by Skye Malone
I watched him, not sure I was buying that. “But you made us to kill them. If this magical exchange is so important, why do that?”
“That was different,” Joseph replied like I was an idiot for asking. “We were defending ourselves. I mean, what would you do if you found yourself suddenly at war with a bunch of incredibly strong, incredibly fast, spiky-armed nightmares who could make you adore them with a touch? I mean, one minute you’re fighting side-by-side with your buddy, and the next he’s trying to kill you because you’re attacking the new love of his life. We had to counter that. Our leaders ordered us to counter that. So yeah, we took dehaian prisoners and human volunteers and every magical trace element we could gather from animals and nature on the islands… and we created you. Gave you strength and speed to fight them, skin to handle their spikes, and hearing and a sense of each other’s location so that – if those bastards dragged one of you underwater – it’d give the others a hope of saving him and killing the dehaian responsible. We made you with all that, plus a craving to absorb the magical energy dehaians give off when they die that was so strong, it’d stand a chance of overriding any love magic they tried. Didn’t matter that it left you all as psychotic as serial killers, or that you couldn’t understand anything but brute force to keep you in line. It was necessary. Back then, it was necessary. Now, you’re just a throwback to a bygone era that refuses to die off.”
I stared at him, uncertain whether to be more angry or shocked.
“Shut up,” Baylie ordered.
Joseph glanced to her. “What? Is he your boyfriend?”
“Stepbrother, you jerk. And if you keep talking about him like that, I’ll–”
“Yeah, well, your stepbrother shouldn’t even be able to stay in the same room as her. Not without twitching like an addict in desperate need of a hit. I know what he is. I made his kind, and he’s got just as much of that in him as the rest do. He should be going crazy, and if he’s not, that doesn’t mean he won’t eventually.”
I tensed.
“She said shut up,” Chloe snapped.
Joseph regarded me for another moment and then his gaze flicked to the girls, taking in the anger on their faces. “Damned United Nations,” he muttered again. He gave them an exasperated look. “Listen, I’m not telling you anything he doesn’t already know is true.”
“It’s not true about me,” I said, carefully keeping my voice calm.
He hesitated and then harrumphed again. Pushing away from the desk, he straightened. “Whatever you say. I have work to do.”
I drew a breath.
He circled the desk and then tugged open a drawer. From inside, he pulled out the white box of a first aid kit, though the thing was held closed with string and appeared to be nearly bursting at the seams. With quick motions, he untied the string and then took a plastic-sealed syringe from inside.
“Just a bit of blood to begin the process,” he said while he examined the syringe.
He waddled back around the desk to Chloe’s side. She shifted like she wanted to pull away.
“Don’t move,” he cautioned.
She nodded, the motion tight and jerky.
Joseph ignored it. Unwrapping the needle, he checked over it one more time and then stuck it into her arm.
Blood began to fill the syringe.
Chloe turned her face away, closing her eyes.
Seconds passed. He removed the needle and pressed a wad of gauze to the inside of her arm.
“There. Hold that.”
She did as ordered.
Joseph set the syringe down and then retrieved a strip of medical tape. Quickly, he stuck it across the gauze and then turned, grabbing a pair of scissors from the box. Chloe flinched back in surprise when he snipped off a lock of her hair.
“Alright,” he said. “That should get me started.”
He shoved both the needle and the hair into the first aid kit. Hefting the box beneath one arm, and losing a few random bandages from its sides in the process, he headed for the door.
Ellie twisted in the seat. “Wait. Is this safe, though? Us being here while you work on that, I mean. We’re so close to the water, and if the Beast picks up on her…”
Joseph tossed her a derisive look. “First off, that thing was targeted at my kind, and I’ve been here for decades. We’re fine. Second, I’m guessing your friend is muffling the magical energy coming from her just about as tightly as she can, am I right?”
He eyed Chloe, waiting.
She gave a small shrug. “I guess.”
“Yeah, well, with you hiding like that, you’re fine here. You could even go in the ocean and, if you got lucky and the Beast was far enough away, you wouldn’t attract it even if it was back at full strength. Not right away, in any case. And keeping folks like her,” he nodded to Ellie, “or dehaians around makes you safer still. Disrupts the signal you’re sending off and makes you harder to track.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
His withering expression returned. “Okay, it’s like this,” he sighed. “You’re energy. I’m energy. Every damn thing in the world is energy. And that energy has a variety of frequencies. Signatures. Things that make you different than, say, a cauliflower. The Beast is tuned only to those frequencies that are unique to old dehaians and to wizards like me. Just those. It ignores greliarans, because apparently, the dehaians aimed it at us first. Probably thought to get the creators of the weapons before we could make more. But then they lost control of the damn thing and it turned on them too.”
