by Jami Gray
“Out.” His voice was harsh as he barked out the command.
Taking a shaky breath, she released the seatbelt and opened her door, following his tall figure as he strode toward a small clearing, his fury evident in every step. When he stopped next to a large moss covered tree trunk, she went to stand opposite of him, staying out of arm’s reach.
He glared at her, the sharp edge of suspicion darkening his gaze. “Enough of this shit, Raine,” he spat. “Whatever you’re hiding, spill it.”
Struggling to keep her face blank, she tried to hide the emotions tearing her apart. “It’s a long story,” ice coated each word. “Do you really want to go into this now?”
He snarled something vile and pulled out his phone, dialing from memory. His voice was short, “I’m running late. Don’t leave.” Not giving Mayson a chance to argue, Gavin snapped his phone shut without another word. His gaze pinned her like shards of colored glass, and his face was hard, unreachable. Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the tree, and waited.
Circling the conversational pit, she hedged, “I’ve used Mayson for information in the past.”
“What kind of information?” His question hit the air like bullets.
Knowing if she didn’t start from the beginning, chances were high he’d kill her outright, she held up a hand. “I’ll explain, but you need to hear it from start to finish.”
“The whole story?” His expression didn’t change, nor did the chill in his eyes lessen. “Wouldn’t that be refreshing? I so like being kept in the dark.”
She winced as his tone sliced through her. In that moment, she lost the partner from the last few days and faced the dangerous warrior. Tension kept her stiff and unmoving, but she forced herself to meet his stony stare. “I spent my fifteenth birthday chained to a lab table.”
A swift ripple of shock flared in his eyes before they went back to cool calculation.
She didn’t stop. “I know you’ve heard stories at Taliesin. Even I’ve heard some of them.”
“How much is true?” He had no idea how much his question hurt.
“They barely scratch the surface.” She gave an awkward shrug. “I’m Fey, but no one’s really sure what else is in here.”
“So those rumors of you being the result of some forbidden affair or magic gone wrong?”
Gritting her teeth, she looked away. “Magic didn’t do this to me. Humans did.”
His poignant silence scraped at her nerves.
“They used me for their experiments. I lost track of how many. Each one did something to me, to my magic. But my mother…” Her throat closed around the choking pain and shame. With a ragged cough, she continued, “She died during one of those experiments.”
Raising a shaky hand, she massaged her temple, hoping to stave off the impending headache. Unsettled, she began to pace as the need to move dug at her. She couldn’t stand still and look at him while she relived her past.
Reverting to the necessary distance to get through this, her voice cooled. “It was late at night. My mother and I were at home when they came.” Memories of cracking wood, harsh commands, grabbing hands, and her mother’s screams swam across her mind. “When I woke up I was chained down on a table. Wrists, ankles, neck and waist. They used iron restraints. The pain of it burned so bad, I couldn’t think. I spent the first few hours screaming myself hoarse.” Her hand absently rubbed at the phantom ache in her wrist.
“Men in white lab coats would come in, run their tests, and leave. I tried asking questions.” Begged and pleaded, more like—two words she would never say out loud. “But they ignored me, talked over me as if I was nothing.” She was deaf to the bitterness echoing in her voice.
“They took samples of everything. Flesh, blood, bone, whatever they could use. They tried every stimulus they could come up with.” Searing agony in dancing flames, breath-stealing cold, the unnerving feeling of something inside her she couldn’t stop. “It didn’t matter how much I fought, they kept going.”
The nightmares seeped through her mental walls as she gave him the whole story. Her vision darkened, like clouds before a storm. “Do you know how many different types of pain there are?” It was a rhetorical question. Giving a sharp shake of her head, she pulled herself back from the black pit of memories.
“It took me awhile to figure out, but their little ‘tests’ left me different.” Her lips twisted in a tight smile, and harshness entered her voice. Looking at the fist clenched at her side, she flexed her hand. It looked so normal now, but before…before she could make it change into something deadly.
