So he thought she was God’s wrath—or Satan’s agent. “I’ve saved people, too,” Val said with a frown. She’d wrestled her whole life with the possibility that her ability might be evil, that maybe she somehow caused the terrible things she saw. Over the years she’d convinced herself that wasn’t the case, but Sten’s insinuation opened up old wounds. “We’re even now, got it?”
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not about getting even. It’s about helping out your partner.”
Val’s breath caught at the possibility. “We are not partners.” She wouldn’t go down that road, despite what her visions suggested.
Sten moved closer, his gaze flicking between her eyes and her lips. For a crazy second she thought he was going to kiss her. An image slinked into her mind of her and Sten tearing up the world together, setting mansions on fire, putting bullets in the heads of evil people, reveling in their enemy’s blood. How good it would feel to hurt those who thought they were immune from justice, to leave behind a trail of humiliated Eliot Saliers and Mystery Men hit by buses. Together, they could do it.
After an intolerable few seconds, the corners of his mouth ticked up into a slight, cynical smile. “Tell yourself that for as long as you need to. I’ll be waiting.”
He walked away to join his cop friends as they vacated the premises, off to deposit Salier into his new, much shittier life.
Bile rose in her throat, spoiling the taste of Max that had lingered there before. So what if she was capable of an all-consuming inferno of wrath, and Sten might be the fuel for that fire? Just because she was capable didn’t mean she had to give in to the temptation. Val marched away from the scene, embarrassed to be there. What the hell was she thinking? Why had she come? What was wrong with her?
She drove home in a near panicked state, desperate to be with Max. She needed him. She loved him. He was her light in the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-eight
As if emerging from a fog, the world appeared one piece at a time. First, Max sensed a bright light in his face. Squinting through the glare, he saw walls of plastic sheeting. Abutting those, tables covered in trays of what looked like medical lab equipment. Finally, his bare feet, his bare legs, a hospital gown that came to his mid-thigh, and his wrists encircled in leather straps, binding him to the metal table he lay upon.
Max turned his head and the world spun. He jerked his torso as far to the side as he could go, leaned over the edge of the table, and threw up onto the floor.
“Well, that’s a stronger reaction than I expected,” Lucien said from somewhere out of Max’s line of sight.
Max spit bile from his mouth and flopped his head back on the table. He clenched his eyes shut to stop the spinning. “What…did you…do to me?”
“Not much, yet. Prep work mostly.”
Footsteps echoed around the room, moving to Max’s right. He risked opening his eyes again and saw the blurry outline of Lucien in a lab coat, doting over a tray of vials and syringes, pausing occasionally to scratch notes on a clipboard.
“When was the last time you achieved sexual climax?” Lucien asked.
“Wh—what?”
“The last time you achieved sexual climax?”
“Why…”
“Based on the gossip news, I’m going to assume it’s been within the last twenty-four hours.” He wrote on the clipboard. “What are the nature of your prophetic visions?”
“I don’t…”
“What do you see? People? Objects? Symbols?”
Max’s head swam. He was dreaming. “Numbers…”
“Interesting.” A pen scratched on paper. “Now I understand where your fortune must come from. Are your visions stronger when you have intercourse with Valentine Shepherd?”
Mention of Val’s name stirred in him a faint lucidity. He strained against the leather straps, but his muscles were jelly. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because I want to know how we work.”
“We?”
“Don’t play coy. Northwalk calls us seers—you, myself, and Valentine, and others I’ve been unable to locate, until they told me about you.” He let out an amused hmph. “They are very secretive, Northwalk. They only deal directly with seers who have something they want, and even then it’s usually through a proxy.”
Shit, Lucien was like them. Max should have beaten him to death when he’d had the chance.
“Have you sired any children you are aware of?”
“I’ll kill you.”
“That would be quite a feat in your current state.”
