He lifted my chin with his fingers, looking me squarely in the eye. “I have no reason to slum it with her when I have the best right here.”
“Fuck you,” I couldn’t tame my smile, no matter how hard I tried.
“Oh, Regan,” he groaned. “You are very fucking lucky I have a plane to catch.”
I pouted. “Punish me, then take me with you.”
His soft mouth possessed mine with a feverish hunger, stopping at the perfect time to leave me aching for him. “No,” he affirmed.
I ducked from underneath his arms and sat at the table, fuming.
He came to me and kissed my forehead. When I pulled him in for an erotic parting kiss, it quickly became more.
He missed his flight when he fucked me sore and weak for three hours. However, I failed at making him avoid his trip completely, to my utter disappointment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE CROWD AT Le Strange was thick with prospects for a fuck boy if I was looking. Soft electronic music played as people mingled at the round tables, or by the oval-shaped bar in the center of the club.
I stopped at the bar and ordered a cocktail while I surveyed the scene, looking for someone in particular. After two days of boredom and my thoughts running wild, I did something I’d surely regret later and called the one man who might’ve had the answers I coveted, and he promised to meet with me.
Emile was at the end of the bar. He caught my eye and nodded to another part of the lounge.
I waded through the crowd, following behind him. He stopped at an occupied booth away from the rest of the clubbers. He gestured at the table and said a few inaudible words to the crew at the booth, making them clear out and give us the space.
As we slipped inside the booth, sitting on opposing sides, I examined his face, checking for a hint of anything I’d missed. I saw nothing beyond his sad green eyes staring back at me.
“Thought you never wanted to see me again.” He started off our conversation on a sour note.
“No more cryptic statements. Give me some answers.”
He struggled with a smile and lost. “You’re putting the pieces together, aren’t you? This won’t go over well with him.”
I shrugged. “Are you going to give me what I want, or are we going to play the game of twenty questions you won’t answer?”
“On one condition.” He slid an unseen thing from his pocket and uncovered it—a vial full of red liquid. “If you want to get rid of his control over you, take this.”
“You just happed to be carrying this around?”
“I knew we’d run into each other again.” His smile held a hint of dirty innuendo.
“We’re not doing that.” I gathered my things and stood. “Do I need to give you the address to my place with Calind, or can you use your clairvoyance to get there?”
“I need the address, Regan. Whatever you think, I’m not what Calind is. And if I do this, you need to make moves. I can’t keep doing this thing with you if you’ll be with him.”
I wrote my address on a cocktail napkin. “See you in an hour.”
JUNE AND I had sent texts back and forth regarding a meeting while I spent two hours smoking by the pool back at home. I had the wagons circling the mystery, ready to crack it open. I was tired of feeling as though I was going crazy. If I couldn’t bring the experience to an end and expose what was real, I had to do it on my own.
I heard a commotion at the front door and walked into the foyer to investigate. I cracked the door open to find Emile standing there.
“Trust me, okay?” he asked, appearing to sense the trepidation I wasn’t great at hiding. “I know it’s a lot to ask when so many things have happened between us. I can show you what you need to see.”
In disbelief, I arched a brow.
“You want answers.” He brought out a vial of red liquid and shoved it into my hand. “Drink this.”
“Are you shitting me? You want me to drink blood like it’s some magical essence?”
“This will unhook you from Calind’s control and show what he’s blocking from you.”
I stared at the blood, extremely grossed out. A bitten lip drawing blood and questionable injections were different; this was severe. “Whose blood is this? Won’t this make me sick?”
“Once you’re infected, it doesn’t make a difference.”
“Infected? Moi? You’re fucking crazy.”
“Are you going to drink, or are you going to stand there and keep firing shots at me?”
My feet shifted forward, and I clutched the vial. I delayed for several minutes before I pressed my lips to the rim and tipped it to my mouth, drinking the thick, metallic liquid in as few gulps as possible.
Emile lifted my chin over his balled fist as his eyes dissected me. “Do you feel anything?”
I gagged as the horrible aftertaste took hold. “I don’t feel good.”
A hard pressure rang up my spine and gave rise to my temperature. The pain hit hard and brought me to my knees, crippling me, leaving me writhing on the floor.
It was as though another person was inside me, clawing at me from the inside out, shoving me out of my body.
The sickness came forth, and I couldn’t stop it. I vomited. Thick, curdled, reddish-black blood sprung from my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t…
SHE’S A LITTLE girl, only five or six. She’s playing with her Barbies in the atrium as her mother argues with a stranger.
She looks up, and curiosity takes hold. She creeps around the too large hall that swallows her small body whole. She can see a crack in the door. There’s a man in her mother’s bed, and he’s covered in red.
Her mother, the face she should see, remains hidden behind a cloud of smoke. She can only see her mother’s mouth—her smeared red lipstick. Someone’s blood is dripping from her mouth. Ethereal red flames radiate over her skin.
