by Anne Hope
The footsteps grew louder. She came to a door, tugged it open and bulleted through it. Beyond the doorway everything looked different. There were rooms, dozens of them, all furnished with cots and a handful of personal items.
The living quarters.
She saw people gathered in what looked like a cafeteria—men, women, even children.
God, there were children here. She wanted to scoop them all up, take them away from this evil place. But the adults stood vigil, watching her intently, as if they knew at a glance she wasn’t one of them. Some began advancing toward her, closing in on her…
Lia raised the knife. “Stay back.”
Something in her eyes must have convinced them she intended to use it, because they froze, their empty gazes riveted on the bloodied blade. Again she ran, her heels echoing the beat of her heart, drowned by the shrill peal of the alarm.
Then she hit an invisible wall. A bubble sealed her in, imprisoned her in nothing but air. She ran one palm over the transparent wall, struggled to pierce through it with the dagger she held in the other. How was this possible? How could air suddenly turn solid, like water hardening to ice?
The creatures closed in on her. There was nothing particularly distinctive about them. They were normal people, men, women and children of various races and ethnicities, linked by a bond she couldn’t comprehend. They moved as one, watched her with the same impassive stare. Even the kids were unnaturally subdued, quiet and expressionless, as if they’d been given a potent dose of Ritalin.
Fear and desperation conspired to rob her of what little courage she had, and a frustrated whimper tore loose from her throat. “How are you doing this? What in God’s name are you?”
“They’re Hybrids.” Marcus cut a determined path through the crowd. “Half human, half Kleptopsych, like your good friend Jace. Like me.”
Lia’s legs failed her, and she pressed her body to the invisible barrier at her back and slid to the ground, where she remained in a crouch. She touched the strange wall, shook her head. “None of this is possible.”
“Sure it is. It’s simple science.” Marcus eyed her meaningfully. “Matter is energy, a vibrating mass you can mold into anything you want. Humans can’t perceive energy. Their souls won’t allow them to, therefore they can’t control their environment the way we can.”
“Are you telling me you have no soul?”
“I did. Once. We all did. That’s why we’re not like the purebloods. Our humanity isn’t completely lost.” If not for his emotionless expression, she would’ve sworn she caught pride in his voice, underscored by a note of wistfulness. “Every day we fight our dark nature to preserve it. Believe me when I tell you it’s an uphill battle.”
She took in the faces surrounding her—the men, women and children who studied her as if she was as foreign to them as they were to her. Was she expected to believe that not a single one of them possessed a soul? She wasn’t even sure what a soul was. She knew it only as an abstract concept, a word people use to represent who they are, the amalgamation of a person’s thoughts and feelings.
Tears stung her eyes. “The children?”
“Hybrids as well. Some killed by their own parents, others in one act of violence or another.”
“But they’re alive.”
“They were reborn, same as Cutler.”
Suddenly this ridiculous story made an odd kind of sense. Hadn’t she seen Jace die, then miraculously come back to life? Maybe Marcus was telling the truth.
“We take care of our own. These kids need to be protected until they reach adulthood, which won’t be long now. Once a Hybrid child turns, he reaches maturity at an accelerated rate. In five years’ time, they’ll all be full-grown, at which point they’ll stop aging.”
Lia’s senses spun. She watched Marcus for a sign that he was lying, found none.
“I told you before, Lia, we’re not the bad guys. Stop running and help us.”
“How?”
“Wait for Cal to return. He’ll explain everything.”
As her whole reality unraveled around her, the barriers in her mind slowly crumbled. Nothing was what she’d believed it to be. This was her chance to see the world as it was, to explain the unexplainable.
Marcus must have noted the acquiescence in her eyes, because he suddenly turned to one of the others, a stocky man with spiked blond hair. “Release her.”
The guy did as he was told, and Lia’s prison dissolved in a wild burst of light. Marcus walked up to her, extended his hand. Reluctantly, she stood and took it.
“May I have the dagger, please?”