“Whatever they were looking for, I wasn’t giving it to them. My body, my mind, my magic, wouldn’t respond how they wanted. I knew it wouldn’t be long before my time as a lab rat came to an abrupt end. I was a threat, too uncontrollable, too unpredictable. So, I learned to hide my growing skills. They created something all right, just not what they expected.”
She stopped moving, not really looking at him, but staring unseeing at the trees in front of her. “I started planning my escape. I stopped responding to their tests, burying my magic deep. I made them believe I was no longer able to function. Therefore, I wasn’t a threat. One night before I left, I heard two technicians discussing the termination of a separate project.” The last word emerged as a hiss. She hated that word—her tormentors had labeled her mother a project.
“Which project?” His voice cut through her memories.
She realized she had fallen silent, caught up in her past. “My mother.” Deliberately opening both her hands, she studied the bloodied half-moon marks on her palms, a curious detachment settling in. “She didn’t survive their latest implant.” Needing to move so she wouldn’t fall apart, she paced away from him.
Memories of the two techs as they speculated to the reason the test subject failed rose. Their clinical observation of her mother’s death attributed to “the host body rejecting the implant”. The conversation continued before it hit Raine—what they did to the most important person in her life. Impregnating her mother with some perverted genetic structure, all the while hoping for a live birth. Instead, her mother had hemorrhaged to death. Not that anyone tried to stop it. The implanted embryo caused too much internal damage to justify keeping her alive.
“You escaped by yourself?” Gavin’s question dragged her back from the agonizing memories.
She shook her head. “No, a few days later, while I was getting out of my restraints a man came in.” No point in detailing how she managed to slip out of those restraints, how long it took her to thin out her wrist, morph it down, to slip through the cuffs. Or the deadly claws that sprouted, giving her the only weapon she had at the time. No, better not to share all that. “It took a few minutes to realize he wasn’t one of the scientists. He got me out of the lab.”
Turning, she met Gavin’s gaze without flinching. “We were outside, almost to the woods, when their security caught us. We were trapped, but I wasn’t going back. I used the power they’d created, just like they’d hoped. I burnt each man to the ground.” No preliminaries, just a statement of fact. She gave Gavin credit, his expression didn’t change.
“I’d do it again if I had to.” Cold, she turned back to the trees. “We weren’t the only test subjects at that lab.” She braced, knowing what she said next would change everything. “My rescuer was Mulcahy.” Out of the corner of her eye she caught Gavin’s jerk of surprise. Yep, knew that would get a reaction.
Almost done with the story, she hurried on, wanting it all out. “After killing those men, I blacked out. When I woke, Mulcahy was carrying me. We were about two hundred yards out when there was an explosion. The lab went up in flames. The explosives he used did their job. Nothing was left but a pile of rubble.”
She rubbed her arms. “I spent a year recovering. I got my strength back, and pulled myself together. I joined Taliesin just before my seventeenth birthday.” She wanted, no needed, him to understand, but from his unforgiving expression it was futile wi
sh. “My job gave me focus, helped me to function as normally as I could.”
No sense in sharing she trained from the beginning to be a Wraith. Needing to hone her skills, to become an unbreakable weapon so she would never again feel helpless or out of control again. From the moment she used her magic to kill those men there hadn’t been one iota of remorse. Instinctively she understood the danger she faced. The scientists and their tests managed to create an unpredictable, dangerous animal. A very pissed off predator who only wanted to hurt.
It would be so easy to give in and become the monster they created. Something held her back, forcing her to choose, to continue to choose, not to let her magic corrupt her sense of self. It had taken years to regain control, but she kept her vow to not become what the twisted humans created, to stay true to her sense of honor. Problem was, her sense of honor was a bit skewed.
“I was twenty-two,” she continued. “When I finally figured out who the power men were behind that lab.”
“The deaths at Talbot?” He didn’t hesitate to put the pieces together.
