Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  Red hair hung in a limp ponytail to one side, and even from a distance, I could see a sluggish quality to the way she moved, the way she blinked.

  Had they drugged her?

  Without even meaning to, I stepped out from the shadows. I began moving toward the duo on the front porch, but before I’d fully crossed the lawn, Bethany marked my presence. She stared at me, like she was trying to see through some kind of fog.

  She shook.

  Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out the words until I got closer.

  “You’re dead.”

  I stepped up onto the porch, careful to keep my back to the surveillance.

  “I saw you. I saw you die. You’re dead.”

  The first time she said it, Bethany’s voice was monotone, but by the second time—and the third—she was starting to sound more like her old self.

  She was starting to sound pissed.

  “I saw you. You went through the windshield. You broke your neck. There was blood—so much blood, and your legs …”

  “Maybe you saw wrong,” Skylar suggested.

  “I know what I saw. Kali’s dead, and I’m crazy. They drugged me up, and now I’m crazy. They were afraid I’d tell someone. They knew my dad couldn’t keep me here forever, so they made me crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy,” I said calmly. “You must have just gotten things mixed up in the wreck. I was bleeding, but they were mostly surface cuts. When I woke up, you were gone. I was worried, so I came here.”

  “I think I’d know if you weren’t dead,” Bethany snapped. “And, no offense, but I’m pretty sure I’m more qualified to tell if I’m crazy than you are.”

  I couldn’t tell if Bethany was on the verge of hysterics or reading me the riot act. Skylar must have been leaning toward the “hysterical” interpretation, because she wound up and smacked her, right across the face.

  Bethany blinked. “Did you just hit me?” she asked, disbelief coloring her every feature.

  Skylar raised both hands, palms outward. “I come in peace!”

  “You do not come in peace. You hit me.”

  “I hit in peace!”

  Sensing that this could devolve into an all-out brawl very quickly, I took matters into my own hands—literally. I stepped forward and put my right palm on Bethany’s shoulder.

  “I told you I’d be okay, and I’m okay,” I said softly.

  I could see the wheels turning in Bethany’s head, see her wanting to believe me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  Bethany shrugged off my touch. “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not,” Skylar piped up. “Somebody drugged you, and your dad is keeping you locked up in your own home. That’s not fine.”

  “What is she even doing here?” Bethany directed the question at me, and I took that as evidence that she was at the very least less sure that I was a hallucination than she’d been a moment before.

  Skylar didn’t wait for me to answer Bethany’s question—she jumped right in herself. “Someone’s watching you, Bethany. They’re after Kali. And I can’t shake the idea that this is bigger, that there’s something else, someone else.…” Skylar frowned. “Bad people are doing bad things. Good people are doing bad things, too. I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to help.”

  Skylar blinked, and her eyes stayed closed for a fraction of a second longer than they should have. “This is it.”

  She sounded … sad. Stubborn, determined, and sad.

  “This is what?” I asked, wondering how many times I’d worn that same expression on my face and what exactly had put it on hers.

  “It,” Skylar said simply. “This is it.”

  Bethany snorted. “Because that really clears things up.”

  Skylar smiled, but the expression only took on half her face. “Give it a few days,” she said, “and it will.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but for better or worse, at the moment, I had bigger fish to fry.

  I’d come here as step one in a plan to track down Bethany, but it looked like I wasn’t going to need steps two through four. Instead, I needed to find out what Bethany knew, what she remembered.

  Besides the fact that I should have been dead.

  “Can we come in?” I asked.

  Bethany planted her body firmly in front of the open door. “My dad could come home any second. You shouldn’t be here when he does.”

  “Then can we go somewhere else?” I gave her a look. “We need to talk.”

  “I can’t leave,” Bethany replied without hesitation. “They’ll know if I do. My dad said everything was going to be okay. He said he’d take care of it, but I have to stay here.”

  There was something in her eyes when she talked about her father—not quite anger, not quite fear.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” I didn’t mean for the words to come out of my mouth with an edge to them, but they did. Bethany had left me on the side of the road. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice. Maybe they’d forced her to go, but she’d left me broken and bleeding on the ground and hadn’t lifted a hand against the people who’d put me there.

  “You were already dead!”

  The vehemence of Bethany’s words took me by surprise.

  “You were dead, and it was my fault. I was the one driving. I was the one who got bitten. I couldn’t—I can’t do this again.”

  Again?

  “There was nothing I could do for you, Kali.”

  “But there was something you could do for someone else.” Skylar tilted her head from one side to the other and then back again, staring intently at the lines of Bethany’s face. “Someone you love.”

  Bethany’s eyes hardened, and she stepped back into the house, ready to slam the door in our faces. Unfortunately for her, I was quick.

  Too quick.

  Quicker than I would have been two days before.

  There are some benefits to being bitten.

  As Zev’s words echoed in my head, I realized how very close I was standing to Bethany. How fast her heart was pounding. How hungry the thing inside me was. I was fast and strong and more than I’d been two days before—and the chupacabra wanted blood.

  Twenty-one hours and nine minutes.

  “You can’t come in,” Bethany snapped, bringing me back to the present.

