by Jade Kerrion
“Is it?” Danyael stared into the eyes of the man who had betrayed him. “You swore I would be held safely in custody until the investigation cleared my name, yet you sent me, without trial, to a maximum-security prison for life.”
“Danyael, the president pardoned you. You’re free.”
“Free? I’m trapped in a virtual prison, bound to a twenty-mile radius of the Mutant Affairs Council headquarters. I’m still trying to dig myself out of the hole you buried me in.” And I don’t know if I can ever get out. Despair, potent because it was so rare, threatened to choke him. He shook his head. “I want to live, Alex, but I’m not going to put someone else through the hell I went through.” He turned away and limped out of the door.
He endured the startled glances of the people he passed in the corridor and the steady stares of the two enforcers who shared the elevator with him. He had almost made it to the front door when he heard Zara’s footsteps behind him. His lips twisted into a grimace. Of course she could never let things lie. He braced himself, but still, he lost his balance when she grabbed his arm and swung him around.
She caught him, steadying him before he fell. Her gaze burned into his. “I’m not going to let you give up without a fight.”
“I’m not giving up, Zara. I’m just not going to do it your way, or his way.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Talk to my brother. He’s a possible donor.”
“What about your father?”
He hates me still. “I’ll talk to him too.”
“I want you to move in with me.”
He shook his head, his response immediate and instinctive. “I can’t trade a five-minute walk for an hour-long commute. I get little enough rest as it is. I can’t carve another two hours out of my day to travel from Georgetown to Anacostia.”
“I’ll drive you to work. I want to be sure you’re getting sufficient food and rest. You can move in with me, or Laura and I will move out to Anacostia. Your choice.”
“What kind of choice is that?” he protested.
Her smile was sleek and feline. “Precisely.”
Was she going to address the fact that he wasn’t Laura’s real father? It wasn’t Zara’s style to sweep things under the carpet—the showdown was coming; he just wasn’t sure when. Danyael sighed and moved away, but she caught his hand. “I’ll come by tonight after you wrap up at the clinic to pick you up. Make sure you’re packed by then.”
He knew when he faced a battle he could not win. “I’ll need more time. Tomorrow night.”
“Fine.” She released his arm, but he could feel her gaze boring into his back as he left the building.
The irony mocked him, raucous laughter echoing in his skull. Their tense relationship, bred in distrust and betrayal, had apparently taken a step forward. Zara had voluntarily invited him to move in with her. He stood at the threshold of having the family he had always desired and needed, all for the price of terminal cancer.
CHAPTER FOUR
An hour later, Danyael arrived at the free clinic to find sixteen frustrated patients, a distressed locum, and the two nurses, Jacquie and Sandra, struggling to keep both parties from each other’s throats.
“I don’t know how you do it.” James Morrison, a doctor who worked on call with the D.C. Department of Health, sagged into the squeaky chair at Danyael’s desk. “A day and a half of this nightmare and I’m ready to call it quits. The patients and their issues…oh, God.” His face paled. “They seem to expect miracles, and they keep pouring in.”
“They can’t go anywhere else. No other hospitals or clinics will take them,” Danyael pointed out. “I’ve got this under control. Why don’t you head back?”
“Will do.” James leapt to his feet and scurried out the front door of the clinic so quickly that he left skid marks.
Jacquie peeked into Danyael’s office, amusement glittering in her brown eyes. “No spine in that one.”
“He’s young.”
“Older than you. And you’re practically a pup at thirty-one.”
Danyael conceded with a smile. “More sheltered, then. Let’s see if we can get caught up.”
She nodded, but did not move away from the door. “How are you doing? I called Zara this morning, and she said you were still under observation at the Mutant Affairs Council.”
“I’ll be all right.”
She scowled. “You’ve been pushing too hard, that’s what. I’ll talk to Sandra, see if we can sneak in a five-minute break for you every two or three hours without backing up the line too much.”
