by Gary Jonas
“I didn’t mean to bring anything up. I just wanted you to know that you’ve got a witness. Someone who saw what happened to you and knows it was wrong.”
I tried to think of something witty to say, and stopped myself. I didn’t have anything to hide, but that’s how he would take it. But the problem with not saying anything is that the silence stretches, until it becomes something you fall into where everything you don’t want to think about waits at the bottom.
“I don’t know what I would be if I weren’t a Sekutar warrior,” I said. “I don’t know what I would do. I don’t know what I will do, if I survive this only to find out all my strength is gone and I’m just an ordinary woman.”
Brand took my hand again and looked deeply into my eyes. “I don’t know what I would do either if I couldn’t be a Sekutar. Probably something really stupid and self-destructive. But I can tell you this, Kelly Chan. You will never, ever, be just an ordinary woman.”
I could feel whatever other life we had pull us together like a magnet.
Brand leaned in and kissed me. He ran a hand down my side to my waist, then lower to my hip. I imagined my time twin had kissed Brand, her version of him at least, and I wondered if it felt as good, as rich and deep as this. I opened my eyes and and caught him peeking, too.
Brand pulled away just enough to speak, but his lips brushed against mine with every word. “Dammit, it’s not supposed to feel this good.”
“Why not?” I ran my nails lightly over the nape of his neck and he shivered. “Because we’re doomed?”
“Because if it feels this good this soon, there just might be something to your layered time madness.” He leaned in again.
The door opened and Lina’s whispered voice came through just before she did. “Brand, is she—? Oh. Sorry. Guess you are up. I mean, awake.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lina filled the doorframe from one side to the other. She wore a bright, flowing dress patterned with hibiscus flowers and a matching headband that held back all of her perfect black braids.
Brand leaned back. “I took out the stitches because her skin’s starting to knit. Not sure what’s going on underneath.”
“Let me have a look.” The mattress sagged when Lina sat on the edge. She smiled and placed her hand on my stomach. Her smile quickly disappeared and she touched my forehead.
“Gracious, girl. You’ve got yourself a fever.”
“Infection?”
“Mmm hmm.” Lina glanced up at Brand. “Can you give us a little privacy, Honey? Go tell Martin his auntie needs something to eat.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Brand damn near saluted before he left. Lina had that effect on people. You just wanted to please her, but not because she demanded it or charmed it out of you, like Liz did. She was genuinely warm and good. I think it went along naturally with her talent. Or maybe she’d developed a thick coating of compassion because of the way her magic worked.
Lina gave me a smile that brightened the room. It couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes.
“Amanda told me some of what’s going on with your body. Said you wouldn’t want that fellow to know. Of course I already figured you didn’t want anyone to find out, am I right?”
“You know me.”
Her smile widened. “Yes, I do, and it’s my pleasure.”
“Brand knows though. I told him about the kill switch.”
Lina raised her eyebrows. “Well, you do surprise me from time to time. Now, we’ve got to figure out what to do with you, girl.”
“You think your magic will make it worse? Like Amanda’s did?”
Lina crossed her arms, then tapped her mouth with her forefinger. “It’s a risk. But the good news is, it’s not a guarantee. I’m not tied to DGI, and my magic’s a little different from most.”
“You don’t pull it from the ley lines like wizards do.”
“No, my power comes from a more personal well than that one.”
I’d watched her heal people before. “I’m not asking you to do this, Lina. I can get by.”
“I know you can.” Lina smoothed a few stray hairs back from my face without making me flinch – not something just anyone can do. “But Amanda also told me why you got hurt. You’re going after one of your students who got taken.”
I thought of Bliss, and of Jiggs and Kess, and I wondered where they could be, if they were safe or dead. Or worse.
“It’s more than just Jessica now.”
“It could have been any of your students.” Lina’s bright smile faded. “How is my niece?”
“Monique’s good. Strong.” I sighed. “She still won’t talk to you?”
“My sister says Monique prays for me in church.”
“Because you healed her … no … you damn near brought her back from the dead using magic. I’m the one who killed her so-called boyfriend, but she talks to me, lets me teach her self-defense.”
“I respect her beliefs.”
“I don’t.”
The door opened and a little boy around five or six years old carried in a breakfast tray loaded with cupcakes and Twinkies. He had his aunt’s smile.
“Put that tray down over there on the table, Sugar. That’s right.” Lina couldn’t take her loving eyes off the boy. He sat down in a rocking chair and pulled his legs up, grinning as he settled in to watch.
“Oh, Shug, I think Miss Kelly and I are going to do this by ourselves.”
Martin pushed out his lower lip and didn’t budge.
Lina shook her head. “You go show Mr. Brand how you can whoop his ass at checkers.”
