The Complete Lost Children Series

by Krista Street

  After another painful stretch, I stood to use the bathroom. We were scheduled to land in a few minutes so I made it quick.

  On the way back to my seat, I passed the captives. They still slept in their seats, slumped forward at unnatural angles. Jacinda would occasionally reach over and rearrange one of their heads or arms, while Father did checks on them every few minutes. A pensive gaze filled Jacinda’s eyes. I wondered if she’d been watching them the entire flight.

  I watched her briefly as I stumbled back to my row. Jacinda’s eyes seemed drawn to the large male, the freakishly strong one with the golden eyes, again and again.

  Since the man was sitting it was hard to tell, but from what I remembered in the warehouse, I guessed he stood around six four. Maybe taller. The width of his shoulders surpassed his seat back on both sides. Large hands rested on his thighs. They were as large as dinner plates. An image of him fighting Flint, Jasper and Mica flashed through my mind.

  I shuddered and hurried back to my seat.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were taxiing from the runway to our awaiting vehicles. The sun peeked above the horizon. It was the dawn of a new day. A day filled with so many unknowns of what these three would reveal.

  The Suburban and Pathfinder waited exactly where we’d left them. It was hard to believe only a little over a week had passed since the day we’d left the desert fortress. So much had happened in that time.

  The captives never stirred as we loaded them into the vehicles. Relief hung in our clouds. I could tell none of us liked drugging people against their will. All of us had experienced too much of that in our short lifetimes.

  An hour later, we pulled through the security gates into the desert home. Bright morning sunshine streamed down and my stomach growled, protesting again at being neglected so much in the past twenty-four hours. The fizzy coke and bag of chips had long metabolized.

  When I stepped out of the Suburban, the feel of the sun on my face and scents from the dry desert helped calm my nerves. All of us looked, and I’m sure felt, exhausted. More than anything, I wished for that month long trip with Flint. I knew now what people referred to when they said they needed a vacation.

  Greg had flown away as soon as we’d disembarked from the airplane. It was once again me and my family. We all carried luggage in while Flint carried the new three. He deposited them on the couches in the living room. Di and Father quickly went to work, assessing them again, except doing it more thoroughly this time since they could actually inspect them more easily here.

  “Do you know who they are?” I asked Father. I had a feeling he and Di already had this conversation, but I hadn’t been privy to it.

  Father frowned, studying them carefully. “No.”

  The three slept soundly through their exams. There were numerous scars and recent puncture wounds, probably from injections, but that was it.

  The real damage, it appeared, was confined to their minds. Now the question was, how in the world did we help them?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It wasn’t until late morning that one of them stirred.

  By that time, all of us had showered and changed. We’d taken turns watching them while chugging coffee to stay awake. Amber was the first to notice that the chloroform was wearing off. She called Flint and the twins since it was the big one, the large man with the caramel colored unruly mane who was waking up. We had him in restraints, but nobody was confident they’d hold him.

  None of us knew how he would react to what we’d done, and if he got angry, it could get ugly. Fast. Flint and the twins tensed.

  Flint clenched his hands into fists. “If need be, I’ll grab him first. I’ll take him from behind. Each of you grab a leg. Channel relaxing feelings to him if he gets aggressive.”

  “Copy that,” Jet replied.

  Jasper fidgeted on the balls of his feet. “He’s strong, Jet, stronger than Flint.”

  “Well, shit,” Jet muttered.

  “Babe?” Flint said as the large man moaned. “Can you be on standby?”

  I readied an energy ball. It was hard since I was so tired. A small one formed after my third attempt, but it was strong enough to do what I needed. “I’ll knock him out again if I have to, but I’m only going to as a last resort.”

  Flint nodded curtly. “Good.”

  Everyone else gathered behind us. Di, Jacinda, Amber and Mica stood back. Father waited in the corner, his eyes worried. Bright sunlight streamed into the room. The smaller man and long haired woman still slumbered on the other couches. Thankfully. If all three woke at once, we’d probably have to chloroform one of them again.

  Amber lifted her nose. “He’s awake!”

  The man abruptly bolted upright, his eyes bright, clear, and that strange golden color. Something in his gaze flickered. Something that didn’t look entirely human. With a deft turn of his head, his gaze narrowed.

  “Who the hell are you people?” he growled. His gaze swiveled around, but he made no move to stand.

  I breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t lunged at anyone. Both twins fixed their gazes on him, a concentrated sheen in their eyes. Ah, so that’s why he’s calm. I kept my energy ball ready, just in case.

  “Who are you people?” the man asked again.

  I was the first to respond.

  “We’re all like you.” I still stood a safe distance away. “You probably don’t remember us, but fifteen years ago, this man,” I nodded toward Father, “took us out of O’Brien’s research facilities and hid us deep in the Colorado wilds. All of us were experimented on, like you were until Conroy got us out.”

  At the mention of experiments, the man growled. Actually growled. Definitely not human. Mica’s eyes widened, and Amber stepped back. Jacinda cocked her head, that pensive expression on her face again.

  The man tensed and eyed his restraints. He lifted his head and sniffed the air. Another guttural sound emerged from him. “Someone’s breeding.”

