Not if Freya and I could help it.
We needed to be more careful.
When we got to my place, Freya took Rose up to her bed in the guestroom, while Lily followed me up the stairs to our bedroom. I wasn’t ready to get settled yet, still feeling stressed, so I didn’t bother changing my clothes, instead just sitting on the edge of the bed.
The uneven pressure against my rear reminded me that I still had the folded contract in my pocket from earlier. I knew I would be signing another one after discussing some changes, so I wasn’t worried about keeping this one in good condition.
But it was just another thing I had to worry about – how to handle that situation.
Lily sat down next to me for a moment to give me a hug, before getting up to get changed. I absentmindedly ran my fingertips along her latex-clad butt as she stood, though it was just a general show of affection. I was sure no one was in the mood to do anything after such a long miserable day.
Lily seemed to be extra indecisive about what to wear when she opened up the closet, but I wasn’t really paying much attention, my thoughts elsewhere. I didn’t think it really mattered either way, assuming she would just throw on whatever.
I reached out with my second-sight to see Freya gently running her fingertips along Rose’s temple affectionately in the other room. The somber look in her crimson eyes made me wonder if Lexi’s near-death experience reminded her of what had happened to our daughter barely half a year ago.
We had almost lost Rose then, and just the same nearly happened to Lexi today.
Life was just too short – too fragile.
Freya stood up then, prompting me to focus on my eyes again in the immediate room, noticing that Lily had finally decided on one of her black latex nightgowns and was beginning to get undressed.
However, unexpectedly, movement downstairs caught my attention, and I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw another ghost of Lily heading out the door.
“Something wrong?” Lily asked in response to my expression. She had just paused after having taken off her green blouse, leaving her upper torso completely exposed, though she was turned away from me, looking over her shoulder. I realized the blouse must have been one of the shirts she owned that gave her chest support due to the shape, considering she didn’t have a bra on.
I shook my head, again glad that my astral trailing ability would have been useful earlier, but a little annoyed it was haunting me now. “No, I’m fine,” I replied.
Lily turned towards me slightly, seeming to evaluate my expression, but then abruptly squeaked loudly in surprise when Freya quietly slipped into the room.
We both looked at her in confusion as Freya closed the door behind her.
“Still jumpy?” I wondered, curious as to why Lily had her arm crossed over her chest. After all, it wasn’t like Freya hadn’t seen her naked before.
“A little,” Lily admitted in a strained voice, turning away from us to slip the nightgown on.
Freya looked her up and down for a moment while she changed, before moving closer and wrapping her arms around Lily’s shoulders, prompting the busty model to return the hug.
“I was really worried about you,” Freya whispered, before sighing. “And I just want to keep you safe,” she added.
“I know,” Lily replied simply, rubbing her hand across Freya’s back.
Freya then pulled away slightly and just held Lily’s gaze for a long few seconds, only to lean forward slightly like she was aiming for a kiss.
Much to my complete, total, absolute shock, Lily closed the gap and rested her lips gently against Freya’s before attempting to pull back away. She wasn’t able to though, with Freya abruptly attempting to deepen the kiss…
And Lily let her.
I was so stunned by what I was seeing, that I couldn’t do anything other than just gawk.
Was this really happening right now? After a day like today?
What in the hell?
I mean, witnessing them begin to make-out was totally hot, but I also felt uneasy knowing that Lily might be under the influence of some unknown drug. Granted, I supposed a kiss was harmless enough, but I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with it going any further – certainly, not under these conditions. Because I cared about how Lily would feel later.
Thus, when Freya pulled away and said she needed me, I was firm in my response.
“I don’t think now is a good time, considering the situation.”
Her eyes narrowed a little. “Sam, I’m not in the mood for anything other than a kiss. Now hurry up.”
“Same here,” Lily agreed with a heavy sigh. “I’m definitely not in the mood either.”
My brow furrowed as I looked at Lily, confused by that statement, before I got up to offer Freya my wrist. Something in her intense expression made me change my mind about not offering her my blood. Surprisingly, she grabbed my arm a little roughly and sank her teeth in without her mouth widening. Then, almost at the same time, her forehead split down the middle, her third-eye glowing bright red as the slit narrowed.
Lily screamed.
As fast as lightning, Freya grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the floor so hard that it was a miracle she was still conscious.
“Shit!” I cursed in shock, my astral limbs ensnaring Freya automatically. But, before I pulled her off Lily, her next words stopped me.
“Where in the HELL is Lily?!” Freya shrieked.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I simultaneously saw another apparition of Lily walking out the front door again, my physical eyes unfocusing briefly as a hundred minor inconsistencies all added up at once and hit me like a ton of bricks falling on my head.
This person wasn’t Lily.
No.
This couldn’t be happening.
No, no, no!
The woman on the floor coughed uncontrollably, unable to respond to her attacker’s question. But Freya didn’t need her to respond, her third-eye still trained on its target.
