by Skye Malone
Dad grimaced. He glanced to Mom while she circled behind the couch toward his side. “It’s just…”
Something stabbed my neck.
Gasping, I twisted in the seat and grabbed at the sensation. Harman yanked a syringe away and retreated. Eyes wide, I looked over to see Zeke start to his feet.
I couldn’t warn him. With a quick motion, Mom jabbed a needle into his arm.
Numbness spread through me. I tried to rise, but nothing wanted to respond and every breath felt as though I was lifting weights with my chest. The world warped like a reflection in carnival glass and through the ripples I saw Zeke stumble and collapse onto the couch.
“What…” I gasped at my parents. “What did you…”
“This is for the best, honey,” Dad said, his words murky and far away.
I stared at him incredulously.
“Just you sleep, dear,” Harman said next to me.
I turned my gaze to him. Everything was swimming. Going dark.
“Don’t worry.” His face wrinkled into a warm smile. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Chapter Twelve
Noah
Midfield, Iowa was actually on the moon.
Or at least that’s how it felt.
“How much farther?” I asked Baylie.
She handed me her phone without a word.
I checked the map and tried not to swear. We’d been driving for what seemed like forever, following instructions from short texts that contained nothing more than state borders and highways, until finally we’d received a message with an address a few hours ago.
And after that, there’d been silence.
I didn’t want to think it meant anything, but that didn’t change the worry that was making it hard for me to concentrate. After all, if things were fine, Chloe would have told us. Even if they weren’t, she probably would have tried to send something too.
But this…
“So what’s the plan, anyway?” Baylie asked.
I pulled up the map again. “Find Chloe and make sure she’s alright.”
“Okay…” she allowed. “But find her how? She’s gone quiet, and I’m guessing that means they have her phone. And it’s going to be late when we get there. If everyone’s asleep and we just come pounding on the door–”
“She won’t be.”
I scrolled through the highways and state roads. There had to be a faster route. Something. Sure, her parents had apparently gone to a town so tiny and remote, the map barely knew it existed.
But there still had to be something.
“Um, okay. But if she is… Noah, her parents are nuts. If she’s not around when we show up, they could call the cops on us before we even get to see Chloe. I’m not joking. We need a plan. Like, a real one. Do we wait till morning if everyone’s gone to bed or do we try to–”
“We won’t need to. Dehaians don’t sleep.”
Silence followed. My mind caught up with the words.
My gaze slid to Baylie.
“Huh?” she demanded.
“I mean, they don’t always–”
“Chloe sleeps,” she snapped. “I stayed overnight at her house tons of times.”
“Yeah,” I agreed carefully, “but she wasn’t dehaian then. Not like now.”
Baylie cast me an incredulous glance before returning her gaze to the road. “What else don’t they do? Eat?”
I hesitated. “You should really talk to her.”
She gave me another look, this one more angry than anything.
I grimaced and turned my focus back to the map on the phone.
A moment passed.
“Do you sleep?”
I looked back up at her. Hands flexing around the steering wheel, she didn’t glance my way.
“Yeah,” I answered. “We didn’t get that part.”
Her brow flickered down and then her head moved in a tight nod.
I hesitated. “Anything else you want to know?”
Her gaze twitched to me and away. A heartbeat passed.
“Created,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“To kill them.”
I paused. “Yeah.”
“Is that why your cousins are so… you know, crazy?”
“Pretty much.”
“But why? I mean, why–”
“We want to kill them,” I explained quietly. “We… we feel like we need it.”
She didn’t move. “Do you feel like that?” she asked carefully.
I looked down, trying to decide what to say. I’d grown up knowing that there was a chance I could be greliaran. Knowing that I might have to deal with the same craving to kill dehaians and experience the high their magic provided that Maddox and my dad did. It was why, from the time we were toddlers, Dad had worked with us, trying to preempt those tendencies. We’d done mental exercises. Meditation. Tests designed to push us, just so we wouldn’t lose control of ourselves when real stresses arrived. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t shown any sign of being greliaran till a few months ago. Dad still wanted to make sure I had what I needed so that, if the time came, I wouldn’t lose myself to this thing.
He’d saved us, me and Maddox both. He’d believed there was a different way for our kind, no matter what his brother was like. His own father had started it when Dad and Richard were teenagers, and though my grandfather had never been able to fight it quite as much as we had, ultimately even he’d managed to live an almost normal life.
But it didn’t mean that part wasn’t there.
That I didn’t feel it, deep inside.
I’d just discovered something else, same as Maddox and Dad and my grandfather.
“I want other things more,” I said quietly.
She hesitated.
“Greliarans don’t get to have lives,” I told her. “My kind… except Dad and Maddox and me, anyway… they always end up in the middle of nowhere, isolated from humanity. It’s their only defense because in most cases, the drive to kill dehaians has made them so insane, they can hardly keep from hurting innocent strangers as a substitute – if they even want to stop themselves anymore. That’s how bad this can be. I mean, you’ve seen my cousins. Even living where they do, it’s a miracle they’re not in jail. And they’re as crazy as any murderer who’s already been sent there.”
