Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3)

by Washington, Jane

  I pulled Eva into my lap, trying to keep her limbs away from the wet floor as I raised a hand and called on the valcrick, feeling the need to vomit as it exploded into the room. Danny convulsed, flapping around on the ground and making wet sounds as his limbs slapped against the wet skin of other fallen people. In truth, I had no idea what the valcrick was doing. I wanted him to both live and die in equal measure. I wanted him to stop, but I wanted him to heal. I was desperate for both.

  When he grew still, I laid Eva down and hurried over to him, staring down into his unblinking grey eyes. I held my breath, still hesitant to touch him, and jerked back a step when he heaved in a choking breath and surged upright, clutching at his chest.

  “It worked,” he gasped, a laugh gurgling from his straining chest.

  “It worked?” I repeated, my limbs numb as I stumbled back a step. I didn’t recognise the look in his eye, and it frightened me more than anything else that I had witnessed.

  “Yes.” He laughed again. “I can’t die, because I am death.”

  The door burst open behind us, and suddenly Danny was on his knees. “Help!” he cried out, as two more Klovoda agents rushed into the room.

  “Danny?” One of them helped him up, casting horrified eyes over the room. “Are you okay? What happened?” Danny must have turned his ability off, because the agent wasn’t falling. Danny started sobbing, pointing a shaking finger toward Eva’s inert form.

  “S-she…” he began to sob so hard that words seemed to become impossible, and my confusion became so great that I couldn’t do more than stand there and tremble.

  One of the agents scraped his fingers against the wall and took a trembling step back, shaking the water off as he stared at Eva. “She drowned them all.” He sounded terrified. “We need to sedate her. Get a team in here!” he shouted to someone still out in the hallway.

  He grabbed me and pulled me out into the hallway. Danny was suddenly beside me, his hand threading into mine, holding too tightly.

  “Say anything and I kill them all,” he whispered to me. “Me and you, Lela… we have to stick together. It’s just me and you now.”

  My lips were too numb to speak, and I tried to pull away from him. He shook his head, his nails digging into my skin.

  “You were dead,” I finally stuttered, as a team of armed guards spilled into the room.

  “There was a boy inside me. I suppose he’s dead now. Thank you for helping me, Lela. You’re the only one who will ever help me. I know why, it’s because you love me, and I love you. It’s just us. I won’t forget. Even when they take you away… I won’t forget.”

  He squeezed my hand even harder and my chest grew cold as blood welled from the indents he had made with his nails, dripping down over our joined fingers.

  I was lying on a couch in Quillan’s office, my unblinking stare fixed to the roof as images and words ran rampant inside my head, seemingly without order or meaning. I had recounted my entire vision to Quillan—who had, in turn, recounted it to Noah and Cabe, but although I was able to dispassionately narrate the scenes of my memory to them, I hadn’t yet fully come to terms with the blinding pain that was ripping through my chest, breaking my heart all over again.

  I mourned the loss of a twin I had never known—while holding onto the knowledge that he had brushed past me in corridors and stalked me relentlessly for years. Noah and Cabe were eager to hunt Danny down and tear into him with everything that they had, but I forced them to stay in the office with me, the vision of Danny disabling agent after agent with only the brush of his fingers warning me to keep my pairs away from him.

  “Seph.” Quillan pushed a glass of water into my hands and kneeled beside the couch. “Will you talk to me, please? Say something.”

  “I think I’m in shock,” I mumbled. “I feel like I’ve just lived through everything for the first time, I’m still trying to compute it all. I want to go and see Eva. I want to talk to Jayden.”

  “We’ll do all of that,” he promised, “but right now I have a lecture to give, and Danny will be there. If I don’t turn up, it might spark his interest. We don’t want him to get suspicious yet, do we?”

  “No.” I vehemently shook my head. “Not yet. I need to talk to Jayden first. I need to find out why he’s so scared of Danny. I think I know why… I mean, it’s obvious… but I need to be sure. And then I’m going to confront him. Alone.”

  Quillan’s frown appeared, but he quickly smoothed it away. “We’ll go over the plan later. You two, don’t leave her alone.” He turned to Noah and Cabe, who weren’t as successful at hiding their frowns as he had been. “I’ll deliver my lecture and be back in an hour. Nobody leaves this room, understood?”

  He extracted a grunt out of Noah before grabbing his briefcase and storming out of the room, his shoulders tight with anxiety.

  “I always hated that guy,” Cabe admitted, picking up my legs so that he could sit beside me on the couch. “Never liked him for a second.”

  “Not helping.” I scrubbed a hand over my face.

  The chill of premonition still sat on my shoulders. I couldn’t seem to shake it off. I felt the need to turn for a paper and pencil again, but I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle. I no longer wanted to know about the messenger, about Danny. My eyes kept straying to the notepad on Quillan’s desk anyway, and eventually Noah picked it up, snagged a pen, and handed it to me.