In a flash, even before I had recovered from the shock, Freya reached into her pocket and yanked out her phone, shoving it in the woman’s face – the woman, who looked exactly like Lily in every way.
How was that possible?
Was it a superpower? I had known of a few people who could change their coloring, but to change their appearance entirely to match someone else? Including body shape?
How in the hell was that possible?
“Call your boss and have him tell us where Lily is, immediately, or else I’m going to start gutting you!”
The imposter continued coughing violently, but grabbed the phone with shaky hands, her orange eyes wide in terror as she held it up to put in a number.
Unfortunately, the person she was trying to call didn’t answer, forcing her to leave a message that sounded like she was speaking random words in a foreign language. If I had any doubts previously, the accent coming out of this imposter’s mouth certainly wasn’t anything I’d ever heard from Lily before.
The moment she was done with her message, Freya yanked her to her feet by her throat, took off Lily’s engagement necklace, and then was shoving her towards the door.
Rose was already awake in response to the commotion, standing right outside the room, listening to everything going on.
“Rose get in the car,” Freya barked out when she opened the door and saw her. “We have to go find the real Lily. I should have listened to you,” she added a little less harshly.
The little girl was clearly shocked, but still bolted down the stairs without question.
I could hear Freya seething as she made threatening comments to the fake Lily while they made their way to the first floor. “You’re lucky I don’t just kill you now,” she hissed, followed by, “If Lily isn’t in perfect health when we get to her, then I’ll rip out your heart and shove it back down your throat!”
I was pissed too, especially now that the initial shock was wearing off, but in that moment I was most concerne
d about getting to Lily as soon as possible, afraid that she wasn’t safe, and also unable to even fathom why the S-FBI would have done this.
Because, obviously, it had to be them.
They kidnapped Lily and then switched her out with an imposter while I was on my way to meet the Assistant Director.
But how in the hell did they think they could get away with this?
Unless they had never intended to give Lily back…
The thought made me sick.
The idea of living with an imposter, and the real Lily being who knows where, literally made me want to vomit right then and there. If Freya didn’t have the ability to read minds, then would I have figured it out on my own?
I wasn’t sure, knowing I probably would have ignored my astral trailing.
Needless to say, our trip to a government lab downtown was a tense one. Freya drove with Rose in the passenger seat, while I was in the back tying up the fake Lily with my astral limbs.
The lab was initially just a guess Freya had made based on the imposter’s thoughts, but it turned out to be the right move, as confirmed when the woman’s contact returned the call on the way there. Freya was the one who answered, and she proceeded to described exactly how she was going to kill all of them in gory details if Lily wasn’t in perfect health when we arrived.
Unfortunately for them, Lily wouldn’t be able to meet us at the door when we got to the lab…because they had her sedated…
“What in the world are they thinking?” I asked seriously after she hung up on them.
Unlike her, I was still trying to be mindful of the fact that Rose was with us. I felt horrible for dragging our daughter along, but we couldn’t just leave her at home alone, and it wasn’t like we had a safe place to drop her off on such short notice. Not to mention, after all this shit, I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight either, intending to keep my second-sight focused on our daughter the entire time I was inside the building.
I knew our daughter had already experienced a lot of her own horrors, so cursing really wasn’t so shocking to her, but still. I wanted to protect her from the bad things in the world as much as possible, even if she had surely heard us all cuss before.
Freya didn’t answer my question right away, gritting her teeth in anger. After a moment, she finally managed to speak. “Those idiots thought it was a brilliant idea to spy on us from the inside. They wanted to verify their assessment of you, as well as try to pry more into my life. They aren’t fools. They know I have secrets I’ve managed to keep them from knowing, even after all this time. Gah!” she almost growled in annoyance, lowering her voice. “I’m so close to just killing them all! If it wasn’t for the fact it would ruin our lives, then I would!”
Honestly, I was a little surprised she didn’t seem worried about the threats she was making. Then again, we had gotten out of our initial encounter with the S-FBI without her getting arrested for all the damage she did. I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but assumed they must be giving her special treatment due to her history with the government.
She must have some kind of immunity or special privileges, like superheroes and certain government officials did.
Knowing the ‘why’ behind their plan helped a little…a little. But I still couldn’t understand how they expected to get away with it.
“How long were they going to keep Lily?” I wondered.
“A day,” she said through her teeth. “Maybe longer depending on the situation. Their idiotic plan was to have this b–” Her voice cut off, before she rephrased. “To have this imposter get in a staged car accident, or have some other orchestrated incident that put her in the hospital. Then they’d switch her out, leaving all of us under the assumption that Lily had amnesia and had lost the last day.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It seemed so stupid, and yet I knew I probably would have fallen for it. And even if I did suspect something was off, I would have had no way to prove my suspicions. Our belief that this Lily had just been drugged seemed to explain many of the inconsistencies, even a lot of her behavior.