I shook my head. “I want a life, Baylie. More than I’ll ever want to kill a dehaian, more than I’ll ever crave that rush. Back before I found out that I was like Dad and Maddox, I thought I might not have to worry about it. That I could be like any other human. And now that things have changed, I’ll do anything to keep from ending up like the rest of my kind. I want to just live, and nothing we were made for can compete with having the freedom to simply do that. Nothing.”
She bit her lip, staying silent for a moment. “And Chloe?”
I paused. I knew what she was asking.
But she was also my sister, ‘step’ or whatever be damned, and Chloe’s best friend to boot. I had no idea how to reassure her of the degree to which her friend wasn’t in danger from me, because awkward didn’t even come close to describing it.
I wanted to do plenty of things with Chloe. Killing her definitely wasn’t one of them.
“Chloe’s safe,” I managed.
She glanced to me.
“I swear,” I continued.
Baylie paused, watching me from the corner of her eye. She gave a small nod.
I let out a breath, returning my attention to the phone. The arrow on the GPS had moved quite a bit while we’d been talking, and now showed us closing in on Midfield.
Finally.
The sun was past the horizon by the time we pulled into the town, though the moon was bright and turned everything to shades of silver and blue. Streetlights were few and far between, and when we turned onto the street of the address Chloe had sent, the lights vanished entirely. Darkened houses lined the road, their yards higher than the sidewalks and separa
ted from them by short stairways and stone-walled drop-offs. Old trees towered above it all, leaving deep shadows within which the house numbers were lost.
“There,” Baylie said.
I glanced over to where she pointed. In the driveway of a massive Victorian house, the Kowalskis’ green sedan was parked. Most of the lights in the house were off, though a few still shone from the second floor, and the majority of the curtains were drawn. On the steps to the sidewalk, however, an African-American girl sat with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
Baylie pulled over a few houses shy of the Victorian. Pushing open the doors, we climbed from the car and started across the street.
The girl looked up from her hands as she heard us come closer. She was young, maybe only fifteen, and her eyes were a startling shade of greenish tan.
Her brow drew down with caution when she spotted us.
“Hey,” Baylie said. I could hear the tension in her voice. “Do you, um… do you live here?”
The girl took a moment before nodding.
Baylie glanced to me. “We’re looking for someone,” she continued to the girl. “A friend. Her name’s Chloe. We–”
The girl scrambled to her feet. “Wait, you know Chloe? You–”
She cut off, her caution returning with a hefty dose of distrust. Swallowing hard, she glanced around. “What’d you come here for?”
Baylie hesitated. “We’re a little worried about her.”
The girl’s guarded expression didn’t change. “Why?”
Baylie gave me a quick look again and I could see the same wariness in her eyes that was probably in mine. The girl seemed like she was checking that we weren’t enemy spies or something, and it left me on edge. Chloe still hadn’t contacted us. If something was wrong and this girl was a part of it…
I drew a breath, focusing on staying calm.
“We don’t think she wanted to come,” I risked saying. “And we’re not sure why she had to–”
“You’re not?”
I paused and then shook my head.
The girl bit her lip and cast a glance to the house. Nothing had changed.
“Come on,” she said, motioning to the shadows of the sidewalk beyond the house.
My brow twitched lower. We followed her down the block.
“Listen, um, your friend,” she tried. “She’s… there’s special considerations for her, and it sounds like she hasn’t said anything, so–”
“She’s not human,” Baylie interrupted.
The girl paused. “You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” She blinked a few times, visibly resetting. “Okay, well, um … in that case, maybe…”
The girl’s gaze went back toward the house. Her brow flickered down and she bit her lip again. I couldn’t make sense of the debate that seemed to be raging behind her eyes.
“What’s going on?” I asked, struggling with the urge to turn around and head straight inside after Chloe right now.
“Can you help her?” the girl asked, looking back to me.
“What are they doing to her?” I pressed, my heart pounding.
She trembled. “Something really wrong.”
I headed for the house.
“No,” the girl protested, chasing after me and grabbing my arm.
I ripped it away before my skin could change.
“Please,” she begged in a whisper. “My grandfather… he has a lot of security and her parents are watching her too. You’ll never make it in there without the police coming.”
She drew a shaky breath. “But I can get her out. Just park your car farther down the street and keep an eye on the house. When we come outside, be ready to go.”
The girl started past us.
“Wait,” Baylie said. “Who are you?”
“Ellie.”
“Why are you helping us?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Because maybe old stories can be true.”
My brow drew down in alarm. That sounded so like something I’d said to Chloe weeks ago.
Ellie glanced back toward the house. “Now hurry. Please. I’ll have her out of there as soon as I can.”
Without another word, she ran for the house.