Lucien’s blurry form walked over to stand at Max’s bedside, where his face came into wobbly focus. Max’s arms twitched with the desire to wrap his hands around Lucien’s neck and squeeze for an eternity. The buckles on his leather straps clanged against the metal table.
“Have you had sexual relations with a seer other than Valentine Shepherd?” Lucien asked.
Max summoned all his strength to escape his bonds, pulling as hard as he could on the leather straps, his whole body bucking against the table.
“This will be easier for you if you answer my questions.”
Despite his rage, the thick fog in his head and the weakness in his muscles made his efforts no more than feeble thrashing. He collapsed back on the slab, panting from his effort. “If you touch her again, I will fucking kill you.”
Lucien made an exasperated sigh. “They don’t like us to know about each other. When one seer interacts with another, it interferes with the Alpha’s vision in ways I unfortunately don’t understand. Something about too many possibilities. Northwalk won’t let me examine her; they think I’m going to kill her and cut her up.” He chuckled. “They are correct.”
Max should’ve played along, pretended to sympathize with Lucien, coaxed him into loosening the bonds. But all he could do was glare with useless hatred as tears clouded his vision further. “I’ll break every bone in your body…every bone…”
With a slight exasperated roll of his eyes, Lucien walked away, becoming a blur again, then returned with his tray of vials and syringes.
“You know, I’ve spent over half a century searching for other seers. I have tried conducting experiments on myself in the past, with poor results. You’d think more of us would use the gift for monetary gain, like you with your numbers to predict the stock market, and myself with cures for diseases to sell. Maybe others aren’t as enterprising or clever as you and I. Or maybe they’re ashamed of their gift. A pity, if that’s the case. I’ve only been able to find and examine one other, and…well, she didn’t last long. That lost opportunity was heartbreaking. So when Northwalk told me they needed your sperm and Valentine’s eggs to ensure a child would be born of your seeds because you were seers, I cannot tell you how ecstatic I was.”
Lucien smiled down on Max, a sick, gleeful twist of the Frenchman’s lips, like a kid who’d been given the keys to the candy shop. “They told me not to kill you, though they must be very anxious for your progeny if they’re willing to take the chance asking for my help. But rest assured, whether or not you die depends entirely on you, and how cooperative you are.”
Lucien eyed his vials, chose a pink-hued one with a nod, and placed it in front of him. “It’s too bad Valentine sent the police after me. I was on the cusp of creating a new strain of hepatitis in the prostitute population. Now I must abandon all that work I’ve done. As one of very few men with an intellect to match my own, you must understand the frustration of having your experiments ruined by an unpredictable variable.” He picked up a syringe and drew liquid from his chosen vial.
“No,” Max said as he watched the fluid fill the barrel. “No—”
“Northwalk will eventually forgive me for taking you.” Snickering, he added, “I’m keeping half of them alive, after all.” He tapped the syringe. A little stream of liquid shot out the needle. “And modern medicine means neither one of you must technically be alive to create a child, only certain parts of you.”
Lucien held Max’s arm steady and eased the needle under his skin. As Lucien pushed the plunger down, a wave of panic swept Max’s anger away. Not panic for himself, but for Val.
“Don’t do this to her, please,” he said as the pink liquid disappeared from the barrel and into his vein. “I’ll cooperate. I’ll answer any questions you want. Just leave her alone.”
Lucien smiled. “Excellent! I knew you’d come round.” He snatched up his clipboard. “Have you sired any children you are aware of?”
Max’s heart raced. He was helpless again, just like he’d been under the thumb of his father. “N—no.”
“Are your visions stronger when you have intercourse with Valentine Shepherd?”
He turned his head away, bright light burning his eyes. The world began to slew as whatever Lucien had given him started taking effect. “Yes.”
“Do feelings of love for her affect your visions?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Tiny pink beetles scuttled underneath his skin and burrowed through his muscles, moving up the marrow of his bones and into his brain. “Yes.”
