrible,” Leigh said, softly. She didn’t want to look at the
ring anymore. She was relieved when Dre returned the stone to its
setting, and the ring to his pocket.
To Leigh, the ring was further proof that everything she had ever
believed about her dad had been a lie. He had never even really loved her
mom, and her mom certainly hadn’t loved him; Jack had just made her
believe she did, with magic. What did that make Leigh? Part of her dad’s
cover story? “I didn’t even know stuff like that existed outside of spy
movies,” she said, stuffing her cold hands under her knees.
73
“Microfabrication technology. It’s not just for James Bond
anymore.” Leigh laughed. Dre was such a nerd, she couldn’t help being
amused by his corny sense of humor. “J.J. wanted me to see if I could
trace the signal back to its source. The rings were equipped with
transmitters, built to broadcast in short bursts. J.J. thinks LeRoi kept a
base of operations Burke never knew about, and if we could trace the
signal, it might lead us there.”
“But LeRoi is in custody,” Leigh said. “Why does it matter where
her evil lair was?”
“Bad guys always have a backup plan,” Dre shrugged. Leigh did not
care for the sound of that. Her brothers had figured too prominently in
Ursula LeRoi’s plans up to this point.
Further conversation was cut short by a handful of Chaz’s stoner
buddies dropping in to check out the new CD offerings. For the next hour
they lounged at the counter snacking on the Oreos Seth kept there and
chatting about bands, delighted by Leigh’s knowledge of the gypsy punk
folk scene. Finally, Dre closed out the register while Leigh showed them
out. Crap, she thought. She had “People Are Strange” stuck in her head
now.
Re-Spin stayed open later than most of the other stores in Fairfax’s
mall; everywhere else was closed for the night when they finished
locking up. Leigh’s heels echoed on the tile floor as Dre walked her out
to the parking lot. Almost every window was a prom display. “Have you
rented your tux yet?” Leigh asked, fiddling with the beads on her
bracelet while looking at Dre sidelong. His skin was richly brown, like
cocoa. Like the quills on his feathers when he skinned.
He shrugged. “I figured I’d just wear something I already have.”
“Really?” Leigh did not quite manage to keep the judgment out of
her voice. You could not wear a Big Bird T-shirt to prom. There were,
like, laws about that.
“It’s not like I have to match anybody,” Dre said lightly, as he
reached around Leigh to open the main doors. On his bicep, just where
his sleeve ended, was a small, white circle. He had been shot there,
trying to warn Will McLain that Ursula LeRoi was coming to kidnap
him. Bleeding, poisoned by the silver in the bullet, he had rushed to
Leigh’s house – not for help; to protect her. After she had called him a
freak. And what for? To impress Shanti Bruce? Leigh didn’t even like
Shanti.
Lydia’s Escalade was waiting by the curb, under a street lamp. Lydia
was on the phone. She waved to Leigh through the windshield. “Do you
need a ride?” Leigh offered, noting there were no other cars in the lot.
“No thanks,” Dre said.
74
Well, right. Leigh had forgotten he could just fly home.
She took a breath and turned to face him. Headlights on the
expressway reflected in his dark eyes. “Dre, listen. I’m – I’m sorry for
what I said that day. The day you asked me to prom.”
He could have been a jerk about it. Most guys would have been. Not
Dre. Dre just smiled. His cap was tilted so it cast shadows on his
cheekbones. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked you out. I know you don’t
think of me like that. But we’re friends now, right?”
He peeked up at her hopefully. “You bet,” Leigh said, managing to
smile, even. “We’re friends.”
75
Chapter Six: Moonlight Sonata
Out of the city, the stars twinkled like faerie dust tossed into the sky.
Marshall climbed out of the Lotus first, zipping up his jacket as he did.
Seth wondered how much of the chill he was feeling had to do with the
crisp breeze. “Okay?” he asked. Marshall shrugged.
Emery had walked over to the arched gate and was peering up at the
words ROYAL ACRES CEMETERY, spelled out in bent iron rods
between one brick post and the other. “It’s locked,” he called back to
them.
A ripple moved under his skin. In the next blink, a fluffy white rabbit
was wriggling through the iron bars. His pink nose twitched, and there
was Emery, in his human skin again, wrapping his fingers around the
bars. He had layered a denim jacket over his T-shirt, but his big feet were
still in his Birkenstocks. “I’ll go see if there’s a key in the caretaker’s sh
– what?” Emery said, a little defensively.
“Nothing.” Marshall, who had been gaping at him, quickly closed
his mouth. “I’ve just – I’ve always been kind of freaked out by rabbits.”
He was dating a werejaguar, and he was scared of rabbits? Seth
sighed. “Step aside, Indiana. Emery, watch and learn, grasshopper.
Watch and learn.”
Taking the narrow metal file out of his back pocket – hey, you never
knew when a little B&E would be necessary – Seth slipped it into the
keyhole on the padlock. He twisted; jiggled; and smirked, as the lock
popped open and the chain slithered through. “Good to know you have
options if the Duke thing doesn’t work out,” Marshall said, as Emery
pushed the gate open for them.
Fog seeped along the grass as though the graves were exhaling it.
Royal Acres was the largest, and oldest, cemetery in Fairfax. Somewhere
in here was the Steward family mausoleum, the final resting place of
Jack’s father. Quite possibly the reason Aidan McDonagh had come to
Fairfax to begin with, to follow up on Gavin Steward’s assertion that the
Ark was housed at Fort King.
They stayed on the paved path to the west corner of the cemetery.
There were no clouds tonight; the waxing moon cast a long shadow away
from the child-sized angel on top of J.J.’s headstone.
The last time Seth had been here, Marshall’s shrouded corpse had
been lying on top of that grave, Agathon had been pouring blood onto the
ground, and J.J. had been holding Seth back, begging him to wait, to be
sure what Agathon was bringing back would be Marshall. When the spell
had ended, the bowl-shaped tree beside the grave had toppled straight out
of the ground.
76
It was still there, dismissed as damage from the storm, lying on its
side atop a blanket of yellow leaves as its branches died. Roots straggled
out of the trunk like stripped veins. The thorny rosebushes that had
circled the tree had been crushed beneath it; blackened petals like dead
butterflies had floated into the hole its uprooting had left behind.
Seth stood at the edge staring down. Marshall was just behind him,
shifting his weight.
They had driven back to Fort King that night in Marshall’s stormdamaged Audi. Emery at the wheel, Marshall and Leigh and Whitney
and Seth scrunched into the back, Cleo in the passenger’s seat. J.J. had
run home through the woods. He and Seth had never talked about that
night, about when Seth had realized J.J. meant to kill Marshall if he came
back wrong, and had pushed him, the only time he had ever touched his
brother in anger. J.J. had not pushed back. Aside from one good-natured
romp, J.J. had always refused to fight Seth, even in training.
At Fort King, Aphrodisia had clopped down the steps and folded
Marshall in her arms like he was her own flesh and blood. Dr. Townsend
had just stood there, gray in the moonlight, saying nothing.
“It’s cracked,” Emery said.
Seth swung around. Emery was kicking dirt away from J.J.’s
headstone, which was split down the middle, severing the Jeremy from
the Jonathan. Sleeping with the Stars. “Do we have to dig it up?”
Marshall sounded skeptical. “We didn’t bring any shovels…”
“We won’t need them,” Seth said.
“Can you use your claws?”
Seth could have, but that wasn’t what he meant. He unfolded the
letter from his jacket pocket. Emery had given his okay for him to bring
it along. Pointing to the JJS, he said, “This is Elijah Bishop’s
handwriting.”
Emery frowned. “Seth, it can’t be. Bishop was executed decades ago.
Before you and J.J. were even twinkles in your mother’s eye.”
“While I have never really understood that expression,” Seth said,
“your dad died before J.J. and I were born, too. You’re eighteen. We’re
seventeen. Your dad died before this grave was ever dug.”
Emery blinked.
Marshall took the letter from Seth and stepped into a brighter patch
of moonlight to study it. “He’s right,” he declared. “I’ve read Dr.
Bishop’s journal. This is definitely his writing.”
“But how could Elijah Bishop have written a note on a letter my
mother wrote after he was dead? How could he have written down an
address to a grave that didn’t even exist yet?”
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Emery was upset. His chest was rising and falling fast. “I don’t
know, Em,” Seth said, gently. “But if the grave didn’t exist yet, it stands
to reason there couldn’t have been anything in it Bishop would have
wanted your dad to find. But there was something here that did exist
then. Something I’ve seen in almost every prophetic dream I’ve had
since I came to Fairfax.”
Seth pointed. At the tree.
They all looked down, into the hole. It was deep, deeper even than it
should have been with a tree so old ripped straight out of the ground.
Emery swallowed loudly.
“So.” Marshall looked at the other two. “Who wants to go down the
rabbit hole?”
***
After a few minutes of macho arguing about who would take the
risk, dispatched by Seth pointing out he was the only one who could get
back out of the hole without a rope, Seth shucked his jacket off and leapt
over the edge.
The fall was about eight feet, not quite as far as the hunter’s pit
Blondie had once trapped him in. Seth’s basketball shoes landed in a
quarter-inch of mud, splattering his jeans. Seth drew back against the
wall, having learned his lesson about silver nets. But the bottom of this
hole was just dirt.
“Seth?” Marshall’s face appeared above him. Seth didn’t know if he
was really that pale, or if it was just the moonlight. “Anything down
there?”
“Aside from man-eating bunnies?” Seth said. He heard Marshall
sigh.
The hole pretty much looked like a hole. Roots furred the walls;
worms were wiggling through the damp soil. But there was something
else, something Seth’s keen jaguar eyes had seen from up above. It was a
tin box, wrapped inside crystal threads like the web that surrounded the
Ark. Seth cleaned mud off of them with his fingers. They glowed at his
touch.
A glyph had been crudely carved into the box’s lid. Seth spoke the
word, in his mind to see if it would work, and the crystal web suddenly
turned to powdery white ash, freeing the box. Seth wiped his hands on
his jeans. He felt a little guilty. The crystal had almost seemed alive, like
a plant.
Tucking the box inside his jacket, he gathered his legs under him.
“I’m coming up.”
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There was a scramble overhead. Seth took a breath – a ripple moved
under his skin – and a fully-grown jaguar sprang out of the hole, landing
neatly on four paws.
“Jesus,” Marshall said, but it seemed perfunctory by this point.
They all agreed the graveyard was too creepy to hang out in, and
besides, they hadn’t eaten after practice; as Seth was ravenous, which
always made Emery nervous, they drove across town to Archie’s Diner.
The diner was busy for a Tuesday night; the theater across the road had
just let out. Seth tried to remember what life had been like when a
regular weekday night was catching the latest action flick, not digging up
his brother’s empty grave on the instructions of a dead man.
Archie’s was a classic diner – checkered floor, chrome counter, even
an old Wurlitzer jukebox that still worked. The boys ordered garden
burgers and milkshakes from a poodle-skirted server on roller skates, and
Marshall got up to answer his phone – it had started ringing as soon as
they stepped inside the diner. Watching him walk over to the jukebox,
Seth placed the box on the table. “Em, I think you should do the honors.”
Emery nodded. “Okay,” he said, and pulled the box toward him.
The hinges were rusted, but the lid opened easily, no lock. Inside was
a stack of sheet music. Or at least it seemed to be on first glance. Emery
picked up one of the papers, his pale green eyes narrowing in
bewilderment. “These aren’t musical notes,” he said.
“They’re not?” Seth picked up one of the sheets. “No,” he said,
“they’re not.”
What should have been lines of music were instead lines of glyphs.
Emery looked over at him. “Can you translate them?”
“Yeah. But I think the Commanders and McLain should see them
first.” Seth didn’t want to be accused of doing anything else behind the
Alliance’s back.
Emery handed the box back. Seth shook his head. “Elijah Bishop
meant for your dad to find this,” he said. “You should be the one to give
it to the Commanders.”
Emery laid his fingertips on the lid, tracing the glyph. Over by the
window, Marshall had turned away from them, hip propped against the
jukebox. A booth of girls kept stealing glances at him, but Marshall
didn’t even notice them. He was listening to whoever was on the other
end, not saying much in response. Seth frowned. Why hadn’t he just
taken the call at the table?
“Do you really think Bishop told my dad how to find this?”
The question brought Seth’s attention back to Emery. “Yes,” he said.
“I don’t know how, since he’s supposed to be dead, and I don’t know
what we’ve found, exactly, but I think your dad was going to get this box
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the day the hunters killed him. You told me he asked your mom to meet
him at their cabin that day, right?” Emery nodded. “I think Aidan wanted
Melody with him before he dug this up. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk
LeRoi getting his hands on her and forcing him to make a trade, the box
for her.”
Emery looked toward the door. Under the fluorescent lights, his eyes
were shining. “Em,” Seth said, feeling a sting behind his own eyes. “I
know how it feels to lose your dad. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” When Emery looked back at Seth, he had blinked the
tears away. “I’m sorry Dad died. I’ll always be sorry for that. But now I
know he didn’t die for nothing. He died doing something important.”
Emery’s voice was firm, and without fear. “It’s up to us to finish it.”
***
“Who was on the phone?” Seth asked.
Marshall turned Weezer down on the radio. They had just left the
expressway, taking the exit for Castle Estates, after dropping Emery off
in Haven Heights. Seth hadn’t wanted to ask about the call in front of
him. The fact that Marshall hadn’t mentioned it seemed ominous.
He had been quiet since returning to the table at Archie’s. Seth saw
his knuckles whiten as he gripped the wheel now. “It was my father. Ms.
McLain called him about the vandalism at school today.”
“Oh.” Seth picked at a fleck of mud on his jeans, not sure where to
look, at Marshall or the road. “Did you want to talk about it?”
“Not a lot to say,” Marshall said. “He asked if I was all right, if I felt
threatened at school. I said no.” Instead of making the expected left, onto
Kings Lane, Marshall turned right, down Queens Boulevard. Toward
Castle Park. Parallel with the merry-go-round, he pulled over and
switched the ignition off. It had started to rain, so they had put the top
up; the convertible’s windows were so darkly tinted Seth didn’t at first
realize the street lights weren’t on around the park. A white utility van
was parked down the street. “He also said the school is taking the
incident seriously. Mr. Steward spoke to the police – ”
“Jack? How did Jack get involved?” If Jack knew, Lydia would
know, which meant Seth would be walking into a Supermom Goddess
firestorm of rage at home.
“Apparently Leigh called him. Or his office, anyway. They’ve
classified it as a hate crime. That’s a big deal, not just a slap on the wrist
and some detention and community service. Dr. Foss called Dad because
the police questioned Cam.”
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Seth could see where this was going. He folded his arms. “And your
dad called you because he wants you to call the cops and tell them Cam
wasn’t involved, is that it?”
“He didn’t say that. He asked me if I thought it was Cam. I said I
didn’t, and he asked if I would be willing to tell the police that.”
“Let me guess. You said yes.”
“I said when the police talk to me, if they talk to me, I’ll tell them
the truth.”
Marshall tipped his head back against the seat. Seth knew there was
more. “What else?”
“He asked me to come home.”
Marshall did not whisper this, but the words seemed to suck the air
out of him. He closed his eyes. Seth couldn’t, really, but he imagined he
could see the blue through the lids.
Something black and icy, which Seth had felt with Marshall once
before when discussing his father’s opinion on boys liking boys – just
resist the impulse, Dr. Townsend had said, and it goes away – threatened
to wash up inside of him. He took a deep breath to keep it at bay. “What
did you say?”
“I said I’d have to think about it.”
“And you really mean that? You’d be willing to go back there and
live with him?”
“Seth, they’re my parents.” Marshall sounded pleading. He opened
his eyes, twisting sideways in the seat to look at Seth. He had taken his
letterman’s jacket off at the diner; his white shirt was the perfect
complement to his honey-toned skin. Stubbornly, Seth refused to look at
him. He looked at the swings blowing in the wind. He could smell the
rusted metal even inside the car, a tang akin to silver powder. “I mean, I
know they’re not my parents, not really. Not in the biological sense. I
know what my father did with the Ovid Experiment is unforgivable. And
I know how he feels about you and I is – complicated.”
“Wrong,” Seth said, flatly. “How he feels about you and I is wrong.”
“Okay. It’s wrong,” Marshall said. “But he still raised me. He
provided for me, for eighteen years. He never hit me, never abandoned
me, never treated me like a lab rat. He wanted what was best for me, my
whole life. I couldn’t be who I am right now if it wasn’t for him, even the
times he pushed me, the times he rode me too hard – the times he was
wrong. That’s a lot to give up. And my mom, and Whitney – ”
“Still love you,” Seth broke in, firmly. “And you can still have a
relationship with them. They’ve never asked you to be anything other
than who you are. They never tried to make you into someone else. Into
81
them. Or have you forgotten what the whole point of the Ovid
Experiment was?”
“No,” Marshall said. “I haven’t forgotten.”
He moved to start the car. Seth caught his wrist. Okay, that had been
a crappy thing to say. “Indiana, don’t. Please? I’m sorry. I don’t want to
fight.”
“Maybe we need to fight about this,” Marshall said. “If you hate the
idea of what my father made me so much. If you’re afraid I’m too much
like him.”
He jerked his wrist out of Seth’s grasp, face turned away. Seth could
see his reflection in the dark window. Anger was written into the hollows
around Marshall’s mouth, stretching his lips taut, but it wasn’t only
anger. Marshall, Seth realized, was afraid. Afraid what he had just said
was true. Afraid he was his father.
Seth folded his hands in his lap. What he wanted to say was that he
had seen inside Marshall’s mind, a postmortem mind-meld arranged by
their friendly neighborhood Lizardman, for the purpose of finding the
Black Swan, and from that he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how
fundamentally different, how fundamentally better, Marshall was than
his father. But it all seemed too complex to put into words. “I just mean
that your father wanted to use you as a tool to help Chimera hunt down
werekin,” he said, which was not untrue. “If he had ever found out you
really can see our auras, don’t you think you and I would have met under
very different circumstances? Like with you pointing me out to hunters?”
Marshall’s expression changed. Rain streaked the outside of the
glass, tracking down his reflection. “No. You’re right. I know you’re
right.” He rubbed his hands over his face. It was times like these all Seth
wanted to do was pull Marshall into his arms and kiss every drop of
sadness inside of him away. And just like that, he realized that now,
despite the fact that they were parked on a public street less than a mile
from Marshall’s house, he could.
He snapped his seatbelt off. “Marshall?”
Marshall turned, and Seth kissed him.
Instantly, that little spark inside of Seth that only ignited with
Marshall blazed up like a four-alarm fire. Without warning he lunged
forward, with a speed and grace no human could have matched, and
pinned Marshall against the door.
Marshall gasped against his mouth. Rain was striking the hood like
bullets; they might have been inside the eye of a hurricane – Seth
couldn’t even see the park through the sheets of rain. Not that he was
concentrating on the view. Marshall shoved Seth’s jacket down his arms.
Seth sat back to let him throw it over the seat, but Marshall didn’t stop
82
there. Yanking his own T-shirt over his head, he grabbed Seth by the
shoulders, pulling him back in for a kiss so fierce Seth’s teeth sliced his
lip.
“Sorry,” he gasped. Marshall murmured what sounded like don’t be.
He was kissing Seth’s neck, sliding his hands up under his shirt, over his
stomach, down his spine. Blood thundered in Seth’s ears. He felt
superheated, like he did in the seconds before he skinned. Only this was
magic of a very different sort.
He did not protest when Marshall picked him up and lifted him into
the backseat.
The leather was cold, and still smelled new. Distantly, Seth thought
of Marshall’s Audi TT Coupe – but he couldn’t remember the Audi
without remembering riding in the backseat of it with Marshall after
Agathon had resurrected him. He pushed the memory away, and the
agony of losing Marshall that sometimes still snuck up on him unawares,
twisting him inside out.
Marshall had stretched out on top of him and was brushing his lips
over the spot below Seth’s ear he knew drove him crazy. Seth traced the
backs of his hands up and down Marshall’s spine. His skin was smooth,
soft, the knobs of his spine like chips of ivory. Seth pulled his own shirt
off, wanting to feel their skin slide together.
“I love you,” Marshall whispered.
“I love you too.” Seth looked up at him. “I’ll never love anybody
but you.”
A warm hand cupped Seth’s neck. Lips pressed sweetly against his.
Marshall was retreating, back inside their self-imposed boundaries, but
tonight, Seth wanted more than just to hear I love you.
Tonight, Seth wanted Marshall.
“Sit up,” he said.
Right away, Marshall sat up. His hair was adorably tousled.
“Sorry…I shouldn’t have…I know this was fast – ”
“Marshall?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut-up, okay?”
“Oh.” Marshall’s dimple appeared. “Okay.”
He lay down. Seth straddled his lap, appreciating how that made
Marshall’s eyes darken. Seth was smaller than Marshall, shorter, slighter,
more delicate all around. Marshall rested his hands on Seth’s thighs,
squeezing as if to feel the muscles there. Seth’s kisses started at
Marshall’s jaw and worked down, along the line that split the center of
Marshall’s chest, across the ridges in his stomach. Marshall tensed.
“Seth. Seth, we shouldn’t – ”
83
“Why?” Seth curled his fingers under the waistband of Marshall’s
jeans, his lips tracing the bruise Alfaro’s elbow had left on his ribcage.
“Why can’t we?”
“Because. We haven’t really talked about this, and…It’s still sex.”
Seth looked up at him. Marshall’s eyes were dark as smoke; what he
wanted, and how much he wanted it, was written all over his face. “Are
you saving yourself for marriage or something, Indiana?” Seth growled.
“Because I seem to recall you trying this with me one time, in your
bedroom…”
“Moment of weakness.” Marshall shut his eyes, biting down on his
lip – which Seth found indescribably sexy – when Seth deftly unfastened
the buckle on his jeans. His boxers were basic black. “Seth,
really…we’re – we’re still in high school, and – my father…”
“Your father?” Seth sat up so fast he nearly toppled over. Cats were
never that clumsy, but Seth was all kinds of off-balance at the moment.
“What does your father have to do with this?”
“Jesus, Seth, I don’t know, okay? I’m doing the best I can here.”
Marshall threw his arm over his eyes, baring the faint, pale circle
above his heart – evidence of the bullet that had killed him. In that single,
terrible second, Seth was back in the Fairfax High gym, Marshall staring
up at him as the life seeped out of his beautiful blue eyes. “Marshall,” he
whispered, just as he had that night.
Something in his voice made Marshall look at him. Seth placed two
fingers over the scar. Marshall’s mouth twisted; he pulled him down so
Seth’s cheek rested on his chest. He had to feel the hot tears escaping
Seth’s lashes, much as Seth tried to quell them. He didn’t even know
why he was crying. Because he was so tired? So worried about what
would happen with the Alliance now that the Ark was complete, the
Source closed off? So frustrated at Cam for trying to ruin the best thing
in his life?
Marshall held him close, whispering that it was all right, he was
there. Slender fingers trailed up and down Seth’s arms, raising goose
bumps, and the fist of pain that had tightened inside of Seth began to turn
into something else. He felt the same slow, hot trickle of desire wash
over Marshall. He ducked his head, kissing the tears off Seth’s cheeks.
“This isn’t fair,” he murmured, as Seth’s lips found their way back
onto his neck. His voice was drowsy. “I’m trying – to be – responsible –
and you’re being – ”
“Yes?” Seth’s fingers touched Marshall’s zipper and pulled it,
slowly, down. “What am I being?”
“You,” Marshall growled. “You’re just you, and I should say no to
you, but I can’t, because you’re you.”
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Seth grinned. His heart was pounding, partly from nerves. Much as
he wanted this, it would be his first time, too. He tried not to worry that
he didn’t really know what he was doing. That he might be bad at it. “We
call that circular reasoning, Indiana. Duke would not be impressed.”
“You’re lucky you’re getting full sentences out of me right now,”
Marshall all but gasped, as Seth’s hand moved lower –
The tap-tap-tap on the window was as loud as a bomb detonating:
Seth yelled in surprise, leaping back from Marshall, whose blue eyes
were slightly panicked. At some point the downpour had slowed to a
drizzle.
Outlined by moonlight, a man was looking in at them. Seth didn’t
spend much time studying his face. He was too busy staring at the
muzzle of the gun pressed to the glass.
“Hello, cub,” Regent said.
85
Chapter Seven: Checkmate
Will McLain could not have been more surprised for his half-hearted
response of “enter” to be answered by Lydia Steward stalking through
his office door.
McLain dropped his pen on the desk he was sitting behind. Like all
of the offices inside Fort King, formerly occupied by Chimera
Enterprises’ Partners, McLain’s was outfitted with trendy black furniture
and state-of-the-art technology, right down to the phone he couldn’t
figure out how to use. He had removed the mounted wereowl from above
the hearth, given him a proper burial in the woods with the rest of the
corpses Ursula LeRoi had held onto as trophies.
Lydia was carrying a red umbrella, which she propped against the
door after she closed it. Her pea coat was damp, as was her auburn hair.
McLain had been so wrapped up in reading Jensen’s latest report from
Roswell he hadn’t even heard it raining outside. A cup of cold coffee and
an untouched éclair sat on the corner of his desk, weighting down the
files on the hunters whose futures awaited his recommendation, whether
they would be released under the terms of Operation Swan Song’s
amnesty agreement, or transferred to another maximum security
installation off-shore, if deemed psychologically unfit to rejoin human
society, as the brass put it.
“If you’re here about the relocation plans,” McLain began, since he
couldn’t see why else Lydia would be speaking to him again, “the
Commanders are working their contacts Undergr – ”
“I’m not here about the Alliance,” Lydia said.
In clipped tones, she explained about the trouble at Fairfax High that
day. Ingrid had already called McLain, but he let Lydia talk it out,
motioning her into one of the egg-shell-shaped chairs in front of the
fireplace. She draped her coat over the back. The yoga pants and T-shirt
underneath suggested she had just jumped in the car and driven here
without giving it much thought.
McLain, having come to sit across from her, leaned forward, elbows
on his knees. His arms were still bronzed from the New Mexico sun.
“I’m sure they’ll find out who was responsible for the vandalism. Aunt
Ingrid won’t stand for this sort of thing. I understand the Foss boy has
already been questioned.”
“It’s not just that.” Lydia brushed her hair back. When it was wet, it
curled against her neck likes vines. “I’m worried about J.J.”
“Oh?” McLain kept his tone neutral.
“He isn’t sleeping. I hear him, in the night, prowling his room.”
“He is a cat. They are nocturnal.”
86
“Yes, but it seems like more than that,” Lydia said. “And this
evening, Ingrid told me there was an incident after his Gym class, after
Seth had left for practice. J.J. threatened Cameron Foss.”
“Threatened him how?” McLain was careful not to let a note of
anything other than concern creep into his voice.
“She didn’t know. She said the boys who witnessed it were very
closed-mouthed about it. They’re all angry with Cameron because they
think he’s the one tormenting Marshall and Seth. Ray Evans walked in at
the end of it. He said Cameron was white as a sheet, too scared to even
file a disciplinary report.”
McLain did not doubt this. He had seen J.J. fight in the Arena. No
one had ever stood a chance against him. “I’m not sure what it is you’re
asking me,” he said, quietly.
“I guess I’m – what I want to know is – God, I don’t even want to
say it.” Lydia dropped her face into her hands. It was a long minute
before she took them away again, looking up at McLain. Fine wrinkles
webbed the corners of her eyes. Here and there, threads of gray mixed
with the sun streaks in her auburn hair. McLain knew these were
supposed to be imperfections. They didn’t seem that way to him. “Will,
do you know why J.J. asked the Commanders to spare LeRoi’s life?”
“No,” McLain said. “I don’t.”
“I would think he would hate her.” Lydia’s voice dropped on the
words, as though she was ashamed to hear them coming out of her
mouth. “I love my son, Will. But how he was raised…and then for him
to ask for mercy, on behalf of that – that monster…”
McLain sat back in his chair, hands palm-down on his knees.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. “When I met J.J., I only knew
who he was, who he really was, because of Ben,” he said. “I wouldn’t
have guessed otherwise that he was Resistance. His loyalty to LeRoi
appeared absolute. I saw him kill for her, and smile while he did it, this
teenage kid who for all the world looked like an angel, turned into a
savage beast at the snap of LeRoi’s fingers. She delighted in that. She
loved showing him off to the Partners. She called him her ‘pet.’ I once
heard her say she couldn’t have been prouder of her own son.
“Then J.J. came to me, days before he and Cleo were scheduled to
graduate from the Scholae Bestiarii. I don’t know if you know this, but to
graduate, a werekin had to kill his hunter partner, or the hunter had to kill
him. On the rare occasions either refused, both were killed. ‘Failed
experiments,’ LeRoi called them. Finally here was a test J.J. couldn’t
fake, and he knew it. He begged me to help him save Cleo.” McLain
paused, to let that sink in. Lydia’s blanched face relaxed the tiniest bit.
“You could see he was in agony. He was in love with this girl. For ten
87
years he had tortured himself, starved himself, all so she wouldn’t have
to do those things to him, or be hurt for refusing to hurt him. I can tell
you this much. Nobody who served Ursula LeRoi willingly could love
someone that much.”
Lydia’s eyes went cold. “Jack did.”
“If you’ll forgive my presumption, ma’am, I don’t believe your exhusband had any idea what he was actually avowing himself to, until it
was too late to back out.”
“You mean Leigh,” Lydia said, softly.
McLain nodded. “Once she was born, LeRoi had Jack, for life. She
would have killed her if he had betrayed Chimera. Probably forced you
both to watch.”
Lydia exhaled. She was coming back into her own, straightening
along that steel spine McLain admired so much. “Do you think I’m
overreacting about J.J.? Reading into normal seventeen-year-old boy
behavior?”
“I think anybody who has been through what J.J. has been through
would have trouble adjusting,” McLain answered honestly. “If he gets
worse, we’ll go to Xanthe. We can get him help. We don’t have to
involve Burke or the Commanders. I won’t even tell Ben, if you don’t
want me to.” He stood. “As for why J.J. wanted LeRoi alive, that’s
beyond me. But I’ve never known J.J. to do anything without having a
good reason for it. And he is the only person who ever beat Ursula LeRoi
at her own game.”
“Thank you, Will.” Lydia had risen as well, reaching for her coat.
Automatically McLain took it from her and held it out for her to slip her
arms through. Her hair got trapped in the collar; he lifted it free,
arranging it carefully around her shoulders. Half in the circle of his arms,
Lydia looked up at him. “I should have asked before. How’s Caroline?”
“Furious,” McLain said, dryly. “I haven’t seen her stomp her feet
since she was five years old, but she did last night when I told her again
she can’t go to school right now. She’s been listening to Brittney Spears
nonstop ever since. I’m pretty sure it’s a ploy to drive me insane.”
“Teenage girls can do that,” Lydia said, with a faint smile.
“Speaking of, Leigh was saying something about this concert at MoJo’s
on Friday night, a band some boy she knows plays in. She thought it
would be nice if Caroline could come with her. I told her I’d have to
chaperone, of course.”
“That’s very nice of her to offer, but I don’t think now is – ”
The door flew open, with enough force to crash into the wall. Lydia
cried out. McLain had shoved her behind him, drawing his sidearm.
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Dre Alfaro, dripping wet, threw his hands up on the threshold,
shaking as the magic under his skin fought to take hold. “Regent,” he
gasped, completely out of breath. “Werner Regent. I was flying home,
and I saw – Castle Estates – ”
McLain didn’t wait to hear more. Taking Lydia by the hand, he
pulled her out the door.
***
“Tie those knots tight, cub.”
Slanting his eyes downward, Seth glared at Regent without turning
his head. The cold muzzle of a gun was pressed to the back of Seth’s
skull. He was kneeling in the convertible’s front seat, Regent’s broad
shoulders blocking out the moon behind him. The silver in the bullets
burned Seth’s nose like too much chlorine. He might have magicked
himself out of a collar once, but even the Totems couldn’t save him from
a silver bullet to the brain.
Marshall looked up at him, pleading with his eyes. An old rag had
been stuffed in his mouth to serve as a gag. Seth cinched the ropes tight
around his wrists. The rope was looped over and under through the
steering wheel, a complex configuration Houdini would have been
stumped by. Seth had Ben Schofield to thank for his knot-tying prowess,
and he had put it to good use here; regardless of what Regent had in store
for him, Seth didn’t want Marshall barging into the middle of it any more
than his former guru did.
“If you hurt him – ” Seth started.
“I have no intention of hurting either of you,” Regent said. It was
disturbing to Seth how easily he believed him. “Now. Put these on.”
He held a pair of silver manacles out to Seth. Seth dutifully clamped
them around his wrists. Marshall made a noise around his gag. It sounded
like Seth.
“Just sit tight, kid,” Regent said. “I’ll bring him back.”
That Seth did not believe.
Rain puddled like thin tar on the black asphalt. Regent marched Seth
across the dark, deserted park, around the swing set and merry-go-round,
past the hickory tree with the knot on the side that looked like an old
man’s face. The manacles were silver; they didn’t suppress Seth’s magic
like a collar, but if he snapped them Regent would just shoot him, largely
defeating the purpose of escape. At the utility van, Regent stopped.
“Open it,” he said.
With shackled hands Seth grasped the lever on the back door and
pulled down. Regent prodded him inside and shut the door behind them.
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Seth was told to sit, so he sat, in one of two rolling chairs in front of
a bank of CC-TV monitors. The back of the van had been outfitted like
an FBI surveillance van in the movies, complete with cords and wires
bundled on the floor. No windows. “Are you still working with Gideon,
or did he run off after LeRoi’s takedown?” Seth asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Let’s call it idle curiosity,” Seth said. When he had encountered
Aaron Gideon last, his Bio teacher had clawed Connor Burke’s skin off.
Literally.
“Gideon never worked with me,” Regent said. “He works for me.”
“And who do you work for? Still LeRoi?”
Regent just grunted and sank down in the chair across from Seth’s.
In exile, he had lost none of his polish; like a true cat, Regent always
landed on his feet. His wool overcoat was impeccable, his red-and-whitestriped beard neatly trimmed, his bowler hat tilted at a slight angle on his
ginger head. For the briefest second when their eyes had met back at the
car, Seth’s heart had constricted. He thought he had seen the same
anguish, longing married to fury, in Regent’s marbled eyes.
The last time they had met, Regent had saved him from a whipping
at Blondie’s hands, then collared Seth and tried to drain his life-force.
Somehow Seth had survived, though Regent had taken the key with him.
Nothing was supposed to remove a collar except its key.
The pistol, a Glock .9 millimeter, rested on the knee of Regent’s
navy-blue suit. “Aren’t guns a little beneath you, General?” Seth said.
“Guns have their uses, like any weapon,” Regent said. Still, Seth
noticed, he placed the gun on the counter.
A small pot of chai tea was steaming on a portable burner. Regent
poured some into a clay mug and passed it to Seth, who balanced it
awkwardly in his bound hands. Regent drizzled honey into his own mug.
Seth looked around at the banks of monitors. He recognized the parking
lot of the Fairfax mall, the run-down street Melody and Emery lived on,
the metal knight that guarded the front entrance of Fairfax High. A big
house on a hill, dark stone climbing with ivy, he did not recognize. Had
Regent tapped into the traffic camera feeds or something?
The more pressing question was why Regent had Fairfax under
surveillance to begin with, as his boss was currently enjoying the first leg
of a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Seth shook his hair
out of his eyes. He had been allowed to put his clothes back on, but he
was still disheveled. “So. What do you want this time, Regent? Place to
crash while you’re in town? I don’t think Mom will say yes to that.
Maybe you could ask Jack. I’m sure he’s over that one time you tried to
maul him to death.”
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Regent chuckled. “Same old smartass cub,” he said, not without
fondness. He took a sip from his mug. The cinnamon aroma had
unleashed a flood of unwelcome memories for Seth: long evenings at
Regent’s sunken bar, listening to him wax philosophical about courage
and honor. Of which Regent had neither, though Seth hadn’t known that
then. “Congratulations on the basketball championship. I understand you
have a chance at a state title now.”
Don’t, Seth wanted to say. Basketball was his thing. Regent didn’t
get to taint that, too. “Well, gee, Mr. Regent, thanks,” he said, with as
much sarcasm as was (super)humanly possible. “I’m so touched you
came back here just to pat me on the back. Nothing says ‘well done’ like
a gun to the head. Now, how about we cut the crap and you tell me what
you want?”
“The Ark,” Regent said.
Seth cocked an eyebrow. He was trying hard to play this cool while
his mind whirled through escape scenarios. “Anything else?”
“And the Black Swan, eventually, but I’ll settle for the Ark for
now.”
“Wait,” Seth said. “I’ve seen this episode. It ends with you and your
traitor pals getting your butts kicked.” That earned him a tight-lipped
glare. Seth set his untouched tea down on the counter. He was not foolish
enough to drink anything Regent had fixed for him. It could have been
drugged, or poisoned. “Give it up, Regent. The smartest thing you can do
is hide in a hole somewhere and hope McLain never finds you. What are
you even still fighting for, anyway? Your team lost, in case you missed
the memo. Chimera Enterprises is finished.”
“Cub, if you think Chimera Enterprises could be defeated that
easily, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
Regent rolled his chair back from Seth. At first Seth thought he was
going for a weapon, but what Regent came up with, from a pile of twoway radios and night-vision goggles, was a remote control. He pressed a
button. The second bank of monitors lit up with a live feed of the exterior
of Fort King. Lydia’s Escalade was parked in the shadow of the threeheaded fountain.
The fountain. Animated by souls of the dead, answerable to Agathon.
Seeing it gave Seth an idea. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath down
into his lungs. J.J., if you can hear me, I’m in the park, J.J., I need help –
“Wake up, cub.” Regent snapped his fingers under Seth’s nose. Seth
calmly opened his eyes. Regent seemed pleased he hadn’t startled him.
Seth wondered just how long the mangy old tiger had been spying on
him. Had he seen Seth on his morning runs, practicing his karate stances
in the backyard? Did he know he had given J.J. the katana he had forged
91
for him? “We know the Ark is still at Fort King,” Regent said. He had
darkened the monitors again. “We know it has your blood in it. All we
need now is the Black Swan, and we can raise Lemuria. We can go
home.”
He was like a broken record, Seth thought. “Point of fact, you need
the Source too before you can open the stargate. And General Burke
already gave us that option. Our queen decided against it.”
Regent sneered. “Don’t tell me you’re that naïve. Do you really think
Burke would have allowed you to raise Lemuria, no matter what
Caroline McLain decided? Think about the track record of humans and
werekin. Do you think your military buddies are just going to hand the
power of the gods over to an alien race? Do you expect the United States
military to pay for a super-powered warrior to go to college and play
basketball and marry that boy back there you’re so head-over-heels for?
At best they’ll collar you and your twin and force you both into their
army. At worst, they’ll exterminate all of us. They even have a code
name for that,” Regent said. “Eden.”
What scared Seth was that Regent was not mocking him. He sounded
pitying, and that was worse. “I trust McLain,” he said, roughly.
“And you aren’t wrong to,” Regent said. “But Will McLain is a
captain. In the military they have this little thing called chain of
command, and your captain friend is pretty damn near the bottom of it.
He won’t be the one who decides the fate of the werekin in the end.”
“Neither will LeRoi,” Seth argued back. “From where I’m sitting,
we’re still better off than we were when she was running the show.”
Regent slapped his palm down on the counter. Seth almost jumped.
“Dammit, cub, would you put aside this black-and-white notion you have
of the good guys and the bad guys and listen to me for a change? Say for
the sake of argument you’re right. David Burke has no designs on the
werekin other than what he’s stated. What happens if the rest of
humankind finds out about us? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about
it. Underground you weren’t just hiding from Ursula LeRoi. You were
hiding from humans, period, and you know it.”
“I’m sure you have a point to all of this,” Seth said, stiffly. He didn’t
want to admit that not only was Regent right, but he had just had a
version of this argument with Marshall two days ago, at which time Seth
had been arguing Regent’s side.
“I do. And here it is.” Regent leaned forward. “Fort King is the best
fortified military installation on this planet. I have considered every
possible scenario for breaking in there to steal the Ark, and my
employers have concluded it’s impossible. But they don’t know what
you can do.”
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“I can’t do anything,” Seth said. His voice shook a little. He wished
Regent would hit him, or yell at him, or anything but look at him with
such steady purpose, like Seth was his last hope.
“You spoke to the Ark in its own language, and it opened for you.
You can control it. If you call to it, the power inside of it will obey you.
It will come to you. No amount of security can stop that.”
“How did you know what happened with the Ark?” Seth stammered,
too late realizing if Regent had been bluffing about what he knew, he had
just confirmed it.
“I have my sources,” Regent said..
Seth pulled his shackled wrists up against his chest. He had this
mixed-up fear inside, that Regent might reach out and take his hands, tell
him he belonged with him again. He wanted to hate Regent. Someday –
and Seth might not have shared J.J.’s prescience, but he understood
enough about how the world worked to know this – he would have to kill
Regent, and he thought that might be easier if he hated him.
“Who is this employer?” he demanded. “It can’t be LeRoi. Who did
she leave to run things in her place?”
“Well, well, well. I am impressed, cub. You’re finally learning the
right questions to ask.”
More Yoda b.s. Seth was way over that. “I just want to be sure I
know my full options before I decide to betray my own kind,” he said.
“Do I get dental? Is there a severance package?”
“You wouldn’t be betraying your own kind,” Regent said. “You’d
be saving us. Putting our fate back in our own hands. You think about
that a while before you decide on your answer.”
Seth stared at him. “That’s it? You’re letting me go?”
Maybe Regent would have said yes. Maybe he would have picked up
that gun and fired into Seth’s brain. Seth would never know, for just
then, there was a roar outside, followed by an ear-splitting bellow as
something struck the van – struck it with such force the steel crumpled
and the whole thing pitched up onto two wheels, sending Seth and his
captor flying.
***
Seth came to upside down on the floor of the van, underneath the
bank of CC-TV monitors. Thin, salty blood filled his mouth from a gash
across his forehead – the result of banging it against the edge of the
counter. He groaned. Across from him, Regent, flat on his back, was
staring dazedly up at the ceiling.
93
Through a rip in the side of the van, Seth saw two things. The first
was J.J., racing through Castle Park in his human skin, teeth bared. The
second was the bull, rounding for his next attack on the van.
As bulls go, this one was massive. Muscles strained under his black
coat, which was as glossy as brushed velvet; his hooves kicked up sparks
as he lowered his head, snorting around the gold ring through his nose,
and charged.
There was no time to brace himself. The van tipped up onto its side;
teetered for a moment; then toppled, landing with a deafening crash of
shattering glass and shearing metal. Seth flew sideways, into the back
doors, which popped open. He did not see what had happened to Regent,
and he did not stick around to find out; somewhere in the van was a gun
loaded with silver bullets, and Seth did not feel like becoming a jaguar
trophy on Regent’s wall. Gathering his legs under him, he sprinted
toward the park. His skull was throbbing like someone had massaged it
with a hammer.
Lights were coming on in houses up and down the block. Seth saw
J.J. (two J.J.s, really, as he was seeing double at the moment) pour on a
burst of speed, vault straight over the merry-go-round, and keep right on
running, never once breaking stride. His eyes were blazing like suns,
brighter than Seth had ever seen them. “Seth! Behind you!”
In the middle of the street, Seth spun around. The movement was too
much: His knees buckled, the wave of dizziness that broke over him
coinciding with a stabbing pain in the back of his skull. He hissed as his
still-shackled hands slapped the wet pavement.
About that time, something leapt on top of the overturned van. Seth
glimpsed red and orange stripes. Before he could even shout a warning,
the Bengal tiger had jumped onto the bull’s back.
Fangs sank into Angelo Alfaro’s shoulder. The bull threw his head
back and bellowed.
J.J. skinned.
Somewhere close by, Seth heard Leigh gasp in amazement. She had
never seen J.J. skin. The black jaguar did not slow or turn; he stretched
out his spine, lengthening his strides so he almost seemed to ripple across
the darkness, a shadow against shadows. At the curb, just as the bull
heaved his shoulders back, flinging the tiger free, J.J. pounced.
“J.J.!” Seth screamed. On his knees, he watched as the tiger hit the
ground on his side. Regent rolled gracefully onto his paws, snapping his
sharp teeth at J.J.’s throat. The smaller, lighter jaguar batted him aside
with a paw. Regent backed away, snarling, onto some unsuspecting
citizen’s manicured lawn, favoring his front leg. J.J. paced after him,
slowly, snarling in his throat. The sounds were hair-raising.
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Regent’s eyes were two yellowish-brown marbles. J.J.’s, big, round,
and golden, locked onto them. Somehow, that key turned in Seth’s mind
again, and he was seeing what J.J. was seeing, feeling what he was
feeling, thinking what he was thinking.
This was what Xanthe had taught him, over so many grueling years
of endless meditation, prolonged fasts, the absolute and utter denial of
self: surrender of the world that could be seen to the world that could
not…J.J. let a curtain fall around him, shutting out the rending of metal
as the bull’s hooves gouged through the side of the van, the shrill
barking of neighborhood dogs.
Show me who sent you, he commanded.
Regent’s marbled eyes widened. Rapid-fire images flashed across
J.J.’s mind. A bedroom that looked onto a red-rock desert. A darkhaired, gray-eyed woman standing over a cradle. A logo – a monster
with three serpentine heads, the body of a lion, and a scorpion-stinger
tail – sewn onto a white lab coat. A hypodermic needle, hidden in the
pocket of a red-and-black coat…
Regent roared right before he lunged. Seth blinked. He almost didn’t
see J.J. skin, diving sideways as the tiger’s claws swiped through the
empty air where he had just been standing; his skull was throbbing like it
had been split open. Leigh had this notion J.J. was a twenty-four hour
psychic channel, but Seth could now fully appreciate what J.J. meant by
telepathy being a muscle like any other – using it exhausted you,
physically and mentally. It was easier for him with Seth, because they
were already so connected, but even then it was much less taxing for
them just to direct their feelings at one another than for J.J. to hear the
thoughts Seth sent him. And prying into someone else’s mind, especially
if they resisted him, like Regent had just now? Nearly impossible. Seth
doubted anyone but J.J. would have been tough enough to withstand that
kind of pain.
Seth tried to sit up. Someone caught him. It was Marshall. Beside
him was Leigh. “Lie still, Philadelphia,” Marshall said, gently. The van’s
back doors were wide open, glass from its busted windows sparkling like
fallen stars on the asphalt. “Leigh, find me something to get these
shackles off, okay? Maybe there’s a key in the van.”
“Okay.” Seth saw Leigh jump up. He looked up at Marshall.
Marshall was very pale, which only made his eyes bluer. “J.J. –
Marshall, did Regent – ”
“J.J. is fine. Regent just ran off.” Marshall glanced down the street.
Seth expected to see tiger stripes, but Lydia’s Escalade was roaring down
Queens Boulevard toward them. Before it squealed to a complete stop,
Will McLain had dived out of the passenger’s side.
95
He looked from Seth, lying in the middle of the road in Marshall’s
arms; to Alfaro, helping Leigh jump down from the back of the bustedup van; to J.J., picking himself up from a trampled flowerbed; to the
people peeking out around their curtains up and down the street; and
sighed.
***
“Next time you send a rescue party,” Seth complained, “can you
please choose someone with less impulse control issues than Angelo
Alfaro?”
J.J. smiled thinly. He was perched on the sink in Seth’s bathroom,
observing as Marshall daubed antiseptic onto the gash on Seth’s scalp.
He had given him a phial of Healing potion to drink on the short drive
home. As a result, Seth’s head was buzzing more than ever.
“I had to psychically page somebody to help us,” J.J. reasoned, in
his own defense. “Your distress call wasn’t big on details. ‘I’m at the
park. I need help.’ For all I knew, an entire army was after you. Lucky
Angelo was in the neighborhood, making nice with Toby.”
He meant Topher. “And there’s no sign of Regent?”
“It’s like he vanished on a puff of smoke.” J.J. slid off the sink. His
eyes still had a wild look in them; he couldn’t seem to sit still. “All
finished, Doc?”
“Just…one…sec. Okay.” Marshall straightened up, tossing a bloody
wad of gauze and cotton balls into the trashcan. “The skull is fractured,
so for God’s sake please do not bash your head into any walls for a few
days, but the potion I gave you has started the Healing process. I can
leave behind some strengthening potion if you think you need it. With
the game on Saturday, it might not be a bad idea.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” J.J. said.
Marshall flushed. “Not like that. I mean because basketball games
can get physical. If you got pushed down, or bumped into – ”
“Both likely, with Alfaro playing,” Seth grumbled.
“Yes, but he’ll be on our side now. It’ll be the other team getting
their ribs broken.” Marshall sounded quite cheerful about that. Golden
Boy sportsmanship did not extend to winning state basketball titles.
In the kitchen, they found Jack Steward and Will McLain each
drinking a Heineken at the counter, Lydia leaning against the sink, and
Leigh sitting on one of the stools at the island. She had done a quick
change from the hot-pink pajamas she had been wearing when Seth had
psychically paged J.J. to a denim skirt and blue tank top.
96
“From what Seth said, by Regent’s own admission Fort King is the
most secure location he’s ever seen. I don’t think Ben will want to move
the Ark any – ” Jack broke off as Seth walked in, leaning on Marshall’s
arm. His tie was undone, his suit jacket unbuttoned. “Seth. Do we need
to take you to Fort King to be checked out?”
“Been checked out. Clean bill of health.” Seth sat down on the other
stool. Marshall wrapped his arms around him from behind, so Seth could
lean back against his chest. Rope burns braceleted Marshall’s wrists.
Still, for an encounter with Regent, Seth knew they had both come away
unscathed. “What were you saying about moving the Ark?”
A look passed between the adults. Oh, let’s don’t bother him with the
truth. Leigh saw it too, and said, “Clyde Dowling wants to move the Ark
from Fort King. As a, quote, ‘military-trained strategist and West Point
graduate’ – ”
“Here we go,” J.J. muttered, slouching against the doorframe with
his hands in his pockets.
“ – he thinks the only way to safeguard the Ark is for you not to
know where it is.”
Seth was speechless. How could the Commanders think he would
help Regent steal the Ark? Just weeks ago Seth had chosen death over
disloyalty when Regent had collared him. He had stopped Chimera from
overrunning Fort King, called down the Totems to end a battle LeRoi
had been on the verge of winning. He had sacrificed Marshall’s life to
protect the Black Swan. What more proof that he was on their side did
they need?
“Relax, little brother,” J.J. said. “Nobody believes you’re a traitor.
They don’t trust me, and they know you do. They’re worried I’ll trick
you into doing whatever LeRoi wants. I bet the Commanders even think
I let Regent get away tonight.”
J.J.’s eyes were flat. McLain could not quite meet them. “Like Jack
said, Ben convinced the other Commanders not to move the Ark – ”
“Like Burke would have let them?” J.J. asked, of the ceiling.
“ – so the bigger concern now,” McLain pretended not to hear him,
as J.J. seemed to be spoiling for a fight, “should be organizing a
protective detail for Seth. Now that Regent somehow found out about his
power over the Ark, we have to assume he will remain a target.”
Seth envisioned sitting in class with Secret Service agents fanned out
around him. Wearing Kevlar under his basketball jersey. These were not
pleasant thoughts.
“I can watch out for Seth,” J.J. said.
Lydia waved a hand. In the other, she was holding a glass of merlot.
“Honey, we’ve talked about this. Protecting Seth isn’t your job.”
97
“Yeah, Lydia,” J.J. said. “It kind of is.”
Lydia flushed. J.J. had never spoken to her so rudely. Frowning at
him, Jack said, “What about Andre Alfaro?”
“Baby Bird?” Seth was taken aback. “You really think he could take
Regent?”
Jack tried not to grin. Lydia had adopted the cardboard-stiff
politeness she always did around her ex, tolerating his continued
existence for her children’s sake. Jack did his best not to antagonize her
with small things like smiling. “I only meant that Dre does scouting on
his own already, as he has proven more than a few times. Evelyn has the
other werebirds keeping an eye on McLain’s house, for Caroline. We
could put Dre on Seth at school. They have most every class together.”
“Who’s Evelyn?” Seth asked.
“Janowitz,” Lydia said. “Your English teacher.” She set her glass
down on the counter. “Jack, I don’t feel comfortable with Seth running
around the city right now. And I refuse to put another child’s life on the
line to protect his.” Pointed glance at J.J.
Seth was still processing what his mother had just said. “Miss
Janowitz is werekin?”
“Yes. She goes to work glamoured.” Lydia looked over at him.
“Why?”
“But – ” Seth actually sputtered with indignation. “She can’t be
werekin! She gave me a B– on my essay!”
“She still has to have standards,” Leigh said.
“That is not the issue here, Adleigh.” Lydia’s patience appeared to
be hanging by a thread. “Will, I want Seth guarded here at the house until
Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon are apprehended.”
“We can do that,” McLain assured her. “But school – ”
“I don’t want him going to school,” Lydia said. “Not while Regent
is out there. He’s gotten to him too many times.”
“Mom!” Seth burst out, as Jack sighed, “Lydia…”
“I do not want to hear it.” Lydia shot Jack a look that could have
frozen water. “I am done putting my children in harm’s way for this
cause. Until those men are sharing a cell with Ursula LeRoi, Seth is not
leaving this house, and that is final.”
98
Chapter Eight: Lost in Translation
“It’s like I’m grounded,” Seth said, “and I didn’t even do anything
wrong.”
Throwing himself down on the sofa, he took a resigned bite of
Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart.
On the other end of the line, he could hear Cleo trying not to smile.
“It’s not so bad, is it, sweetheart? You get a couple of days off from
school, the house all to yourself…You could take a hot bubble bath,
watch cartoons all day…”
“I don’t technically have the house to myself. I’m under
surveillance.” Seth sat forward enough to peer around his mother’s lace
curtains. As if to taunt him, morning sunlight washed Kings Lane in
brilliant white light, dew sparkling like diamonds on the spider web spun
at the corner of the garage. Perched just above it was a red robin. She
ruffled her feathers as though waving hello, and Seth fell back on the
couch. “And it might be more than a couple of days. Who knows when
Regent will pop back up again, or if he even will? And we don’t have
any leads at all on Gideon. For all we know, Regent ate him for
breakfast. I could be locked up here for years, growing older, all alone,
life passing me slowly by…”
“I thought you said you were going back to school on Friday.”
Cleo was not appreciating his teenage angst. Brushing Pop-Tart
crumbs off his sweat pants – why bother getting dressed to enjoy house
arrest? – Seth plopped his heels on the coffee table. Poe climbed up
beside him, nuzzling against his hip. “Only because of the game
Saturday,” Seth said. “You aren’t eligible to play if you miss school the
day before a sporting event. McLain practically had to twist Mom’s arm
to get her to agree to let me play.”
Somewhere in the background, a vehicle, what sounded like a
Humvee, rumbled past. Cleo spoke up to be heard over it. “How is it
going with Alfaro on your ball team, anyway?”
“So far so good.” Seth rubbed the back of his skull. It was still
tender. “We’re all getting together over at Jack’s tonight to properly
christen Marshall’s new pad.”
“I figured you and Doc had already done that,” Cleo teased.
“It’s not for lack of trying. We just keep getting sidetracked by this
pesky little alien invasion problem. What’s that line from Shakespeare?
‘These times of woe afford no chance to woo’?”
Cleo laughed, but the thinness of it was noticeable. Seth wondered if
she was thinking of their conversation the day she had left for New
99
Mexico. When she had told him he would always have half of her heart,
because she didn’t know how to take it back from him.
She quickly changed the subject. “How can you go to a party if
you’re confined to quarters?”
“Jack told Mom his house counts as my house, too.” Lydia had
looked like she was about to choke on her response to that, but had
refrained for the sake of peace. “Anyway, Emery delivered the sheet
music we found at J.J.’s grave to the Commanders. Lydia is taking me to
the fort later to train with Xanthe, so I guess we’ll find out then if they
want me to translate the glyphs, and how Elijah Bishop could have left a
note for Aidan McDonagh when he’s been dead for half a century.”
“What does J.J. think?”
Seth sat up. Poe lifted her pink nose from his leg and meowed at
him. “I don’t know.” Seth roughed the calico fur along the kitten’s spine.
“He didn’t really say.”
Cleo’s voice dropped lower. It sounded, from the muted background
noises, like she had just ducked into a quiet room. “He’s not acting like
himself, is he?”
“No,” Seth confessed, relieved to have somebody he could say this
to without feeling like a traitor. “He’s so on edge. Like he’s about to
snap. I think he would have pummeled Cam yesterday if Marshall hadn’t
basically called him on being out of line.”
“When did this start?”
The day you left, Seth thought. But then he thought back, and
realized that wasn’t true. Sunday, J.J. had been furious over Seth’s arrest,
but he had not lashed out at the Commanders. Monday, he had calmly
broken up the fight between Seth and Alfaro. It had been the next
morning when he had started biting everybody’s heads off. “Since
yesterday, I guess,” he said. “He was definitely worse this morning,
though. He and Mom had a ten-minute screaming match in the kitchen
over him threatening to smash Cam’s head through the wall if he ever
called me a faggot again.”
“But he was okay Monday? Because he sounded weird that night,
when he called me,” Cleo said.
“He called you?” Seth brightened. He had not given up on Cleo and
J.J. “What did you guys talk about?”
“Most of it was classified, so if I told you, I’d have to kill you. But
he said he called to just say hi. J.J. does not call to say hi. And I think he
cried at one point.”
Whoa. Seth started to pace, heel-toe, along the couch. Sometimes,
when his emotions were ramped up, stillness still eluded him. Poe went
to sit on the hearth beside a napping Captain Hook. “Did you guys have a
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fight?” Seth asked. Fighting with Marshall always made him cranky.
Instantly he thought of their argument last night, the possibility Marshall
could move back under his father’s roof, to live by his father’s anti-Seth
rules. He stepped onto the back of the couch to continue his pacing.
“No. We didn’t have a fight.” Cleo paused. “I’m not even sure why
he wanted to talk to me. She was there.”
She being Vixen O’Shea. “You’re the one he loves, Cleo. But he
thinks you don’t love him. Someday, if you just keep waiting around, he
is going to fall for somebody else.”
“Maybe it would be better that way.”
Cleo sounded bleak. Seth leapt down from the couch. “Tell me the
thought of him with another girl doesn’t make you want to gouge your
own eyeballs out.”
“Seth – ”
“C’mon, Cleo, say it. Say you really want him to forget about you
and move on.”
“That is not the point,” Cleo said, tightly.
Seth made a buzzer noise: Errhh! “Wrong! Thanks for playing
though. It is the point, Cleo.” He swung up onto the stairs, trailing his
fingers along the wall where the family photos of Lydia, Jack, and Leigh
used to hang before Leigh had taken them all down. “This torch you
think you’re carrying for me, that’s just you finding excuses not to be
with J.J. You have to stop blaming yourself for hurting him. He tricked
you into doing it, to save your life, and now he thinks you’ll never
forgive him for that, when who you really can’t forgive is yourself. Both
of you are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.”
Cleo was quiet for a minute. Seth ducked into his bathroom and
started assembling the ingredients for a long soak in his Jacuzzi.
Grapefruit-scented bath oil. Fluffy towels. iPod. The journal he had
borrowed back from Marshall last night.
Finally, Cleo said, “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can say
over the phone. ‘Hi, I’m in love with you, but I feel like you should hate
me.’”
“So tell Jensen you need a weekend furlough and hop a plane back
to Fairfax. I could use another cheerleader in the stands on Saturday
anyway. I miss you,” Seth said, honestly. “Life in this crappy little hick
town is even crappier for not having my Cleopatra in it.”
Cleo laughed, an honest-to-goodness laugh this time, and promised
to think about it. Seth hung up and slid down in the hot, foamy water
until the bubbles lapped at his chin.
Seth did his best thinking in the bath; unlike most cats, jaguars loved
water. He cranked Green Day on his headphones as he paged through
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Bishop’s journal, translating the glyphs penned into the margins almost
by reflex, the way you couldn’t help reading billboards on the Interstate
once you learned how.
Before, when Seth had read this journal, it had not occurred to him
how odd it was for Bishop to have been drawing glyphs before Mt.
