Richardson keeps me in a painful grip with one hand and raises the gun calmly at Torch with the other. As Richardson pulls the trigger I grab for his arm but I’m too late. The bullet goes wide. Richardson fires again, again. Torch runs and leaps at us, dropping into a crouch as he makes impact. He kicks the legs right out from under us. I tumble to the side as Richardson drops and snaps into a crouch like a world-class merc.
“Walk away or you die,” Richardson tells Torch in a flinty voice.
“Go ahead. I’ve got backup,” Torch replies with a smirk.
I can’t tell if he’s bluffing or not, but right about now I long to see Mohawk’s zebra stripes kicking ass. Shouts echo from a distance. I hear the tattoo of shoes on concrete. Swat? Security? Richardson curses. He picks up his scorched birdman with one arm and shoots at Torch once more for good measure as he backs through the deserted sentry gate.
For just a moment we are alone in the quad. Jared lies, half naked and bleeding, in a pool of blood next to a black-clad corpse. Torch drops next to Margot, who has curled up in a ball and is sobbing. And then we are surrounded by riot gear: faceless visors and semi-automatics, nozzles beaded on us. The buzz and whirr of helicopters fills the air.
Torch raises his hands above his head as he winks at Margot. “I tripped security on my way over,” he tells us. “All of it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
We ride back in Storm’s shiny black van, splattered with Jared’s blood. It slips over my fingers as he lays with his chalk white head in my lap. I run sticky fingers through his blond hair, his and my blood all over everything, until he lifts a corner of his mouth and smiles smugly up at me.
Seconds before he passes out, he whispers, “Knew you had a thing for me.”
...
Back at Storm’s tower they run Jared into a small room I’ve never seen before. For a long time I pace the floor. When I feel woozy, I sit on the bench outside and watch the door. Every few minutes I think I see the doorknob turn. No one comes out. I have too much time to think but not enough room inside me to do so. Someone comes by with a fresh compress for my arm. The bleeding has almost stopped, just a thin trickle on a razor straight line. The pain sets my teeth on edge.
Father Wes’s words haunt me. In the blood. Evolve or die.
Rumors of blood cults have been around for ages. Around the school we couldn’t help but hear the gossip; girls who swore they knew preachers who’d overcome the Plague, men with followers.
What do you call a Laster who survives? the joke goes.
A rich man.
Sometimes survivors sell their blood in little vials strung around necks like talismans. Sometimes they’ll sell bits of braided hair to be worn in sachets next to their skin. Do you know how much salvation costs? we heard Sally Morgan screech one day as she produced one of these supposedly magic vials between her pale, skinny fingers.
Sally Morgan didn’t make it to twenty.
This is different. Father Wes isn’t selling salvation from his own skin. I’m not even sure he’s peddling salvation. Father Wes has something more dangerous to sell to the rabble: prophecy. But where I’m still foggy is how it could have anything to do with Margot and me.
My mind snags on the painted circles that have been popping up with all the graffiti. One circle intersecting with another, red as blood. Crossed eyes. Watchers, Kira called the preachers’ cult. And what are they watching for? It’s unthinkable but the words whisper and twist through my fried brain anyhow. They’re looking for us. Twins. Joined twins. Sisters who once shared a single cell, blood, DNA.
Shared one egg, one cell, until we started to split. Like two circles slowly coming apart.
I crouch over my knees, trying to gulp in air that won’t come. But this time I can’t blame my sister. This time the panic is all mine as I realize I’ve stumbled upon what I’ve been searching for: the truth.
...
An hour later Dorian Raines comes out of the room, Storm a thundercloud in her wake. He disappears, but she stays to stare over me, hands on hips, as though deciding something before she speaks. Her mouth has become a severe line, her springy curls frizz all around her head, hell-bent on escape.
But she’s gentle when she finally speaks. “He won’t rest until he knows you’re all right.” She nods toward the door. “But at the moment I’m more worried about you.” She tucks my chin in her fingers and examines me. “You look like you’ve been hit by a car. Has someone looked after that cut?”