The line of patients did not clear until nine-thirty that night, an hour and a half after the official closing time. Exhausted, Danyael sank into his chair and closed his eyes. He would have to dredge up the energy to help Sandra with the cleaning and—
Sandra’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Someone to see you.”
Another patient? It would have had to be an emergency if Sandra had admitted the patient after the clinic’s official hours. Stifling a sigh, he opened his eyes. They flared wide, unseeing, as grief—deep and tremulous—plowed through him. Dazed, he looked up into familiar brown eyes set in a face that he had not seen for nine years. “Chloe?”
Chloe Sullivan’s lips tugged into a faint smile. “Hello, Danyael.”
He half-rose from his seat, but she shook her head, apparently dispensing with the formalities. She set her heavy wool coat aside and gestured at the chair across from him. “May I?”
Danyael nodded. The smell of lemon-scented disinfectant wafted in through the open door of his office. Sandra had already begun cleaning up, humming a soft tune as she mopped the floors in the reception area. He turned his attention back to Chloe as she smoothed down her well-tailored black dress and sat across from him, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy beneath her meticulous makeup. “I’m sorry to hear about your father,” he said.
Her rosebud lips moved, soundlessly at first, and then the words emerged, trembling. “We buried him this afternoon. Dad never enjoyed the pomp and pageantry of politics, and he didn’t want them at his funeral either.” Her fingers twisted the white handkerchief she held in her hand, working it into a tear-sodden knot.
Danyael leaned forward, extending his hand to her.
Sobbing, Chloe flung herself out of her seat and into his arms. He held her, his hand stroking gently down the length of her back as she sobbed against his shirt. His empathic powers coiled around her, supporting her with infinite tenderness, like silk against a knife’s edge, not dulling the blade but surrounding it with love. He did not know how long he held her. At some point, Sandra looked in to wave a silent goodbye. Danyael nodded his thanks, dismissing her.
Finally, Chloe pulled away. She managed a sheepish smile as she dabbed at his tear-soaked shirt with an equally wet handkerchief. “I’m so sorry.”
“No reason to be,” he assured her.
“We haven’t seen each other in nine years, and the first thing I do, without saying hello, is cry on you.”
Danyael smiled. “You did say hello.”
Her lips tugged into a wan smile. “We lost touch so long ago. How have you been doing?”
“Don’t you know? Isn’t it all over the news?”
Chloe chuckled. “I work in the news industry. More than anyone else, I know we only hear a fraction of the truth. What really happened three years ago?”
Had it been three years already?
Almost.
Thirty-four months prior, several days before Christmas, Zara Itani had broken into Pioneer Laboratories and, apparently on not much more than a whim, inspired by compassion he had not known she possessed, she freed Galahad. In the chaos, six abominations also escaped from the laboratory and rampaged through Washington, D.C., adding a sheen of unnatural horror over the violence of the genetic riots that consumed the city in the aftermath of Galahad’s escape. All of that was public knowledge.
What was not public knowledge was that Danyael, as stunned and surprise
d as anyone else by his obvious connection to Galahad, had used that new information to track down the family who had abandoned him when he was two years old.
The truth was uglier than he could have imagined. His unchecked empathic powers had apparently driven his mother mad. She had not just abandoned him. His mother had tried to kill him, tossing him over a bridge and into a river in the height of winter. She had died in a car accident on the way home, the secret perishing with her.
He still had a father and a brother, though neither wanted Danyael back. Both preferred him dead. His brother, Jason Rakehell, was president of Purest Humanity, the largest pro-humanist organization, and he hated human derivatives, including mutants, and most especially, Galahad. His father, Roland Rakehell, Galahad’s creator, was professionally mortified by the realization that the son he had thought was dead, the son whose genes he had used to shape his precious creation, was actually alive.
At an unplanned family reunion that took place at Pioneer Laboratories, Jason demanded his father choose between Galahad and Danyael. Roland chose Galahad, and Jason, out of spite for his father as much as hatred for his brother, shot Danyael. As he lay dying, Danyael had used his empathic powers to filter through his brother’s and father’s hatred for each other.
