by Amy Cook
“Are those flame throwers?”
The man jiggled the weapons as if to say, “obviously.” Cajun shook his head in awe. “And that actually works?” The nozzle shifted directly at his brother, and Harley tensed.
“If someone was throwing a stream of fire at your face, wouldn't you back off?” the man stated bluntly.
“Point taken.” Cajun nodded quickly.
“I have to go. They can’t find me. I will be in contact.” The man turned and quickly melted into the shadows. Cajun watched him go, face still etched with that boyish awe. The awe turned into his usual fool grin as he turned to Harley.
“I've got to get me some of those.”
“Charleen would ground ya from ’em before the day was out,” Harley grumbled, as they turned to face their fate.
“Yeah… but boy, would it be fun while it lasted!”
Harley battened down the hatches of his heart, holding Amiel closer. She was alive and in his arms. The place he was determined to keep her for the rest of his life, if possible. Together they would face the world and all the horrors it had to offer. Including the horror that was traipsing ever nearer them from down the corridor.
Suddenly he and Cajun both groaned out in pain. Pain shot up Harley’s spine, electrical impulses slamming into his brain. Cajun gasped, falling to his knees, hands gripping his head. Harley fought to maintain his feet, mindful of the precious cargo in his arms. The pain level rose: once, twice. Three saw his knees buckling despite his resolve. He tried to keep Amiel from being hurt in the fall, his body crumpling forward over top of hers in a pathetic effort to shield her.
“Well. That was a bit overly dramatic; do you not think so, Hybrid?”
Harley froze as the cold tone of Malinda Hilden reached his ears over the pain in his body. Slowly, Harley’s eyes shifted to take in the situation. All around them stood Foundation guards, guns pointed and ready. One look at his brother confirmed their shared assessment. They were completely screwed. Malinda strode closer, leaning over him.
“Release the girl.” She spoke with the sugary sweet tone that always drove Harley up the wall. He gritted his teeth against the pain, refusing to move. He knew there was no choice, knew in the end Foundation would have her. Yet, somehow, he couldn’t force himself to simply hand her over. Malinda tsked. Straightening, she motioned toward two guards. They approached, kicking him in the gut, over and over, trying to make him let go. Harley hovered on the edge of consciousness before they finally pried the kid from his arms. Malinda strode toward Amiel, a look of power and malevolence in her eyes.
“That’s better.” She crouched down, her smile twisting into a vindictive sneer. “Oh, Amiel. What a mess you’ve made.” Malinda tsked. “But it is no matter now. You’ll be so much more useful to me this way.” She snapped her fingers, motioning toward the guards. “Take her.”
“Yes, Director!” The guard shouted, quickly moving to grab Amiel and toss her over his shoulder. Harley’s Hybrid roared with muted fury. Yet neither of them could do a thing while Harley was crippled by the implant in his head.
“I claim her as my LeaderMate.” Harley forced the words through his clenched teeth. He might not be able to physically save her right now, but his claim could save her a lot of torment once inside Foundation. The Director looked over her shoulder with a smug sneer that sent his hackles rising.
“We shall see about that, Hybrid. My daughter never has and never will have the choice of who she marries. That hasn’t changed just because she inherited some usefulness.” She motioned toward the guards once more. “Once back at Foundation, toss the Hybrids in Isolation for a few days to remind them who they belong to.”
Harley watched in desperation as Amiel was carried in the opposite direction. Suddenly, a whole lot of stuff clicked together to make one giant, ugly puzzle. Amiel was Malinda Hilden’s daughter. The poor kid had been screwed from birth.
Chapter 61
Amiel
Amiel woke slowly. She winced as she pried her eyes open, the light piercing them with unfamiliar intensity. Her teeth hurt, her eyes hurt, her entire body hurt. Groaning, she tried to rub the ache away from her temples. But her arms wouldn’t move. She tried again, groggy mind sharpening to awareness. She was tied down. Immediately, memories of being tied down to a grimy mattress came back to her, memories of the entire ordeal with Darvey and Grim. What was happening now? Had they somehow managed to recapture her? Had that all been a dream, and she’d be forced to relive it now?