“Mommy?” the little girl cries. Frightened, she steps backward. She looks to the bed again and sees the man has a hole in his body
Her mother’s frown tells the little girl her mother is upset with her for interrupting. “Get out!” she shouts at her daughter
Someone rushes past the little girl; it’s her father. Casting an appalled look at the scene, he takes the little girl out of the room.
The girl bawls and cries, wrestles herself from her father’s arms, and runs into her room.
“IT’S ME, MY little darling,” her mother assures her. She has a coat in hand, and there’s a finality to her smile. As she lowers, the shroud remains over her eyes.
The little girl can only see the full lips of her mother and the perfect, dark brown skin surrounding it. She kneels to her daughter’s level and takes her hand. The daughter notes her mother’s hand and her knobby knuckles. Red blood stains them in various spots.
She thinks it’s paint.
“My little darling, I love you. Mommy can’t stay. She has to go away, for a long time.”
The little girl clings to her mother and cries, begging her not to go. The mother calls for the daughter to look into her eyes, and a shroud clears enough to see her mother’s prominent, almond-shaped brown eyes. “I’ve gone to the hospital, my little darling, because I’m sick. I never made it out of the hospital.”
“You went to heaven?” the little girl asks, in a dream.
“Yes, it’s where good people go when they die. Never forget how much I love you.”
Still in a dream, the little girl nods.
Her mother kisses her on the forehead. “I love you so much, Regan.”
The woman looks up at me—the adult me in the middle of the room. “I love you so much, Regan,” she says, looking straight at me as she walks. “Know who to trust. You think he’s helping you. He’s not. Look.” She points to the corner of the room.
The scene fades away, and I’m in the Executive Suites building, inside an office twice the size of Michelle’s and at least ten stories higher.
Claudette Hawkins is sitting at her des
k, in the middle of a phone call. She’s arguing with someone about a project. She threatens whoever is on the other line and says she’ll stop that person from ruining it.
Someone rushes into her office and interrupts her. I can’t see who, a shadow covers their face.
Claudette stands against the person who is wielding something in their gloved hand. “Oh you aim to kill me, do you? I suppose Raymond sent you to do this, didn’t he?”
“Raymond doesn’t control me,” the nondescript voice says.
She laughs. “Either way, he won’t control you much longer, and this betrayal won’t go unpunished.”
“You won’t be able to touch me after this. I know what the project is meant for. Or should I say, whom.”
Her eyes turn dark. “Raymond has poisoned your mind. That’s a mistake I will soon fix.”
They fight. She loses. Her head’s torn from her body and the person sets her on fire. The entire office becomes engulfed in flames.
The scene changes back to the bedroom of my house.
I look at the woman next to me, the woman who is my mother. The shroud over her face clears, and the woman who looks back at me is… Claudette. “You’re my mother? I don’t fucking believe it.”
“He’s blocking you.” She touches the tracker at the back of my neck. “This is your key to stopping him.”
“What does it mean? Who’s blocking me? Who killed you?”
“My secret’s been discovered, and the fact that you couldn’t see everything alerts me. He’s inside your mind, Regan.”
“Who’s inside my mind? What am I supposed to do?”
She stops and looks into the corner.
Emile is on top of me, kissing me as I kiss him. I appear in a daze. My mother frowns and turns her back on me.
I follow her. She tries to move away from me, but it’s too late. I catch a devilish grin spreading across her face.
Everything begins to fade away…
MY EYES FLUTTERED open. I was back on the bed, and on top of Emile, who was as naked as I and moaning while I fucked him. He kissed me, touched me, mumbled how much he missed me.
“No. No. No!” I wiggled away from him and bolted to the other side of the room. I covered my breasts and pussy with my hands and arms. “What the hell makes you think you can do that?”
“What?” He jolted in disbelief. “You came on to me, Regan. Shit, you were on top of me.” He slid off the bed. “I don’t understand. You took off my clothes and wouldn’t take no for an answer. You wouldn’t even tell me what you saw in the vision. What happened?”
Calming, I studied the corner of the room, where my mother and I once stood. It hit me again. Claudette Hawkins was my mother, and someone killed her. She didn’t die when I was a kid. She died within the last few years; maybe three years ago—when I met Emile. Scariest of all, the woman wasn’t fucking human.
“How long was I out?”
“Out?”
My head pounded. “How long was I talking to you? Seducing you?”
“Less than an hour.”
“You said it would make me feel better. It didn’t. It made me see horrible shit.”
He looked perplexed for a moment. “It was supposed to clear your mind.”
I kept my distance and wrangled on the first piece of clothing I could find. “Who’s the so-called friend that’s been helping you, Emile?”
He vaulted out of the bed and dressed. “I wish I could tell you, Regan. I can’t. Not yet. Not while you’re like this.”
The flood of images Claudette showed me made me sick. Who killed my mother? Emile? Had Emile killed my mother and slept with me for three years after the fact? If Claudette was dead, who was the person Calind claimed to be working for? Maybe Calind was the murderer.
How the hell could any of this be a feasible fucking reality?
