Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella

by Mary, Kate L.

  I tried to convince myself that none of it had been a dream, but it was all too unreal and I suddenly felt desperate to see my family with my own eyes. Careful not to wake Donaghy, I rolled out of bed and stumbled in the blackness for my clothes.

  The hallway was dark and the wood floor creaked under my feet as I made my way to the stairs. When Donaghy and I had come up, Mom and Dad had still been downstairs with Margot and I had no doubt in my mind that they would still be there. The light that penetrated the darkness when I reached the first floor seemed to confirm it, and when I stepped into the living room the scene I was greeted with wasn’t much different than what I’d expected.

  Margot was asleep on the couch still, her head resting in Mom’s lap, who was also out. Dad, however, was awake and sitting in a chair across from them, his gray eyes focused on his wife and daughter like he couldn’t stand the thought of missing even a moment.

  When I stepped further into the room, he looked up with a start. “Shit.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered, crossing the room to him. “Did I scare you?”

  He held his hand out to me and I went to him, taking it before perching on the arm of the chair. “Don’t take much these days.”

  I glanced toward Margot and my heart constricted. “Has she spoken yet?”

  “No.” Dad shook his head. “She will. We gotta have faith.”

  I’d never thought faith was a necessity, but after everything that had happened, I couldn’t help clinging to it now. Everything else had worked out, why shouldn’t this?

  “What about you?” I asked. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m good.” He patted my leg absentmindedly.

  Dad’s gaze was still on the couch, but I was looking him over. His face was so beaten and bruised that he didn’t look much like himself at the moment, and even though the swelling on his eye had gone down, it was still dark purple. He had a cut on his lip, right above the scar on his chin, the one he’d had for as long as I could remember.

  I reached out and touched it. “Where did you get this scar? You’ve never told me.”

  He tore his gray eyes from the couch and focused on me. “It ain’t a very nice story.”

  “There are a lot of stories like that. It doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to know them.”

  This time, I was thinking about the things Jim had told me, and the stuff about my biological mother that Angus had alluded to, and somehow Dad seemed to know that I wasn’t talking about the scar anymore.

  “What do you wanna know?” he asked.

  “Why did my mom change her name to Ginny?”

  “It was her real name,” Mom said, and I turned to find her eyes open and focused on me. “Her real name was Virginia Lucas, Ginny. She changed it to Hadley Lucas when she moved to California to start acting.”

  “Why did she change it back? Angus told me something happened to her. In Vegas.”

  I looked between Mom and Dad, giving them a moment to decide what to tell me. I had a right to know, but I also knew that it might not be an easy thing for them to talk about, even after all these years.

  After a second, Mom shifted, moving Margot’s head so she could slide out from under her. She stretched when she stood, and even though I knew she was probably sore, I also thought she might be buying herself time. Her back cracked and she made a face, but then grabbed a chair and pulled it over so she was sitting in front of Dad and me.

  “It isn’t an easy thing to talk about,” she said when she had taken a seat. “It might be hard to hear, too.”

  “I’m twenty. I’m not a child.”

  “Some things are even hard for adults to hear,” Mom whispered.

  I looked toward Dad, expecting him to be on my side, but his gaze was focused on the floor. The expression of pain on his face gave me pause, but I knew that even if I walked away now, I’d always wonder what had happened.

  “I want to know,” I said after a few seconds of heavy silence.

  Mom nodded. “It happened during the early days of the outbreak. We were at a hospital looking for supplies when your mom and I got separated from Angus and your dad.” She nodded to Dad. “This father, not Jon. We didn’t know Jon yet, but we met him that day.”

  A chill ran up my spine at her tone.

  “We were in the parking lot when a van drove up. Men jumped out and took Hadley and me. They drove us to the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas where a group of men were living. There were women in the hotel too, but they weren’t there by choice. They were currency. The men living in the hotel would go out and gather supplies for the man in charge, and in exchange they were allowed to choose a woman for the night. Back then, everyone knew who Hadley Lucas the movie star was...” Mom’s voice dropped off at the last sentence and she had to swallow before going on. “There was nothing I could do to save her. I tried, but I was as powerless as she was.”

  A sense of dread had pooled in my stomach, and I suddenly found myself wishing I hadn’t asked, because I could do math and I had a pretty good feeling I knew what was coming next.

  Only, I was wrong.

  Mom looked up and captured my gaze with hers. “Your father, Jon, was driving the van that took us.”

  I shook my head. “No. You said my parents loved each other. You said—”

  “They did.” Mom grabbed my hand when I started to stand. “They did. It’s a long story, so long that I doubt I could remember it all, but know that he only did those things to save his sister. Megan. She was only sixteen and she was in there, a prisoner, and he did what he thought he had to do to free her.

  “After he took us to the hotel, he had me sent to his room and told me what was going on. He helped us get out, and even though he was the one who’d brought us there to begin with, once I saw what Megan had been through, I couldn’t blame him. And your mom didn’t either.”

  “What happened to her?” I whispered. “What happened to Megan after you got out?”

