Flames of Mars (Celestial Shifters Book 2)

by Tjalara Draper

  Violet nodded.

  Thane collapsed to his knees at her feet, his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving. Then, without warning, he reached out and hugged her. His hands dug into the small of her back as he buried his face in her stomach, trembling.

  Violet stood still as a statue. She’d never planned for this moment. She’d never expected this moment would happen—or rather, she’d desperately hoped it wouldn’t.

  Telling Thane would’ve meant admitting Solace was not just hers—she was also half his. It hurt too much to face the idea that something still tethered her to him—to the man she’d fallen in love with, had once even thought about spending the rest of her life with, only to discover he’d lied to her, taken advantage of her, and been at least partially responsible for Lyla’s death.

  He and that stupid scorpion tattoo had haunted her dreams for years. And yet . . .

  A small, almost forgotten feeling pierced her emotional stronghold, bringing with it memories of her time with Thane after she’d bumped into him that first day at the coffee shop: snippets of conversation, laughter, the indescribable sensation of his arms around her body. He had encouraged and challenged her, listened to her. Back then, she would’ve sworn he’d understood her. Being with him had made her feel free. Happy. Safe.

  Her world zoned in on Thane, the man she once loved.

  The father of her child.

  His grip on her was as tight as ever, even when his whole body was racked by shuddering sobs.

  What was happening? Was Thane . . . crying? What should she do?

  In Violet’s experience, men didn’t cry. They were always stoic or unsentimental, viewing tears as a weakness despite causing so many to be shed by the women and children in their homes. Even when the fights, the abuse, and the addictions had reached an abominable level, not one of them had been reduced to tears.

  Violet flicked out her whip-like tongue. A myriad of pungent flavors rippled through her senses: rhubarb, lotus flower, champagne, rosewater, pine needles, and seaweed, all tinged with the stickiness of nougat and the tang of cider vinegar. Her mind raced as she tried to decipher each associated emotion. Rhubarb represented shock, and rosewater suggested Thane was feeling overwhelmed. The champagne indicated feelings of inadequacy, yet lotus represented immense joy. Violet couldn’t quite recall what pine needles and seaweed meant, but these flavors were strong enough to rival her own emotional rollercoaster.

  A small part of her still wanted to scream and rage and kick Thane off of her, to demand he leave her and her daughter alone. But . . . she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to push him away, not when the presence of nougat and cider vinegar made it clear Thane’s heartbreak and grief were soul deep. All she could do was kneel down in front of him, tears blurring her vision until they eventually spilled down her cheeks.

  Thane wiped his own tears on the collar of his shirt and took a deep, shaky breath. “How is he?”

  “He?” Her brows furrowed.

  “Yeah. How’s the baby?”

  Violet slowly shook her head. “Not a he.”

  “A girl?” Thane’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, then he buried his face in the crook of his elbow. “A girl?” he repeated over and over under his breath. “A girl . . ?”

  Violet frowned and folded her arms. “Is there a problem?”

  “No!” Thane gripped her folded forearms and said in a gentler tone, “You don’t understand. I have a daughter. A girl. It’s . . . it’s almost impossible.” He started to laugh quietly and shake his head.

  For half a second, Violet was confused by his reaction, then she remembered that having a Veniri daughter was beyond rare.

  “What’s her name?” he asked. “I assume you’ve given her one?”

  Violet nodded. “I named her Solace.”

  His entire face lit up, erasing all evidence of his tears. In contrast, Violet couldn’t help feeling that by giving him her daughter’s name, she’d also given up a tiny piece of her soul.

  “Solace.” Thane looked around the room expectantly. “Where is she? Can I see her?”

  Violet’s lip began to tremble as she struggled to control fresh tears. Her gaze dropped to the small bite mark on her hand. “She’s . . . not here.”

  “Is she, like, napping or something?”

  “No. I mean, she’s . . . gone.” Violet almost choked on the last word. “Which is what Autumn has been working on this whole time. And why Nathan’s been training me to control my abilities.”