  He turned and met Jacinda’s gaze.

  Her eyes widened.

  A slow, suggestive smile grew on his face while Jacinda flushed as red as a tomato. I guessed by breeding, he meant that one of us was ovulating. Apparently, Jacinda.

  “You can smell that?” Amber asked.

  His face whipped toward her. She muffled a squeak and took a step back. The man studied her for a moment. The silence was deafening.

  He sniffed the air again, this time in Amber’s direction. “Can’t you smell it? You can smell things, right?”

  Amber’s eyes widened as did the rest of ours. “You know that too?”

  The man’s gaze flickered across us before he nodded.

  “But how?” Amber asked.

  The man again looked around the room, as if sizing all of us up. That realization made me squirm.

  Finally, he reached a hand for his head, or tried to. The restraint stopped him. With a violent wrench, he ripped his arm free.

  So much for that holding him.

  The man tapped his head, the restraint dangling from his wrist. “I can see it. Up here.”

  Up here? From the looks of it, none of us knew how to interpret that.

  “So you believe me when I say we’re all like you?” I said. “Because you can see that we’re different?”

  “Yeah.” The man leaned back on the couch. He ripped his other arm free and then stretched his arms behind him and rested them on the couch’s frame. The ropes continued to dangle from his wrists like a hangman’s noose gone wrong. His arms were so long, they extended the length of the sofa. His gaze flickered between us again, that predatory gleam still there, although his body seemed entirely relaxed.

  The twins’ features had returned to normal. Both had crossed their arms. Their faces twitched. It was obvious they were no longer manipulating the man’s emotions, although they appeared to be discussing him telepathically.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. At least the man wasn’t violent. Of all the ways I thought this guy would act upon waking
in a strange house, out of a lab, over a thousand miles from the facility he grew up in, especially after how violent he’d been initially—this was not it.

  “But don’t you have questions or something?” Mica blurted. “I mean, seriously, dude. We just broke you out of a subterranean research facility that you spent your entire life in. Isn’t this the first time you’ve seen daylight?” She waved toward the floor to ceiling windows and the beautiful mountain desert.

  The man glanced at the view. “No.”

  “So you weren’t always kept in that cell?” I asked.

  The man shook his head. “They let us out sometimes, on experimental excursions. I spent several months a year outside running.”

  “Running?” Mica raised her eyebrows.

  “With the wolves,” the man replied.

  Wolves? Um sure, why not. “You’re saying they let you go free?” I said.

  The man’s gaze hardened. “Not really. They tracked me so they could watch and study me.”

  “Why did they want to watch you with wolves?” Amber asked.

  “I can turn into one.”

  For a moment, everyone was speechless. Then Mica said incredulously. “You’re a werewolf?”

  “No, there’s no such thing as werewolves.”

  “But you said you can turn into one,” Mica persisted.

  The man shrugged. “You can call me a werewolf if you want, but that’s not technically what I am.”

  None of us said anything for at least ten seconds. The silence was so thick it felt like solidified pudding. Father was the first to speak.

  “Your drug was manufactured with lupus DNA.” Father’s eyes widened as recognition filled his face. “You’re Luke!”

  The man nodded. “So they say.”

  Amazement filled Father’s face. “You were around eight years old the last time I saw you.”

  Luke’s head cocked. He studied Father and then all of us. “So you really did take your entire group when you escaped?”

  Father nodded. His cloud once again grew heavy with guilt. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t take all of you. There were too many.”

  Luke took a deep breath. “I thought about you all for a long time after we heard some escaped. I wondered where you went and what happened to you.”

  “If I could have come back for you, I would have,” Father said.

  “I know you would have,” Luke replied. “You were the nice one.”

  Everyone grew quiet again. It wasn’t until Amber spoke that the silence broke. “How did you know I could smell things?”

  Luke shook himself, his sad expression disappearing. “I told you. It’s up here.” He tapped his head again.

  Amber let out an exasperated sigh. “But what does that mean?”

  “I can read into people, see things about them. I can see that you’re all different, like me.”

  “Like mind reading or something?” Jasper asked.

  “Kind of like that,” Luke replied.

  I shifted my vision. Luke’s brightly colorful cloud appeared. I wondered which color represented the drug that gave him his psychic abilities. Perhaps several of them did. I snapped my gaze back to normal.

  Jet crossed his arms. “But what does that have to do with you being a wolf?”

  “It doesn’t. It’s another alteration they made on me when I got older. The others they gave that drug to died.”

  Uneasy expressions sprouted on everyone’s faces. Once again, I was reminded of how horribly cruel Project Renatus was.

  “If you could see into us, why did you fight us when we tried to get you out of O’Brien?” Jasper asked. “Couldn’t you see we were there to help you?” Jasper held up his arm, displaying the ugly bruise that had formed from where Luke grabbed him.

  “You woke me out of a sound sleep. Haven’t you heard that saying, Never poke a sleeping wolf?”

  “I think that’s a sleeping bear,” Mica replied tartly.

  Luke shrugged. “Same thing.”

  I nodded toward the other two who were still sleeping. “Do you know them?”

  “Yeah. We’re all that’s left.”