Alex Saunders from the Mutant Affairs Council had arrived in time to save Danyael’s life, but in a final, cruel blow, Roland had demanded that telepaths rip out Danyael’s memories of his family. Within hours of finding his family, Danyael had lost them again.
Over time, he had regained those memories, though they were memories and experiences he would have rather lived without. To his surprise, he had even regained family; Jason had returned, and the brothers had struck up a cautious friendship.
“Danyael?” Chloe asked, her gentle voice recalling him to the present. “What happened? What changed you?”
What changed me? He shook his head. “Somehow Galahad’s escape set off a land grab between the Mutant Affairs Council and the Mutant Assault Group.”
“What was the prize?”
Danyael stared down at his hands as they clenched into fists. “Me. General Howard from the Mutant Assault Group wanted an alpha empath for his super soldier army, and Alex Saunders from the Mutant Affairs Council was equally determined not to let the general have me.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “So, the charges against you weren’t true?”
“I killed twelve men in self-defense—nothing that would have warranted a life sentence in a maximum-security prison. The class-five threat classification the council slapped me with…it was all Alex.”
“And prison—”
“That was Alex’s insane plan to keep me out of the general’s reach, but what does the general do? Something crazier—”
“Conspiring with Sakti, the mutant terrorist group, that wasn’t crazy. That was treason.”
Danyael inhaled deeply. “The general trained and armed Sakti to break me out of prison.” He pushed to his feet in spite of the stab of pain in his leg. “Alex would have left me to die in prison. It’s hard to resent what the general did, even if he did have ulterior motives.”
“But you stopped Sakti.”
Danyael nodded. “Yes, when Sakti turned against the assault group and attacked D.C., I had to do something. Everything…everyone I loved was in that city.” Including Zara and Laura Itani, and Lucien Winter.
Lucien, immune to Danyael’s empathic powers, had once been Danyael’s salvation. The heir apparent to the Winter fortune was then only fifteen, but he had saved a twelve-year-old orphan from a life of misery and abuse, and offered a young alpha empath the rare gift of true friendship. That friendship was now lost to Danyael too, a casualty of the conflict between the Mutant Affairs Council and the Mutant Assault Group. Lucien, his mind altered by a telepath, had been irretrievably turned against Danyael.
Lucien was just one of the many losses Danyael had chalked up since his life was overturned that fateful day when Galahad escaped from Pioneer Labs. At some point, Danyael stopped trying to keep track. He couldn’t dwell on the past, not when the present required all his energy and focus.
It was ironic though that he had survived so much, only to succumb to cancer, to the one thing he could not blame on Zara, Galahad, Alex Saunders, or General Howard. Life has a sick sense of humor.
“You saved the city, Danyael.” Gratitude and admiration infused Chloe’s voice.
Danyael shrugged, the motion concealing a flash of heartache. Saving the city had demanded a higher price than he had been willing to pay. It had cost Miriya Templeton her life.
He lowered himself into his chair and stretched his leg out in front of him. “What brings you here?”
Her voice caught. “I wanted to ask if it was true…what the FBI told me.”
“What did the FBI tell you?”
She pressed her lips together. “That my father didn’t really die of smoke inhalation. They suspect Galahad killed him, but they have no evidence. They said Galahad has been killing his templates, and that it’s been happening for two years.” Her questioning gaze searched his face. “Is it true?”
Danyael looked away, unable to take comfort in a lie. “Galahad’s templates have been dying, it’s true. But there’s no evidence—”
Chloe shot to her feet. “Hang the evidence! Why didn’t the FBI warn Galahad’s surviving templates? I could have hired a security team to protect my father. How could the FBI conceal something like this? Their conspiracy of silence killed my father.”
“Chloe—” Danyael closed his eyes as he absorbed the fury-seared grief pouring out of her.