“I think the bleeding has stopped.”
“Well, let’s clean it up before you go in there. And what’s this?” She tilts my head. “Looks like someone backhanded you.” I’d forgotten falling to the pavement when Torch jumped Richardson. No wonder my face felt like concrete. She eyes my cheek with professional scrutiny. “Make sure you get some ice on that as soon as you’re done in there. And don’t stay longer than ten minutes on pain of death.”
I nod as she patches me up right there in the hallway, and then I slip, quiet-quiet, through the door.
The room smells of blood. Tangy, iron, overwhelming. I want to open the window, but I don’t want Jared to get cold. He’s shirtless, probably pantless, too, I gather from the white sheet and comforter pulled up over his legs. His left shoulder and ribs are bandaged, red fading through the white, like death warmed over.
The patient cracks an eye open as I approach the bed. His chest rises with a deep inhale. “Thought I smelled you,” he says.
“Somehow that can’t be a compliment,” I mutter.
“C’mere.” I approach the bed. “Closer,” he growls, “I’m not going to bite you.” His forehead puckers into a frown. “Someone put their hands on you.” His hunter’s eyes sweep over me and harden. My hand flies automatically to my cheek as he spies the bruise. Color floods back into his face. “She told me you weren’t hurt.”
“I’m not. I’m not hurt.” I shake my head. “Not really.”
“Margot?”
I shake my head. “She’s fine. She’s with Torch. Malcolm.”
Jared relaxes a fraction and studies me. His fingers trail over the bandage that runs from my wrist to my elbow. “But you’re not. Not really. Liar.” I open my mouth to say something, anything to let him rest easy, but I can’t. Sobs break from me like a sudden storm. I stuff a hand in my mouth and turn away. “Hey, now. Lucy. Lucy, look at me, dammit, because I can barely move.”
I don’t know why I’m crying. Maybe it has something to do with the image of his pale lifeless face I can’t seem to scrub from my mind. Or that helpless feeling I can’t shake—we were swatted around like bugs out in the schoolyard. Maybe it’s the stress of knowing there are more than one group of people trying to get to Margot and me, for whatever reason, and the lengths they’ll go to get what they want. Life has always been cheap in Dominion City. That doesn’t mean I can live with being responsible for anyone’s death.
Most of all, admits a small voice inside me, I can’t bear the True Born beside me being hurt.
I take a deep breath and wipe my eyes with the backs of my grimy hands before I turn back to Jared. I’d not bothered to wash or change, and I’m still covered in the schoolyard, patches of me soaked in Jared’s blood.
“Are you going to be all right?” I whisper when I’ve finally got myself under control again.
“Me? Hell, yes,” he grumps. A shock of blond hair falls over his eye. My fingers itch to smooth it away and watch it fall again. He doesn’t move to touch me but I can feel his attention, like tiny caresses, everywhere on me. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill some of us?”
I clasp my hands tightly in front of me. “Have you come close?”
He stares at me, blinking slowly before answering with a shudder. “Only once, but it wasn’t by violence. I told you that story. Here, sit down before you fall down.” Jared scoots over on the bed, wincing. I perch beside him, my hip pressing against his. Instant warmth floods me. Bits of stress fall away from me like ra
indrops.
“Do you know how I came to live with Storm?” I shake my head and stare at him solemnly. It isn’t the first time I’ve wondered at their history. The only person in this world Jared seems to respect is Nolan Storm. And after what he told me he went through, I’d as soon say Jared doesn’t come by trust easily. “I come from a Laster family.” My mouth falls open. “Surprised? Yeah, so were we. Especially when my father and two of my brothers came down with the Plague while I started sprouting fur.”
“Oh. What happened?”
“Mom went crazy when my dad and Keiran died. She and her relatives decided I was a devil. They decided to burn me out of the house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They set fire to my bedroom. With me inside, sleeping.” Gripped with nausea, I hold my stomach and lean forward. “Hey, you’re not going to faint, are you?” Jared eyes me with concern.