  Thane stiffened, his eyes widening with horror. “So, last week, that trip to Rivermyre . . .”

  Violet nodded. Then, before she could hold back, she recounted the whole story of how Solace had been kidnapped.

  By the time she’d finished, Autumn, Tio, and Sagan had gone back to working on the computers, leaving Violet and Thane to themselves, still sitting in the middle of the floor. During their conversation, Violet had handed Thane the photo of Solace, which he held reverently between his fingers as if it were a priceless relic.

  Other than the intermittent clack-clacking of keyboards and the hushed conversations between the other three, Thane and Violet sat for several minutes in silence. Strangely, it didn’t feel awkward. It was almost companionable, much like when they first met. Before . . .

  Violet shot a sidelong glance at the crystal scorpion tattoo on his neck. As usual, the potent concoction of rage and heartbreak churned in her chest, threatening to choke her. She hated everything about what that tattoo meant to her.

  Weird. It didn’t seem as clear or bright as she remembered. Had her intense feelings made the image more vibrant in her mind? She squinted. The black geometric lines were now a dull gray, and barely any color remained in the fractal crystal design. Was the tattoo fading?

  Thane rubbed his neck, blocking her view. “I can still feel it, you know.”

  “Feel what?” Violet almost held her breath, unsure where his statement was heading.

  “I can still feel it when you look at me.”

  A heartbeat passed. Blood rushed to Violet’s cheeks the second she recalled the photoshoot with Thane in her college dorm room. She’d needed help with one of her photography assignments, and during the session, Thane had told her he could sense her looking at him. She’d thought he was going nuts at first, but after a small test, it was hard to deny he could literally feel her gaze.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Violet blinked several times at Thane’s sudden question.

  His brown eyes met hers. Was it her imagination, or were the golden flecks in his irises more prominent than they were a few minutes ago? “Why didn’t you tell me sooner about Solace? I mean”—he gestured to the doorway—“if I hadn’t walked in on your conversation, were you ever planning on telling me?”

  “I . . .” Violet shifted uncomfortably, scrunching her knees up to hug her legs. “No,” she finally admitted.

  Thane stared at her for a long time, his expression unreadable. Violet could have sworn the gold in his eyes dimmed.

  A thousand excuses bounced around her skull as she tried to anticipate his questions, his accusations, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, his lips pressed into a thin line, and he slowly nodded.

  Eventually, his gaze dropped back to the photo. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think I can understand your reasoning.”

  Instead of the vindication Violet had expected, an intense wave of shame washed over her. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, and dropped her chin to her knees, staring intently at the pattern in the carpet.

  “Violet?”

  “Yeah?” She allowed herself a second or two to work up the courage to meet Thane’s gaze.

  His expression was hard, and this time, his eyes were edged with steel. “I promise,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “I will do everything in my power to get our daughter back.”

  Our . . . The word reverberated through Violet’s head.

  In that moment, Violet remembered the emo
tional meanings of pine needles and seaweed. Pine needles represented deep, abiding love, and seaweed expressed Thane’s sheer determination.

  A high-pitched squeal yanked their attention to Autumn doing a happy dance in her swivel chair. “I’m in!” She fist-pumped the air and hooted. “I’ve finally weaseled my way in. I knew it! I knew it would work this time.”

  Tio whooped as Violet and Thane scrambled up from the floor.

  “Whoa.” Sagan gave a low whistle.

  Image after image was flying up all over Autumn’s screens: architectural plans, all sorts of schematics, various files and scanned paperwork, ID photos of staff dressed in white lab coats and security uniforms. Violet could barely comprehend all the new information. The one thing that tied all the documents, images, and uniforms together was a logo of an X with wings over the words Xabat Biogenetics Research Inc.

  “No way,” said Tio. “So back at Rivermyre when I joked about knocking on that Xabat building’s door to ask for your daughter back, it wasn’t a joke after all.”