“Galahad is out there, killing innocent people. Why didn’t the media report on this?” She ground her teeth. “It’s Lucien Winter, isn’t it? He funded Galahad’s lavish lifestyle, and he’s protecting Galahad now.”
“You don’t know—”
“Winter’s on the board of the six leading media conglomerates in the world. He can shut down anything.”
“You’re attributing to him more influence than he has.”
“Am I? You were Winter’s friend once, weren’t you? You know what he’s capable of.”
Yes, I do…
Chloe continued without missing a beat. “And you’re Galahad’s template. He’ll come after you. Why are you protecting him?”
“Protecting him?”
“They said the government asked for your help in bringing him in, but you refused.”
Danyael’s heart clenched. Emotional blackmail. It always came down to emotional blackmail. Damn you, Alex.
Chloe knelt in front of him and wrapped her fingers around his subtly misshapen left hand, the bones once broken and badly reset from a childhood injury he did not remember. Her doe-like eyes were moist. “My father was a good man. I need to know why he died.”
“I can’t help—”
She shook her head and pressed a slim finger against his lips. “No, don’t answer right now. Think about it, please.” She pushed to her feet. “I intend to get to the bottom of this, with or without your help.”
“Leave it to the FBI.”
“They don’t want to deal with it. They said that unless there’s strong evidence one way or another, they’re not going to take on Galahad and Lucien Winter.”
Danyael’s eyes widened. “They said that?”
She nodded. “Galahad’s not an in vitro, clone, or mutant; he’s the perfect human being. He doesn’t fall under any jurisdiction—not the In-Vitro Authority, the Association for the Representation of Clones, or the Mutant Affairs Council. Even the International Genetics and Ethics Council won’t touch him.” A soft beep drew her attention to a smartphone that she pulled out of her handbag. Her face tightened as she scrolled through the message on the screen. “Philip Lancaster, the world championship marksman, was just found dead of an apparent heart attack in a parking lot in Baltimore.”
“And he was one of Galahad’s genetic donors…”
She nodded, a smile of
grim satisfaction on her face. “This time, there are eyewitness accounts of Galahad speaking to Lancaster shortly before he collapsed.” She reached for her coat and shrugged it on. “I’ve got enough clout at NBC; if I can break the news, the social media channels will run with it and the government will be forced to bring Galahad in.”
“Chloe.”
She threw a glance over her shoulder, the motion impatient.
“Be careful.”
A sad smile passed over her face. “You too.” She walked out of the building, a blast of cold air seeping into the clinic in her wake.
Had the world suddenly gone mad? Galahad was apparently out to kill his donors—but why? And more importantly, Danyael wondered, why didn’t he care, even with his own life apparently at risk?
Too tired. Caring demands energy. And he was desperately short on energy.
Besides, he had nearly died too many times in the past three years. It was hard to work up an honest fear of death after that many close calls and when he was already living under a death sentence. Six to eight weeks…
Regret pulsed through him, a dull ache that would cripple him if he dwelt on it. Don’t think; just keep moving.
Danyael pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and glanced at the time. For a moment, he hesitated, wavering between much-needed rest and equally needed work. A rueful smile curved his lips. If he returned to his apartment, the lure of his bed would win out; he would have to stay at the clinic to keep working. With a sigh, he reached into his desk drawer for his computer tablet. He logged into the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions online library and typed “T-cell-prolymphocytic leukemia” into the search function.
He was wading through a deluge of medical research two hours later when he heard the front door swing open. His brow furrowed as he pushed up from his chair and reached for his crutch. Hadn’t he locked the clinic door when Chloe left?
No, he hadn’t. He ground his teeth. Damn it. My distraction is going to get me killed.
Danyael hobbled to the door, bracing for a confrontation with Zara—who else would have known to check in on him at the clinic at such a late hour? He stepped out of his office and jerked to a stop when he saw the man in the corridor—his perfect mirror image, Galahad.