Martin’s smile returned as he jumped up and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Lina laughed. “My little brother’s boy, and just as ornery. That one’ll be the death of me.”
I covered Lina’s hand with mine. “I might be the death of you.”
Lina turned her hand over until she held mine. “Not today. And let’s hope I’m not the death of you.”
Lina closed her eyes and pressed her hands against my abdomen first. She grimaced as beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. Lina could heal some serious wounds, but like all magic, there was a cost, and this one was personal. I hoped that because I couldn’t feel my pain anymore, Lina wouldn’t either. I should have known she would – it was how she directed her magic to where the body needed healing.
It was her choice. Lives were at stake, and this was how she fought to save them. Some battles just aren’t obvious until you’re up close.
The magic went deeper. Lina turned her head and pressed her face into the ample flesh of her upper arm, trying to muffle her cries. And then the pain ricocheted back into my body as the magic of the kill switch went toe to toe with hers. I squeezed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, determined not to let out a sound. If Lina could face my pain, then I damn sure could, too.
Lina tore off the bandage covering my shoulder and laid her hand on the raw wound. Her fingers started fires in the bare muscle tissue. Lina gasped and moaned as tears poured down her cheeks. I balled up the quilt in my fists. Two kinds of magic surged inside me, one trying to kill, and the other trying to save.
In the end, Lina’s magic won. My abdominal wound healed. My arm rewove itself. The fever died down.
Lina flopped across the bed. It creaked under her weight.
“Well, that was awful,” she said. She pointed to the tray of snacks and I jumped up to get it.
On my way back, I stubbed my toe. I’d never stubbed my toe before. That was for slow, clumsy people. It hurt. I stopped and looked down in shock.
Lina raised her head. “What’s wrong, Shug?”
“Nothing.”
“Your face says otherwise.” She reached for a Twinkie, unwrapped it and half the treat disappeared in one bite. “Don’t lie to me.” She stuffed the rest of the Twinkie in her mouth and chewed, eyes closed in rapture.
“I stubbed my toe. It hurt.” I sounded pathetic.
Lina unwrapped another T
winkie. “I was afraid of that. Have a cupcake.”
“I don’t want a cupcake. What’s wrong with me?”
“Well, I healed you, obviously.” Lina ate the cupcake I refused. “But the kill switch is still inside and still active. Fighting me, it burned out a lot of the magic that goes into making you a badass Sekutar warrior. You get hurt from now on, it stays hurt.”
“What do I do? How do I get the magic back?”
Lina wiped her mouth and belched. “Excuse me.” She looked longingly at the next cupcake in her hand but put it back on the tray. “Kelly, I don’t know if you can. Your magic’s different from mine. You can’t recharge what’s not there.”
She picked the cupcake back up and bit into it. “Maybe Amanda can help you. For now, you need to rely on your gentleman friend out there to—”
“Never.” I dug my nails into my palms. No one could know I was still weak and vulnerable, especially Brand. He was the last person I wanted to rely on for anything. No matter what he said. No matter what I felt.
“Kelly.” Lina looked me square in the eye. “You need to go save that poor girl, and you can’t do it alone right now. I know that flies in the face of everything you believe.”
“You’re damn right it does.”
She looked at all the pictures of friends and family on her dresser, including the one of a smiling, younger Monique. “Be that as it may, you still can’t make it alone, girl. None of us can.”
Maybe not. But I was still determined to try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I left Lina to her refueling. After that, she’d curl up in bed and sleep for a day or two. She refused my money, said I was doing her a solid by helping Monique stay safe. She needed the cash though. I figured when this was over, I’d still pay her back. Her house was close to a hundred years old with all the problems that went along with severely deferred maintenance.
“Hey, look at you.” Brand stood up from an olive-green couch that was about as old as the house. Amanda sat at the other end. Martin was nowhere in sight. “How’s the pretty lady?”
“Good as new,” I lied. “Where’s Martin?”
“His dad came and picked him up after work. Just in time, too. I’d already lost five bucks to the little shit playing checkers.”
I sat down in a chair across from the couch. “We need to plan how to break Jessica out of DGI.”
“She’s not there anymore,” Amanda said.
“Where is she?”
Amanda picked up her phone and passed it back and forth between her hands, a nervous habit she’d had as long as I’d known her. “Long story. I called to see if I still have a job or if I needed to flee Colorado and possibly the lower forty-eight. Turns out I can stay if I help clean up this mess.”
“Good for you. So where’s Jessica?”
“Look, before they hired me full-time I’d been working freelance for DGI installing no-kill buttons for staff ghouls. I thought I’d hate the job because, you know, ghouls. But then I got to know them personally. They get a bad rap, but they’re mostly good folks, like Jiggs and Kess. Liz and I talked about it at work, a lot. I didn’t know she was one of them at first. I thought she was a witch sympathetic to the cause, like me.”