I stared after her.
“Noah?” Baylie prompted.
I blinked, pulling my gaze to Baylie.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
I paused. There wasn’t another option, short of breaking the door down.
“Wait,” I allowed. “For the moment, anyway. And have the car ready to get the hell out of this place the moment we have Chloe back again.”
Chapter Thirteen
Chloe
The world was dark. Thick fog surrounded me, dampening everything. I couldn’t feel my body and my thoughts were like eels, slipping away between my fingers when I tried to grab at them.
“…sorry about earlier,” came a girl’s voice. “Listen, why don’t you all get some sleep? I can watch her for a while.”
“I’d rather we stayed here.”
Mom. Anger rose in me, though I couldn’t seem to hang onto the reason why.
“She’s going to be out for a few hours yet,” the girl said. “Don’t worry. If anything changes, I’ll come get you.”
“Young lady,” Dad said. “I appreciate your offer, but her condition is–”
“I know about her condition. Grandpa told me. And about the treatments as well.”
There was a pause.
“I think she’s going to need you a lot more after she wakes up than now, don’t you?”
Another pause followed.
“We’ll be right down the hall,” Mom said.
I fought to pry my eyes open as footsteps creaked on the floor, moving away from me. My body felt encased in cotton, and about three sizes too big, and nothing wanted to move.
A door shut. I could feel my heart pounding. The floor closer to me squeaked.
Something slid on the thick flesh of my arm, pulling off from it with a pain like an insect bite and then being replaced by pressure a heartbeat later.
“Please be okay,” the girl whispered as though to herself. “Please.”
My arm lifted and fell as someone picked it up, wrapped something around it and then returned it to a soft surface. A moment passed, and then the entire series of sensations repeated on my other arm.
“Wake up,” the girl urged. “Come on. Be okay and wake up.”
I wanted to respond. To ask what had happened to me. Her voice was starting to seem familiar, though a weird, panicky feeling came with the recollection.
My heart pounded harder. That feeling was important. Something had happened. Something bad. I needed to run.
I had to get out of here.
The panic grew. An ache spread through me, permeating both the fog and the dense clay my body felt like it’d become.
My eyes opened.
A white blur lay in front of me, and slowly resolved itself into a narrow bed. Pale moonlight streamed through the gauzy curtains of the window to my left, lessening the shadows of the small room. A shut door waited on the opposite wall, with a tall dresser at its side.
I pulled my gaze to the right, finding the old man’s granddaughter standing next to the bed.
Relief filled her face. Quickly, she reached for the blanket covering me.
“I’m going to move you, okay?” she whispered while she tugged it aside. “I need you to help me, though. I-I know it’s hard, just please do everything you can.”
I didn’t respond. The ache was building into a burn, like someone was slowly turning up the heat on my skin.
She gave a swift look to the door, and then she took my legs, pulling them to the side and off the bed. Moving quickly, she turned and slid her hands under my arms. With a grimace, she hefted me up into a sitting position.
My hand caught the edge of the bed, bracing me whil
e the world swam. I dropped my gaze to the floor.
“What…” I managed, my voice hoarse and choked.
My words trailed off. I was in a blue hospital gown and cotton shorts, with the back of the shirt left open to the air. On either side of the bed, IV bags hung from metal supports, while tubes ran down to where I’d lain on the sheets.
I looked back at the girl, my brow furrowing in confusion.
She grimaced as she turned from grabbing my shoes off the floor. “We need to go.”
“What…”
“I can explain when we’re outside,” she said as she pushed the shoes onto my feet. “Please, Grandpa or your parents could come back any minute.”
Fear and anger kept me rooted to the bed. We’d been having orange juice. My parents and Harman – that was the old man’s name. And she was Eleanor – had been making me nervous. And then I… I couldn’t remember. Mom had…
An image of Zeke falling flashed through my mind.
I gasped, my eyes going wide. “Zeke. Where’s Zeke?”
Her grimace turned to a wince. “He, uh… please, we need to go.”
“Where is he?” I demanded, my voice growing stronger.
“Please,” she begged in a whisper. “If I don’t get you out of here now…”
I stared at her, something in her face making me doubt the wisdom of continuing to ask questions till we were outside like she wanted. Because I didn’t know what had happened, but my parents or her grandfather–
His wrinkled face looking down at me. Bright lights behind him. Voices in the distance. Beeping too.
“Chloe, focus.”
I managed something like a nod, my heart pounding harder as I fought the memory and the pain away.
With a worried look, she took my arm and looped it over her shoulder.
“Try to support as much of your weight as you can. I’m going to lift you.”
I eyed her petite size doubtfully, but worked to do as she said when she struggled to pull me upright. My legs wobbled as I reached a mostly standing position, but after a moment, the shakiness began to pass.
We made our way toward the door.
“Okay, just brace yourself there,” Eleanor said, nodding toward the tall dresser to the left of the door.