She’d forgotten about the weapon she still clutched in a vise-grip.
“The blade is drenched in angel’s blood. If it as much as touches us, it will burn straight to the bone.”
Not the smartest thing to say to a half-crazed woman holding a scary-looking knife. But Marcus didn’t look concerned as he pried the handle from her fingers. He must have sensed on an instinctive level that she wouldn’t stab him.
First demons, now angels. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. This whole ordeal was far too bizarre to be a dream.
“What now?” she asked. “Are you going to tie me up again?”
A beat of silence followed, one that made her pulse trip and blood pound in her throat. “Not if you promise to behave. No more stunts like the one you pulled back there.”
“I’ve got no idea what that was,” she confessed.
Black ice glazed his features. “Neither do I. Hopefully, Cal does.”
When Jace awoke, twilight had swept in to paint the world an eerie purple. Gray clouds rolled overhead, and the crescent moon carved a white gash in the sky. He sprang to a sitting position and found himself staring into a pair of moon-silvered eyes. Jace’s body tensed. The muscles in his arms and legs flexed. His back arced as he gathered in a crouch, ready to pounce.
The wolf didn’t move. It continued to watch him with that wizened stare, its long white fur undulating in the wind.
Jace met its unsettling gaze and growled, “Back off,” unsure if his special ability would work on a wild animal.
The wolf held its ground. Very slowly, Jace rose, never taking his eyes off the beast. The wolf approached him, dropped something at his feet, then turned and vaulted into the woods.
Jace shook his head in relief. “The Dog Whisperer,” he grunted. “That’s me.” The sense of victory only lasted as long as it took for him to squat and retrieve the object the creature had spit out. The floor dropped out of his stomach.
In his palm lay Lia’s locket. The gold still hummed with her energy, a warm, seductive purr that reached far inside him and squeezed. With a colorful oath, he took off at a sprint after the wolf, but the animal was long gone. All Jace had left was this necklace and the cold, sinking feeling in his abdomen.
He uncurled his fingers, gazed at the locket with a yearning that crippled with its intensity. “Where are you, Lia?”
The locket glowed white in the light of the moon. Energy pulsed in his chest, drew him forward. The overwhelming compulsion to run westward seized him. The more he ran, the stronger the compulsion grew. The world streaked by in a purple blur as he picked up speed. Grass crunched beneath his feet. Shivering trees slapped his face. The breeze embraced him, a silky caress that brought to mind Lia’s tender touch. The mere memory of it made his flesh thrum.
He needed to find her. Needed to hold her. He was empty without her.
The night deepened, but his pace didn’t let up. Using the locket as a compass, he ran so fast he could’ve been driving. It surprised him how well he could see in the dark, as though he wore a pair of night-vision goggles. In the quickly receding distance, the clamoring ocean beckoned him. Dirt and brush eventually gave way to sand, and salt rose from the sea to saturate the air. At the top of a bluff that jutted from the Pacific, several metal structures hunched beneath a blackened sky. Jace left the comforting cover of the woods and plowed across the beach, his gaz
e riveted on the sterile-looking buildings. The closer he got, the louder Lia’s essence chimed, like a siren’s call.
She was somewhere inside that facility. He knew that as surely as he lived and breathed. With an ease that startled him, he scaled the tall cliff and crept toward the strange construction. Was it a research lab? A secret military base? A collection of abandoned warehouses? From out here, the place looked deserted, but he felt a dark energy vibrating from within. A tenebrous cloud enveloped the whole area. Below, driftwood littered the beach as restless swells crashed against jagged stone.
A flash of light flickered up ahead. For a split second, Jace could’ve sworn he saw the hazy outline of the wolf. Then the illusion disintegrated like fog in the sun. The urgency inside him reached a dangerous peak. He circled the buildings, tried all the doors until he found one unlocked. Briefly he contemplated the possibility that he was walking into a trap again, then decided he didn’t give a damn. If Lia was in there, he wasn’t leaving without her.