  Mom didn’t release my hand, but she did look away. “She was too damaged. She’d been through too much.”

  “And my dad?” I had to force the words out. “Was he actually my dad?”

  Her hand tightened on mine. “Yes. Jon Lewis was your father.”

  “How do you know?” I thought of my mom, my biological mother, trapped in a hotel. I didn’t have a lot of understanding of celebrities, but I knew enough to know that she had been a big one. It was how I knew what she looked like, because over the years I’d been able to find dozens of magazines with her pictures in them. “I mean— She—” The words stuck on their way out.

  “You look just like him,” Dad said, speaking up for the first time. “There ain’t a doubt in my mind.”

  I remembered Jim saying the same thing, and I told myself that they weren’t lying, but it was a hard thing to wrap my brain around because I had no idea what my father had looked like. Dark hair, yes, but that could have come from anyone, and how many had there been? How many men had gotten the honor of having Hadley Lucas in their bed for the night? Did I want to know?

  Mom reached out with her free hand and took Dad’s, and when he looked up the expression in his eyes nearly took my breath away. That’s when it hit me Mom had been there too, in that hotel, and that Dad hadn’t been able to do anything to help her. He must have been going out of his mind with worry, the way we had all these weeks with him missing.

  “You were there too,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them. “Did you, I mean… What happened?”

  Mom squeezed my hand. “Nothing. I got lucky. Your dads—both of them—kept me safe.” She glanced toward the man who had raised me.

  “No wonder she started going by Ginny,” I muttered.

  “She didn’t want people to know who she was,” Mom said. “She cut her hair and when it started to grow out it was a different color. The world had changed, and somewhere along the way people began to forget about movie stars and sex symbols. She felt safer.”

  “Did she want me?�
� I asked, the question impossible to keep inside. “She couldn’t have known for sure who my father was. Did that mean she didn’t want me?”

  “She wanted you enough to travel across a zombie infested country to save you.” Mom squeezed my hand. “She loved you. So did your dad.”

  “So do we,” Dad said.

  Mom nodded, and I found myself sliding down off the arm of the couch so I was sitting in Dad’s lap. I hadn’t done that since I was a child and for a brief moment I felt silly, but then his arms were around me and I no longer cared. I needed his support right now. I needed to know that I was loved and wanted and that despite the awful story of how my parents had met, I had somehow managed to end up in a family that loved one another.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Meg

  After those life-altering revelations, I knew I’d never be able to sleep, so I told Mom and Dad to get some rest while I stayed with Margot.

  I knew that distracting myself from the horrible images of what my biological mother had gone through wouldn’t be easy, especially when I thought of my own close calls, but I had a feeling that focusing on my sister just might do the trick. So I sat with her head in my lap the way mom had before, stroking her dirty blonde hair out of her face and whispering to her as the rest of the house slept. I talked to her about games we’d played, about songs we’d sung, even about fights we’d had, hoping that something would bring her out of this stupor.

  Then I started talking about what had happened in my life since she was taken from it, focusing on the good things. On the people I’d met, Colton who had been my first love, Dragon and Glitter and Helen. Donaghy. I talked to her about how it felt to realize I was an adult now, how amazing it was to fall in love.

  I wept when I told her how much I’d missed her. How alone I’d felt growing up, how I’d wished I could have had her to whisper to at night the way I had before she’d been taken from me. The words seemed to flow out of me in endless streams, but instead of running out of steam, the more I talked the more I thought of that I wanted to share with her. I’d missed my sister more than I’d even realized, and now that she was alive, I was desperate to have her back in my life.

  The room was just beginning to fill with the glow of the early morning sun when Margot’s eyes opened and she looked up at me. It would have been like looking into Mom’s eyes if it weren’t for the total innocence that radiated in those brown depths. Instead, it was like once again seeing my sister at the age of nine even though years had passed and she was now a almost an adult.

  “Megan?” she whispered.

  “It’s me.” The words were almost drowned out by a sob, so I swallowed before speaking again. “I’m here.”

  Margot looked around, blinking like she couldn’t make sense of what was going on. “Where am I?”

  She started to sit up, and I reached out to help her, afraid that she was too weak. Her arm felt impossibly thin in my grasp, and it made everything in me squeeze into a tight ball, but I swallowed the pain, wanting to be strong for my sister now that she was finally waking up. She was going to have so much to adjust to, and she would need all of us to do it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Margot nodded, but then shook her head. “I don’t— I don’t know.” Her hand went to her forehead and she closed her eyes. “I have a headache and I don’t remember what’s happening.”

  “You don’t remember anything?” I held my breath, praying that she wouldn’t. Losing years of your life would be a much better alternative to remembering the torture that had been inflicted on you.

  “I remember…” Her face scrunched up. “I remember a white room. I remember machines that beeped. I remember…” Margot opened her eyes and looked down at her arms, at the crooks that were covered in scars just like Glitter’s and Angus’s were. “I remember needles.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, afraid that if I looked her in the face I’d start to cry. “You’re okay now. We’re all together again.”