Hokulani and its treasure trove of Lemurian texts had been discovered.
Now he knew Bishop had encountered Lemurian years earlier. His father
Abraham Bishop had found the Tortoise Clan in the Amazon when
Bishop was just a child.
Tortoises live long lives. They have long memories.
Page by page, as Seth translated the glyphs, a story came together,
the ending to a tale he had only ever heard the beginning of. By the time
he closed the journal, the bathwater had gotten cold, a scud of thin gray
bubbles floating on the surface.
Seth lay there for a long time even so, staring at his ceiling,
headphones on the floor, his ears filled with a girl’s dying song.
***
Part-time employment was already cramping Leigh Steward’s style.
She wanted to go to the party at Jack’s with everybody else (she had it on
Seth’s authority her father would not be there) but she had a shift at ReSpin. It wouldn’t even be with Dre. It would be with Emery. While
Emery was cool, Leigh did not see the point of hanging out with a boy
you couldn’t even flirt with. And Whitney wouldn’t be there, because
she was going to Marshall’s party.
Whitney didn’t care about parties. She just wanted to spend time
with her brother. Leigh cared about parties, like she cared about prom,
yet here she was, dateless, prevented from hanging out with the varsity
starting lineup so she could sell some kid in a FRODO LIVES T-shirt
another Simon & Garfunkel album.
Leigh fumed about this from Fairfax High to Fort King, riding up
front with Seth. He had picked her and J.J. up from school in their
mother’s Escalade. J.J. was slouched down in the back poking at the
seam in the leather with the tip of a bone-handled dagger. “You can’t
have knives at school, doofus,” Leigh informed him.
“You can if you don’t get caught.” J.J. flashed his smirk at her.
Whatever. He was more of a jerk these days than ever. Leigh did not get
what Quinn O’Shea saw in him. Okay, in an objective and totally nonincestuous sense, she realized J.J. was good-looking, but the bad boy
thing was so passé.
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“How’s your head?” she asked, swiping a strand of blue hair off
Seth’s cheek.
“Fine, thank you.” Seth smiled at her. J.J. made a gagging sound at
their sibling affection. Before Leigh could suggest a place for him to put
his dagger, Seth had parked and J.J. had jumped out, padding up the
fort’s front steps, spine arched.
Leigh shook her head. “He’s doesn’t even try acting human, does
he?”
“It’s harder than you think,” Seth said. He always stuck up for J.J.
Inside the fort, Seth branched off to the elevator for the lower levels.
Leigh did not have a burning desire to hang out in the Gen-0’s creepy
underground lab, and besides, she was supposed to be meeting Emery
here for him to drive her to Re-Spin. She climbed one of the curved
staircases basically at random. A couple of Marines on the upper
walkway glanced at her. Leigh knew she was looking fine today; she had
worn her newest pair of Seven jeans and a funky gold sweater that
slipped off one shoulder, thinking maybe Dre Alfaro might advance his
prom date offer again, now that she had manned up and apologized.
Alas, he had not.
Fort King was unlike any place Leigh had ever been. The black stone
looked wet, but when you touched it, it was as dryly glazed as ice. Like
the children’s castle she used to love to play in at Castle Park, the inside
was a labyrinth: twisting stairwells and glassed-in skywalks and
mazelike corridors, turrets at the corners offering a spectacular view of
quilted fields and dark forests, the city skyline in the distance. Leigh
wandered around for an age before happening onto a set of glass double
doors – which Will McLain and another, younger soldier were just
coming out of.
“Hi,” Leigh said, blushing out how loud her voice rang out.
Stupidly, she realized now, she had not anticipated running into McLain
at the fort.
McLain looked up from the file he had been reading. What they said
about a man in uniform really was true, Leigh thought. Those
camouflage fatigues made her weak in the knees every time. “Leigh. You
shouldn’t be up here. This is a restricted area.”
“I didn’t see any signs,” Leigh said.
“That’s why there are supposed to be guards.” McLain sighed. “Just
wait here, all right? I’ll walk you back down. You.” He turned to the
soldier standing behind him. “Stay. Do not move.”
His answer was a wordless nod.
Only as McLain strode off down the black corridor, muttering under
his breath, did Leigh realize the boy was not a Marine. He was built like
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a soldier, if a little on the slim side, but his reddish-blonde hair was long
enough to touch his collar, and anyway he was too young to be in the
military, sixteen or seventeen at the most. What she had mistaken for
fatigues was an olive green T-shirt and gray sweatpants. His rubber-soled
boots had been plucked of laces; his wrists were cuffed in front of him, a
chain connecting the shackles to a belt around his waist, another chain
running down to the cuffs circling his ankles. Leigh’s mouth went dry.
She had heard Fort King was being used to house the hunters
captured at the Chimera facilities Operation Swan Song had raided. She
simply hadn’t expected to find herself alone in a dark hallway with one
of them.
The boy was not handsome; his features were strong, more
Whitney’s type than Leigh’s. His coloring was very fair, but his eyes, by
contrast, were big and dark, almost vulnerable-looking. His lips were
very full. They curved into a smile when he saw Leigh staring at him.
“Hello,” he said.
Leigh blinked. “You’re – British?”
“Guilty.” Accent in full bloom, the hunter boy leaned his shoulders
back against the glass doors with lazy arrogance. Now who did that
remind her of? “Chimera Enterprises is a worldwide conglomerate.”
“I think you mean was,” Leigh corrected, coldly, pretending this
was not a revelation to her. She had never thought to ask why Ozzie
Harris had a British accent. She had kind of assumed it was fake.
This boy’s accent was more cultured than Ozzie’s, like someone
brought up at one of those rugby-and-polo boarding schools with
Headmasters and oral exams and whatnot. “They still seemed fairly
operational when I got nibbed,” he said.
“How long ago was that?”
“A week, give or take a day. Hard to keep track of time in here.”
Chains clinked as the boy raised his wrists to scratch his nose. A ropy
scar ran from his wrist to his elbow. “You’re not werekin, are you?”
Leigh shook her head. “My brothers are. Half-brothers. Both of my
parents are human.”
“Lucky you,” the boy said. He sounded like he meant it. A buzzer
sounded on another level; Leigh jumped. Her fingers were curled tightly
into her damp palms. “You don’t need to be nervous, love,” the boy said.
“I’m not in the habit of hurting humans. Besides, I’m not really in a
position to hurt you.”
He displayed his shackled hands. Not quite sure how she felt about
that, Leigh edged over to the bench in front of the empty guard station
and sat down on the edge of it, keeping her eyes on him. “Where was
McLain taking you?” she asked.
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“Interrogation.”
There was no emotion in the boy’s face as he said this. Leigh was
spared coming up with a reply by McLain returning, leading two M.P.s.
“Take Lukas to my office,” he was saying to them. “I’ll be along in
a minute. Leigh, this way.”
The guards marched the boy between them down the corridor. Right
as they turned the corner, he glanced back, lifting one shackled hand.
Leigh wasn’t sure if it meant goodbye or piss off.
She hurried to catch up with McLain, who had long legs and always
walked like he was late for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. “You know,
there’s a reason anything a prisoner tells you under torture isn’t
admissible in court,” she said, stiffly.
McLain blinked at her. He seemed to have been a million miles
away. “We aren’t torturing prisoners, Leigh. There wouldn’t be any
point. LeRoi never trusted her hunters with any valuable intel. She saw
them as tainted by alien blood.”
“But…he said you were taking him for interrogation…”
“Then he lied.” McLain did not sound surprised. “We’re conducting
psych evals on the hunters, to determine which ones would pose a danger
to human society – they are highly-trained killers, after all – and which
ones are ready to begin integration.”
“Oh.” Had the boy not known that, or had he just been messing with
her? Leigh supposed it didn’t matter. Chances were she would never see
him again. She put him out of her mind and swept her hair over her bare
shoulder. “I have a proposition for you, Captain,” she said.
“Yeah?” McLain waved to a guard. They were buzzed through a
checkpoint into a corridor Leigh recognized: It led to the infirmary.
“Would this have anything to do with a concert at MoJo’s Friday night?”
“Mom is chaperoning, but I thought it would be nice for you and
Caroline to come,” Leigh said.
“Leigh, I appreciate you wanting to include Caroline, but especially
after what happened last night, I don’t feel safe having her out of the
house.”
Leigh had anticipated this. “Let me ask you something. If tomorrow
you catch Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon, will there be no danger to
Caroline anymore?”
McLain stopped and looked at her. They were standing outside the
infirmary; the recessed amber lights picked up on the silver swan charm
nestled in the hollow of his throat. “As long as the Ark is on Earth,
waiting for her blood to be added to it, Caroline will be in danger,” he
said.
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“Then I rest my case,” Leigh said. “You can’t keep her locked up
forever. She isn’t just the Black Swan. She’s a person. It isn’t fair for her
to never have a life.”
The grin that found McLain’s lips was rueful. “Miss Steward,” he
said, “you are going to be an excellent attorney.”
“I have my moments,” said Leigh. She laid a hand on his arm.
McLain glanced at it, then up at her. Leigh tried out the sultry eyes she
had been practicing in her mirror: chin tilted down, lashes slightly
lowered. Vogue promised it would melt any guy like butter. “Say you’ll
come to the concert with us, Will, please?”
Will. She had actually called him Will. Leigh’s heart was about to
quiver out of her chest.
McLain tapped the file folder against his palm. “You said your mom
is going to be there?”
“Yes.” Leigh failed to see how that factored in, but she didn’t stew
on it long, as McLain nodded his assent. Oh, the sweet, sweet taste of
victory. Savoring it, Leigh sailed into the infirmary.
***
Seth looked up from his cot as Leigh breezed in, smiling like the
Cheshire cat. His eyes narrowed. Baby sister looking that pleased with
herself was never a good sign. “What have you been up to?” he
demanded.
“Nothing.” Leigh fell back on the cot beside his, midway along a
line of cots underneath a row of arched windows. The opposite walls
were glass cabinets lined with potions. The ceiling arched overhead,
funneling to a point. Fort King’s architecture was like something
Salvador Dali had dreamed up. “How was training with Xanthe?”
“Exhausting.” Xanthe had taught Seth deep breathing exercises to
help him sink into a waking trance. Five minutes in, Seth’s head had
started to pound. J.J. had felt it – shared pain, the drawback of twin
telepathy. He had insisted Seth go to the infirmary while he tracked
down Aphrodisia to check his healing skull fracture. “What are you still
doing here anyway? I thought you were meeting Emery.”
“So did I,” Leigh said, just as the door opened, and Emery walked
in.
Towering over him was a ten-foot tall woman with a pair of delicate
antlers sticking up from a cloud of springy dark curls. A pair of fawn
hooves peeked out from under her white Healer’s robe. “Seth Michael,”
Aphrodisia said, in her chime-like voice, gliding over to the cot and
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folding one of Seth’s hands in her mottled bluish-gray one. “Are you
well?”
“My head has felt better,” Seth admitted. J.J. had padded into the
room as well; he was scowling, and Seth did not have to ask why. Emery
was holding open the door, and Marshall was wheeling Connor Burke
through it.
“Look what I picked up at ball practice,” Marshall said.
“Connor!” Leigh jumped off the cot to hug Connor’s neck. He
smiled and blushed as she fluttered around him, laidback charming as
always. J.J. sat down on the sill of one of the arched windows and started
spinning his dagger around on it, doing that J.J. thing of tuning them all
out.
Aphrodisia felt of Seth’s skull, shined a light in his eyes, and
declared him healing but not healed. She prescribed a phial of
strengthening potion for him to drink, to speed up the process. The
instant it crossed his lips, the throbbing in his head receded.
Meanwhile, Marshall had lifted Connor out of the wheelchair and
onto one of the cots. Connor looked very pale against the starched sheets,
drawing attention to the hectic splotches of color on his cheekbones. “We
can wait in the hall,” Emery offered. He had come to sit next to Seth,
avoiding J.J. and his dagger.
“Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” Connor said. Emery
glanced at Seth, who shrugged. He was honestly curious to see his
boyfriend’s Healer expertise at work.
Marshall had doffed his letterman’s jacket for a white lab coat.
Operation Swan Song still used some of the equipment Chimera
Enterprises had left behind; the coat had a three-headed chimera stitched
on the pocket. Seth blinked, seeing the same image in Regent’s mind as
J.J. had tried to force out of him who he was working for. In the midst of
treating his fractured skull and rehashing everything Regent had said to
him for McLain, Seth had quite forgotten that he had seen Ursula LeRoi
standing over a baby’s cradle in that vision.
Marshall pushed his curls out of his eyes. He seemed ill at ease, Seth
thought; he kept glancing at J.J., whose expression was blank as paper.
Aphrodisia rolled Connor onto his side and pulled his shirt up in the
back. Marshall placed one hand on Connor’s back, the other in hers;
Aphrodisia’s other hand rested almost protectively on the slope of her
stomach underneath her robe. Marshall’s eyes widened, then went blank
as their minds fused and he saw with her through Connor’s skin, to the
tissue and bone beneath.
J.J. had become absolutely still, surrounded by smoky evening light.
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Seth was not aware of holding his breath until Marshall blinked and
Aphrodisia turned Connor gently onto his back again. He pulled his shirt
down to the waistband of his jeans. The scars on his back were
gruesome, a triplet of angry red furrows scored deep into the smooth
flesh. “Well?” he said. “What’s the verdict, Doc?”
“It’s not Healing.” Marshall sounded frustrated. “The nerves are still
dead. I don’t understand it.”
“So increase the dose of strengthening potion.”
“Connie, we can’t – ”
“C’mon, Doc.” For the first time, Connor’s smile wobbled at the
edges. “What’re you worried about? Turning me into the Incredible
Hulk? I know all about the potential side-effects of an overdose. I’m not
worried about that.”
“Well, I’m worried about poisoning you. We’re already risking that
with the dose you’re on.” Marshall passed his thumb over a small, raised
mark on Connor’s collarbone – an injection site. “We’ll have to work on
the formula some more.”
“Then what about those other options you mentioned?” Connor said,
not to be put off. “You told me about the healing properties of the Gen0s’ blood, how they don’t age because their cells don’t break down.
Can’t you just inject me with Aphrodisia’s super-blood or something?
I’m up for anything at this point.”
“No.” Marshall had whitened around the lips. “Connie, that was all
theoretical, okay? We have no idea what a human body’s reaction would
be to Gen-0 blood. Your system could treat it as a virus and completely
shut down. We’re not doing anything that radical.”
“You must be patient, Connor,” Aphrodisia put in gently, when
Connor started to argue. “True healing takes time. Marshall, what do you
think about…”
She drew Marshall into the corner, speaking to him in low tones.
Connor hauled himself upright on the pillows, smoothing his dirtyblonde hair where it had gotten rucked up in the back. “Oh, will you all
please stop looking like someone just shot your grandmas?” he said,
good-naturedly. His Texas twang was more pronounced lately, Seth
noticed; it covered over the more northern inflection that had sometimes
rounded his vowels. “It’s only been two weeks. I really should be flat on
my back still, but instead, I’ve healed enough to wheel myself around in
this chair. The rest will come. What I want to hear about is what the
Commanders said about this box y’all dug up.”
J.J.’s head came around. He had been staring out the window, and
Seth was startled by the metallic glint of his round eyes. “Who told you
about that?”
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“The same person who told me Werner Regent attacked Seth last
night,” Connor said. “General Burke is my father, you know.”
“I don’t care if he’s your friggin’ fairy godmother, you don’t have
clearance for this kind of intel,” J.J. all but hissed, through his teeth.
“Oh, J.J., button it up, would you? Nobody here is impressed by
your top-secret clearance.” Leigh bent over Connor’s cot, plumping his
pillows. J.J. looked like he was taking deep breaths through his nose to
keep from skinning. About how Seth had looked when Cam Foss had
given Leigh a birthday kiss. “What did the Commanders say, Emery?”
“Well…” Emery twirled his St. Francis’ medal. J.J. was his pack
leader; he seemed reluctant to answer with him glowering, but J.J. was
the only one of them who had a problem with Connor. Frankly, Seth was
disappointed in how his twin was behaving. It was not a feeling he
relished. “They didn’t know what to make of all the Bishop stuff.
General Burke is getting the records on his execution declassified, but
that could take some time. In the meantime, they gave the go-ahead for
Seth to translate the glyphs. Hopefully from those we can figure out what
the music means, if it’s some kind of message or spell or what.”
Connor swung his easy smile onto Seth. “Hey, maybe your mom will
let you come out to my place tomorrow to work on them. I’d love to
learn Lemurian. And our house has more security than the Mint. I think
there might be land mines on the perimeter.”
Seth hesitated. Not over the invitation; hanging with Connor would
definitely beat another day of Spanish soap operas on Telemundo. “I
think I may already know what the music means,” he said. “Em, did you
bring that book of sonnets like I asked?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Hopping up from the cot, Emery dug through his
messenger bag. The front of it was covered with buttons that said things
like MAY THE FOREST BE WITH YOU and WIND POWER TURNS
ME ON. “Here it is. Whitney threatened to pull me out of a hat if
anything happens to it, though.”
Leigh, bored already, had started buffing out a scuffed nail with a
file from her Coach bag. “Is it true she calls you Snuggle Bunny?” she
asked, with academic interest.
Emery’s ears turned red.
The book’s cover was blue fabric, embroidered with silver stars. Seth
flipped through until he found the sonnet he wanted, and read, “I will
play the swan, and die in music.”
He looked up. J.J., though he had gone back to staring out the
window, had spoken the words along with him.
“That’s beautiful, Seth, but we’ve heard it before,” Leigh said. “It
marks the coordinates for the stargate. Although I still can’t believe
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we’re actually calling it that,” she added, frowning at her French
manicure like it displeased her.
“Well, interdimensional portal to the home of the Totems is kind of
a mouthful,” Emery pointed out. “I see the connection – die in music,
sheet music. But what does it mean?”
Seth took a breath. “I reread Elijah Bishop’s journal today – ”
“God, you were bored,” Leigh said.
“ – and when I translated all of the glyphs he had written in the
margins, I realized they weren’t random doodles. They tell a story. The
story of the dying swan, who sings a song with her last breath, a song so
beautiful, so powerful, it calls her Totem down from the stars to join with
her. I think Caroline – ”
Seth. J.J.’s voice was crystal clear inside Seth’s mind. Not here. Not
in front of him.
Subtly, without taking his eyes off the window, he inclined his head
at Connor.
Somehow, Connor saw it. He seemed to know perfectly well what it
meant. “It’s all right, Seth,” he said, quietly. Leigh and Emery looked
bewildered. Neither of them had marked J.J.’s meaningful nod. “I should
be going anyway. Marshall offered to drop me at my house before your
party. Philly, could you push my chair over here?”
Glaring at J.J., Seth rolled Connor’s wheelchair over to the bed,
holding it in position as Connor picked his legs up, swung them over the
side of the bed, and hoisted over into the seat, the long muscles in his
arms straining as they took the full weight of his body. Marshall saw him
and broke off from Aphrodisia, pocketing a hypodermic needle as he
turned away from her. “Ready to go, Connie?”
“I’m tired.” Connor sounded it. Seth knew how he felt. When he had
been recovering from LeRoi’s poisoned bullet, the constant healing had
sapped his energy. By the end of the day, he had been almost sick with
fatigue.
He promised to ask Lydia if he could spend the day at Connor’s
house tomorrow – a backhanded apology for J.J.’s rudeness. Marshall
wheeled Connor out. Seth said he would be down in a jiff to ride with
them.
J.J. was spinning his dagger on the windowsill again. Sunlight
sparked off the blade each time it went around. “You already know what
the glyphs in Bishop’s journal said, don’t you?”
Seth’s tone was accusing. J.J.’s was immutable. “Yes,” he said. “And
it’s not something Connor needs to know.”
“So we’re back to that? All this need-to-know top-secret myclearance-is-higher-than-your-clearance soldier crap?”
110
“No,” J.J. said. “We’re back to that I don’t trust Connor Burke.”
“Would that be because he’s Burke’s son, because he has a crush on
Cleo, or because he isn’t Alliance?”
“Oh for the love of the stars.” Palming his dagger, J.J. stood. He
stretched up on his tiptoes as he arched his spine, oozing feline
superiority. Never before had Seth been tempted to take a swipe at his
twin’s placid smirk with his claws. “I don’t care who Connor’s father is
or who he has a crush on. Something is not right about that kid. As for
him not being Alliance, his father may decide to break protocol and share
state secrets with him, but there are some things that are classified for a
reason. If you’re so hung up about not knowing everything a member of
the Alliance knows, then join up already. Otherwise, quit whining about
how I don’t accept your choice not to, because like I’ve told you, I
already have.”
“Hey!” Leigh said, hotly. “For Christ’s sake, J.J., what is your
problem?”
“I don’t have a problem. Seth has a problem, apparently, and it’s not
one I can fix.” J.J. slunk over to the door. It was like he didn’t see Seth
standing there, looking like his brother had just pushed him off the deck
of a ship into a raging sea. “I promised Quinn I’d come to her place
before the party, so…See ya there.”
The door closed behind him. Emery, Leigh, and Seth all stared at it.
“What is going on with him?” Leigh asked. She didn’t sound as though
she really expected an answer. Which was fortunate, as Seth had none.
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Chapter Nine: Blood Moon
The Steward & Regent Law Firm had been a warehouse prior to
Gavin Steward purchasing it, with Chimera funds, and renovating it into
a swanky downtown office. The red brick façade had weathered over the
years to a dusty rose. The setting sun reflected off the arched windows,
shadowing the central dome and slender spires of the Sacred Heart
Academy down the street. J.J. could smell the river from where he stood.
He could also hear the angry beat of a heavy metal bass. Quinn
slammed the door of her Jeep and joined him on the sidewalk. “Ten
bucks says they have a keg,” she said.
“We can hope,” J.J. said. She grinned.
J.J. hadn’t known quite what to think when Quinn had answered her
front door in a dress made of gray T-shirt-like material. It stopped well
above her knees, answering the question of whether her legs were as
freckled as her arms. She had also dusted her vulpine features with
sparkly bronze powder, glossed her lips with something shiny that
smelled like honey, and spun her fiery hair into two braids coiled at the
nape of her neck with a plastic barrette. J.J. would have felt underdressed
in his jeans and black T-shirt, if he had been the type to feel
underdressed.
He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
Quinn tucked her hand into his elbow.
The music led them across a parquet foyer, up a spiral staircase,
down a hall of locked conference rooms to a door at the end that stood
ajar. It swung inward as J.J. reached for the knob. “Well, lookee what the
cat dragged in.”
Angelo Alfaro filled the doorway. And J.J. did mean filled. Alfaro
was edging toward seven feet these days.
The gold beads in his long dreadlocks, J.J. was amused to see, had
been alternated with blue ones – the Fairfax High school colors. His
hooded sweatshirt had the Knights’ mascot on the back. The other team
would probably hide in the locker room when they got a glimpse of him.
Alfaro ushered J.J. and Quinn inside, through a tasteful entryway
with white columns supporting the ceiling. A wall of glass overlooked
the river, a flow of lava under the sunset. J.J. shivered. He could almost
feel the rumble underfoot as the temple door sealed shut behind him and
his brother, trapping them under the mountain as the lava bubbled up
from the island’s core…Seth…
“You coming, player?”
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J.J. turned. His feet had carried him over to the window. Quinn’s
expression was quizzical. J.J. forced a smile he didn’t feel. “Yeah,” he
said. “Right behind you.”
Following Quinn, he slunk through an arched doorway into a living
room separated from a galley kitchen by a granite-topped bar. Kids were
sitting on sofas, swaying to music in front of the hearth, sipping soda
from plastic cups in the kitchen. (No keg. Marshall would have vetoed
that.) Most of them were cheerleaders and ballplayers, some the kids in
Seth and J.J.’s Honors classes: faces J.J. knew, names he hadn’t learned.
Why form attachments to people who could never really know you, who
you would eventually have to leave behind for good?
Some names he did know. Serena Jensen and Zoe Campbell were
chatting animatedly with a pretty little Asian girl (Yena – J.J. could
remember that one; she was Bryan-Billy-Brady-Whoever’s prom date) at
the bar. A little bushy-haired werekin boy everybody called Squirrel was
sitting on the counter, chattering away with some of the younger
ballplayers. Ozzie Harris was deep in sober discussion with some stoner
types over by the stereo, probably debating which had more soul, punk or
folk.
There were new faces, too, kids whose blood called to J.J.’s – Quinn
and Alfaro’s new neighbors in Haven Heights, recent transplants from
the worldwide Underground.
None of them were glamoured. And the strangest part was, the Castle
kids didn’t seem put off. They seemed fascinated, though they couldn’t
have known by what.
“What’s-His-Face didn’t come?” J.J. said.
“I assume you mean Cam Foss,” Alfaro said, “and I doubt he’ll be
poking up out of his hole anytime soon. Not just because of you,” he put
in, quickly, seeing the sideways glance Quinn had thrown J.J. “His little
stunt in the cafeteria backfired. Nobody’s too happy about him quitting
the team when we’ve finally got a chance to win state, and whatever else
they might think, everybody likes Seth and Marshall. Foss didn’t even
come to school today. Now, come on. The real party’s this way.” Alfaro
jerked his thumb at a staircase spiraling up from a corner of the living
room.
It let out into a spacious loft bedroom with black-and-chrome
furniture. Marshall’s core group was assembled there, around a flatscreen TV. Seth was sitting on the floor by the bed, leaning back against
Marshall’s legs, wielding a controller for some high-tech game console.
Whitney Townsend sat beside him, her legs sticking straight out from
under her corduroy skirt. They were racing virtual cars on a virtual
racetrack.
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“She’s good,” J.J. commented, after a minute.
The corner of Quinn’s mouth drew down. “You think a girl can’t
play videogames?”
“I didn’t think girls could drive,” J.J. said.
He probably would have gotten smacked for that, but Seth had heard
his voice and twisted around. The smile froze on his face. J.J.’s heart did
a painful backwards skip. Seth always looked so young, with that insane
blue hair and those flamboyant tattoos. It didn’t matter that they were the
same age. J.J.’s instinct had always been to protect his twin. Now that he
had met him, seen the essential goodness inside of Seth, he wanted more
than that. He wanted to shield him from what was coming. And he
couldn’t.
I’m sorry.
The thought crossed J.J.’s mind before he could catch it, a butterfly
floating free of a net. Seth heard it. The light came back on in his golden
eyes; he tossed his controller up to Alfaro and bounded over to J.J.,
squeezing his twin’s neck in a one-armed hug. “I wasn’t sure you guys
were gonna make it,” he said.
“Quinn had to do her hair,” J.J. said. And did get smacked for that.
They played videogames for a while. Then Ozzie broke out his guitar
to play slow songs and Quinn wanted to dance, so J.J. left his soda on
Marshall’s nightstand and trailed her downstairs. He hadn’t danced
much, but LeRoi had seen to it that he knew how; while everyone else
stumbled around in slow circles, he took Quinn’s hand in one of his,
placed his other on her waist, and stepped effortlessly into a waltz. She
closed her eyes, letting him lead. Her head felt right resting against his
shoulder.
“This is nice,” she said.
“Mmm,” J.J. murmured. He was looking at Seth. Having migrated
downstairs with Marshall, he was on the couch with his head on
Marshall’s knee. Marshall was stroking his hair.
Quinn followed J.J.’s gaze. “They look good together, don’t they?”
she said. “They look happy.”
“Yeah,” J.J. said. “They do.”
His voice was softer, throatier, than he meant for it to be. Quinn
tipped her head back to look up at him, studying his eyes like she was
reading something there. Then, “Come on,” she said, and led him out of
the apartment.
***
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“Where do you suppose they’re going?” Marshall said, dryly, as
Quinn pulled J.J. off the dance floor. Seth made a face. Cleo needed to
get her divine huntress booty home before Miss Vixen sank her claws
any deeper into his twin.
It was getting late, and tomorrow was a school day, for those partiers
not under house arrest. The Honors kids started to take off first, in twos
and threes; soon the crowd was thinning, everybody calling out “bye”
and “thanks” and “good luck Saturday” as they went out. Seth stretched.
He knew they needed to start the cleanup – Jack would flip if they left
his bachelor pad in its current state of post-party disaster – but he was so
tired, all he wanted to do was curl up in Marshall’s arms and go to sleep.
His training with Xanthe had had the opposite effect from the desired
one. Rather than blocking out the dreams, it had made them more vivid.
Last night he had woken up on his bedroom floor, thrashing around in his
tangled sheets.
“Let’s get you to bed,” Marshall said. Seth started to protest, but
Marshall scooped him up in his arms. Topher and Gabe glanced their
way from the kitchen. Like the true-blue pack brothers they were, they
had already started gathering up plastic cups and potato chip bags. Alfaro
was toting three bulging garbage bags out the front door for a dumpster
run.
“Is Philly all right?” Gabe called out.
“His headache is coming back,” Marshall said. Migraine. Seth’s
excuse for missing school that day and the next. “You’re getting better at
that,” he observed, as Marshall carried him up the stairs.
“Better at what?”
“Lying,” Seth said.
“From you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Marshall said.
He laid Seth down on his bed, fussed the covers up around his chin.
Seth yawned. He was fighting sleep, but there was something he had
been dying to ask all evening. “Marshall, what did you take from the
infirmary today?”
“You mean this?” Reaching into the pocket of his letterman’s jacket,
which was hooked over the bedpost, Marshall produced a syringe – the
one Seth had seen him pocket in his lab coat that afternoon. “It’s
strengthening potion,” he said. “Or it was. It’s all gone now.”
“Self-medicating for the big game, are we, Indiana?”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “I took it to give to Connor. Aphrodisia told
me to. Ask her, if you want.”
“I trust you.” Seth took the empty syringe from Marshall. A few
chartreuse droplets clung to the inside of the glass bowl. The syringe
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reminded him of something. He was just too tired to remember what. “I
didn’t know you gave potion by injection,” he said.
“You don’t really need to, to werekin. But human anatomy and
werekin anatomy differ in important ways. This is something Aphi and I
are working on, for treating humans.”
Seth handed the syringe to him. Marshall laid it on the nightstand
and kissed Seth’s cheek. “Go to sleep. I’ll be up later.”
“Promise?” Seth said.
Marshall’s lips brushed his ear. “I promise,” he whispered.
Seth snuggled deeper under the covers. Already slipping under, he
did not see Marshall stash J.J.’s soda cup in his desk drawer before he
went out, closing the door behind him.
***
Along the bank, the river was clogged with dead limbs girdled by a
flotsam of leaves and trash. Quinn led J.J. down to the water’s edge via a
concrete staircase from the paved walking path above, where people
jogged and biked during the day.
No one was around this late. Above them, lights twinkled like stars
in the high-rise office buildings. Near the Kentucky shore, a tugboat
pushed a coal-laden barge beneath a stone bridge spanning the dark
water. Clouds had filled in, smoke across the fiery orange moon. A few
lines of poetry came back to J.J. – Yeats, he thought, though he wouldn’t
have sworn to it: For wisdom is the property of the dead, a something
incompatible with life; and power, like everything that has the stain of
blood, a property of the living; but no stain can come upon the visage of
the moon when it has looked in glory from a cloud.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Quinn asked.
J.J. kicked a beer bottle out of his path. The only asphalt down here
was the floodwall rising beside them like a concrete wave; his boots
crunched over flat stones, pushing them down into the sandy bank. “Talk
about what?”
“Whatever has been on your mind all evening.”
J.J. sighed. He wasn’t used to anybody besides Cleo reading his
moods so well.
He leaned back against the wooden pylon of one of the fishing piers
that stretched out into the river. Brown waves lapped gently at its base.
“You were at the school the night Seth and I joined with our Totems,” he
said. “Did you see what happened?”
Quinn nodded. She was standing in front of J.J., the wind blowing
her dress against her body. “It was the most incredible thing I’d ever
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seen. These two jaguars made entirely of light just falling from the sky
and burning all of those hunters to ash, and you and Seth just standing
there, right in the center of this inferno, like you had fallen from the
stars.”
She shivered, hugging her elbows, a reminder that she did feel the
cold. J.J. draped his leather jacket around her shoulders. “I had never felt
power like that,” he said. “When Seth spoke to the Ark, and it opened,
and LeRoi’s captive werekin at Fort King were freed from their collars –
for that instant, it was like I knew how it must feel to be a god. To know
everything, to see everything, but to be removed from everything, like
none of it was really happening to me.”
Quinn looked up at him. “This has something to do with those pages
of music they found at the cemetery,” she said, “doesn’t it?”
“It isn’t music,” J.J. said. “It’s a spell. Seth can translate it, but only
the Black Swan’s voice can give it power.”
J.J. turned then, looking out across the water. The barge had made it
past the bridge; the river was empty again, and black, like the river in the
jungle of his dreams. When he spoke, his voice sounded far-away. “I
thought it was strange that LeRoi risked kidnapping Will McLain that
night. If she hadn’t done that, Dre would never have seen her, and he and
Leigh wouldn’t have rounded up all of you to come to our rescue at the
school. Ultimately that cost LeRoi the battle. Ben called it a tactical
error, but Ursula LeRoi does not make tactical errors.”
He paused. Quinn stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on. Trusting
that he had a reason for telling her all of this. J.J. supposed there must
have been one. He had a reason for everything he did.
“When Seth and I joined with our Totems, we could see what was
happening at Fort King. I saw McLain strapped to the Source, and the
glyphs carved into it glowing like they had just been branded. I asked
him about it later. He thinks LeRoi just wanted him there to have a front
row seat to seeing the soldiers under his command die, but he also said
he could feel part of himself draining away when the Source began to
glow. He chalked it up to blood loss. Derek Childers gave him a hell of a
beating that night.”
“But you know better,” Quinn said.
She had come up behind J.J. He could see her shadow beside his as
the moon rose higher over the river. “The Source is designed to operate
only with the Black Swan’s blood. McLain isn’t werekin, but he is the
Black Swan’s brother. Their human blood is the same,” J.J. said. “It was
enough to operate the Source – not fully, that would have been like
dropping a nuclear bomb on the city, but LeRoi didn’t need its full power
to take back the Ark.
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“What the Source is meant to do is open the stargate. When the
Black Swan’s blood completes the Ark, the ship the Totems left for us on
Lemuria will rise. When the Black Swan is chained to the Source, it will
draw on her life-force, just like a collar would. It will drain her, just like
a collar would. And as she dies, she will sing a song, a spell, set to
music, that will call down her Totem. Their energies will fuse, and that
will give the Source enough power to rend a hole through the fabric of
space and time. If that power isn’t channeled somehow, there won’t be
anything left. Nothing on Earth, nothing that isn’t already onboard that
ship, will survive.”
The White Swan had seen this. It was why she had sacrificed herself
and all of her kindred to sink Lemuria beneath the seas.
McLain didn’t know. He didn’t have the clearance, and Burke
wanted it kept that way. If McLain had known what raising Lemuria
would really mean, he would have hidden his sister somewhere no one
could ever find her.
Ben and the other Commanders knew. The Alpha Clan knew. Elijah
Bishop had known. Ursula LeRoi knew. J.J. knew. Now Seth, and Quinn.
That was it. A dozen souls on the planet knew the blood of a twelveyear-old girl could destroy it. This is how it ends.
Arms slid around J.J. from behind. “Us,” Quinn said.
J.J. glanced back at her. “What?”
“You said ‘us.’ The ship the Totems left for ‘us’ on Lemuria. But
I’m not one of you. I’m not werekin.”
J.J. turned around. Quinn kept her arms around his waist; he lifted
his hands to her face and cupped it in his palms, using his thumbs to trace
the pattern of freckles on her cheekbones. “I told you,” he said. “I’m
human too.”
“Prove it,” Quinn said.
Her mouth was very close to his. Too close. She smelled like honey
and vanilla and she was warm and soft like some kind of rare, exotic
flower, and standing there with the moon pulling on the magic in his
blood like the tide being pulled out to sea, there was no fighting it
anymore. J.J. closed his eyes, and kissed her.
J.J. had never kissed a girl before. Not a lot of romantic prospects in
a government-controlled laboratory, and the one girl he had wanted to
kiss, he would have been put to death for kissing. But J.J. was a warrior,
trained to listen to his instincts, so he didn’t think too much about it; he
just slid his hands around to the back of Quinn’s neck, unfastening the
barrette that secured her braids as he tasted her lips with his.
Quinn made a sound of surprise in the back of her throat. J.J. spun
her around, trapping her against the wooden pylon. He had never
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appreciated just how petite she was, swallowed up by his jacket, which
he slid down her arms and tossed into the sand. He was trying to go slow,
to be gentle, but Quinn grabbed the hem of his shirt and ripped it free of
his jeans, up his arms, over his head. Her fingers buried in his hair. She
was kissing him fiercely, and J.J. responded in kind: picked her up,
swung them around so his back was against the post, her legs around his
waist.
Heat. He was nothing but heat, and electricity, everywhere her skin
touched his. He couldn’t kiss her deeply enough. He pushed off the post
– Quinn gasped, but they didn’t fall, they sank, gracefully, J.J. on top,
laying her back on top of his jacket, near enough to the shallows little
waves broke over their feet. Quinn’s dress was rucked up around her
hips. J.J. ran his scarred hands up the smooth, freckled skin of her thighs;
she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over the blood
pounding in his veins. He couldn’t think, and he didn’t want to think. He
was tired, tired of never wanting anything for himself, of never letting
himself feel anything, of always being in control, the soldier, the chess
master…
Quinn’s hands pressed against his chest. Her skin was hot and
flushed, blood close to the surface. J.J. had a sudden, vicious desire to
rend that skin with his teeth, to lap up the blood as it spilled from her
veins –
He jerked back. Quinn was staring up at him, deathly pale. Her hair,
free of its braids, wreathed her face like flame.
J.J. staggered away from her, over to the pylon. He was sick. Dizzy.
He hit the ground on his knees, not even feeling the rocks digging into
his skin, his chest hitching up and down. The fever had faded; he was
shaking, ice-cold inside and out. “I’m sorry,” he said, into his hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m – ”
“J.J., it’s okay.” Quinn knelt in front of him. J.J. flinched away. The
button on his jeans was undone. “We both got carried away. I should
have said stop sooner…”
“No.” J.J. shook his head. He couldn’t look at her. He looked at the
water swirling in eddies around them, soaking his jeans, the hem of her
torn dress. It seemed impossible that he could still hear traffic crossing
the bridge. “You don’t know what I’m like. You don’t know – the things
I’ve done – ”
“I do know you.” Quinn’s tone was firm. “You’re not that guy, J.J. I
wouldn’t go for a walk in the middle of the night with that guy. I’m not
stupid. Something is going on with you right now, I don’t know what it
is, but look at you, my God, baby, you’re shaking – ”
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Quinn reached for him. So, so much J.J. wanted to fold into her
arms; he couldn’t remember a time he had ever needed comfort so
desperately. But he didn’t deserve it. He looked up at Quinn, and all he
could see was her lying underneath him, asking him to stop, panicking
because he didn’t, because he didn’t even really seem to hear her.
And it hadn’t even been her face he had seen, that had stopped him.
It had been Cleo’s, bruised, bloodied, resting in the Arena’s bloodsoaked sand with the sun reflecting off her silvery eyes as he raised the
dagger over his head to drive into her heart. You’re nothing but an
animal, she had spit at him. You’re nothing but an animal, J.J. Sullivan,
and I hate you.
“No.” J.J. pushed Quinn away, not roughly, but swiftly. She fell
back in the shallows. He didn’t look back to see if she tried to follow
him; he just ran, along the shore, his spine stretched out as his four paws
hit the ground, carrying him off into the night.
Quinn did call after him, she did chase him, but the black jaguar
never slowed. Watching them from the shadows of the pier, the boy
hidden there smiled to himself. Gotcha.
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Chapter Ten: Elders
The Burkes lived in the largest house in Fairfax, on one of the gentle
hills that swelled up from the flat farm ground, down a lane even longer,
narrower, and more winding than the one that led back to Regent’s. The
house, a mansion really, had been empty for decades before General
Burke bought it and fixed it up three years ago, when he had moved here
with his son from New Mexico.
So Jack told Seth as he slingshot the Beamer around yet another treelined curve. “I should impress upon you how rare this invitation is,” Jack
said. “David Burke is a notoriously private man. A lot of deep pockets in
this town have never forgiven him for buying up this ‘historic landmark’
and not even throwing a decent dinner party so they could gawk at it.”
“You should ask him to host a Steward campaign fundraiser,” Seth
said. “Charge a thousand bucks a plate.”
“Something tells me I will not have David Burke’s vote come
November.” Jack braked, inside a circular drive centered by a plashing
fountain. Seth stared out his window at the dark stone house. Ivy choked
the walls; white star flowers hugged the foundation, spilled out of vases
along the columned portico, their perfume a white haze in the morning
air. The Gothic windows blocked the light without reflecting it, like
lidless eyes.
The house should have been beautiful, but wasn’t. It was as cold and
remote as a mausoleum.
“You’re sure you’re all right with this?” Jack asked, as though
reading his thoughts.
“Yeah. Fine.” Flashing a smile, Seth grabbed his backpack off the
seat. Seth climbed out. Jack waved as he pulled away.
The mansion’s front doors were oak, carved with shooting stars. As
the Beamer drove off, Seth raised a hand to lift the silver knocker, but the
door opened, and there was Connor. “Hola, Philly,” he said. “Mi casa es
su casa.”
“Gracias,” Seth said.
Connor wheeled back, motioning him inside. Seth looked around.
The floors were silver-veined marble, and echoey. A marble staircase
flowed up from the foyer, branching into two streams at a landing
beneath a stained-glass window made of checkered red-and-black panes.
A design of shooting stars was painted on the glass. “Like your school,”
Seth said, looking at the pattern the alternating squares cast on the
marble walls.
“The LeRois founded Sacred Heart Academy,” Connor explained.
“This house used to be theirs.”
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Seth was so taken aback he stumbled. “This used to be Ursula
LeRoi’s house?”
“Try to resist the impulse to burn it down,” Connor said lightly.
“Come on, I’ll show you my room.”
Seth followed him as he wheeled down the hallway, past a long oval
mirror that captured their reflections. Seth was in jeans and a T-shirt.
Connor was dressed even more casually, in holey sweatpants and a
Warriors hoodie. At the end of the hall, in front of a bay window with a
view of an English garden, he pressed the button for an elevator. Seth
was impressed. “Your house has an elevator?”
“My father does love to spend money. Guess we’re putting it to
good use now.”
Seth couldn’t tell if he had imagined the sourness in Connor’s voice;
the doors had opened, and he had wheeled inside. Seth stepped in after
him.
Connor’s room was wicked. He had the entire basement to himself. It
was tricked out with black velvet wall hangings, electric-blue rugs, and
funky neon-colored floor lamps. There were vintage pinball games; a TV
that took up one whole wall; cube-style shelves of books bolted above a
jumbo-sized waterbed; fully-stocked mini-fridge…Around a Mensa
membership certificate, science fair ribbons from schools in Connecticut
and Texas and Indiana created a collage across a giant bulletin board. A
chrome desk beneath it boasted computer equipment Dre Alfaro would
have drooled over.
Connor supplied Seth with Oreos and Mountain Dew, and they
wasted an hour zapping aliens on his Xbox, talking basketball and girls
(and guys, as Connor didn’t seem to have a preference) and colleges.
Connor’s plans on that front were still vague. He wanted to travel, he
said. See the world. It was the rare golden boy who could be so blasé
about The Future.
Finally they got down to business. Seth dumped his backpack out on
the desk. Connor parked his wheelchair beside him, fingers knit under
his chin. His long tawny hair had dried in waves from his shower. “What
am I looking at?” he asked.
“These are glyphs.” Seth placed the tip of his index finger on the
parchment page, which crinkled though it wasn’t creased.
Connor’s hazel eyes glittered like chips of gold. “Is it a song?”
“That’s what I’m about to find out. In general, though, we think it’s
a spell.”
“For what?”
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Seth hesitated. Yesterday, he wouldn’t have. Yesterday, he had
forgotten something he had woken up this morning remembering. He
trusted J.J. And J.J. did not trust Connor.
“We’re not sure,” he lied. Connor nodded. He would have had no
reason to question Seth, yet Seth had almost been ready for him to. “The
Commanders think these pages probably came from Mt. Hokulani, some
of the ancient Lemurian texts Bishop and LeRoi recovered along with the
Ark. But they were never catalogued in Chimera’s databases, so it’s
possible the Tortoise Clan gave them to Bishop and he never shared them
with anyone else.”
“How do you read them?”
“It’s like you try not to read them. You just look at them, until they
start to make sense.” Seth shrugged at Connor’s expression. “It’s hard to
explain. Just watch.”
Settling more comfortably in his chair, he moved his eyes across the
page, bottom to top, right to left, deliberately unfocused. A lesson, like
stillness, Regent had taught him.
The trick worked. Seth picked up a pencil; as the glyphs began to
whisper in his mind, he moved his hand quickly across the page. When
he finished, he sat back and stared at what he had written.
Connor was leaning forward in his chair. The lights in his bedroom
were low; Seth wondered if that was why he seemed so pale. “They’re
not words,” he said, softly. “They’re notes. Musical notes.”
“It is sheet music,” Seth pointed out.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Connor glance at him as though
annoyed. But when Seth looked up, Connor was grinning. “Let’s get
some lunch,” he said. “I’m starving.”
***
The Burkes’ housekeeper, Elke, served them deli-style ham
sandwiches and potato chips on the terrace. She was a matronly woman
in a starched white apron; looking at her, Seth thought of Naomi, who
had kept house for a wealthy family in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood in
Philadelphia. He spoke to her in Russian. She responded with the
eagerness of one who rarely hears her native tongue.
“Did Elke come with you from Texas?” he asked, after she
disappeared back inside.
“Oh, Elke has been with us forever. My father likes to have
someone around to keep an eye on me.” Connor crossed his elbows on
the table. He hadn’t touched his food, despite his claim that he was
starving. Seth had already packed away both of his sandwiches.
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The terrace overlooked the garden. The furniture was stone,
weathered like it had been built about the same time as the house, a
century ago. The whole scene felt out of place for Fairfax, land of strip
malls and chain restaurants: the pond with the stone bridge, the flowerlined walkways, the gargoyles on the roof. It reminded Seth, not
pleasantly, of the courtyard of Ursula LeRoi’s other home, the estate
where she had ordered J.J. to kill their father.
“Are you coming to the game Saturday?” he asked, to steer his mind
into less painful waters.
“I am,” Connor said. “But listen, Seth, I…I wanted you to come
here today because I haven’t been completely honest with you. I knew
about werekin before I met you.”
He paused for a reaction. Seth didn’t have much of one. He had long
felt Connor had acclimated to the aliens-among-us stuff far too readily.
“Your father told you?”
“No. My father never wanted me to know Project Ark existed. He
made my mother swear not to tell me. But she did anyway.”
“Your mother wasn’t werekin, was she?”
Nothing would have surprised Seth at this point, yet Connor seemed
almost bemused by the question. “Both of my parents are fully human,”
he said. “I was raised by my mother back East, before I went to live with
my father in Texas.”
“Yeah, I remember you saying that,” Seth said, unsure where this
was going. Connor was tracing the beads of condensation on the outside
of his glass, reluctant to meet his gaze. The gray crescents under his eyes
were tinged pink. “Connie, if you need to go rest – ”
“I have to show you something.” Abruptly, Connor wheeled away
from the table. Seth, after a moment, slunk after him into the garden.
The floral perfume was even headier under the trees, cloying in its
sweetness, like funeral flowers. Connor rolled across the bridge and
turned down a narrow path crowded by thorny bushes. Seth had to stop
to free his jeans from a snag. When he caught up to him again, Connor
had stopped, outside a stone cottage with windows grimed from disuse.
The windows were stained glass, checkered red and black, etched with a
design of silver stars.
“There should be a key,” Connor said. “On top of the doorframe.
Can you…?”
“Yeah. Of course.” Seth stretched up on tiptoe. Above the round
wooden door, his hand closed around something small, but weighty. He
took it down. It was an old-fashioned brass key. Connor fit it into the
lock, and the door creaked open on rusted hinges.
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The air was cool and musty. Seth blinked as his eyes adjusted to the
dimness.
Once this had probably been a guesthouse. A round wooden table
with two spindled chairs stood before a plain stone hearth. There was a
stand in the corner, beside a wooden screen, holding a chipped
washbasin, and a brass-framed oval mirror with wavy glass on the wall.
Four indentations in the floor underneath the window marked where a
bed had been. Flanking the hearth were tall bookcases, empty of books.
The floor in front of one was scored like something heavy had been drug
across it.
“There.” Connor pointed at the wall. “This is what I wanted to show
you.”
Seth walked over. Hanging there was a framed black-and-white
portrait of two men, obviously from the previous century. They wore
dark suits, posed stiffly with their hands behind their backs in front of the
stained-glass window in the Burkes’ foyer.
“The founding fathers of Fairfax, Indiana.” Connor had rolled up to
Seth. “This is Abraham Bishop,” he pointed to the shorter man, who had
a freckled face and kindly blue eyes behind square spectacles, “and this
is Maxim LeRoi.”
Cold gray eyes stared down flatly at Seth. He shuddered. Underneath
the stink of mildew was a sharper, chemical scent he couldn’t place.
Connor folded his hands. “Seth, didn’t you ever wonder why
Chimera Enterprises brought the Ark to Fairfax?”
“Not especially,” Seth shrugged. “I just figured they were looking
for the last place on Earth anybody would expect to find alien
technology.”
“Chimera Enterprises was born here. It started with the discovery of
an ancient Lemurian text in an Indian burial mound out where Fort King
is now. The Cahokia nation once occupied what is now Fairfax. They
were one of the oldest Indian tribes on record, wiped out long before the
Europeans came to these shores. Archaeologists have found Mayan and
Aztec artifacts in their burial mounds, suggesting they had trade routes
clear from the Ohio River to the Amazon. Abraham Bishop came to
Fairfax to study what was found, and it eventually led him to the
Amazon, to the Tortoise Clan, on an expedition Maxim LeRoi, the
wealthiest man in Fairfax, funded. Bishop and LeRoi were looking for
the werekin homeland half a century before their son and daughter found
it.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Seth asked. His mouth was dry.
Connor’s eyes were hard and bright. He did not look like the carefree
boy Seth had just been playing videogames with.
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“I’m telling you this because you have a right to know the truth,”
Connor said. “And because I’m tired of keeping secrets for my father.
I’m telling you this because Ursula LeRoi is my mother.”
Seth was speechless. Literally. His mouth moved. No words came
out.
Connor tapped his wrists hard on the arms of his chair. His lashes
had lowered onto his cheekbones. With a sickening twist in his gut, Seth
knew where he had seen those perfectly sculpted features before.
“My parents met after Mt. Hokulani was discovered,” Connor said,
quietly. “My father was just a young officer then. He wasn’t in charge of
Project Ark. Your grandfather, Michael Shepherd, was. My father was
assigned to guard the Ark at Fort King, and he and my mother fell in
love. They never married, though, and not long after I was born, they
split up.
“They had been on the rocks for a while. They’re both stubborn
people, and the longer Project Ark went without producing a Black
Swan, the more desperate my mother became to raise Lemuria, and the
more convinced my father became that the werekin posed an
unacceptable threat to humankind. When he found out about the Ovid
Experiment, that was the last straw. He left. Went back to Washington,
started working to have Project Ark shut down.”
“But you told J.J. you don’t want to be like your father,” Seth
blurted out. “You’d rather be like your mother?”
“Seth.” Connor raised his head. His expression was twisted. “Do
you know what my father wants to do to your kindred? Do you know
what his solution to the ‘werekin problem’ was going to be?”
“Eden,” Seth said, tonelessly. Do you think your military buddies
are just going to hand the power of the gods over to an alien race?
They’ll exterminate all of us. They even have a code name for that. Eden.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that walketh
upon the earth,” Connor quoted. From having been dragged to Mass by
Naomi every Sunday of his childhood, Seth recognized the creation story
from Genesis. “Seth, my father wants you dead. All of you. He may
pretend to be on your kindred’s side, but that’s just to keep you appeased
while he finds an excuse to do away with you.”
“And your mother? What does she want?” Seth knew he was being
harsh. He couldn’t help it. He felt like he was about to choke on the
dusty air.
“Power,” Connor said. “She wants power. It’s the only thing she
ever has wanted.”
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A breeze blew in through the open door, ruffling Connor’s hair. The
day had turned warm; sweat shone on his upper lip, on his collarbone
above the injection sight, and guilt twanged in Seth’s chest. Connor was
on their side. He couldn’t help who his parents were. He took a deep
breath. “Did Gideon know who you were, when he…?”
Seth gestured at the wheelchair. Connor nodded. His face had set
into the granite mask Seth had seen the first night they had met, when
Connor had stood up to Cam Foss on his behalf, nearly instigating a
courtside brawl. “He knew. My mother was there that night. Did you see
her rush to my aid? No.” Connor shook his head. His words were brittle.
“I’m not her son anymore. I chose my father over her. In her mind, no
crime is greater than disloyalty.
“When she told me about Project Ark, she took me to the Arena to
see the werekin fight. It was sickening, these smug, pampered humans
cheering these spectacular creatures on in a senseless death match. I’d
never seen anything so barbaric. I couldn’t be part of that. I told her I
was going to live with my father. She warned me that he would prosecute
her for treason if he found out what she had told me, so I pretended I
didn’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have told him.
But…she is my mother…”
He trailed off. Seth couldn’t take it. He turned and walked out into
the garden. This was too much to process standing still.
Once again, he felt he was missing some crucial piece of the puzzle.
The forest for the trees. He headed for the bridge, looking up at the
gargoyles on the mansion’s roof, the ivy choking the stone – and one
piece of that puzzle clicked into place. He had seen this house before. On
Regent’s surveillance feeds.
Seth turned, scanning the garden. There, and there, hidden in the
branches of a weeping willow, visible only to a werecat’s eyes. Cameras.
“Do you hate me now?”
Connor had rolled onto the bridge. He was looking down at his
hands, at the star flower cupped in his palm. Seth leaned back against the
railing. “Of course I don’t hate you, Connie.”
“You don’t?”
Squinting against the sun, Connor looked up at him. Seth shook his
head. “Who our parents are doesn’t determine who we are. Look at
werekin. Our skin doesn’t depend on our parents’. It depends on our
Totems. Each and every one of us gets to choose who we want to be.”
“Somehow I don’t think J.J. will agree. He already doesn’t trust
me.”
Connor tossed the flower into the water. It sank slowly. “J.J. doesn’t
not trust you,” Seth said, because it seemed kinder than the truth. “He
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just thinks you’re hiding something, and you are. J.J. is a telepath. He
picks up on that stuff. But if you don’t want me to tell him,” Seth said, “I
won’t.”
Connor’s expression registered genuine surprise. “Thanks,” he said,
softly.
Seth nodded. He didn’t like keeping secrets from his twin, but
Connor’s secret was a big one. It wasn’t his to tell. “I do need to ask you
something, though,” he said.
“Anything.” Connor sounded eager.
“Do you think your parents could still be working together?”
“I would deem it highly unlikely,” Connor said, “since my father
just had my mother locked up for the remainder of her natural life.”
True. And yet, the cynical part of Seth’s brain reasoned, what else
could General Burke have done once LeRoi had attacked a military
installation with stolen alien technology? Publicly disavowing her would
have been the only way to keep himself out of prison. Like the Partners.
But Regent was still working for someone, someone with enough
connections on the inside to have learned about Seth’s power over the
Ark, someone with the wherewithal to place half of Fairfax under
surveillance. And, since teleportation wasn’t one of Regent’s mad
weretiger skills, someone with the means to spirit him out of town under
the noses of the dozen Marine units McLain had dispatched to scour the
city for him.
Seth explained this to Connor as they headed back to the house. Elke
had cleared their lunch dishes from the terrace, leaving the pitcher of
lemonade and two tall glasses. Connor poured himself one. “A lot of the
Partners are wealthy and powerful,” he said. “It could be any one of
them. Doesn’t J.J. have any idea who it might be?”
“No,” Seth said. At least his twin wasn’t sharing, if he did, which
was entirely possible. “I do know he has Dre trying to track down some
super-secret headquarters of LeRoi’s.”
“Track down how? I thought Alfaro pretty well destroyed the
electronic equipment in the van.”
“J.J. found this ring of Jack’s, that LeRoi used to keep tabs on the
Partners. Dre is tracing the transmitter back to its home base. He has to
get it working first, though.” Seth’s source on this was Leigh. She had
been irked that J.J. hadn’t told her about the ring, as it pertained to Jack,
and Jack to her.
Connor’s hands were clasped tightly around his glass. The strain of
all of this seemed to be wearing him out; his face was gray again, striped
with color across his cheeks. “I should call Jack,” Seth said, standing up.
He had been sitting on the low wall around the terrace. “Have him pick
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me up so you can take a nap. Marshall will kick my tail if I end up
getting you sick.”
“I suppose I should rest a while,” Connor said, softly. Putting his
glass down, he wheeled over to Seth and stuck out his hand. Seth clasped
it. Connor’s skin was hot and dry. Inside the sleeve of his sweatshirt, his
wrist looked bruised. “Seth, I can’t tell you how glad I am we’re
friends.”
Seth smiled at him. “Me too.”
***
Not telling J.J. about Connor’s parentage was a decision Seth
second-guessed pretty much from the moment he buckled himself into
Jack’s Beamer. By the time they made it back to Castle Estates, he had
nearly talked himself out of keeping Connor’s secret, but the dilemma
turned out to be moot: When he unlocked the back door, Lydia came
rushing at him, white as death.
“He’s gone,” she said.
Seth froze. “Who’s gone?”
“Your brother. He’s gone.” Lydia pressed the backs of her hands to
her cheeks. Those looked like the same jeans and cashmere sweater she
had worn the day before, just a lot more wrinkled now. “He didn’t come
home last night. I waited up. I just had this feeling something was wrong.
Then Ingrid called this morning and said he didn’t come to school…”
“Lydia, take a breath.” Jack moved around Seth, as Seth couldn’t
seem to lift his feet to step out of the doorway, and steered Lydia onto
one of the tall stools. “J.J. goes off on his own whenever he pleases. You
know that. It doesn’t mean anything has happened to him.”
His tone was gentle. Lydia looked up at him with tears in her eyes.
“Jack, the things I said to him – I was so angry, I told him if he couldn’t
control himself, he was going to ruin everything – ”
“It was an argument. You didn’t mean it.” Jack loosened his tie. His
getting-down-to-business mode. Seth was inexplicably relieved. It wasn’t
as if Jack could somehow make things better just by being there, yet he
felt like he could, like when Ben used to check his closet for hunters
when Seth was little. “Did you go to Cleo’s? Call McLain to see if he’s
been to the fort?”
“I drove to Cleo’s myself. Twice. I broke a window to get in the
second time. And Will hasn’t heard from him. He offered to send out a
search party, but then David would know…”
Lydia’s voice cracked. Jack nodded, to himself. “That’s wise. We
shouldn’t involve Operation Swan Song if we don’t have to.”
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He glanced at Seth, who, during this, had managed to unglue his
tennis shoes from the threshold and close the door behind him. “He left
the party with Quinn,” he said.
Lydia perked up. “Do you have her number?”
“In my phone…” Seth dug through his backpack. “Here.” He
offered the phone to Lydia.
Jack cleared his throat. “Um, Seth, maybe you should call her.”
Right, Seth thought. Quinn wouldn’t want to tell their mother if J.J.
was shacked up with her.
The call seemed to take forever to connect. “Hello?” a sly voice
finally said.
Seth turned his back on his parents. “O’Shea, it’s Seth.”
“Yes, Sullivan, I have caller I.D.” Quinn sounded like she was
outside. Probably walking to her car after school. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen J.J.?”
A pause. Brief. Telling. “Not since last night. Why?”
“Last night,” Seth pressed, “or this morning?”
“Please tell me you are not calling to ask if I had sex with your
brother.”
Before she could hang up on him, Seth said, “J.J. didn’t come home
last night, and no one has heard from him.”
Quinn breathed out audibly.