  I took the items from him silently, touching pen to paper almost unwillingly. As much as my mind rebelled against the task, my fingers automatically moved into motion, outlining another desk. I almost pulled back from the vision, but something about the desk was familiar, and so I kept drawing. A sense of urgency settled over me as I looked up from the page to Quillan’s desk, which was turned diagonally so that the back was facing the window and the front was facing the door. It was the exact angle of the desk I had just drawn. The urgent feeling swelled, building inside me until I was propelled to stand and move toward the piece of furniture. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a sudden and overwhelming impulse to duck beneath the desk.

  I crouched down, warring with my instincts even as I pushed the chair away. Eventually, it became too difficult to fight, and I checked the empty space beneath the desk before crawling in and sitting down, the notebook tucked into my lap. Noah and Cabe came around to stand beside me, and I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were suddenly worrying for my sanity. I put a finger to my lips, still unable to shake the premonition that rode me, and pulled them down to my level.

  Cabe was the first to join me, hunching beneath the desk to face me, his legs stretched out on either side of mine. Noah crawled in behind me, needing to sit me on his lap so that we could all fit inside the cramped space with our legs tangling in the middle. I held my finger to my lips again and only a second later, the door to the office burst open. I heard the gentle thud of booted feet walking over the carpet before the person paused. The static sound of a radio-transceiver filled the room.

  “Top floor of faculty offices have been cleared,” a male voice declared.

  “Received,” came the reply. “Faculty hostages have been moved to the common area of the administration building and all phones have been confiscated. Close off entries and exits.”

  “Consider it done,” the man said, striding back to the hallway and closing the door behind him.

  Cabe mouthed, “What the hell?”

  I didn’t know how to reply. I had no idea what was going on, so I only shrugged at him, wide-eyed. Noah pulled his phone out and I saw him call Quillan. It didn’t even ring—his screen flashed, saying that the number was busy. I no longer felt the burning need to hide beneath the desk, but that might have simply been because the odd forecasting had run its course.

  I placed the notebook aside and whispered, “Did he say hostages?”

  “That’s what I heard.” Noah’s voice was low against my neck. “Do we need to stay in here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should
, just in case.”

  Cabe shifted so that his legs were turned out, giving Noah room to partially untangle himself as I sat between his thighs, my feet notched in Cabe’s lap. Noah scrolled through his phone again, selecting Silas’s contact this time.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “Something’s happening at the college. I don’t know. Something about hostages and confiscating phones. We’re hiding under the desk in Miro’s office.” He paused, and I heard Silas’s muted voice on the other end before Cabe started talking again. “Because Seph went all vacant-eyed like she does when she has her visions and just crawled under, so we went with her. Right. Okay. Sure.”

  He hung up, turning the phone to silent and laying it on the ground where he would be able to see the screen light up. I checked my phone to make sure that it was on silent as well, and then decided to try and call Poison and Clarin while I was at it. Neither of their phones rang. Cabe turned his own phone to silent and we waited there nervously until Noah’s phone vibrated.

  He picked it up. “What’s up. What? Are you serious?” He listened for a second, and then groaned quietly. “No… they said admin building. That’s where we are. Yeah, okay. Give them Cabe’s number, he’s better at talking to people. Okay. Bye.”

  He hung up and I twisted to look at him, my eyebrows arching.

  “Well?” Cabe prompted.

  “It’s a human.” Noah sounded shocked. “Some guy who applied to the college and got rejected. He’s got a machine gun and a few of his friends backing him up. They’ve managed to round up almost three-hundred people on the ground floor of this building and they’ve barricaded themselves in.”

  “Ahh…” Cabe’s forehead pulled into a frown. “What the—Why?”

  “Apparently…” Noah swallowed, seemingly unsure of his next words. “Apparently he released a statement to the human press that he was going to eradicate Maple Falls of mutants. I’m guessing we’re the mutants. Nobody knows how he found out about us, but Silas is already inside his hard-drive and he has a lot of information that he shouldn’t have.”

  “What?” Cabe and I both choked out at the same time.

  “That doesn’t even… how can…” I struggled to articulate myself. “Shouldn’t there be an insane level of security around here or something, like the high school? Where are Andrei and Hans? I haven’t seen them since I had my vision.”

  “Keep quiet,” Noah cautioned in a whisper. “They were supposed to be waiting at the end of the walkway so that they couldn’t overhear what we were talking about in here. I’m guessing they got herded downstairs with everyone else.”

  “Why didn’t we hear anyone screaming?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as Noah’s.

  “Well… probably because nobody has been hurt yet,” Cabe replied, rubbing at his temple. “They won’t actually shoot anyone. He called them hostages, so he must be after something.”

  “Probably,” Noah affirmed. “The news team is going to call you soon, Cabe. Silas is finding out what he can. He said we should stay hidden. We’re likely the only non-hostages with access to this building right now. They’re going to need us at some point.”

  A shiver caught me unawares, and Noah looped his arms around my front. “Don’t worry, little ghost.”

  I nodded wordlessly, but I still startled when Cabe’s phone lit up. He answered it quietly, communicating with someone I guessed to be human, as he steered clear of mentioning anything to do with the Zevs.

  “They want us to stay here,” he said after the call was over. “Remain calm and all that crap. The Klovoda should be calling soon with a revised plan.”