  Violet blanched.

  “Do we know what this mysterious facility is all about yet?” Thane asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Autumn slowly shook her head as she flicked through several more documents. “Maybe . . . something to do with, I don’t know, biochemistry? Genetics? Umm . . . maybe Aunt Dawn would know. This seems like something she would understand.” Autumn pointed to a screen displaying what looked like a lab report, then clicked on another file.

  A gruesome parade of photographs immediately flooded the monitors.

  With a screech, Autumn covered her eyes and spun in the swivel chair until her back was to the screens. Violet gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as ice-cold terror replaced the warm blood in her veins.

  If horror and fear were tangible beings, one was now squeezing Violet’s throat, and the other had an even tighter grip on her heart. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the photos—though God knows she wanted to. She needed to. But the more she stared, the more her fear froze her in place. Never, as long as she lived, would she be able to forget the ghastly images.

  And those people have my baby!

  “Ugh . . .” Tio sounded as if he was about to gag. He slouched forward, one arm wrapped around his torso. “That’s . . . messed up.”

  Sagan and Thane had become like twin statues on either side of Violet, but she barely registered their presence.

  “They’ve got to be some kind of experimental facility,” said Sagan.

  “Yeah, but what kind of psychos experiment on . . . on children?” said Tio.

  A heavy silence settled over the group.

  As if waking up from a coma, Violet disjointedly said, “That girl at Rivermyre, Umbra, the one who killed the Godzilla worm. She mentioned something about failed Xabat experiments.”

  Tio reached for Autumn’s abandoned keyboard. He clicked a thumbnail of a video file, which filled the screen and immediately began to play. It showed a man strapped to a bed with multiple IV lines injected into his chest. Several scientists surrounded him, discussing the procedure they were about to perform.

  Even Autumn was curious enough to peek past her barrier of arms and dreadlocks.

  Tio skipped the video ahead several minutes to a scene erupting in chaos. The man on the bed was now screaming and writhing, fighting the bonds on his legs, on his wrists, and across his forehead. The IV tubes were now filled with different colors of heaven knows what. Scientists darted around in a flurry, shouting and yanking out tubes. Colored liquid and vibrant red blood sprayed all over the flailing man’s chest.

  A wrist strap snapped. Then the other. The man’s writhing turned into violent tremors. His chest expanded, blowing up like a balloon, until his skin began to split.

  Violet stopped breathing as the doomed soul on the bed began to morph into a thing of nightmares—a creature Violet was unfortunate enough to have seen in person.

  “No. Freaking. Way,” breathed Tio. “That guy’s the Godzilla worm.”

  Heavens have mercy.

  “Are you serious?” Thane pointed to the screen. “That’s the thing you guys encountered at Rivermyre?”

  “That thing was a man.” The horror in Sagan’s voice echoed Violet’s own disbelief.

  The ear-splitting roar on the screen morphed into a sound that still rang crystal clear in Violet’s memories. The Godzilla worm grew and grew. Thrashing and wreaking hell, it finally pounded through the wall and out of the camera’s view, leaving bodies and carnage in its wake.

  The screen went blank, and the computer hut was plunged into silence.

  “Do you guys seriously think Solace is in that place?” Thane asked.

  A small whimper escaped Violet. Her eyes burned, whether from her refusal to blink or her need to burst into tears. Knees buckling, she collapsed on the ground beside Autumn, who sat hunched over her knees, hands locked tight around the dreadlocks on either side of her head.

  Tio clicked on another file. When he scrolled through the images, something caught Violet’s attention.

  “Wait! What’s that?”

  Tio clicked on the thumbnail, and an employee’s photo filled the screen.

  Violet’s world spun. She pointed to the photo of the smiling woman in the lab coat. “That’s Macie, my midwife.”

  Tio clicked through to another photo that showed Macie’s husband. “It looks like both of them were scientists at Xabat for a number of years, and then about a year ago”—he pointed to a section of writing—“both of them were fired. But it doesn’t say why.”