Seth went back out on the porch, shutting the door behind him. Lydia
had started crying again. His mother’s distress on top of his twin’s
disappearance was more than Seth could take. He wouldn’t just leave, he
thought. He wouldn’t not say goodbye. “Quinn, if you know something –
”
“He ran off.” A car door slammed, and an engine rumbled. “We
went for a walk, we had a – fight, and he ran off. I assumed he was going
to Cleo’s.”
“And you didn’t wonder where he was when he didn’t show up to
school today?”
“I’m not his babysitter, Sullivan,” Quinn said sharply. “I figured
he’d stayed home with you. He was on edge all day yesterday, being
separated from you with Regent and Gideon out gunning for you.”
“Quinn.” Seth gripped the porch railing. His claws had slid out; he
felt them digging into the wood. “You have to tell me whatever it is
you’re not telling me.”
She swore under her breath. The engine noise died down, like she
had pulled off to the side of the road. Seth stared at a spot just above
their backyard fence. The place he had heard J.J.’s voice in his mind for
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the first time, warning him to go back. Seth hadn’t listened. It had nearly
been his last mistake.
“We made out, okay?” Quinn sounded like she would rather have
been prying her toenails off than telling this to Seth. “He got a little
rough, I said stop, and I think…I think he thought he’d hurt me. He
didn’t,” she said, quickly. “I wasn’t even really sure I wanted him to
stop. I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept saying he
was sorry, that I didn’t really know what he was like, and then he ran
away.”
“Where?” Seth couldn’t keep the hiss out of his voice. He wasn’t
angry with Quinn. He was scared, for J.J. He hadn’t heard his twin’s
voice in his head all day. He told himself he would know if J.J. was dead.
“Where did this happen?”
A minute later, when Seth opened the back door, Leigh was sitting at
the island patting Lydia’s back. Jack was on his cell phone in the dining
room, gesturing with his hands. “Did she know where he was?” Lydia
asked, shakily.
“No. But she last saw him down at the river. They argued – ” Lydia,
Seth had decided, did not need the gory details “ – and J.J. ran off. I’m
going down there to start looking for him.”
“What about Poe?” Leigh said.
“What about her?”
“Well, J.J. did program her to be the psychic warlock kitty,” she
pointed out. “Can’t she locate him?”
“Great idea,” Seth said. “Why don’t you go ask her?”
Leigh glared at him.
She didn’t say anything, though, as Jack chose that moment to stalk
back into the kitchen. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. “I just
spoke to Agathon. Xanthe is going to try to locate – ”
Lydia screamed. The basement door had just opened, and a figure
had appeared.
J.J. looked up. He was sleep-rumpled, in a white T-shirt and black
boxers. Dried mud flaked off his feet onto the linoleum.
Lydia flew at him, and would have knocked him back down the steps
had J.J. not seized the doorframe with both hands. “Jesus, woman,” he
gasped. “What the f- ”
“Jeremy Sullivan! Where in the world have you been?”
Lydia cupped his face in her hands. J.J. was still blinking sleep out of
his eyes. “What do you mean where have I been?” He ducked away from
her, slinking like a cat when it senses danger and is about to bolt. “I’ve
been in my room. Asleep.”
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Leigh stood up, hands on hips. “The basement is not your room, J.J.
It’s a basement. Have we or have we not talked about this?”
“Oh.” J.J. looked honestly chagrined. “I forgot. Sorry.”
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. Apparently, sorry was the wrong thing to
say.
Jack seemed to be caught betwixt amusement and exasperation.
“You didn’t check the basement?”
“No, I did not check the basement!” Lydia whirled on her ex,
unkempt curls flying. “I told you I was up all night! He never came
home!”
“I came home,” J.J. said. “This morning. No one was here.”
He stretched, yawned, and slunk over to the fridge. Lydia stared at
him. Her cheeks were now rouged with scarlet spots. Seth couldn’t
decide if he was relieved to see his twin alive, or ticked at his devil-maycare attitude. Couldn’t he see their mother was half-sick with worry?
Didn’t he care? He closed the fridge with a sigh. “I’m hungry. Can we
order Chinese?”
“J.J. Sullivan.” Lydia was breathing hard. Leigh edged closer to
Seth. Captain Hook and Poe had already beaten a path down to the
basement, through the door J.J. had left ajar. “Where were you all night?
Were you with a girl?”
Only a flutter of the pulse in J.J.’s neck clued Seth in that his twin
wasn’t quite the cool cat he was acting. What’s wrong with you? he
wanted to scream. Why won’t you talk to me? “I went for a run, after the
party,” J.J. evaded, scratching his ankle with one muddy toe. “I didn’t
feel like coming home.”
“Oh, I see. You didn’t feel like coming home.” Lydia was using her
super-controlled voice. This was not good. “And did you also not feel
like going to school?”
“No,” J.J. said. “I didn’t.”
“Lydia – ” Jack started.
Lydia fired a look at him. Stay out of it. “Go to your room.”
She raised a hand, pointing up the stairs. J.J.’s eyebrows shot up.
Rarely did anything surprise him. “What?”
“Go. To. Your. Room.” Lydia bit the words off like each one was an
individual strip of leather. “You are grounded, young man.”
“You’re not serious.” J.J.’s tone was flat.
“Yes, I am. I have had enough of this behavior. Dragging in at all
hours, coming and going as you please, never leaving notes, never
calling to say where you are. Snapping at all of us over nothing. And
then standing there, acting like you’re – like the rules don’t apply to
you.” Lydia squared her shoulders. Getting all of that out seemed to have
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lifted a weight off of them. “Well, I have news for you, Jeremy Jonathan.
The rules do apply to you, and as of now, you are going to start
following them.”
J.J. leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. The edges of
his smirk were as hard and sharp as glass. “You’re grounding me,” he
said. “You’re seriously grounding me.”
“Yes.” Lydia’s voice shook the tiniest bit. “I am.”
“From what? From training with Xanthe, so I can use my gift to
save the world? From working out over at Cleo’s, so the next time
someone tries to kill Seth, I can be there again to save his life? From
helping the Commanders decide my kindred’s fate? Because in case you
hadn’t noticed, Mom, I don’t play basketball. I don’t have friends. I’m
not here to pretend I’m a real live boy. I’m here because I’m needed.”
“J.J.,” Seth admonished, softly, too shocked to say anything else. He
had never heard J.J. speak to their mother this way, ever.
J.J.’s golden eyes flicked to him. Just like when Marshall had called
him on the Cam thing, he flushed, and seemed to come back to himself.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I just didn’t sleep well. Bad dreams.” He took
a deep breath, rubbing the back of his neck like it was sore. “I didn’t
mean to worry you. I’ll go upstairs.”
Lydia made as if to reach for him. J.J. looked so forlorn, the anger
seemed to wash out of her in a single wave. “J.J. – ”
“Lydia.” Jack interrupted gently. “Let’s let him get some rest, all
right?”
The look J.J. threw their step-father was almost grateful.
Lydia watched J.J. slink up the stairs, head down, spine arched.
When he disappeared at the top, Jack turned her toward him, and Lydia
rested her head on his shoulder.
For the briefest instant, watching his parents embrace, Seth thought it
would all be all right. Then Lydia heard the breath Leigh sucked in,
looked up, and saw the accusing look on her daughter’s face. As though
she had been awoken from a trance again, she jerked roughly away from
Jack, slammed the basement door, and marched out of the kitchen
without another word to any of them.
133
Chapter Eleven: Love Potion Number Nine
Dre Alfaro almost hopped off the step when Leigh Steward plunked
down beside him. “What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
“Uh…” Dre blinked. Students were splitting around them, streaming
through the main doors of Fairfax High. Dre had flown to the school
hours ago, camped out on the steps with his laptop and Jack Steward’s
ring, determined that today would be the day he would get this
transmitter working. Nanna always had to prod Angelo out of bed, but
Dre did his best thinking around sunrise. There was something to that
early bird getting the worm saying.
He shifted his MacBook onto the step below him, swiping his bangs
out of his eyes so he could look at Leigh. As always she belonged in a
magazine – crocheted cranberry-red dress, brown boots that zipped up
past the knee, auburn curls twisted into a high ponytail. She had taken to
wearing the beaded bracelets Zoe made, and today, her earrings were red
feathers. Synthetic, but still, it felt like a signal, like he might not have
imagined her sidelong glances these last two weeks after all. Dre ducked
his head shyly. “I have to work,” he said.
“Not anymore you don’t,” Leigh informed him. “I talked to Emery.
He’s taking your shift at Re-Spin tonight, and you are coming with me to
MoJo’s.”
“I am?” Dre said.
“Uh-huh. Listening Korn is playing.”
Leigh rose. Dre shoved his laptop in his bag and darted after her.
Every guy in the hallway turned to stare as she walked by. “Leigh, have
you ever heard Listening Korn perform?” Dre asked.
“No,” said Leigh. “Why?”
“Well, if you tell Ozzie I said this, I’ll deny it to the grave, but they
suck.”
Leigh grinned. She handed her books to Dre; he held them while she
opened her locker, quick-checking her lipstick in the mirror on the
inside. Pictures of her friends were taped all over the place. There was
one of J.J. and Seth on the Stewards’ brick fence, showing off their
curled biceps. One of Marshall holding up a Blue Devils shirt in the gym,
before it got destroyed by the Jaguar Totems. Whitney kissing Emery
outside of Archie’s Diner. Dre, bent over his laptop in the library. “I
don’t remember posing for that,” he said.
Leigh shut her locker. Her cheeks were pink. “Well,” she linked her
arm through his, “the fact that the band sucks just means our friends need
us there for moral support even more. Right?”
“I guess,” Dre said.
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“Terrific. So my mom has this rule about chaperoning, but I’m
trying to get a bunch of people to go, so it shouldn’t be totally lame. Did
you want to come by my house before and maybe…ride together?”
They had reached Mr. Talbot’s classroom. Leigh looked up at Dre
with wide green eyes. Was she, Leigh Steward, asking him, Dre Alfaro,
on a date? Dre felt color creep up from the collar of his plaid shirt. “Sure
I can come by your house. If you want me to…”
“Awesome.” Leigh glanced over her shoulder. The classroom was
empty; the bell wouldn’t ring for another ten minutes. “Come in here. I
wanted to ask you something.”
Dre followed her in. The click of the classroom door closing was
echoed by a jump of his heart.
It seemed very quiet without the hallway noise. Leigh sat down on
the edge of her desk. Dre put her books on the one beside it and dropped
his backpack on the floor, hooking his thumbs through his suspenders for
something to do with his hands. Through the window he could see the
parking lot. Ms. McLain was on her cell phone, talking animatedly to
someone as she paced.
“Where did Ozzie grow up?”
“The Liverpool Underground,” Dre answered, with automatic
honesty. The question had caught him off-guard. Leigh wasn’t thinking
of dating Ozzie, was she? He had a girlfriend. Chelsea Stone, the
drummer in his band. “He didn’t come to Fairfax until two years ago,
when the Resistance made him a Commander. Why?”
“I was just – thinking.” Leigh twisted one of the curls that had come
loose from her ponytail. “Are there lots of werekin overseas?”
“Oh yeah.” Dre bobbed his head. “There are werekin all over the
world. Chimera Enterprises has Partners in every developed nation.
China. Japan. Russia. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Europe. Look, I can show
you…”
He dug his laptop out and opened it on Leigh’s desk. She leaned in to
see. “There.” Dre pecked two-fingered on the keyboard. “These are the
addresses I pulled off LeRoi’s PDA when I cracked the encryption a few
weeks ago. The same time I found the Source in the Amazon.”
“Nice work, by the way,” Leigh said.
“Thank you. Anyway, McLain’s men have raided all of these, but
there could be dozens more out there we don’t know anything about.”
Leigh’s pupils reflected back the addresses scrolling across the
screen, Shanghai to Istanbul. “It just seems so hopeless,” she said. “How
can you destroy something this huge? It’s like a dragon, or something.”
She blushed, but Dre, finding the analogy apt, nodded. “In most
stories, to kill the dragon you have to cut out its heart,” he said.
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“Do you think Ursula LeRoi is Chimera’s heart?”
When Leigh asked things like that, it was proof she was more
substance than style. Dre hesitated. He probably knew more about the
inner workings of Chimera Enterprises than just about anyone, from all
the files he had decrypted for McLain. Dre only had to look at something
once to remember it forever. Angelo said his brain was the planet’s
tiniest super-computer. “No,” he said, after a moment. “I think someone
else is still running things.”
“I think so, too.” Leigh put her hand on Dre’s shoulder. All he
would have had to do was tilt his head, and his eyelashes would have
brushed hers. “It would be safer for you all to leave Earth, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” Dre admitted.
“Then – and please don’t take this the wrong way,” Leigh said, “but
why don’t you?”
“I guess…” Dre paused, to find the words he wanted. “I guess
because we have reasons to stay,” he said.
Leigh lowered her eyes. “Oh.”
Dre’s heart beat fast anyway; for birds it was natural, a necessity for
flight. He didn’t think his had ever beaten this hard, though. About that
time the bell rang, and he turned away to shut down his laptop before
Leigh could see the pulse fluttering in his throat. “Did you still want me
to come over tonight?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Leigh said. Her voice was softer than usual. “If you still
want to.”
“I’ll be there at seven,” Dre said.
***
Baby Bird hopped onto his stool at the Bio table approximately two
seconds ahead of the first bell. Nice, Seth mouthed, as Ms. Krughman
shot him a look.
“I have some bad news,” their substitute announced, addressing
them at attention with her hands folded in the small of her back. She still
wore her white nurses’ uniform and rubber-soled shoes. “You’ve got to
stick your fingers again. Some smarty-pants broke into my office last
night and stole your blood type cards.”
Several kids groaned. “This is medieval,” Bryce complained, as Ms.
Krughman passed out the rectangular cards. “You shouldn’t have to
bleed yourself to pass eleventh grade. What would somebody want with
blood type cards, anyway?”
Seth shrugged, wincing as Yena helpfully stabbed his finger. His
mind wasn’t really on Biology.
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J.J. had stayed locked up in his room all night, so Seth had not been
able to tell him that Connor Burke was Ursula LeRoi’s son. By this
morning, he was second-guessing his decision to renege on his promise
to Connor. Connor was on their side. He had withstood torture for Seth’s
kin. He might never walk again because of what Gideon had done to
him. What right did Seth have to betray his confidence? No matter what
he had said yesterday, he didn’t believe J.J. would ever trust Connor
once he knew who he really was.
Especially not now. J.J.’s mood had worsened overnight, progressing
from snappish to brooding. He hadn’t said a word at breakfast. He hadn’t
said a word on the drive to school. In the parking lot, he had walked right
by Quinn, and Miss Vixen had looked so hurt Seth couldn’t even be
happy on Cleo’s behalf.
Marshall had been almost as preoccupied as J.J. He hadn’t called
Seth last night, and Seth’s repeated texts had gone unanswered. Then this
morning he had made up some excuse about working on a special project
with Aphrodisia to get out of going to the concert at MoJo’s. Seth had
not been fooled. Marshall was moving back in with his parents, plain and
simple. Back where he was not allowed to be Seth’s boyfriend.
The only good things that could be said about the day were that (a) it
was Friday, (b) Cam did not show up, and (c) it passed quickly.
Coach called a team meeting in the cafeteria after last period. No
practice tonight; tomorrow was game day. Coach, propping his foot on
one of the metal folding chairs, started out by ordering them all to get a
good night’s sleep. The mural of the Knights’ mascot behind him had
been scrubbed clean of graffiti, but Seth still avoided looking at it as he
slouched down between Topher and Alfaro. Marshall had glanced at him
when he hadn’t taken the seat next to his.
“Here’s the score, princesses,” Coach said. His clipboard was
resting on his hairy knee. The fact that they didn’t have a gymnasium
anymore hadn’t stopped him from coming to work in running shorts. “I’d
say we’ve finally got a decent shot of winning state this year. I know it’s
been a tough season, and it hasn’t all gone the way we would have liked,
but you ladies have really come together this week. Our first game is
against the Montrose Military Institute. Their new captain is good, but
Connor Burke and Sacred Heart sent the cadets home last year, and this
year we sent Sacred Heart home. So let’s go out there tomorrow and win
that sectionals title. Whatta ya say?”
“GO KNIGHTS!” the team yelled, in unison.
“All right.” Coach waved a hand at them. “In bed by ten. I mean it.”
Seth had to wade through the usual post-practice jostling and razzing
to get to the door, where Marshall was waiting. They were both wearing
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Fairfax High Knights T-shirts, though Marshall’s jeans were
Abercrombie, Seth’s from Re-Spin. “Did you need a ride home?”
Marshall offered. “Or do you have to travel by armored car these days?”
His smile was teasing. Seth did not return it. “I’m going to the fort,”
he said.
“Cool,” Marshall said. “I wanted to check on – I mean, I wanted to
see Aphrodisia anyway.”
The Lotus was the last car in the lot. They dropped their bags in the
back; when Seth turned from closing his door, Marshall cupped his chin,
and kissed him.
Seth pulled back. “We’re at school,” he said. “Someone could see.”
“So?” Marshall said, trying to pull him in again. Seth turned his
head away.
Marshall sat back and ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick
up on the side. One of his habits Seth adored, like he adored Marshall’s
hands, and his dimple, and his blushes, and his kindness. He stared at the
crane swinging above the bombed-out gym, determinedly dry-eyed. Why
did Marshall have to do this to them? Seth had already worked out why
he wanted to drive him home. He was gathering his nerve to tell him it
was over, he had chosen to live by his father’s rules.
“So,” Marshall said, after a few minutes of silence. “Do you want to
tell me what you’re pissed about, or do I have to guess?”
Seth glanced at him sidelong. “Who says I’m pissed?”
“Well, usually when I kiss you, you kiss me back, so I’m going out
on a limb here and saying I’ve done something to make you mad.”
Again, was implied. Being temperamental was part of being a cat,
but Seth could see, objectively, how that could get frustrating. He blew
out the breath he had been holding in. “Are you moving back in with
your parents?”
Marshall looked baffled. “Where did you get that idea?”
“From you,” Seth said. “You said it was a lot to give up.”
“I know I said that, but come on, Philadelphia, do you really think
I’d decide something like that without talking to you?” Marshall shook
his head. The top was down; the breeze that ruffled his messy hair was
laced with a tang of silver powder, carried over from the remains of the
gym. “We have to make those kinds of decisions together now.”
Seth’s heart swooped a little. “What kinds of decisions?”
“Decisions about our future,” Marshall said, simply.
Seth stared at him. He didn’t know why – Marshall had told him he
loved him, he had overturned his perfect Golden Boy life to be with him.
Yet Seth had never understood, until now, that when Marshall looked to
The Future, it was their future he saw, not just his.
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Seth kissed him. Marshall wasn’t expecting it, and murmured in
surprise. Undone by that in some way he couldn’t even explain, Seth
wrapped his arms around his neck to bring him closer, moving his body
against Marshall’s as Marshall’s mouth moved against his.
“Don’t start this if you’re going to tell me to stop,” Marshall
whispered, brushing back the strands of Seth’s hair that had gotten
trapped between their mouths. His hands were shaking. “Not today. I
don’t want to stop today. I want you too much.”
He looked almost stricken when Seth sat back, but Seth was only
reaching around him to start the car. “Then drive fast,” he said, “before
Jack gets home.”
***
MoJo’s was Leigh’s favorite restaurant. She liked the black-andwhite photos on the exposed brick walls, of Fairfax back when people
drove cars that looked like boats and girls wore long skirts with wide
belts and blouses with ruffled sleeves. She liked that the wooden booths
had been imported from an old London pub and had dates and initials
carved into the tops, from couples all the way back to the 1950s. She
liked the fire that crackled in the stone hearth year-round, dancing on the
liquor bottles lined up behind the polished bar. Eating here had always
made her feel grown-up. She could remember ordering a Shirley Temple
from the bar and make-believing it was a martini when she was a little
girl.
The hostess took her coat, and Lydia’s, and Dre pointed to the back
room, which was only opened for parties and concerts. “I see McLain,”
he said.
Leigh smoothed down her crocheted dress. “Let’s go,” she said.
They had to fight the crowd to get through the arched doorway. Dre
grabbed Leigh’s wrist; he was good at darting through little gaps she
wouldn’t even have seen. The music got louder and the lights lower as
they pushed closer to the stage. Listening Korn was already into its first
set.
“You’re right,” Leigh shouted in Dre’s ear. “They are terrible!” She
heard him laugh.
Ozzie was slamming away on his guitar, backed up by Chaz, on bass,
and on drums, a girl with spiky green hair and a lip piercing. An oliveskinned boy with a shaved head was screeching into a microphone on
vocals, hopelessly off-key. Leigh glanced behind her. Her mother had
stopped to talk to Melody Little at a high-topped table in the corner.
Lydia looked utterly out of her element in her gray silk pants suit.
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Melody, in a denim dress and cowboy boots, looked completely hip.
Leigh prayed that would be her at thirty-five.
“Where’s your better half, Miss Steward?”
Leigh turned around. Will McLain was leaning against one of the
carved wooden posts that supported the back room’s ceiling. Colored
lights strung across the rafters pulsed in time to the music, candy-colored
circles on the hardwood floor.
McLain was drinking from a longneck bottle – of nonalcoholic beer.
Was he on duty, or just staying sober to keep an eye out for Caroline? He
wasn’t in uniform. He was in ripped jeans and a long-sleeved white Tshirt that should have been outlawed for skin that bronze.
Caroline was perched on one of the chairs along the wall, talking to
Connor Burke, who was wearing his Warriors’ letterman’s jacket despite
the back room’s stuffiness. Caroline’s ivory cheeks were flushed with
excitement. No wonder, Leigh thought. She was the center of attention
for all of the Haven kids, Serena and Zoe and Squirrel and Quinn and
Alfaro. Alfaro must have talked Topher and Gabe and Bryce into
coming, too. Bryce had his arm around Yena Lee. They were all drinking
from bottles like McLain’s.
“I wasn’t aware I had a better half,” Leigh said, sidling closer to
McLain to be heard over the music. Good God, what was this song?
“Fingernails on a Chalkboard”? “Nails in Your Eardrums”?
“I meant Whitney,” McLain shouted back. “You two seem pretty
close.”
Cake and Ice Cream, Marshall had called them as kids. Not so much
these days. “She’s with Emery. At Re-Spin.” Leigh rolled her eyes, to let
McLain know how juvenile she found Whitney’s crush. He grinned. “So
who does a girl have to know to get a drink around here?”
“Connor bought us all a round. But I think Dre has you covered.”
With his bottle, McLain pointed at the small, dark figure slipping toward
them through the crowd. “He’s sweet on you, you know.”
Leigh was glad it was too dark for McLain to see her blush. His
cheeks were bright as well, as were his eyes. Will McLain had amazing
eyes. They were the perfect shade of mocha-brown for his dark hair.
“We’re not dating,” she said, quickly.
“Why not? He’s a nice kid.”
“Maybe I’m not into kids,” Leigh said, testing out those smoldering
eyes again. McLain’s mouth twitched. He looked away, onto the dance
floor. Quinn had dragged Caroline out there. They were dancing in a big
group, laughing, stumbling into one another like they really had been
drinking.
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“Here you go, Leigh.” Dre appeared and pressed a Diet Coke into
her hand. The bottle was cold. She sipped gratefully. It was only like a
thousand degrees back here. “Hi, Captain. Is Caroline having fun?”
“Looks like,” McLain said, mildly. “Any luck getting the transmitter
in Jack’s ring to work?”
“Oh no.” Before Dre could answer, Leigh shook her head. She had
worn her hair down; this caused it to fly around her cheeks. “No work
tonight. We are here to have fun. Dre, hold these for us, would you?”
Plucking the bottle out of McLain’s hand, she handed their drinks to
Dre.
McLain protested, but Leigh pulled him into the center of the dance
floor, directly in Dre Alfaro’s line of sight, and linked her arms behind
his neck. “Are you trying to get me arrested?” McLain growled.
“Since when is dancing against the law?” Leigh said, sweetly.
McLain didn’t seem to have an answer for that. He set his hands
lightly on her waist, holding her farther away from him than was
practical in such a press. Sweat dampened the collar of his shirt – gross,
on most guys; sexy, on him. Leigh slid a finger under the swan charm he
always wore. “Did Caroline give this to you?”
“Yes.” McLain cleared his throat. Leigh’s fingertips rested against
the pulse point in his throat. She could feel his heart hammering. “For
my birthday one year.”
“I got Seth a jaguar charm for his birthday,” Leigh said.
“I know. He wears it every day.”
“I would get J.J. an asshole charm, but they don’t seem to make
those.”
McLain laughed. Leigh had managed to edge close enough that she
felt it vibrate in his chest. She moved her hands down, from his neck
onto his shoulders. His skin smelled sweet, like lemons or honey or
something. She tried not to stare at his mouth, which was almost as
distracting as his eyes, and extremely kissable.
“Your mom has been worried about him,” McLain said. It sounded
thick, like he was having trouble concentrating, too. They had somehow
moved to the edge of the dance floor. The music wasn’t as loud here.
Either that or Leigh’s ears were rebelling against the assault. “She said
he hasn’t been acting like himself.”
“He has been edgy lately. Well,” Leigh sniffed. “Edgier, if you
know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” McLain said. “I think I do.”
His smile was out of focus; Leigh’s head had started to spin. The
song wasn’t slow, but she rested her head on McLain’s shoulder anyway.
141
His hands opened on her back. She felt the heat of them through her
dress. “When did you know Caroline was werekin?” she asked.
“She skinned before she was a year old. My parents helped form the
Underground. They knew about werekin, about Lemuria, so they realized
immediately what she was.”
“The Black Swan,” Leigh murmured. She peeked over McLain’s
shoulder. Caroline was sitting with Connor again. She didn’t see
anybody else around. Where had Dre gotten to? And why did she care?
He had made it, like, so apparent he didn’t intend to ask her out. Irritated
with herself, Leigh snuggled closer to McLain. He tensed when her nose
bumped his jaw. “They must have been terrified,” she said.
“About like when Thomas and Lydia realized your brothers were
werejaguars – direct descendants of their Totems. My parents kept
Caroline glamoured from then on, hoped LeRoi would never find out
about her skin. She had no reason to suspect the Black Swan would be
born to my family. My parents were human.”
“How did they die?”
“Car accident, on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was fourteen. Caroline
doesn’t even remember them.”
“And that’s when you came to Fairfax, to live with Ms. McLain?”
Leigh felt McLain nod. His chin was resting on top of her head. The
music seemed far away, like they were on an island somewhere, just the
two of them, and the heat was the sun baking off the sand. “Why did you
join the Marines?”
“To help the Resistance. Aunt Ingrid and Ben Schofield are old
friends. I knew him. I respected him. I wanted to help.”
“God, that’s so brave.” Leigh looked up at McLain. “I wish I was
that brave.”
“I think you’re very brave, Miss Steward,” McLain said.
His voice was not a boy’s voice. The timber of it was deeper than a
boy’s, more resonant. Leigh had never felt so young. She had only been
kissed a couple of times – by Bryce Heilsdale, on Valentine’s Day, a
short, slobbery make-out session in the movie theater; by Topher
Simmons, in a game of spin-the-bottle ninth grade year, just a quick peck
on the lips; and by Cam Foss, at her Sweet Sixteen, when he had shoved
his nasty tongue down her throat. She was nervous, suddenly, and not at
all sure what she was doing here, or what she wanted.
“Will,” she whispered.
McLain blinked. He seemed surprised to be standing stock-still with
her in his arms on the periphery of a crowded dance floor. He let go of
her fast. “I – I need some air,” he said; or Leigh thought he did – he was
already walking away. She tried to run after him, but he slid effortlessly
142
away into the dancers. He had turned pale, the hectic light shutting off in
his eyes. Was he sick? Leigh could smell that weird smell, which she
didn’t think was liquor, clinging to her skin, passed from his. But what
did she know? Maybe he was drunk. He could have been drinking before
she showed up. He was twenty-four.
Resignedly, she picked her way back to where she had left Dre. He
wasn’t there. After some searching, she finally found him in the hallway
outside the bathrooms.
Topher was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees,
moaning. Somebody on the other side of the door was retching horribly.
Leigh unzipped her boots – the heels were stilettos, and her feet were
killing her – and yanked them off. “What is going on?” she demanded.
Her head felt a hundred times clearer than it had minutes ago. She was
mortified at what McLain must be thinking of her right now. Such a silly
little girl, freaking out right as he was ready to kiss her…
“Something they drank,” Dre said. He had stuffed his newsboy cap
in the pocket of his pinstripe trousers. His fringe of bangs was pasted to
his forehead with sweat. “Somebody must have spiked their drinks.”
“Who is in there?” Leigh wrinkled her nose. The retching had
started up again.
“Gabe. Bryce already passed out.” Dre nodded at a shape curled into
a ball behind a case of pizza sauce near the back door. “Serena and Zoe
are taking care of Quinn and Yena in the ladies’ room. They’re both in a
pretty bad way.”
But Dre seemed fine, and apparently, Serena and Zoe were, also.
Leigh thought that was weird. She had seen Seth get tipsy off sips of
their mother’s merlot at dinner. Werekin were not immune to drugs or
alcohol. “Who’s with Caroline?”
“Connor.” Dre seemed determined to answer Leigh’s questions in as
few words as possible. “I’ve got this, if you want to go dance some
more.”
Oh, now he was jealous? After she had dropped like a million hints
about prom? “Will got sick, too,” Leigh said, invoking McLain’s first
name as though it gave her some purchase on him that she knew it did
not. “I should go check on him. And somebody should warn the manager
those drinks were tampered with.”
“Connor already did,” Dre said, stiffly. “He said they couldn’t have
been, and if we didn’t all leave, he was calling the cops on us for
underage drinking. Angelo went to get the car.”
Crap. They could not have two-thirds of their starting lineup arrested
the night before sectionals. Coach would bench them all, and Seth and
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Marshall, wherever those two lovebirds were, could not win the game by
themselves. “I’ll go find Mom,” Leigh said.
“Leigh?”
“Yeah?”
Leigh swung around, hope, or something like it, lifting her heart up
against her ribs. Dre looked down at his loafers. “Nothing,” he said.
“Never mind.”
***
For the love of the stars, what was wrong with him? A sixteen-yearold? He ought to be locked up, McLain thought.
He tipped his head back against the alley’s wall. He had made it
outside at last, after fighting his way off the dance floor. Across the
parking lot, a black van was idling, headlights switched off. McLain shut
his eyes.
Will McLain had never thought of Leigh Steward as anything other
than what she was – a kid. Like Caroline. He could not explain what had
happened in there, why his body had been made of heat, pulse pounding,
blood boiling. He hadn’t been able to think. He hadn’t wanted to think.
Then she had said his name, Will, timidly, and he had wanted to
throw up.
So far he hadn’t. He had sank down on his knees in the alley, heaved
a few times, but nothing had come up. He hadn’t even had a beer tonight,
but this awful spinning queasiness was worse than the time the salty old
dogs in his unit had bought him a fifth of tequila and dared him to chug
it.
“There you are.”
McLain forced his eyelids up. The world tilted; Lydia Steward
grabbed his arm. “Oh no,” she said, amused. “Not you, too. Leigh told
me somebody put something in the kids’ drinks.”
“Must be high-end stuff,” McLain groaned. “Caroline – ”
“Is fine. She’s with Connor. I gave Leigh the keys to bring the
Escalade around. We’ll give you a ride home.” Lydia wiped beads of
sweat off McLain’s brow with the back of her hand. “A Marine who
can’t hold his liquor. I am shocked, Captain.”
McLain tried to smile. And moaned. Lydia reached for him, but he
pushed her away and ducked into the alley, where he finally coughed up
something green and bitter behind the dumpster. “Jesus,” he swore,
spitting to clear his mouth.
“Do I need to take you to the hospital?”
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Lydia rested a slim hand on his back. Not many women would have
had the grit to kneel over a puking soldier in a filthy alley, especially
while wearing a thousand-dollar silk suit. “I’m all right,” McLain said,
wryly. He did feel better now. Just weak.
“Let’s stand you up, then.” Lydia gripped his arms and guided him
back against the wall. He was shaking with cold. “Will, you’re scaring
me. You don’t look well.”
“I’m sure I smell lovely, too.”
“You may have had more attractive moments,” Lydia said.
She was smiling. Lifting a hand, McLain tucked a curl behind her
ear. Now she shivered. He saw his reflection in her eyes grow larger as
she swayed into him. Or was he drawing her in? Somehow his hands had
dropped to her shoulders –
The door to McLain’s right burst open.
Caroline stumbled through it, giggling madly. McLain’s heart
twisted. Caroline was so slender and fragile in that sleeveless pink dress
she had begged him to let her wear, their mother’s pearl earrings
dangling from her earlobes. Still a little girl playing dress-up. “Look,
Connie, we found them!” she said, happily, and giggled again, as Lydia
hurriedly moved away from McLain. “Oooh! Were you guys kissing?”
Connor Burke coughed. He had locked the wheels of his chair in
place on the threshold. The hallway behind him was dark, as was the
alley, but McLain had the fleeting impression that he was not pleased to
see them. Must have been the drugs. Hadn’t Caroline just said ‘we found
them’? “What’s going on?” he asked.
“We were looking for you,” Connor said, quickly. “It’s a madhouse
in there. I couldn’t get my chair out the front, so we decided to try the
back way.”
“Is that what you decided.”
A shadow separated from the end of the bricked-over alley. At first,
it seemed too long and too low to be the shadow of a boy. Its eyes shone
brightly in the moonless dark.
J.J.’s eyes still shone as he stepped into the light. He was wearing
black camouflage. The bone handle of a dagger poked out of his combat
boot. The katana Regent had forged for Seth was strapped in a baldric
across his back. A swan, the symbol of the Resistance, was carved into
the thick pewter cuff around his right wrist.
McLain thought of the first time he had seen J.J., padding out of the
jungle garden on LeRoi’s estate. This is my pet, she had proclaimed, as
the black jaguar skinned into a beautiful twelve-year-old boy with leaves
caught in his golden curls. My Jeremy.
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“J.J. Sullivan.” Lydia sounded at her wit’s end. “Do you or do you
not recall me grounding you?”
“I’m not here for the concert,” J.J. said. Indeed, his wet shirt
suggested he had been standing outside in the drizzle for some time. “I’m
here because I don’t trust him.”
He jerked his chin at Connor.
McLain moved between them. J.J. was making him uneasy. He
hadn’t seen him since Sunday. The change in him was dramatic. “J.J.,
Connor is not the enemy.”
“Really, McLain?” J.J. glared at him. “You’re not the least bit
curious how your drink got spiked? You’re not wondering at all why he
was ducking into an alley with the Black Swan, alone?”
“I did not spike anybody’s drink.” The door banged shut as Connor
rolled out of its path. He whirled his chair around to face J.J. “I bought
the drinks from the bar. I didn’t open them.”
“Like you don’t have the cash to pay off a bartender,” J.J. sneered.
“Fine,” Connor snapped. “Go ask her. And as for what I was doing
with Caroline, I was trying to find her brother. You want me to try
protecting her in a crowd like that? What was I supposed to do if
somebody grabbed her – chase them?”
His voice broke. McLain laid a hand on his arm. Poor kid; he was
trembling. By rights he should have still been in the infirmary. “Look, I
think we all just need to go home and get some sleep,” he said.
“And I think you need to wake up already, Captain.” J.J.’s nostrils
flared. He smacked a palm against the side of the building. “Damn it,
Will, why won’t you listen to me? I am telling you. He. Is. Lying.”
There was a hiss in J.J.’s voice. Shadows played across his delicate
features, throwing into relief the pale spots on his cheeks. McLain
straightened up from Connor. His hand had closed around the brass
knuckles he carried in his pocket, tipped with silver spikes. He did not
want to use them, but Will McLain had done many things in his young
life he had not wanted to do. “And I’m telling you to go home, soldier,”
he said, coldly. “We can sort this all out in the morning.”
J.J. set his jaw. J.J. recognized an order when he heard it. He was
tempted to tell McLain what he could do with his orders, but unlike Seth,
J.J. was Alliance. The chain of command did apply to him, and the
consequences for disregarding it. “Fine,” he snapped. They didn’t want
to listen to him, fine. On their heads be it.
Headlights appeared at the mouth of the alley. Leigh tapped the
Escalade’s horn. McLain took the handles of Connor’s chair, wheeling
him toward the car.
When he turned back, the alley was empty, and J.J. was gone.
146
Chapter Twelve: Mind Games
Starlight whitened the Arena’s sand to a pearlescent glow. Blood
spatters from his last fight were scattered on the sand like bouquets of
black flowers.
J.J. looked up. Directly overhead, a handful of stars formed an
unmistakable shape. A swan.
The stands were crowded. Faces leered at him, ghoulish in the dark.
J.J. saw Lydia, bloody tears staining her white cheeks, holding onto his
father, who was corpse-white, the front of his shirt sticky and wet.
Thomas Sullivan’s pale blue eyes were enormously sad.
Eerie music wafted from the orchestra pit, where the Alpha Clan
swayed together to the music their instruments made. Connor Burke was
conducting them. The Ark glowed as he cupped it in one palm. The smile
he flashed was sharp, teeth pointed like a shark’s.
From the crowd, a slender girl in a long robe of black feathers rose
and began to sing.
J.J. shouted for her to stop. Glyphs fired on the Arena’s curved
walls; the stars overhead burned brighter, a harsh white light that seared
J.J.’s eyes as the stargate slowly opened. He looked down. The sand was
rising, churning, turning from white to red, and things were rising with
it, things dead and rotting: Marshall, wound up in a bloody linen shroud;
Dre, heart missing from his torn-open chest; Cleo, flesh charred like
paper tossed into a furnace. Her blackened lips moved. “You’re nothing
but an animal, J.J. Sullivan…”
The song broke apart on its final note. Silver rain fell from the stars.
J.J. screamed as his skin blistered. He fought through the sand that tried
to suck him down, even as the iron gate at the end of the Arena rattled
upward, and a jaguar paced through it toward him.
The cat’s paws skimmed the surface of the bloody sand without
sinking into it. J.J. held up his hands. The brand on his palm was
bleeding. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
The jaguar’s roar melted into a teenage boy’s brittle laugh. “You
might have to someday,” Seth said, “so take this.”
***
J.J. woke with his hand wrapped around something. Something that
was cutting into his palm. Hissing, he bolted upright, staring down at his
mangled hands.
He had fallen asleep with the jaguar katana on his nightstand. At
some point in the nightmare, he must have grabbed it by the blade. Blood
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sank into the etchings, black against the steel. Two jaguars, one light, one
dark.
J.J. had never questioned Seth’s decision to give him this sword.
Protecting Seth was all J.J. had ever done. Deep down, though, he had
been relieved for Seth to lay down his sword, for purely selfish reasons. I
know the future you have seen.
Stop it. J.J. spoke the words clearly in his own mind, pressing the
heels of his bloodied hands against his eyes. Xanthe had probed his mind
countless times for the source of these nightmares – nightmares in which
he betrayed his twin, collared him, whipped him, even killed him. He
insisted they were only dreams. J.J.’s latent fear that he would lead
LeRoi to his twin without meaning to.
Then why, J.J. had asked him just yesterday, hadn’t the nightmares
stopped once LeRoi was in custody? J.J. wasn’t leading a double life
anymore. So why did he keep dreaming about betraying Seth?
Fear is a powerful emotion, Xanthe had replied. Only love is more
powerful than fear. J.J. made a face no one else was in his bedroom to
see. Xanthe’s answers were usually right, but right didn’t always equal
satisfying.
He cleaned the blood off his sword with his shirt sleeve and returned
it to its sheath. The cuts on his hands had already knit back together; a
hot shower and a change of clothes later, J.J. was in the kitchen, digging
the package of bacon he had hidden behind the goat cheese out of the
fridge.
No one had been waiting up for him after the concert last night. J.J.
had taken the long way home through the woods, stopped in at Cleo’s
just to look around, and by the time he had unlocked the back door, his
mother and his sister had been in bed. He had looked in on them, like he
always did. Seth’s bed had been empty. J.J. had a pretty good idea whose
bed was not. Grinning to himself, he folded a slice of bacon into his
mouth.
“What are you so happy about?” Leigh demanded, yawning as she
breezed into the kitchen. Her pajamas were leopard-print. J.J. didn’t
know whether to be amused or offended by that. “It’s barely seven
o’clock. Aren’t cats supposed to be nocturnal?”
“I’m just having a nice morning,” J.J. said. He was. Energy fizzed in
his veins. Sucked that he had to go to Seth’s game. Not that he didn’t
want Seth to win. It just would have been a beautiful day for a run –
cloudless blue sky, soft spring breeze. The spotted owl on McLain’s roof
hooted to him through the window. “Did you and Dre have fun last
night?” he asked.
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“For your information, there is no ‘Dre and I,’” Leigh said. “We just
rode to the concert together. That does not make us a couple.”
“Because you blew it with the prom thing,” J.J. said. He was
figuring out the high school dating rules, slowly but surely. Yet Leigh
looked offended.
“I didn’t blow it, all right? I turned him down. I’m perfectly within
my rights to turn a boy down when he asks me out. Something which, if
you were a normal big brother, you would be happy about, by the way.”
Leigh sniffed. “And besides, I apologized for calling him a freak.”
“Did it make you feel better?”
Leigh stuck her tongue out at him. She was popped up on her tiptoes,
taking a glass down from the cabinet. “What are you eating, anyway?”
“Bacon,” J.J. said.
“Where did you get – oh my God!” Leigh shrieked. J.J. jumped back
from the counter with a hiss. “J.J., you can’t eat raw meat! You’ll get
sick!”
J.J. started to say he wasn’t eating anything raw. Then he looked
down at the pink and white strips swimming in blood on his plate, and
his stomach lurched. He hadn’t cooked the bacon.
Even worse, it had tasted good.
J.J. threw the plate into the sink with a crash. Suddenly he was
shaking all over, cramps squeezing his middle. He heard Leigh say his
name as he slid to the floor. Go away, he thought; don’t touch me, stay
back, go away –
“…call the fort.”
His mother’s voice penetrated the haze that had clouded J.J.’s mind.
He lifted his chin from his chest. Lydia was kneeling over him, the hem
of her silk robe tucked between her knees. Something blessedly cool
passed across his forehead. A wet rag. “Where are you sick, honey?”
All over. He was sick all over. J.J. shut his eyes tight; the dizziness
was awful, but after a moment, it passed, and he was able to sit up.
“I’m all right,” he managed. “I just got dizzy.”
“Mom? It’s Will.” Leigh appeared behind Lydia, holding out the
phone. “He wants to know if you need help bringing him in.”
“Bringing me in where?” J.J. croaked.
Lydia placed a glass of cold water in his hand. The sides were
smudged with the green clay mask she hadn’t yet scrubbed off her face.
“Fort King,” she said. “I think Aphrodisia needs to have a look at you.”
She’s lying.
The voice inside J.J.’s mind was soft as a purr. He recognized it
instantly. He tensed.
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She’s lying to you, my pet. They want to collar you again. Make you
a slave. They know it’s the only way to control you.
J.J. shrank back against the cabinet, eyeing his mother warily.
Lydia’s green eyes were wide and clear now, but he had read doubt in
them last night, in the alley. She thought he was dangerous. She
questioned his motives in wanting LeRoi kept alive.
“I’m fine,” he said, more forcefully. “I just haven’t been sleeping,
and I felt sick for a minute. But I’m fine now. I don’t want to miss Seth’s
game. Please?”
Lydia hesitated. Then, “All right,” she sighed. “Leigh, tell Will it
was a false alarm.” Leigh sent her eyes skyward and stalked away, back
into the living room. Lydia traced the arch of J.J.’s cheekbone with her
knuckles. “Are you sure you’re all right, honey? You’re so pale, and
your eyes – ”
J.J. lowered his gaze. His eyes were his giveaway. “I’m fine,” he said
again.
“Well…all right. If you’re sure.” Lydia helped him to his feet,
satisfied when he finished drinking the glass of water, placed it in the
sink beside the bloody plate, and smiled at her, his most charming smile.
He waited for her back to be turned to check that the dagger was
stowed underneath his shirt.
***
In the morning light, Marshall’s face was all planes and angles
framed by tousled curls. The black silk sheets stopped at his waist. The
muscles in his stomach were hard and flat, the skin across his shoulders
dark and smooth. Seth traced the small white scar above his heart with
two fingers.
Marshall stirred. “Morning,” he murmured, drowsily.
“Good morning.” Seth bent over and placed his lips where his
fingers had been. A delicious shiver moved down Marshall’s spine. He
raked his hands through Seth’s tangled blue hair and dragged his mouth
up to his, rolling over on top of him as they kissed. Seth’s hands
skimmed down his back, feeling the muscles bunch as Marshall shifted
over him.
“I vote we stay in bed today,” Marshall murmured. “What do you
say?”
Seth raised an eyebrow. “What about the game?”
“The – ” Marshall sat up fast, looking around for his alarm clock.
“Jesus, what time is it?”
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“Relax. It’s only seven.” Seth sat up as well, circling his arms with
his knees. Marshall had begun frantically snatching clothes up off the
floor, but even with the tournament looming, Seth was so content he was
practically purring. This could be his life now, he thought. Waking up
next to Marshall every day, going to sleep beside him every night. You
couldn’t ask for more than that. “We don’t need to leave for another halfhour. Sacred Heart is just down the street. Jack was making us
breakfast.”
One arm through his T-shirt, Marshall spun around. “Jack? Jack was
up here? Did he see us?”
“Um, yes.” Seth might have been enjoying this just a little bit.
Golden Boy discomfiture was cute, especially when Marshall was all
sleep-rumpled and pouty-lipped from kissing. “He has seen us sleep in
the same bed, you know.”
“Yeah, but do you think he knows we…?”
Seth leaned back, stretching luxuriously. “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t
tell.”
Marshall glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Seth
smiled innocently. Marshall stuck his other arm through his shirt.
“Listen, after the game – ”
“After our victory party, you mean,” Seth said.
“Of course,” Marshall agreed. Screw Cam Foss. They had this
sectionals trophy locked with Alfaro on their side. “So after the victory
party, I want you to come to Fort King with me.”
“Is this about that special project you and Aphrodisia are working
on?”
“Oh.” Marshall looked like he had forgotten mentioning that, and
possibly wished he hadn’t. “No, this is about something else. Something
big Aphrodisia is announcing today. And I’d like for you to be there.”
That was all he had to say. “Okay.” Seth scooted off the bed and
kissed him, quick. “I love you, Indiana.”
Marshall’s smile was more brilliant than the sunrise. “I love you too,
Philadelphia.”
While Marshall went to shower, Seth padded downstairs in the jeans
and shirt he had worn yesterday. His wardrobe didn’t really matter, as he
would spend most of the day in his jersey. Jack was just setting two
spinach-and-cheese omelets on the counter. He was wearing faded jeans
and a Fairfax High Knights sweatshirt with Seth’s number on the back.
“Coffee or milk?” he asked.
“Milk, please.” Seth sat down at the bar. “Jack, can I ask you
something?”
“Of course.” Jack put a glass of milk down in front of him.
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“Do you want to get back together with Mom?”
Jack took the question remarkably well, coming as it did at seventhirty on a Saturday morning from the punk alien step-son whose
boyfriend was living in his spare room. “I don’t see that happening,
Seth,” he said, gently.
“No. I know,” Seth said. “I just wondered if you wanted it to.”
Jack hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “Lydia and I were never in
love. Chimera’s telepaths unraveled her memories and gave her new
ones, but even the enchantments they placed on her couldn’t make her
love me. Your mother loved Thomas. To me, she was always Tommy’s
wife. I married her to protect her, and I tried to be a good husband, but
every day of our lives together was as much a lie for me as it was for her.
The only honest thing between us was Leigh.”
That was sad, Seth thought. “Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
“Once. A very long time ago.”
“And?” Seth speared the last bite of his omelet. If Marshall didn’t
get down here, he was in danger of losing his. “What happened?”
“Let’s just say I wasn’t as brave as you,” Jack said, “and he left.”
There was no chance for Seth to respond to this, for the apartment
door opened, and who should walk in but Cleo.
Seth cried out. So did Marshall, at the top of the spiral staircase.
For a minute it was all hugs and laughter, like they hadn’t seen one
another in weeks. Seth was almost surprised Cleo didn’t look any
different. Same skintight jeans and spike-heeled boots. Same razor-cut
brown hair and silvery-blue eyes. He snapped the strap of her black tanktop. “You got a tan in the desert,” he teased.
“Well, it wasn’t from sunbathing, I can tell you that. Jensen is a
slave driver.” Cleo let him hug her again, and laughed. “I missed you
too, sweetheart. Has Doc been taking care of you?”
“Oh yes,” Seth said. Marshall blushed.
“Nothing is wrong, is it?” he asked, leading Cleo over to the couch.
Jack had disappeared into his bedroom for his wallet and his keys.
“The Source is fine. Still locked up like a drum, but secure. I just
came back for a visit.” Cleo glanced at Seth. He was sitting on the arm of
the couch beside Marshall. “Is J.J. coming to your game?”
“As far as I know,” Seth said. “You want me to call him?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll just see him there.”
“And to that end,” said Jack, emerging from his bedroom, “we
should go. Coach will want you boys there early for warm-ups.”
They walked, as it was a gorgeous day and Sacred Heart was a block
from the law firm. Marshall explained to Cleo how the tournament would
work – a round of semi-final games this morning, to determine which
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two teams would face off for the sectionals trophy, and a bid to the state
championship, that night. Every game was winner-take-all: Losers went
home, post-season hopes dashed. Fairfax would be playing Montrose, a
private military school just up the river, first.
Cleo listened politely, but Seth could tell her mind was elsewhere.
Team busses were already lined up outside Sacred Heart’s central
dome. Seth and Marshall said their goodbyes to Jack and Cleo and
walked around to the gym, duffel bags slung over their shoulders.
Suddenly, Marshall stopped. “What?” Seth said, looking where he was
looking – at the alley behind the school.
“Nothing,” Marshall said. “I just thought I saw someone, but…it
couldn’t have been.”
“Who?” Seth asked, curiously.
“Let’s hope it was your fairy godmother,” someone drawled.
Seth let go of Marshall’s hand as he turned around. On the chance
his claws slid out, he didn’t want to scratch him. “What do you want,
Cam?”
Marshall asked it before Seth could. He sounded resigned.
Cam Foss leaned back against the gym doors, through which Seth
could hear the thump-bump-swish of the other teams warming up.
Having foregone his letterman’s jacket, Cam was wearing a plain gray
jacket over his jeans. Seth hadn’t seen him since the cafeteria incident on
Tuesday, and was only mildly curious how he had come by that stellar
black eye. Cam Foss had been pretty low on his list of priorities of late.
Cam curled his lips up in his rattlesnake smile. “I just wanted to wish
you luck, Townsend. From what I hear, you’re going to need it.”
Seth snorted. Cam was so full of himself. “I think we’ll survive
without you,” he said. “Come on, Marshall.”
He attempted to steer Marshall inside, but Marshall resisted. “Why
haven’t you been at school?”
Was he actually concerned? For Cam? Seth stared at them both as
Cam stood up straight, and shrugged. “My father kept me home for a few
days, to let things cool off.”
By “things,” Seth figured he meant J.J., who had threatened to bash
Cam’s skull in if he ever picked on Marshall and Seth again, but a look
passed between Marshall and Cam that suggested something else was
going on here. “You could have called me,” Marshall said, quietly. “If it
was – bad.”
“If what was bad?” Seth demanded.
“He thinks I was behind the graffiti,” Cam said, ignoring Seth.
“Everybody does. The cops came to my house. Coach pulled all the
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letters of recommendation he wrote to colleges for me. Shanti dumped
me. I hear she’s sniffing around Alfaro to ask her to prom.”
“If you say it wasn’t you, I believe you,” Marshall said.
His voice had that rough edge of earnestness Seth couldn’t help
loving him for. Cam blushed to the roots of his gelled-up hair. “It wasn’t
me. But that doesn’t mean I’m interested in being friends with a faggot.”
“Cam – ”
But Cam was already walking away. Marshall sighed. “What was
that about?” Seth wondered aloud.
“Nothing. Human stuff.” Marshall yanked open the gym door. “We
better go see what’s up.”
Seth wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but he found out soon
enough. When they walked into the locker room, Gabe was lying on one
of the benches with his arm across his stomach, like he was trying not to
throw up. Topher was hunched against the wall, wearing oversized
sunglasses. Coach was pacing like a caged lion. Alfaro stood beside the
sinks, kicking the heel of his Nike against the concrete floor.
Marshall dropped his duffel bag. “Okay. What happened?”
***
“How bad is it?” Leigh wanted to know, as she slid onto the bleacher
between Whitney and Emery. J.J. sat down on the end. The gym was
packed, flooding his senses with the human scent of sweat and soap. The
bone handle of his dagger was reassuringly cold against his spine.
“Bad,” Whitney said. Like Leigh, she was dressed in their school
colors, #11 painted on one cheek, for Marshall, #4, for Seth, on the other.
“Topher and Gabe are still sick as dogs. Marshall said Coach is furious
with them. He doesn’t care if their drinks were spiked, he told them to go
home and get some sleep, and instead they went to a party. He threatened
to bench them and Alfaro and pull in two replacements from the second
string.”
“Are they forfeiting?” Leigh tugged anxiously on a curl. Their
mother had joined McLain a few rows over. J.J. saw her glance at them.
“No. They can’t – they’re done if they forfeit. Coach is putting
Angelo at center, Marshall and Seth at guards, and they’re hoping that
will make up the difference.”
J.J. leaned around Emery. “Why don’t they just ask Quinn to play?”
Leigh gave him The Look. “Quinn is a girl, J.J. Boys and girls play
for different teams.”
“That’s dumb,” J.J. said.
“And who says chivalry is dead?”
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J.J. turned around slowly. Quinn was sitting on the bleacher behind
his. She had on athletic pants, a Lady Knights hoodie, and her UA
beanie, yet J.J. saw her in the sand, dress rucked up around her thighs.
She looked at him coquettishly through coppery lashes. The effects of
whatever she had been drugged with last night appeared to have worn
off. “Want to buy me a Coke, player?”
“You’ll miss tipoff,” Emery protested. The Knights were trotting
onto the court. J.J. hadn’t really paid attention to which team they were
playing. Some military school. Marshall was shaking hands with their
captain, a brown-haired about his height. Quinn stood up.
“We won’t be long,” she said.
There didn’t seem to be much choice but for J.J. to follow her.
The corridors of Sacred Heart Academy were black stone cut by
stained-glass windows. At the concession stand, J.J. bought two Cherry
Cokes from Yena Lee’s mother, and they walked over to a flight of stone
steps that led into the school proper. Quinn sat down on the bottom one.
The doors at the top were chained. J.J. padded up and paced in front of
them, heel-toe.
“I’m going to give you the benefit of a pretty big doubt and assume
there’s a reason you haven’t called me,” Quinn said.
J.J. sipped through his straw. The soda was too sweet, like syrup, but
at least it was cold. “I didn’t know I was supposed to call you,” he said.
“Don’t be a jerk, Sullivan.”
Quinn pursed her lips in that yes-you’re-cute-but-don’t-think-thatmatters expression she had perfected with him. J.J. smirked. “Okay. I
didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say to you. How’s that?”
“Better.” Quinn set her drink down on the step. “What did you want
to say to me?”
“That I’m sorry, about what I did.” There now, J.J. thought. That
hadn’t been so bad.
“And what is it you think you did?”
At the end of the stair, J.J. pivoted back around. Quinn had her
shoulders against the wall. Her hair fanned across her shoulders. In his
fingers, J.J. recalled, it would separate like strands of silk. “You told me
to stop,” he said. “And I didn’t.”
“I said ‘wait.’ Not ‘stop.’”
“Same difference.” J.J. had been raised in captivity, not a hole. No
meant no. Period.
“It’s not the same,” Quinn insisted, lifting her chin even as a blush
seeped under her freckles. “I wanted you, too. As much as you wanted
me.”
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No one had ever said that to J.J. Oh, he saw the looks, in the
hallways, on the street, from boys and girls. He knew it was only partly
due to the magic in his blood. He had just never cared. He had been in
love with the same girl his entire life.
She left you, my pet. You know why. It’s nothing to do with those
scars on your hands. She could have forgiven you for that, if she hadn’t
met him.
Seth.
The name was on the tip of J.J.’s tongue. Yes, Ursula LeRoi’s voice
purred inside his mind. He could hear her smiling. Everything Cleo
despises in you, she adores in him. She loves him more than she loves
you. She wants him like she never wanted you. She would have killed you
to protect him.
Right then, the part of J.J. that knew he would have wanted Cleo to
kill him to protect Seth was shut off.
He stayed put as Quinn climbed the stairs to stand in front of him. He
could smell her, blood under the skin, sweat in her pores, shampoo in her
hair. It made him dizzy. “That’s not the only reason you haven’t called
me,” she said, “is it?”
“No,” J.J. admitted. He saw no advantage in lying. He wasn’t out to
break Quinn’s heart.
“Are you in love with her?”
Quinn didn’t have to say who. They both knew who she meant. J.J.
nodded. “Yes.” It was the first time J.J. had ever acknowledged that out
loud, and it almost stole his breath. “But she doesn’t feel the same way
about me, so…”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” J.J. said.
Quinn caught his wrists then, and set his hands on her hips. “Do you
know why I like games so much?” she asked, softly. J.J. shook his head.
Her palms had run up his arms, over the swell of his biceps, to his
shoulders, her body finding the exact right way to fit against his.
“Because I always win,” Quinn whispered.
J.J. would never know if he would have pushed her away or crushed
her mouth under his – his skin was on fire again – for just then someone
called his name, softly.
J.J. whirled around. At the bottom of the stairs, a tall, muscular girl
was staring up at him. He wasn’t sure she had spoken aloud.
Sunshine poured in the stained glass windows, outlining her in red
and gold, but her eyes were silver as moonlight, frozen to ice. “Sorry to
interrupt,” she said, coldly, and spun around on her heel.
“Cleo!”
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Shoving Quinn aside more roughly than he intended, J.J. leapt down
the stairs, straight from the top to the bottom. Right then, he didn’t care
who saw. He slip-slid in front of Cleo, blocking her route into the gym.
“You’re here,” he said.
A stupidly obvious statement, true, but what J.J. meant was that he
hadn’t known she was there. For years he and Cleo had trained together,
fought together, lived together. She lived inside his skin even deeper than
Seth did. J.J. had always been able to feel when she was near, but now,
she was standing in front of him, and he might have been seeing her
through ice, visible but unreachable.
Seth. He couldn’t feel Seth, either.
J.J. swung around, with somewhat less than catlike grace. The crowd
was on its feet. Defenders were scattering before a charging Alfaro; Seth
raced along in his wake, dribbling so fast the ball was an orange blur.
Too fast. He whipped the ball to Marshall, who fired off a flawless threepointer. The Knights’ fans crowed as it swished.
J.J.’s eyes were drawn into the stands. McLain was on the edge of
his seat. J.J. could read the lines in his suntanned brow: They were giving
away too much, Seth and Alfaro, playing too hard to make up for their
teammates’ illness. A reporter from the local paper was snapping photos
like crazy. People were exchanging glances and murmurs. A killer jumpshot was one thing. If either of them lost control and skinned…
Cleo’s fingers touched his wrist. Was her skin like ice, or was his
still aflame? Every smack of the ball against the court exploded inside his
skull. “Talk to him,” Cleo urged.
J.J. shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Oh, for the love of the stars, J.J., it’s a stupid game! Just tell him to
tone it down. So what if they lose? It’s not the end of the world.”
To Seth it would be. But that was not the issue. “You don’t
understand.” J.J. spoke each word calmly. “I’m trying to. And I can’t. I
can’t hear his thoughts. I can’t make him hear mine.”
Cleo rocked back on her heels. Eyes narrowing, she took in the blueblack smears under J.J.’s eyes, the flush topping his cheeks, the thinness
of his frame, sparer than when she had seen him just seven days ago.
“Jeremy.” J.J. shivered. His name, his full name, not his nickname, on
Cleo’s lips had always shot through the center of him like an arrow.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Cleo! You’re back!”