He scoffed. “Bastards. But regardless, the Beast is drawn to those specific signatures – and you’re close enough to that old signature to wake the thing up. But the current dehaians and landwalkers, the Beast ignores them. They’re basically invisible to it. They’re still putting off energy, though, and just like two songs playing in the same room make it harder to listen to one, their signal disrupts yours. More of them around you, the better off you are – which probably is also why I’ve had such trouble getting a lock on you, if you’ve been around them and the dehaians all this time.” He glared at Chloe briefly before falling back into his surly, lecturing mode. “But meanwhile, muffled up and trying to hide as you are, you’re sending out the energy of, say, a candle. When you stop hiding, you’re the damn sun. If the Beast is close, it’ll spot you either way. But if it’s not… well, it’s harder to spot a candle at a distance than a star, right?”
Chloe’s brow furrowed at all the metaphors. “Um, alright, but how do I even know if it’s close?”
He chuckled. “Well, once it’s strong enough, you’d know mostly because you’d be dying. But until then… you’d want to watch for changes around you. Weird feelings in the air and water, like you’re getting weaker and you don’t know why. That means it’s got your scent and you better run – or swim – for your life.”
Chloe swallowed hard.
“But it’s not an issue,” Joseph continued. “I’m going to change up your magic same as your ancestors did theirs. And until then, I’ve got enough shielding around my property that you could stop muffling yourself up with the Beast right outside and it still wouldn’t pick up on you. What do you think you all passed out there?” He snorted derisively. “You probably didn’t even see the markers in the forest. The concrete–”
“The little pillar things, yeah,” I interrupted. “We saw them.”
“Huh. Well, those form protective barriers. Layers of them. Every trace of magical leakage from my machines is trapped, so there’s nothing for the Beast to pick up on.”
“That’s what we drove through?” Ellie asked. “The weird feeling in the air?”
“Basically the magical equivalent of instantly going up a few thousand feet in elevation – except it probably won’t kill you and you adjust to it faster. But that shielding will hold, even if I let you drive through it. Magic leakage might make it past a few barriers, but it can’t get by every one. And the house is
even more secure, meaning that as long as you’re in it,” he looked pointedly to Chloe, “the Beast won’t have a chance in hell of knowing you’re here.”
Ellie fidgeted on the chair. I glanced to her. She had that look on her face again – the nervous one, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure it’d be okay.
Chloe seemed to see the expression as well. “What is it?”
Ellie looked her way and then hesitated, catching sight of me. She dropped her gaze quickly, almost as if she was uncomfortable meeting my eyes.
I tried not to scowl, mentally thanking the turtle for making Ellie frightened of me on top of everything else.
“It’s just, you said Chloe messes your stuff up,” Ellie explained to Joseph. “Couldn’t she do that to your barriers?”
Joseph paused, and then harrumphed again. “It’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”
He waddled back toward the other room, leaving us sitting beside the desk.
“Why doesn’t that reassure me?” Baylie muttered under her breath.
I looked over to her. Baylie’s lip twitched when she realized I’d heard, though the smile died quickly.
“We’ll keep an eye out,” I told her. “If something starts to seem off or you feel anything strange,” I glanced to Chloe, “we’ll leave.”
Chloe hesitated, her gaze on the desk in front of her, though it didn’t seem like she was seeing it. “Yeah,” she agreed distantly.
My brow drew down.
She seemed to feel my curiosity. A weird, pained expression flickered across her face. Without looking my way, she shoved up from the chair and hurried after Joseph.
I watched her leave and then turned to Baylie, confused.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Baylie said.
She followed Chloe from the room.
I took a deep breath. Chloe couldn’t be scared of me too. She knew what I was, but whatever that turtle said, she had to know I’d never hurt her.
At least, I hoped she did.
“So, um… he’s kind of a jerk, yeah?” Ellie asked, more than the regular share of nervousness in her tone.
I glanced to her. She eyed me askance, like she felt awkward about looking at me.
“Yeah,” I replied flatly.
I gave her a tight smile and then pushed out of the chair, heading for the door. I needed air. Space. Something.
And I wished we’d never come to this place.
Chapter Twenty
Wyatt
Owen pulled the SUV to a stop.
The landwalkers were ahead of us, standing beside a brown sedan with their attention on a gravel track leading farther into the woods.
“You think they found them already?” Clay asked.
“It’s another five miles to where that guy said she’d be,” Owen pointed out.
I ignored them both, watching the landwalkers. Only one car was parked ahead, with the other two sedans nowhere to be seen. All the guys who’d been on the road near our house were gone too, with only that scrawny lab assistant and the round, old cop remaining. They weren’t doing well, either. The cop clung to the sedan like it was the rock holding him stable against the spinning world, while the toothpick guy just looked like he was about to shake apart. Neither of them reacted to our SUV pulling up near them, though perhaps they were in too much pain to care anymore.
And then there was Harman.