He tasted smoke. Please, no. Heat blistered his face. Not tonight. He tried to move away from it but couldn’t, his whole body frozen with fear. Leave me alone. Lightning cracked outside his bedroom window.
“What do you see, Max?”
His father’s voice. What do you see, Maxwell? Concentrate. Tell me what you see. He felt wetness slipping down his cheeks—his own tears.
“What do you see?”
Max forced his eyes to open. “Fire,” he whispered. “I see fire.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Val paced around the coffee table, Toby at her heels, stabbing her phone with trembling fingers. She dialed Max’s number for the eighth time, cursed when she got his voice mail again. He’d been gone for almost three hours. The time had come to panic.
“Fuck.”
She should have gone with him into his condo. She should have waited for him outside. She shouldn’t have gone to Yarrow Point. She shouldn’t have let her lust for vengeance cloud her judgment. She should have been happy with what she had.
“Fuck!”
Val dialed Stacey. Of course it went to voice mail, too. “Stacey, please. Please return my call. I know you’re mad at me and I’m sorry. I’m sorry again. I’m sorry forever and all eternity. Max is missing. He went to his place to get some things and he hasn’t come back, and I’m really freaking out. I had a vision that Lucien kidnapped him, and I think that’s what’s happened. I think Lucien has him. If he’s doing to Max what he did to Margaret, I—” Her voice choked up. “I need to find him. I can’t do it alone. Please call me back.”
Val hung up and took a long, trembling breath. She knew how to search for a missing person. Setting aside the fact that this missing person just happened to be the love of her life, the process was still the same. First, visit the place he was last seen. That was easy; she was the last person to see him, entering his condo. He could still be there, maybe having a long talk with Abby. Val might’ve taken comfort in that, if not for her earlier vision.
She jumped in her car and drove to Max’s condo. Val eyed her phone the entire way, praying it would ring and Max’s face would pop up on the screen, so she could go home and feel stupid for panicking. It didn’t.
She parked in front of his place and walked to the front gate as rain started to fall. A light drizzle dotted the sidewalk a dark gray, not enough to do more than moisten her hair, but the start of something bigger. It hadn’t rained since the day they found Margaret’s body on the beach, just as Val had seen it. She wouldn’t let the same thing happen to Max. She’d either save him, or die trying.
Val found a button on a panel labeled “#3—Carressa/Westford.” She pressed it, and the adjacent intercom buzzed. If she was lucky, Max would answer; less lucky, Abby. Most likely, no one. In the latter case, she’d jump the fence and get in through a window, deal with the police if she got caught—
“Yeah?” a man’s voice crackled through the intercom.
For a split second she thought it might be Max, until she realized the voice was too high-pitched. A friend of Abby’s maybe.
“Got a package for Abigail Westford,” Val said, “Needs to be signed for.”
“What is it?” the man asked.
Val rolled her eyes. This idiot definitely wasn’t Max. “They don’t tell me those things, sir.”
A few seconds of silence, then, “Fine, bring it in.”
The gate clicked, unlocked. She pushed it open and walked through a manicured courtyard with a wildflower garden and marble fountain in the center. It looked like an apartment complex, though nicer than any she’d ever been to, with doors much farther apart than normal, hinting at the vast space behind them. Val found a sleek gray door with a brass number 3 on the front and knocked.
Footsteps approached, and the door swung open. Standing in the threshold was Ginger. Back from whatever country he’d jet-set off to, so he could support his sister during her painful breakup. Maybe get in a little rape and murder on the side.
Ginger looked at Val, and she looked at him. Confusion dominated his face, then a flash of recognition, then anger. “What the f—”
Val socked him in the face. He screamed and stumbled backward, clutching a broken nose. Before he could escape, she kicked him in the shin and he dropped to the ground. She delivered two more swift kicks to his chest to ensure he stayed down. His arms flailed about his body, to his face, then chest, then leg and back again, unable to settle on which ball of pain he should nurse first.
Val loomed over his pathetic, prone form. “Where is Lucien?”