  “Evidence would suggest otherwise,” Skylar commented, following my lead and stepping into the house.

  “Get out.”

  “Nope.” Skylar grinned. “I want to see Château Davis. You’ve been dating my brother for six months, and you’ve stolen my tampons twice. The least you can do is give me a tour.”

  “Skylar,” Bethany said, her voice cracking. “Please, both of you, just get out.”

  “Bethany?”

  I half expected to run into Bethany’s father, but instead, the voice that had issued that query was clearly female.

  “You guys need to go,” Bethany said again, her voice low and urgent.

  “Bethany, dear,” the voice called from the other room, “have you seen Tyler?”

  Bethany flinched. A moment later, her face was a blank canvas, flat and unreadable. She plastered on a smile and turned around, just as a woman wearing heels and a white silk bathrobe stepped into the room. She had long, wavy hair that straddled the line between blonde and red. Her eyes were wide, her smile inviting.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I didn’t realize Bethie had guests.”

  “They were just leaving,” Bethany said.

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. They should at least stay for breakfast. Have you seen your brother? It’s omelet day, and you know how he feels about those.”

  Bethany stood up a little straighter, and her face softened.

  “Okay, Mom. Okay.”

  I wasn’t sure what Bethany was saying “okay” to, but it seemed to satisfy her mother, who ran a smoothing hand over the white silk robe.

  “I ought to get dressed,” she said absentmindedly. “Somet
hing’s not right.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Bethany said. “I promise.”

  Her mother nodded, and a second later she was gone, leaving the three of us in the foyer, silent, the air thick with all of the things we weren’t saying.

  “She’s the one you’re helping,” Skylar said. “Your mom. What did your dad say he’d do for her if you kept your mouth shut about what happened out on the highway this morning?”

  In my mind, I rephrased Skylar’s question—what did he say he’d do to your mother if you didn’t?

  “It’s none of your business,” Bethany said, her voice low and full of warning. “You never saw her. She’s fine.”

  I couldn’t shake the look in Mrs. Davis’s eyes, the singsong tone to her voice. I’d seen her before, at university functions. She’d seemed fine.

  Normal.

  Like Bethany, only older.

  What’s wrong with her? I wondered, but that wasn’t the kind of question you asked out loud.

  So instead, I asked something else. “Who’s Tyler?”

  Bethany left us in the foyer. She didn’t say a word, didn’t respond to the question. If I’d had more practice with the whole “friend” thing, maybe I would have known what to say or do next, but I didn’t.

  “She’ll be back,” Skylar said. I wasn’t so sure, but up until now, Skylar’s instincts had been right on point. Unfortunately, she chose that moment to turn her focus from Bethany to me. “Bethany wasn’t wrong,” she said slowly. “Was she? About you going through the windshield, about your broken neck?”

  Don’t tell her.

  This time, I didn’t object to Zev weighing in or the advice he was dispensing. That was how I’d always gotten by, how I survived. By not opening my mouth. By keeping people at arm’s length.

  “My neck isn’t broken,” I said stiffly. “I’m fine.”

  “People only ever say they’re fine when they’re not.” With those words, Skylar’s eyes went from my face to my stomach. Even clothed in the tank top, I felt naked. I felt like she could see straight through me.

  I don’t know what would have happened next, if Bethany’s mother hadn’t interrupted our little standoff. All smiles, she came back into the room garbed in a twin set and jeans, every inch the suburban soccer mom. For a moment, I thought she was going to offer us lemonade or something, but instead, she fixed her gaze on a spot about a foot in front of Skylar and me.

  “Tyler,” she said, in one of those mom voices—halfway between exasperation and indulgence. “Stop pestering Bethany’s friends.”

  It took me a moment to digest her words. I stopped breathing.

  “I am so sorry, girls,” Mrs. Davis continued, a smile dancing across her face, her eyes flitting back and forth, like she was tracking someone’s movement, even though there wasn’t anyone there.

  I looked at Skylar. She looked at me. The two of us looked at the spot on the floor.

  “C’mon, Ty,” Mrs. Davis said. “Leave the girls alone. I’ve got an omelet with your name on it and a big glass of milk.”

  She held out her hand and beckoned. After a brief pause, she flitted away, her movements purposeful and graceful. As I watched, she reached out, like she was tousling someone’s hair and then she paused.

  She turned and looked back over her shoulder.

  And for a split second, maybe less, it looked like she might crumble to the ground. Like she knew there wasn’t anyone in this room but the three of us. Like wherever her Tyler had gone, Bethany’s mother wished she could go there, too.

  That split second of clarity was fleeting, and a moment later, the bright smile returned, but I was left with an aching sadness. I watched Mrs. Davis walk out of the room, murmuring gaily to nobody at all.

  Beside me, Skylar wiped the back of her hand roughly across her face.

  “You okay?” I asked her. After what we’d just seen, I wasn’t entirely certain that I was okay.

  Skylar shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s just—she’s so sad. She’s drowning.”

  For once, Skylar didn’t elaborate, and when Bethany came back in a moment later, I struggled to hide my own emotions, to make it seem like Skylar and I hadn’t just seen into the intimate depths of her mother’s broken mind.