Her memories finally came into focus along with her vision. They trickled back, ending with the memories of what she’d promised Harley. This must be Foundation. She steeled herself. She was in the big games now. If she were going to fight to win Harley, she couldn’t show weakness. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose, fighting to stay cool and collected. A door slid open in the distance, and she slowly opened her eyes. She wasn’t ready for what she saw — or, more appropriately, who she saw.
“Finally awake, I see.”
Amiel flinched at Malinda’s chiding tone. “Mother?” Amiel asked, confused. “Where am I? What’s happening?”
“You’re confined at Foundation.”
“What are you doing here?”
Malinda’s brow rose. “I own Foundation.”
She might as well have kicked Amiel in the stomach. This did not bode well for her. The way Malinda was grinning down at her, the way her body was tied, it all led to an ever-increasing feeling of dread in Amiel’s stomach. She couldn’t help thinking back to the last conversation they had had. The promise of revenge Malinda had made. Jeller’s face flashed through her mind. Was she next?
“You… you own Foundation?”
“Of course, stupid child.” Malinda sneered down at Amiel.
“Why am I tied down?”
“I always knew you would serve my purposes in one way or another. I was determined of it. It turns out I was just trying the wrong direction. Having you as my personal weapon will be much easier than marrying you off.” Her lips stretched into a smile that matched the malevolence in her cold eyes. “For once in my life, I can’t say that I’m entirely disappointed in you, Amiel. You’ll be far more useful to my plans now.”
“Weapon?”
“Oh, yes. I have yet to personally see what you can do, but I have no doubt that it will be awe-inspiring in the right hands.”
“I can’t do anything,” Amiel hedged.
“Oh, but you can. You know that as well as I.”
Amiel’s mind flashed back to the dreamlike memories of what she’d done in the warehouse, and she felt her stomach bottom out. That power, in Malinda’s hands?
“What makes you think I have any power?”
“I have my methods. My spies. Employees that are uniquely attached to their knowledge of you.” She leaned over Amiel, a hand on each side of the table, darkness in her gaze. “Did you really think that you could have so much access to my employees and equipment, without my noticing?”
Amiel’s eyes widened, fear lacing her heart. Pell!
“What did you do?” Her hands shook as she clenched them in their restraints.
“Oh, hush, don’t be so dramatic. He’s fine. He’s too useful to kill. For now.” Malevolence brewed in Malinda’s gaze as she pushed away from the table. “He was surprisingly loyal, however. It took more force than I imagined it would, to make him talk. So you will excuse me if I don’t let you see him again. That much loyalty can’t be trusted.”
Amiel swallowed hard, forcing her anger aside as Malinda continued her rant.
“He was a veritable well of knowledge, that one. He told me all about your genetic makeup, how you were born with it in your blood. That it did not trigger mutation and manifest itself until you were of age.”
Amiel fought to keep the surprise from her face. Maybe Pell had told her of her DNA, but he hadn’t told her about the tags’ involvement. The tags were safe, for now.
“You would use your own daug
hter as a weapon?”
“In a heartbeat,” she hissed.
“How can you be so cold and cruel? I have never for a moment in my life felt that you loved me.”
“That is because I never did,” Malinda replied honestly. “I never once felt that you were my child.”
“What did I do to make you despise me so?” Amiel hated the confused, plaintive tone that had seeped into her voice, like she was a faithful dog just kicked in the gut by its owner. She’d always known Malinda disliked her. Yet, somehow, hearing the actual words made the reality that much more painful. Malinda’s eyes shifted, taking on a distant look of remembrance.
“Your father and I had a difficult time conceiving. The doctors said it was my fault. My fault,” she scoffed with self-disgust. “It took us years of in vitro fertilization to conceive Jaron. But he was mine.” Her voice was a mixture of pride and something Amiel had never heard in her mother’s voice: love.
“You loved him,” Amiel whispered in wonder.
“Of course I loved him!” Malinda snapped, the anomaly of surprising love gone, quickly replaced with fury. Amiel felt her own rising to match it.