“How could—how could—” I sputter.
“Someone put it in their heads that it would cleanse the family line. Like it was a curse that could be lifted. Don’t worry, my mother made sure my other brother and sisters got out before the house went up.”
“You think that’s what would worry me?” A faint blush creeps over Jared’s cheeks that I decide to ignore. “How did you get out?”
“They hadn’t yet figured out that I had skills other than growing fur. I busted the window and made a three-story jump.”
“Did you—were you hurt?”
“Cuts, mostly. Then I lived on the streets for a spell. Like I told you, most of the kid gangs are Lasters, you know. Won’t take True Borns. I wasn’t very good at living on the streets. Maybe the True Born in me is a pack animal. I got sick. I was starving to death. And then I was fighting in the rings. When I escaped, I came across some Laster who’d seen me fight. He brought me to Storm.”
“Jared,” I start to tell him I’m sorry but he cuts me off.
“Don’t ruin it. Don’t say a damn word. Just let me figure out that you’re okay.”
Despite myself I smile as Jared’s arms wrap tighter around me.
“You smell awful,” he tells me crankily. “Take a shower or something, would you? I can’t stand smelling that guy’s hands on you.”
“It was the man from Senator Kain’s party,” I muse aloud. “Do you remember him? He and his bird friend tried to take me there. This time he said he wasn’t there to hurt us. How do you think he knows when and where to show up?”
Green fires over Jared’s eyes as he glares. “That’s a question I’d like answered, too. Hand me my shirt,” he says, scooting me off the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to talk to Storm.”
“Wait a second,” I argue. “You can’t get out of bed.”
Jared grits his teeth at me as he pulls his legs down off the bed so I’m standing between them. “Princess,” he says, “do you have any idea how quickly a True Born like me can get over a little bullet hole? Hand me my shirt.”
I wonder whether now would be a good time to break the other news. “There’s something else.” I try not to let my eyes wander over his very naked, very sculpted chest as I hand over his shirt. He drapes it over his injured shoulder. I help him with the other side, my fingers brushing the hot flesh of his chest and shoulder. “Um,” I start, distracted. “We need to find a witch.”
...
Of course, there had always been the Plague stories: the witch who threw out a curse at the lover who spurned her, causing the first case of the Plague. The old lady who walked around pointing at everyone who was going to catch it. I’d always been particularly creeped out by that story. It sounded a little too much like me. I used to lie in bed at night and wonder if I was a witch, too. And that would be bad.
They burn the old lady in the story.
But for my family, the real tragedy would be that our father would not present me to society. He’d never be able to marry me to one of his associates. I would be cast off and alone. As if I was a True Born.
So when we met a real witch I was stunned. It was at Bettina Ford’s thirteenth birthday party. After the games and spun sugar cakes, Bettina’s mother brought a tall, dark-haired woman into the chaos of the party room. In among striped helium balloons and curly pink streamers that tickled you from the roof, the witch stood out in a dark cloak that covered her from head to foot.
Her beautiful dark eyes cast around the room and landed on us sisters for a second too long, then swept back. We thought nothing of it at the time. We were used to people staring at us, so close to mirror images in matching burgundy dresses.
“You.” She pointed at Bettina, and had her sit down. All the other girls sat down around her. The witch pulled Bettina’s hand from her lap. She ran a long finger across Bettina’s skin as she said things about what Bettina liked, what she didn’t like, what would happen on her vacation later that year. Bettina’s white-blond hair fell around her face as she stared, enraptured, at her own palm. At the end of the reading the woman’s dark eyes fluttered with tears. She pressed a small gold coin none of us recognized into Bettina’s hand and said very softly, “This will help you when the vacation comes to a sticky end.” The witch read for a bunch of the other girls, but neither Margot nor I approached her, and for her part, the witch avoided making eye contact with us again.
The Ford family was on vacation in Rome when the Plague hit them. It was odd, but sometimes it strikes a whole family at once. It ate through Bettina’s family with its diamond teeth, leaving her for last. She ended up wandering the streets alone, sick. She had nothing but the coin the witch had given her—an old, old Romany coin—which was just enough to pay for the hospice where she died two days later.