His hands shook when he pointed to the forest, and I could see the sweat dripping down his face like he was under intense stress or strain.
Not that he seemed to notice. Pacing back and forth in front of the turnoff, he appeared to be speaking. Every few moments, he’d start down the road, only to suddenly retreat.
I pushed open the passenger door, still studying him.
He was talking, though his voice was so low that it couldn’t be meant for the others to hear. In rambling mutters, he was going on about how this had to work, about the other men collapsing, and about medicines holding out because he had a mission. Research. Lives to save. When we came closer, he turned. My brow rose at the look on his face.
I’d seen crazy. Much time around the more pathetic of the older greliarans, and you sort of became used to the way those aging weaklings cracked.
But I’d never seen anything like this.
His eyes were practically sparkling. His mouth twitched in and out of a spasmodic smile like the muscles couldn’t agree on which ones needed to work for the expression to hold. He didn’t really seem to see us, and his gaze kept returning to the forest like it was pulled there by a string.
“What–” the large cop sputtered when he finally spotted us.
He grabbed for his gun.
“No,” Harman protested, hurrying back from the side road. “No, no it’s fine.”
“How is it fine?” the cop demanded. “These things, they… they’re not landwalkers. They’re not even human. They’re– what the hell are they?”
Harman appeared to barely hear the question. His gaze stuttered toward the other road.
“G-greliarans,” the scrawny assistant guy supplied, eyeing us like he wanted to back away. “They’re, um… they were created to kill dehaians and–”
“What?” the cop snapped. “Harman, Chloe Kowalski is half–”
“It’s fine,” the doctor interrupted, his gaze snapping to us again. “It’s just fine.”
Harman shuffled toward us quickly. “She’s down the road,” he said to me. “You have to help us reach her. We can’t seem to get to her. Every time we drive there, we end up back here. The road. It bends. It…” He looked up at me, that crazy light in his eyes growing stronger. “You have to save Chloe, Richard. And Eleanor too.”
My brow climbed again. Wait… Richard? Seriously?
“I don’t want these things involved, Doctor Brooks,” the cop insisted. “This madness has gone far enough. This is a matter for landwalkers, so send those creatures back where they came from and let us rescue the girls ourselves.”
I barely held back a growl. There was no way in hell that was happening. I’d break his fat neck if he tried to stop me from killing that bitch.
“No,” Harman argued, “they have to help, Barry. These are the good ones. The dehaian boy, that other greliaran boy, they’re the ones who are against us. They want to push Chloe into giving up every trace of humanity she has left. They’ve filled her head with… with stories. Lies. She doesn’t understand the danger of all this because of them. But these…” He attempted to look at us, but his crazy gaze didn’t seem able to make the trip before it returned to the side road. “Richard and his sons will help us. They can stop those boys and bring Chloe to safety.”
Appearing more unsettled by the second, the assistant glanced from Harman to us as if he couldn’t decide whether to tell the old man that he had our identities wrong.
The cop only grimaced, however. “Fine,” he agreed, his tone strained. “But for her safety, she’s coming back in our vehicle. All the girls are.”
“Of course,” Harman said.
I eyed them. Again, that wouldn’t happen. But arguing here wouldn’t fix it.
Making it clear how wrong they were once I had the fish girl in my grasp, on the other hand…
I restrained a smirk.
“I need more medicine,” the cop muttered. He headed around to the other side of the sedan.
“D-Doctor Brooks?” the scrawny assistant tried. “About the treatments, though… what your granddaughter said–”
“Eleanor is confused, Aaron,” Harman stated as if he couldn’t believe the other guy didn’t see it. “My treatments save lives. They always save lives, and with Chloe’s help, they’ll save even more. It’s vital we keep her from losing herself by becoming any more like those soulless creatures than she already has. Our research depends upon it.”
Aaron’s brow furrowed. Seeming discomfited, he dropped his gaze away.
“Now, Richa
rd,” Harman continued to me. “Can you see about this road? We simply must reach her soon.”
I regarded him flatly, but he’d already returned to watching the forest and talking to himself.
Psycho.
Suppressing a scoff, I steered clear of him and walked toward the gravel track.
My feet stopped almost immediately. There was something wrong with the air. It seemed to vibrate, as if an enormous speaker waited ahead of me, playing on full blast. But I couldn’t hear a thing. Only the regular sounds of the forest surrounded me, interrupted sporadically by Harman’s muttering. The farther I continued down the side road, though, the worse it became – like the world was trying to bend around me.
I retreated several steps. The warped feeling faded a bit.
Thoughtfully, I studied the road. Whatever it was, magic had to be involved. Humans couldn’t do this. Humans wouldn’t even know where to begin.
“What is it?” Owen asked.
I didn’t respond. If it was magic, then maybe we could take it. Kill whatever was causing it and absorb it into ourselves.