“Then why did you never visit him in the hospital? Why did you let him think you hated him, even until he died?”
“Why do you think? You were always there. Always! Even before he left on his fool’s errand to join the military. And when you weren’t around, he was talking about you, admonishing me for my treatment of you, or admiring an accomplishment you’d made. It was the same with your father. The two fools were besotted with you, and I couldn’t stand it. You made me hate them.”
“Why? Why do you hate me so much?” Amiel choked out.
“After Jaron, your father refused to try for more children. He said it would be a travesty to bring more innocent souls into such a world, rampant with infection as it was. Imagine my excitement and surprise when, years later, Warwick told me he wanted to try again. I wanted another child to call my own, so badly. I was such a fool!” She cursed malevolently. “Had I known I would conceive a monster, I would have refused.” Her face twisted into a mask of disgust.
“I should have known then. I should have known that you were a monster. What had taken us years to accomplish with Jaron took only one try with you. My pregnancy was nothing like it had been with Jaron. I was sick constantly, always in agony. It was like you were a vampiric being, sucking the very life essence out of me. The doctors told me it was all in my head. But pain doesn’t lie.” Her eyes glittered darkly.
“When you were born, you had to be ripped from my stomach, leaving me with an ugly daily reminder of your existence on my skin. And when I first held you in my arms, you stared up at me with those big eyes. I should have felt a mother’s love, devotion even, for the little life I fought so hard to bring into this world. Instead, I was disgusted. I saw only a monster, with one brown eye and one green.” At Amiel’s startled expression, Malinda offered a dry laugh.
“Oh, yes: one green, one brown. It was just an outward manifestation of your monstrosity. Warwick had you undergo a Stroma surgical procedure on the brown eye, in an effort to conceal your differences from the world. It shifted the coloring so that it matched the other green, but that mattered nothing to me. I had already seen the truth behind those eyes.” She waved her hand in the air, as though to swat the matter aside.
“The moment I met your gaze, I made the nurses take you away. Warwick and Jaron had to hold you, change you, feed you. I couldn’t stomach the sight of you. No amount of surgeries could have changed that.”
Amiel cringed, tears welling at the sheer repugnance in her mother’s tone. Though she had known Malinda’s dislike for her, she had never known the true depth of hatred Malinda felt toward her, until now. And though Amiel had as much as disowned herself from the family in disgust for the atrocities committed by Malinda, it didn’t change the fact that the woman was still her mother. And as much as she wanted to hate her, to not feel an ounce of pain at what Malinda said, it simply wasn’t possible.
“In a twisted way, this little revelation makes my heart lighter.” Malinda stared down at Amiel with an odd sort of fascination. Her hand gripped Amiel’s hair, yanking her head back to look deeper into her eyes. “Yes. I understand now.” Her voice turned quiet, contemplative. “I used to lay awake at night, praying that you would be taken, your last breath drawn in the middle of the night. I wanted nothing more than to be free of you. And yet, I was filled with such conflicting guilt over even thinking such a thing. What kind of mother wishes death upon their child? Especially one they had so longed for. What kind of mother looks in her child’s eyes and sees only a monster? What crazed ailment bore down on me, to make me so hateful toward something so innocent?”
Amiel shivered at the emptiness in her mother’s gaze.
“Warwick told me it was because I suffered from postpartum depression. That perhaps it was the letdown after all the yearning I had felt over becoming pregnant again, knowing you would be the last child I would ever have. That it was the knowing that I had finally realized my dream, but didn’t know what to do with myself next. Or perhaps it was from the fact that you were a three-parent baby.” Malinda shrugged.
“I didn’t know the answers myself, back then. But I know now. From the moment you were conceived, I knew you were something different, something so very wrong. When I look into your eyes now, I can see it so easily. I think I could see it then, too; I just didn’t understand what it was. I didn’t understand that there really was a monster lurking behind your gaze.” She released Amiel’s hair with a painful jerk, face soured with disgust. Amiel swallowed the cry of pain, focusing on the words Malinda had spoken, instead.