Cleo tore her eyes off of J.J. He didn’t miss the flicker in them as she
looked down at Connor Burke, beautiful and fragile as broken glass in
his sleek chrome chair. “Connor,” she stammered. “I – I didn’t realize
you were still…”
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“On wheels?” Connor’s smile lit up the green specks in his hazel
eyes. He had worn his black-and-red letterman’s jacket. J.J. didn’t see
how he could stand it in the sweltering gym. “Marshall keeps promising
it’s only temporary. I have faith in him. Oh, I’m supposed to tell you.”
Connor turned to J.J., his smile dimming in wattage. “Dre is looking for
you.”
J.J. glanced away from the game. Alfaro had just fouled the
Montrose captain, again, and Coach Evans’ forehead vein was throbbing
like it did before he called timeout to chew on somebody. Might be J.J.’s
only chance to speak to Seth. “Where is he?”
“Like I said. Looking for you. I told him you went off with Quinn,”
Connor added.
Cleo stiffened. J.J. would have gladly kicked Connor’s wheelchair
over, but that would have just been bad form. “Thanks,” he said, coolly,
and jogged off as the whistle blew.
The Knights huddled up around the bench. J.J. eased around a
referee and Billy-Bryan-Brady-What’s-His-Face on the sidelines, coming
in on the tail end of something Coach was saying about fundamentals.
Gabe and Topher were gray-faced and sweating profusely. Marshall
didn’t look much better. He had been playing twice as hard as usual to
keep up with Seth and Alfaro, and Marshall never gave basketball
anything less than his all.
J.J. caught Seth’s eye. Mopping his brow with the hem of his jersey,
his twin motioned Marshall over to the sidelines with him. “¿Que pasa,
hermano?”
“Seth, you have to be careful.” J.J. pitched his voice low, cautious of
listening ears. Most of the Castle kids’ parents were former Partners.
Any of them could still be working for LeRoi. “You and Alfaro. You’re
getting noticed.”
“Noticed by whom?” Marshall said.
“Everybody,” J.J. said, looking deep into Seth’s eyes. There was just
nothing. Total blank-out. Psychic static. The harder he pushed, the worse
his head throbbed. “We can’t risk exposure in front of all these – ”
“J.J., in case you haven’t been paying attention,” Marshall said,
“we’re getting killed out there. We need Seth.”
J.J.’s temper flared. “It’s a game, Doc. Nobody dies if you lose.”
Marshall’s flushed cheeks paled. Damn it. J.J. took a breath. “I didn’t
mean that,” he said. “Doc, I wasn’t trying to bring up what happened to
you.”
“I know.” Marshall looked down. “This is just so wrong,” J.J.
thought he heard him mutter.
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Seth patted his arm. “It’ll be okay, Indiana. We’re only down by six
points. We can win without superpowers. And, if we don’t, Baby Bird
can do a fly-by on their bus.”
Marshall looked at him through his fingers. “Do I even want to know
what that means?”
“It means these cadets are gonna need to hit the super-duty carwash
on their way home,” Seth said. J.J. couldn’t help but grin. Seth slipped
his twin the thumbs-up as the referee called them back onto the court.
As play resumed, J.J. climbed up and sat down beside Emery,
checking the stands for Quinn’s flaming hair. He didn’t see it. Secretly,
he was relieved. He didn’t want to get into what had happened back there
in the hall. This girl stuff was too confusing with his head pounding like
it might burst. “Dre was looking for you,” Emery announced, shouting as
the crowd cheered a three-pointer – the first one Topher had put in the
hoop the entire game.
J.J. glanced down at Cleo and Connor. They were still by the doors,
still talking. He looked away when Cleo looked up at him, tugging the
collar of his shirt away from his neck. It was so ungodly hot in the gym.
He wished for the Coke he had forgotten outside. “I heard. Do you know
what he wanted?”
“Something about a ring.”
The transmitter. J.J. jumped to his feet, to scan the crowd for Dre,
but it was futile; everyone else had jumped up as well, counting down
together: “Nine! Eight! Seven!”
J.J. looked down at the court. Seth had the ball. As the final seconds
clicked away, he was running toward the basket as fast as he could.
Except he wasn’t, J.J. knew he wasn’t, and he could see the effort it was
taking for his twin to hold himself back: three seconds on the clock, the
Knights down by three…Seth started to pop off his toes, then switched it
up, firing the ball to Marshall…Marshall spun around, arched his spine,
lobbed a three-pointer at the hoop –
The buzzer rang. The ball hit the court and bounced, hollowly, twice.
Marshall fell to his knees. He looked stunned. The shot had hit the
rim and glanced off. He had missed. Marshall never missed.
It was over. The Knights had lost.
Alfaro kicked a chair. As the Montrose team went wild, Seth looked
up at J.J. His eyes were big and round and golden, and hurt, because he
had let his pack down. He could have taken that shot. Instead he had
passed to Marshall, for the sake of the Alliance, and now Marshall, who
felt every failure so keenly, would have to carry the weight of being the
one who had lost the game.
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“J.J.?” Emery said, uncertainly. J.J. didn’t hear him. He was loping
down to the court. Bodies knocked into him; they smelled of blood and
sweat and silver, like bodies in the Arena. Images splashed over the
reality before his eyes, of his kindred, ripped and torn by his claws.
Something fiery burst on the back of his tongue, spilling down inside of
him, molten lava at his core. On some level J.J. knew something was
terribly wrong with him. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. He
scented danger everywhere, enemies all around.
Seth had his arm around Marshall as he drew him off the court. Cam
Foss was standing on the sidelines, smirking at them. J.J. saw him raise a
hand to blow a mocking kiss to Seth.
A cloud of glitter lifted off his palm. Like – silver, J.J. thought. He
smelled it before he saw it, before he saw Marshall’s eyes widen as he
looked from Cam to J.J., screaming something – stop, J.J. would know it
was, later, but it was too late. He had already skinned.
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Chapter Thirteen: Thicker than Water
When the black jaguar leapt off the court, Seth did not move. He was
waiting to wake up. This had to be a dream. J.J. would not skin in the
middle of a crowded gymnasium just to shred Cam Foss for glitterbombing him.
Then claws flashed. Something warm and wet sprayed Coach Evans’
face. Fans started screaming. And Seth did not wake up.
Cam hit the court on his back. The black jaguar was instantly on top
of him, snarling. Seth heard Alfaro bellow. The Montrose captain was
charging toward J.J., shouldering aside panicked spectators – a stampede
had started for the exits – in an attempt to help Cam.
The black jaguar whipped around on him, fangs bared. Montrose's
captain froze. Seth knew the other boy was about to die. In that single
instant, he made his choice, and skinned.
Pandemonium ensued. Almost no one had seen J.J. skin. They had
just seen a jaguar appear out of nowhere and maul a boy. Hundreds of
people saw the ripple move under Seth’s skin, saw the shimmer of
displaced air before the sweaty blue-haired punk from South Philly
disappeared and the tawny jaguar that had appeared in his place lunged at
the other, hissing cat.
The cats collided, and rolled. As jaguars, Seth and J.J. were the same
size, five-and-a-half-feet long, though J.J. retained the hard sheath of
muscle Seth lacked in his human skin. Seth came up on top, trying to pin
J.J., but he was also trying not to hurt him, and J.J. flung him off easily,
roaring as he rounded, slashing his claws across Seth’s snout. Seth hissed
and leapt at him again. This time his teeth nicked J.J.’s throat, but before
he could clamp down, J.J. had skinned back into a boy.
Seth saw the spark but not the dagger. He felt the burn across his ribs
as he spun away, skinning mid-turn; he came down in a crouch on all
fours, blood soaking the side of his blue jersey. J.J. twirled the dagger,
hissing with his lips drawn black. Blood freckled his cheeks and arms.
More blood, not his, ringed his mouth. Marshall was kneeling over Cam.
“Stay back!” Seth shouted. Alfaro had started toward him. Massive
as he was, Alfaro wasn’t trained. J.J. would kill him.
The gym had all but emptied. J.J.’s wild eyes flicked around the
stands, hollowed of everything that made him J.J. Sullivan. J.J. is
vicious. Feral, really. Keeping him collared is the only way to control
him. Seth had not believed Cleo when she had said that. Now he
wondered if he should have.
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J.J. He focused, as Xanthe had shown him, capturing his twin’s gaze
as he rose, cautiously, from his crouch. J.J., it’s Seth. I don’t want to hurt
you. Please, put the knife down.
Nothing. No response, no sign J.J. had either heard or understood. It
was like screaming down a well, only his own voice echoing back.
J.J. pivoted. Seth did not see why, at first; the phht of the tranq dart
leaving the barrel had been lost inside his own thundering heartbeat. He
did see the dagger spinning end-over-end into the bleachers, glimpsed
the silver spark of the dart just as J.J.’s spine curved, yet somehow, as
though the huntress standing on the highest bleacher had anticipated this,
the tranq stuck neatly in the small of J.J.’s back.
He howled. The dagger missed its mark and embedded in the wall
behind Cleo’s head.
Seth sprang to catch him as J.J. slumped, but arms wrapped around
him from behind. “Dude, you can’t,” Alfaro said, desperately, dragging
him away. J.J. was writhng on the ground. “If he doesn’t get the full
dose, he won’t stay down.”
He was right, but Seth couldn’t stand it. This was J.J. Everything
inside of him screamed at him to protect his twin from the pain signing
along his nerves as it sang along J.J.’s, a symphony of shared agony.
Cleo flung the tranq gun down as she rushed to J.J.’s side, capturing
the hands scrabbling at his back and gently pinning them to the court,
palm-up with her fingers laced through his. J.J. stared at her with bleary,
bewildered eyes. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry,” Seth could see her
whispering.
J.J.’s spine arched. “Cleo,” he gasped; and then, at last, mercifully he
was still.
Seth sagged in Alfaro’s arms, feeling the bigger boy’s chest heaving
against his back. His wrists were locked around Seth’s waist. Only now
did Seth see the ragged lines his nails had scored in Alfaro’s dark skin.
“I’m sorry – ” he began, but Alfaro brushed aside his apology.
“He’s your brother,” he said, simply. “Come on. You need to sit.”
Seth sat, on the Knights’ bench. He was shaking all over. What was
happening outside? Were the SWAT teams rolling up – or, the stars
forbid, news vans? Jack was working his cell phone, damage-controlling.
McLain had led Lydia down to the court. She had pulled J.J.’s head into
her lap and was stroking his hair back, murmuring what sounded like a
lullaby. Up in the stands, Emery was guarding Leigh and Whitney, his
green eyes, pale as colored glass, fixed on Cam.
Cam. Seth almost didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to. By
the Knights’ bench, Marshall had stripped off his jersey and was holding
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it against Cam’s chest. For the first time Seth had ever seen, Marshall’s
capable hands were shaking.
Blood pooled around them, washing up out of the three bone-deep
claws marks stretched from Cam’s shoulder to his hipbone, like he was a
sponge being pressed. His lips were blue. Seth was not sure he was
breathing.
“Dad,” Marshall whispered. His tone was agonized.
He was looking up at the tall man in the tailored blue suit standing
over him. Seth had not even known Wesley Townsend was still in the
gym, but somehow, there he was, kneeling next to Cam. “Let me see
him, Marshall,” he said, calmly. Marshall scooted back. Dr. Townsend,
after laying his fingers against Cam’s wrist to feel of his pulse, drew a
syringe and a phial of magenta liquid – Healing potion – from the inside
pocket of his suit. “We need to slow the bleeding down. Inject this, right
there, in his neck.”
Marshall took a deep breath. With steadier hands, he took the syringe
from his father and slid the needle into Cam’s neck. Cam didn’t even
flinch.
Dr. Townsend glanced around, spied Alfaro hovering over Seth, and
snapped his fingers. “You. We need towels. Clean towels, as many as
you can find. Go.”
Alfaro raced down to the locker room.
Everything seemed to be happening inside a dream. Seth hugged his
arms around his middle, aware on some level that he was badly cut and
bleeding from J.J.’s dagger. On the court, McLain had rolled J.J. onto his
back to pull out the dart, as Lydia tipped something to his lips. The
antidote. “But – ” Seth started.
He had been about to say, But he could skin again. Then he saw the
small silvery key McLain was tucking into his pocket.
The torc around J.J.’s neck was the same one he had worn the night
Seth had at last met his twin face-to-face. Ornate, scrolled with glyphs, it
cast a bruise-like shadow on his throat. Asleep, J.J. looked very young;
the antidote would counter the silver poison in the tranq, but he could be
unconscious for hours, unable to skin for days. Or ever, if the collar
stayed in place.
There were implications here Seth could not process, of Cleo
carrying a tranq gun on her, of McLain having J.J.’s collar in his bag. As
though they had suspected he was losing control. How had Seth not seen
it? J.J. was his twin. He lived with him. Cleo had known from a single
phone call.
Or had he seen it, Seth asked himself, and just not wanted to?
“We can’t do this to him,” he whispered.
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McLain sat back on his heels. “Seth, we have to. We can’t risk him
hurting anyone else.”
He was right, but – this was wrong. Seth could feel it, like the night
he had left Cleo at Regent’s to be tortured. Still, what could he say? J.J.
had just skinned in front of a thousand people. He had just attacked an
innocent, defenseless human. He had tried to kill Cleo. He had tried to
kill Seth.
McLain stood up. “I’m going to call the fort. They’ll have to send a
prisoner transport.”
“We need Medivac, too,” Dr. Townsend said crisply. Alfaro had
returned with the towels. Marshall was pressing them against Cam’s
chest; the white edges had already soaked through with red. “Tell the
Healers to prepare an operating bay.”
McLain nodded and walked off, flipping open his phone.
Seth looked up at Cleo, who was prying the bone-handled dagger out
of the wall with fierce purpose. The tip was stained with blood. Seth’s
blood.
He remembered a dream, so real it was like a memory, the first
dream in which J.J. had ever appeared to him in his human skin. I don’t
want to fight you, Seth heard himself say, as his doppelganger handed
him the dagger hilt-first, the bowl-shaped tree fanned out behind him.
You might have to someday, J.J. had said, so take this.
***
Noises pierced J.J.’s brain like needles. Groggily, he pried open his
eyes.
The world came together in pieces. Sounds first: the clang-clomp of
boots ringing on walkways, the buzz of locked doors opening, the hum of
something much more powerful than a generator deep, deep
belowground. The stone floor, the steel cot, and the silver bars told the
rest of the story. He was in a cell.
He rolled off the cot, onto his feet. Bare feet; looking down, J.J. saw
that he had been dressed in thin cotton pants, no shirt. He raised his
hands to his neck and hissed a breath through his teeth. He was collared.
The boy sitting on the cot across from his raised an eyebrow. He
wasn’t much older than J.J., if at all; his reddish-blonde hair was cropped
close to his scalp, but his chin was scratchy with a three-day beard. “You
look like you’ve had better days, mate,” he observed.
“How long…” J.J.’s voice rasped; his throat was dry as sand. The
boy rose, fluidly, and poured water from a metal pitcher on the cell’s
single narrow shelf into a tin cup. J.J. accepted it and drank deeply,
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shaking his head when more was offered. The stiffness in his joints
suggested silver poisoning, from a tranq. Drinking too much too fast
would just give his cramping stomach something to expel into the cell’s
stainless steel commode.
Even so, he felt better, clearer, than he had in days. He pushed out
tentatively with his mind. The familiar snap rebounded inside of him,
like someone had plucked a string tied to his heart, and the tension in
J.J.’s shoulders relaxed. Seth was close. He could feel him again. At the
game, he hadn’t been able –
The game.
J.J. swallowed. “How long have I been here?”
“Couple of hours. You were in a bad way when they brought you
in.” The boy nodded at the tangled sheets on J.J.’s cot as proof. “You’re
a werecat, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” J.J. said coldly. He recognized a hunter when he saw one.
“Thought so. Cats are always easy to spot. I believe I met your sister
the other day.” A buzzer sounded, closer this time. The glass doors at the
end of the hall opened. The hunter boy’s eyes – they were a dark shade
of amber, striking against his ice-white skin, with pupils that were
slightly oval-shaped – widened. “Well, pussycat,” he said, “I’d say your
day is about to get a whole lot worse.”
J.J. did not respond. He was shivering, from more than the residual
poison in his veins. The last thing he remembered was fighting Seth in
the Arena. But that was impossible. The Arena no longer existed, and if
it had, J.J. would not have agreed to fight Seth. Arena matches were to
the death. They had been at a basketball game, and Seth’s team had lost,
and Cam Foss…Cam Foss blew a kiss at Seth, a sparkling cloud lifted off
his palm, and one side of J.J.’s brain called it silver powder, the other
side harmless glitter. J.J. had lost hold of what was real after that.
The bars clanked as they retracted into the cinderblock wall. The
hunter boy stepped back on a growled command, but J.J. stepped forward
as General David Burke beckoned. “Cuff him,” Burke commanded.
Cleo glanced at him. She was back in her hunter gear, black leather
jacket over tank-top and jeans. J.J. silently extended his wrists, showing
her it was all right, he wouldn’t fight. She snapped the silver cuffs in
place without looking at him. On the other side of Burke, McLain, in his
desert fatigues, was working his jaw like he wanted to protest.
J.J. personally thought the cuffs were overkill when he was collared,
but maybe they thought he could open a collar like Seth could. That, J.J.
thought, could prove to his advantage before this was over.
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From his cell, he was marched down one of the fort’s many winding
passageways, at last descending a staircase outside the rotunda. A guard
saluted them through the steel doors.
Ben Schofield froze at the head of the long oval table, interrupted in
the heat of an argument with Clyde Dowling, whose jowly neck bulged
above his bowtie. Ozzie Harris was canted forward, tufts of sandy fur
sticking out of his ears; when J.J. appeared, he sat back, looking torn.
Melody Little was pink-cheeked, as angry as J.J. had ever seen her.
Logue Ampon’s eyes were cat-yellow, his slim hands curled into fists
inside black motorcycle gloves that matched his leather jacket. BAD
KITTY was spelled out in silver studs across the back.
Seth and Marshall were leaning against the black swan statue.
Agathon towered over them, wings folded so they looked like part of his
long black robe. Through the window with the Tree of Songs etched into
it, the sun was a red sliver on a purple horizon.
Agathon’s flat insectile eyes met J.J.’s. Xanthe? J.J. asked silently.
Agathon shook his head. Below.
With the Ark. Begging the question of who was guarding the Source,
as Cleo was standing beside J.J., and Lieutenant Kate Jensen was
standing at attention beside the flat-screen monitor.
Burke walked past Josephine O’Shea’s empty seat to the end of the
table. He was in full military regalia, as if to counter Ben’s flannel and
jeans. “Jensen,” he barked. “Talk to me about damage control. Right now
I’ve got about five hundred people convinced they just saw two teenage
boys transform into jaguars.”
“We’ve shut down communications in and around the city, sir,”
Jensen said quickly. “But there’s a lot of chatter online right now, and
we’re having trouble casting the net wide enough to catch it all.”
“Black it out if you have to. The whole city. Shut down the grid if
that’s what it takes, Lieutenant, but you keep this thing contained until
we figure out what the hell we’re going to do.” Jensen started tapping
furiously on her PDA. Burke swung around. “Agathon, can your
telepaths help us out?”
Agathon’s wings rustled. “Xanthe has begun the process of memory
reversal.”
“Can it be done?” McLain looked at Agathon with a mixture of hope
and skepticism. “Can he make it so no one who was in that gym will
remember what they saw?”
Agathon’s antennae curled downward – not a good sign. “It will not
be easy, with so many minds to clear. For most there will be the
confusion common to a traumatic event. But…some may remember.”
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For a moment, J.J. thought Burke would shout. Then he laughed,
dryly, spun his chair toward him, and sat down. “Well, Jeremy,” he said,
“looks like you got your wish. Ursula LeRoi is going to get her war.”
“I never wanted a war,” J.J. said, coldly. And I’m not your son.
Burke leaned forward, a lion staring down the upstart cub. The collar
rested heavily on J.J.’s neck. He raised his chin above it. “If you never
wanted a war, then why in God’s name did you skin in front of a
thousand witnesses?”
“He couldn’t help it,” Marshall said.
No one was expecting him to speak, least of all J.J. . He glanced
from Burke to Marshall, as the general spared Marshall an annoyed
glance. “Son, now is not the time – ”
“General, if I may.” Ben Schofield’s voice, though soft, carried
around the room. “I believe Marshall Townsend has earned the right to
address this Alliance whenever he pleases. Don’t you?”
Flushing, Burke sat back in his chair.
Marshall stepped away from the statue. Seth was still in his torn
jersey. Marshall was in green scrubs, like he had just come from surgery.
“I’ve been worried about J.J.,” he said, again to J.J.’s surprise. He hadn’t
figured on Doc worrying about him. You had to care about somebody
before you could worry about them. “He hasn’t been acting like himself
these last few days. He’s been moody. Restless. The change was so
sudden, if he hadn’t been werekin, I would have said he was doing drugs.
“That got me thinking. A few nights ago, I threw a party, and J.J.
left his soda cup behind. I brought the cup in to Dr. Bishop’s lab, and
Aphrodisia and I ran some tests on the saliva. This is what we found.”
Marshall aimed a remote at the screen. It flickered to life with a complex
chemical equation. “This is the formula for strengthening potion – at
three times the normal dose. More than you would give an elephant, if
you’ll pardon the expression.”
Melody was appalled. “And – this was in J.J.’s saliva? Was
he…doping? Deliberately?” She glanced at J.J., motherly concern on her
face.
“I don’t think so,” Marshall said. “I think he was being poisoned.”
“Poisoned.” Burke’s expression was dubious. “Someone has been
trying to kill him with strengthening potion? Seems a peculiar way to go
about it.”
“I know it sounds strange.” Marshall spoke patiently. “General,
potions are made of toxic substances. Werekin are less susceptible than
humans to most of them, with the exception of silver, but if I injected J.J.
with a dose like this,” he gestured at the screen, “all at once, it would
most definitely kill him. The toxins would overtake any benefits the
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potion was meant to provide, like in any drug overdose. Which is why I
realized the potion had to have been administered to him gradually, over
a period of days, building up in his system and causing his increasingly
erratic behavior. There would have been other side-effects, too, as the
toxins built up in his tissues. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been having
dizzy spells, running fever, feeling sick to his stomach…”
“He did pass out this morning,” McLain put in. “Lydia called me
before the game.”
Burke glanced at him sharply, but Ozzie Harris had raised a hand.
“How can you feed somebody potion without them knowing? No
offense, Doc, but the potions you Healers cook up don’t taste like
licorice.”
“It’s possible to disguise the taste of small amounts of potion, if you
put it in something either very sweet or very bitter,” Marshall said. “But
in this case, I would say the potion was released directly into the
bloodstream. Through one of these.”
He dipped his hand into the pocket of his white lab coat and came up
with a small, flat disc. The Commanders watched it roll down the table
like a dime. At the end, before it could roll off, Burke slapped a hand on
it. “What is it?”
“It’s a subcutaneous delivery system,” Marshall said. “You insert it
under the skin and it dissolves, delivering a continuous dose of potion to
the patient. I designed it. We’ve been using it on your son.”
Burke’s brow wrinkled. J.J. caught the quick-beat of the pulse in his
throat, and the back of his neck tingled uneasily. J.J. was trained to read
body language as well as minds. General Burke was hiding something.
“I don’t see any marks on him.” Clyde Dowling waved a hand at the
smooth, fair skin on J.J.’s chest and shoulders. “Wouldn’t there be
marks, if he was injected?”
“There would be on a human, but J.J.’s skin would have healed over
within hours from a wound that small, literally the size of a pin-prick,”
Marshall said. “The disc would have been concealed, even from him, and
it would have begun to dissolve almost immediately. The effects would
have been gradual. By the time he realized anything was wrong, he
wouldn’t have been thinking clearly enough to ask for help.”
Melody twitched her long braid over her shoulder. “And an overdose
of potion would cause him to skin?”
“Werekin control their magic through mental will – you decide
which skin to inhabit. Impair the mind, you impede that control.”
Marshall spoke with the relaxed assurance of someone who had given
the subject intensive study. “A dose of this magnitude would cause visual
and auditory hallucinations, paranoia, violent mood swings – a break
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with reality. Imagine being hooked up to a drip of LSD. If J.J. noticed
anything at all, I’m sure he thought he was losing his mind.”
That wasn’t exactly what he had thought, and J.J. had a feeling it
hadn’t been what Marshall had thought either: He ran a hand through his
dark curls, the only sign of nerves he had shown since taking the floor.
J.J. knew what Marshall had thought, and why he felt guilty for thinking
it now. He had thought J.J.’s true nature was finally taking over. Proving
he really was just an animal. J.J. didn’t blame him for thinking it. He had
never given Marshall much reason to like him.
“So this potion was building up in his system, and then what?”
Burke still did not sound like he believed any of this. His heavy brows
were drawn together in a single line. “This morning things just
conveniently reached their boiling point and caused him to skin, at the
most inopportune moment imaginable?”
“The Coke,” J.J. said. A few of the Commanders looked around like
they had forgotten he was in the room. “I bought a Coke at the
concession stand. It didn’t taste right. It was too sweet. Quinn – ”
“She got sick,” Marshall said, and hurried to add, as J.J.’s head
came up, “She’s all right. Her mother is upstairs with her, in the
infirmary. She’s resting.”
“Let me be sure I understand you, Marshall.” Ben’s heavy Louisiana
drawl extended the “ah” in Mah-shall. “Someone poisoned their drinks
to get to J.J., knowing that would push him over the edge. Is that right?”
Marshall nodded. Ben turned to Burke. His whiskers were like wire
bristles. He scratched at them with one paw-like hand. “General, if
Jeremy was poisoned, we can’t hold him accountable for his actions.”
“Well, Mr. Schofield, someone is going to be held accountable. The
same someone who knows what’s become of the Source, since it
disappeared from Roswell this morning about the same time your Jeremy
here went off the reservation.”
Looking satisfied to have dropped that bomb so neatly, Burke sat
back in his chair.
You could have heard a pin drop before all of the Commanders
started talking at once.
J.J. eased away from McLain. When no one tried to stop him, he
quickened his pace around the table. “You’re shivering,” Marshall said.
He shrugged his lab coat off and wrapped it around J.J.’s shoulders.
“You should be lying down – ”
J.J. waved that aside. He felt terrible, but they had bigger problems at
the moment. “Did Cam survive?”
“He came through surgery,” Marshall said.
A guarded response. J.J. read between the lines. “I’m sorry,” he said.
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“Don’t.” Seth finally looked up. This entire time he had been
looking at his basketball shoes. The soles were stained with blood.
“Don’t apologize to us. All right?”
J.J. swallowed the bitter taste of bile. Understandably, Seth would
not want his apology. J.J. had just ruined any hope he might have had for
a normal human life. “Seth, Xanthe can make those people forget what
they saw,” J.J. said, knowing it was a lie even as he told it convincingly.
“You won’t be exposed – ”
“You think I’m worried about what people saw?” Seth looked
stricken. “J.J., you’re collared! They locked you up! Marshall just stood
here and said you’ve been sick for days, thinking you were going crazy,
and I didn’t even notice! I didn’t get you help!”
“Sweetheart, you did notice,” Cleo said gently. J.J. had known she
was behind him. He just wasn’t ready to turn around and face her yet. He
was too afraid of how she would look at him. “We all noticed, but none
of us knew what to think. How could anyone have imagined something
like this was going on?”
“In other words,” J.J. said, “you thought I was in a snit.”
“Well. You do have those, from time to time.”
There was something in Cleo’s voice J.J. wasn’t sure he had ever
heard before, at least when she was talking to him. She took his arm,
tentatively. He let her turn him around. Cleo tilted his chin down,
looking in his eyes; J.J. knew enough about tranqs to know the fields of
gold would still be spotted with silver. Her fingertips brushed the healing
scratch on his neck from Seth’s teeth. Inspecting him for damage as they
had inspected one another every night in their tiny cell after a long day of
training in the Scholae Bestiarii. J.J. remembered the first time Cleo had
drawn her shirt up and he had noticed how the flat muscles of her
stomach melted into the curves of her hips. Treating her wounds, having
her hands on his skin as she treated his, had become another kind of
torture altogether after that. There was a reason Chimera separated
hunters and werekin once they came of breeding age.
Cleo did not apologize for tranqing him. J.J. would not have wanted
her to. Instead, she unlocked his cuffs and stuck them on her belt. “Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?” she said.
J.J. grinned. “Paris,” they said together.
***
Paris. Cleo and J.J. were staring deeply into one another’s eyes, both
half-smiling, and Seth didn’t know whether to smack the two of them or
usher them into a private room to just make out already. Holding up a
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hand, he pointed over J.J.’s shoulder, to where Ben was attempting,
unsuccessfully, to call the meeting back to order. “Does someone want to
tell me what that is all about?” he demanded.
“The Source,” Cleo said, automatically. “Somebody stole it.”
“I got that part,” Seth said.
“I didn’t,” Marshall said. “It’s a twenty-foot-tall slab of rock. How
do you steal a twenty-foot-tall slab of rock off a heavily fortified military
base in the middle of the desert?”
“I’m gonna go with magic,” J.J. said. Marshall glared at him. “Look
it. Burke thinks the Gen-0s orchestrated this all somehow, to get control
of both the Ark and the Source. The Commanders think Burke is behind
it and blaming it on the Alpha Clan to cover his tracks, hiding the Source
somewhere we’ll never find it, so we could never open the stargate. The
problem is, neither side really trusts the other here. You can bet LeRoi is
banking on that.”
“That seems like a cynical way of looking at things,” Marshall said.
“Our father always said there could be no peace until the werekin
were free to choose their own destinies.”
For the last ten minutes Agathon had seemed to become part of the
obsidian statue. Now he unclasped his hands. His wings stirred the air
gently behind him, casting shadows on the walls. “The Alpha Clan does
not remain below because we must,” he went on, in his quiet rumble, as
they all looked up at him. “We remain below because we understand that
humankind is not ready to accept us. We make this sacrifice for the good
of Earth. This,” Agathon lifted his tapered fingers to his neck, to indicate
the torc that circled J.J.’s, “is not choice. A slave cannot choose to serve
its master.”
Seth had never looked at the collars quite like that. He glanced at J.J.
To his surprise, J.J. looking down at his bare feet. For seventeen years,
J.J. had been collared. Seth doubted you ever got used to that, but how
much harder must it be to go back to being someone’s slave once you
had tasted freedom?
“He’s right,” Marshall said. “It’s what I’ve been saying about the
werekin coming out of hiding. Humans have to see you as equals. Then
they have to choose to treat you as equals. Otherwise you’ll never be
free. You’ll always be hiding, and you’ll always be hunted.”
“But the Ark – ” Seth said.
Marshall cut him off. “Agathon, if the Alpha Clan could find a way
to destroy the spaceship that’s down there on Lemuria, would people still
be afraid of the Gen-0s?”
“Yes,” Agathon said. “We are alien. Humankind fears that which is
Other.”
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He looked down at them with his flat black eyes as he said it, and
Seth recalled his reaction to the Gen-0s the first time he had seen a
picture of one in Elijah Bishop’s journal. It shamed him now to think he
had been relieved that LeRoi had exterminated them, but it also proved
Agathon’s point. Gen-0s had to hide because they didn’t have human
skins. Werekin hid inside their human skins, for the same reason. They
feared what would happen if people knew what they really were.
“I’m not arguing that the power of the Totems doesn’t need to be
protected,” Marshall said. J.J.’s metallic eyes were watching him from
under their lashes. “It’s the same principle as keeping a nuclear bomb out
of the hands of terrorists. But that’s a separate issue from what happens
to your kindred. Your fate and Lemuria’s fate aren’t one and the same.”
“You think Xanthe shouldn’t make anyone forget,” J.J. said.
Marshall crossed his arms on a shrug. “I think the truth comes out
eventually, no matter how hard you try to stop it.”
His voice was even, as even as J.J.’s half-smile. Well, well, well.
Maybe the planets had realigned, Seth thought. Marshall and J.J. were
actually getting along.
They seemed to be the only ones. Behind them, Ben growled
something, and Burke banged a fist on the table. The sound echoed up to
the rotunda’s high ceiling. Cleo looked at J.J. “How do you want to play
this?”
J.J. hesitated. It wasn’t indecision; rarely if ever was J.J. not ten
moves ahead of everyone else. Seth looked at him hard. What is it?
Slowly, J.J.’s eyes came up to his. Do you still trust me?
Seth nodded. He had always trusted J.J. Even before he had met him.
J.J. spoke quickly then, inside Seth’s mind. Seth’s eyes grew bigger
and rounder as he did. “Can you do it?” J.J. asked, out loud. Marshall
and Cleo frowned in bewilderment, not having been privy to the psychic
twin confab.
“I don’t know.” Seth tugged on his jersey. The knife-wound in his
side had already healed, but the jersey was crusted to the blood on his
side. “I’ve only done it once, and I don’t really know how I did it. But I
can try…”
“Just don’t let him know it’s you. He needs to think it’s me.” J.J.
took a deep breath. “Agathon, is everything else ready, like I asked?”
“We are ready,” Agathon said.
Marshall sighed. “What are you up to now, J.J.?”
J.J. smiled.
***
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When J.J. hopped up on the table, Seth saw Burke frown. He did not
seem pleased that his prisoners’ cuffs had been removed. “Look,” J.J.
said, as the startled Commanders fell silent. “There’s no point standing
here pointing fingers at one another. Burke isn’t hiding the Source. The
Gen-0s aren’t hiding the Source. We all know Ursula LeRoi is behind
this. She wants Lemuria raised and the stargate opened. The Black Swan
refused to do that, so now, she’s using whoever she has working for her
on the outside to turn us against one another and force a war that will
push us to do what she wants.”
“I thought LeRoi’s only endgame would be to have someone break
her out of prison,” Burke said, sarcastically.
“I’m sure she has a plan for that as well,” J.J. rejoined, without
missing a beat. “Right now what we need to do is figure out who she has
working for her. We find them, we find the Source.”
He hopped down from the table. Burke glowered at him. “How about
we just find the Source?” he growled.
Jensen coughed. “Permission to speak, sir?”
Burke did not remove his icy glare from J.J., who was smirking
placidly. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“The Source gives off one mother of a heat signature,” Jensen said.
“But we’ve retasked every satellite over North and South America, and
so far, we haven’t found a thing. It’s like the Source isn’t just hidden. It’s
like it disappeared, off the face of the Earth.”
“So you see?” J.J. sat down in Josephine O’Shea’s empty chair,
dropping his bare heels on the table. “Searching for the Source is a waste
of time. We need to find whoever is hiding it, and we need to shut them
down before they find some way of getting their hands on the Ark and
the Black Swan.”
“Fine.” Burke’s patience was at an end; he spoke tersely. “McLain,
get that Alfaro boy in here and start running down every gigabyte of data
we’ve got on Ursula LeRoi’s Partners. I want hourly updates on your
progress. In the meantime, we need to let Washington know we’re
handling this mess, before the media starts reporting an alien invasion in
Indiana.”
He started for the door. J.J. cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting
something, sir?”
He laid a scarred hand on his throat. Burke reached into his pocket;
J.J. tensed, and Seth felt the same twinge in his bones, the expectation of
pain. Most werekin are raised in captivity. From the time they’re old
enough to walk, every time they disobey their masters, no matter how
slight the infraction, they’re given a demonstration of the collar’s power.
Just the memory of the pain is powerful motivation to obey.
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“Captain,” Burke said, “return this prisoner to his cell.”
Melody gasped. Clyde Dowling snorted out of his seat. “Now see
here, General, you’ve already heard the evidence – ”
“The evidence, Mr. Dowling, can be presented at court martial.”
Burke’s eyes glittered. Seth hadn’t realized before just how badly Burke
wanted J.J. out of the Alliance. Why, he wondered? What did Burke have
against his twin? “Unlike his brother, this boy is under my command,
and I say he stays locked up until he is formally cleared of treason.”
“General, please.” Melody pressed her small hands down on the
tabletop. “You can’t do this. We need J.J.”
“Need him for what, Miss Little?” Burke countered. “To advise us?
To help us outsmart LeRoi? If he truly is a member of this Alliance, I am
sure he will still be willing to do that.”
“From a cell,” Logue Ampon said. “You want him to help you from
a cell. Collared.”
His cat’s eyes flashed dangerously. Burke drew himself up to his full
height. “Commanders, with all due respect, this is not your call. It is
mine.”
“Only as long as you hold that key,” Ozzie said.
He had gotten to his feet. So had Logue and Ben.
Seth’s heart was beating fast. He nearly cried out when J.J. spoke in
his mind. Now.
Seth shut his eyes. He pictured the glyphs on J.J.’s collar, written
across his mind like white letters on a black screen. He sank into himself,
as Xanthe had shown him…felt the Ark, suffused with his kindred’s
blood, tugging on his bones…and there it was, spread before him, a
jungle more vibrant than any jungle on Earth, the temple of the Jaguar
Totems under the full moon and the blazing sun – a place with no
separation between light and dark. Power roared inside of Seth, and he
spoke a word, a single, shining word, in his mind, as J.J., taking it from
his thoughts, spoke it out loud.
The collar around his neck began to glow. Cleo yanked the bonehandled dagger off her belt, misunderstanding, thinking Burke was
killing him – but the torc simply opened, and clattered to the floor.
Seth opened his eyes.
Mouths were hanging open. Melody Little squeaked. For real. She
had actually skinned in her chair. The little brown mouse’s whiskers
were twitching.
Drawing his hand out of his pocket, Burke stared at the small silver
key. “You…you have the power to…”
“We are not going to be collared anymore.” J.J. had never sounded
more like a prince than he did at that moment. Scooping up the collar, he
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tossed it contemptuously onto the table, a useless hunk of metal singed
around the edges. Cleo was looking at him with her lip pinned between
her teeth, brow slightly furrowed. “My kindred are not slaves, General.
We choose not to overpower you, because we want to live in peace, but
you are not going to collar us. Not any of us. Not anymore.”
Burke’s expression was impossible to read, and as stony as granite.
Dropping the key back into his pocket, he signaled to Jensen and McLain
to follow him out.
Even as the Commanders burst into applause, Seth felt his heart sink.
For all their sakes, he hoped whatever game J.J. was playing here, he was
playing to win. Burke had been willing to exterminate the werekin before
when he believed they posed too great of a threat to humankind.
According to his son, he had been looking for an excuse to follow
through on that ever since. What would he do now that he couldn’t
control them?
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Chapter Fourteen: Second Chances
Leigh did not know why Dre wanted her to meet him at Re-Spin at
eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, but that was what his message had
said. It had been delivered through Miss Janowitz. Though Operation
Swan Song still had the phones shut down, birds didn’t need cell towers
to communicate with one another.
The mall had been closed for hours when Leigh parked Seth’s
Yamaha around the back. She skirted bags of trash lined up around the
overflowing dumpster outside Re-Spin’s employee entrance – a metal
door, one of a dozen facing into the alley – then jumped back as
something fluttered in the shadows. “Dre!” she gasped.
“Sorry.” Dre shook his bangs out of his eyes like he was ruffling his
feathers. He was dressed tamely, for Dre, black cargo pants and a black
T-shirt, white gloves without the fingers. Cargo pants were so over, but
the gloves were kind of chic. “Did you bring the stuff?”
Did he think she would go to all the trouble of sneaking out of the
house and swiping her brother’s motorcycle without bringing what he
had asked for? Leigh dug through her Coach bag for the sheet music she
had found under Seth’s mattress. Seth hid everything under his mattress.
Like that wasn’t the first place a kid sister would look. “I still don’t see
why you couldn’t just come by my house to get it,” she grumbled.
“J.J. didn’t want anyone in the Alliance to know I had it,” Dre said.
“Captain McLain does live across the street from you.”
“It’s not like he spies on us,” Leigh said, and was puzzled when Dre
blushed. Boys were so weird. “So…you’ve talked to J.J.?”
The last time she had seen her big brother, Marines had been carting
him out of the gym on a stretcher. Leigh had seen Seth wounded and
helpless. Never J.J. He had looked very small.
She had wanted to go with him, but her father had insisted Emery
drive her home. Her mother, the traitor, had sided with him. Thus Leigh
had been in the dark all day, with no way to call anybody at the fort, and
no clearance to get past security if she had driven out there.
Dre relayed that Seth and J.J. were both fine, waiting for the
Commanders to straighten out who had poisoned J.J. and who could be
hiding the Source. Cam had been transferred to Fairfax Memorial’s ICU.
With the Source missing, the Gen-0s had the Ark on lockdown, and extra
security had been dispatched to the Black Swan’s house, just in case.
Dre stepped up on the curb. Leigh watched him scuff his loafers
along the concrete. “J.J. asked me to do something else for him,” he said.
“He’ll probably kill me for this, but I think you should come, too. It
involves you.”
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“It involves me?” Leigh drew her Burberry coat closer around her.
The night was cool. A pinkish haze of city lights screened out the stars;
she could only see Dre’s outline in the shadows inking the alley. “What
about me?”
“It’s your dad’s ring. I got the transmitter working.”
“You know where the signal is coming from?”
“Burke’s,” Dre said. “The signal leads back to General David
Burke’s.”
Leigh blinked. “You’re sure?”
Dre bobbed his head. His small hands fluttered, coming up with a
sleek handheld computer from one of his many pockets. “See this blip
there, on the screen? That’s where the transmitter broadcasts back to. It’s
here in Fairfax, south of the city, on General Burke’s estate.”
“What are you going to do?” Leigh whispered.
“Check it out. J.J. doesn’t think Burke would betray us like that, and
he doesn’t want to accuse him without proof he’s working for LeRoi. If
we find proof…” Dre stuck the computer back in his pocket. His chirp of
a voice had become even softer. “Things will really get complicated
then.”
***
Seth turned the silver torc over in his hands. He didn’t know why he
had picked the collar up off the Commanders’ table after J.J. had dropped
it. He just had.
He also didn’t know why his feet had carried him outside, to the
trees that surrounded Fort King. Yet here he was, sitting cross-legged in
the shadow of a pine tree that was leaking sap like candlewax.
Supposedly he was waiting on Marshall, but Marshall had been down on
the lower levels for hours, conferring with Aphrodisia. Her big
announcement had apparently been canceled in the wake of their game
day disaster.
Half an hour ago, J.J. had padded out the fort’s front door, looked up
at the chimera fountain like he might have something important to say to
it, then sat down on the lip of the concrete bowl and started polishing his
dagger. The jets inside the serpents’ mouths had been turned off tonight;
the water at the bottom of the fountain was clotted with dead leaves and
brown pine needles. From where Seth was sitting, the clouds drifting
across the moon created the illusion the scorpion-stinger tail was
swaying.
McLain had given J.J. a pair of jungle fatigues to change into. The
jacket was folded beside him, the jaguar katana Seth had given him
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rolled up inside of it. Looking at him, Seth was reminded of his dream –
the Lemurian jungle, the Tortoise Clan, the swan’s song. Something
about that, and the air J.J. was giving off, like he had come out here for
the express purpose of avoiding anyone, had kept him hidden in the
shadows. J.J. didn’t appear to know he was there. His thoughts were
shuttered tonight, even from his twin.
Now, the front door opened again, and Marshall came out. He
hesitated on the top step a moment, looking around for Seth. Seeing J.J.
instead, he said, “You know this is a bad idea.”
“What’s a bad idea?” J.J.’s tone was equitable. He was his usual,
unflappable self again now that he was off the crazy-making potion.
“Whatever you’re planning to do and not telling Seth about.”
Marshall sank down on the ground, leaning back against the front tire of
his father’s Lexus. He still had on his scrubs. He looked worn out.
“You’re not omniscient, J.J.”
“I believe we’ve had this argument already. As usual, I turned out to
be right.” J.J. flipped the dagger around, offering it hilt-first to Marshall
as he stood. “Give this to Seth for me, would you?”
Marshall ignored him. “There’s something I haven’t said to you.”
“Really.” J.J. leaned a hip against the hood. “What’s that? That you
think I’m an asshole? ’Cause you’ve implied that strongly, on a number
of occasions.”
“Thank you.”
J.J.’s nose wrinkled – a cat twitching his whiskers. Seth had done the
exact same thing at the exact same moment. “What are you thanking me
for?” J.J. demanded.
“For insisting on bringing me back. You don’t need to deny it,”
Marshall said, heading off J.J.’s attempt to do just that. “I thought it was
Seth, but Aphrodisia said you were the one who made Agathon promise
to try.” Marshall scooped up a handful of gravel, let it pour through his
long fingers. Seth knew he should announce himself – this was obviously
meant to be a private conversation – but he was a cat. Curiosity got the
better of him. “She also said you were ready to kill me again, if the ritual
didn’t work like it was meant to.”
“So are you thanking me for bringing you back,” J.J. said, “or for
being willing to kill you if I brought you back wrong?”
“Both, I guess. I wouldn’t have wanted to live if I wasn’t still me.”
Brushing dirt off his scrubs, Marshall rose and held out a hand. After
a moment, J.J. placed the dagger in it.
“Don’t you want to know why?”
Seth, who had been about to stand up, froze.
178
Halfway to his car, Marshall turned back. The wind sighing in the
trees blew shadows across his face. Seth saw him on a riverbank, lighting
candles around Caroline McLain as he cast the spell to entrance her. Was
J.J. seeing the same thing? He had been inside Marshall’s mind with Seth
after Marshall died. He knew more about Marshall than he really had a
right to. “I assumed you did it for Seth,” Marshall said.
“I know things.” J.J. didn’t sound like he was bragging. He was just
stating the truth. “Sometimes I don’t even know how I know them, I just
know them. When you pulled that trigger, I knew you weren’t finished.
You weren’t supposed to die that day. You had more to do in this world.
Not just for werekin. For you.” J.J. leaned back against the car. “I didn’t
bring you back for Seth. I brought you back for you.”
“Pulling that trigger – it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”
Marshall sounded surprised to be confessing this, least of all to J.J. Seth
couldn’t have spoken up then if he had wanted to. He couldn’t breathe.
He and Marshall had talked about what had come after he had died, but
never about before, that final second when he had looked at Seth and
said, I wouldn’t change it. “I wasn’t really scared of dying. I just kept
thinking of all the things I wanted to do with my life that I wouldn’t get
to. I mean, I’m sure everybody feels that way. Even if you had a
thousand years, I think when it came down to it, you’d still want just one
more minute. One more breath. One last kiss.” Marshall whispered that,
kiss, looking down at the dagger he was holding. Heat stung Seth’s
cheeks. “There was something I regretted, though.”
“Yeah?” J.J. shifted position against the car. “What was that?”
“Not telling Seth sooner how I felt.” Marshall still blushed easily,
and probably always would, because he was Marshall, but his gaze, Seth
thought, was more direct than it had been two weeks ago. “I should have
told him every day from the day I met him that I loved him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I guess…” Marshall glanced toward the tree line. Seth shrank
deeper into the shadows. “I guess because I was afraid, of what my father
would say. Of what people would think. But I’m not afraid of anything
now. I’ve seen what comes after. It showed me that all that matters is
what we do here, in this life. This is all we get. There are no second
chances.”
“Unless you know a good necromancer,” J.J. said.
“Just for the record,” Marshall said, “you really are an asshole.” He
was grinning. J.J. grinned back at him. Marshall held up the dagger. “I’ll
give this to Seth for you. Anything you want me to tell him?”
J.J. shook his head. “Just watch out for him, Doc.”
“I always do,” Marshall said.
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Seth took a breath. It seemed he hadn’t breathed in minutes.
Marshall was walking to his car, flipping open his phone – to call
Seth, probably, to ask where he was, if he had waited on him or gone
home with Lydia. Seth made to rise, and that was when hands touched
his shoulders from behind.
Seth was a werecat. Sneaking up on him was nigh impossible. He
started to turn, but he didn’t get that far; the hands holding him from
behind (the skin was hot and dry; he could feel it through his jersey’s
mesh) tightened, and a word was spoken, in Lemurian – a word that
spoke of memories and lies. All of the locks in Seth’s mind turned at
once, forced open like the first time Xanthe had reached into his mind
and drawn up the dreams Caroline McLain had been sending him; and
Seth would have cried out, if the world hadn’t fractured around him:
memory, reality, dream burst from their separate compartments, fused,
and then receded, washing the color from the world in a wave of
prismatic light, all the atoms emitting light inside wavehood…
He saw Thomas reaching down to swoop him up from a sandbox in a
city park, the sun setting over the Queensboro Bridge in the distance;
Naomi carrying a birthday cake with six candles over to the kitchen
table, the flames dancing in the windows of their row house; Lydia
sitting on the railing of a wraparound porch, a forgotten cigarette
burning down to her manicured nails; J.J. moving like a dancer across
the white mat in Regent’s Bat Cave, sword singing around his blonde
head; Marshall’s eyelids fluttering down as Seth stretched up on his
tiptoes to kiss him, snow sifting down softly outside the window at his
back…
As the images rose up, the light swallowed them, obliterating them
like the wave of light and heat that follows a nuclear blast. When it was
over, Seth blinked, and smiled at the boy standing over him, who smiled
back. Gotcha.
***
As Marshall’s convertible eased down the drive, the shadow at the
back of Wesley Townsend’s Lexus shifted. J.J. turned toward it. “If I told
you I didn’t want you to come with me, what would you say?”
“I’d say I’ve seen you drive, and you’re going to need me if you
want to make it past the first roadblock,” Cleo said. J.J. shot her a sour
glance. She had taken her jacket off; her arms were more bronzed than he
had ever seen them. “When are we leaving?”
He didn’t ask how she knew his plan. Only Agathon and Xanthe
were supposed to know, but Cleo knew J.J. inside out. “In about ten
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minutes,” he said. “Wait for us down by the creek.” Cleo saluted with her
keys.
This late, the fort was quiet. A sleepy corporal buzzed J.J. through
the glass doors outside the infirmary. He entered quietly. Curtains had
been pulled around the bed where Marshall’s father had operated on Cam
Foss. A red biohazard container was open at the foot of the bed.
Something rancid curdled in the back of J.J.’s throat. More innocent
blood on his hands.
By habit he started to reach for Seth with his mind. But no, J.J.
remembered, just in time. Safer for Seth not to know where he was or
what he was doing right now.
At the moment only one of the infirmary’s cots was occupied. J.J. sat
down on the edge of it. During the day, the infirmary was the sunniest
room in the fort. At night, the moonlight on the walls rippled like cold
water.
Healers had dressed the girl on the bed in a thin white hospital gown.
J.J. stopped just short of touching her cheek, his hand resting instead on
the pillow. “Quinn.”
Quinn stirred. Moaned something about five more minutes. J.J. didn’t
have five minutes. All hell would be breaking loose in about three.
“Quinn, wake up,” he said.
“J.J.?” Quinn sat up, blinking herself awake. Her skin was warm,
flushed with sleep. “Are you all right? Mom told me what happened, but
they wouldn’t let me out of here to see you…”
A freckled hand reached out to his throat, to touch the collar that
wasn’t there. J.J. gently caught her wrist. “I’m fine. I just wanted to say
goodnight.”
“You’re leaving.” Quinn did not phrase it to imply she expected him
to be back in the morning. “You’re going to find the Tortoise Clan,
aren’t you?”
“Okay,” J.J. said. “Now I know why Seth freaks out when I do that.”
Quinn smiled slyly. Even sick she was pretty, lips a pale pink against
her colorless cheeks. “I don’t have to read your mind. It’s what I would
do. Your dad was a werefox, my mom is a werefox. They taught us
strategy.”
“I’m glad someone thinks I have a strategy,” J.J. said.
“You always have a strategy. It’s what I like about you.” Quinn
twined her fingers through his. “Come here.”
Against his better judgment, J.J. let himself be drawn down on the
pillows. His body was heavy, still aching from the poison in the tranq.
He closed his eyes while Quinn tickled his palm. “I’ve been thinking
about what you told me, down at the river,” she said. “You want to know
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why the Totems didn’t leave werekin a way of returning to their
dimension without destroying the Earth. You want to know if it’s
possible to open the stargate without wiping out humankind. And if
anyone would know, it would be the only Clan to survive the sinking of
Lemuria.” Quinn turned J.J.’s hand over. “You haven’t told Seth what
you’re planning, have you?”
“I don’t want him to know,” J.J. said, firmly. “He’ll be questioned
after we’re gone, and if Burke thinks he had a hand in this, he’ll execute
him.”
“He’ll execute you too, you know.”
J.J. shrugged. “Not if my plan works. Then they’ll give me a medal.”
Quinn had begun tracing the scars on his hands. It was more
distracting than J.J. wanted it to be. “Well, if you’re really going,” she
said, “I guess I should let you off the hook.”
“For what?”
“For kissing me,” Quinn said, with perfect frankness. “The only
time you did, you were drugged. I know how I felt on that stuff last
night, and this morning, before I got sick. It was like I was burning up
from the inside out. I probably would have ripped Clyde Dowling’s
tweed suit off if he’d been standing in front of me.”
“Thank you,” J.J. said, “for that mental image.” He felt her smile,
and opened his eyes partway. Quinn had her lower lip folded in her teeth,
looking at their joined hands. He could have let it go, but he said, “I
didn’t just want to kiss you because of the potion.”
Quinn lifted her chin to look him in the eye. Her face was mostly in
shadow. “But?”
“But look at my mother. She married my father, and she spent the
next seventeen years living under one of Chimera’s enchantments,
believing she let me die when I was a baby. The guilt nearly destroyed
her. Look what’s happened to Doc in just the few weeks he’s been
involved with Seth. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to get hurt
because of me.”
Quinn propped up on an elbow. Her hair was loose. It spilled around
them on the pillows. “Okay, first of all, your mother wasn’t born into
this. I was, and from what I gather, Marshall was, too. We’re already a
part of your world, even if we are human. Or hadn’t you noticed that my
mother is a Commander in the Alliance?”
“This isn’t about human or werekin, all right? You go to school.
You have friends. You have a life.” J.J. pulled his hand out of hers and
wrapped his fingers up in the sheets. “That’s not how I was raised. That’s
not something I ever wanted.”
“Seth wasn’t raised like that, either, and he’s adjusted.”
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“Yeah, well, I know it’s hard for everybody to keep straight, but I’m
not Seth.” J.J. couldn’t quite keep the sharpness out of his tone. “I don’t
want what he wants.”
“You want to go home,” Quinn said. “Back to Lemuria.”
J.J. just went on staring up at the pitched ceiling. Six weeks ago that
had been unequivocally true. Six weeks ago, his family had only existed
as a picture in his mind. His beautiful mother. His bratty kid sister. His
twin brother, the light to J.J.’s dark. Living in their world had changed
things for J.J. He didn’t know what he wanted now. The experience was
alien to him. Growing up in captivity, there had never been much to
want. “It’s probably a moot point,” he said. “The Tortoise Clan stayed
hidden for millennia. If they don’t want us to find them, we won’t find
them. Even if we do they may not have the answers I’m looking for.”
“You do know this is exactly what she wants you to do,” Quinn
said. “I know you think you can outsmart her, J.J., but the first rule of
battle is: never underestimate your enemy.”
J.J. turned his head, serving up one of those silky feline smirks.
“Precisely,” he said.
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just remember, player, she’s the one
who taught you the game.”
Their time was up. Quinn seemed to know it; she leaned in, J.J.
thought to kiss his cheek, but at the last second, she turned his chin with
her finger and kissed him, lightly, on the lips. Just enough of a kiss to
make J.J. want more, but a rumble moved under the floor, and
somewhere, an alarm began to blare.
“Go!” Quinn cried.
J.J. was already gone.
In his human skin, J.J. was fast. In his jaguar skin, he was a silverblack blur. The tips of his claws clicked as he bounded out of the
infirmary and down one winding staircase after another, streaking along
hallways lined with high-tech offices that slammed shut as the fort went
into lockdown. Red and orange emergency lights painted circles on the
walls. Orders were being shouted over a P.A., every able-bodied soldier
in the fort, human and werekin, funneling down to the main corridor.
Something huge was barreling along that corridor. From a skywalk
three floors up, J.J. saw McLain marshaling a dozen Marines outside the
rotunda. They were firing at – J.J. was expecting it and almost couldn’t
believe it – a monster with three serpentine heads, the body of a lion, and
a scorpion tail. Cracks webbed along its stone flesh each time it lifted
one of its legs. Its paws were grimed with sludge from the fountain; the
souls of the dead that looked out through its blank eyes seemed to slither
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across its heads, giving the stone expression. The black jaguar poured on
a burst of speed. Thank you, Agathon.
At the end of the hallway, the elevator doors stood open, waiting for
him. J.J. skinned as he passed through them. They closed, and the cage
started down automatically.
Skinning so soon after being tranqed had taxed every ounce of J.J.’s
willpower. His hands shook as he strapped the katana on his back, in
easy reach over his left shoulder.
He was tensed for a fight when the doors opened, but the two guards
were on the ground, unconscious. The recessed amber lights flickered.
J.J. couldn’t be sure if he really saw a pair of flat black eyes melt into the
shadows, or if his mind was playing tricks.
Down here the alarms were muted. J.J.’s breath hung in the dank air.
In the pane of glass across the end of the hall, he watched himself
approach. Beside the bedraggled reflection of a slim boy in jungle
camouflage, the dark-haired woman in the gray jumpsuit waited
patiently, almost as though she had been expecting him.
J.J. touched the keypad on the wall, and a door to the side opened.
The prisoner turned gracefully and walked through it.
“Hello, Mother,” J.J. said.
Ursula LeRoi’s smile was thinner than a blade. “Hello, my pet.”
***
Dre insisted they leave the Yamaha at the entrance to the Burkes’
drive. While Leigh appreciated the need for stealth, this still made for a
long walk in the dark.
Leigh was not scared of the dark, all right? She was sixteen. But this
was like dark dark. No street lights. No headlights. Just trees. And some
creepy white star-shaped flowers that emitted a phosphorescent glow that
was almost scarier than the dark.
“Are you cold?” Dre asked.
Leigh shook her head. She was, a little, but as this was the first thing
he had said to her that hadn’t directly pertained to their mission, she
decided to take the opening. “You could have just asked me to dance,”
she said.
Dre glanced over at her. They were walking down the center of the
paved drive, stepping on shadows. “What?”
“At the concert last night. You’re mad because I danced with Will,
but you didn’t ask me to dance.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to dance.”
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“Girls always want to dance, okay? If you’re at a party, and there’s
dancing, just accept that every girl there wants somebody to ask her to
dance.”
“I meant I didn’t know you wanted to dance with me,” Dre said.
Leigh frowned. “Why wouldn’t I want to dance with you? I asked
you to go to the concert with me, didn’t I?”
“No. You asked me to ride with you. That’s not the same thing.”
Dre had stopped walking. Leigh did as well, hugging her elbows. The
living fence of trees behind them swayed in the wind. “Leigh, how long
have we gone to school together?”
“I don’t know,” Leigh said. “Two years?”
“In two years, how many times have you said hello to me in the
halls?”
“How many times have you said hello to me?” Leigh held up a hand
before Dre could protest. “Listen. I get the whole ‘I’m-a-werekin-andwe-had-to-stay-away-from-humans thing,’ for safety or whatever, but it’s
not like I knew that. I didn’t even know werekin existed until Werner
Regent tranqed me in my own house. I thought you saw me as some
spoiled little brat, like Shanti. So don’t act like I was being this big snob,
refusing to talk to you while you were trying to get my – ”
Dre clapped a hand over her mouth. Leigh was so insulted she nearly
bit him before she saw the headlights racing up the drive.
The car was big, some brand of SUV, and driving fast. Dre tumbled
Leigh sideways, into the bushes; almost before she felt the hot rush of
air, the car was gone, around the curve. By the light of the moon she
glimpsed the gabled roof of an enormous house above the treetops. The
SUV was heading straight for it, at ninety miles an hour.
Dre’s gloved hand slipped away from her mouth. Leigh was
sprawled on top of him; he had absorbed the brunt of their fall. “Are you
hurt?” she asked, breathlessly. Dre shook his head. They were close
enough for Leigh to appreciate that his bone structure was very fine, and
that those dorky clothes concealed a body less skinny than she had
originally believed. She felt her heart speed up to match his, and hoped
he couldn’t feel it through her sweater and her coat.
“We should keep moving,” he said.