  Di crossed her arms. “What are their names?”

  “Edgar and Susannah.”

  “Can you tell us anything about them, so we can help them when they wake up?” Di asked.

  “That one,” Luke pointed at the Brit, “he’s part otter, and she’s part eagle.”

  Jet’s head snapped back. “Eagle?”

  The woman sleeping on the couch was so waifish and benign looking. If I hadn’t seen her in action, I’d have assumed she was completely docile.

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “Don’t piss her off. Her fingers can turn into talons and she knows how to use them.”

  I cocked my head. “Then why didn’t she claw us when we tried to take her from the warehouse?”

  “Drugs. They drugged all of us every day so we couldn’t transform, but those drugs are wearing off now.” Luke grinned. “See?”

  We all turned. The woman’s eyes were open. Cobalt blue irises blazed from her thin face. She bolted upright. A sharp scream emitted from her mouth. It was ear piercing, like the scream of an eagle. She lunged from the couch, her hands up, fingers growing into talons as I jumped back.

  I tripped over the coffee table, falling to the ground.

  She leaped right at me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I blasted her with an energy ball before she landed on me. I didn’t think about it. The ball formed the second I knew I needed one. That had never happened before.

  The woman shot across the room and smacked into the wall before crumpling into a heap on the floor.

  My mouth dropped. What have I done?

  In a flash, Flint stood in front of me, blocking me from the woman. Protecting me. Always protecting me.

  Energy poured off Flint. It was so hot, I could almost taste it. It was crazy how in tune I was becoming with the energy fields around everyone. Lately, I didn’t need to switch my vision to harness the fields. I could feel them. When we first met in August, it was no wonder nobody had ever noticed the energy off Flint. I hadn’t known at the time that it was my ability that allowed me to feel it.

  “Are you okay?” Flint asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I got to my feet.

  The woman still lay on the floor. I cringed. I hoped I hadn’t hurt her.

  “That was impressive.” Luke no longer sat on the couch but stood over me.

  I had to crane my head up to see him. He was taller than Flint. Huge shoulders lifted when he put his hands on his hips. I could only imagine how big of a wolf he made.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I muttered.

  “No problem.”

  Luke walked over to Susannah and picked her up. She was small and emaciated, reminding me of how I’d looked during my homeless days. She didn’t appear healthy and apparently didn’t weigh much either, or perhaps it was simply Luke’s immense strength. Luke looped an arm around her waist and carried her back to the couch.

  Father hurried to her side. He checked her head and back. She didn’t appear to be bleeding.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  Luke shrugged. “Probably. She gets knocked out a lot. She’s used to it.”

  I didn’t know if he was being serious or sarcastic. Luke grinned, wolfishly. Smiling like that, I could tell he was part lupine.

  Father frowned at Luke’s words. “I can’t find any obvious injuries. We’ll have to see how she feels when she wakes.”

  Di crossed her arms. “Any suggestions to keep her calm when she wakes again?”

  “Nope,” Luke replied. “You’ll probably have to restrain her. That’s what they did in the lab.”

  He spoke of everything at O’Brien so candidly and calmly. I couldn’t tell if it was a coping mechanism or if the way they’d grown up wasn’t as traumatic as we’d all feared. He did say he ran in the wild several months a year. Granted, he was monitored the entire time, bu
t still, he’d been outside and free. Surely, that helped, at least a little.

  “Do we need to worry about him?” Jet pointed at the other guy.

  Edgar was the smallest male in the house, which didn’t mean he was small, by any means, since the twins were built like wrestlers and Flint and Luke like Mack trucks, but he was the shortest. His ebony skin was clean and smooth, however. He seemed much healthier than Susannah.

  “No, he’s usually pretty calm,” Luke replied. “Especially if you get him in water. That settles him right down if he’s riled up.”

  We all sat back down, everyone on the edge of their seats, bodies tensed. Jacinda kept eyeing Luke. She’d been strangely quiet since he woke.

  A little while later, Edgar and Susannah roused again. This time, however, we had the woman restrained. Edgar merely glanced around warily, pushing back into the sofa as he groggily opened his eyes. His gaze grew narrow and confused as he scanned the room. When he saw Luke, his tense shoulders relaxed, at least a little. He cleared his throat.

  “Are you gonna hurt me?” he asked warily, his words lilted in a strange accent.

  Di’s face softened. “No. We’re here to help.”

  FIVE WHOLE DAYS passed with all of us living together. Since Father didn’t want us leaving the house, it gave the twelve of us plenty of time to get to know one another.

  Each day we scanned the Chicago news for details on O’Brien. Since nothing was reported on Marcus on any channel, we knew that he lived. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. While I didn’t want murder on my conscience, I also knew that Marcus would never let us live in peace.

  The official report hadn’t been released on the explosion. It would probably be months before that happened, but so far, there was no mention of our names or pictures of us. I could only hope it stayed that way.

  As for us adjusting to Luke, Susannah and Edgar—in a way, it was as if we lived in a different country. Some of the behaviors and customs of our newest family members were completely foreign. Regardless, we slowly adjusted to the addition of them. It was strange, living with people who were part animal.