He swiped at his bloody nose. “Wh— I don’t—”
She kicked him in the chest again. He yelped like an injured water buffalo.
“Where is Lucien, you piece of shit?”
“I dunno! I dunno! I swear!”
Val grabbed his arm and twisted it into a lock. He shrieked as his tendons stretched to their limits.
“Wrong answer, fuckface. I know you work for him, so where is his base of operations? Where did he take Margaret?”
“I dunno!”
She was going to have to break his arm. Damn, that would be satisfying.
A thunder of footfalls down the stairs caught Val’s attention before she could snap his arm in two. Abby ran into the hallway, stopping short when she saw Val on top of Ginger.
“What are you doing here?” Abby yelled at Val. “What are you doing to my brother?”
“I’m trying to get him to tell me where Max is.”
“He’s with you,” Abby spat.
Val let go of Ginger’s arm and stood to face Abby, the woman Max loved not long ago—thought he loved anyway. The hurt and anger in her eyes were withering, and Val felt nothing but sympathy for her. Max must not have told her how strong the bond between him and Val really was. Everything in their lives had pulled them together, and objected violently when they were apart. Abby had been an unfortunate casualty in the war between their heads and their hearts.
“He’s not with me. Lucien Christophe kidnapped him.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it.”
Abby scoffed. “You watched Lucien kidnap Max?”
“No, I saw it. Before it happened.”
For a moment Abby looked confused, then the meaning of Val’s words dawned on her. A terrible sadness descended over her face, and Val realized Max hadn’t told her Val could also see the future. Abby thought she knew him, that Val had stolen Max away from her, but she never had him in the first place.
Movement at Val’s feet alerted her to Ginger’s attempt to crawl away as the women stared each other down. She kicked him in the butt and he collapsed back to the floor. Abby gasped and threw a hand over her mouth.
“What did Lucien have you doing for him?” Val demanded.
“Nothing!”
She stomped on his hand and left her foot there, grind
ing his fingers into the hardwood floor. “There are two hundred and six bones in the human body. I will break all of them, one at a time, until you decide to be honest.”
“Okay, okay!” Ginger’s hand writhed under her heel. He spoke through gritted teeth. “He wanted me to do a bunch of odd jobs.”
“A piss-ant like you? Why?”
“I don’t know, he just did.”
“Like what?”
He swallowed hard. “Give people packages, bring him women, other stuff.”
Bring him women. Women like Margaret.
“Since when?”
“Six, seven months ago.”
About the time Max and Abby started dating. Lucien didn’t care about Ginger—he wanted Max. Why?
“And what did he give you in return?”
He certainly didn’t need the money. Ginger hesitated, looked at her, then his sister, then his hand. Val brought her foot down on his fingers again, felt a couple of them snap. Abby and Ginger hollered at the same time.
“Stop it!” Abby said, “He didn’t—”
“I have HIV!” Ginger cried at the same time his sister spoke.
Abby fell silent.
“Lucien said he’d cure me. He can! I’ve seen him do it before! If I helped him, he’d cure me.”
Abby’s mouth fell open. Her face—already turning paler by the second as the entirety of her ignorance became clear—contorted from despair to horror. She had no idea of the world she lived in, the dark reality under the gilded veneer of her privileged life.
Val checked her hands for blood and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw none. She might’ve felt sorry for Ginger, if he hadn’t helped Lucien rape and murder people in a sick bid to save himself.
“I’ll ask you one more time: where did Lucien take Max?”
Ginger shook his head. He still wanted his goddamn cure.
“Harbor Island.” Abby spoke just above a whisper. Ginger’s gaze cut to hers, his eyes wide. “Daddy put Eugene in charge of one of the Southwest shipping lines; a small one, as a test of responsibility. It docks at Harbor Island and accepts shipment in one of the warehouses. I don’t know which one exactly. It’s the only place Eugene has access to that Lucien could…could—”
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