Disappointed in some obscure way, Leigh got up, brushing white
petals off her jeans. Dre slipped his fingers into hers, leading her into the
trees – the driveway didn’t seem safe anymore – into darkness so
absolute it had density. “How do you know where you’re going?” Leigh
hissed, ducking a branch that snatched at her loose hair.
“Birds have excellent night vision,” Dre said.
“Bollocks, Alfaro. You’ve got that GPS thing out, don’t you?”
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Dre cackled wickedly.
Pretty soon the trees opened up into a silvery-green lawn that spilled
into a picturesque garden. Floodlights on the foundation lit up the
mansion’s stone façade in inverse pyramids. Sneaking uneasy glances at
the gargoyles on the roof, Leigh allowed Dre to pull her across a stone
bridge above an oily pond, over to a stone cottage trellised by more of
the weird white flowers. Leigh lifted her hair off her neck. She was
suddenly clammy with sweat.
“Okay.” Dre tucked the handheld computer into one of his multiple
pockets. “This is it. Are you ready?”
Ready for what? Leigh wondered, as he swung open the round
door…
She had to blink for her eyes to adjust. The cottage was like the ones
she had pictured when her dad used to read to her from Grimms’
Fairytales. The cold hearth. The dusty floor. The cracked washbasin and
wavy mirror. She started to ask if Little Red Riding Hood was in cahoots
with Ursula LeRoi, but Dre pressed a finger to his lips, nodding at the
hearth.
One of the bookcases beside it was open a quarter-inch, like
someone had tried to pull it shut behind them and it had gotten stuck.
Leigh shivered. A secret passageway. She couldn’t decide if she was
excited or terrified.
Dre inched across the room. Leigh followed, clinging to his hand.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” she whispered.
“How?” Dre whispered back. “The phones are down.”
“So? Do your bird call thing.”
“There aren’t any werebirds out here for me to call to. We’re too far
outside of town. The Alliance doesn’t guard out here.”
Leigh glanced nervously at the window. She thought something had
moved there, but it must have just been a tree branch blowing on the
wind; she didn’t see anything now. “Why not?”
“Burke has his own security.” Dre peered around the bookcase. “It’s
a ramp,” he said. “It looks steep. And it smells – wrong.” Leigh didn’t
smell anything except mildew, but the fact that Dre could did not settle
her nerves. His quick, dark eyes jumped back to her. “Stay close.”
Leigh nodded. The air, as they sidled by the bookcase, was cold and
damp, a sepulchral image she steadfastly resisted as Dre picked his way
along surefooted. He had slipped his gloves off. His hand was warm in
her icy one.
At the bottom, he swore.
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There were lights down here, green lights, along the edges of glass
cases lining a long, low room. Leigh shoved her hand into her mouth to
keep from gagging.
Inside the cases, dead animals had been preserved under glass: cats,
frogs, pigs, rats, chimpanzees, swimming in murky formaldehyde. In the
center of the room, inside an upright glass tank, a cadaver floated in
pinkish liquid. Not human. A Gen-0. Her mottled bluish-gray skin,
leeched of blood, had faded to the color of clay, but the tail that took the
place of her legs, scaled like a fish’s, retained its vivid emerald-green
coloring. Long, dark hair floated around her like seaweed. Below her
elbows were scaly fins, below her ears, two sets of delicate gills.
She was the saddest, most beautiful thing Leigh had ever seen.
Parked beside the tank was a metal table holding all manner of
medical implements. Judging by the jars of preserved organs lined up on
it, they had been used to dissect the mermaid girl. “What is this place?”
Leigh asked, on a shudder.
Dre shook his head. He had walked over to a table piled high with
medical charts. He picked something up; it was a rectangular card, with a
boy’s name written on it in blocky script. “Bryce Heilsdale,” Leigh read
aloud, over his shoulder. Her forehead wrinkled. “Aren’t these the blood
type cards that got stolen from school? What would Chimera want with –
”
She screamed. Off to their right, behind a door Leigh hadn’t seen,
something crashed.
Leigh did not see Dre grab one of the scalpels off the dissection
table. She barely saw him move, he moved so fast, yet suddenly the door
had been flung open, and she was looking into a room full of state-ofthe-art computer equipment. Two figures were grappling there. Dre
staggered back as the bigger one hurled the smaller one into the table
Leigh had been standing in front of. Screaming, she ducked out of the
way. “Connor!”
When she cried his son’s name, David Burke, on the threshold,
looked up at her. His teeth were bared; his face looked like a skull. Leigh
stumbled into the glass tank, transfixed by horror as Burke reached down
and picked Connor up by the throat, fingers sinking deep into Connor’s
flesh. Connor beat at his chest with his fists. His wheelchair had been
overturned inside the computer room, wheels spinning. Leigh could not
imagine what was happening.
Dre lunged. His arm slashed downward, and Burke released Connor
with a cry. A dark red line appeared on his cheek. Dre pivoted, bringing
the scalpel around again, but Burke backhanded him, sending him
crashing into the glass cases. Leigh screamed again.
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Connor had scrambled to his knees. That seemed wrong, but Leigh
didn’t have time to think about it: She saw him draw something from the
pocket of his letterman’s jacket, saw the green lights glint off of it as
Burke picked Dre up, by the arms, whispering to him as he set him on his
feet – Dre’s eyes widened – he shoved Burke aside, spinning to face
Connor – whatever Connor had thrown struck him, full in the chest –
There was a slow motion lapse between Dre’s small body going rigid
and him crumpling to the floor. The part of Leigh’s brain that continued
to function realized time had not actually slowed down, only her
perception of it. She was not aware of falling to her knees, bruising them
on the stone floor.
“No,” Connor whispered.
Leigh didn’t know why that got her frozen blood pumping again.
General Burke was bending over Dre like he meant to plunge the knife
buried there deeper into his chest. Leigh grabbed the metal dissection
tray and screamed, this time in fury, as she flew at him, swinging the
metal tray in a wide arc.
The arm Burke threw up was a second too late. The tray connected
with his temple, and he collapsed like a felled tree, shattering the glass
cases.
A syrupy flood of formaldehyde gushed over Leigh’s shoes. She
hardly noticed. She dropped the tray, and her bag, and fell to her knees
over Dre.
The ends of his glossy hair were soaked in chemicals. Red bubbles
frothed on his lips – he was trying to say her name. Shushing him, Leigh
laid her hands gently on either side of the blade. Just the hilt, formed in
the shape of a star, protruded from his breastbone, above his heart.
Silver will stop him from healing. Leigh heard Marshall’s voice like
he was standing next to her. She wished he was. Her little crush last fall
aside, Marshall had been like her big brother her whole life. She swiped
at her cheeks, then closed both hands around the hilt. Dre’s eyelids
fluttered.
One swift jerk and the knife was free. For a second, Leigh was sure
she had killed him. It was the longest second of her life before Dre took
another breath.
“Leigh, is he…”
Leigh glanced over. Connor had skittered back against the wall.
“He’s alive,” Leigh said. She didn’t know what to do with the bloody
knife, so she just dropped it. “But he’s hurt. We need to get him out of
here, and you, before your father wakes up…”
“Your phone.” Connor stuck his hand inside her bag. “I’ll call the
fort.”
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“The phones are dead. J.J. is the only one who knows we’re here,
but it might be hours before he starts to worry,” especially since he
hadn’t known Dre was bringing her along, Leigh didn’t add, “so I
guess…” Leigh took a breath, straightening out her tangled thoughts.
They needed to let the Alliance know what they had found here, but the
most immediate concern was getting Dre to a Healer. “I guess we can tie
your father up, and I’ll drive you guys back to the – ”
She never finished that sentence.
A shadow had appeared at the base of the ramp. Looking up, Leigh
saw that it was Seth. He had changed clothes, his ruined blue-and-gold
jersey traded for black camouflage. The blue dye had been washed out of
his hair; he would have been indistinguishable from J.J. had it not been
for his jaguar tattoos.
His golden eyes, when they fell on her, were blank of recognition.
“Are you all right?” he said.
He wasn’t asking her, Leigh realized. He was asking Connor.
“I’m fine,” Connor said. “Did you take care of Elke?”
“Regent did. He’s waiting with the car.”
Regent? Did he mean Werner Regent? Leigh started to ask what in
God’s name was going on, why Seth was working with Werner Regent,
but Connor had risen to his feet – which was just so incredible, Leigh
could only stare.
As Connor rose, he shucked his jacket off. To Leigh’s horror, his
arms were mottled bluish-gray like the Gen-0s’, stained purple by small
round bruises. Needle tracks. What had he done to himself? And what
had he done to Seth? Did Seth not see his little sister kneeling on the
floor over the body of his friend? He didn’t seem to. All he seemed to see
was Connor, who smiled as he dusted himself off, taking in Leigh’s
open-mouthed expression with obvious delight.
“Well, whatta you know,” he said. “I’m feeling much better.”
189
Chapter Fifteen: Call of the Wild
“I have a theory about how you stole the Source,” J.J. said.
Ursula LeRoi looked over at him with mild curiosity. On the plane –
Chimera maintained a private airfield outside of Fairfax – she had shed
her prison jumpsuit for jungle fatigues like J.J. and Cleo’s. In Manaus,
while J.J. had put his rusty Portuguese to use bartering for supplies from
a local contact in a rundown warehouse near the Rio Negro, she had
purchased a pair of oversized sunglasses and a green bandana to cover
her dark hair. She looked as at home in the rainforest gear as she would
have in her tailored black suit and white lab coat.
At the back of the canoe, which J.J. was guiding down the center of a
murky green stream, Cleo was asleep with her head on a waterproof
duffel bag. This was not the Amazon River. It was one of its many
offshoots, a slender thread stinking of rotted plant life, close-packed by
towering trees that screened out most of the dawn light. Algae grew like
aquatic grass along the banks. Heat seemed to rise in vapors out of the
thick brown mud between the trees, giving birth to clouds of gnats that
sang above green ferns. Colorful birds swooped and soared overhead. J.J.
stayed alert for the warning ripple of an alligator approaching their small
wooden craft. His chest and back were slick with sweat.
Jaguars could kill alligators, but J.J. was hoping it wouldn’t be
necessary. He was tired. Exhausted, more like: not yet fully recovered
from the poison in the tranq, running on the few hours’ sleep he had
managed to catch on the flight from Indiana to Brazil. He and Cleo had
traded off. Neither was comfortable leaving LeRoi unattended.
LeRoi took a sip from her metal canteen, offering it to J.J. before
clipping it back on her belt. The water tasted of metal. “What if I told
you I didn’t steal the Source?” she said.
“I’d say two evil geniuses trying to raise Lemuria is one serious
coincidence.”
LeRoi smiled. It was a knife-edged smile that suggested she was in
on a joke J.J. wasn’t, and he didn’t let on that it ruffled him. She could
have been lying simply to achieve that effect. With the dark glasses
hiding her eyes, it was harder for him to judge, although he might not
have been able to anyway. Ursula LeRoi was an excellent liar. Almost as
good as J.J. “So tell me your theory,” she said, leaning her elbows back
on the side of the canoe.
J.J. pulled the oars through the water in one long stroke. “The Source
was designed to open dimensional portals, to create a rift in space and
time,” he said. “That means it can travel through dimensions. It may
need full power to move from one dimension to another, but very little of
190
its magic would probably be needed to send it from one point to another
in the same dimension. I think that’s how the White Swan sent it and the
Tortoise Clan away from Lemuria to begin with. It’s how the Tortoise
Clan sent the Source from the Amazon to Fairfax the night you tried to
use it to steal the Ark. It’s how you got it off of the military base at
Roswell, and how you’ve been hiding it from our satellites ever since.
You’ve kept it on the move. Dimensional hopscotch.”
“Bravo, my pet.” LeRoi clapped politely.
“So where do you plan on raising Lemuria from?”
“I,” LeRoi delicately stressed the word, suggesting she wasn’t the
one trying to raise Lemuria now, “always intended to raise it from
Fairfax. No reason to risk moving the Ark.”
“I thought so. That’s why you brought the Black Swan to Fort King
after Regent collared her, rather than bringing the Ark to her.” J.J. pulled
the oars again, steering them toward the bank. Up ahead the stream split
around an enormous tree. He did not have to be told this was their
destination; he had seen those branches sweeping down from a great
curved bowl in every dream he had ever had of Lemuria. Elijah Bishop
had planted a tree just like it in the Royal Acres Cemetery, where he had
hidden the swan song. “What I’m not clear on is how you can raise an
island from the bottom of the ocean on land.”
“Remember that the laws of physics and the laws of magic are not
the same,” LeRoi said. Her tone was the one she always used when
discussing difficult concepts with J.J., patient but with an undercurrent of
condescension, giving him to understand he would never grasp anything
as fully as she did. Very different from Doc, who didn’t seem to
appreciate the depth of his brilliance. Of course megalomania was not a
flaw of Marshall’s. “What the Ark will raise is not an island. Lemuria
was a piece of the Totems’ world left behind for your kin, but the White
Swan destroyed it when she sank the Ark, the same way Earth will be
destroyed when the stargate opens. Nothing can restore what was
destroyed; Lemuria is ashes. What will rise is the ship that was left
behind there. A ship designed to travel through, and between,
dimensions. You can call that ship to any point on Earth where the
Source and the Ark are joined.”
“You know,” Cleo said, “the White Swan could have saved us all a
lot of trouble and just jettisoned the werekin off this rock eons ago,
instead of sinking Lemuria.”
The canoe had bumped up on the bank. J.J. didn’t know if that had
woken Cleo, or if she had been awake all along; her eyes were alert as
she sat up, stretching in a manner that wasn’t totally convincing. LeRoi
smiled frostily at her. She had seemed annoyed by Cleo’s presence on
191
the flight as well, like the huntress was intruding on her special alone
time with J.J.
Cleo helped him drag the canoe up the spongy bank and tie it off on
one of the huge trees that marched up the hillside, away from the stream.
J.J. shouldered the black duffel bag. “I can carry that,” Cleo said.
He shook his head. The remaining flecks of silver in his eyes were
still absorbing slowly into his gold irises, but a fresh wave of energy had
rolled over him as soon as he had set foot on the bank. “Which way?” he
said.
LeRoi pointed down a dirt path disappearing into the underbrush.
“This way. It’s a difficult hike. It will take us most of the day.”
For once, LeRoi was true to her word. The path sloped upward
gently, but the rainforest flanked them on all sides, an army of monstrous
trees trailing woody vines like hairy tentacles. Ferns grew shoulderheight along the trail, budded with jewel-bright flowers that gave off
strange, heady aromas. J.J., in the lead, had to hack a path with his
katana. Cleo brought up the rear. She never lowered her pistol from
LeRoi’s back.
At midday, they stopped on the banks of a small stream that spilled
over moss-covered rocks in miniature waterfalls. The rocks were
glassine, black as nighttime. Obsidian. J.J. looked up at the trees’ arcing
limbs as Cleo plopped down on one of the rocks, pistol resting on her
knee. LeRoi was taking strips of jerky and dried apples out of the pack
J.J. had shrugged off his shoulders, along with his fatigue jacket. They
were all sticky from the moist heat.
“This isn’t really the Amazon, is it?” J.J. said.
Cleo raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You’re not still wigged out
on potion, are you?”
J.J. made a face at her, and she grinned. “Look at these trees. Trees
don’t grow this tall even in the rainforest. And I’ve never seen flowers
like this, have you?” He pointed to the carpet of white star-shaped
flowers giving off a moonlit glow under the canopy’s endless twilight.
Their perfume was intoxicating.
Cleo shrugged. “There are all kinds of undiscovered species in the
rainforest, J.J.”
J.J. was undaunted. He knew he was right. He sensed power all
around them, calling to his blood. Power not of this Earth.
He sat down on a rock that hung out over the stream, swinging his
boots, and bit into the jerky LeRoi handed him. “You could hunt,” she
remarked conversationally. “Cleopatra and I wouldn’t mind to wait. You
must be starving, and the forest is teeming with game.”
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Cleo opened her mouth, but J.J. caught her eye. Not worth it. LeRoi
smiled, with just one corner of her narrow mouth. “Oh, I see. You’ve
decided to play housecat like your brother, is that it, my pet?”
“You know, Mother,” J.J. placed his katana on the rock beside him,
“it might work against your interests for me to follow the law of the
jungle.”
LeRoi laughed, silvery as the water tumbling over the rocks. “You
haven’t seen it, have you? What being here, in your natural habitat, has
done to you.” She swept her arm toward the stream. “Go on. Have a
look.”
She was baiting him. Sound judgment told J.J. to ignore her and get
moving again, they were wasting precious time, but curiosity got the
better of him – that, and Cleo’s sudden reluctance to look him in the eye.
Shifting forward, he peered into the stream.
Golden eyes stared back at him. Bright as suns, rounder, wider, more
metallic than human eyes were meant to be. His canines were sharp as
fangs. J.J. looked down at his hands gripping the edge of the rock. His
nails were claw-tipped, pale spots blooming on his bare, hard-muscled
arms, the tips of his ears elongated to points. Long whiskers even
sprouted around his nose. He sucked in a breath.
J.J. knew he was both, a cat and a boy, but his skins had never been
this close to fused. He hadn’t even felt the magic in his blood stir. It was
like this was his natural state, the separation of his two skins a mask he
wore.
“Don’t you see, Jeremy?” LeRoi leaned over so she was watching
his reflection with him. The long braid of her hair fell between them,
brushing J.J.’s arm. “This is what you are. Your true face. Lemuria was a
tiny piece of another, pristine world. If you help me open the stargate,
you can go there. You know you don’t belong in this world. You belong
in that one. Can’t you see the freedom I’m offering you, and all of your
kin who join with us?”
“At the expense of Earth.” A hiss slid under J.J.’s words. “You want
to open a doorway to a new world at the expense of this one. We won’t
help you do that.”
“A ruined world.” LeRoi’s gaze had snared J.J.’s in the water. “A
world too polluted to survive. A world crowded with people too ignorant
to live in peace. Why would the Black Swan have been born now if the
Totems weren’t telling you this planet is beyond saving?”
She cupped J.J.’s face in her hands, tearing his eyes away from the
wild, alien creature in the water. She had taken off her glasses. Her eyes
were stormy gray, the fingers stroking J.J.’s cheeks cool and dry as
snakeskin. A shudder of suppressed magic rippled down J.J.’s spine.
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LeRoi had never touched him like this when he wasn’t collared. She had
never dared get this close. “Jeremy, my pet, my beautiful boy, I know
you have asked yourself that very question. I know you have seen how
this world ends. And you came for me, for me, when the Alliance failed
you, because you knew I would forgive you for betraying me. I should
have seen how much you love your brother. I should have understood
you would do anything to protect him. But I never meant to hurt him.
Those were lies Ben Schofield fed to you. I only needed Seth’s blood to
complete the Ark, so I could do what I swore I would do when Bishop
and I found the Ark: take you home.”
“Let go of him.”
Cleo’s voice acted on J.J. like a bucket of ice water. He sprang back
from LeRoi, further, faster than any human could have, coming up in a
crouch against the nearest tree. Some frozen creature had crawled into
his chest and begun to melt there, seeping ice into his veins. He felt
rather than saw the rosettes fade from his arms, the whiskers melt from
his cheeks.
He was shaking with the memory of a dream, his twin collared and
betrayed, by him. God help him, for a moment there, when LeRoi had
said home, he had been tempted to believe her.
LeRoi looked coolly over her shoulder at Cleo. “What I have to say
to my son does not concern you, Cleopatra.”
“He’s not your son, and he’s not your pet.” Cleo looked at LeRoi
down the barrel of the pistol she had aimed at her head. “You collared
him for seventeen years. You ordered him to kill his own father. You
tortured both of us, and you enjoyed every second of it. You’re the one
who should be asking for his forgiveness, so stop with the mind games,
bitch, or I’ll pull this trigger and show you how this ends.”
LeRoi’s smile cut like a blade. “Poor Cleopatra. How you do love
him. But he doesn’t love you, does he? No.” She shook her head, poised
on the lip of the rock like she might spring. “Because he’s an animal, and
his loyalty is to his own. You should have remained loyal to me, my
dear. Once I collared Seth, I could have made you the breeding partner
for them both. That’s the only way you would ever have had either of
them.”
Most girls would have blushed. Cleo paled. J.J. cried out, seeing her
finger move on the trigger – but Cleo was only lowering the gun as she
turned on her heel and strode off into the trees.
Cursing under his breath, J.J. sheathed the katana across his back and
pointed at LeRoi. “Stay,” he said.
He didn’t look back to see if she obeyed. He didn’t care. The jungle
was J.J.’s domain. If his prey ran, he would find her.
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Cleo had a good head start on him. Even with his werekin speed, this
still meant it took J.J. more than a mile to catch up to her.
When he did, she was standing stock-still in a valley between two
tree-covered hills, in a circle of those strange white flowers. Her back
was to J.J., and he didn’t immediately see what she was staring at. Out
from under the canopy, the sun was punishingly bright. He shaded his
eyes with his hand. “Cleo – ”
Something hissed.
J.J. heard it, and he saw Cleo spin around, away from the trees at the
edge of the valley; he did not see her fall, as he was leaping, skinning in
the air, landing on four paws in front of the jaguar as she bounded out of
the tree toward her prey.
The jaguaress hissed again, shrinking back from this new danger in
her path. J.J. hissed back at her. She was a young cat, with none of the
spark in her round golden eyes that J.J. had in his. No humanity. She was
purely animal. A different breed of intelligence from his, yet an
intelligence all the same.
Black rosettes rippled along her spine. Her tawny fur was sleek, her
long tail banded black. The black jaguar twitched his whiskers at her,
laying his ears back in warning. She tilted her wedge-shaped head. J.J.
tilted his at the same time, capturing her gaze.
The snick of this lock being turned was unlike anything J.J. had ever
felt. There were no thoughts. There were sensations – sight, smell, sound,
taste, touch – that gave an impression of her life in the rainforest: a cool
den under an outcropping of rock, a stream perfect for bathing, a marshy
meadow fertile with peccaries and caiman…
J.J. broke the contact with a low whine. Cautiously, the wild jaguar
lay down on her side, baring her snowy chest to him. Accepting the
invitation, J.J. crept forward and sniffed her experimentally. She batted at
him with a paw; he batted back, tongue lolling as he danced away.
Laughing.
The wild jaguar rolled to her feet, tail twitching as she tracked him
with her eyes.
“Would you two like to be alone?”
The wild jaguar did not move when the black cat disappeared and the
blonde boy appeared in his stead. J.J. knelt in the grass, plucking a weed
and sticking it in the side of his mouth. “Can I help it if she finds me
attractive?” he said. “I am one good-looking cat.”
“Just as long as she doesn’t find you good enough to eat,” Cleo said.
“She won’t hurt me,” J.J. said. To prove it, he extended a hand to
the jaguar. She sniffed it, nudged it with her snout, then, seeming to
decide this was less entertaining than a romp, she streaked off into the
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shadows under the trees. J.J. closed his eyes halfway. Peace be with you,
sister.
An echo, not words, something deeper, rebounded through him, and
he smiled.
“That’s rare,” Cleo said.
She had stretched out beside him in the grass. The white flowers
formed a crown behind her dark head. Where they touched skin, they left
behind a silvery residue that smelled like nighttime; she brushed some
off her cheek, smudging a streak under her eye.
“What’s rare?” J.J. asked, lying back beside her. The sun was a gold
disc in the white sky, for miles around the only two things, aside from
the flowers, that weren’t green.
“For you to smile like that,” Cleo said.
“You heard LeRoi. I am in my natural habitat. Apparently it suits
me.”
Cleo shot him a slantwise glare. “Stop doing that.”
“What?”
“Deflecting. You’ve been deflecting since I came back from
Roswell. And don’t say you haven’t,” she said, rolling onto her side with
her chin propped in her hand. “I’ve asked you a dozen times how Seth is,
and you just say you don’t know. When I ask how you are, you make
some pithy remark.”
“My remarks are not pithy,” J.J. said. “They’re sarcastic.”
“I rest my case,” Cleo said.
J.J. sighed as he sat up. He was not unaware of time passing, or of
the woman they had left back at the stream, but Cleo was right. He
hadn’t given her a single straight answer this entire trip. She was risking
her life just by being here. He owed her honesty, at least. “I don’t know
how Seth is because every time I try to reach out to him, all I feel is the
sense that he’s there, that he’s alive, but that I can’t reach him.”
“Why?”
Cleo’s voice was soft. J.J. glanced at her. Lying in his shadow, her
eyes were a purplish shade of blue, the streak of white flower-pollen on
her cheekbone like stardust. “It’s happened before. After you showed
him how Dad died, he was so furious with me he shut me out.”
“And you think he’s shutting you out now because you helped
LeRoi escape?”
“I didn’t tell him what I was planning. I asked him to free me from
that collar, and to let the Commanders believe his power was my power.
Then I turn around and free the one person on this planet he hates more
than anyone: Ursula LeRoi.” J.J. took the weed out of his mouth and
tossed it away, into the grass.
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“J.J., Seth trusts you,” Cleo said, softly. “He knows you wouldn’t
betray him, or any of us. He knows this is part of your plan, even if he –
even if none of us know what that plan is.”
“How can he?” J.J. turned his head to look at her, really look at her,
letting their gazes meet and hold for longer than a few seconds. “Look
what I did to Cam. Look at the mess I made, everything Seth wanted out
of his life – ”
“You didn’t do that, J.J. Someone was poisoning you. It’s a miracle
they didn’t kill you feeding you that much potion.” Cleo sat up, too. She
didn’t touch J.J., but they were sitting very close; he could feel the heat
of her sun-kissed skin. It made him aware of his own skin, of how it felt
against hers when they fought. “If he’s shutting you out now, I think it’s
to protect you. Maybe Burke is trying to force him to track you down
like LeRoi always wanted you to track Seth down, all those years in
captivity when you shut him out for his own good.”
“Maybe,” J.J. said, unconvinced.
He had uprooted another weed. Cleo took it out of his fingers,
covering the back of his scarred hand with her rough palm. “How are
you?” she asked, gently.
J.J. couldn’t even say he didn’t know. He was too many things at
once. Tired. Anxious. Confused. He rested his temple against Cleo’s
forehead, breathing in the sweet scent of the flowers around them, and
the sharper scent of their sweat. “Cleo, why did you come back?”
Implicit in the question was his knowledge of why she had left in the
first place. J.J. had seen Cleo’s face in the cemetery when Seth had run to
Marshall. J.J. was a telepath. Not many thoughts were hidden from him.
Even ones he would rather not have known.
“How can you want to touch me?” Cleo whispered, the pad of her
thumb sliding over the lacelike scars on J.J.’s fair skin. “After what I did
to you, how do you not hate me?”
While this did not answer the question, J.J. thought perhaps it did,
and his unspoken one of what had sent her away from Fairfax to begin
with. “You did what I wanted you to do,” he said roughly. “If anyone
deserves the blame for that day, it’s me, not you.”
“Why? Because you didn’t kill me like you should have?”
“Because I didn’t tell you what McLain and I had planned.”
That brought Cleo’s head up. J.J. drew his knees up and laid his
cheek against them, hands locked behind them, out of sight. He hated
that his scars caused her pain. More pain than they had ever caused him.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said. “But that fight had to be absolutely real.
LeRoi had to believe we would have killed each other. I knew the only
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way to make you want to kill me was for you to think I would have killed
you.”
“But why?” Cleo sounded like this was the part she had never
understood. “Why put yourself through that just to save me? Why torture
yourself all those years in the Scholae Bestiarii when I wouldn’t follow
orders and torture you myself?”
“It wasn’t selfless.” J.J.’s voice was harsh. He was sick of being
treated like a hero. He was not a hero. “The trainers wouldn’t have just
punished you for disobeying. They would have forced me to punish you,
and I would have had to do it or else LeRoi would have known I wasn’t
really bought into her whole master-and-slave dominatrix game. Then
she would have hooked me up to a silver drip until I broke and found
Seth for her. I couldn’t stand that. I wanted to protect both of you. Don’t
you see how weak I really am? I could hurt myself, Cleo, but I could
never hurt you.”
He looked away, jaw clenched.
“J.J., you are not weak.” Cleo spoke fiercely. “Look what Doc did –
sacrificing himself because he couldn’t stand for Seth to be tortured, but
he couldn’t stand to give up Caroline, either. You didn’t call him weak,
did you?”
When J.J. didn’t respond, she shifted closer to him. “You want to
know why I came back to Fairfax? I knew something was wrong with
you. I could hear it in your voice the night you called. Then I talked to
Seth, and he was worried about you, too.”
“Seth,” J.J. said, flatly. “You came back for Seth.”
“I would have come back for Seth, if I had thought he needed me.
But I thought you needed me, so I came back for you.”
Cleo stood up.
She didn’t just stand up, though. She turned her back on him, and J.J.
remembered, although it was hazy from the potion, the look on her face
when she had seen him with Quinn at the game. He got to his feet as well
and stood behind her. Sweat had left her short hair damp in the back.
There was a tiny star-shaped mark on the bony knob at the top of her
spine, like a scar, or a birthmark.
“She wouldn’t have done it, you know,” he said.
Cleo stiffened. “Who wouldn’t have done what?”
“LeRoi. She wouldn’t have made us breeding partners. She never
allowed hunters and werekin to breed. Do you know why?”
“No,” Cleo said shortly.
“Because she wanted hunters to see werekin as animals.” J.J. had
never needed to be gentle with Cleo – in a fight, she could hold her own
– but he was gentle now as he set his hands on her shoulders from
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behind. “She wanted us to hate each other. Hunters and werekin, natural
born enemies. Except we’re not. We’re the same, under the skin. Our
blood is the same.”
“J.J., I never thought of you as an animal.” Cleo was all but
whispering. “I tried to, but – I never could think of you as anything
except J.J.”
“And I never thought of you as my enemy,” J.J. said.
He dipped his head. As his lips touched that small white mark on her
neck, Cleo’s spine arched; then she had turned in his arms, and her hands
slid into his hair as his mouth found hers.
There was nothing hurried about it. No frenzy of fire, no potion
exploding in his veins: The only heat between the two of them was the
heat that had always been there. J.J. didn’t have to think about how to
kiss Cleo, he just knew, like he knew how to breathe. And Cleo knew
how to kiss him, nudging his lips apart with hers, tracing the sensitive
skin on the nape of his neck with maddeningly gentle sweeps of her
thumbs.
J.J. had never wanted anything like he wanted this – not warmth, not
sunlight, not even air. His hands ran down Cleo’s arms to her hips,
edging under her T-shirt, onto the damp skin of her flat stomach. She
was scarred, as scarred as he would have been if his wounds hadn’t
always healed. J.J. didn’t mind the scars. She wouldn’t have been Cleo
without her scars.
“Tell me this is real,” he whispered, against her mouth. “Tell me this
isn’t a dream, because I’ve dreamed about you so many times – ”
“It’s not a dream,” Cleo gasped, losing her breath as his hands
moved up her sides, under her shirt. “It’s real, and I – ”
He silenced her with a kiss, the type of kiss that said just how far his
dreams of her had gone. Cleo stumbled back into the tree the wild jaguar
had leapt out of. J.J. pinned her there with his body, raising his arms for
her to slide his shirt off over them. They were both shaking. This might
have been their first kiss, but it had been years in the making.
Cleo put her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back a little. J.J.
cupped her face, doing his best to control his breathing. “Am I – are we
going too fast? We can – slow down – ”
“What about Quinn?”
Jerking back, J.J. stared at Cleo incredulously. He felt like she had
just sliced him with a blade. “What about her?”
“I know you care about her. Are you sure – ” Cleo blushed
suddenly; they were close enough J.J. felt the heat of it “ – are you sure
this is what you want?”
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Could she not feel how much he wanted her? It was taking every
ounce of J.J.’s willpower not to take this any further than they already
had. It wasn’t like he had planned for an interlude in the rainforest. He
didn’t have protection with him, and he doubted Cleo did, either. “Quinn
isn’t like us,” he said. “She has school, and basketball.”
“That’s not an answer, J.J.,” Cleo said, softly.
Maybe not, but it was the only answer J.J. had. “What about Seth?”
he said, figuring turnabout was fair play. “Are you sure you wouldn’t
rather be doing this with him?”
“Goodness,” said a bemused voice. “This is awkward.”
Holding onto Cleo’s waist, stopping her from pulling away from
him, J.J. turned, languidly, to face LeRoi, who was standing in the
middle of the valley. When he did not move away from Cleo, from the
corner of his eye, he saw the motherly mask LeRoi had worn back at the
creek slip. The eyes behind her dark glasses sparked like blades of ice.
That’s your true face, Mother, he thought.
LeRoi smoothed a silky smile back over her sculpted features.
Through some unexplained mystery of nature, she managed to appear
cool and collected even in the steamy heat. “If you two are finished,” she
said, “you might be interested to know that we’re here.”
J.J. slid his shirt back on. Darkly flushed, Cleo had stepped back
from him and was setting herself to rights. “Can you be a little more
specific?” he said. “Where is ‘here’?”
“‘Here’ is there.” LeRoi pointed, at the hill J.J. had mistaken for,
well, a hill. Only now, on closer inspection (or had it not been there
before?), he saw that the grass was growing over gray stone, not brown
earth, and that while the features of the statue had long since weathered
away, the shape was unmistakable. A long neck. Four stumpy legs.
Domed shell of a back.
They had found the Tortoise Clan.
***
When Leigh woke up, she couldn’t at first figure out why her mouth
tasted of bile, or why, more importantly, she was lying on a marble floor
veined with silver like rivers of starlight, under a dome buttressed by
black wood. Through the bars of a silver birdcage, she could see a wide
center aisle splitting dozens of rows of intricately-carved wooden pews.
A deep fissure ran up one side of the dome, webbing outward in smaller
cracks. Plaster dust lay like snow on the floor beneath it.
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Then she saw Dre slumped against the bars nearby, and everything
came flooding back. The cottage. The underground lab. Connor throwing
a knife at Burke; Dre stepping in front of him; and Seth –
Leigh sat up, pushing tangled hair behind her ears. Her coat and
shoes had been removed. The back of her neck was sore as a wasp’s
sting. She had fought when they tried to carry her up the ramp back at the
cottage, but Connor had managed to inject her with something that had
sent her spinning into darkness.
“Can I offer you a drink?”
Leigh spun around. A mistake, as her head was still wobbly on her
neck. “Screw you, Connie,” she spit out, steadying herself against the
bars.
Kneeling on the other side, Connor smiled. How could she have ever
thought he was cute? His features were perfect. Like they had been
chiseled from ice. All of the easy warmth that had made him so
appealing was gone from his hazel eyes; the heat in them now was the
kind of burn that might come from touching a glacier. “Now, now, Miss
Adleigh,” Connor said. “Language. You are in a church. Or what used to
be a church.”
Leigh glanced around. She hadn’t spent much time in churches, since
Jack was a staunch agnostic, but she recognized the rows of pews, the
crucifixes on the stone walls, the red-and-black stained glass windows as
belonging inside a cathedral. Falling stars were etched into the window
behind the altar, the reflected pattern scattered across the walls. The sun
shone through the window, riding high in the cloudless sky. It had to be
midmorning. Her parents would be looking for her, and J.J., and – Seth,
she thought again, and straightened.
“What have you done with Seth?”
Connor’s lazy smile stretched wider. He had donned his red-andblack Warriors jacket again, covering his mottled arms. His jeans had a
patch sewn on one knee. “He’ll be back soon. I sent him to the library to
finish translating those glyphs.”
“This is your school?” Leigh’s voice was raspy.
“Yes, but today is Sunday, so don’t bother screaming. There isn’t
anyone around to hear. And on the off-chance you still happen to be here
tomorrow, the cathedral hasn’t been used in years. The storm damage
was the last straw. Father Andrew had it walled off.” Connor pointed at
the long crack in the ceiling. Explained the cobwebs lacing the blownglass wall sconces and the faint smell of mildew underlying a fainter
smell of incense, Leigh thought.
Connor passed a bottle of water through the bars. “You should drink
this. Sleeping potion dehydrates you.”
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Leigh scooted over to take the bottle. The cage was tall enough for
her to stand up in, but her legs didn’t feel ready to hold her yet. “Was it
you who stole the Source?” she asked, after a few sips.
Connor shrugged. “That’s what Operation Swan Song is calling it.
Seth says the glyph for it implies more about origination than a power
supply.”
And why was Seth sharing this information with the enemy? Leigh
screwed the cap back on the water bottle. “Why are you doing this?”
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to reveal to you all of my
diabolical plans?” Connor leaned back on his palms. He was sitting
cross-legged just outside the cage. Leigh wanted to grab him by the
lapels and bash his smug face into the bars. “All you need to know is that
I do have a plan. One you weren’t supposed to get caught up in, but you
showed up at a very unfortunate time, and thus, here we are.” He
frowned over his shoulder. A door to his left, leading into what looked
like a choir room, was ajar. Someone was rustling around inside of it.
“People are going to be looking for me, Connor,” Leigh said.
“I’m sure they are.” He turned back to her. “But right now, all
anybody knows is that you’re missing. I doubt they’ll think to look for
you at Sacred Heart Academy, since nobody suspects me of any
wrongdoing. They probably think J.J. offed you before he busted my
mother out of prison and ran off with her and Cleo.”
Leigh stared at him. “Your mother?”
“Oh, you don’t know? I guess Seth kept his word not to tell. My
mother is Ursula LeRoi.”
Okay. So much about this was just wrong. “J.J. busted Ursula LeRoi
out of prison?” Leigh said.
“I knew he would, if I could shake the Alliance up enough. J.J.
always has to control everything.” Connor’s lip curled. Leigh had known
Connor and J.J. disliked one another. She had not realized Connor truly
hated her brother. Why? Because Ursula LeRoi had invested more in him
than in her own son? “Now he’s off to find the Tortoise Clan, trying to
prevent a war that has always been inevitable, and McLain will devote
the full might of Operation Swan Song to searching for him, and that will
make what I have planned so much easier. My mother,” Connor leaned
forward like he was confiding something vital to Leigh, “is a very useful
scapegoat.”
Impressed with yourself much? Leigh thought. She didn’t say it,
though, for Dre had stirred.
She crawled over to him. The water had helped clear her head, but
she was still weak. “Dre?”
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At her voice, his eyelids fluttered. His shirt had been removed; an
ugly red line was scored across his chest, where the knife had pierced his
heart. Leigh had heard Seth say there were some injuries even werekin
couldn’t recover from. The sleeves of her white angora sweater were
stained rust-red from where she had pulled the knife out of him. Even
though Dre wasn’t bleeding anymore, Leigh didn’t like how ashy his
skin was, or the blue cast to his lips.
An ornate silver torc, singed around the edges, circled his neck.
Leigh looked back at Connor, crouched like a young lion on the other
side of the bars. “Take it off him,” she said angrily.
“I don’t think so.” Connor placed the small silver key on the altar,
tantalizingly out of Leigh’s reach. “Werekin are powerful creatures.
They need to be controlled. My mother’s first mistake was forgetting
that. Believing their loyalty could be bought, or earned.”
“So she left you in charge when she got caught?”
“Are you asking me if I’ve been plotting this all along?” Connor
sounded amused. Of all the times it would have paid to be able to skin.
Leigh would have mauled Connor Burke in a second if she’d had the
power. “I suppose that depends on what you mean by all along. Since I
reached the age of five and become smarter than either of my parents? Or
since Derek Childers and Aaron Gideon did me the favor of maiming me
and waking me up from the enchantment that Gen-0 lizard freak put me
under?”
Leigh’s hand tightened around Dre’s. His fingers were ice-cold.
“When did Xanthe enchant you?”
“Four years ago. After my mother let me in on her little pet project,
and my father found out I knew.”
He had lived with his mother back East, Leigh recalled Connor
saying. To think she had felt sorry for him because his parents were
divorced. “Your mother must be so proud,” she said, sarcastically. “Evil
genius seems to run in the family.”
“I like to think I’m a different breed than either of my parents,”
Connor said, as the door behind him opened the rest of the way.
Leigh’s mouth fell open. She did not know who she had been
expecting, but it had not been Aaron Gideon.
He looked flabbier than ever, Leigh observed unkindly, gross and
sweaty in his lab coat and ill-fitting trousers, skin the grayish-white of a
poisonous mushroom. Behind his thick glasses, his muddy brown eyes
were bulging. “He’s not cooperating,” he informed Connor.
“Of course he’s not cooperating,” Connor said. “That’s when you
persuade him.”
“My methods appear to be ineffective,” Gideon said, stiffly.
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Connor sighed. “Watch them for a minute,” he ordered, and got up
and went through the door.
It closed behind him. Gideon leered at Leigh through the bars.
Disgusting. He always had been a perv. The sort of teacher who tried to
walk behind you on the stairs if you were wearing a short skirt. “Nice job
turning your boss into a science experiment,” Leigh sneered. By force of
will she had not reacted to Dre’s fingers abruptly tightening around hers,
pressing something into her palm – the first sign he had given of being
truly awake.
“Who, Connor?” Gideon shook his head bemusedly. “Oh no, Miss
Steward. The credit for that goes to Marshall Townsend. He’s even more
brilliant than Wesley, which is saying something.”
“Marshall would never work with you,” Leigh said fiercely.
“No,” Gideon agreed, “but Marshall Townsend was the one to
design a delivery method for strengthening potion that would allow a
human system to withstand infusions of Gen-0 blood. Not that he
envisioned it being used that way – he was just trying to save Connor’s
life. Still it was the piece we needed to achieve something Chimera had
attempted several times before, but the human subjects never survived.”
Leigh thought of the mermaid girl floating in her tank. She stood up.
She had to hold onto the bars for balance, but that was all right. Gave her
an excuse to keep her hands behind her back. “Who was she?”
Gideon looked up from cleaning his glasses on the hem of his lab
coat. “Who was who?”
“That girl you cut up back there in your Frankenstein laboratory.”
“I don’t bother about specimens’ names, Miss Steward.” Blinking
slowly like some vile life-sized insect, Gideon returned his glasses to his
nose. “Elijah Bishop was the one to start the nonsense of naming those
things. To me, they are all numbers. Your brother, for instance, is
Specimen Number 4331-dash-7. Your boyfriend there, whose
remarkable brain I am very much looking forward to dissecting, is
Specimen Number 8102-dash-7. Giving them names implies they are
human, like you or I. The fact is, Miss Steward, they are not.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Leigh, “call you a human.”
She struck. The scalpel in her hand crossed the bars, and would have
plunged into Gideon’s fleshy neck, if a hand hadn’t gripped her wrist.
Leigh screamed as her arm was cruelly twisted. Her hand opened;
the scalpel pinged off the marble floor. It was kicked away from the bars
with a booted foot before Dre could seize it.
“Doesn’t anybody check prisoners for weapons anymore?” Seth
wondered aloud.
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He released Leigh and she staggered back, cradling her arm. The
pain was sickening, though not as sickening as Seth’s round golden eyes
looking not at her but through her, like she was a perfect stranger.
“Seth,” she whispered.
He wrinkled up his nose. God, how many times had she seen J.J. do
that? He looked just like him. Okay, they were identical twins, but Seth
had never moved like J.J. J.J. was contained. Seth was fluid. Seth smiled.
J.J. smirked.
“I’m not Seth,” Seth said.
No shit, Leigh thought. Seth would never have broken her arm. “You
are too. You’re my brother. Seth Michael Sullivan. They’ve done
something to you, put some kind of spell on you, like they did Mom – ”
“My mother abandoned me,” Seth said coldly. “She and my father
handed me over to Chimera Enterprises to be trained.”
“No. That’s not true.” Leigh wrapped her good hand around the
bars, trying to see past the screen that had been pulled over Seth’s eyes.
Dre had passed out again. Moving even the littlest bit had sapped the few
ounces of strength he had regained. He needed a Healer.
Just by looking at Seth, Leigh knew what had happened to him was
not like what had happened to J.J. when he had been drugged. Then he
had still been J.J., just amplified. This was like when her mother used to
kneel at J.J.’s grave, vividly recalling the death of a son who had not
died. Enchantments didn’t wear off like potions. It had taken seeing J.J.
alive to break the enchantment Chimera had placed on her mother. What
would it take to break Seth free from his?
“Seth, look at me,” Leigh pleaded. “I’m your sister. You grew up
Underground, in Philadelphia with Ben Schofield and Naomi Franklin. If
you were raised in captivity, where is your brand?” Seth blinked. Leigh
pressed on. “You and I only met a few weeks ago. I gave you that charm
you’re wearing – ”
“This bauble?” Connor had appeared out of nowhere. Deftly he
plucked the pewter jaguar charm off Seth’s neck, balled the leather cord
up, and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. The momentary darkening of
Seth’s eyes lightened, turning them opaque as sun-gilded glass again. “I
bought that for Jeremy. Our little joke.”
Jeremy. Oh God. Understanding hit Leigh, and she almost fell down
again. “You – you made him believe he’s J.J.?”
“Quit calling me that. I didn’t keep the stupid nickname my father
gave me. I go by Jeremy.” Seth looked at her with thinly disguised
impatience. A look J.J. had perfected. Leigh wanted to scream. It was
like Seth had been hollowed out, and a puppet that could perfectly mimic
his twin was speaking and acting in his stead.
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Connor leaned in to the bars. He smelled like salt and rust. Before
Leigh could draw back, he had picked up her broken wrist, not gently,
and stabbed a needle into it. Leigh cried out. “Calm down,” Connor said,
shaking his long hair back from his face. “It’s just healing potion. I don’t
have any interest in torturing you, Leigh.” He dropped his voice lower.
“As for what your brother believes, you want to be very careful about
trying to break a spell as powerful as the one I’ve put him under. You
could damage his mind, even destroy it. As long as he’s under the spell, I
can make him believe anything. Just like your father had Xanthe do to
your mother.”
“Seth is still in there,” Leigh hissed back at him. “He survived being
collared. He’ll find a way out of whatever you’ve done to him.”
“You think so?” Smirking, Connor turned and held out a hand to
Seth. “Kiss me,” he said.
Seth grabbed his outstretched hand, pulled Connor forward, and
kissed him.
From the night they had met in her kitchen, Leigh had never seen
Seth look at another boy besides Marshall. Yet he was kissing Connor
now with abandon, soft, hungry kisses that implied a history of long
intimacy that simply did not exist, and Connor, clearly relishing the little
show he was putting on, was slanting his mouth across his, teasing him.
Seth growled in the back of his throat. He was stronger than Connor, and
the taller boy laughed as Seth spun them around, trapping him against the
bars, and sealed his mouth with his.
“Stop it!” Leigh smacked the bars. A zing of pain shot through her
healing wrist, but she was too furious to care. “You are sick, Connor, he
doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
“That’s not fair.” Connor wrapped his arms around Seth’s waist,
smiling sideways at Leigh as he brought their foreheads together. His lips
were red as strawberries. “Your brother is an excellent kisser.”
“That is not what I meant,” said Leigh, through her teeth. “He
doesn’t know who he is. I bet you even made him forget Marshall, didn’t
you?”
“Hmm,” was all Connor said. He didn’t need to say anything else.
Seth’s expression hadn’t even flickered at Marshall’s name. Leigh hated
Connor Burke right then, more than she had ever hated anyone, for
taking Marshall from Seth.
Gideon cleared his throat. Like the pervert he was, he had been
standing off to the side, eagerly taking in Connor’s display. “There is the
small matter of the Ark still to attend to,” he said.
His tone was obsequious. Leigh wondered if he saw the flash of
distaste in Connor’s face as he let go of Seth. “You’re right,” he sighed.
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“Duty calls.” He saluted, a mockery, Leigh assumed, of his father, which
begged the question of where General Burke was. She glanced at the
closed choir room door. “We shouldn’t be long. Tell Regent not to get
frisky. I want them both alive when we get back.”
“Of course,” Gideon said, silkily.
Leigh stood still as a stone until Gideon had waddled out of the room
after Connor and Seth. Only when she was finally alone did she slide
down beside Dre, rest her forehead against the bars, and give up on
fighting tears.
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Chapter Sixteen: The Stars Are Fire
Whitney Townsend hadn’t known Will McLain all that long, but she
was certain it was rare to see him unshaven, uniform wrinkled, sitting
with his head in his hands.
The table McLain was resting his elbows on was the long mahogany
one in the Stewards’ dining room. There was an ugly scratch on his
cheek someone had taped together with butterfly strips, and a gash on his
wrist crusted over with blood. Whitney had not been at the fort to see the
chimera fountain come to life, but Emery had told her it had taken
McLain lobbing a grenade under it to stop its rampage. Miraculously, no
one had been seriously injured.
Nevertheless, as distractions went, Whitney was inspired by
Agathon’s ingenuity.
“Has anyone heard from Burke?” McLain asked, into his hands.
“Not since last night, sir.” Kate Jensen wasn’t usually so formal
with McLain, who was her cousin after all, but things with Operation
Swan Song were fairly tense right now. Sitting over against the bay
window, through which Whitney could see the front porch of her own
house, Emery was gnawing freely on the end of his ponytail. “Connor
said he came home late and left early for Washington. Do you want me
to try his numbers again?”
McLain nodded, and Jensen hurried out through the French doors.
Caroline McLain, swathed in a hot pink bathrobe like one of Leigh’s, bit
her lip, looking after Jensen like she wanted to go with her but wasn’t
sure she was allowed.
Marshall draped his arm across the back of her chair. He was even
paler than McLain; they had both been awake all night, Marshall at the
hospital with Cam, McLain at Fort King sorting out the aftermath of
LeRoi’s prison break. Jack Steward had been with him, overseeing the
work-in-progress efforts of the Alpha Clan to memory-wipe every
spectator at the sectionals tournament. From what Whitney understood,
twenty-four hours later the communications freeze was starting to raise
more questions than it was helping to contain the problem. Televisions,
radios, and cell phones had been nothing but static for more than a day.
The decision to lift the net that had been dropped over Fairfax would
have to come from McLain. With Burke MIA, he was in charge. And his
day, Whitney thought sympathetically, just kept getting worse. LeRoi
had escaped. J.J. and Cleo had vanished. The sheet music Seth had been
translating, that had cost Emery’s dad his life, was nowhere to be found,
and neither was Seth. Then half an hour ago, Lydia Steward had showed
up on the Townsends’ doorstep in a panic because Leigh’s bed hadn’t
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been slept in. Whitney had immediately called the fort and asked to
speak to McLain.
Which was how they had all ended up here, in the Stewards’ dining
room. Coffee and muffins sat untouched in the center of the table. The
big wooden clock on the wall announced that it was ten-twenty-two,
backed up by the sunshine gilding the Stewards’ front yard.
“What are you thinking, Will?” Jack asked, from the end of the
table. Lydia was sitting next to him. Her oval face was as colorless as her
silk robe.
“I think we need to keep Washington in the dark about what’s going
on here for as long as possible.” McLain ran his hands distractedly
through his hair as he sat up. “Agathon insists J.J. took LeRoi to help
him find the Tortoise Clan. I believe him, but I doubt anyone else is
going to see it that way. General Burke, assuming we ever get in touch
with him, could decide to declare J.J. a traitor. In that case, the order will
be to shoot on sight.”
Jack covered Lydia’s hand with his. She had pressed her other fist
against her mouth like she was forcing down a scream. “And Seth and
Leigh?”
“We’re combing the city, but at this point, I think we have to
assume Werner Regent, or someone else working with him, has Seth.
They probably took Leigh to force him to come after the Ark.” McLain
glanced at Jack and Lydia’s linked hands, then lowered his gaze to the
wood grain of the tabletop, following it with his callused fingertips.
Whitney sat forward, playing with the cuffs of her Fred Flinstone
pajamas. She still didn’t really feel like part of these proceedings, but
McLain treated her like she was, because she had found the coordinates
to the stargate. “Are you going to move the Ark?”
“The Alpha Clan guards the Ark,” McLain said. “They have to be
the ones to decide if we move it.”
“What about Caroline?” Lydia asked.
McLain glanced at his sister. “We have her under guard. I don’t
know what else to do.”
“Would you please not talk about me like I’m not here?” Caroline
said, sulkily.
“Caro, nobody is – ”
“Don’t call me Caro, Will. I hate that nickname. I’m not a baby
anymore.” Caroline’s ivory skin flushed splotchy red. Whitney felt for
her. How well she remembered twelve. An awkward age, an in-between
age, too old to like the things you had liked when you were a little kid,
dolls and cartoons and ponies, and too young to do all of the things you
wanted to do, like date boys and drive a car and go to prom. To be the
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mythical savior of your kindred on top of that was a load. “I’m sick of
being locked up. If you’re going to treat me like a zoo animal, you might
as well just put me in a cage like LeRoi did.”
“Caroline.” Lydia spoke sharply, the way she spoke to Leigh when
she talked back. McLain had whitened to the lips. “Your brother is doing
his best to protect you.”
“Well, maybe I’m tired of being protected, did you ever think about
that?” Caroline snapped. Kicking her chair back, she stormed out of the
room. A minute later, the front door slammed.
“Let her go,” McLain said wearily. Lydia had started to stand, but
McLain waved her back into her seat. “Evelyn is next door. She’ll keep
an eye on her.”
“We need to find Seth,” Marshall said, as Lydia sat back. His body
was bent forward like a wire about to snap. In his scrubs, he was a
perfect eighteen-year-old replica of their father, if Wesley Townsend had
ever worn his black curls just a wee bit long. “He’s the only one with the
power to take the Ark from the Alpha Clan. If we get him back, the Ark
is safe, and so is the Black Swan.”
“Marshall, we’re trying. But we don’t even know where to begin.”
McLain scraped his hands through his hair again. He looked like he
wanted to yank it out. “The last anyone saw of Seth was inside the
rotunda at Fort King. That was more than thirteen hours ago. We know
his motorcycle is missing, but that’s our only clue.”
“You must have a contingency plan for keeping him from stealing
the Ark,” Marshall reasoned. A muscle jumped beside McLain’s mouth.
Whitney saw it, and she saw Marshall see it, too; his eyes instantly
frosted over to the frigid blue of arctic ice. “Does it have something to do
with those snipers on the fort’s roof?”
“If it came down to that,” McLain said, “I believe Seth has already
proven he would prefer death to betraying his kindred.”
“Here’s an idea,” Marshall said. “Why don’t we just kill Caroline?
Take out the Black Swan, and it doesn’t matter who has the Source or the
Ark, you can’t raise Lemuria, and you can’t open the stargate. Basically
solves our problem.”
“Marshall,” Jack said. Lydia had gasped.
“What, Mr. Steward? You’d rather see him kill Seth?” Marshall’s
tone was obstinate, but he was blushing. “You know Seth will do
anything to protect Leigh. He would never let anyone hurt her.” Almost
unconsciously, he picked Whitney’s hand up. His mouth twitched when
she squeezed his fingers, gently.
“We need to figure out who’s holding them,” Emery said, from the
window, speaking up for the first time. “J.J. called it yesterday: If we
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find who has been helping LeRoi on the outside, we’ll find the Source,
and we’ll find Seth and Leigh. Without anybody getting killed.”
McLain nodded. “You’re right, Emery. We’re working on that, too.
Has anybody heard from Dre? He was running down a lead for J.J. when
he left the fort last night.”
That was too much for Lydia. She shoved back from the table. In
yoga pants and a long T-shirt, even without makeup, she looked young
enough to be Leigh’s older sister. “Will, for the love of the stars, what is
the matter with you? Dre Alfaro is sixteen years old, and you’ve got him
running down some lead my seventeen-year-old son came up with?
Marshall whisking Caroline off to safety in the midst of a battle? These
are children! They need to be protected, and they’re the ones protecting
us! Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Lydia, this isn’t helping,” Jack said.
He rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. Lydia whirled on him. “Please do
not lecture me about helping, Jonathan.”
Jack colored. There was a beat of silence before Whitney said, “The
hunters.”
McLain looked over at her. His fingers were laced under his chin,
squeezing the blood away from his knuckles. “Come again?”
“The hunters,” Whitney repeated. This was probably a stupid idea,
but now that she had started on it, she decided to just put it out there. “I
was just thinking that Fort King is housing a whole bunch of hunters
right now. Can’t any of them track down Seth?”
“We already questioned them.” McLain’s tone, though dismissive,
was not unkind. “We’ve been evaluating which ones are ready for
integration into human society. None of them know anything useful.
LeRoi wouldn’t have shared anything damning with them.”
“But they’re still hunters,” Whitney said. “They’re trained to track
down werekin. To think like they do. Right?”
Emery had sat up straight. He looked handsome in his camouflage
fatigues, yet Whitney wasn’t sure she didn’t prefer his frayed jeans and
word shirts. “She has a point, Captain. If Cleo were here, she could track
Seth, like she did the night Regent chased him into the woods. Xanthe
has already tried to locate him, and he can’t get a sense of him at all.
Maybe we should give a hunter a try. If there was someone who knew
werecats, like Cleo – ”
“Absolutely not,” Lydia said hotly. “You are not sending hunters
after my son.”
“Not to hurt him, Lydia. To find him.” McLain sounded impressed
by the idea. Whitney was pleased. She didn’t have much to contribute in
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the superhero category. It was nice not to be utterly useless now and
then.
McLain thought he knew someone who could help. He went out to
make a call. Lydia followed him. She still didn’t look thrilled to be
setting hunters on Seth. Whitney heard them arguing quietly as they
disappeared into the kitchen.
After a minute, Jack got up as well. Whitney heard him climb the
steps to Leigh’s room.
Marshall laid his head down on his arms. He had taken out his cell
phone to check his messages; whatever the news was, from the slump of
his shoulders, it didn’t seem to be good. Whitney rubbed his back. “Was
that about Cam?”
“No. Aphrodisia needs my help at the fort.” Whitney felt the
muscles in his back expand, then contract as Marshall sucked in a breath
and blew it out, sitting up as he did. Her brave, beautiful, brilliant
brother, she thought tenderly. Marshall’s eyes were ringed with shadows,
darker than a winter sky. Whitney wondered what, if anything, had been
said between him and Cam last night at the hospital. “I shouldn’t have
said that about Caroline. It was an awful thing to say.”
“It’s nothing Burke hasn’t said,” Emery said, reaching down to pet
Captain Hook. The little dog had picked up on the somber mood and was
looking morose. Whitney cleared her throat. Emery saw the glare she
was shooting him; his big ears reddened, and he hastened to add, “Sorry,
Doc. I just meant McLain has heard it before.”
In the doorway, someone coughed. Whitney looked around. Quinn
O’Shea was standing there, copper hair pouring out from under her UA
beanie. Angelo Alfaro was right behind her. “Trust me,” Quinn said. “He
hasn’t heard all of it.”
***
The tunnel into the hillside looked the same as it had in J.J.’s dreams.
He didn’t find that comforting, given that those dreams ended with his
fiery death as the mountain exploded.
But this was not a mountain, it was just a hill, and this rainforest was
not the Lemurian jungle. Sending messages through dreams was like
writing backwards on a mirror in a foreign tongue, then throwing the
mirror in the ocean to hopefully wash up on some distant shore: You
never knew if the person who received it would recognize the language,
or know to set the mirror in front of another to straighten out the words.
J.J. had tried several times to speak to Seth through dreams before he had
managed to do more than show him a cemetery Seth had never seen and
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a girl he had no reason to suspect was a hunter. Try as he might, he never
had been able to warn him about Regent or Jack.
Whoever had been sending Seth and J.J. dreams of Lemuria had
clearly wanted them to find this place, Earth’s last connection to that lost
land. J.J. hoped the fiery death part would be just a metaphor, too.
The tunnel sloped downward at an almost imperceptible angle. The
earthen walls were haired with yellow roots; a quarter-inch of water
lapped at J.J.’s boots when he stepped cautiously over the threshold, halfprepared for the entrance to seal shut. It did not.
“I see a light,” Cleo said.
J.J. glanced at her. “At the end of the tunnel? That’s very optimistic
of you.”
She glared at him. Darkly satisfied by that, J.J. motioned to LeRoi.
“Come on. You’ve been here before. You can show us the way.”
LeRoi had taken the bandana off her hair and tied it around her neck.
Her braid was fraying, damp strands clinging to her cheeks and neck.
“They won’t let me in,” she said, “but I can take you to the door.”
J.J. spread his arms. “Lead the way.”