Clever man. She sighed, rubbing a hand wearily over her face. “The first four were mine. I have no idea on the last three.” Not missing the skepticism he didn’t bother to hide, she tried explaining. “The first four are tied to Aaron Talbot. Even you figured that much out. Aaron was the moneyman behind the lab. The other three, Austin Santos, Leon Bishop, and Danilo Rostislav were all heads of various departments at the lab. Matthew Peyton was the senior Talbot’s right hand man.”
“Did you kill Aaron Talbot?”
“No, his car accident was just that, an accident.” She held his unemotional gaze without flinching, knowing what he saw. She spent years facing it in her mirror. “I didn’t do it, but I didn’t shed any tears about it either.” There was no remorse, no satisfaction, just emptiness. “The other four—they had to answer for what they did.”
“Who made you judge and jury, Mc Cord?”
Him using her last name was a bit disconcerting, but not unexpected. If she was honest, she would be thrilled to leave this little clearing alive. Everything else would be gravy. “I was the last one standing.” Her answer wasn’t a plea for understanding, but stated a brutal truth. “They killed my mother. They killed countless other Kyn and humans. They were so intent on playing some demonic god to find a way to outrun mortality. They had no right!”
Her breathing turned choppy, and she took a moment to recapture her shredded emotions. “They took what wasn’t theirs, what they could never understand, and warped it into unrecognizable forms. They created nightmares you have no concept of.” The depth of her emotions made her throat and eyes burn. “Gods willing, you’ll never have to find out.”
He remained unmoved. “That doesn’t explain why you hid what you did. It doesn’t explain why you supposedly stopped after those four.” He began stalking her, each step echoed by an accusation. “It doesn’t clear you for the last three. It doesn’t even make sense that Mulcahy wouldn’t come up with your name first. Why wouldn’t he sanction the hits? It doesn’t cover how you came to know Mayson.” His voice grew harsher, colder as his anger pushed through his thin control. “It sure as shit doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me this last night!”
Like a curtain ripping away, his pain and anger at her perceived betrayal became clear, leveling her in one vicious punch. It was too late to apologize—his temper well and truly snapped.
“Did you get a kick out of watching me chase my tail?” It came out on snarl. “Or wasting my time tracking leads to your kills? Did you think you were so damn good no one would figure it out? Were you ever going to tell me? How much of you is a lie, Raine?” The last question exploded in her face as he backed her into a thick tree trunk. He slammed his palms against the rough surface, caging her in without touching, while his words sliced her open. “Maybe I should be the one deciding if you’re worth the risk.”
There it was, what she dreaded from the beginning. Whatever relationship they may have started was gone before it even really started. No way would he believe her, no matter what she said or did. None of it would change the fact that she hadn’t told him straight out. Now, when it was too late to fix it, she managed to destroy something fragile, something she wasn’t sure she’d ever find again.
“I didn’t tell you because I’ve never told anyone,” her voice was soft, trying to talk to his rage. “You know as well as I do what happens to the Kyn who go after humans. Mulcahy wouldn’t change the rules.” She flinched in anticipation of his reaction as she finished, “Not even for his own blood.”
He stumbled back a step. His piercing eyes searched her face. “What do you mean ‘his own blood’?”
“Mulcahy is my uncle.” Gavin wanted it all? Fine, she’d give it to him. “It’s why he was at the lab that night. My mother was his half-sister. He received a tip one of his Wraiths and his sister were being held in a hidden lab. He went in to retrieve both of them.” She fought to keep her voice from shaking. “He found his Wraith beyond saving and his sister dead. He overheard some of the personnel talking about a subject scheduled for termination the next day. Curious, he went looking. He found me.”
“Don’t try to play me.” Gavin’s face darkened. “If he was your uncle, he would have gotten you out regardless.”