  “Here,” Bethany said, tersely. It took me a moment to realize that she was holding out a slip of paper. No, not paper—a brochure.

  I took it from her. “Chimera Biomedical,” I read, but my eyes were drawn away from the words and to the image below it: an octagon bisected by a ladder, spiraling around an invisible line.

  Only this time, the ladder looked less like a ladder and more like a DNA helix.

  “They specialize in gene therapy,” Bethany said stiffly. “Regeneration.”

  “Regeneration?”

  Bethany stared pointedly at the tips of her toes. “Reviving brain cells. Stimulating nerve growth. Growing organs.”

  “Do they do stem cell research?” Skylar asked, taking the brochure from my hand and staring intently at the symbol—the one she’d drawn for me the day before.

  “Look,” Bethany said. “This is what you wanted to know, isn’t it? You wanted to know what that symbol was, and I told you. You want to know who my dad is working for. Well, this is it. It has to be. It explains everything. Why he’s been working so much. Why he’d do something like this. Why Skylar drew the symbol.”

  I processed Bethany’s words, but felt like I was missing something—the reason she hadn’t told me this company’s name the second she’d seen the symbol; the things she was saying about her dad.

  “Your mom came back in here a second ago,” Skylar told her, gauging her reaction. “Looking for Tyler.”

  This time, Bethany didn’t react to the sound of the name. She just raised one eyebrow, untouchable and cool. “So?”

  I knew then, knew that Tyler wasn’t a figment of her mother’s imagination. Knew that he’d been real once, that he wasn’t anymore.

  “You had a brother,” I said, thinking of all the times I’d wished for a sibling, for someone in my house other than just my dad and me. “But something happened.”

  Bethany’s chin wavered, and I realized that she was biting the inside of her cheeks—anything to keep herself from showing a hint of weakness to the two of us.

  Skylar sucked in a breath, that same sad smile painting her face, like if she let her lips tilt downward, she might start crying instead. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said, her voice soft, her tone even.

  I thought of the things Bethany had said when she realized I was alive. You were dead, and it was my fault. I couldn’t—I can’t do this again.

  “The accident today wasn’t your fault, either,” I told her.

  “It’s always my fault,” Bethany said, voice steady, hands shaking. “My mom. My dad. Tyler. I was supposed to be watching him. Me. But he wanted to go to a friend’s house, and I wanted to watch something on TV, so I let him. I let him go, and he was goofing around on their diving board—it was the middle of winter. There wasn’t any water in the pool, and he should have known better. I shouldn’t have let him go.”

  Bethany shrugged, like that could make the words she was about to say matter less. “He fell.”

  I wondered how old she’d been at the time, how old her little brother was when he died.

  “He’s not dead.” Skylar said the words suddenly, and I wasn’t sure whether she was responding to my thoughts or if she’d seen something in that exact moment that had started her lips moving. “He fell. On concrete. Hit his head, but he didn’t die.”

  “Coma,” Bethany said flatly. “For the past four years. Once upon a time, the doctors thought he might wake up. There were some experimental treatments, but they didn’t work. Now they say he’s brain-dead. It doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s gone.”

  I tried to imagine what must have been going through her head at that moment, how she must feel, but I couldn’t. I had my reasons for keeping people at arm�
�s length, and she had hers. My dad and I barely even spoke. My mother had left when I was three. But Bethany—

  Her brother was brain-dead.

  Her mother believed he was still running around the house.

  And her father was conducting illegal experiments on unwitting teenagers—Bethany included.

  Suddenly, it clicked in my head: the brochure I was holding, Bethany’s familiarity with Chimera Biomedical, her father’s willingness to break the law for them.

  “You said there were experimental treatments.” I watched her reaction to my words. “When Tyler first got hurt, you said he underwent experimental treatments.”

  Bethany turned her attention back to her toes. “So?”

  “Whose experimental treatments were they?” I knew the answer before I asked the question. Bethany eyeballed me, and when she responded, her words were clipped.

  “Who do you think?”

  The brochure in my hand. The look on Bethany’s face the first time she’d seen the symbol.

  “Chimera Biomedical,” I said, expelling a breath and giving it a moment. “Are they still treating him?”

  “No,” Bethany said too quickly.

  “Beth—”

  “Don’t call me Beth,” she snapped.

  I didn’t need overly developed people skills to see that snapping at me about her name was probably easier than admitting that if her father was working for Chimera, he hadn’t just taken this job for the pay grade. He hadn’t agreed to experiment on teenagers for the money.

  He was looking for a cure.

  “Why chupacabras?” I asked. Bethany shrugged.

  “Why not?” she said. “They’ve tried everything else. Nothing works—nothing is ever going to work, but try telling that to the great Paul Davis. Sometimes, I’d swear he’s more delusional than my mother, and as I’m sure you’ve gathered, that’s saying something. If Chimera Biomedical told my dad that his research might jump-start Tyler’s brain, there’s nothing that he wouldn’t do.” Bethany swallowed hard. “Obviously.”

  The wheels in my head turned slowly as I looked down at the pamphlet, Bethany’s earlier words about Chimera echoing in my head.