He followed a long corridor lined by a series of empty rooms that looked inhabited only by spiders and rats. Maybe this place was a collection of abandoned warehouses after all.
No. The energy he sensed in the air was too strong. It was as thick as tar and just as black. Most puzzling of all was that something inside him responded to it.
One building led to another, all interconnected by a series of steel passageways. The locket he clasped began to blaze with heat. Lia was close. He didn’t know how he knew that. He just did. When he entered the last building, the one closest to the ocean, everything morphed. The place looked like the headquarters of some secret government agency. There was a TV room—where all monitors were tuned to CNN—a computer room filled to the brink with the latest, top-of-the-line equipment, and an archives room that overflowed with newspapers, some old and yellowed. Jace scanned a few copies, noticed that some headlines were circled in bright red ink:
“Shooting Spree in Geneva County leaves 28 dead.”
“Aviation disaster in Brazil claims 228 lives.”
“7.0 Earthquake strikes Haiti. Death toll reaches 200,000.”
“A riot in Pioneer Square leaves 24 dead, 15 injured.”
Whoever called this place home had a disturbing fixation with death and disaster, natural or otherwise. Jace continued his search. A few turns later, he uncovered dozens of bedrooms, all highly practical with their neat rows of cots and sparsely decorated walls. Maybe this was some kind of military facility.
Then again, maybe not. In some of the messier rooms, personal items lay scattered on the beds or concrete floor—a pair of shoes, a discarded T-shirt, a red bra. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d see at boot camp. But what shocked him most was the children’s ward. He came across a huge space, the size of a gym, once again lined with cots. A dozen or so children lay dozing in their beds, surrounded by a scatter of toys. What kind of place was this? He’d never seen anything like it. None that he could remember, at any rate.
The hum of conversation echoed from beyond the walls, and Jace warily followed the sound. It led him to a conference room, where a group of people huddled around a long table. Again, a slew of LCD screens lined the walls, tuned to various news channels, all set on mute.
As he entered, Lia’s presence burned a hole straight through him. He felt her before he saw her. She was lying on a couch at the far left corner of the large room, unconscious. At the head of the table sat Marcus, the son of a bitch who’d come after him last night, next to a blond man Jace had never met.
Every protective instinct he possessed roared to life. “What the hell did you do to her?” He shot across the room, but an army of thugs quickly rose to stop him. They gripped him by the arms, immobilized him. He wasn’t sure if his mental hold would work on all of them at once, couldn’t even collect his thoughts long enough to try. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
“Relax,” Marcus cautioned. “She’s just resting.”
Lia’s lashes fluttered, and a breath later clear blue eyes latched on to his face. A tempest brewed inside him, a deadly blend of fury and relief. He broke free from his captors’ grasp, bridged the distance between them and fell to his knees next to the couch. His palms rose to bracket her face. “You all right?” His voice splintered as he absorbed her heat.
She nodded as she rose to a sitting position. Her hair had come loose, and it spilled over his hands, a fragrant curtain of silk. “I’m fine.”
He wanted to pull her into his arms, to shelter her there for as long as his existence allowed, but this wasn’t the time or place. He had another score to settle, so he vaulted to his feet and narrowed in on Marcus. “Whatever’s going on between you and me, let’s finish it. Right here, right now.”
The blond guy slid in between them, raising his hand in a gesture of surrender. “Take it easy. This doesn’t have to end in violence.”
“I didn’t start this. He did.” Jace pointed an accusing finger at Marcus. “He brought this on when he went after Lia.”
“Settle down.” The blond man pushed at Jace’s chest, fought to hold him back.
“Don’t bother, Cal,” Marcus said to his buddy. “The guy’s an idiot. He can’t see when someone’s trying to help him.”
“Your brand of help, I can do without.”
Marcus shoved his way past Cal, until he stood nose to nose with Jace. “If you stop running your mouth long enough to hear us out, you might actually learn a thing or two. You have no idea what’s at stake.”