“Maybe.” She fought back old doubts, but Gavin didn’t need any more unpleasant truths. The truth was her uncle may have cared for her mother, but her daughter was only useful in how she could help him. “Regardless, he got me out. Once he destroyed the lab, he didn’t feel the need to dig any deeper. His intelligence indicated all those involved were at the site that night.”
As she uttered the words, old emotions rushed her. She ached for the child who had been reborn into some unnatural creature who would never fully be a part of the Kyn. When she looked in the mirror, the beast peeking out served to remind her why being a Wraith was her only option. Without the safety valve of her job, her bloodier tendencies, which made her such a good Wraith, were the same ones that would lead to her becoming the hunted.
Doubt and disbelief were clear on Gavin’s face as he studied her. “You’re saying they weren’t all killed?”
“Aaron and his little gang were at a different location.” She stepped away from the tree carefully. “It took me years to track those four men down. Years to figure out how to make it look like accidents. Mulcahy never thought to look beyond the information he was given. To this day, he thinks it was a small renegade group of scientists. For him, the problem was solved. He was wrong.”
“Why not go to him? He would have helped.”
Why try explaining the non-existent relationship with her uncle? Hell, she could barely comprehend it herself. She shook her head, not taking her eyes off of him. “I didn’t track those men through documented lines. I tracked them down through other survivors. Most of who were considered crazy or delusional. I knew the faces in the lab. I knew their names. I listened when those scientists talked, as they pulled samples off my body, while they ran their tests, while they discussed how I wasn’t giving the expected reactions.”
Fighting down her rising resentment at still having to defend her actions, she kept her voice level, “Mulcahy would not take the word of an angry, somewhat crazed child and a handful of tortured, mind-broken Kyn. It wouldn’t be worth the risk, not to him or to Taliesin.”
Frustrated by Gavin’s continued disbelief, she dared to share more, laying a part of her bare. “The year it took for me to heal? I spent half the time seeing things that weren’t there, reacting to strangers like a rabid animal, and hours not moving or speaking, just watching, waiting.”
Only for him would she attempt to get him to understand the hell of that first year of recovery. A maelstrom of emotions wrapped tight fingers over her throat, but she got the words out. “Those experiments opened a door to abilities I didn’t understand, couldn’t control. It was like being drowned in noise and brutal urges. I couldn’t turn it off, I co
uldn’t turn it down. It was all I could do not to strike out at those around me.” She shuddered as the memories clawed closer.
“When I was finally able to surface, it still took time for me to understand those people were trying help.” Her voice dropped as the emotional upheaval hit its peak and blessed numbness began to seep in. “When Mulcahy finally let me join Taliesin, I was grateful. The training was so intense it took over everything. I used my training to grow strong enough to eventually close the door and lock it.”
Gavin didn’t waste time putting the rest of the story together. “Mayson was one of those Kyn wasn’t he?”
She nodded, saying nothing. What she shared with Gavin, she had never shared with another. Nor could she see ever doing so again. It brought back too much pain, too much anger, too much helplessness.
“Why did you stop after the first four?” He watched her face carefully, as if her answer would reveal something vital.
After all the half-truths and lies, he wouldn’t believe her. Hell, if their positions had be reversed, she’d be hard pressed to believe anything he said. Yet, she had to try. “It became too easy to hunt and kill. There was a part of me that liked it.”
Contempt flickered through his face. Catching the expected reaction, what was left of her heart shattered, and finally the numbness settled in.
His voice betrayed nothing, “So because you liked spilling their blood, you stopped?”
She nodded, once.
His bark of harsh laughter made her jump. “Bullshit! You’re a Wraith for fuck’s sake. We kill people. It’s what we do. If killing bothered you that much, you wouldn’t be standing here.” He leaned in, filling her vision, but keeping a careful distance between them. “Lie to yourself, if you want, just stop lying to me.”
His derision cut deep, deeper than expected. Burying her pain with the hundreds of other bitter and painful emotions locked away, she wondered a bit distantly if the little room holding all that mess would ever fill up. When it did, what happened next?