  “Where are Mommy and Daddy?” she asked, her voice shaking and making her sound like a tiny child.

  “They’re in bed.” I pulled away and quickly wiped at the tears on my cheeks before she could see them. “I can get them.”

  I started to stand, but Margot grabbed my arm and I froze. Her brown eyes swept over my face, getting wider with each passing second. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty,” I whispered.

  “How old am I?”

  “Eighteen,” I said, even quieter.

  Margot’s shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t a dream. It was real.”

  “It was real,” I said, grabbing her and pulling her in for another hug. “But it’s over now. You’re safe, and I promise I’m going to make sure you are never hurt again.”

  The floor creaked and I looked up to find Mom standing in the doorway, her face streaked with tears.

  It was a good thing we’d already decided Mom and Dad weren’t going with us, because after Margot came to they were too distracted to join in on the planning. For me, the break from worrying about my sister and a past I couldn’t change was welcome, so when everyone else crowded into the dining room to plan, I went too.

  “We can’t go back in through Dragon’s,” was the first thing Jada said.

  All around the room people nodded in agreement. Jim was at her side with Luke next to him, but Kelly was out thanks to her injury. She wasn’t the only one either, and when I scanned the room I realized how much smaller our group was this time around. Al, Angus, Dragon, Donaghy, and I were all here, but we’d lost the other people from Senoia and Helen. Parv was present too, despite her injury and the fact that everyone was trying to talk her into staying. I knew they wouldn’t succeed, just like no one would be able to convince me not to go, so I hadn’t even tried to join in that argument.

  It wasn’t a lot of people, but thanks to Angus, we’d gained The Church as allies.

  “What did you and the High Priestess talk about?” I asked, turning my gaze on Angus. “I’m assuming she’s still going to help.”

  “She is, but I gotta reveal myself to her people first. She wants them to know what they’re fightin’ for.”

  “Is that something you really want to do?” Parv asked.

  “It’s somethin’ I gotta do. We need the numbers, and hell, I deserve it. They’ve used me for the past twenty years, I might as well get somethin’ outta it.”

  “He has a point,” Al muttered. “If we don’t have them on our side, we might as well go to the gate with our arms up and turn ourselves into Star.”

  “I think we’re all in agreement that that isn’t an option,” Jada said. “So let’s focus on the bigger issue. How do we get in?”

  “The priestess said they got a way,” Angus replied. “I ain’t sure what it is, but it’s how they got out to come here.”

  “We’re going to meet them then?” Jada asked.

  “That’s the plan,” my uncle said.

  “Good.” Jada nodded and scanned the group. “That brings us to the next problem. How we get to Star. We’re assuming he’s going to be inside the CDC, but he might not be. He could be in his house for all we know, which could make things complicated.”

  “He’ll be at the CDC,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention my way. “I spent a lot of time with Jackson, and if I know anything about his father, it’s that he is a workaholic. Plus, the house isn’t fortified the way the CDC is. You don’t need a code to get in, just a key, and anyone could break the front door down.”

  “Do we have a code still?” Jada looked toward Dragon.

  “I have it.” He frowned. “Helen made sure I knew it in case something happened. She wanted to be prepared.”

  “What about weapons?” Jim asked, speaking up for the first time. “With The Church we’ll have the numbers, but what about arming them? We all know their anti-violence stance.”

  “They got it covered,” Angus said.

  “The Church has weapons?” Al as
ked in disbelief.

  Angus pressed his lips together and nodded. “I ain’t seen ‘em with my own eyes, but that’s what I was told. The priestess said she’s been stocking up.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For this,” Angus said.

  “Then I guess that’s it. We can’t really make any other plans until we get to the temple and find out what the High Priestess has in mind.” Jada shook her head. “I just hope whatever she’s thinking helps us, because if we have to fight The Church too we’re screwed.”

  Sabine met us on the side of the road on the outskirts of old Atlanta. There was a truck parked behind her that—like all vehicles still driving around—had seen better days, and she was flanked by the same large men who had stood at her mother’s side in Senoia, all three of them decked out in the same red robes they’d worn before. The plunging neckline of Sabine’s revealed a simple black shirt and the bronze pendant she and all the other senior members of The Church wore. It was an eye with a red stone in where the pupil should have been, and it gave me the creeps.

  “Priestess,” Jada said when we had all climbed out of the truck.

  Sabine dipped her head, but as usual her gaze was focused on my uncle. “Angus James.”

  He grunted in response.

  “We’ve been told you have a way into the city,” Jada said.

  Sabine tore her gaze from Angus and looked the other woman over, her gaze lingering on the tattoos peaking out of her shirt and moving up her neck.

  “Why do you choose to degrade your body in this way?” she asked.

  “I don’t see it like that.” To Jada’s credit, she managed to keep her expression even. “And that’s not why I’m here.”

  Sabine frowned, but nodded in agreement a second later. “We have a way in. You may follow us.” She waved to the truck at her back. “We will park two streets over and walk from there. It is not a difficult journey.”