“A three-parent baby?”
“From the very start, you were a little science experiment,” Malinda quipped patronizingly. “Warwick shifted his attention to fertility treatments, during the first years of our marriage when we couldn’t conceive. He began dabbling in the arts of creation, searching for a better means of conception for those who were infertile. After Jaron was born, I thought his fascination with the subject had been satisfied. I was wrong.” Her fingers lifted to toy with the straps that held Amiel immobile.
“When we decided to try again, he approached me with the idea of a three-parent baby. It’s a procedure in which the genetics of three people are merged into one to form a child. It is meant to take out the undesirable portions of one egg, the portions that lead to a genetically deficient embryo. The deficient portion is substituted with another, bringing a healthy child into the world. I trusted Warwick, believed the doctors when they told me that I was lacking, unable to bear a healthy child on my own. And in my eagerness for another baby, I agreed to the procedure. I bore the embarrassment of having another woman’s DNA intermingled with mine and my husband’s, simply to bring you into existence. ” She grabbed up a folder from the metal tray by the table on which Amiel was strapped. She pulled out a single paper from within the folder, waving it before Amiel’s face.
“I never knew her name. Not until today, when I uncovered these files. Would you like to know your monster mother?”
Amiel stared at the paper, wrapped in shock as her eyes caught on one name.
“Sia.” The word came out in a choked sort of whisper. Her eyes lifted to seek out Malinda’s, looking for some hint of humor, anything that would give away the joke. She found none. “You are telling me that… Charleen’s mother is also mine?” The implications were staggering.
“This paper gives my soul such freeing solace. Finally, I can hate you freely, without feeling the hideous guilt lurking at the edges. My hatred for you has been well founded all these years. It wasn’t just the rantings of a hormonally unstable woman, a woman who suffered from depression and wished horrible things on the child she birthed. It was the justified fears of a woman forced to carry a monster into existence. I am vindicated!” Malinda released a strangled chuckle, a sound of crazed relief. Leaning near, she gripped Amiel’s j
aw so that she had no choice but to meet her gaze.
“And now that I have you, monster, I am going to make your life miserable. I am going to make you wish that you had died in your crib. You are going to make up for the years of soulful torture you cost me. You are going to do everything I tell you, make my every wish come true.” Her eyes brightened with a devious internal joy.
“Oh, and since sedation will not work on you, I am afraid you are going to feel every single second of this.” Straightening, Malinda turned to the doctors.
“Begin.” It was a simple word. And yet that simple word felt like the final nail in Amiel’s coffin. Malinda walked out of the room, leaving her last living child to the whims of those around her in lab coats. Amiel’s eyes widened with fear as the table rose, shifting to stand upright. From this new vantage point, Amiel could see that there was one window in this small, sterile room. Malinda stood there, watching through the clear glass panel, a chilled grin on her lips.
“Please,” Amiel whispered desperately. “Please don’t do this to me, Mother!” A nurse came forward, strapping her head to the table so tightly she couldn’t move an inch. Amiel whimpered as a gag was shoved deep into her mouth. She jerked against the straps holding her to the table as the sound of a saw whirled to life at her back. She delved deep into her subconscious, desperately digging in search of her Hybrid.
But her Hybrid was nowhere to be found. Amiel was left alone to face the coming torture. Movement drew her eyes back to where Malinda watched, a front row seat to the coming torture. Any doubt Amiel felt about whether her mother held a shred of love for her was obliterated in that moment. Malinda’s grin stretched wider as Amiel’s muffled screams rent the air.
Epilogue
Angel
Angel knelt over the body of the scientist, lip curled in disgust. Darvey: the spineless lout. He had served his purpose well enough, but he had had more to offer before he should have died. Her master would be displeased. Still, she felt the utmost pleasure at finding the man’s heart burst from within. It saved her the trouble of having to deal with his touch and annoying advances a day longer. She had played the part of smitten seductress for long enough. She wished she could have killed him herself, but the disappointment was dulled by the fact that he was ultimately dead and no longer her problem.