  Sagan leaned closer to one of the screens, zoning in on a photograph of a group of people in white lab coats fanned around the gore on a hospital bed. He pointed to a grinning man standing front and center in the group.

  “Oh no.” Sagan’s whispered words sent a chill down Violet’s spine.

  “Who is that?”

  Sagan ignored Thane’s question as he pushed past Violet to access the keyboard. “Please no,” Sagan breathed, his eyes darting over a document. “I know what this place is trying to do. They’re experimenting with animals and humans to somehow bioengineer shifter abilities for the human race.”

  “In that case, mystery solved as to why Macie and her husband were also killed during the Magneii attack,” said Autumn.

  “What do you mean?” Violet asked.

  “The way I see it, they were kicked out of this secret science society. A brand-new shifter baby would’ve been the perfect ticket for them to try and weasel their way back in.”

  Violet sucked in a sharp breath. The sudden need to vomit was intense.

  Sagan went back to scrolling through the file of staff documents. Face after face flashed across the screen. After a few seconds, he growled in frustration and typed something on the keyboard. The search pulled up a single document, this one without a staff photo.

  Sagan turned away from the screen, his eyes wide and glassy. After taking half a step, he stumbled into the wall by Autumn’s desk, then slid down to the floor in a heap.

  “I don’t understand,” said Thane.

  “Yeah.” Tio peered at the screen. “What are we looking at?”

  Violet’s own terror was amplified by the fear radiating off Sagan. She scanned the document. It looked like a simple employee file for one of the top scientists in the facility. None of it made sense—until she recognized the last name.

  “Branstone?” she said aloud.

  All heads swiveled to Sagan except Violet’s. Instead, her eyes bored into the grinning scientist at the front of the pack in the photo Sagan had singled out.

  “Yeah,” Sagan finally said. “The director of Xabat Biogenetics is Renard Branstone. My grandfather.”

  20

  Zhivotza

  “Grandfather, huh?” Nathan’s rhetorical question was met with somber silence from the group, but his heavy mind was elsewhere anyway. He’d hardly slept last night, still unable to shake Dawn’s words.

&
nbsp; . . . consider putting your affairs in order.

  Nathan had been checking in with Gus at the infirmary when Tio had run up and vehemently told him they all needed to check out what Autumn had discovered. The kid had manhandled Nathan and Gus down to Autumn’s computer lab before either of them could protest.

  Nathan was trying his best to absorb all the new information quickly, but it was hard enough trying to figure out what the hell Autumn and Tio were even showing him. Autumn’s computer den was straight out of a sci-fi movie. He cast a sidelong glance at Gus, who was intently studying a number of lab documents on the computer screens.

  Thane, Violet, Tio, and Autumn were all watching Nathan with a mix of wide eyes, crossed arms, lip biting, and dreadlock twirling. Sagan was slouched against the wall with his head bowed, very much in contrast to his usual nonchalant hunter pose. It reminded Nathan of when Sagan and Matthias had captured him to harvest his Diamantium shards. Even though it had been Nathan getting tortured, there was a moment where Sagan looked as if he was the one going through hell. And now, his defeated expression suggested a whole other level of torment.

  Everyone was waiting on him. Expectant. But for what? Why did he have to be the go-to guy whenever something came out of left field? Just like when Violet manifested dual shifter abilities, he had no more insight than anyone else into what was going on, let alone what needed to be done about it.

  Nathan scratched at the new stubble along his jaw, then released a lungful of air. “What makes you so sure that this guy”—he pointed to the photo of the smiling group of people in lab coats—“Sagan’s grandfather, has Solace?”

  Autumn, Tio, Violet, and Thane responded all at once.

  “Whoa, whoa. Stop!” Nathan waved his arms to get everyone to shut up. He turned to Gus, who just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Gus. “I didn’t catch any of that either.”

  Nathan grunted. “Autumn, start at the top. What’s this about you and Tio hacking into government databases?”