People just acted differently sometimes when they were under the influence of certain drugs, just like with alcohol or any other inhibitor.
But the fact that the S-FBI thought they could get away with it only confirmed that they didn’t know Freya had the capacity to read minds.
Once we arrived at the facility, which was deceptively small from the outside, Freya didn’t waste any time. She took a few large gulps of blood from my wrist, leaving me with the imposter, before heading into the building at full throttle, her third-eye activated for all to see as she took out everyone she came across, reading their most recent thoughts, before moving on to the next.
I had Rose wait in the car, making sure she wouldn’t open the door for anyone, and then followed Freya with the imposter in tow. Due to the delay of me talking quickly with our daughter, I stepped through the shattered glass door, only to realize that Freya wasn’t even on the first floor anymore. She had taken out a security guard in the lobby and then headed downstairs to the significantly larger basement floors beneath the ground.
She hadn’t killed anyone as far as I could tell though, with the unconscious guard having a huge welt already forming around his eye but otherwise alive. Which meant Freya must be pulling her punches significantly, considering that, with her strength, the guy wouldn’t even have a face if she had hit him as hard as she could.
Knowing that Freya didn’t need my help, I decided to wait for her where I was, being close by to guard the exit and watch over Rose.
Nothing happened for several long minutes.
There wasn’t even any traffic on the street, since the road just outside the building was more like a large alleyway that didn’t go anywhere, but I still knew we finally had company long before anyone pulled around the corner.
Because that massive invisible bubble unexpectedly came charging at me as fast as a speeding car, swallowing us all up in an instant, followed by a black utility vehicle squealing as it turned too quickly.
I tightened my astral limbs around the imposter, uncertain of how this was going to go down, but fully ready for a fight.
However, my tense muscles immediately eased up a little when I caught sight of Freya carrying a limp Lily up the nearest stairwell. She was wearing what looked like a hospital gown, and her eyes were open, but she had a vacant expression on her face, like she wasn’t fully conscious.
I felt especially stupid when I saw slight movement in her citrine eyes, realizing that even with a sedative her irises were still shifting a little. In fact, the few times I had seen her irises stop moving entirely, they were also really bright, capable of glowing in the dark. I should have known that the lack of motion didn’t go with the dull color.
That was only a fleeting thought though, my attention shifting forward as two familiar faces jumped out of the black vehicle, along with three military guys I didn’t recognize.
Knight was dressed in pink cotton pajamas, with black boots on that didn’t match at all, while Carnegie was at least wearing half of his suit from before – his shirt untucked. No one had guns drawn, though everyone was armed except the girl.
Freya reached the top of the stairs and burst into the hallway behind me just as our five visitors reached the entrance, prompting her to stop in her tracks, staring at Carnegie with a glare of hatred that could kill on its own.
“You’ve got a lot of balls showing up here,” she snapped. “You should know I like to kill and ask questions later!”
“Yes, but I also know from your file that you suffer from a severe case of Killer’s Remorse, even when you were just doing your job while enlisted with the S-FBI all those years a–” His voice cut off when her glare became even more violent, like she was about to drop Lily and rip out his throat right then and there. “But, umm, that’s not the point. I came to make amends, and to ensure our asset is returned unharmed. She was just following orders.”
“Mak
e amends!” Freya scoffed. “You can make amends by ensuring I never see your face ever again! And you’re lucky I didn’t kill her the moment I realized what was going on!”
She didn’t wait for him to respond though, instead marching past me to leave. However, the moment she got to Knight, the girl shot out her hand, touching Freya’s arm.
Freya stopped dead in her tracks and glared at her with all the murderous rage she could muster, but surprisingly the girl’s expression was somber.
“For the record,” she whispered. “I didn’t know about any of this. And, having dealt with a lot of powerful supers in my lifetime, I would have advised against it, had I known. I’m sorry this happened.”
Freya’s eyes narrowed slightly, but then she gave her a sharp nod and continued out to the car. Carnegie looked pissed from her comment, but he kept his mouth shut. Honestly, I really wondered what kind of role this girl played in their organization, because she acted a lot like a freely-independent contractor, as if she didn’t play by their rules at all.
In fact, the more I considered it, the more confident I felt that she was hired help, rather than actually being a part of the S-FBI, or even the government in general.
Which meant, despite this girl’s attempts to make amends, I wasn’t about to feel even remotely bad regarding what I was going to do. Now that Lily was safe, my own rage had fully settled into my heart, no longer suppressed by fear and worry.
I released my hold on the imposter, causing her to drop to the ground, since apparently I had been supporting all her weight, and then I reached into my back pocket for the contract he had given me barely half a day ago.
“And you can shove this up your ass,” I snapped, tearing it in half and tossing it at his feet. “And, if you ever try violating Lily’s human rights again, or anyone else in my family for that matter, then you’ll wish it was the apocalypse coming for you instead of me.”
The Sacrificial Love of an Immortal Page 12