  As if on cue, all of our phones lit up at the same time. I grabbed mine, seeing Jayden’s contact, and accepted the call.

  “Having a decent morning, Wonderkid?” he greeted dryly.

  “You have no idea,” I muttered.

  “Well, as your handler, it’s my pleasure to give you your first mission. Are you ready?”

  “That depends. What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay the hell where you are. Don’t try to be superwoman right now. I mean this in the kindest way possible… but this requires more finesse than your particular brand of havoc.”

  Despite the veiled insult, and our current situation, I wanted to laugh. I bit it back and simply replied, “Right. Okay.”

  He paused, and I could feel the tension that crackled through the phone.

  “There’s something else.” He sounded hesitant… or maybe I was just growing accustomed to recognising when a person was withholding information from me.

  “What is it?” I prompted.

  “I think Weston set this up,” he admitted, his tone considerably lower than it had been before.

  I fumbled with the phone and it slipped out of my fingers, banging against my knee and disappearing between my legs. Noah, who had apparently already finished his phone call, slipped an arm beneath my thighs and lifted me up, reaching beneath me for the phone and handing it back.

  “W-what?” I whispered into the receiver. “What did you say?”

  “Weston,” Jayden reiterated. “Lord Henry Weston. The Voda. I assume you know who I’m talking about.”

  “How? Why? I don’t understand.”

  “There’s absolutely no way this could have happened without his help. I’m sure he’s expecting you to make a horrible scene in an attempt to save your friends, which will of course be documented by the human press about to descend on that college. He wants to parade your strength in front of the human world. It’ll be an even more effective warning than an actual warning, because it’ll look like he’s been hiding his super-secret deadly weapon away from the government, which is exactly what he’s been doing, but still… it’ll have more of an impact if they accidently find out about you.”

  “This is his idea of protecting the Zevs from humans?” I groaned. “I think a better protection would have been to keep the crazy guy with the machine gun out of the college in the first place.”

  “Unfortunately, you are not the Voda,” Jayden replied, an edge of sarcasm in his tone. “So common sense need not apply.”

  “Fine. I won’t budge. But you’re getting help, right?”

  “Don’t worry. We already have agents surrounding the building. We’re going to let the humans deal with this—we’ll act like the helpless little innocents that we aren’t, unless intervention is needed. So, this might take a while. Might as well get comfortable. Can you lock the door?”

  “Someone came in before; they know that the door isn’t supposed to be locked.”

  “Stay hidden then.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll call if anything changes.”

  He hung up, and I glanced back and forth between Noah and Cabe. They were having a silent conversation with their eyes, and judging by their expressions, they had been told the same thing as me. Noah’s arm was still looped beneath my thighs so I lifted myself up, allowing him to extract it before I settled between his legs again.

  “It feels wrong,” I eventually admitted. “Hiding up here and doing nothing.”

  “They just want attention.” Cabe’s hand wound around my ankle, shifting my foot slightly.

  I realised that I had been digging it into an uncomfortable place, and I blushed, tucking it beneath his thigh instead. We were so cramped up… it was difficult to tell what was pressing against what.

  Cabe caught my blush and leaned around the side of the desk. “There has to be a better place to hide than this.”

  The couch was the only other piece of furniture in the room, other than a bookshelf and the built-in cupboards that stretched along the back wall. Cabe carefully extracted himself and glanced toward the door before walking over to the cupboard and prying one of the doors open. He motioned us over and since I was the only one who could see him, I stood and tugged on Noah’s shirt until he stood with me. I tried to walk as silently as Cabe had as I approached and peered into the cupboard, finding it entirely empty. Quilla
n still hadn’t had a chance to move in properly, it seemed. There were shelves on the side closest to the window, but since it stretched along the entire back wall, there was still plenty of space to hide comfortably.

  Cabe climbed in and sat down with his back against the shelves. I went after him, standing straight with plenty of room still above my head as Noah sat back against the other side, closing the door behind him. The cupboard was immediately drenched in darkness and I crouched down between the two of them, unsurprised when they both reached for me at the same time. Each of my hands were captured, and I felt the tug in two different directions.

  “Oooph,” I protested quietly, causing one of them to chuckle.

  “Should we take shifts?” Cabe asked, releasing my hand.

  “Probably a good idea.” Noah sounded quietly amused. “Go ahead, Seph, pick your favourite Adair.”

  I rolled my eyes, but in the darkness they couldn’t see it, so it was a wasted effort. I stayed where I was, crouched directly between them.

  “There’s plenty of room. I’ll just stay—”

  Noah grabbed me, hauling me back against his chest and wrapping a hand around the lower half of my face, cutting off my words. I tried to struggle out of his grip, but his legs hooked over mine, sticking them down to the floor. His body was too tense for the situation, and it convinced me to pause. I heard footsteps outside the room and I stilled completely as somebody opened the door. My stomach lurched, and I silently pleaded that they wouldn’t look inside the cupboard. After a moment, the door closed again, the footsteps retreating. I sagged back against Noah, my breath colliding with his restricting fingers in a rush. He removed his hand from my mouth.

  “Guess you won that round,” Cabe whispered.