Ben had never told J.J. anything about his visit to the Tortoise Clan,
other than that he had asked them to give LeRoi the Source. It had been a
bold move, but the Tortoise Clan wouldn’t have agreed to it if they
hadn’t believed the werekin could use the Source to defeat their enemies.
Tortoises lived long lives. They had long memories. The Tortoise Clan
would know secrets no other living creature remembered even existed to
be forgotten. They were the original telepaths, the first necromancers, the
most skilled Healers, the White Swan’s priests and advisors on Lemuria.
Like the Alpha Clan was for the Black Swan.
The deeper they descended, the brighter the light grew, outlining a
set of massive silver doors scrolled with interlocking glyphs. J.J. wished
for Seth’s ability to speak the language of magic – the gift of tongues, so
much more useful than J.J.’s gift of foresight. He reached out
instinctively with his mind, reaching for the tether that bound him to his
twin. Seth? Can you hear me?
His mind slid off the surface of something opaque, like fingertips
sliding off an iced-over windowpane. J.J. frowned. That wasn’t right. He
knew how it felt for Seth to lock him out. This was like Seth was locked
in –
Cleo gasped.
The tunnel’s entrance was a corona of daylight far, far behind them –
too far to turn back to, as the doors they stood in front of suddenly folded
inward. LeRoi moved behind J.J., one thin hand fluttering up to her
throat, as if to touch the key to the collar he no longer wore. “It wouldn’t
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open for me,” she whispered. “I was here once before, and it wouldn’t
open for me…”
The rest of her words were lost in a wash of silver light that made
them all stagger back.
J.J. drew the sword over his shoulder. The etched blade glowed like a
slice of starlight as he threw his arm up to shield his eyes. Cleo’s elbow
bumped his; she had drawn the pistol off her belt, moving into position
beside him like they were back in the Arena, fighting as a matched pair
for the Partners’ sport. J.J. felt her breath on his cheek as she glanced at
him, looking for his signal to attack.
A shape appeared in the light. No. Several shapes. As the light
dimmed, the shapes became distinct, and J.J. lowered his sword.
Taking her cue from him, Cleo lowered her pistol.
The dozen men in rough-spun brown robes were familiar to J.J. from
his dreams. Still, being in their physical presence was overpowering. The
alienness of them pressed on his mind as they fanned out, surrounding
the interlopers.
A chalky powder seemed to cover the men’s gray skin. Actually, J.J.
saw, it was a fine downing of hair. The eyes in their skull-like faces
tunneled straight into their sockets, the irises as colorless as their skin
and their long, snarled hair, which was tipped with slivers of bone that
clinked when they moved. They seemed to be a unit, their odd, shuffling
gait perfectly in time, shoulders stooped like they were used to carrying a
heavy weight on their backs.
One wore a necklace of small animal bones around his long stalk of a
neck. His gnarled hand curled around the wooden shaft of a bronzetipped spear. Marking him as their leader, J.J. bowed.
We are not kings. The voice that spoke in J.J.’s mind was
multiplicitous – the Tortoise Clan seemed to think with a hive mind. He
kept his head bowed, trying not to flinch from the pressure of the voices.
His brain felt like it was trapped under a rock. You do not bow to us.
I bow from respect, J.J. thought back. You are my elders. I come with
questions. An urgent need –
We have no answers. We are not who you seek.
“You’re not?” J.J. was so surprised he spoke aloud.
“No,” said a light, bemused voice. “I am why you have come. Or, I
can show you to the one who is, at least.”
J.J. raised his head. LeRoi had uttered a cry like Grandpappy
Tortoise had just stabbed her with his spear.
Standing on the threshold of what J.J. glimpsed to be a jarringly
modern room, the white-haired old man smiled. He was a man; his blood
did not call to J.J.’s as the weretortoises’ did. He was wearing a sturdy
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pair of brown trousers, well-worn hiking boots, and a cotton shirt
buckled over with a khaki utility vest. Kindly blue eyes sparkled behind
his half-moon spectacles. “You’re not Elijah Bishop,” J.J. said. For it had
been Bishop he was expecting. Bishop he was certain had summoned
him to this place, through dreams, no matter what Project Ark’s records
said about an execution.
The old man shook his head. “No, I am not. My son left this world
many years ago.” He glanced at LeRoi, and the sparkle in his eyes was
suddenly more like the flash of a dagger-point.
“This isn’t possible,” LeRoi said, through bloodless lips. “You were
lost.”
“Not everything that vanishes is lost, Ursula. Sometimes it chooses
not to be found. But forgive my manners.” The old man’s eyes warmed
again as they returned to J.J. “I am Abraham Bishop. If you’ll come with
me, it would be my very great pleasure to introduce you to my son.”
***
Okay, so there was, like, nothing even slightly romantic about being
confined inside a birdcage with the very pretty but badly hurt and
possibly dying boy you might have had the teensiest little crush on for a
few weeks now, in spite of his atrocious fashion sense and self-professed
love of role-playing games, not to mention his unfortunate ability to
quote every line from The Lord of the Rings. Except if said boy
murmured your name in his sleep when he turned over.
Leigh ran her hand through Dre’s glossy dark hair. After rousing
briefly to sip some water, he had fallen asleep again with his head in her
lap. For the past two hours, Gideon had left them alone in the cathedral
to do whatever it was mad scientists did to while away spring afternoons,
and Leigh, after crying herself into puffy eyes, had watched the sun
progress across the sky through the stained glass window.
The cathedral was pretty. Leigh wasn’t religious, but she appreciated
the artistry of the tortured Christ on his cross, the beatific Madonna
holding her babe. Rosy lights burned low in blown-glass sconces
between the boarded-up windows, adding their discordant light to the
red-and-black squares the stained-glass window cast on the wooden pews
and silver-veined marble. The pattern of stars on the window seemed to
shift if Leigh stared at it too long. Whitney was always reading her
poetry, and some stupid line from Whitman or Poe or somebody was
stuck like a bad song in her head: Doubt that the stars are fire; doubt
that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.
Honestly. What did that even mean?
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Dre shifted. Leigh let her hands settle lightly on his shoulders. There
were thin, corded muscles there. It made her appreciate the physicality of
how his wings must beat, the strength it would take to fly. She had never
been jealous of what Seth and J.J. were that she wasn’t, but she almost
was now, and not only because, uncollared, Dre could have flown right
out of this cage. Werekin were beautiful.
Those dark eyes opened. Leigh blushed like she had just said that out
loud. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Dre said.
Leigh helped him sit up. His color was still bad; it worsened when he
touched the torc around his throat. She wasn’t sure he had been properly
awake enough before to realize he was collared. “What happened?” he
asked.
Leigh quickly filled him in about Connor, Seth, and Gideon. “That’s
what General Burke said to me, right before Connor threw that knife at
him,” Dre said. “He said, ‘We have to stop him. He’s Ursula’s son.’”
“So on the strength of that, you decided to take a knife for him?”
Dre shrugged. “I knew I might survive. He wouldn’t have.”
Leigh touched the red line on his chest with the tips of her manicured
nails. Like the scar across Seth’s hipbones after LeRoi had shot him, the
wound had healed on the outside, but inside, Dre didn’t seem to have
healed at all. She could tell by his pallor. “Come here,” she said. Dre let
her guide his shoulders back into her lap. Leigh closed her eyes, resting
her head against the bars. “It’s like Connor isn’t even human anymore,”
she said.
“He can’t be fully human and have done what he did to Seth,” Dre
said. “Only Gen-0s have that kind of telepathic power.”
“But I thought telepathy was a gift from the Totems. Like your skin.
Something science can’t replicate.”
“Connor must have already had some telepathic powers. Some
humans do. The Gen-0 blood would just have enhanced them.” Dre
folded Leigh’s hand in his. She looked down at him. His eyes were very
large in his delicate face. “Leigh, if we get out of here, do you want to go
to prom with me?”
She burst out laughing. It was all just so absurd, and yet somehow,
absolutely perfect. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
She swept her hair over one shoulder, to hold it back as she leaned
down, touching her lips to his cheek. She felt Dre breathe out, felt his
eyelashes brush her nose, and it would have been the perfect moment for
her to kiss his mouth, had Gideon not waltzed back in.
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He was wheeling a gurney ahead of him. Leather straps dangled off
the sides, studded with cruel silver spikes. Leigh scrambled to her feet.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I told you, Miss Steward.” Gideon parked the gurney next to the
cage. “I intend to have a look at this specimen’s brain. Did you know he
has a photographic memory?”
“No.” Leigh’s hair whipped across her cheeks as she shook her
head. “Connor told you, I heard him tell you to leave us both alive – ”
“What Connor doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Gideon said lightly.
“I’ll tell him the specimen expired. Without Healing potion, given the
damage to his heart, it’s the most likely outcome anyway.”
“He is not a specimen.” Leigh wrapped her fingers around the silver
bars. She was fairly trembling with rage. “He is a person.”
“Miss Steward, from a purely scientific standpoint, let me assure
you that thing is not a person.” Gideon flicked a glance of pregnant
loathing at Dre, who was sitting up, arms locked around his knees. Leigh
could tell by his breathing he was battling the urge to skin, which the
collar would not allow him to do. A dark shadow passed across the
window, painting his ashen skin in shades of gray and blue. “I have
never understood the desire of humans to mate with these creatures. It’s
like mating with a cockroach. Although I understand that now even the
Gen-0s are being permitted to mate with one another, if you can fathom
such a thing.”
Finding that beside the point, Leigh said, “So Dre has alien DNA.
He’s still a living being. He feels pain. How can you strap down a living
being and cut out his brain?”
“Vivisection is a long-accepted practice for the advancement of
medicine. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the sake of science.”
“This isn’t science,” Leigh spit at him. “It’s just murder. You take
lives for no reason other than because you can.”
Locking the wheels in place, Gideon leaned back against the gurney.
The scalpel Leigh had tried to stab him with earlier was clasped in his
hand. Leigh thought, with a suppressed shudder, there might be another
reason Aaron Gideon took lives. Like because he got off on it. “I am a
man of vision, Miss Steward. Something Ursula LeRoi failed to
appreciate while I was in her employ.” Leigh frowned. Wasn’t he still in
LeRoi’s employ, by proxy, through Connor? “She and Elijah Bishop
were both woefully shortsighted in their view of what resurrecting the
werekin could mean. Bishop had this laughably naïve plan to learn from
them about ‘world peace.’ LeRoi is obsessed with sending us to new,
unblighted worlds, as pristine as the island of Lemuria, with the superior
technology to conquer them for the future of humankind. That was the
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vision that brought them together initially. A perfect world. Bishop
wanted to create heaven on Earth. LeRoi wants to leave Earth behind for
the real thing.”
“What does Connor want?” Leigh said.
“Connor,” Gideon said, “recognizes what Eve was bright enough to
grasp that Adam could not. Within the Ark lies alien DNA with the
secret to perfecting the human race. A race that never falls prey to
disease or the ravages of age. A race that never weakens, never dies. We
can be immortal, but as Eve knew, the only way to become a god is to
acquire the knowledge of the gods.”
“I think you’re forgetting how that turned out for Eve,” Dre said.
Gideon started to laugh, but the sound was swallowed up by a terrific
splintering as the stained-glass window burst apart.
The gurney overturned – Gideon had dived behind it, throwing up
his arms. Leigh jumped back, out of the way of the shower of red-andblack glass; something bellowed, and a second later, the shadow she had
seen loomed up in the empty pane, a massive bull with hide like black
velvet.
Angelo Alfaro leapt over the sill. He pawed the marble, kicking up
sparks, then charged the gurney, which flipped up and over his horns, to
crash onto the dust-laced keys of the pipe organ. The amplified boom
seemed to presage the end of the world.
Gideon took off at a sprint.
Leigh did not straightaway recognize the boy who dove through the
window and sprinted off after him, loosing an arrow from the string of a
high-powered bow. She did recognize Quinn O’Shea, Emery Little, and
–
“Whitney?” she gasped.
“Leigh!” Whitney ran to the bars, looking all around for some way
to unlock the cage. Emery and Quinn had disappeared into the choir
room on the archer’s heels. “How do you open this thing?” she said,
desperately.
“Move over.” Alfaro gently pushed her aside. He was wearing
baggy jeans and an AKO hoodie, the shoulders of which sparkled with
broken glass. Seizing the bars in both massive hands, he yanked once.
They came free easily, like they were made of straw instead of metal,
creating a doorway wide enough to walk through.
Alfaro rushed over to Dre, palming something small and silver – the
key Connor had left on the altar. Whitney threw her arms around Leigh.
Her cheeks were wet. “How did you find us?” Leigh asked, hugging her
back just as tight. She had never been happier to see her best friend.
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“Lucky,” Whitney said. Although Leigh had absolutely no idea what
luck had to do with anything, she nodded.
Alfaro scooped up Dre. He looked even more fragile in his adopted
brother’s arms. Before Leigh could go to him, Quinn reappeared,
pocketing her cell phone in her Lady Knights hoodie. “There’s still no
service.” She turned to Leigh. “Where’s Seth?”
“Not in here,” drawled a distinctively aristocratic voice. The archer
had stepped back into the cathedral. He was sporting a fresh scratch
below his eye, like a bullet graze, dressed in jeans now; his longish hair
had been recently cropped, standing up in short spikes all over his scalp,
but that crooked smile was the same as it fell on Leigh. “Hello again,
love,” the hunter boy said.
“Okay,” Leigh said. “Who the hell are you, and what is going on?”
“This is Lucky,” Whitney said quickly. “Well, Lukas, but – anyway,
he’s a hunter. McLain let him out to track down Seth. We started at the
fort, and he followed the trail out to the Burkes’, then from there to
here.”
“How?” Leigh asked, impressed in spite of herself.
“You’ll have to ask him. He was scarily good at it.”
Lucky beamed. Emery, coming up behind him, did not look pleased
to hear his girlfriend complimenting a hunter. In particular one with a
sexy British accent and a cool leather jacket, like a modern-day Robin
Hood with that bow slung across his back. “Gideon got into a car in the
alley and drove off,” Emery said. “I think someone else was driving it.”
Damn. And Leigh had been so looking forward to witnessing his death
by lethal jaguar when J.J. got his teeth into him. “I did find General
Burke back here, though. He’s in a bad way. We need to get him back to
the fort.”
“What about the Ark?” Leigh said.
Lucky wrinkled his nose. Leigh stared at him. So. Familiar. “What
about it?”
Blank faces looked back at her as Leigh glanced around their small
circle. Her mouth went dry as the truth sank in: They didn’t know.
“Connor just took Seth to steal it,” she said.
219
Chapter Seventeen: Absolution
There must have been a time when Will McLain’s decisions were
simple. He just couldn’t remember when that was.
McLain was twelve years old, to the day, when his sister Caroline
was born. Their mother had worried he would resent sharing his birthday
with a sister so much younger than he was, a “surprise” baby who would
take up so much of his parents’ time just as he was entering his teenage
years, but McLain had never minded. He had loved Caroline on sight,
this tiny, perfect creature with hair black as night, surrounded by a
nimbus of light like a halo.
He had pointed the light out to his parents. They hadn’t seen it. They
didn’t see the blurred image of Uncle Ben or the other werekin in Fairfax
their son had to blink away from his eyes, either. But when Caroline was
a week old, she skinned, and after that, nothing had been the same.
Joseph McLain, a Chimera scientist, an ally of the Resistance on the
inside, had requested a transfer out of Fairfax, away from the Ark. They
had kept Caroline glamoured, prayed to the Totems no one would ever
suspect what she was.
Two years later, holding his aunt’s hand in a snowy cemetery while
the priest said a final prayer for his parents, McLain had hated himself
because in some inchoate way he was relieved they were gone. For now
if he failed to protect Caroline, his parents would never have to know.
He looked over at his sister. Caroline had grudgingly dressed in jeans
and a plain black sweater and tied her glossy hair up in a ponytail for
traveling. McLain was also in jeans. Their luggage was packed into the
trunk of his rusted Pontiac, which still had its New Mexico plates.
Though he had told no one they were leaving, once Quinn O’Shea had
finished telling them what J.J. had told her about the swan song, McLain
didn’t see how anyone could have expected him to stay.
“I’ll only be a few minutes,” he said. “Did you want to come in or
stay in the car?”
Caroline folded her skinny arms. The sky outside her window was
cherry-red as the sun lowered into a bank of ominous clouds in the west;
it picked out the copper streaks in her hair. McLain had those same
streaks, a jarring reminder that their human blood was the same – enough
for McLain’s blood to have powered the Source. She isn’t just the Black
Swan, Leigh Steward had said. She’s a person. Leigh. Another little
sister he had let down.
“You said we could stay in Fairfax,” Caroline mumbled, to the
dashboard.
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Patience, Will, Aunt Ingrid would say. Caroline had been remarkably
brave these past few months. She hadn’t told LeRoi her brother could see
werekin after Werner Regent had collared her. If she would have, LeRoi
would have killed him, for hiding the Black Swan all these years. Then
she had entranced herself to stay hidden from the traitor inside the
Resistance and made the difficult, adult decision to remain on Earth with
the rest of her kindred. Caroline was a queen, as the White Swan had
been, but she was also twelve years old. McLain had never gotten the
parenting stuff down. Aunt Ingrid had always handled that part.
“Look,” he said, nodding to the guard at Fort King’s gate. “I want to
stay here too, Caro – Caroline,” he corrected, quickly. “But it isn’t safe.”
Usually his lopsided smile worked on Caroline. Tonight she was
having none of it. She turned her head to look out the window. “Connor
was right about you,” she said.
McLain put the car in park, next to what had been the chimera
fountain yesterday and today was an empty, cracked concrete bowl. The
only thing certain in life, he remembered his father saying, is that it
changes. “What did Connor say about me?”
“That you don’t want me to have a life.” Caroline snatched her iPod
out of her sparkly pink purse. “I don’t want to go in. I’ll stay here.”
“All right,” McLain said. “But don’t leave the car.”
He rolled the windows down – leaving her the keys in case the
clouds loosed their rain – and jogged up the steps into the fort. Inside
was a beehive of activity. Sergeant Scott Sommers saluted as McLain
started up a flight of stone stairs, changing course to walk with him.
“We’ve got a problem, sir,” he reported.
Oh well, McLain thought. Nice to have one of those for a change.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
The stocky, ginger-haired Sommers passed him a print-out. It was a
high-res photo of two jaguars, one light, one dark, leaping at one another
across a basketball court as panicked spectators pushed and shoved to get
clear of them. McLain cursed. Anyone who hadn’t been at the game
would probably dismiss it as a hoax, but those who had been might see it
and remember what had really happened. Enchantments were tricky
things. You never knew what might be enough to break them. “I thought
we had the city blacked out,” he said.
“We’ve shut down cell towers, land lines, wireless Internet, told
people it’s a problem caused by the storm damage, but some local
reporter found his way to the edge of town and managed to upload this
from his iPhone.” Sommers paused. McLain stopped outside his office to
wait for the bad news his sergeant didn’t want to deliver. “He also went
on quite a rant about the military essentially cutting off the city in order
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to contain news of an alien invasion. He specifically named Operation
Swan Song.”
McLain swore. Loudly. Profusely. “Find Jensen,” he ordered,
throwing open his office door. “I want to know where we are in
contacting Burke. And get Ben Schofield up here. I need to talk to him.
Has anybody heard from Emery Little?”
“No sir. The tracking device on Lucky – sorry, I mean Lukas –
that’s the hunter, sir – ”
“I know who Lucky is,” McLain growled. “What about him?”
“Sorry, sir.” Sommers flushed. He was younger than McLain; he
had only made sergeant a few weeks ago. “The tracking device is still
active, and it looks like they’re on their way back to the fort. We haven’t
spoken to them. Communications are still down.”
“I want a full report the moment they get here.”
“Yes, Captain.” Sommers snapped a salute and started to go, then
turned back. McLain had just spun his chair away from his cluttered
desk. “Did you want to speak to J.J. Sullivan as well, sir?”
Slowly, McLain turned around. “J.J. Sullivan is here?”
“Yes sir. He arrived with Connor Burke about twenty minutes ago.”
Sommers looked baffled by McLain’s sudden pallor. No one but Jensen
knew J.J. had orchestrated LeRoi’s escape, with Agathon’s help.
“Where are they now?” McLain demanded.
“On the lower levels,” Sommers said. “With the Gen-0s.”
And somehow, McLain just knew. “Shut it down!” he said. “The
whole fort, Sommers, lock it down. And get a guard outside to bring the
Black Swan in here, now!”
***
Quinn pitched her useless cell phone over the backseat. It landed
amidst the crumpled-up soda cans and old concert flyers on the van’s
floorboards. “Still nothing,” she announced.
Leigh winced as Emery hit a pothole on the highway at seventy
miles an hour – top speed for Chaz’s clunker van. Guitar stands rattled
dangerously against the back doors. The engine had been whining for the
last five minutes, knocking ominously in the depths.
Leigh scooted Dre’s shoulders higher into her lap, trying not to let
him be jostled. They had found a stash of Healing potion in the medical
bag Gideon had left behind at Sacred Heart. Some they had fed to
General Burke, the rest to Dre. Dre was still breathing shallowly. Alfaro
had carried him to the van.
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Emery and Lucky-the-hunter had carried General Burke between
them. The general was conscious, but only just barely; his face was black
and purple, one of his eyes swollen shut. Whitney was tending to him in
the other corner of the van. Alfaro and Lucky were talking in low tones,
Lucky’s fingers rubbing absent circles on a red, raised mark on the inside
of his right wrist.
“Crap,” Emery said.
His knuckles had whitened on the wheel. Whitney’s chin came up.
“What’s the matter?”
“They must be on lockdown again. There’s a roadblock.” Emery’s
big ears twitched. Peering around him, Leigh saw flashing lights in front
of the gate at the top of the fort’s long, winding drive.
“Don’t slow down,” Burke growled.
As he hadn’t spoken until now, everyone stared at him. “What?”
Emery squeaked, glancing over his shoulder. Quinn hissed at him to
watch the road.
“Drive through it,” Burke commanded raspingly. “You see those
clouds over in the west? Those aren’t rain clouds, son. I know that
because rain clouds don’t move against the wind. We don’t have time to
answer questions. Just keep going.”
Alfaro muttered a curse. “Seatbelts!” Emery squeaked.
Would have been a lovely idea, if Chaz’s van actually had seatbelts.
The back had been hollowed out to make room for Listening Korn’s
instruments. Quinn, in the passenger’s seat, snapped her belt in place.
Alfaro dove on top of Leigh as Burke pushed Whitney down on the floor.
Leigh saw Lucky brace himself against the back doors. Was he actually
laughing?
“Won’t they shoot us?” she shrieked.
“Keep your head down,” Burke shouted back.
There wasn’t much time to be scared. A half-beat later, the van
slammed nose-first into the chain link gate – which popped up onto the
hood, fractured the windshield, and skidded across the top of the van
before bouncing off the back. Leigh heard guards shouting for them to
stop and the rat-tat-tat of gunfire when Emery kept the pedal to the floor.
“Emery!” Quinn screamed. He slammed on the brakes. Leigh would
have been thrown into the front seat if Alfaro hadn’t been on top of her,
practically squishing her. Dre moaned. “Crap,” Emery said again,
breathlessly, as the smell of burned rubber filled the van. “Oh, Chaz, is
gonna kill me…”
“Focus, Emery,” Quinn snapped.
The van was being surrounded. By men with guns. Alfaro sat up,
positioning his bulk in front of Leigh and Dre as the back doors were
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jerked open. Lucky hastily raised his hands. “What the – ” Taking them
all in, Ben Schofield lowered the sawed-off shotgun from his shoulder.
“What in the name of the stars is all this?”
“We’ll explain later,” said Quinn, diving out of the van. “Connor
and Seth are here, and they’re trying to steal the Ark!”
“You know, I think they might already know that,” Emery observed,
looking out the shattered windshield at the armed guards on the roof, the
spotlights sweeping the wooded hillside.
Ben slid an arm around David Burke’s waist and helped him limp
into the fort. Alfaro jumped down and reached back to scoop up Dre. His
eyelids looked thin as paper over his eyes, which were not darting around
like they usually did. Leigh grabbed the hand Whitney offered to help
her down and held onto it as they raced inside the fort.
Leigh had never mapped the internal geography of Fort King, but
even with Marines swarming down the narrow corridors and twisting
staircases, it wasn’t hard to keep Angelo Alfaro’s beaded dreadlocks in
sight. She would realize later the soles of her bare feet were cut from the
broken glass back at the cathedral, but she didn’t at the time notice the
bloody footprints she was leaving on the black stone as they burst into
the infirmary.
Marshall looked up. He was standing just inside a curtain that had
been pulled around a cot at the end of the room. A white lab coat was
open over his scrubs. “What’s happened?” he asked, as he hurried toward
them.
Alfaro arranged Dre gingerly on one of the cots. “Connor Burke
stabbed him,” he said. “Silver knife. To the heart.”
“How long ago?” Taking a penlight from his pocket, Marshall
shined it in Dre’s eyes. He had only started a little when Alfaro had
mentioned Connor.
“Maybe twelve hours ago?” Leigh said, shakily. “It was last night.”
“Has he had any potion?”
“Just a little.” Leigh wanted to hold Dre’s hand, but she also didn’t
want to get in Marshall’s way. “Marshall, will he – he’ll be okay, won’t
he?”
“Was the blade treated with anything?” Marshall asked. “Silver
powder, or…?”
“I don’t know,” Leigh whispered. “I don’t think so.”
Marshall glanced at her. His eyes were bluer than Leigh had ever
seen. “Seth?” he asked, softly.
It was Whitney who explained what Connor had done to Seth, while
Marshall worked on Dre, checking his blood pressure, hooking
electrodes to his chest, tipping strengthening potion to his lips. His color
224
improved a little after that. Whitney nudged Leigh forward; she walked
over to stand by Alfaro, who laid a hand on his brother’s bare shoulder.
“What can we do, Doc?” he asked gruffly.
Marshall draped his stethoscope around his neck. Alarms had started
to sound down below – either that, or Leigh had just become aware of
them. She saw Lucky motion Emery and Quinn out into the hallway.
Marshall, glancing after them, touched the pocket of his lab coat as
though checking something was there. “His heart is damaged. It would
have been better if he’d been treated right away, but we’ll give him as
much potion as we can. Angelo, stay with him. If he gets worse, call out
to me. Whitney, Leigh, I need you to help me.”
“Help you what?” Leigh demanded. She didn’t want to leave Dre.
He looked – well, not good. That was as far as she was willing to let her
mind go down the path of what it meant for his heart to be damaged.
“Where’s Aphrodisia? Can’t she do her psychic X-ray thing on him?”
“Aphrodisia is a little busy right now,” Marshall said. He reached to
draw back the curtain around the cot at the end of the row. Leigh set her
hands on her hips. The Ark being stolen was a big deal, she realized, but
Dre could be dying. “What is she doing she can’t take a minute to look at
my boyfriend?” she demanded.
Marshall shoved the curtain back. Leigh and Whitney both gasped.
“She’s giving birth,” he said.
***
J.J. felt like he should say something clever as Abraham Bishop led
them through the Tortoise Clan’s temple, but at the moment, he was
fresh out of pithy remarks.
“Bunker” would have been a more accurate description than
“temple.” The walls, the floors, the ceilings were all black stone,
quarried from the same vein as that which fashioned Fort King.
Fluorescent lights hung from low wooden rafters, swinging their
shadows around corners. The hallway they were following had lots of
twists and turns, and J.J. felt some sympathy for a rat trapped in a maze.
Doorways opened off to the sides – more low-ceilinged rooms crowded
with computers larger than most people’s television sets; radar screens;
satellite feeds; blinking motherboards of indeterminate function. The
room they had first entered had been like the bridge of a ship, a central
command platform surrounded by computerized work stations.
So far the only living beings J.J. had seen were the twelve warriors
who had greeted them, but he would have bet his sword this place was
home to many more members of the Tortoise Clan.
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Abraham Bishop chatted about the problems of deforestation and
pollution facing the Amazon as he walked ahead of them, holding aloft a
kerosene lantern he didn’t really need. J.J. wondered how the temple was
powered. They had to be off the grid down here. Hydropower, maybe?
He didn’t feel the vibration of a generator…
He also wondered how Abraham Bishop could still be alive. He had
not been a young man when he had disappeared into the rainforest, years
before his son would discover Mt. Hokulani. He had to be well over a
hundred years old by now.
“It’s strengthening potion,” Abraham said.
J.J. glanced at him in surprise. The old man smiled. “I could guess
what you’re thinking, young man. The secret to my longevity is a small
infusion of strengthening potion once a year, on my birthday. Keeps me
young. Not forever – I still age, slowly – but then, no one needs to live
forever.”
LeRoi sniffed. She was walking between Cleo and J.J., shrinking
closer to him as the air grew heavy with the musky aroma of incense.
The hallway before them opened up into a wide chamber that finally
looked like it belonged in the temple of an ancient alien race. Torches
burned low in iron brackets around the circular room, their fire stuttering
green instead of red. Glyphs had been carved into the floor in swirling
patterns, like water flowing over stone. J.J. was almost certain this was
where the Source had been housed; a pyramid shape had been scorched
into the center of the floor, as though something superheated had stood
for centuries on that spot. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above
them, rising to a central point.
A curtain of vines woven with jewel-bright flowers screened a dais at
the front of the room. When LeRoi hesitated, Cleo grabbed her arm and
marched her along. No one spoke.
The incense came from small brass censers hanging at varying
lengths amidst the vines of the curtain. J.J. wondered if the incense was
made from the star-shaped flowers; that was what the smell reminded
him of as Abraham made to sweep the curtain back. His eyes met Cleo’s,
hers lupine silver in the dark. The memory of those few stolen kisses
burned between them…J.J. caught his breath…
And he was looking down at a corpse.
Or what he mistook for a corpse until he noted the flush of color in
the man’s cheeks and lips. He waited. The chest did not rise and fall. No
pulse fluttered in the throat. He glanced at Abraham, about to ask for an
explanation, when a voice spoke – whispered, really. Jeremy Jonathan.
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J.J. jerked back, saved from falling off the dais by his catlike grace.
Cleo stared at him. Obviously no one else had heard the voice, although
LeRoi was ashen. “He’s – alive?” J.J. said.
“Entranced.” Abraham knelt beside the simple stone altar the man’s
body was laid out on. The man had been dressed in a blue robe stitched
with silver stars. His hair was long and fair, untouched by gray. He was
probably forty years old, or had been when he had been entranced. For a
second J.J. was inside Marshall Townsend’s mind again, the night
Marshall had entranced Caroline McLain. In stasis, she won’t need to eat
or drink, won’t experience cold or hunger or pain. The magic in her
blood will sustain her, until the spell is released.
The man’s hands had been folded lovingly on his chest. LeRoi was
eyeing them as though convinced they would suddenly reach for her. “I
saw him die,” she said thinly. “I was in the room when Michael
Shepherd injected him – ”
“With sleeping potion,” Abraham said. “He injected him with an
overdose of sleeping potion. A sleep he could never wake from.”
Tenderly, he brushed his son’s brow. “His mind remains alive. We have
cared for his body here all these years.”
“My God,” Cleo said. The words were more of a breath. “This is
really Elijah Bishop?”
Jeremy Jonathan.
The voice was more insistent that time. Kneeling, J.J. placed a hand
over Bishop’s. His skin was like ice. Like the Black Swan’s when Seth
had carried her out the Townsends’ back door and J.J. had helped him
arrange her in the backseat of Jack Steward’s Beamer. Father.
He felt Bishop smile, though his face did not change. You have a
father. Thomas Sullivan was a great man.
You are father to us all, J.J. said.
Xanthe has been teaching you. There was a sigh in J.J.’s mind, ripe
with longing. I miss him. I miss all of my children.
They miss you, Father. They have done as you asked. They have
guarded the Ark. But now – J.J. felt the connection start to slip, some
outside force pressing in; he closed his mind to it, but it left him with a
feeling like razors scraping his skin. Now the Ark is complete. I came
here to ask if there is any way to use it without destroying the Earth.
I know what is in your heart, Jeremy Jonathan. The voice in J.J.’s
mind was not gentle, but it was free of judgment or reproof. You want to
go home.
The word home seemed to act as some sort of spell. The world
shimmered around the edges like J.J. had just walked through a waterfall
of light. The cold, dark temple disappeared, and the next thing J.J. knew,
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he was standing on a beach of sparkling white sand like powdered
diamonds.
A jungle ran down to the beach, vibrant with hues of blue and green,
like the water lapping at the sand, turquoise against the shore, darkening
in rings of lapis and sapphire out to sea. A mountain capped in white fog
loomed over the beach, easily a day’s hike through the jungle. Dark
clouds seemed to be gathering over it, though the rest of the sunless sky
was a clear, arresting blue.
Overcome by a sense of nameless dread, J.J. turned from the shelllined path he seemed to have just stepped off of and looked at the man in
front of him. He was sitting on a piece of driftwood bleached to the color
of bone by the tropical sun. “Is this Lemuria?”
Elijah Bishop’s smile lit his light blue eyes. He was dressed in
lightweight linen pants and a white cotton shirt. No shoes. His long hair
was tied at the nape of his neck with a length of white ribbon. “Lemuria
doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
“Then you’re saying we’re nowhere?” J.J. knelt, pointedly sifting
the white sand through his fingers – real sand that had been warmed by a
real sun. “Sure feels like somewhere to me, Father.”
Bishop pushed his wire-framed glasses up his freckled nose. “There
are worlds inside your mind, J.J. Sullivan. Some might say the mind is
the most infinite universe of all.”
I can only teach you to find the hidden rooms of your mind. You must
uncover what is contained there. The first lesson Xanthe had ever taught
J.J. about telepathy. He shivered again. Some rooms you did not want to
unlock.
Bishop stood. “Walk with me,” he said.
They started together up the shell-lined path, into the cool quiet of
the trees. J.J. wasn’t filthy or sore from the long trek through the
rainforest anymore; he was wearing black trousers and a long black coat
perfectly cut to his frame. The coat buckled along the side with silver
snaps. The jaguar katana was sheathed across his back.
Reaching up, he felt a thin circlet of beaten gold on his head. Bishop
smiled at his lifted eyebrows. “You would have been a prince on
Lemuria,” he explained. “You and your brother. Direct descendants of
your Totems. Like the Black Swan. The first and only of her kind.”
“I’d rather be a warrior than a prince,” J.J. said.
“I see nothing in history to tell me you couldn’t have been both,”
Bishop said.
J.J. didn’t answer, because they had just turned a corner and were
looking down on a city.
228
The buildings were all made from black volcanic stone, glistening in
the sunlight. There were palaces with colonnaded walkways, enclosing
courtyards with babbling fountains and exotic gardens; temples crusted
with jewels, silk curtains billowing in their glassless windows;
bathhouses with arched doorways that smelled of jasmine and
sandalwood. Wide shell-lined boulevards connected the buildings to one
another, adorned with giant statues of the Totems like the one the Alpha
Clan had made of the Black Swan inside Fort King. Nothing appeared to
have been built. Everything seemed to have grown, straight out of the
ground.
Across the city, the statue of the White Swan – the only white stone
in the city – looked down on them with more vigilance than benevolence.
Her skins were fused, the graceful neck curving into feathered wings.
There was intelligence in the blank stone eyes, and very little kindness,
like the blind eyes of Justice. Behind her, a black pyramid etched with
glyphs pointed to the sky. J.J. saw that he had been wrong: The clouds
were not gathering over the mountain; they were gathering above the
pyramid.
Bishop motioned him to follow. They walked through the deserted
city – the silence was oppressive – to an open-air building surrounded by
a lush garden. The white star-shaped flowers grew everywhere, exuding
a perfumed haze J.J. could feel on his skin like clammy dew.
The building was a library. Shelves of books circled a glyph carved
into the center of the floor. J.J. recognized this one; it meant
understanding. A less practiced eye might have translated it as
knowledge, but there was a difference between knowing a thing and
understanding a thing. Stone staircases so delicate they might have been
fashioned of air spiraled up to a second floor, where silk curtains danced
like ghosts on the ocean-scented breeze.
Nothing about it was inviting. Its beauty was that of a dead flower
preserved in wax.
All of the books had the same blue fabric covers embroidered with
silver stars. Bishop watched J.J. walk over and take one down at random.
“Amor vincit Omnia,” he read. “Virgil. Good choice.” He stuck the book
back on the shelf and turned around. “Father, can I ask you something?”
“You want to know how I told Aidan McDonagh about the swan
song when I was here,” Bishop gestured vaguely at the walls that looked
like stone but were really as translucent as vapor, a world inside his
mind, “entranced.”
J.J. nodded. Bishop sat down on the sill of one of the tall, open
windows. He seemed perfectly at ease, but at the same time, melancholy.
Resigned to his fate. “I spoke to him the same way I speak to you.
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Through dreams. Aidan was never trained. I’m not sure he realized
someone was sending him dreams. But he knew they were meant to
guide him, and he had the courage to act on them.”
“But it was your writing,” J.J. insisted. “On the letter Seth and
Emery found.”
“Have you heard of automatic writing? I spoke through Aidan that
last night. It’s a crass way of putting it, but he ‘channeled’ me, if you
will. It took a tremendous force of will on my part, but he had opened his
mind fully to the dreams by then.” Bishop looked down at his hands.
They were careful, elegant hands, like Marshall’s. “I sent him to his
death. If I had known the hunters were so close – ”
“We don’t control the future, Father. We only try to shape it.”
Bishop grinned. Suddenly he could have been a teenager. “You are
Xanthe’s student. Does he still watch Casablanca?”
“Every Saturday night,” J.J. said. Bishop laughed. It had probably
been a long time since he had laughed with anyone, and J.J. felt a little
guilty for spoiling the moment, but a sense of urgency was growing in
him. Shadows rippled across the city. The clouds above the pyramid had
thickened, and if he listened closely, he could hear thunder off in the
distance, like the mountain was growling. “Is there a way to send us
home without destroying the Earth?”
“The White Swan didn’t believe there was.” Bishop peeked around
the silk curtain at the statue staring down at them. “She sank Lemuria to
save this planet.”
“Because Earth is blessed with a special magic,” J.J. said.
“Humankind.”
“The Totems thought so. They came down to Earth to bless them.”
Swinging up onto the staircase, J.J. leaned back against the rail. He
was still amazed by the gritty texture of the stone under the soles of his
thick boots. The illusion of this place was real enough to trap you.
“LeRoi thinks the Black Swan was born now because humans have lost
that blessing.”
Bishop’s mouth tightened. “I spent too many years listening to what
Ursula thinks. I’d rather know what you think.”
“I don’t think it’s an accident the Jaguar Totems chose Seth and I
now, and that we have the gifts we do,” J.J. answered readily. “But I
don’t think the Totems want us to destroy the Earth. I think they saw a
chance for us to save it, because thanks to you, we have something the
White Swan never had. The Alpha Clan.”
There was no sun in the sky, but the light outside frosted the lenses
of Bishop’s glasses, hiding his eyes. “You have kept this from Ursula?”
“We’re not what you’d call bosom friends,” J.J. shrugged.
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“Yes, but there are not many minds in this world as cunning as
hers.” Bishop shifted, or perhaps the light outside dimmed, for J.J. could
see his eyes again. They were deep as the roiling ocean. “If you succeed
in this, you will have beaten her at her own game not once but twice.”
“Will it work, then?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Bishop said. “The Gen-0s would have the
strength to channel the Source’s power. The question is: What do you
want them to channel it into? Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It
only changes form. The White Swan called upon her Totem to close the
stargate the day the Source was created, and she sank her homeland
beneath the seas.”
“So there has to be a sacrifice,” J.J. said.
“Think of it as an exchange.”
That was kind of like calling death a long sleep, but whatever. J.J.
had never expected saving the world to be easy.
He hopped down from the stairs. The curtains were whipping wildly
now as the wind blew through the library, riffling the pages of a book, a
journal bound in cracked leather, that had been left open on a tall
podium. Words in black ink lifted off the parchment like butterflies.
Bishop made no effort to rise, even as the floor beneath their feet began
to crack, fissures appearing in white lines across the black stone. “Come
back with me,” J.J. shouted, over the thunder of the wind. “I can take you
back with me, Father. I know I’m strong enough to take us both – ”
Bishop shook his head. White flowers drifted in the windows,
dancing with the black butterflies. “There is no absolution for the works
that have been wrought on your kindred in my name,” he said, calmly,
his voice almost lost in the sudden storm’s cacophony. “I do not ask for
forgiveness, Jeremy Jonathan. I did not bring you here to save me.”
J.J. stared at him, the horror of this place just beginning to dawn on
him. Because there was another quote from Virgil, he recalled, from the
Aeneid. Each of us bears his own hell.
The butterflies’ wings had razor edges. They slashed the silk
curtains, slashed shallow cuts on Bishop’s arms and cheeks. His blood
splashed onto the stone floor; the glyph carved there began to glow like it
was newly branded. The white petals formed a whirlwind that drove J.J.
back, toward the door. He cried out again for Bishop, but the stone
beneath his feet fractured apart in a blaze of golden white light; when J.J.
hit the ground on his knees, it was the stone floor of a cold, dark temple.
Someone was saying his name. J.J., slumped against the altar, lifting
his chin off of his chest with an effort. Cleo’s eyes registered relief. She
was kneeling beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “What did he say?”
she asked, her voice soft with wonder.
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LeRoi was staring at J.J. hungrily. Abraham stood behind her. Very
slightly, he shook his head.
“He said it’s time to leave,” J.J. said.
232
Chapter Eighteen: Genesis
McLain had just enough time to load a clip into his sidearm before
the alarms started to blare.
He sprinted into the corridor, shouting at the first group of soldiers
he saw to come with him. Ozzie Harris happened to be among them.
“What the bloody hell is all this, Captain?” he demanded shrilly. The
orange freckles on his cheeks stood out like spots.
“I think Seth is stealing the Ark,” McLain said.
There was no chance for Ozzie to reply beyond a high-pitched laugh
of disbelief, for they had reached the elevator, and McLain ordered the
dozen Marines inside.
It was a quick but nerve-wracking ride. McLain had seen his share of
action. The wiring tension never really went away; you knew you could
die, believed you wouldn’t. There was no other way to channel the fear
into a sharper focus that let the training take over, helped you stay alive.
By long habit he kissed the swan charm around his neck, just as the
doors swooshed open.
He saw the blood first, viscous, arcing silvery-black spatters of it,
spackling the glass-fronted cabinets, the long leather couches. Bodies,
Gen-0s, were crumpled near the hearth, in the corners. Something
ferocious had torn through here. A fresh black streak of silvery blood
like the trail of a comet ran along one wall; a bloody paw print marked
the threshold of the corridor that branched off to the chamber that housed
the Ark.
Silently, McLain motioned his men forward. The air in the lower
levels was chill. No lights burned; eyes fixed to their night-vision rifle
scopes, the Marines moved forward in formation. Shapes seemed to drift
in and out of the shadows around them. It might have just been nerves, or
it might not have been. The lower levels were the domain of the Alpha
Clan. McLain had never ventured down here. His knowledge of the
honeycombed tunnels came only from the fort’s blueprints.
He could probably have found his way without even that, though.
The Ark hummed in his bones, its magic growing stronger the deeper he
led his men into the lightless maze.
At last they were standing outside a round wooden door. The chains
that had been drawn across it pooled on the floor like sleeping vipers.
McLain pushed it with his fingertips –
Something exploded from the darkness – a snarling mass of red and
orange stripes. Shots rang out. Burning pain seared McLain’s scalp; he
rolled to the side, through the open doorway, into the Ark’s chamber.
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There was a flash of marbled eyes in the Ark’s sinister red glow as the
five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger rounded again, hissing.
Sommers jumped in front of McLain. Regent swiped his claws
across the young sergeant’s chest. Blood spurted into McLain’s face,
mixing with the blood already gushing from his torn scalp. McLain
squeezed the trigger on his pistol, but the shot went wide as something
struck him from the side. The pistol flew out of his grasp and skidded
over the edge of the pit that sloped down hundreds of feet, crisscrossed
by crystal fibers like a giant spider’s web. McLain was thrown sideways
into the wall.
He ducked before Connor’s boot could connect fully with his skull.
The blow was glancing, enough to leave his ears ringing, but McLain
managed to stagger to his feet.
Connor Burke smiled at him. The light in his hazel eyes was manic,
the sleeves of his letterman’s jacket soaked with silvery-black blood,
clearly not his. There was something wrapped around his neck, some sort
of thin tissue. McLain couldn’t make it out in the dark.
“Hello, Captain,” Connor said. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to
kill you.”
McLain flicked blood out of his eyes. Sporadic bursts of gunfire in
the corridor told him his men were still fighting. He pressed his back
against the cold stone wall and looked at David Burke’s son, feeling his
heartbeat against his spine. McLain had never known Connor well.
Apparently, he had never really known him at all. “What have you done
with Seth?”
Connor’s laughter reverberated around the room. His eyes weren’t
just manic. They were crazed. “Sorry. Seth isn’t here right now.”
He snapped his fingers. The boy standing in the shadows stepped
forward.
Without the jaguar tattoos circling his right eye, brow to cheekbone,
McLain would have sworn he was J.J. It was more than just the black
camouflage and freshly-washed golden curls. It was how he moved. J.J.
was a cat in a tree, poised to pounce. For all of his natural grace, Seth
had never moved like that. He hadn’t been trained to.
Cupped in his hands was an orb made of dense, translucent glass,
filled with scarlet liquid too thick to be wine. McLain could see the red
cast through his fingers. He swallowed as he stared at it.
Connor yawned like he was bored by all of this. A weapons belt was
strapped around his slim hips, bristling with throwing stars, a silver
knife, a braided leather whip. “Haven’t you ever seen the Ark, Captain?”
The answer was no, but McLain chose not to give it. “Am I to
assume your mother also had you retrieve the Source?”
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“You can assume any damn thing you like,” Connor said pleasantly.
“But if I were you, I’d be deciding if I had any last words.” He snapped
his fingers again. “Jeremy, take care of this, would you?”
Seth smirked. Before McLain could ask why Connor had just called
him by his twin’s name, Seth had pitched the Ark to Connor, and lunged
at McLain.
He skinned midair. McLain saw the shudder down his spine as he
turned, sliding under the cat’s claws; a wave of dizziness broke over him
– his scalp was clawed to the bone – and he stumbled into the railing that
circled the pit. The tawny jaguar’s roar was earsplitting in the stone
chamber. Seth lunged again, claws out – but this time, something
whizzed by McLain’s ear and struck the jaguar in the shoulder, just
above the joint.
With a howl, Seth rolled sideways.
Connor whipped around. As the tall figure in the doorway went to
knock another arrow on the string of a high-powered bow, something
leapt out of Connor’s hand, spinning like a razor-edged flower through
the dark. Lucky cried out and clutched his hand.
Connor took a step forward – only to take a step back as a bright
banner of flame whirled into the room.
Coppery hair flying around her head, Quinn O’Shea landed a
roundhouse kick against Connor’s chest. Connor crumpled. Seth roared,
fur bristling along his spine. Before the jaguar could lunge, Quinn
yanked the whip off Connor’s belt and snapped it at him. Seth paced
back, growling. Lucky’s arrow was sticking out of his shoulder.
McLain hardly noticed any of this. His vision was shifting in and out
of focus.
He dimly saw Emery swing a quarterstaff at Connor, and Connor
counter with a kick that struck him in the ribs. Quinn and Lucky –
McLain had recognized the hunter immediately, the one he had sent after
Seth, against his own misgivings – advanced on the jaguar, who backed
away, hissing. Blood dripped off Lucky’s fingers. His leather jacket was
ripped below the wrist.
Tranq him, McLain thought. He would have said it, had he been able
to. The railing dug into the small of his back as he held himself upright
by the elbows. In some dim corner of his mind he was wondering where
Caroline was, but he couldn’t remember if she was at the fort or at home.
Numbness was spreading from the crown of his head down to his toes.
The collar of his shirt was soaked with blood.
Lucky drew a tranq gun from his belt. There was a snarl; it sounded
almost like a warning, and Lucky shoved Quinn out of the way as the
tiger crashed into the room. Connor yelled something, the words
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indistinct; McLain saw him punch Emery squarely in the jaw, then race
out the door as Emery fell, the jaguar and the tiger bounding after him –
Connor glanced back. Unless McLain was hallucinating from blood
loss, his teeth were pointed as a shark’s, and the tissue around his neck
flared into – gills. He laughed at McLain’s look of horror. His hand shot
out like he was blowing a goodbye kiss.
The sound the throwing star made as it spun toward McLain was the
whisper of a razor parting silk. Acting on pure instinct, McLain flipped
his body over the rail. His fingers, slick with his own blood, lost their
grip; there was a sense of weightlessness even as the weight of his body
pulled him over the edge.
He plummeted, shattering the crystal web, which was springier than
he would have imagined, like a plant…He shut his eyes…He could see
Caroline, the first time their mother placed her in his arms, and the
awesomeness of his responsibility for this other life had risen up inside
of him like an ocean swell…He could hear his heart thundering in his
ears now just like it had then, and he did not know the thunder was
actually wings; his eyes had already closed in anticipation of the end as a
shadow swooped down into the pit. He did not feel the long, tapered
fingers seize him by the shirtfront, arresting his fall like a star captured
on its way to Earth.
***
A searchlight hit the infirmary’s arched windows, throwing
Marshall’s shadow up onto the cabinets. Potions sparkled there like
liquid jewels. Leigh hadn’t the faintest notion what half of them were for,
just as she didn’t know what half of the instruments Marshall had
instructed her to put out on the metal table were for. “Do you actually
know what you’re doing?” she said.
Marshall didn’t answer. This could have been because he was rolling
a stool up to the foot of the cot, peering under the sheet that had been
draped over Aphrodisia’s lap. Her delicate hooves had been hoisted up
into two stirrups, spreading her legs wide. Whitney was bathing her
forehead with a cool cloth. She had pulled a gauzy yellow gown on to
protect her corduroy skirt and brown cardigan.
Aphrodisia’s curls were sticking to her cheeks, but so far, she hadn’t
loosed so much as a whimper of pain. “Okay, Aphi.” Marshall folded the
white blanket up to her hips. She had been dressed in a plain blue
hospital gown, a shade paler than her hairless skin. Her eyes met Leigh’s,
flatly black with no whites. Leigh, thinking of the mermaid girl floating
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in her tank, managed a tremulous smile. “I think we’re ready for you to
push,” Marshall said.
“Agathon?” Aphrodisia asked, in her bells-on-water voice.
“I don’t know where he is, Aphi, I’m sorry.”
Aphrodisia nodded. Alarms continued ringing throughout the prison.
Leigh had all but tuned them out. An occasional rumble of distant
thunder overwrote them.
She wanted to ask how this was possible. For starters, she had not
realized the Gen-0s weren’t sterile. You saw giant moth and snake and
deer people, and you just, like, assumed. She remembered Marshall had
said something to Seth once (Leigh had been in the backseat of his Audi,
discussing prom dress options with Whitney, not really listening) about
artificial insemination, so maybe that explained it, but still, she had just
seen Aphrodisia a few days ago, and her belly had not been nearly this
swollen. Leigh would never have guessed she was pregnant.
“Will it be human?” Whitney asked.
Leigh thought that was a ridiculous question, but Marshall didn’t
seem to. He rested a gloved hand lightly on Aphrodisia’s knee. Leigh
didn’t want to look at what he was doing with his other one. “There’s no
way to know. Some of the genetic material is human, but Aphi’s isn’t.
And no human fetus could gestate this rapidly. She was only fertilized
about three weeks ago. We didn’t expect to get lucky on the first try. I
mean – ” He blushed. “You know what I mean.”
Leigh, wholly from nosiness, asked, “Whose genetic material did
you use?”
Marshall hesitated, but Aphrodisia said, “Jonathan Steward’s.”
Leigh looked down at Aphrodisia’s elegantly molded face. The Gen0s were all beautiful in their own alien ways. When Leigh looked at
Aphrodisia, the tips of her delicate antlers poking up from her curls, her
eyes slightly more sloped than Agathon’s or Xanthe’s, she thought of a
faun out of the old Roman myths. “Jack Steward’s? As in my dad Jack
Steward’s?”
Marshall sighed. “Men donate sperm all the time, Leigh. It’s not like
we have a limited supply. Aphrodisia and Agathon wanted a child, and
Mr. Steward wanted to help them out.”
“But…he didn’t have to, like…”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “We call it ‘artificial insemination’ for a
reason.”
“Just checking.” Leigh was unabashed. After all, Aphrodisia was
married.
“Okay, Aphi.” Marshall patted Aphrodisia’s knee. “Push.”
237
Balling her hands up into fists, Aphrodisia took a deep breath and
bore down, eyes shut tight. No sound escaped her until she released the
breath on a gasp and fell back on the pillows, panting. Whitney smoothed
her hair back.
Leigh had to remind herself to breathe.
“That was good,” Marshall said. “Now I need you to push again for
me. Come on, Aphi, big push – that’s it – I can see the shoulders, come
on – ”
The something sliding out of Aphrodisia was pink, not blue or gray.
Leigh didn’t see much else about it, other than that its dark hair was slick
with silvery-black fluid the consistency of oil, like how Leigh envisioned
a star might bleed, because about that time, Alfaro shouted. Leigh almost
jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t forgotten about Dre, being watched
over by his big brother a little further down the ward, but she had been
about to witness an actual alien birth. She had gotten a little caught up.
The infirmary doors had crashed open; that was why Alfaro had
shouted. All of a sudden the room was filled with people: wounded
soldiers, human and werekin, being carted in on stretchers, carried in
their comrades’ arms. Logue Ampon deposited a young man with ginger
hair on the cot next to Dre’s and stormed back out, cat-yellow eyes
blazing. The soldier gurgled on his own blood. His chest was a mass of
gore, and Leigh thought, Seth.
She ran toward Emery, who had just staggered in, supporting Ozzie
Harris with an arm around his waist. “Did they get the Ark?” she cried.
Emery nodded. Quinn had pushed in behind him; she helped Ozzie
over to the windowsill, as the cots were filling up fast. White-robed
Healers were suddenly everywhere, like they had materialized from the
woodwork. Leigh had never seen so many of the Gen-0s aboveground all
at once. She thought of that Fuseli painting The Nightmare, seeing these
giant aliens with snake tails and spider legs and ram’s horns tending to
Marines that looked like children compared to them.
“Regent is with Connor,” Emery said, bringing Leigh’s attention
back to him. “We tried to tranq Seth, but he got in the way before we
could. Agathon is bringing McLain up now.”
Leigh’s knees went to jelly. “What’s wrong with Will?”
Emery didn’t have to answer. Agathon had just ducked under the
doorway, cradling Will McLain against his chest.
McLain’s dark hair was matted to his scalp with blood. The crimson
was startling against his colorless cheeks. Too stricken to move, Leigh
simply stared as Agathon carried him over to an empty cot. “Is he…?”
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“He’s alive,” Emery said grimly. “Listen, I have to go help. The
Source is here. That’s what this storm is all about. We’re trying to find
Connor before he gets past the perimeter with the Ark.”
“Emery!”
Emery spun back. His ponytail was coming loose. Maybe it was the
tracks of blood on his cheeks, but he looked too tough to be Whitney’s
hippie wererabbit boyfriend. Leigh laid her hand on his arm. “Now that
Seth has the Ark, can’t he just call down the Totems to wipe us all out?”
Emery shook his head. “He needs J.J. for that. They have to channel
their Totems together.”
“You don’t…” Leigh dropped her hand back to her side. “You don’t
think they’ll kill him, do you? It’s not Seth’s fault Connor enchanted
him. He’s not a traitor.”
“I know,” Emery said, gently. Then he was gone, lost in the sea of
bodies flowing in and out of the infirmary.
Leigh stood there a moment, adrift. Leigh was not a Healer. Up here
she would only be in the way, she thought. As if to prove it, at that
instant, a Healer almost tripped over her scurrying by with a tray of
potion. Leigh quickly stepped back against the wall.
What good was she going to do up here? She could sit by Dre’s
bedside, yes, but much as Leigh wanted to be with him, was that really
going to help anyone? Her brother was out there, mindjacked by an evil
teenage genius hell-bent on world domination. She had to try, Leigh
thought. Even if it was hopeless, Seth would never have given her up for
lost.
She chose the quickest route she knew out of the fort, which was
straight down the cellblock where she had met Lucky earlier in the week,
out a side door that opened into the trees. Hunters shouted questions to
her as she ran past their cells. As Leigh had no answers, she ignored
them.
An alarm went off when she opened the door, but it was just another
shrill cry in the jangling cacophony; she didn’t expect to be called back,
and she wasn’t. She tore down the hillside, limbs slapping her cheeks,
wind whipping her hair as raindrops began to patter the grass –
Leigh cried out. A hand had snaked out of the dark and dragged her
behind a tree. “Shh,” someone hissed.
“Don’t shh me, Lukas-Lucky-Whatever-Your-Name-Is.” Leigh
yanked her wrist out of his grasp. “And don’t grab me. It’s rude.”
“So sorry, m’lady.”
Lucky bowed mockingly to her. Something sticky coated Leigh’s
wrist. Looking down, she saw that it was blood. Lucky’s fingers were
wet with it. “You’re cut,” she cried.
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“Just a scratch,” Lucky said. The bone-deep gash on his forearm did
not qualify as a “scratch” in Leigh’s book, but he signaled her to follow
him without giving her time to argue.
Together, they knelt in the shadows at the bottom of the hill. Hours
seemed to have passed since Emery had ploughed through the fort’s gate;
tipping her face up to the light rain, Leigh was surprised the sun was only
now slipping under the horizon. She thought of this myth Seth had told to
her after the battle at Fort King. They had spent a lot of time talking
during his recovery, getting to know one another once he didn’t have to
hide who he really was anymore. The Maya, Seth had said, believed the
sun was a jaguar racing across the sky. At night, when the sun set, the
jaguar’s skin turned black, and he traveled the underworld slaying
demons. The light jaguar ruled the land of the living. The dark jaguar
ruled the land of the dead.
Leigh shivered. J.J., she thought, where are you?
On a gravel road not thirty feet from where she crouched, Seth was
sitting on the hood of a black SUV. Werner Regent, impeccable in a
tailored navy suit, seemed to be treating a wound on his shoulder.
Leigh’s Seth would have been joking around, talking about his nine lives
or something. Connor’s Seth endured the pain stoically.
“I did that.”
Leigh had forgotten Lucky was with her. He was quiet as a cat. “You
did what?” she hissed.
“Shot him. In the shoulder. With an arrow.” Lucky patted the bow
and quiver slung across his back.
“Listen, Robin Hood,” Leigh said, “that’s my brother you’re
bragging about shooting.”
“Which is why,” Lucky said, “I didn’t shoot him in the heart.”
He drew her back into the trees and shrugged his bow to the ground,
one-handed sliding a thin knife off his belt. “What are you doing?” Leigh
demanded, backing up.
“I might ask you the same thing.” He held his injured arm out. He
placed the tip of the knife against the raised mark on his wrist, over the
pulse point. The growing shadows cast favorable planes on his
aristocratic features. He reminded her of someone Leigh couldn’t place.
“Were you planning to waltz out there and beg your brother to come
home with you? Hoping the mere sight of you would wake him up from
this dream he’s trapped in?”
“No,” Leigh lied, glad the shadows also hid her blush.
“Good. Because it wouldn’t have worked.” Lucky plunged the knife
down suddenly. Leigh gasped as blood welled up under the blade; he
shot her an amused glance, like cutting his own wrist open was nothing
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at all for anyone to be bothered by, and reached down to pluck something
small and shiny out of his skin.
Leigh let him drop it into her palm. The bloodstained copper disc
was no bigger than her smallest fingernail, like the transmitter hidden
inside Jack’s ring. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A tracking device. You didn’t think McLain would just turn me
loose, did you? Chimera Enterprises never loses its investments if it can
help it.”
He extended a palm. Leigh let the tracker slide off her fingers into
his. “Will McLain isn’t Chimera,” she said stiffly. “He’s Alliance.”
“Didn’t have any qualms about collaring your brother, did he now?”