“Listen to them, Jace.” Lia’s voice punctured the bubble of rage enveloping him. He looked at her beautiful face, felt peace chomp away at the anger. “They’re like you. All of them.”
Curiosity got the better of him. “Like me how?”
“You’re what we call a Hybrid,” Cal explained. “A cross between a Kleptopsych and a human.”
That one word, Kleptopsych, sent a potent dose of apprehension shooting through his bloodstream. He’d heard it before, from Diane. “What the goddamn hell is a Kleptopsych?”
“Have a seat and I’ll tell you.” Cal gestured to the spot on the couch next to Lia. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. And I’m convinced time is a commodity we just don’t have.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jace reluctantly took a seat, but only because it allowed him to stay close to Lia. If they pulled anything funny, he’d be quick to react.
“You don’t trust us.” Cal studied him with probing gray eyes.
“Right about now,” Jace answered, “I don’t trust my own shadow. If you don’t start talking soon, I’m grabbing Lia and getting out of this metal trap faster than you can blink.”
Cal didn’t seem fazed. Jace had a feeling he’d heard those words before, plenty of times. He turned to the others, gestured with his arm, and they all filed out of the room. All but Marcus and some redhead. She stood in the doorway, observing Jace with cool, amber eyes. The second Cal glanced her way, she scampered out.
Cal directed his attention back to Jace. “You don’t remember your past,” he said. “I can tell you about it.”
Jace’s snort punctuated the air as his annoyance amplified. He was tired of having his chain jerked. “Yeah, right.”
“You fit the profile to a tee. More than most. Some Hybrids go through life unaware of the darkness they carry inside them until death reveals it to them. But you…you felt it all along, didn’t you?”
Jace assumed the question was rhetorical and didn’t bother answering.
“You even exerted that power over others,” Cal continued. “Your presence brought out the worst in people. No matter what you did, you could never really fit in. Those who didn’t beat you avoided you.”
Jace shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. Every second of it is a blank.”
“There may have been other signs as well,” Cal went on, ignoring the interruption. “Maybe you could move objects with your mind, read people’s moods or thoughts. Whatever the case, you coul
dn’t find peace anywhere. Not even in your own home. Anger and violence dogged your every step. Sometimes you wished you could just be—”
“Invisible.” Lia finished for him, her voice so faint it barely registered.
Three pairs of eyes swiveled her way.
“You know,” Cal told her. “You know I’m telling the truth. You feel it inside you.”
“Yes.”
Jace’s irritation spiked. “Can someone please tell me what you guys are talking about?”
Lia tangled her fingers in a nervous clasp, then stared at her joined hands, unable to meet his gaze. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me,” Jace urged. “Crazy’s taken on a whole new meaning for me.”
She took a deep breath, held it for a second or two. “I think…the night you were brought into the hospital, something weird happened.”
“You mean besides me dying and coming back to life?”
Lia gave Cal a conspiratorial look that annoyed the crap out of Jace. “I think, somehow, you transferred your memories to me.”
This was one statement Jace hadn’t anticipated. Words evaded him as her meaning sank in. All he could do was stare at her.
“I’ve been having dreams,” she explained. “Dreams that feel like memories. There’s this kid—I’m pretty sure he’s a boy—and I’m sort of seeing the world through his eyes. I hear his thoughts, feel what he feels, live his experiences. I can’t describe it. All I can say is that when I wake up, I’m convinced the dreams are real. I feel it in my gut.”
If his reality had been turned upside down before, this blew everything he knew straight out of the ballpark of what qualified as reasonable. “You’re right. This is crazy. You can’t transfer memories. Lia, you’re a doctor. You of all people should know that.”
“I’m not sure what I know anymore.”
“You’re both right,” Marcus pitched in, after what was an exceptionally long silence for him. “Memories can’t be transferred, but a soul can. And a soul is like a hard drive. It stores experiences. Unless it’s wiped clean before moving on to the next body, those memories can be retrieved by the new host.”