“Go to Van,” Emile suggested, appearing bewildered. “I think it’s the only way you’ll get a truth you can believe.”
“And how do you know Van?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“Through a mutual friend.” He shrugged. “Go to him. It’s the only way you’ll know you can trust me.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the one answering the questions, instead of Van?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t trust anything I have to say. Van is objective—someone you would believe instead of me.”
I couldn’t hide the shock over Emile knowing Van when I didn’t even know he existed until recently. Emile was deeper into this than I thought. “However you know Van, he’s Calind’s brother. He won’t turn on him like you think he will.”
“Van is Claudette’s son. Calind isn’t his blood. He has every reason to tell the truth.”
I thought I nodded. I wasn’t sure. Finding out Van was my brother too sent me into a tailspin.
Emile stepped forward. “I’m glad you called me. I was worried he had your head so fucked up you wouldn’t be able to see.”
Receding from him, I put a good distance between us.
Disappointment took over his face. “How did everything get screwed up between you and me? Nothing is okay. You don’t know what it does to have to stand here and look at that,” he pointed to the ring on my left hand, “and try to stay calm. It’s my fault for letting it get this way.”
Emile backed me into a corner. “Was I crazy for thinking you felt something for me? I thought with his control gone, you would feel what you used to. What you felt before you found out you were sick. Did you ever feel anything?” Latent desire reflected in his stare.
“While I was fucking you, you mean?” The words were painful to say. I imagined Calind discovering what happened and flipping the hell out.
Emile glanced at the bed. “He’s going to smell me on your sheets and realize we fucked in his bed. When that happens, my door is open. I’ll make sure he never finds you, and with my friend, we can protect you from him.” He delayed leaving, and instead peered at the door. “I’ve missed you, Regan. So much.”
He pulled himself together and finally left.
I slunk onto the bed, holding my head in my hands, and muttered, “Shit.” Because I just stepped in enough of it to cover me from head to toe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“WE CAN’T DO it out here or in our lab.” June’s eyes darted across the quad of the University. “I have the key to my professor’s office—it’s one of the few places where they can’t spy on us.”
“We should get going,” I said, feeling anxious.
“We should.” Together we strolled toward a massive building in the center of the campus. “I’m surprised you didn’t cancel. I half expected you would. Thought Jake would give you the answers. He knows more than he lets on. I think he—” she leaned in toward my ear and whispered, “got into something last semester. He had to go away for a while. When he came back, he was different, acted strange. Disappearing, missing classes, but never got kicked out. There’s a corporation that isn’t a company—it’s a cover. I think he’s either working for them or involved with them somehow. Maybe was once involved with them.”
“Is that corporation Executive Suites?” I asked.
She put a finger to her lips and remained silent until we reached her professor’s office.
She prepped the syringe to take my blood. “You sound desperate for information. What’s going on?”
“Anything you can share is fine.” I couldn’t just tell her, ‘Hey I think another Vorarei killed my mother for a project I can’t find out anything about. And, oh yeah, I think she was a Vorarei herself, making me half, but, hey, let’s not get caught up in formalities.’
It was creepy to think I could be half Vorarei. I never felt different from anyone else. It made little sense. My skepticism circled back around, compelling to reignite my belief that it was fiction, meant to entertain.
“What I know is unfounded,” June said. “Only stuff I found on the Internet. I don’t know enough compounding facts. There’s no clear data I could dis
cover on it without tripping some serious security measures and putting my life at risk. I found out about the origins of the virus. Like I was telling you before, it’s old. Very old. Ancient. The Vorarei’s powers—”
“They can read minds and have a damned strong power of suggestion,” I finished her statement.
“I’ve read that somewhere, too. You think it’s true?”
“I do,” I said, questioning why I was even there, because I clearly knew more than she did. “Tell me about what you read, June. Not what you do and don’t think is true.”
“Well, you could stab or shoot a Vorarei and nothing would happen to them. I read somewhere that light is a hindrance to their healing. It makes them take longer to regenerate tissue. The way to kill them is to cut off the head and burn the body separate from the head. If you don’t, they can heal from the wound. It will take a while, but they will heal. Well—”
She gave me an uncomfortable smile.
“What, June?”
“You said no more of what I think is true. Only what I know, right?”
I’m seriously going to fucking choke her. “Spit it out.”
“There’s a doctor. He claims the virus wasn’t self-contained, but derived from a single, alien being. He thinks the alien being is indomitable, and when the virus spread to humans, it didn’t mirror and caused a lot of issues.”
“Meaning?”
“He thinks the alien being only needs blood to survive, and it’s more powerful than the humans it contaminated. He also thinks the original being doesn’t know the full extent of their power. At least, not yet. Because if it had, we’d all have a reason to be scared.”
“Maybe not,” I replied. “Maybe not every nonhuman being is bent on world domination and destruction. Maybe he, she, or they want to be normal, seen as normal, and live like they are normal.”
She nodded in agreement. “Never thought about that.”
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