Lucky’s tone was derisive. Leigh had been waffling up till now on
whether or not she liked him. She decided on the not. He was arrogant
and smug and – a lot like J.J., her inner voice whispered. “Let me tell
you what’s happening here, love, since you seem quite well in the dark.
Ursula LeRoi decided to stop pretending she was following orders.
Therefore, your General Burke declared her an enemy of the state and set
about shutting her operation down. But that doesn’t mean he intends to
set an alien race free into the world. What’s he been doing since LeRoi
was captured? Something she never managed: Luring the werekin out of
the Underground in droves, registering them here at Fort King, and
implanting them with these,” he held up the tracker, “before he allows
them to leave. They’ve all known so little of actual freedom, they think
they’re being let off the leash.
“I heard about what your brother did, with taking off that collar.
You can bet the minute Burke gets to a phone he’s going to call in Eden.
That’s the kill order for every werekin on the planet,” Lucky said, when
Leigh opened her mouth to ask. “Without the collars, Burke knows he
can’t control werekin. He won’t risk them overpowering humankind.
He’s wanted to exterminate them all for years anyhow.”
“McLain wouldn’t let him do that,” Leigh said.
“Will McLain isn’t in command. Last I saw, he wasn’t even
conscious. But it wouldn’t matter if he was. The first werekin Burke will
want dead is McLain’s sister. The Black Swan.”
Leigh hated that everything he was saying made sense. “What are
you going to do,” she demanded caustically, “help him?”
Lucky’s reply was to wink at her, swinging his bow up to his
shoulder with an arrow somehow knocked on the string.
If Leigh had been blessed with werekin reflexes, she might have
been quick enough to stop him. But she wasn’t, and before she could
even shout a warning, Lucky had let the arrow fly.
It thunked into the SUV’s rear tire.
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Seth leapt off the hood. Regent was halfway inside the car, buckling
Caroline McLain into the back. Leigh heard her scream as Connor
jumped behind the wheel, shouting at Seth: “Jeremy! Come on!”
Seth’s golden eyes swept the trees. They lighted directly on the spot
where Leigh was standing. She was certain he saw her, in spite of the
shadows; she tensed to run, knowing she could never outrun a jaguar, but
Seth grabbed the door with one hand and swung up off the running
board, lighting gracefully in the passenger’s seat as Connor punched the
gas and roared away down the gravel road.
Leigh coughed. As the dust cleared, she was looking through the
now-steady rain at a collapsed bridge over a dark ribbon of creek. “Nice
shot, Robin Hood,” she said sarcastically. “They got away.”
Lucky laughed. He had dropped his bow; voices were moving
toward them in the dark. Leigh put her hands up. Lucky did as well, and
she saw that tracker no longer rested in his palm. Her eyes widened.
“You just shot that tracker into their tire, didn’t you?”
Lucky’s smirk was the definition of feline. “Bull’s eye,” he said.
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Chapter Nineteen: As We Become
When McLain opened his eyes, it was to the moonlight-glazed
darkness of a room he did not immediately recognize. He moved to sit
up, and a hand touched his arm. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea just yet,
Captain.”
“Lydia?” McLain let his aching shoulders fall back on the pillows.
Now he recognized the pitched ceiling and the glass cabinets, the muted
hush and the pungent scent of mercury and sulfur. He was in the
infirmary.
Rain tapped the arched windows, blown into the glass in sharp bursts
by gusts of intensifying wind. Lydia Steward was sitting with her legs
tucked up under her in a chair beside McLain’s cot. Her curls were tied
up with a rubber band; a thin blue blanket was drawn around her
shoulders, over her T-shirt and yoga pants. White-robed Healers glided
almost silently around the dark ward, bending down to check their
charges.
Before he even asked, McLain knew. “Caroline?”
“I’m so sorry, Will. Connor has her.”
Connor was right about you. Of course Caroline would have gone
with Connor, McLain thought, as his hands curled into fists. She didn’t
know about his plans, what he really was. He had played on the fact that
he was a good-looking seventeen-year-old boy and she a naïve twelveyear-old girl to see to it that she trusted him.
Lydia shifted over to McLain’s cot, placing a glass of water in his
hand. McLain watched her hand come up to the bandages on his
forehead as he mechanically put the glass to his lips. The water was cold,
and helped settle his churning stomach. “Did we ever reach Burke?” he
asked.
“After a fashion.” Lydia’s tone was wry. “He’s upstairs, in the
command center. They’ve started evacuating the city.” She glanced at the
window just as a flash of lightning lit it up, briefly turning it into a mirror
that reflected the ward.
“What about Seth?”
Lydia explained about the enchantment, the lab Leigh and Dre had
discovered at the Burkes’, the experiments Connor had conducted on
himself with Gen-0 blood. Considering the gills and shark teeth, they
seemed to have worked. “Did you know he was Ursula LeRoi’s son?”
Lydia asked.
“No. Burke never told me.” McLain handed the empty glass back to
her. Lydia set it on the windowsill, tossing the blanket over her chair.
McLain had managed to scoot up so he was sitting against the pillows. A
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turban of bandages was wound around his head. Every movement pulled
the edges of the healing wounds on his scalp. “Has there been any word
from J.J.?”
“Not yet.” Lydia sounded wan.
“He’s going to have a field day with the ‘I told you so’ about
Connor,” McLain said. Lydia’s lips twitched. She looked away as the
smile melted, trembling at the corners. McLain picked her hand up off
the sheet. “We’ll get them back, Lydia. Caroline. Seth. J.J. Cleo. All of
them. We’ll get them back.”
“You sound so sure,” Lydia murmured, searching his eyes as if for
some doubt.
“We got Leigh back, didn’t we?”
Lydia glanced at the next cot over. Leigh was asleep there, her head
on the pillow beside Dre Alfaro’s. Wires snaked from electrodes on his
bare chest to a monitor that was beeping unsteadily. Drawing his hand
back from Lydia’s, McLain rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “You were
right. I shouldn’t have sent him to check out any leads. I forget they’re
all just kids.”
“They aren’t just kids. They’re much more than kids. Every single
one of them is remarkable,” Lydia said. McLain couldn’t tell if she was
amazed, or disturbed, or both. “You should have seen Marshall tonight.
He was so composed, taking care of everyone, giving instructions to the
Healers like a man twice his age.”
“But still,” McLain said, roughly.
Lydia gave him a stern look. “This is not your fault, Will McLain.
You didn’t start Project Ark. You helped to stop it. You do not bear the
responsibility for what has gone wrong here. No one’s blood is on your
hands.”
McLain knew she didn’t just mean Dre Alfaro’s. He pretended to
believe her. “Can you hand me those fatigues over there? I should report
in with Burke, check on my men – ”
“Your men are fine. They all survived.” Lydia rested her hands on
McLain’s shoulders. “You have to rest, Will. You nearly died. If
Agathon hadn’t caught you when you fell into that pit, you would have
died. And I still sat here and watched them pump a pint of blood into
you, and about a gallon of Healing potion.”
“I’m fine,” McLain insisted.
“Well, then, you need to lie there and listen to me, because I’m
ninety-nine percent certain the world is going to end tonight, and I have
something I need to say to you.”
In the dark, Lydia’s eyes were green like a cat’s. McLain felt the
steadiness of them pin him down on the mattress. “All right,” he said.
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Lydia took a breath. When she spoke, she spoke quietly. “It’s not
like I don’t remember the past seventeen years. I remember marrying
Jack. I remember raising Leigh. I remember remembering that J.J. was
dead, and that Thomas had left me and taken Seth with him because of it,
and I also remember not remembering that Thomas told me, the night he
proposed, who he really was and what my father had really been part of
at Fort King. The only thing I can’t remember is the night J.J. was
collared and Thomas got away with Seth. That’s just blank.
“When I saw J.J. in Regent’s yard that day, everything Chimera had
made me forget flooded back in, all at once.” Lydia touched her temples
as though remembering the sensation. McLain was hardly aware that the
nighttime life of the busy ward continued around them, that the rain had
begun to fall harder outside, a gray curtain drawn across the city.
Everything had receded for him except Lydia’s voice, and the fluttering
of a pulse in the back of his throat, just behind his Adam’s apple. “All of
the locked doors in my mind opened up, and I was furious with Jack for
what he had done to me, and most of all for this helpless, broken person
he had turned me into. I swore right then I would never depend on
anyone else again the way he had made me depend on him. I would be
strong enough to do everything on my own – raise three children, two of
them werekin, and never ask for a minute’s help. But then…”
She bit her lip. McLain shifted slightly on the bed. “But then?”
“Then you moved in across the street.” Lydia’s eyes jumped from
the rain-lashed window to McLain’s face. “Every single time I’ve called
you, day or night, you’ve been there. When the boys blew up the
backyard resurrecting that dog. When J.J. got sick. When he went
missing overnight. When Seth was kidnapped. You’re there every time I
need you to be there, and that scares me to death.”
“Why?” McLain asked, softly.
“Because I need you to be there,” Lydia said, and leaned over, and
kissed him.
A throat cleared.
McLain looked up, reluctantly, his hands still tangled in Lydia’s
curls. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Can this wait?”
Kate Jensen smiled down at her combat boots. “I’m afraid not,
Captain. General Burke said to bring you to the command center if you
were awake, and…Forgive me, sir, but you seem pretty awake.”
McLain sighed. Lydia kissed his whiskery cheek. “Go on,” she said.
“There’s someone I want to meet anyway.”
***
245
Dre liked watching Leigh sleep. A few mornings (and he realized
this could have come off as creepy stalker behavior) he might have
hopped along her windowsill, peering around her curtains as the first rays
of daylight slanted across her porcelain face. He had never seen her
asleep up close, though. Never been able to admire how the slope of her
nose became the slant of her cheekbones and the swell of her lips.
She had fallen asleep with her head on his pillow and her hand on his
chest. Under her palm was a faint pink line that by tomorrow wouldn’t
even rate as a scar. Dre wasn’t fooled, though. He had heard Marshall tell
Angelo it would take weeks for the damage to his heart to heal. It might
never heal enough for him to fly again.
Angelo was gone now. He had slipped in and out most of the night,
wanting to help with the hunt for Connor and Seth, wanting to be by his
brother’s side. An hour ago, Dre had finally convinced him just to go, he
would be fine. None of them would survive if they didn’t stop Connor
and LeRoi.
Leigh stirred now as thunder growled outside and her mother and
Captain McLain followed Jensen out of the infirmary. “What time is it?”
she asked, sleepily.
“Close to dawn.” Dre kept his voice low so as not to disturb the
other patients. The soldier next to him moaned in his sleep. One of the
Healers, Philo her name was, bent over him, her long beak clicking as
her giant feathered wings slowly beat the air.
Leigh looked from her to Dre. Her expression was thoughtful. “You
know, I’ve almost never seen you skin. Only in a fight.”
“I’m not really up for it right now,” Dre said, touching the wires
hooked to his chest.
“Wuss.” Grinning at him, Leigh sat up and tucked her messy curls
behind her ears. Someone had given her a pair of mint-green scrubs.
Naturally, because she was Leigh, she had accessorized. The beaded
bracelet she had bought from Re-Spin circled her wrist. Dre touched it;
she laced her fingers through his, turning her wrist to display the bracelet
for him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Zoe really has a gift.”
“She carves glyphs into the beads. See?” Dre turned one around.
“This one means ‘hope.’”
Leigh studied the small, delicate etchings. Suddenly, she slipped the
bracelet off and tied it around Dre’s thin wrist. “It’ll be your good luck
charm,” she said.
Dre’s cheeks went warm. Back at the cathedral, he was pretty sure
she had been about to kiss him when Gideon had barged in.
It took some doing, but he managed to persuade Philo to let him go
for a walk. (Leigh stood to one side gaping as the Gen-0 hooted and
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chirped and Dre answered her in Lemurian.) The compromise they came
to was that Leigh had to push him in a wheelchair. Grumbling, Dre
stepped into the sweatpants Angelo had left for him. Leigh found an old
gray robe to wrap around his shoulders. “Where are we going?” Dre
asked, as she wheeled him out the glass double doors.
“It’s a surprise,” Leigh said mysteriously.
As they rolled along, she filled him in on what he had missed. Some
of it Angelo had already told him, but Leigh was never one to spare the
details. She even told him what the hunter, Lucky, had said about Burke.
“Do you think he would really order his men to kill all of you?” she
asked.
Dre swiped his bangs back from his eyes. The elevator doors had
opened; he felt like an invalid as Leigh wheeled him inside. “I think our
best hope is for J.J. and Cleo to find the Tortoise Clan,” he said.
Leigh sucked in a breath. She was staring straight ahead at their
reflections in the polished doors. They couldn’t hear the storm in here.
“What?” Dre said.
“Nothing.” Her tone was cool. “I just didn’t realize you were so
anxious to leave Earth.”
“I’m not anxious to leave Earth,” Dre said. “But I’m not anxious to
be genocided, either.”
Leigh raised her chin without replying. Great, Dre thought. Now he
had blown it for sure.
Dre had heard Ozzie tell Angelo the lower levels were a
slaughterhouse – something had torn a swath through the Gen-0s. He
steeled himself, but when the doors opened, there were no bodies, no
blood. No evidence of any carnage at all.
A fire burned low in the stone hearth. Backlit by it, Agathon was
standing over Aphrodisia, who was reclining on one of the long, low
couches. Lydia Steward was sitting beside her, cooing to something that
was swaddled in a white blanket. She smiled when she saw Leigh and
Dre. “Come have a look,” she said.
Agathon stepped away from the hearth to greet them. The firelight
revealed the tracery of spidery veins in his wings, cast a scarlet sheen
over his flat black eyes. Dre knew, if Agathon had wanted to, he could
have called up a host of the damned to slaughter every living soul in
Fairfax. He didn’t like to dwell on what Connor Burke had done to
himself to become more powerful than the Gen-0s. “Andre,” Agathon
rumbled. “Is your heart well?”
From the corner of his eye, Dre glanced at Leigh. The spots of angry
color hadn’t yet faded from her cheeks. “It’s been better,” he admitted,
and saw her teeth catch her bottom lip. “What’s all this?”
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Lydia beamed. “This is the newest member of the Alpha Clan.”
She held up the swaddled bundle.
The infant’s skin was a perfect, downy peach, features distinctly
human. Dre stared at it in awe. A thatch of raven-black hair curled over
the forehead, around the shells of delicate ears; the eyes that blinked up
at Dre were a mesmerizing shade of amber, almost burgundy around the
pupils, fading out to gold around the edges. At the corners, stretching up
to the temples, were red and gold lines that formed the shape of –
“Butterflies?” Leigh said, glancing up at Agathon. Her eyes were
shining.
Agathon nodded proudly. “We do not yet know what the markings
mean. There are more on the shoulders and back.” He gently folded the
blanket down, freeing the baby’s chubby arms. Red, gold, and onyx lines
scrolled in intricate designs all over the tiny body. Dre thought of the
Tree of Songs in the fort’s rotunda, fashioned out of glyphs. He had
never seen glyphs like these before, but if Seth had been there, he was
sure he could have translated them. They made him think of leaves,
dancing on the wind.
“Is this what all Gen-0s look like when they’re born?” Leigh asked,
breathlessly.
“No,” Aphrodisia said, in her chime-like voice. “This child is the
first of a new clan.”
Leigh glanced from the baby to Aphrodisia. “Have you chosen a
name?”
A tactful way of asking if the baby was a boy or a girl. Dre couldn’t
tell either. “The name will not be chosen for some time,” Agathon said.
“Names are sacred to the Alpha Clan. Our names are not fixed at birth as
yours are. They become, as we become.”
As we become. Dre liked how that sounded, liked the idea that you
were not born who you were, but that it was through living that you
became.
For a moment, both canted forward, he and Leigh just stared at this
tiny being. Dre could feel his heart struggling in his chest, but it seemed
far away, and not that important, when faced with the miracle of a brandnew life. Leigh wiped at her cheeks.
Dre looked up at Agathon. “Is it just over, now that Connor has the
Ark?”
The Gen-0s’ expressions were hard to read, but Agathon’s rumbling
voice was solemn. “The future is closed to us. Even Xanthe cannot see it.
Our father appointed us to guard the Ark, but the Totems have chosen
another to speak to it. We must trust that Seth will honor that gift.”
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“But he isn’t Seth right now,” Leigh said, standing up straight.
“Connor has him convinced he’s J.J., and not even our J.J. – a J.J. that’s
loyal to Chimera!”
“Yet he cannot collar him,” Agathon said. “We take comfort from
that. Enchantments can be broken. And Seth is very strong.”
“So is Connor.” Leigh jerked her chin at a lingering smear of
silvery-blackish fluid along the hearth that Dre’s eyes had initially
missed. He wondered what had become of the bodies, and just as
quickly, wondered if he wanted to know.
Leigh was flushed and breathing hard. One of Agathon’s antennae
curled up as the other curled down. His tone was kind. “Connor Burke
draws upon a strength that is not his. Magic is not sustenance. Even the
strongest potion fades.”
A sharp look dawned on Leigh’s face. “Gideon told me Connor only
survived the infusions of Gen-0 blood because of the strengthening
potion in his system.”
“He asked Marshall to infuse him,” Aphrodisia said. The baby
kicked its small feet as it smiled up at her. It seemed to like her voice.
“Marshall refused. He warned Connor that his body must heal on its
own. These are lessons every Healer learns: No being, human or
werekin, can be sustained by magic alone. The potion Connor believes
strengthens him even now begins to poison him.”
“So he’ll die.” Leigh said it flatly. “Will Seth be free of the
enchantment then?”
“No, honey.” That was Lydia, speaking softly. “Magic doesn’t work
like that. Spells aren’t tied to their casters.”
“Then we have to find a way to make Seth remember who he is,”
Leigh said.
Dre cleared his throat. It sounded more like a chirp, though he didn’t
know that. “I might have an idea for how,” he said.
***
Normally once a mission went to hell, people were scrambling
around like ants whose hill has been doused with gasoline, attempting to
salvage something even as they burned. What worried McLain when he
limped into Fort King’s command center was that it was absolutely quiet.
General Burke was standing in front of the flat screen monitor that
dominated one entire wall like a screen in a movie theater. The computer
stations surrounding him were empty, headsets abandoned on keyboards.
Their screens blipped with new messages now and again, an out-of-tune
electronic chorus no one was around to mark.
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McLain let the door sealing shut announce his arrival. Burke didn’t
even turn around; he just said, “Come in, Will.”
Will. Not Captain, or McLain.
McLain walked over to stand beside his C.O. Burke was wearing
desert fatigues, chewing on the end of a fat Cuban cigar he hadn’t yet lit.
His iron-gray hair was buzzed close to his scalp. McLain could see old
scars under it. He had been with the general when he had come by a few
of those, in battles that would never be read about in any history book.
Burke glanced at the bloodstained bandages around his head. “I
understand you took a chance on the hunter. Lukas, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’re not concerned by his…history?”
McLain shrugged. “We can’t help who our parents are.”
A barbed reference to Connor. McLain let the sting of it linger before
nodding at the screen. “Are we waiting on orders?”
“Our orders have already come down. The brass doesn’t want a
repeat of the Storm of the Century, so we’ve begun evacuating the city.
Should be complete within the hour. Right now we’re waiting for a
message to be patched through, but Jensen tells me they’re having
trouble with the satellite, because of the storm.” Burke rolled one of the
leather chairs toward him and lowered into it, looking up at McLain, who
continued to face the blank screen. “So. You know about Caroline.”
“I know the Source is designed to drain her life-force, at which point
she sings that spell Seth and Emery found in the graveyard, her Totem
joins with her, and the Earth is destroyed as the stargate opens for the
werekin,” McLain said. “What I don’t know is why you never told me
the truth.”
“The luggage in the trunk of your car might have something to do
with it,” Burke said, dryly.
Was he asking for an apology? McLain sat down on the railing that
separated the stone floor from the screen. He wouldn’t usually have
presumed to sit in the presence of a superior officer without being asked,
but right then, Will McLain didn’t give much of a damn about the chain
of command.
Burke took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at him. “How
old were you when we met?”
“Eighteen,” McLain said.
“Just a kid. Green as they come, and cocky, to boot.” Burke smiled,
remembering. “But you outperformed everyone else in basic training.
Scored off the charts on your intelligence tests. Nobody could figure out
why you weren’t at West Point. I probably should have asked more
250
questions about you then. I might have figured out you were working for
the other side all along.”
So the Resistance was the other side. Whose side did that make
Burke on? LeRoi’s? “Are you going to court martial me, sir?”
“Son, if I was going to court martial you, I would have done it when
you disobeyed a direct order and helped J.J. Sullivan free the Black Swan
from Chimera Enterprises.” Burke laid the cigar down on the armrest of
his chair and tipped back, fingers laced behind his head. “I didn’t tell you
about the Black Swan’s destiny before that because you didn’t have the
clearance, and I didn’t see any reason for you to know. After I knew she
was your sister, I didn’t tell you because I was sure you’d run off, like
you tried to do tonight, and the best way to protect her, and this planet,
seemed to be having her here where the Alliance could watch out for
you. LeRoi already found her once. I didn’t doubt she could do it again,
no matter where you tried to hide her.” Burke leaned forward. “I never
meant for Caroline to be captured, Will.”
“Not because of her,” McLain said. “Because of the mission.”
Burke shrugged. “What do you want me to say? My mission is to
safeguard this planet. Yes, Operation Swan Song had a mandate I never
told you about. Prevent the stargate from being opened at all costs.
Conceal the existence of werekin from the world.”
“Even at the cost of exterminating them?” McLain shook his head.
“General, they aren’t specimens. They’re people.”
“I know that,” Burke said, with quiet force. “You forget that I’ve
been with this project since its beginning. I never saw werekin as
specimens. I fell in love with a woman who did, but for all of the years
we spent together, I never understood Ursula’s way of thinking. But
werekin aren’t human, either. They are superior to us in every way. I’ve
been a soldier a long while, Captain. I know the underdog does not win
in real life.”
Burke rose, abruptly, and began to pace. McLain watched him. The
muscles in his arms were cramping from how tightly he was gripping the
rail; he couldn’t hear the thunder in here, but he could feel it, vibrating
along the rail, growling in his bones. “Thus far I’ve been able to
persuade Washington that we can control the werekin. Learn from them.
The files Andre Alfaro decrypted from Chimera Enterprises describe
experiments that could virtually eradicate human disease. Cure cancer.
Prevent AIDS. Repair damaged organs and bones. Stop the aging
process. We need werekin for their blood, so I convinced my superiors
not to destroy them. But I’ve had to put certain measures in place, to
track them, to monitor them – ”
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“And Connor used that against you,” McLain said. “He hacked into
your surveillance feeds and had Werner Regent spying on Seth and J.J.
and the Commanders. On all of us. They knew exactly where to find
Caroline tonight. They knew every security protocol we had to secure the
Source and the Ark. You handed them everything they needed to get
everything they wanted.”
“Connor was not supposed to be a part of this.” Burke’s voice was
cold, but his eyes burned dangerously. “I had his memory wiped clean
after Ursula told him about Project Ark, something she never should
have done. I tried to have it wiped clean again after the storm, but the
Gen-0s refused to cooperate.”
“Because Xanthe is tired of doing your dirty work.” McLain was so
disgusted he felt the words curdle on his tongue. “I believed you when
you told me all you wanted was to protect Connor from the danger that
came with knowing about Chimera Enterprises. But that was a lie, wasn’t
it? You weren’t protecting Connor. You were protecting us from him.
You knew exactly what kind of monster slithered out of your wife
seventeen years ago. You’re willing to give the kill order now, murder
hundreds of innocent werekin to safeguard this planet, but you weren’t
willing to kill one boy?”
“He is still my son,” Burke bit out.
“And Caroline is still my sister,” McLain said.
He had surged to his feet without realizing it. He blinked, startled to
find himself toe-to-toe with Burke as a pattern of colored lights fell on
their faces.
“Is this a bad time?” someone said.
McLain spun around. Burke reached out automatically to steady him
when he stumbled.
Lit up on the screen, live and in color, J.J. Sullivan was smirking at
them. His blonde hair looked wet; his jungle fatigues were soiled,
discordant with the luxurious leather interior of the private jet
surrounding him. He was sitting cross-legged in his seat, laptop resting
on his knees. Cleo was leaning in over his shoulder.
“LeRoi – ” Burke started.
“She’s right here.” J.J. panned the webcam mounted on the side of
the laptop. In the row behind his, Ursula LeRoi was handcuffed, and
appeared to be calmly studying the storm outside the oval window. The
camera panned back to J.J. “So listen,” he said. “We found the Tortoise
Clan…”
While he talked, Burke sank back in his chair, steepling his fingers
under his chin. McLain leaned against one of the computer stations. He
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itched to take the bandages off his head. His scalp was tingling as the
claw marks healed over.
Quickly he explained what had gone down on their end. J.J. called
Connor a few creative names, then glanced over his shoulder at LeRoi. “I
honestly don’t think she knows anything about what he’s doing.”
He sounded puzzled. McLain did not sleep well at night when things
puzzled J.J. “If Connor is running his own game, it could make his next
move hard to predict,” he said.
“No.” J.J. shook his head. “His motives may be different from
LeRoi’s, but his means will be the same. He’ll add the Black Swan’s
blood to the Ark to raise Lemuria, and once he has the spaceship, he’ll
use the Source to open the stargate. He wouldn’t have gone to all this
trouble to set up the pieces if that wasn’t his endgame.”
“Tell me you have a plan for stopping him,” McLain said.
“First I’d like to know what General Burke’s plan is,” J.J. said.
McLain glanced at Burke. The light from the screen turned Burke’s
eyes opaque as he leaned forward. “The simplest thing to do would be to
kill the Black Swan,” he said.
“You know where she is.”
J.J. did not phrase it as a question, but, “We do,” Burke said.
McLain swallowed hard. His mouth tasted of metal. “We do?”
“Lukas planted a tracking device on their vehicle,” Burke said.
“They’re still in Fairfax. At Sacred Heart Academy.”
And that, McLain understood, was why the command center was so
calm. The mission had not failed. A team had been dispatched to take out
the Black Swan. The Ark would be retrieved; the Source would be
found; the werekin would be killed if they couldn’t be collared, but all
Burke had to do to solve that problem was to kill the Sullivan brothers.
The only two werekin to have ever escaped their collars.
McLain just stood there, feeling the floor open up beneath him. But
J.J. said, “There is another way.”
Burke seemed surprised by the mildness of his tone. “What’s that?”
“It’s messier,” J.J. admitted. “You probably wouldn’t be able to keep
werekin a secret anymore, at least not from the people of Fairfax. But
half of them are wrapped up in this somehow anyway.”
He explained what he wanted to do. Burke’s granite mask gave away
nothing of what he was thinking. “And you can guarantee this will
work?” he said, once J.J. finished.
“I could lie and tell you I’ve seen that it will work, but the only
future I’ve seen is the one where we all die when the stargate opens,” J.J.
said. He leaned closer to the screen, lowering his voice so LeRoi couldn’t
hear. “If I were in your shoes, General, I know the safer strategy would
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be what you have planned. But I’m asking you to believe that fate hasn’t
brought us to this moment just so my kindred could be destroyed. I’m
asking you to have faith.”
McLain could not look at Burke. He looked at Cleo, looking at J.J.,
the fierceness of her love for this boy, who was not properly a boy but
something, as Lydia had said, much more, written all over her face; and
even if Burke couldn’t see the fusion of J.J.’s skins as McLain could, he
thought the general had to at least see the truth in what J.J. had said. The
werekin could not have been resurrected after thousands of years simply
to be wiped out again. No universe was that cruel.
At last, Burke shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”
J.J. cocked his head. A pocket of turbulence had just shuddered
through the plane’s cabin, momentarily fritzing out their connection.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” Burke said, “but your kindred’s fate is out of my hands.
The order has been given. Operation Swan Song is over. Operation Eden
is underway.”
254
Chapter Twenty: Amor vincit Omnia
Evacuating an entire city was no less complicated in actuality than it
had always seemed to Marshall on the news. Riding in his father’s Lexus
to Fairfax Memorial, he had been reminded of cities in the path of a
hurricane: vehicles clogging the streets, police officers directing traffic
around orange cones. Now, as light leaked across the sky, Marshall
watched through the windows of the hospital’s cafeteria as the wind
turned the leaves silver-side up. Growls of thunder rumbled ahead of
fast-moving black clouds.
The cafeteria was deserted. The Lexus had been one of the last cars
in the hospital’s lot. All but the most seriously injured patients had
already been evacuated; as dawn approached, those that remained were
being loaded into the backs of ambulances. Marshall could see the red
and blue lights from where he was sitting at a round table with Topher,
Gabe, and Bryce.
They hadn’t said a word in the ten minutes since Marshall had
finished telling them about the Ovid Experiment. About what Seth and
J.J. were, and what their parents had made them. Topher had his head in
his hands. Gabe’s head was tipped back, hands covering his eyes. Bryce
was still reading silently through the files Jack Steward had copied for
them.
No one had given him clearance to do this. Marshall didn’t see how
it mattered. The kill order had been issued; the war had begun. He wasn’t
on the side that required clearance to tell the truth.
Quietly, leaving his friends to process, he got up and slipped out,
past the vending machines, out the sliding glass doors into the deserted
hallway. He paused under the archway that separated the E.R. from the
waiting room to read the text Leigh had just sent him. After sending a
reply, he slid his cell phone back in the pocket of his lab coat and ducked
into a stairwell.
Growing up, Marshall had spent as much time at Fairfax Memorial
as he had in his own house. His father had been Chief of Surgery here for
over a decade; as a little boy, Marshall had loved to tag along on his
rounds. He had no trouble finding his way up to the ICU. A harried nurse
barely glanced at him as he passed by her station. In his scrubs, she
probably thought he was his father. Part of Marshall appreciated the dark
irony of that.
The ICU was a long ward of private rooms cordoned off by
automatic glass doors. The real Dr. Townsend was just coming out of the
room Marshall had been making for. They froze in the tiled hallway, not
father and son, though Marshall couldn’t stop thinking of them that way,
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and stared at one another under the bright fluorescent lights. “Have they
taken him yet?” Marshall finally asked.
Wesley Townsend twisted the diamond ring on his pinkie finger.
There was a shadow of a beard on his chin, rings of fatigue around his
blue eyes. “They’re coming for him now. Any minute.”
He handed the chart he had been studying to Marshall, glancing at
the square window down the hall as lightning scissored the black clouds.
His stethoscope was tucked into the pocket of his lab coat. Marshall wore
his around his neck. He knew it was stupid to seek out meaning in these
meaningless differences between them, as if that proved something about
who they were as men. “How is he?” he asked.
“Much better. He has a long ways to go to a full recovery, but the
internal damage is healing. That new formula you and Aphrodisia
designed is nothing short of a miracle drug.”
“There are no miracles. There is only science.” Marshall flipped the
chart closed. “You taught me that.”
“Marshall,” his father said, softly; or maybe he didn’t really say his
name – maybe Marshall only wanted him to. At any rate, the thunder that
shook the hospital just then made it impossible to know for sure. Wesley
ran a hand through his dark curls, causing them to stick up on one side.
Marshall almost winced. “I don’t expect you to understand the choices
I’ve made. Jack and I did believe we were doing what was best for the
world, but in our youth we were also very arrogant.”
It was as close as Marshall would ever get to an apology. And it was
not enough, not nearly enough, to make up for the things his father had
done.
His fingers touched the bone handle of the dagger in his pocket. He
wasn’t thinking about using it; Marshall was not a violent person. He
was thinking about J.J. saying, You had more to do in this world. For
you. “I don’t think ‘arrogant’ is a strong enough word,” he said.
Wesley’s face changed. He turned away before Marshall could
decipher exactly what the change was. “I told your – I told Meredith to
be ready to leave the house in ten minutes. I understand Whitney has
chosen to remain at Fort King. Are you…?”
“I’m staying,” Marshall said. “Until it’s over.”
Wesley nodded. Marshall stood there as his footsteps moved off
down the hall, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the tile. Giving his father a
chance to call out to him.
It wasn’t until he heard the elevator arrive at the end of the hall that
he stepped through the sliding glass doors into the last occupied room on
this floor.
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Cam was flipping through the channels on the TV above his bed.
Each one was nothing but static, but he pretended to search for another
minute before dropping the remote onto the bedside table. “Hey,” he
said.
“Hey.” Marshall walked over, put his stethoscope against Cam’s
chest, and listened to his heartbeat through his striped hospital-issue
pajamas. Wesley had probably just done that, but it gave him something
to do besides stand there. “They’re coming up to move you now. Do you
need anything for pain?”
“The nurse gave me something already.” Cam shifted as Marshall
sat down on the edge of the blue recliner next to his bed. Fairfax
Memorial was a relic of the ’80s, yellow walls meant to mirror sunshine
clashing with the gray tile that cleaned up easily and the plastic furniture
that could be replaced cheaply. Every inch of it smelled of disinfectant.
“Did you want to see?”
Cam started to lift the tape on the thick bandages under his shirt.
Marshall shook his head. “I saw. I was there when it happened.”
“Right.” Cam curled his fingers up in the starched sheets. He had
been unhooked from all of the monitors behind the bed, but the I.V. tube
snaking into the back of his hand made him seem frail. Cam was not
frail. He was solid as a rock. He worked out every day. “That’s all kind
of fuzzy for me.”
“But your dad told you what happened, right? He told you about the
werekin?”
Cam nodded.
Marshall dropped the chart on the floor and linked his fingers behind
his head. Outside, lightning cut like a jagged tooth down to the river.
Fairfax Memorial was only a few blocks from Sacred Heart. From Seth.
Determined not to think about that for the moment, Marshall focused on
Cam.
All of the potion had left him with a ruddy flush across his cheeks.
His black eye had faded to a greenish-yellow shadow. Marshall could
remember when he used to wear his hair almost shaved, with a little rattail in the back. That had also been the phase of Cam’s Pokemon
obsession. “You know what I was thinking about last night?” he said,
and didn’t wait for an answer. “The day we went off the high-dive for the
first time. Do you remember that?”
“I remember you screamed like a little bitch,” Cam said.
Marshall popped up on his toes, lifting his chair legs off the floor. “It
was those older kids who dared me to do it. We couldn’t have been more
than six, and they were like twelve. I wanted to walk away, but you
grabbed my arm and marched me up the ladder. It seemed like we were a
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thousand miles above that pool. I’ve never forgotten what you said to me
when we got out to the end of the board.”
“Don’t look down?” Cam guessed.
“You said, ‘We’ll do it together.’ And we did.”
Marshall put his chair legs down. Cam turned his head to stare out at
the storm. “It wasn’t me,” he said, through tight lips. “That stuff
somebody painted on the wall in the cafeteria. It wasn’t me.”
“I know,” Marshall said. “It was Connor.”
“Burke?” Cam’s gaze jerked back to him. “What does he have
against – ” He stopped himself and finished: “You?”
“Nothing, that I know of. I think it was part of his plan to get to J.J.
He was messing with his head. Trying to make him angry enough to go
after you in public.”
Cam looked down at his bandaged chest. In times past, Marshall
could have touched his arm. They used to be able to touch one another, a
slap on the back, a hug, and it hadn’t been any big deal. Now, though he
had been elbow-deep in Cam’s blood twenty-four hours ago, he wasn’t
sure what the boundaries were. “Cam, when you said you knew what I
was, you didn’t mean about me being gay, did you?”
“No,” Cam said. “But I knew that, too.”
“How?”
“Because of that faggy look you get when I take my shirt off.”
Marshall rolled his eyes. Cam, turning back from the window, smirked at
him. His eyes were a light shade of green. The exact shade of his
father’s. “Sorry. I guess you meant about the science experiment stuff.
Unlike you, Townsend, I’m not above snooping through my dad’s
drawers. I read about the Ovid Experiment when we were in junior high.
It’s why my parents split up. My mom found out what Dad had done, and
she freaked. I can’t blame her. I’m not really her son. We’re not
anybody’s sons.”
Marshall rested his elbows on his knees. “Is that when your dad
started hitting you? After she left?”
Cam shrugged. “Before, he just hit her.”
Another great blast of thunder rattled the windowpane. They both
looked up. Marshall could hear voices in the hallway, drawing nearer; an
ambulance had pulled up to the doors down below, and behind it,
windshield wipers working furiously against the rain, a battered Jeep. He
stood up. “Looks like your ride is here,” he said.
“Yours too.” Cam nodded at the Jeep. “Is that about your
boyfriend?”
His tone was snide. Marshall replied as though it wasn’t. “If you
knew about the Ovid Experiment, then you must have known about
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werekin, too. You must have known what Seth was. Can you – see
them?”
Cam shook his head. “Can you?”
There was no reason in the world for Marshall to trust Cam Foss
with a secret like this. Yet he nodded. “I’ve never actually told anyone
else that,” he admitted. “I was afraid they’d lock me up in a lab and
scoop out my brains.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Cam promised.
Just for a moment, Marshall was back on the sidewalk of Castle
Estates, watching Seth back away from him, sweaty-tousled from their
morning run, flushed because he had just confessed to Marshall that he
liked boys. Marshall’s heart had been about to beat out of his chest. He
had never been more elated, or more terrified, in his life.
He smiled. Nothing about Cam, not his posture, not his expression,
not his tone, suggested that he needed or even wanted Marshall to say
anything else; but the thing about loving somebody was that they didn’t
have to tell you what they wanted, and sometimes you knew what they
needed better than they did. “I know,” Marshall said, as he backed away.
“Why do you think I told you?”
***
Cleo wanted to take LeRoi straight from the airfield to Fort King,
but, J.J. reasoned, there wasn’t time. If Burke’s assassin squad hadn’t
already hit Sacred Heart, they would any minute.
Cleo didn’t like it, but she couldn’t argue when J.J. asked her to
name one time he had been wrong about battle strategy. She pressed the
pedal to the floor, rocketing her Ford F150 away from the tarmac.
Rain hid everything around them like a gray blanket had smothered
the world. J.J. braced his combat boots against the dashboard, furiously
texting on the high-tech cell phone he had swiped from the private jet.
LeRoi was sandwiched between him and Cleo. She had showered on the
flight (Chimera’s jets had all the bells and whistles) and changed into
black slacks and a white silk blouse. Her hair was loose, and damp. A
string of pearls circled her neck. J.J. and Cleo were still in fatigues. Cleo
had informed J.J. he smelled like a cat. One that had been dead a while.
It was almost all she had said to him the entire flight.
“Okay.” J.J. stuck the phone in his pocket. “Leigh says Doc is on his
way, and McLain has everything else we need. They’re going to meet us
at Sacred Heart.” He looked at LeRoi. “If you know anything about what
your son has planned, now would be an excellent time to negotiate for a
nicer cell or grounds privileges or something.”
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LeRoi just smiled coldly. J.J. hadn’t really expected anything else.
He wasn’t sure she had an answer. Connor was going to a lot of extra
trouble to complete his mother’s work. Why poison J.J.? Why expose
werekin to the world? Why bother about anyone on Earth at all if he only
planned to annihilate them?
“What about the Partners?” Cleo’s knuckles were white on the
wheel. J.J. was trusting she could see where they were going. For all he
could tell, they could have been driving straight into the river. “You must
have had a plan to get them onboard that ship before you opened the
stargate. Are they working for Connor now?”
“The transmitters,” J.J. said. “The rings she made them wear. They
send a signal when it’s time for Lemuria to be raised. Don’t they?”
“Well done, my pet.” LeRoi’s gray eyes glittered coldly in the
dashboard lights. “Unfortunately, I have no idea who my Partners are
loyal to now. Knowing them, whichever side they believe will win.”
She gasped then, as Cleo hairpinned around a corner and jammed on
the brakes, flinging them all back against their seats. “We’re here,” she
announced.
“Clearly,” J.J. said.
Rain was sheeting down too hard for him to see anything except the
spires on either side of Sacred Heart’s central dome, acting as lightning
rods. A white flash exploded a street lamp down the block, showering
sparks into the overflowing gutters. LeRoi flinched, and J.J. slammed the
truck door in her face.
Already soaked to the bone, water streaming out of his short hair, he
held up the key to her handcuffs. “Wait here,” he said. “We’ll be right
back.”
“You know she can get out of those,” Cleo shouted, as they raced
for the doors to the gym. The wind nearly tore her words away. J.J. just
shrugged. If LeRoi got away, she got away. With any luck the storm
would drown her. The Black Swan was his priority right now.
He tried not to dwell on Bishop’s warning. If you succeed in this, you
will have beaten her at her own game not once but twice. Ursula LeRoi
did not lose gracefully.
J.J. had to shoulder open the gym doors; the wind kept tearing them
out of his hands. He stumbled inside, Cleo after him, and hissed as a light
hit his eyes. “Easy, player,” Quinn said.
She lowered the flashlight, rather slowly, down the length of him.
J.J. felt Cleo go rigid all over, and was suddenly thankful they had a
battle to focus on.
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The electricity had been knocked out. Flashlight beams bobbed
toward them in the dark. There was still a red stain under the basket J.J.
did not look at. “Are they here?” he asked.
Emery Little nodded anxiously. He was in fatigues. So were Alfaro
and Quinn. Marshall was in scrubs. The beam of his flashlight lit his
features from underneath with a ghostly glow. J.J. wasn’t sure about him
being there, but Leigh had insisted Xanthe agreed Dre’s plan just might
work. Since no living soul knew as much about enchantments as Xanthe,
J.J. was deferring to his teacher in this instance.
“They’re in the cathedral,” Emery said. “We know Connor and Seth
are in there with Caroline. They have the Ark and the Source.”
“Regent?” Cleo asked.
“We don’t know. The werebirds have been trying to find him, but
Miss Janowitz had to call off the search. They can’t fly in this storm.”
“He’s at Burke’s,” Quinn and J.J. said in unison. Quinn swished her
hair back with a shrug as everyone looked at them. “Their
communication systems are all at Burke’s mansion. It’s out of range of
the storm. If Connor wants the Partners called here to board the Lemuria
Express, that would be the best place to contact them from.”
“What’s the plan here, J.J.?” Marshall asked.
J.J. pushed sopping hair off his forehead. Lightning strikes were
coming faster now, strobe-like pulses that rebounded off the gym’s
black-and-red checkered walls, filling the air with the scent of ozone.
Putting aside his gut-level conviction that he was precisely where Connor
Burke wanted him to be right now – why else would he have kept Seth
alive once he had the Ark, unless to lure J.J. to him? – J.J. said, “Our first
priority is the Black Swan. Burke’s kill order begins with her, and his
squad is on their way. We have to stop them, even if that means letting
Connor raise Lemuria and open the stargate.”
“Not to be the heartless cow in the room,” Alfaro said, “but won’t
that just kill her anyway? I thought the whole point was for her to sing
that spell as the Source drains her life-force.”
“Some kinds of dying you can survive,” J.J. said.
“Assuming for a second any of us know what that means,” Marshall
said, “what happens if we save her? Either the Earth still blows up, or
Burke’s men exterminate all of you.”
“One mountain at a time, Doc,” J.J. said, and before Marshall could
call him the name he plainly wanted to call him, said, “Everybody
ready?”
Everybody was, and so they went.
A windowed arcade connected the gym to the academy proper.
Alfaro took the lead. He hadn’t bothered with a weapon, but then, J.J.
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thought, Alfaro was a weapon. Even in his human skin he was strong
enough to kick open the padlocked doors at the top of the stairs with a
single thrust. Quinn had a bow across her back, a knife in her boot.
Emery was twirling his quarterstaff. Cleo had her pistol, and probably
some knives and a few throwing stars hidden under her camouflage
jacket. The jaguar katana was strapped across J.J.’s back.
“Do you have the dagger?” he asked, putting a hand on Marshall’s
arm as they started down a dark, carpeted corridor lined with classrooms.
Marshall patted the pocket of his lab coat. “I don’t really understand
what I’m supposed to do. Do I say something, or – ”
“Just try to make him remember you,” J.J. said. “Whatever you
think will trigger his memories, no matter how small or insignificant it
might seem to the rest of us. And stay close to me, because this is
probably going to get messy.”
“You think?” Marshall muttered.
Two pieces of plywood had been nailed across the cathedral’s ornate
double doors. Between the cracks in them, J.J. could see flashes of light,
timed seconds before the lightning strikes outside. Alfaro broke into a
run. The rhythm of his boots striking the ground became the clip-clop of
hooves; his loud breathing became a bellow; moments later, the massive
bull struck the boards with his horns, plowing straight through them with
a splintering crack.
There was no time for J.J. to take in the towering black pyramid
placed where the chapel’s altar should have been, red glyphs on its sides
glowing like fresh blood. There was time only for him to glimpse
Caroline McLain, slender as a wraith in a white linen shift, bound to the
Source with a silver chain looped around her hips. Then the windows on
either side of the aisle exploded in a perfectly-coordinated assault, and
black-garbed soldiers poured through them.
J.J. kicked the first Marine he came to in the stomach. The soldier
crumpled. J.J. seized his rifle, knocked him out with the butt, and swung
the barrel around like a club, sending another soldier flying into the wall.
Alfaro was charging up the aisle, bullets kicking sparks up around his
hooves. He lowered his head and thrust his horns under one of the pews,
ripping it right out of the floor; it flipped end over end, knocking down a
row of soldiers like bowling pins.
Movement behind J.J. brought him around in a spinning kick. The
soldier ducked; his gun came up, aimed at J.J.’s chest, first, then on up,
to the rafters. A shadow had fallen over J.J. He spun around, but he was
too late to do more than yell as the jaguar pounced on the soldier’s chest,
claws slashing across his throat. Blood sprayed the painted face of a
Madonna on the wall.
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The tawny jaguar skinned as he rose. J.J. paced back, fetching up
against a marble fountain filled with holy water.
Seth’s black camouflage was wet with rain and blood. “Hello, little
brother,” he said.
***
“I think that’s enough for now,” Connor said.
He had to shout it, but a moment later, the wind began to die down,
and the pulsing glyphs on the Source’s black façade dulled to a fiery
glow. Caroline whimpered. She was shivering, soaked from the rain that
had blown in through the busted windows.
As the Source wound down like a dying battery, Connor leapt off the
dais. The storm outside had abated as swiftly as it had sprung up. J.J. was
not stupid enough to think this was over, though. Connor was just getting
started.
Standing in the back of the cathedral, J.J.’s golden eyes measured the
taller boy as Connor sauntered down the aisle. As theatrical as his
mother, he had dressed for the occasion: His tuxedo was basic black, his
vest and tie blood-red. His long caramel hair had been brushed to a high
gloss.
There were, however, noticeable changes from the pretty, slimhipped boy J.J. had met a month ago. A pair of gills cut into the mottled
blue-and-gray skin below Connor’s ears. His teeth were pointed like a
shark’s. Membranous webs stretched between the fingers he flexed, like
he was planning to wrap them around J.J.’s throat.
By silent agreement, the members of J.J.’s pack assembled behind
him. The soldiers, with the exception of the one Seth had killed, were
scattered unconscious around the cathedral.
Seth moved to stand next to Connor in the center aisle. Now that
they weren’t being lashed by rain and blinded by lightning, J.J. could
appreciate the differences in his twin. His hair was its natural blonde,
though still longer than J.J.’s, as Connor seemed to prefer it. The running
and training and ball-playing had added a new layer of muscle to Seth’s
slim physique. He filled out the black camouflage – J.J.’s – well.
Absent his sweet-natured smile, his tattoos no longer made him look
young. They made him look mean.
“What the hell did you do to my brother?” J.J. said.
“Now, now. Play nice, pussycat.” Connor’s hazel eyes conveyed a
warning. Enchantments were potent magic. You could break a mind
trying to break the spell. Did he honestly care what became of Seth, J.J.
263
wondered, or did he still need him for something? He tried to push his
mind into Connor’s, but it was like shoving against a brick wall.
He felt a mental push back, hard enough to stagger him into Cleo.
Nobody but Xanthe had ever been able to do that to J.J. I can unmake
you too, J.J. Sullivan, if you push me.
Even as he spoke in J.J.’s mind, Connor said aloud, “We’re pleased
you all came over to our side so easily. We could have handled it, but all
the same we appreciate the help in stopping our father’s last-ditch effort
to derail our plans.”
Our? We? What was he, J.J. thought, the bloody King of England?
“Listen, Fishsticks,” Cleo said, “we didn’t come here to sign up for your
doomsday squad. We came here to protect the Black Swan.”
“Is this where you tell me to hand over the girl and I can walk away
with my life?” Connor shook his head. His smile was ugly. “The whole
lot of you is annoyingly predictable. How was your sojourn to the
Amazon, anyway? Have an enlightening chat with Elijah Bishop?”
J.J. blinked. Connor laughed at his surprise, linking his webbed
fingers through Seth’s as he sat down on the back of a pew. Marshall
tensed, but Connor had eyes only for J.J. “I know all about where you’ve
been. You and my mother and your girlfriend here went to visit the
Tortoise Clan, and Elijah Bishop told you how to open the stargate
without burning down the world. I knew he’d never tell me, so I had to
give you a little push to send you on your way. Threatening you with
Operation Eden seemed like the most expedient way.”
“Why me?” J.J. said. “Don’t you have minions for that sort of
thing?”
“One, because I rather enjoyed messing with you,” Connor said,
“and two, because I knew you were a strong enough telepath to speak
with Bishop directly, not through dreams. I think we can all agree we
don’t want any mixed messages for an undertaking as delicate as raising
Lemuria, can’t you?”
Emery’s mouth fell open. “You…you don’t want to destroy the
planet?”
“Of course I don’t,” Connor said derisively. “What would be the fun
in that? I want to be worshipped by my own kind. That would be difficult
if I killed all of them. Don’t,” he said, suddenly, and coldly, for Alfaro
had just attempted to edge around the pew, toward Caroline.
J.J. slunk away from Marshall. Connor’s bright eyes jumped back to
him. Though the day was far too cool for spring, sweat stood out on his
cheeks. J.J. didn’t think he was sitting down because he wanted to. He
remembered quite well how it felt to be hopped up on too much magic
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potion. “Please tell me your plan is not as mundane as all that,” he said.
“You want to rule the world? That’s your endgame?”
“I realize it’s not as noble as Bishop wanting to achieve world peace
or even my mother’s misguided desire to send the chosen few off to a
fresh start on a new world, but hey.” Connor shrugged. “What can I say?
I’m a millennial. My needs aren’t that complex. They’re just wrapped up
in a lot of unnecessary angst.”
“You know what I think?” J.J. said.
He leaned his elbows on the back of the pew in front of Connor’s.
The other boy’s gaze was sharp with dislike. “No, but I’m sure you’re
going to tell us,” Connor said.
“I think,” J.J. said, “you’re acting right now. Playing the part of the
hip comic book villain who always gets the cleverest lines in the snappy
superhero dialogue. I think what you really want is to get Mommy and
Daddy’s attention. Must have sucked being an afterthought to them all
these years, but can Little League and spelling bees really compare to
resurrecting a master alien race? This is you acting out. Proving you’re
smarter than either of them ever gave you credit for. And it has got to be
pissing you off that they still aren’t here to see the show.”
“How very Freudian of you,” Connor said. But his pupils had
expanded, spreading across his irises, making him more shark-like than
ever.
“If I wanted to be Freudian,” J.J. said, “I’d say you were jealous
your mother had me sleep at the foot of her bed, and not you. Although
your attraction to my little brother casts doubt on that theory.”
Seth stood up straight, his fingers slipping out of Connor’s. “I’m not
your little brother,” he said. “You’re my little brother. I was born first.”
“Who told you that?” J.J. asked, softly.
For the briefest moment, Seth looked confused. It passed, his golden
eyes clearing quickly, like clouds dispersing after a summer storm. “I
don’t remember,” he said.
“I do,” J.J. said. “I told you. The night Marshall died.”
Seth wrinkled his nose. “Who is Marshall?”
“No one,” Connor said sharply. His gills flared wider as he stood up.
“Come on, Jeremy. It’s time. Bring me the Ark.”
“Aren’t you going to wait for the Partners to arrive?” J.J. said.
Connor glared at him. Weren’t expecting me to know that, were you,
Shark Boy?
Seth had begun to pad up the aisle, but Cleo called after him: “How
did your father die?”
Seth froze. When he swung around, his metallic gaze was flat. “I
killed him. I stabbed him in the heart.”
265
“Why?” J.J. spoke over Connor’s protest. He had slid into the aisle,
even with where Connor was standing, fists clenched. Behind his back,
J.J. made the slightest motion. He sensed rather than saw Marshall ease
closer. “Why would you kill Dad? He loved you. He loved us.”
“Because he gave me up,” Seth said icily. “He let me be collared,
and he hid you to keep you safe. He condemned me to a life of captivity
while you lived free in the Underground. I would still be there if Connor
hadn’t freed me.”
“No, brother.” J.J.’s gaze had captured Seth’s. He could not break
through to his twin’s thoughts, but that tether still connected their minds
– no spell could sever that. Death might not even sever that. Seth and J.J.
were more connected than any werekin had ever been. One light, one
dark. Two halves of the same whole. “I was the one Dad gave up, and I
never should have told you that. You didn’t need to carry that guilt on
top of everything else. I’m sorry for that, little brother. I truly, truly am.”
“Look it.” Seth took a slinking step forward. “I always knew it
would come to this. You, me, the Arena. I didn’t want it, but I swear by
the stars, if you call me little brother again, Seth Michael, you spoiled
little – ”
“Philadelphia.”
Connor snarled, but Seth just stopped and stared at Marshall, no
light, no warmth of recognition in his round golden eyes. He might have
been staring at a blank stretch of canvas. J.J.’s heart plummeted. If
Connor had placed the enchantment that deep – if he had used whatever
power he had acquired from the Alpha Clan’s blood to make Seth forget
Marshall, there might be nothing of Seth left that they could save –
Amor vincit Omnia. The words whispered in J.J.’s mind, catching
him midway to shoving Marshall behind him. Love conquers all.
Marshall was taller than Seth by several inches. As he approached,
Seth tipped his head back to look up at him. Slowly he took in Marshall’s
angular features, just asymmetrical enough to be as interesting as they
were handsome; his inky curls, rain-damp and smelling of dawn; his
baby-blue eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes. “Who are you?” he asked,
for the first time sounding unnerved.
Connor licked his lips, but he couldn’t seem to think of a way to
intervene. Marshall said, “My name is Marshall Townsend, but pretty
much from the day we met you’ve called me Indiana. At least, you do
when you’re in a good mood. Your brother wanted me to give you this,”
he added, before Seth could reply. His golden eyes were narrowing to
slivers.
Marshall reached into his pocket. He came up with J.J.’s bonehandled dagger. Seth took it from him, the tiniest crease appearing
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between his eyes. “He didn’t have a message for you,” Marshall went on,
softly, “but I do.”
“Oh yeah?” Seth flipped the dagger around so the tip was pointed at
Marshall’s chest. His voice was practically a hiss. “What’s that?”
Marshall kissed him.
Would not have been J.J.’s play. J.J. would have kissed him, then
given him the dagger, just to be on the safe side. Seth gasped; he didn’t
seem to know how to react for a second, and it was in that second, as his
shoulders tensed to plunge the blade into Marshall’s heart, that J.J. saw
the illusion that had been placed over his twin’s eyes like a mirror facing
inward, reflecting back only what the enchantment projected there,
fracture.
His mouth softened under Marshall’s, his body remembering what
his mind needed only another moment to catch up to. Connor saw it, too,
and lunged – not for Seth; there was no point anymore, the enchantment
was broken. He lunged for J.J., with a speed and strength as astonishing
as it was unlooked for in a human. J.J. actually cried out as his skull
impacted with the marble floor.
He had drawn the katana over his shoulder before he even realized it.
Connor danced back from him. He was laughing, laughing as he raised
his hands, stretching the membrane connecting his fingers taut, and cried
out a spell that rolled through the cathedral as a wave of pure,
shimmering energy.
The spell slammed into Alfaro first. He flew into the wall, exploding
one of the blown-glass sconces. Cleo had the presence of mind to drop to
the floor, dragging Emery with her. Quinn managed to fire off an arrow
at Connor before she was thrown back into the corridor. The arrow broke
into harmless splinters as it passed through the shimmering wall.
J.J. raised the katana for a backhand slice, but his arm kept moving,
dragging him backwards with it – he hissed as his shoulder pulled free of
its socket, combat boots lifting straight off the floor. Then he was being
flung forward with no time to adjust to the change of direction, spinning
dizzily past the black pyramid (he felt its power touch his skin with the
cold burn of glacial ice) into the jagged remnants of the stained glass
window. An explosion of pain in his right side nearly caused him to
black out.
He landed on his knees amidst broken glass, hissing as he rolled
unsteadily to his feet.
The prick of a sword point backed him up into the wall. From the
other end of it, Werner Regent’s marbled eyes looked at him coldly. “I
made this for your brother,” he said.
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“He outgrew it,” J.J. managed to say. He was almost gagging on his
own blood; his dislocated shoulder felt like it was packed with glass.
“Right about the time he outgrew you.”
Regent drew his arm back. J.J. knew he did not have time to skin
before the blow fell.
But it was Regent who fell.
To his knees first. The katana slipped from his grasp. J.J. grabbed it
with his good hand: instinct – he already knew, because he had seen his
share of death in the Arena, there was no need. Regent’s mouth opened.
He reached around as if he could pull the bone handle of the dagger from
between his shoulders, but someone else yanked it free.
Somehow Regent managed to speak. “Cub,” he moaned.
Standing behind him, Seth raised his chin to look at J.J. Tears slid
free of his lashes, and that was how J.J. knew this was Seth. Their Seth.
Because Seth should have hated Regent, but Seth couldn’t hate anyone.
Not really. The love that filled Seth up could have flooded the world,
washing it anew.
J.J. moved to close his hands around his twin’s shoulders, wincing as
he forced himself upright. His right side was on fire. He didn’t know if
he was hoping to pass comfort into Seth or draw Seth’s grief into him,
and he never found out; for Seth staggered back before they touched,
watching, helplessly, as Ursula LeRoi stepped down from the dais,
holding a blood-stained knife.
“Too late, my pet,” she purred. “You should have killed me when
you had the chance.”
Caroline McLain’s lovely dark eyes met J.J.’s across the room. The
chapel was suddenly crowded as men and women in expensive suits
fanned out around the walls. To the Black Swan’s credit, though J.J. had
failed her, there was no accusation in her eyes. She even tried to smile as
the orb clasped in her bound hands fired from red to gold, blood to ichor,
then to silver, rimming her in starlight as the blood from her gashed
palms seeped into it. J.J. heard the furious thrumming of the Ark even
where he stood.
Ursula LeRoi threw the knife down victoriously, as deep beneath
their feet sounded the trumpet that signaled the end of days.
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Chapter Twenty-One: End of Days
Seth was dizzy. The kind of dizzy where you wanted to either pass
out or throw up. He dropped the dagger – it clattered on the marble – as
he turned, and stumbled into –
“Indiana?” he whispered.
“Come here.” Marshall’s fingers touched Seth’s face. Closing his
eyes, Seth let himself be turned around in the circle of Marshall’s strong
arms, his back against Marshall’s chest. The steady cadence of
Marshall’s heart against his spine timed the beats of his own bruised
heart.
Regent had fallen face-first onto the dais. His marbled eyes were
closed.
The rumble deep in the earth had shaken dust down from the cracked
dome. As it died away, LeRoi stepped lightly back onto the dais, taking
the Ark from Caroline’s trembling hands as she turned to face her
Partners. Seth was relieved not to recognize most of the faces. It would
have been too awful to look across the cathedral and see Mr. Heilsdale,
or Dr. Foss, or Mr. and Mrs. Lee, or Mr. Cochran, the parents of his
friends who had sworn under oath they had disavowed Ursula LeRoi. But
the black curls and blue eyes of Wesley Townsend were impossible to
mistake. Marshall breathed out sharply.
“My friends. My dear, loyal Partners.” LeRoi’s voice was honeyed
as poisoned wine poured in the ear. Jarringly elegant in her silk blouse
and cultured pearls amidst the warzone of the cathedral, she held the orb
up for them to see. It was silver as malachite. “Behold, the fulfillment of
all our hard-won dreams! The Black Swan’s blood has been added to the
Ark. Even now Lemuria is rising. Soon the stargate will open. And we
have my son to thank for it.”