I push the story of Bettina Ford to the back of my mind as I tell Storm and Jared what the Preacher man had said.
When I finish, Storm hits a button I can’t see on the wall nearest the door. “Alma?”
“Yes, Storm.”
“Can you please bring Torch and Margot in here?”
“Of course.”
“Lucy, sit down, please. You’ll do no good to anyone if you’re not healthy.”
“I don’t want to si—”
“Sit,” he commands before eyeing Jared. “You, too.” Jared sits beside me, gingerly sliding back into the cushion. His heat surrounds me, vital and close.
Storm paces the room like a restless stag. In the glass reflection, his horns knot into a thick and heavy crown.
Eyes drooping with exhaustion, Jared adds, “Someone’s got to be tipping them off.”
“Not necessarily. At least, whoever is sharing information doesn’t necessarily have to be a True Born.” Storm pours himself a glass of water from the standing bar. “Who is in a better position to know where you are? The preachers’ people are everywhere. They are on the streets. They camp outside your house. He has a thousand spies, all of whom are desperate.” I consider that for a moment. Silent, pinch-faced Lasters, peering into our father’s car from their parked car hotels. Scavenging near the gates while our mercs train their guns and shoo them away. Camping in the bins near Grayguard…where clearly the guards can be paid off.
“Everyone would know to look for us at school,” I throw in.
Storm nods, the frown spreading down the corners of his mouth. “Exactly. And could follow you easily from your home.”
Jared’s voice cuts through my terror. “And now Father Wes knows he has True Born tails.”
“Are they? True Borns?”
“I don’t know. Did you get a good whiff, Jared?”
Jared winces and shakes his head. “They were too far away when they shot me.”
“If they are?”
“If they are…we’re in an even bigger mess than we thought.”
I ponder this. “What kind of mess?” I ask. As a shiver of fear crawls up my spine and a shadow of fear takes root in my heart, I’m fairly certain I’m not going to like the reason why the man with one eye and his
owl friend are following us.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Margot sucks in her breath. “They’re back early.”
Our house is bathed in a brilliant yellow glow, windows glowing like fireflies winking through the darkness of the city. It still looks cold. I grab for Margot’s fingers. Fritz swings his semi-automatic onto his back and reaches out to shake Jared’s hand.
“Misses.” Fritz nods at us. “Your parents haff arrived home ahead of schedule with an important guest.”
“Of course. We’ll go in through the side door and get cleaned up before greeting them,” I say smoothly as I eye our bodyguards. Just like that, as though I’ve flicked a switch, I am back on again, doing my duty. It’s exhausting, but strangely welcome. Jared still looks pale, but his jaw is clenched with determination. I sigh, realizing they won’t go anywhere without a fight. “Fritz,” I add, “could you please entertain Jared and Torch in the guard room until we’re able to present them to our parents?”
“Of course, Miss Lucy.” Fritz nods and indicates with the thrust of his neck to follow him. I meet Jared’s glare head on. Panic buzzes from Margot. But there’s nothing I can do, and we all know it.
We arrive downstairs twenty minutes later, greeted by the sound of strings, the clinking of glass. I reckon they’ve pulled out the good crystal. Cut glass etched with fine patterns, made from the hands of the world’s greatest artisans. Crystal worth more than your lives, our mother likes to say.
We stop at the threshold to perform our usual look-over. Margot has thrown on head-to-toe black, a long sweeping arc of black that makes her gray-green eyes pop out. She’s swept and pinned her hair to one side. I’ve robed myself in a conservative, tailored charcoal gray with pinstripes. Just the sort of thing our parents will approve of. Margot plasters a bright, fake smile on her generous lips as we cross the threshold into our parents’ world.
“Ah, there you are,” our father says. “Your mother and I were beginning to despair.” The words are light but the accompanying frown tells us we are in disgrace.
True Born Page 19