She turned to beam at Connor, who was standing silent in the
shadows.
More than anything Seth wanted to skin and bite Connor Burke’s
smirk right off his face. His own face burned with the memory of these
last twenty-four hours under Connor’s enchantment. He had believed he
was J.J. Believed Connor had freed him from his collar, believed they
were in love. He understood now what Jack had said. Enchantments
could not create love. Seth’s feelings for Connor, all of that passion, had
been hollow, and had vanished like the moon at sunrise with Marshall’s
kiss. But Seth had still acted on those feelings, and he remembered acting
on them. He wanted to slough off his skin.
He also remembered the plans Connor had shared with him. Thus he
knew LeRoi’s Partners were in for a nasty surprise.
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Connor came forward shyly, head ducked, so much like the laidback
golden boy Seth had played basketball against he might have doubted
Connor was really one of the bad guys had it not been for the mottled
skin and fish gills. He accepted the Ark from his mother in cupped
palms. The Partners exchanged glances. They were used to dealing with
LeRoi, elegant and poised. Her mutant teenage son was another matter.
Connor turned to them. “I know how I look to you,” he said, softly,
all golden boy charm. “Think of me as the first step down a path of new,
accelerated evolution. The first member of a master race.
“Four years ago, when my mother told me about Lemuria, I knew
she was right,” Connor said. The Partners couldn’t seem to look away
from him, as intrigued as they were repulsed. “That much power could
not be left at the bottom of the ocean. But what good is it to open the
stargate if we destroy Earth? What if there was a way to have it all – the
power of the Totems at our disposal, a mechanism to create bridges to
other worlds and the technology to travel there, to conquer new races, to
mine new energy sources, to populate new planets? All without losing
the home we cherish, all while defeating anyone on this planet or any
other who would dare oppose us, with our very own army of werekin?”
An appreciative murmur rippled through the crowd. Seth recalled
how easily LeRoi had swayed the Partners with promises of limitless
power the night Thomas Sullivan’s revolt had been put down.
His eyes sought out J.J. His twin was leaning back against Cleo
much like Seth was leaning back against Marshall, in front of the
shattered window, through which Seth could see Fairfax’s flooded Main
Street. Power lines were tangled in trees; there was a crack in the roof of
the Steward & Regent Law Firm. But the destruction might as well not
have existed for all the mind Seth paid to it. J.J.’s right side was soaked
in blood from a deep gash above his hip, yet his bruised eyes were
piercing the back of Connor’s head. Seth was sure he too was thinking
about that night in LeRoi’s courtyard. Thomas Sullivan’s dying wish.
Save her. Save her, and she will save us all.
“But here’s the thing.” Connor cradled the Ark in one hand,
bringing the other up as though calling for silence, which instantly fell.
The black pyramid cast a longer, darker shadow over him as he stepped
closer to it. “This isn’t a victory any of you have earned. You are sheep.
All you know how to do is follow. You followed my mother when she
wanted to destroy Earth. Then you turned on her and followed my father
when he wanted to exterminate the werekin. Now you’re willing to
follow me because I offer you the world on a platter. You know nothing
of loyalty. You are not worthy to serve me, for I,” Connor said, “am a
god.”
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His voice changed in tonality on that last, a resonant, booming growl
that stole the daylight from the sky.
The Partners screamed, too late realizing the summons they had
answered was their own death knell. A petal of something black and
sulfurous rolled off Connor’s tongue. Crimson at the center like the heart
of a star, it spun into a ball of black fire, and exploded, enveloping the
Partners as they crashed into one another, attempting futilely to flee.
Heat scorched Seth’s skin. Marshall cried out: “Dad!” He started
forward, instinctively, but there was nothing he could do – there was
nothing any of them could do; Seth wrestled Marshall back, pinning his
arms to his sides, his own helplessness in the face of Connor’s power as
bitter as blood in his mouth.
Seconds later, the fire swept out through the broken doors with a roar
that sounded almost human.
The air tasted of soot. Ash floated on the breeze, tiny, greasy specks
that clung unpleasantly to skin and eyelashes; the pews and walls were
untouched, but, Seth saw as he raised his chin and looked around, melted
to the marble floor like macabre sculptures were the charred bones of
Chimera Enterprises’ Partners, warped to the size of children.
“Dad.” Marshall whispered it this time. He had gone limp in Seth’s
arms.
Connor laughed. His hand shot out, seizing Caroline by her glossy
black hair. Caroline whimpered.
Connor shoved the Ark into her hands. His eyes were completely
black now, with no whites at all. “Sing,” he growled. “Seth showed you
the song. Sing it.”
Caroline’s wide, terrified eyes met Seth’s.
Sing. J.J.’s voice rang in Seth’s mind from across the room. Seth
wanted to turn and look at him, but he remembered Xanthe’s training: He
would need eye contact with Caroline to speak to her. Tell her to sing,
little brother.
Seth licked his lips. Caroline. Sing. It’s okay. J.J. says to go ahead
and sing.
It was one hell of a leap of faith, yet Caroline nodded, closed her
eyes, and parted her lips.
The melody was haunting, and different to each person present. To
Emery Little it was the sighing of wind in the trees the night he first
kissed Whitney Townsend on her stoop. To Cleo it was the lullaby of
J.J.’s breathing as they slept in their tiny cell. To Angelo Alfaro it was
his little brother’s chirping laughter as he swung him over his head to
tickle him. To J.J. it was the beat of his mother’s heart while he was
inside her womb.
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To Seth, who spoke the language of magic, it was the ocean at high
tide; the forest in a gale; the desert under wind. And it was Naomi
Franklin’s rich gospel choir alto, and Thomas Sullivan’s quiet reading
voice, and Marshall Townsend’s warm laughter, and Ben Schofield’s
gentle growl, and J.J.’s voice inside his mind. He did not know what it
was to Ursula LeRoi, but she paled even further than she had when
Connor had massacred her oldest allies.
“Stop!” she cried, shrilly. “The ship isn’t here yet, Connor, stop
her!”
Connor swung his smile around on her. LeRoi, who had been about
to grab his shoulder, shrank back. Connor’s lips stretched impossibly
wide around twin rows of shark teeth. “What’s the matter, Mother?” His
voice was garbled like he was speaking underwater. “Afraid of a little
hellfire? Did you really think I wanted you to rule with me?”
LeRoi screamed, a combination of terror and fury. Drawing her arm
back, she poised to drive the silver knife she was still clutching into
Caroline McLain’s heart, to silence her as the Black Swan’s song rose to
its crescendo, firing the glyphs on the black pyramid like they were
sinking freshly into the stone –
A shot rang out. LeRoi gasped. For a split-second Seth, still
nervelessly clutching Marshall, thought she was only startled by the
sound. Then her face changed. She looked down at herself, and Seth saw
her see the tiny, smoking hole in her white silk blouse. A crimson flower
bloomed around it, opening swiftly across her chest.
“No,” she said, sounding more shocked than anything. Then she
slumped, hitting the ground on her side.
At the back of the cathedral, Will McLain lowered his pistol.
Melody Little was standing on one side of him, Ben Schofield on the
other. The rest of the Alliance Commanders and an army of werekin
filled the corridor behind them, but even that was not as shocking as the
Gen-0s climbing through the broken windows. They were so tall they
had to duck.
“What’s happening?” Seth whispered.
He was asking no in particular, but Marshall shook his head. His
hair, his skin, his scrubs were powdered gray with ash. Beneath the
dusting he was white as bone. “I don’t know, Philadelphia. I just don’t
know.”
Connor seemed to. He turned his smirk on J.J. His face was normal
again, no shark teeth, no black eyes, except – gray, from more than the
ash. He looked ill. “I knew you’d come through for me, J.J.,” he crooned.
Blood trickled out of his nose. He didn’t seem to notice. “Tell you what.
When I rule the world, I’ll enchant your brother again so he doesn’t
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remember how to remove a collar, and you two can fight our first Arena
match to celebrate my new reign. Whoever wins can have your two
girlfriends – one for supper, one for dessert. I think I’ll keep your little
sister around a while. Gideon has a fancy for her, and she is of breeding
age – ”
He snapped his fingers. The report of McLain’s gun was silenced as
the bullet melted into a silver clump, dropping harmlessly to the marble
floor. “Try that again, Will,” Connor warned, through his teeth, “and I’ll
gut you like a fish and feed you to my new slaves.”
J.J., white with pain, shook his head at McLain. Cleo appeared to be
the only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor.
Caroline McLain was breathing fast. Her song had faded away on a
final, shimmering note. The music of it lingered in Seth’s mind. It was a
minute before he realized the music had not stopped. It was coming from
inside the Source. As though something, or someone, inside the pyramid
was singing back.
Even Connor moved away from it. Seth pressed Marshall back
against the wall. He was saying something in Seth’s ear, but Seth
couldn’t make it out; the music was building, kicking up a wind that
stirred clouds of dust and ash. Bits of broken glass stung Seth’s cheeks.
He threw his arms up over his face as a wave of volcanic heat rushed
upward from the base of the pyramid…
The cathedral’s dome began to rattle like the lid of a boiling pot.
Suddenly it blew off, shooting like a saucer across the bleak morning
sky. It was then that the Alpha Clan ringing the walls of the ruined
cathedral lifted their arms, as the glowing doorway that had appeared on
the side of the pyramid opened.
***
Light. All Seth saw in that moment was light. The brightest light you
can imagine, whitening the world like the moon had fallen from the sky.
Shadow came next; there seemed to be shapes inside of it, shimmering,
but they dispersed, and a thin ribbon of a girl with glossy white hair like
a feathering of snow stepped out onto the dais.
A simple golden torc circled her graceful neck. Not a collar; a signet
of power. She wore a white gossamer gown made for a queen. Her skin
was black as coal.
For the briefest glimpse, as the light inside the Source died, she was
only an outline of delicate bones. Then she was a girl, young and lovely.
Caroline McLain stared at her, too weak to even lift her hands. The
White Swan placed hers over them, her eyelids fluttering down as her
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fingers touched the smooth surface of the Ark. Seth could not believe he
hadn’t grasped this before – what the Source contained, why only the
Black Swan could speak to it. Just like he and J.J. could only call upon
their Totems when joined, so was it for the werekin queens. They might
have been separated by thousands of years, but in the eyes of their
Totems, the Swans were twins. Direct descendants of their Totems. The
first and only of their breed.
The White Swan opened her mouth and began to sing. This time
there were words, in Lemurian. Seth recognized them. They were etched
on the outside of the Source. The Hymn of the White Swan.
Clouds filled in above the dome. The world seemed to spin on its
axis; suddenly stars appeared overhead, in the shape of a constellation in
a galaxy far from Earth…
Seth did not see the Swans join with their Totems. He saw an inferno
of light engulf them; saw Ben wrestle McLain to the ground as he tried to
run to Caroline, who was wrapped in a robe of feathers made of stars;
saw Agathon, like a god of old, spread his powerful wings and draw the
light deep into his chest. The fiery glow centered above his heart and ran
along his veins, out the tips of his tapered fingers. Xanthe stretched out a
hand; Aphrodisia stretched out hers; and a chain of light raced around the
room, linking together the Alpha Clan. The sizzle of magic that should
have reduced the Earth to dust burned on Seth’s skin.
Connor Burke was all but dancing with glee. He barely spared a
glance at his mother, bleeding on the marble, or the two girls lying
motionless before the pyramid, their song ended. His hazel eyes were the
only color in his gray face. That and the blood on his chin, leaking from
his nose.
He turned to look out the window behind him. And it was the
strangest sight. Hovering an inch above Fairfax’s flooded main street
was a long, sleek black ship, etched with glyphs, taller than Sacred
Heart’s central dome. Like the stone that formed Fort King, the ship
seemed organic, as though it had been birthed rather than built. Crystal
strands crisscrossed the hull. They looked like fuel lines, suffused with
dark red liquid like blood.
“Well.” While everyone else still stood frozen, Connor bent to pick
up the Ark from the Swans’ hands, curled together like delicate glass.
Neither of them moved. “J.J., why don’t you bring my mother aboard?
She seems to have a few breaths left. I’d like her to share this moment
with her sons. She can die knowing you’re going to be my slave now.”
Very clearly, J.J. said: “Screw you.”
Connor laughed. “No thanks. You’re not my type.” He winked at
Seth, who felt the blood rise hotly in his cheeks. “But I will burn all of
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your friends here to ash if you don’t do what I say. I’ll start with your
two little tramps.”
“We can stop you.”
That was Marshall. His voice was as scorched with fury as Seth had
ever heard it. Connor glanced at him. “I’m not your enemy, Marshall,”
he said. For a moment, he sounded like the old Connor, like they were on
the ball court again and his team had just won the game. “We’ve got a
great partnership ahead of us, you and I. You’re the reason I have the
power I have. I want you with me. We’ll build a world our mothers and
fathers never dreamt of.”
“You think I would do that,” Marshall said. “You think I would
work with you.”
“I know what you are.” There was a blade of ice under Connor’s
words now. Marshall stiffened as it sliced. “I know all about the Ovid
Experiment. Can’t you see? You don’t have to be what your father made
you. You can be something much, much more. If it’s just about Seth,” he
added, as an afterthought, “you can keep him. We’re allowed pets. I’ll
find another one.”
Marshall shook his head. He looked grieved. “I’m sorry, Connie.”
“Sorry?” Connor was baffled. “For what? You saved me, Marshall. I
owe you everything. I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”
“I know,” Marshall said. “And that’s why I’m sorry. Because if I
had known what you were, I wouldn’t have just let you die. I would have
killed you myself.”
The friendliness vanished from Connor’s eyes, turning them all black
again. “I’d like to see you try,” he said.
Ben Schofield cut in. “You may be powerful, son, but we have the
Alpha Clan – ”
“Yeah, Agathon looks a little busy right now, Ben.” Connor smiled
at the towering, immobile mothman. “Quite a job keeping the world from
exploding. I hate to say this,” he swung back around on J.J., “but I think
you’re the ones who are pretty well screwed. Now, I suggest you do as I
say and carry my mother onboard that ship, before I run out of patience.”
Meaningfully, he tapped a fingernail against the Source.
J.J. let go of Cleo. Slowly. Every movement seemed to cause him
excruciating pain, and Seth involuntarily winced –
Wait just a minute. He didn’t need to wince. That didn’t make any
sense. Shared pain was the downside of twin telepathy. He even felt it
when J.J. cut himself shaving. Why didn’t he feel anything now – not
even a twinge?
The answer was simple, and occurred to Seth accompanied by a flare
of hope inside his frozen heart. J.J. was faking. Ergo, J.J. had a plan.
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He watched as J.J. limped convincingly over to LeRoi. Scooping her
up seemed to stagger him, and Cleo – who was pale also, with fury – ran
to help him. Seth saw J.J.’s eyes flash. He wanted her to stay back, but he
couldn’t very well say that and maintain his invalid ruse.
Between the two of them, they lifted LeRoi through the window
frame. She stirred, moaning. It surprised, and touched, Seth that J.J. was
trying to be careful with her.
He made it two steps toward the ship Connor had already strolled
proudly over to before crumpling to the sidewalk. Cleo cried his name.
Connor sighed. “Get up, J.J., or I’ll drag you over here by your – ”
“Caroline!” J.J. shouted. “Now!”
Connor’s eyes rounded. J.J. dove on top of Cleo. Seth didn’t see
exactly what happened; he did see LeRoi’s eyes fly open, a blackness of
pure hatred shining out of them, and a streak of something red across his
vision; everything else was blotted out by the silver-white light released
from the Alpha Clan on the Black Swan’s final, purest note.
The Source’s energy returned to the orb in Connor’s hands like a
lightning bolt drawn to a rod in a storm. There was a percussive sound
like a cork being pulled from a bottle; for one single instant Connor was
filled with the light, as though his skeleton had turned to silver and was
shining through his skin. On a shimmer of air, he was lost inside the
explosion as the ship behind him began to rise, surrounded by a fireball
of green and orange flame.
Instinctively Seth threw Marshall down on the dais as the noise of
the ship’s thrusters built, and with a sudden plosive pop, released a
shockwave that rolled down the street, leveling every building on the
opposite side of the road, including the Steward & Regent Law Firm.
Seth did not see what became of the ship. As the buildings crashed down,
the ground underneath them was sucked into a giant sinkhole nearly a
mile wide. Water sprayed up from broken mains, dust and debris
pluming into the clouds. Distantly, Seth heard a splash. He imagined a
tidal wave rising up from the Ohio River and washing over the Kentucky
shore.
It was several minutes before the dust settled enough for him to see
and his ears stopped ringing enough for him to hear.
The ship was gone. Seth sat up. Marshall sat up with him, coughing.
They were both covered in chalky white dust. Marshall shook his head,
scattering plaster out of his curls. “Is everyone all right?”
Voices called back as people helped one another to their feet.
Melody Little had her arms around Emery. She looked like she was
crying. Ben had a paw-like hand on Alfaro’s shoulder. Ben’s temple was
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cut, but he smiled at Seth through the ashy haze, as if to say, It’s over,
runt. We did it.
Seth was not so sure.
For one thing, as Marshall clambered out the window to see about
LeRoi, Humvees were rolling up and Marines were jumping out of them.
General David Burke was in the lead. For another, McLain had crawled
up the dais to Caroline’s side. She fell back limply in his arms when he
pulled her into his lap. “Caro,” Seth heard him whispering. “Caroline,
please, no…”
“She is not gone.”
The White Swan spoke haltingly, as though learning the shape of the
words she wanted to say in English. She had risen gracefully to her feet.
As powdered by debris as any of them, she was nevertheless unearthly
beautiful. Her melodic voice rang with power. “She has joined with her
Totem, as I did, for thousands of years – my body entranced inside this
sarcophagus, my consciousness in the stars, looking down on all of you.”
The White Swan smiled at them. Seeing her, General Burke had gone
starkly white, framed by one of the shattered windows. His Marines
pulled up short on the sidewalk and stared at the alien queen, waiting for
a signal from their commander.
“It was you,” said Quinn. She was kneeling in the center aisle. Her
mother Josephine had a hand resting lightly on top of her coppery head.
“You told the Tortoise Clan to direct Bishop to Mt. Hokulani. You
wanted the werekin resurrected.”
“The time had come,” the White Swan said. “And now you have
made your choice. The vessel the Totems left for us is gone. We have no
means to return to the stars. You have chosen to remain on Earth, and to
protect it, as the first werekin chose to do eons ago, when we gave up our
home, and our very lives.”
“Then you saw this?” Quinn sounded angry. “You saw that Chimera
Enterprises would torture your people, enslave them, murder them, and
you still told Bishop how to find the Ark?”
Agathon spoke in a rumble. His voice was not without sympathy.
“The future cannot be read like a book already written. The future is in
the hands of those that shape it.”
Quinn snapped her jaws together. Her mother murmured softly,
hushing her.
The White Swan placed a graceful hand on McLain’s shoulder. “You
know your sister better than anyone, William Joseph McLain,” she said.
“Would she wish to go with me, to live in the stars with our Totems? Or
would she remain with you?”
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McLain looked up at her. Tears tracked through the dust on his
cheeks. “She can do that? She can stay here?”
“I can free her from the spell. I could have freed myself at any time,
had I wished it. The Totems are not cruel. But know this. In the stars
your sister will have power unimagined on this Earth. She will see, she
will know, more than any human being ever could. She will rule from the
stars for eternity. On Earth, she will be only a girl, as frail as any living
creature. Humankind desires nothing so much as power. What it cannot
conquer it destroys. Our kindred may yet learn to live in peace with
humankind, but as long as your sister remains on this Earth, I cannot
promise she will never again be in danger.”
“I don’t know.” McLain was whispering. “I don’t know what she
would want.”
To be safe, or to be free. Seth understood that choice. He had been
safe in the Underground, he had been safe hidden inside his human skin,
but he had not been free. “I do,” he said. “She would want to stay. I
heard her say it. She said, ‘I just want to be normal.’”
McLain looked down at Caroline, fragile, lifeless in his arms.
Seeing, Seth imagined, everything his sister would miss even as she
gained the stars. He looked at Ben and Melody, as though asking them to
understand. “She’s not just the Black Swan,” he said. “She’s a person,
too. She deserves to have a life.”
“Then so be it,” Ben said.
Seth saw the White Swan kneel over her twin, but he did not see how
she released her from the trance. He had finally turned to see what Quinn
and Emery were staring at, and with an effort like he was swimming up
from the bottom of the sea, he had risen.
An arm, Cleo’s, went around him, helping him over the sill, which
was jagged with broken glass. On the fractured sidewalk, LeRoi was
sprawled face-up, unseeing, a little ways away from where Marshall
knelt beside a charred body, stethoscope around his neck. The
devastation to the street was truly incredible, but that was not what took
Seth’s knees out from under him, dropping him into the grass beside
Marshall.
“Regent,” he whispered.
“Hello, cub,” Regent managed.
Seth could feel J.J. standing behind him, his shadow long on the
dust-covered grass. The stench of burning stung Seth’s sensitive werekin
nose, from the crater in the middle of the street, still smoking, from the
blackened skin on Regent’s face and arms. His eyes had never looked
more like marbles.
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“Doc, can we do anything?” Cleo asked, softly. Her hands were
gripping Seth’s shoulders from behind.
“I’ve infused him.” Marshall stripped off his latex gloves. “Any
more healing potion will damage his tissues. We can try strengthening
potion, but – the burns, they’re so severe…”
“How?” Seth whispered. Regent’s face blurred as his eyes misted
over. He didn’t see the burns. He just saw Regent. The person who had
taught him stillness. “I thought you were – I thought I had – How did this
happen?”
“It was LeRoi.” J.J.’s voice was brittle. His shadow shifted as the
sun struggled out from behind a cloud. “She tried to push me into the
path of that light when Caroline released it, to burn me alive, but –
Regent skinned, and pushed me out of the way.”
“Why?” Seth whispered again.
He was asking so much more than why Regent had saved J.J. Staring
down into Regent’s eyes, he knew Regent had to know that. He didn’t
answer; Seth wasn’t sure he could. He was shaking, fighting magic, or
pain, or both. His hand came up, knuckles like bolts under tufts of
reddish-brown fur. He brushed the tears off Seth’s cheeks.
“Marshall can help you.” Seth heard the panic in his voice. Here was
Regent as he had always wanted him to be, fighting with courage, dying
with honor. Standing with Seth in the end. “Just hang on, Regent. Please
–”
Regent’s back arched; Seth cried out, thinking he was in pain, but
Regent was only drawing him closer, to whisper in his ear. Three words.
Proud of you.
Seth closed his eyes. The tears he had been holding back slid out
from under them. Very gently, he caught Regent’s hand and cupped his
palm against his cheek.
Death, Agathon had said, is a transference. The body ceases –
begins, immediately, to decay. But the soul never ceases. The soul could
not be destroyed, by any magic on any world; the soul was immutable,
and the soul lived on, slipping from one plane of existence to another.
Traveling weightless beyond the stars.
Behind Seth’s eyes the curtain of the sky drew back, and he could
see the stars, diamonds in a clear blue sky; for the stars were shining
under the noonday sun, and he was running through the jungle, under
trees taller than any trees on Earth. The tiger and the jaguar raced side by
side, the power of that place singing in their bones, as their strides
lengthened out toward the distant sea shimmering on the horizon.
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Regent caught his breath as their minds connected. Seth spoke softly
to him, without words. Don’t be afraid. Let me show you where you’re
going.
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Epilogue
The tailored ivory jacket was not heavy enough to protect from the
chill in the lower levels, but J.J. didn’t feel the cold now any more than
he ever had. He didn’t know what had made him think he would.
The Gen-0s’ main chamber had been empty when he had stepped off
the elevator. Xanthe, J.J. thought, must have sensed his approach and
sent everyone away to allow him some privacy. Or it could have been
that the Alpha Clan didn’t spend as much time belowground these days.
As part of the agreement the Commanders had struck with Burke,
negotiated largely by Jack Steward, Operation Eden had been called off,
but the Alpha Clan would for the time being remain inside Fort King.
The world, Agathon said, was not ready to embrace the Gen-0s yet.
But the world, J.J. thought, was changing.
Aphrodisia’s laboratory was deserted when J.J. passed by. At the
next corner, he turned right, into a long, vaulted chamber sparkling with
deposits of mica like a starry night sky.
Agathon called it the Hall of Souls. It was almost as deep
belowground as the Ark’s chamber. Footsteps echoing back to him, J.J.
padded around the room, trailing the tips of his fingers over the names
chiseled into the walls. Nicanor. Solon. Karpos. The members of the
Alpha Clan whose bodies rested inside these walls had never been given
last names. They were all fatherless, and they were all kindred. Elijah
Bishop’s creations.
The black pyramid in the center of the chamber emitted a faint, cold
glow. If J.J. reached out with his mind, he could feel the girl who slept
inside it, but he chose not to tonight. Tonight, he was here to see
someone else.
He sat down cross-legged on the cold black stone and reached out,
stopping short of touching her name.
What was he doing here? J.J. shook his head, unable to answer his
own question. On the other side of this wall was nothing but bones,
slowly rotting. Ursula LeRoi was gone forever. She would never collar
J.J. or any of his kindred again.
J.J. was not grieving for LeRoi like Seth was grieving for Regent,
whom they had buried in the Royal Acres Cemetery, under a stone with
J.J.'s name on it. Ursula LeRoi had never been a mother to J.J. She had
been his captor. The lessons she had taught him had helped him defeat
her, but the more important lessons he had learned from the father she
had ordered him to kill. Loyalty. Courage. Mercy. Ursula LeRoi would
have made J.J. a monster like her own son if she could have.
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Defeating her had given J.J.’s life purpose. What was his purpose
now that she was gone? Where did his life go from here?
J.J. drew his knees up, palms splayed on the cold, living stone. The
Commanders wanted him to remain with the Alliance, but J.J. was no
longer certain he still wanted to be a full-time soldier. Maybe it was time
to give that normal human teenager thing a shot.
J.J. was blackly amused that, for once, his own future was something
he simply could not see. Xanthe said it was because he had a choice to
make – a path to tread, not a destiny to find. J.J. had come here tonight
with some vague notion of finding answers, but he felt nothing. He didn’t
even feel the cold.
He looked down at his ivory tuxedo. The cummerbund and bowtie
were black. Jack had loaned him a pair of diamond cufflinks, and Lydia
had combed his hair, which was getting a little long, so it curled onto his
forehead. “Don’t you want to go?” she had said, when J.J. had protested
that he still didn't get the whole prom thing.
Just like that, for the first time in his life, J.J. did know what he
wanted. For himself, not for anyone else. He stood up, brushing off his
trousers, and looked one last time at Ursula LeRoi's tomb.
“Goodbye, Mother,” he said.
***
“I can’t believe he bailed on prom,” Leigh said.
Whitney sighed. The girls were crossing into the Castle Estates
Country Club garden; the soles of Whitney’s practical ballet slippers
swished on the sidewalk, a whisper to the scream of Leigh’s clacking
stiletto heels. “I don’t think J.J. really cares about a high school dance,
Leigh. He did save the world a month ago.”
“But still,” Leigh said. “It’s prom.”
Leigh was about to fizzle with excitement. Like literally.
Effervescent bubbles were rising up from her toes, into the top of her
head. She practically floated over the ground.
Four weeks ago, she would have been excited about prom. Forget
spaceships and shapeshifters. Prom was the event of your high school
experience. But tonight, she wasn’t just excited to be going to the dance.
She was excited by who she was going with.
Though, honestly, it was nice to do something normal for a change.
Half your city gets leveled by an alien aircraft, and things get a little
weird for a while. Fairfax was slowly resuming a semblance of
normalcy. School was even scheduled to start up again on Monday,
though with all of the conspiracy theories about alien invasions flying
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around, Leigh wasn’t sure how “normal” that was going to be. Probably
as normal as high school ever was.
General Burke had kept a surprisingly tight lid on the whole affair.
Some of the whacko conspiracy theorist “The Truth Is Out There”
websites had published that picture of Seth and J.J. fighting at the
sectionals game, but really, who listened to whackos besides other
whackos? (Leigh conveniently ignored the fact that in this instance, the
whackos happened to be right.) 60 Minutes hadn’t descended on Fairfax
or anything. The news had reported a, quote, “giant sinkhole” opening
after a “gas main explosion” caused by the “second violent weather
anomaly in as many weeks” that had “seriously wrecked downtown.”
Well, that last part was a paraphrase, not a quote.
Marshall had argued passionately for the Commanders to simply let
the truth come out. Burke’s superiors had refused. The compromise had
been to call off Operation Eden and allow Burke’s unit to continue
assisting werekin in secretly integrating from the Underground into
human society. Operation Swan Song had ended, but the Alliance had
survived the storm.
“Hello, love.”
Wrapped up in her own thoughts, Leigh hadn’t seen the two boys
standing in the pale circle cast by one of the country club’s old-fashioned
street lamps. The one who had spoken smirked at her. He was dressed
quite differently from the boy he had been talking to. Emery Little was
wearing a powder-blue tux that matched Whitney’s dress, a retro-funky
affair (like Whitney) that had a puffed-out skirt and a low-cut beaded
bodice. Lucky was wearing dark jeans and a black leather jacket that was
most likely concealing a weapon. The shirt underneath was white Vneck. An old burn scar marked the U where his collarbones met. Leigh
looked away from it, her eyes catching onto his in the moonlight. His
were dark amber.
“You’re going to our prom?” she said. “I thought you were in
prison.”
“They let me out early for good behavior. Seems that tracking
device I planted on Connor Burke’s car led you all to the Black Swan in
time to prevent the apocalypse.”
Lucky’s tone was dry. Whitney gave Leigh a look. What? Was it
Leigh’s fault he had been born a hunter? “Emery says you’re joining the
Alliance, officially,” Whitney said, kindly.
“I am,” said Lucky.
“You’re joining the military?” Leigh dubiously took in Lucky’s
leather jacket and unlaced Doc Martins. “Don’t they have, like, a lot of
discipline?”
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“I was raised in the Scholae Bestiarii. I doubt McLain will come
down any harder on us than the trainers.” Lucky glanced over Leigh’s
shoulder, and for some reason straightened up from slouching against the
street lamp. “I should go. Don’t want to keep Cinderella from her ball.”
Sweeping a mocking bow to Leigh, he sauntered off, whistling under
his breath. Leigh shook her head. Boys were so weird.
She soon forgot Lucky, however, as Serena Jensen and Zoe
Campbell met her walking under the stone archway into the garden
proper, which smelled like jasmine in the moonlight. Serena and Zoe
looked super-cute in matching men’s suits. Serena’s short hair was gelled
into Tinkerbell spikes; Zoe’s sleek black tresses, which Leigh was
insanely jealous of, were pinned up in a complicated chignon. She was
keen to show Leigh the new earrings she had made, white feathers
threaded with tiny black beads. She was branching out from just
bracelets.
Swept along in the growing crowd, Leigh did not mark the small
brown falcon hopping along the grass behind her.
The garden had undergone a stunning transformation into fairyland.
White and black roses had been arranged in crystal vases on round tables
around the terrace. More roses hung off the sides of a gazebo in the
center of the garden, a kind of lover’s bower surrounded by a small
crystal pond. White lights were strung through the branches of the trees,
touching softly on the faces of the dancers circling in front of a raised
bandstand. Ozzie Harris was seated on a stool there, strumming a
wooden guitar. He was actually pretty good without Chaz murdering his
bass on backup. His girlfriend Chelsea Stone, mermaid-slender in a green
slip dress as bright as her shorn hair, crooned into the mic.
The night was pleasantly warm, with a soft breeze that tugged at
Leigh’s elaborate curls. When someone literally tugged one of those
curls, she spun around from the punch table with an indignant gasp.
“Hey! Do you know how long this up-do took?”
“Oops.” Dre Alfaro smiled crookedly at her. He was not in a tux; he
was in pinstripe trousers and a wrinkled white dress shirt and black
suspenders, newsboy cap tilted jauntily on his dark hair. He could have
been in a garbage bag with armholes for all Leigh cared. She looked up
at him, and everything she had rehearsed saying to him flew right out of
her head. All that came to her was: “Hi.”
“Hi.” Dre shyly brought his hand around from behind his back. He
was holding a single red rose. “I know it’s not a corsage – ”
“It’s perfect,” Leigh said. And it was. He was perfect, down to the
beaded bracelet tied around his wrist. She tucked the rose skillfully
behind her ear. “There. How does that look?”
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“Beautiful,” Dre said. Leigh lowered her eyes. For a second there
she had forgotten how dressed up she was. Lydia had taken in one of her
Vera Wang gowns for her. The silk was wine-colored, designed to cling
at the chest and hips, slit on the sides to allow for easy dancing.
Couples drifted by, dipping punch from the crystal bowl Miss
Janowitz was guarding like a hawk (or an owl, to be more precise). Leigh
rested her hand lightly on Dre’s chest through his shirt. She wondered if
he had a scar there. Most likely not. Werekin didn’t scar easily.
She felt the fast-beating heart under her fingertips surge at her touch.
“Do they know yet,” she asked, “if you’ll ever be strong enough to fly
again?”
“Aphrodisia said to give it time. I can still skin, but the flying – ”
Dre shrugged. "We’ll just have to see what the strengthening potion can
do.”
“I’m sorry.” Leigh let her hand slide from Dre’s chest onto his
shoulder. He was still muscular, if a little thinner. “I wasn’t sure you
would really get to come tonight,” she said, suddenly shy.
“I almost didn’t. But Aphrodisia left the window open... ”
“Andre Alfaro!” Leigh jerked back, almost knocking into Gabe
Cochran, who was walking by with his date. “You did not sneak out of
the infirmary!”
Dre cackled. “No. I didn’t. I would have, but Marshall talked Aphi
into letting me come.”
“You jerk.” Leigh punched his arm. But she was smiling, and she
didn’t stop him when he bowed his head to kiss her mouth, as tenderly as
Leigh had ever wanted a boy to kiss her. She was breathless when he
stepped back.
“Now,” he said, with a devilish grin. “How about that dance?”
***
Seth scowled as Leigh linked her arms behind Dre’s neck on the
dance floor. Baby Bird needed to watch the hands.
“Stop looking so ferocious, Philadelphia,” Marshall said. “People
are staring.”
Seth looked around. They had just walked out of the country club, a
two-story slate stone building with a hilltop view of King’s Creek. The
lights of Castle Estates twinkled like stars in the distance. “I don’t see
anybody staring,” he said.
“You never do,” Marshall murmured.
If people were staring, Seth thought, it was at Marshall. His
boyfriend looked like the modern reincarnation of Adonis in a straight
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black jacket and silver-checked vest, a complement to Seth’s black-andgold ensemble. Lydia had posed them in front of the Stewards’ fireplace
for pictures, and Meredith had gone all dewy-eyed about what a
handsome couple they made. Their mothers were probably even now
sitting by the fire, sipping merlot and scrapbooking as they planned the
wedding and named the grandcubs.
“You know,” Seth said, “we could skip the dance and get straight to
the after-prom part…”
“Not a chance, Philadelphia.” Marshall put his hand in the small of
Seth’s back. “I didn’t put on a tux just for you to take it off. Let’s
mingle.” Seth sighed.
It took them a while to make their way around the dance floor, as
everybody wanted to say hi to them, Castle kids and Haven kids. That
divide still existed, although out on the dance floor, it seemed to matter
very little, as just about everyone was dancing in a big group to Ozzie’s
rendition of “YMCA.” The tables, on the other hand, were split more or
less between Castle and Haven, human and alien.
The ballplayers’ table being one exception. Bryce, Topher, and
Gabe, all of whom knew the truth, were seated there with Angelo Alfaro.
Yena Lee was tucked under Bryce’s arm. She looked like a rose in a
red off-the-shoulder dress. She kissed Seth’s cheek in hello. As soon as
he and Marshall sat down, Seth turned to Alfaro. “What’s up, PimpDaddy?”
Alfaro grinned. His tux was white; he had added to it a silver top hat
and cane. The bullring in his nose and the beads in his dreads sparkled
under the icicle lights. “Where’s J.J.?” he asked.
Seth puckered. He had just taken a sip of the cranberry punch.
“Guess he decided not to come,” he managed.
He wondered if that decision had anything to do with J.J.’s ongoing
girl dilemma, which J.J. had been studiously avoiding by throwing
himself into the Alliance negotiations these past four weeks. He hadn’t
been to Cleo’s at all. He spent most of his time at Fort King these days.
There, or in the woods.
Seth had let him be. J.J. didn’t ask for much. If he needed space to
figure out what he wanted now that returning to their homeland was no
longer an option, it was the least Seth could give him.
Losing Lemuria had been a bigger blow to J.J. than it had been to
Seth. It was times like these, sitting at a cloth-covered table with his
friends, talking about college and basketball and graduation, that Seth
could hardly believe how much his life had changed in the four months
he had lived in Fairfax. A year ago, eking out his lonely existence in the
Philadelphia Underground, he would never have believed he could be at
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a school dance with friends, human and werekin, who knew exactly who
and what he was. Not hiding from hunters. Not worrying if his laugh
stretched into a purr or his spine arched when he walked. He touched the
jaguar tattoos circling his eye. He wished Naomi could be here to see
him tonight, safe and happy and free.
Mostly he just wished she could be there. Like he wished Thomas
and even Regent were there. It didn’t seem right for life to go on after the
people you loved were gone. Standing in front of his mirror earlier while
Jack had helped him tie his tie, Seth had almost felt guilty for being
excited about something as ridiculous as prom. But there was nothing for
it. Life went on.
It didn’t mean you ever forgot.
“What are you thinking about?” Marshall asked, laying his arm
across the back of Seth’s chair. Seth realized his cheeks were damp and
rubbed at them with his sleeve. Before he could do more than shake his
head, someone tapped the microphone.
“Go Ms. M-C!” Alfaro bellowed.
“Thank you, Angelo.” On the stage, Ms. McLain smiled. “It is
always my great pleasure to announce the prom court – ”
“Like this is gonna be a surprise?” Bryce said, winking at Marshall.
“ – who are chosen by the senior class to represent the best of us.
However.” Ms. McLain adjusted her wide headband. In deference to
prom, she was wearing a skirt, but it was still navy pinstripe. “This year,
by special request of the senior class, we are doing things a bit
differently. And not just because we aren’t holding prom in our own
gym. In recognition of these changing times,” there was something in
how Ms. McLain phrased that that made the students glance at one
another, and Seth’s heart skip a beat, “this year, by unanimous vote, the
senior class asked me to announce that instead of a king and a queen,
they have decided to honor a royal couple. A couple who has something
to teach us about what it means to live honestly, true to who you really
are. Living honestly isn’t easy. It takes courage to show the world your
truest self. It takes strength not to just go along with what everyone else
tells you is ‘normal,’ and not to be convinced that you are wrong for
being who you are.” Ms. McLain paused. “I am proud to announce this
year’s Fairfax High royal couple…”
Seth had seen this coming, of course, but as Ms. McLain said
Marshall’s name, then his, it was still one of those unforgettable
moments when the world just seemed to freeze, everything around you
perfectly illuminated. He would know later that he was laughing as
Marshall pulled him gently to his feet, but at the time, what he heard was
the applause, what he felt was his hand clasped in Marshall’s, what he
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saw was the smile on the face of the golden-eyed boy standing alone on
the edge of the crowd – a little apart from everyone else, but there
nonetheless, to witness his twin’s special moment.
***
As Marshall led Seth onto the dance floor, J.J. turned and walked
back inside the country club. He wasn’t quite to the front doors when he
heard a familiar laugh.
He spun around. The country club had cherry-stained floors and
opulent crystal chandeliers; a valet was checking coats in a small closet
to the left, while to J.J.’s right, inside an elegant dining room with French
doors thrown open onto the terrace, couples were sitting around tables
covered by white cloths.
A large stone fireplace took up one wall. In front of it, under the
stern gaze of a portrait of Abraham Bishop and Maxim LeRoi, two girls
were talking. One wore a buttery gold sheath dress that spun out the
golden streaks in her copper mane. The other wore skintight jeans and a
black leather jacket and spike-heeled boots.
Cleo saw J.J. first, and moved casually away from the hearth. Quinn
turned to see what she was looking at. Their eyes met, and J.J. pulled up
short, trying to read what was in Quinn’s.
The last thing he had expected was to find Cleo at a dance, talking to
Quinn. He hadn’t seen Quinn in four weeks. He had only seen Cleo at the
fort. There they had only spoken about official Alliance business. She
hadn’t asked him to come over, and J.J. hadn’t turned up uninvited like
he would have before their trip to the Amazon.
He considered turning around now and leaving, but his feet had other
ideas. He found himself walking toward the girls before he had made up
his mind what to do.
Quinn said something to Cleo, who nodded. Setting her cup of punch
on a table, Quinn sauntered out the French doors onto the deck.
“What was all that about?” J.J. asked, looking after her.
Cleo shrugged. “Girl stuff.”
She was sipping from her own cup of punch. By deeply-ingrained
force of will, J.J. did not notice the becoming red stain on her lips. “I
didn’t know you were into girl stuff,” he said.
“Sometimes,” was Cleo’s reply. “Well…” She put her cup down
next to Quinn’s. “See ya.”
And she turned, walking away.
J.J. hesitated just for a moment. He could see Quinn on the terrace –
her hair was unmistakable – and even though she very pointedly was not
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looking at him, he knew she knew he was there. She couldn’t possibly
have planned this, but now that they were all three here, J.J. understood
this was it. His test. His moment of truth.
“Wait,” he said.
Cleo stopped. She was outside the dining room, in the foyer. She
looked genuinely puzzled when J.J. gripped her elbow and steered her
into the parking lot. “I didn’t come here to mess up your night,” she
protested. “I just came to see the coronation. Whitney told me about the
vote, and anyway, I couldn’t miss seeing Bunny Bread in that tux – ”
“I need to talk to you.” J.J. pulled her through a gate in the brick
fence that surrounded the club. The wood beyond it was the same wood
that stretched from Castle Estates to Fort King, deep and quiet under the
moon.
A half-mile in, J.J. found a rotted log and sat down, jerking the knot
out of his bowtie. Cleo leaned against a budding maple. Moonlight
reflected back from her silvery-purple eyes. “I hear you’re getting a new
step-sister,” she said.
“I don’t think McLain has popped the question just yet,” J.J. replied,
dryly. “But if Lydia says yes, I think that makes Caroline my aunt, not
my sister. Who told you about it?”
“McLain,” Cleo said. J.J. had expected her to say Seth. His twin had
been on daily romps in the big cat playground, as fine a place as any to
stitch up the hole Werner Regent’s death had torn in his heart.
Cleo stuck her hands in her pockets. J.J. wondered if she was cold.
“There's something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.
“Clearly,” said Cleo.
Reluctantly, J.J. grinned. Cleo never let him off the hook about
anything. “I wasn’t going to prom,” he started.
Cleo raised her eyebrows at his tux. J.J. sighed. Why wasn’t he better
at this? He could speak through dreams, predict the future, even save the
world, but he couldn’t tell a girl how he felt. “I mean, I got dressed to go,
but then I went to the fort. I went to LeRoi’s grave. I was hoping it would
give me closure. Affirm for me that we really won. That she’s really
gone.”
“And?” Cleo said, softly.
“And it didn’t,” J.J. confessed. “I know she’s dead, but that doesn’t
tell me what I’m supposed to do now, with my life.” Because the truth
was, deep down, J.J. had always believed his kindred would win. He just
hadn’t expected to survive to enjoy the victory.
He stepped up on the rotted log, balancing along the length of it heeltoe. Cleo watched him, a curious look on her face. “Seth knows exactly
what he wants,” J.J. said. “All of that back there. Normal human teenager
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stuff. For a long time, he thought I wanted him to give that up, but I
don’t. I want him to live his life. I only just realized tonight that Seth
wants the same thing for me. He never asked me not to leave Fairfax, not
to get on that ship when it took off for Lemuria. He doesn’t need me to
be a normal human teenager to be part of his life. Which is a good
thing,” J.J. said, as he pirouetted down from the log, “because I’m not.
Normal. Or human, entirely. And I don’t want to be.”
He was standing in front of Cleo now. She looked up at him. Tall as
she was, she wasn’t taller than J.J. “What do you want?”
“I want to be a soldier,” J.J. said. “Not because I have to. Because I
want to. There are things in this world worth protecting, and I want to
protect them.”
Cleo nodded. She wasn’t quite looking at him, until J.J. tucked his
knuckles under her chin, tilting her face up to his. The last face he saw
when he fell asleep at night; the first face he thought of when he woke up
in the morning. He couldn’t remember a time it hadn’t been that way.
“And I want you,” he said. “Just you. I don’t know if you still want me,
but – ”
“J.J.” Cleo was still looking at him with that inexplicable, almost
bemused expression. “You don’t get it, do you?”
Now she would say it. I never wanted you. I wanted him. J.J.’s hand
dropped from her face. “Get what?”
“When I met Seth, I couldn’t believe how different you were.”
Cleo’s voice was steady. J.J. crossed his arms so she wouldn’t see his
hands shaking. “He was so good and kind, and you were so – cold, and
ruthless. I looked at him and I saw you, the way you had always seemed
to me growing up, no matter how hard you pretended you weren’t good
underneath. Until that day in the Arena when I looked up at you and your
eyes were just blank. I could have forgiven you for killing me, for saving
yourself, but you looked so…so empty, like you didn’t feel anything, and
I didn’t know how I could have been so wrong about you. How I could
have fallen so deeply in love with this – ”
She grabbed his wrist. J.J. had started to turn away; everything inside
of him was turning to stone, and he didn’t want her to see that in his
eyes. But Cleo forced him around. The branches over their heads danced
shadows across their faces. “But you weren’t empty,” she said. “You
were blank then like you are now because you were hiding everything
you really felt from me. To protect me. You always protected me. Once I
knew that, that awful day when you tracked me down at Chaz’s
apartment and told me what you were really in Fairfax to do, to save the
Black Swan, I knew I had been right about you all along, and it killed me
that I had hurt you for it. Because you are like Seth. Not exactly, you’re
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different people, but in here,” she pressed her palm over J.J.’s heart,
which was racing, “where it counts, you are the same. You’re both
good.”
“Do you love him?”
J.J. whispered it; he couldn’t catch his breath. Cleo nodded. “Yes.
I’ll always love Seth. I couldn’t love you and not love Seth. When I left
here six weeks ago, I thought I had to cut that love out of me, but you
can’t cut your heart in two. Love doesn’t work like that. And if I have to
give my heart to one of you,” and Cleo at that picked up J.J.’s hand,
bringing it to her chest, “there isn’t any question. It has always belonged
to you.”
There were stars in her eyes. J.J. knew it was just a trick of the
moonlight, but he watched them grow brighter as he leaned in. Her
breath touched his lips; he breathed her in, into his bloodstream, feeling
the thunder of her heart under his palm as his other arm slid around her
waist, drawing her against him. He whispered in her ear.
Cleo smiled. Sliding her arms up to twine around J.J.’s neck, she
rested her forehead against his and spoke, as he could have spoken to
her, inside his mind. I love you, too.
***
The dance floor had filled up again, though Seth wasn’t really paying
attention. Ozzie had taken up his guitar again. The melody was slow and
sweet. Seth folded into it as he folded into Marshall’s arms, resting his
head against Marshall’s chest. Nearby, Whitney was circling in Emery’s
embrace.
“What are you thinking?” Seth murmured, returning the question
Marshall had put to him earlier.
“I was thinking about my father.”
Seth had guessed as much, but he still wasn’t sure what to say.
Marshall had gone alone, without even Whitney or Meredith, to
scatter his father’s ashes in the river. He was living next door again, and
Seth knew he had been gone for hours that day, because he had sat in his
window watching for him to come home.
Marshall and Jack had taken some long drives around Castle Estates
since then, ostensibly for Jack to pick out a new house, but Seth
understood there were questions about Wesley Townsend’s involvement
with Chimera only Jack, one of his oldest friends, could answer.
Although there would be questions, Seth was sure, the ones that really
mattered, no one but Wesley Townsend could have answered. Like if he
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had seen Marshall as his son, or a failed experiment. Like why he had
sided with Ursula LeRoi in the end.
“We don’t have to stay,” Seth said now. “If you want to go
somewhere and talk…”
“Nice try, Philadelphia. You aren’t getting me off alone that easy.”
Seth made a face against Marshall’s shoulder, muttering about golden
boys. “I’m okay. I was just wondering if this would have changed my
father’s mind about you and me. To see us being accepted.”
“Do you think it would have?”
“I hope so. Otherwise it’s like he hated me and not just what people
would think about me, and about him because of me, if that makes
sense.”
“You know,” Seth said, realizing something for the first time, “I’m
not sure how my dad would have felt about you and me.”
“From everything you’ve told me about him,” Marshall said, “I
think your dad would have been happy as long as you were happy.”
He stopped circling then, and suddenly drew Seth off the dance floor.
Other couples smiled at them as they hurried by. Seth looked around for
J.J., but he had melted away into the night.
And a beautiful night it was. Marshall pulled Seth along one of the
flowered walkways, into the gazebo that sat a short distance apart from
the crowd. They sat on the white bench inside of it, Seth turning
sideways with a knee tucked under him. He was more nervous than he
had been since the night he had worked up the nerve to kiss Marshall for
the first time.
“There’s something I’ve been putting off telling you,” Marshall
said.
“Okay.” Seth’s mouth was very dry. He couldn’t handle more bad
news right now.
“A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Duke University. They’ve
accepted me into their pre-med program. They want to offer me an
athletic scholarship to play basketball for them.”
Seth whooped, startling the sparrow who had been hopping around
the gazebo’s stairs. She squawked into the sky. “Indiana, that’s
awesome! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well…because.” Marshall ran a hand through his hair. His baby
blues were focused on his loafers. “Seth, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.” Seth cocked a finger at him.
“It’s kind of a jerky thing to ask,” Marshall warned.
Seth sighed. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
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“Preempt me getting mad by being all reasonable and mature.” Seth
kicked his ankle when Marshall bit his lip. “I’m kidding, Indiana. Ask
me. I won’t get mad.”
“Did you like kissing Connor?”
Oh man. Seth felt like an idiot for not seeing that one coming.
He slumped back on the bench. In times past he would have paced,
but for some reason losing Regent had ratcheted up his stillness quotient.
“I liked it at the time,” he said, figuring honesty was the only possible
way to answer such a question. “It was like I couldn’t not like it. But if
you’re asking me if, prior to all of this, was I physically attracted to
Connor, then the answer is no. I never wanted to kiss him before he put
the whammy on me. And the moment the enchantment broke, I was so
grossed out by the things he made me believe I wanted to do, I felt like
slicing my lips off with J.J.’s sword.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Marshall said.
His eyes had darkened to cobalt. Seth sat perfectly still as he leaned
over on the bench, placing his hands on either side of Seth, and brushed
his mouth over his. Seth wanted him as badly now as he ever had. Some
things you only wanted more of the more you had of them. My bounty is
boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I
have, for both are infinite.
“What’s that from?” Marshall whispered.
Seth blushed. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “Romeo and Juliet.
And don’t you dare laugh,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
“Okay,” Marshall said, but there was laughter in his voice. “Just – I
want to be clear here. You’re Juliet and I’m Romeo.”
“Screw that,” Seth said. “I’m totally Romeo. He gets all the good
lines. But we’re getting a little off-topic. Why did you getting the Duke
scholarship make you ask me about Connor?”
“Because I didn’t take it.”
Seth’s chin dropped. “What? Why not?”
“Two reasons,” Marshall said, “and I want you to hear me out on
both of them before you freak out. Okay?”
“Then talk fast,” Seth said.
Marshall sat back with a sigh, hooking his arms over the bench.
Music and laughter floated toward them on the breeze. “Reason One is
that I got a better offer, so to speak. McLain asked me to sign on
officially with the Alliance, now that I’m graduating. Dre has been
decrypting LeRoi’s files, and there’s some pretty scary stuff in them to
do with genetics, alchemy, even Healing. Burke and McLain have been
impressed with my work as a Healer so far. McLain said they couldn’t
afford to lose my expertise right now, but if I want to go to Duke after
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you graduate, the Alliance will foot the bill, and they’ll see to it my
acceptance isn’t denied, just deferred. In the meantime, I’ll probably
learn more from studying with Aphrodisia than I would from med school
anyway.”
Seth kicked his heel against the bottom of the bench. “And Reason
Two?”
“Reason Two is us,” Marshall said simply. “I don’t want to go off to
college and leave you here. I know couples do it all the time, and I know
we’d survive it. We can survive anything. I just don’t want to. You know
what it feels like to lose me, and in that cathedral, when you looked at
me and had no idea who I was, when you were ready to stab me on
Connor Burke’s say-so, I knew what it felt like to lose you, too.”
Marshall picked up Seth’s hand. Seth liked how their fingers
matched up, Marshall’s slender and elegant, his thin and callused. “Seth,
I want to spend every second of my life with you. No regrets. If that
means putting off med school, letting my basketball glory days end in
high school, I can live with that.”
“Okay,” Seth said.
Marshall looked up. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”
“Indiana, if you wanted to go to Duke, or Tokyo, or the moon or
wherever to follow your dreams, I would be in your corner cheering you
on the whole way,” Seth said. “But if what you want is to work with the
Alliance and live next door to me, then that’s what I want to.”
“Wow.” Marshall sat back. “And here I was prepared for this huge
fight. I even had a list of points I was going to make. Leigh helped me
outline them.”
“We can still fight,” Seth offered. “As long as we get to make up
later.”
Marshall laughed.
***
Dawn was streaking the sky when Seth and Leigh tiptoed in the back
door of the red brick house at 706 Kings Lane. Seth’s tie was undone,
jacket slung over his shoulder. Leigh was carrying her shoes.
She followed Seth up to the third floor, trailed by Captain Hook.
Seth didn’t ask why she wasn’t going to her own room; they had drunk
nothing stronger than punch, yet they were both buzzed, on happiness. It
seemed like the kind of night that could go on forever, if you had
someone to lie on top of the covers reliving it with – but when Seth
opened his door, his bed was already occupied.
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“Hola, party animals,” J.J. said, putting down the book he had been
reading. Poe was curled up beside him on the pillow. She stretched when
she saw Captain Hook and jumped down to join him on the windowsill.
J.J.’s ivory jacket was draped over Seth’s footboard. He had the wild,
rumpled look of a run through the woods about him, but also, for the first
time in a month, a smile on his face. “Forget which room is yours
again?” Leigh teased, crawling up on the bed next to him. J.J. rolled his
eyes, but opened his arm for Leigh to snuggle in against his side. “Why
did you wear your tux if you weren’t coming to the dance, doofus?”
“I was there,” J.J. said. His eyes were tracking Seth as he stripped to
his undershirt and boxers, then stretched out on the other side of Leigh.
“I saw Seth get crowned queen.”
“He did not get crowned queen,” Leigh started, hotly.
“Actually,” Seth said, “I think Marshall and I both got crowned
queens.”
J.J. snorted. Leigh smacked him. “Seth, don’t be gross. Besides,
technically you weren’t ‘crowned’ anything. You were given a royal
scepter.” She pointed at the ebony cane propped against Seth’s dresser.
The handle was a white star. Marshall had one as well, only his was
white with a black star. “I thought it was very romantic,” Leigh said.
“I didn’t see Cam among the revelers,” J.J. remarked.
“I heard they’re moving,” said Leigh, “him and his dad.”
That might have been true, but Cam’s had not been the only absent
face tonight. Some of the Castle Estates parents – Chimera’s surviving
Partners – had pulled their kids from Fairfax High. Where they had gone
was anyone’s guess.
Leigh yawned, curling closer into J.J. He ran a hand over her curls,
which had long since slipped out of her up-do, and turned his head to
look at Seth across her. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he
said, quietly, as Leigh’s breathing began to even out. “But it can wait. I
don’t want to spoil your night.”
“Tell me,” Seth said.
“It’s about Connor.”
J.J.’s tone was warning, like he was still giving Seth an out. “What
about him?” Seth asked, too curious not to.
“I…I have this dream.” J.J.’s hands had stilled in Leigh’s hair. Only
J.J. could become so instantly still, Seth thought. “I lure you into a cell,
and I – ”
“Collar me,” Seth supplied quietly. “I have it, too.”
“But you still trust me.” J.J. shook his head like he couldn’t
understand this. “When you thought you were me, Connor made you the
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way I’ve always been afraid to see myself. The way I was always afraid
you saw me.”
“You’re not about to tell me you have a crush on Emery, are you?”
A quick grin caught at J.J.’s lips. “That part was all you, little
brother. Some things even magic can’t change.”
It’s like your skin. You can’t hide it, and you can’t change it. “J.J., I
know you would never betray me,” Seth said.
“I wouldn’t,” J.J. said, firmly. “But you have to understand. For
seventeen years I survived by being as feral as LeRoi wanted me to be.
You wear a mask long enough, it can become your true face. I’ve always
been afraid some part of me really was just an animal, and that was the
part of me that would betray you.”
“You’re not an animal, J.J.”
Reaching across their little sister, Seth laid a hand over his brother’s.
J.J.’s scars felt like embossing on paper. He looked down at Seth’s hand,
and his smile took a slightly firmer hold. “We balance each other out,
you and me,” he said. “It’s more than just light and dark, flipsides of a
coin. It’s like – what’s you is me, and what’s me is you. Like the White
Swan and the Black Swan. We’re more powerful when we’re together.
On some level I think Regent knew that, and it’s why he made you that
sword.”
“Is that why he saved you, do you think?”
“I think he saved me because he knew LeRoi had lost,” J.J. said, and
Seth had a feeling they were getting back around to whatever J.J. had
wanted to talk to him about. “Lemuria was gone. He was dying. He
wouldn’t have survived that wound you gave him. He could have let
LeRoi kill me, but I think he saved me because he loved you, in his own
way, and saving me was the only way he could prove that to you.”
He rolled over then, staring up at Seth’s ceiling.
They stayed that way as the sun came up, wiping out the stars over
Fairfax that shone like beacons to other worlds. J.J. knew those worlds
were out there. Part of him was from another world – the world of the
Totems. But what made any world home were your connections to the
people in it. Ties that ran under the skin, deeper than blood, as much a
part of you as your bones.
J.J. was all at once struck by the strangest idea, that if he came back
to this exact place a million years from now, he would not find it ashes
and dust, burned away as the sun, like any star, built to its inevitable,
ultimate explosion; he would find it just as it was now, with the sunrise
filling up the window, slowly flooding his mother’s house with golden
light that crept up the walls, onto the bed, over him and his brother and
his sister, like a blessing. It seemed clear to him, suddenly, that no
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moment ever really ended, it just melted into the next; that nothing ever
really stopped, and no one was ever really lost. What seemed like the end
was just another beginning.
J.J. closed his eyes then and slept, for the first time in his life without
dreams.
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Author’s Note
The seed of The Ark Trilogy was planted at the Institute for Writing
and Thinking at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. My
deepest gratitude to my instructors there; the lessons you passed on about
writing have since taken root, and flourished.
As I write this, arguments are being heard before the U.S.
Supreme Court about the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender couples
to marry. LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning)
individuals are still subjected to bullying, ridicule, and hate – to the
extent that some take their own lives, and others have their lives taken
from them. I hope, by the time you read this, this will no longer be the
case. I hope our society will have accepted the real and simple truth: that
love is love.
For those individuals, gay, straight, or trans – pansexual,
bisexual, asexual, whichever – who fight for a more accepting and equal
society for us all, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
If you have been with the werekin this long, I owe you thanks for
diving into my stories, and staying under with me. Thanks to my family
– to Mom for giving me that first typewriter when I was eight years old;
to Dad, for being Poor Old Dad; and most of all to my big sister, for not
minding my queerness overly much. To my friends and colleagues, who
make my real world as rich a place to inhabit as my imaginary ones –
thank you; to Isabella, for being patient while I drafted, revised, and
edited, which meant putting some of our long walks on hold; and most
especially, thank you to my students, for allowing me the privilege of
being your teacher. Daniel, Abby, Curt, Patti, Janon, Ambreena, Megan,
Lauren, R.C., Crystal, and so many others I cannot name here: Your
courage, your brilliance, and your passion for life and learning inspire
me every day. You have taught me more than I could ever teach you.
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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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