Amanda looked down at her hands. “Then one day she told me that she was Kin. Because there’s so much prejudice around Kin, she said she was hiding her identity, that only top management knew. I was honored that she trusted me.” Amanda clenched her phone and got quiet.
“Amanda. What about Jessica?”
“Sorry. When you called me on Sunday,” Amanda paused, “I was on my way into work to install no-kill buttons in all the Sekutar ghouls.”
“You were what? You knew about the new Sekutar and you didn’t tell me?”
Amanda’s head shot up, her eyes full of hurt. “I didn’t know, I swear! I thought I was doing this for the Kin’s children and for Liz, that she… Look, I had no idea they’d started the program again.” She looked at Brand. “Twice.”
“They’re wizards,” I said. “You can’t trust them.”
Amanda flinched at that, but went on. “So I went to work putting in the buttons. Liz wasn’t there yet, she didn’t know I’d been called in. But then Liz…” Amanda sank lower into the couch cushions, as if saying the name of her former friend physically deflated her, “…I mean, New Mother, or whatever the fuck she wants to call herself, heard about what I was doing and decided it was time to get out before more of her Sekutar got a diet suppressant installed under their chins.”
Amanda blinked several times and pinched the bridge of her nose. “But she didn’t just take them. She took their food, too. A whole walk-in freezer full of fresh corpses, imported from goddess-know-where. DGI supplied them.”
Her face reddened. “But Liz had a secret stash of even fresher food, snagged from applicants at the cosmetics company. They’re gone too, including Jessica. DGI found the empty cages. And other things.”
She shuddered. “They said there was a, uh, a box. It had a, well, it was kind of like a spider. But worse.”
I flashed back to my first brain operation, the treacherous nurse, the box. Nausea coiled in my stomach – a new, miserable feeling that went along with being human again. I choked back bile.
“Kelly?”
“Talk, Amanda.”
She tilted her head at me, but continued. “New Mother was keeping them scared. It was like she was….”
“I know. Seasoning them.”
Amanda flinched again. She wiped at her eyes. I pretended not to notice the tears. “I trusted her,” she whispered.
“We were next,” Brand said. “DGI promised us to New Mother, like some damn superfood. The way we heal, one of her bastards could feed off us for months, bite by bite. Feed off our magic, too.” He smiled wickedly. “What do you say, Kelly? Me and the boys and girls’ll help you take out the Sekutar ghouls, then we go after DGI.”
“First things first. Jessica’s with New Mother. Do we have a lead on where they went to ground?”
Amanda’s phone went back and forth between her hands, faster than before. “Working on it. Now that New Mother’s gone and taken their kids, some of her followers are willing to cooperate. But for every one of them, there’s another Kin who thinks New Mother did the right thing. We’re still running into a lot of opposition.”
“And every minute wasted puts Jessica in more danger. Any sign of Jiggs and Kess?”
“Not yet, but a lot of Kin are looking for them. Jiggs is the leader of the resistance movement. That’s why DGI wants him.”
“To control the others.”
“More or less. He doesn’t have Liz’s charm,” Amanda spat the word out, “but he’s got a lot of charisma.”
“Can other ghouls charm like her?”
“No. I did some research while you were sleeping. Kin have a bit of a hive thing going on. New Mother is special, like a queen bee. They arise every so often among the Kin. Makes sense. She’s descended from Lady Bathory. Ever heard of her?”
I had, thanks to Jonathan and his love of horror flicks. Lady Bathory had been a Transylvanian noblewoman back in the 1600’s who was accused of murdering virgin girls and bathing in their blood. She was caught, tried and bricked up in a room in her castle where she eventually died.
The phone flew hand to hand. “Good old Lady Bath had a bastard daughter before she married into nobility. A daughter she kept hidden, because Elizabeth Bathory was a ghoul trying to pass herself off as human way up the hierarchy. But whoops! She had a little ghoul baby from a ghoul daddy first. Our Liz is probably descended from that daughter. It makes sense. That branch was power-hungry with a tendency to develop a queen now and then, a ghoul who holds sway over the others, like Bathory. Like New Mother.”
“And uses them to feed.” I thought of the blissed-out look on her face as Marcus devoured Lee. Liz was somehow siphoning off some of the released fear for herself.
“Exactly.” Amanda stopped passing her pho
ne back and forth and clenched it in both hands. “She told me she wanted what was best for her people. But I don’t know if she really cares about her Kin anymore, as long as she can stay on top and feed off the power they release doing the Good Work. It’s awful. I believed her, and not just because I liked her. They’ve been shit on for so long. I’ve seen it up close.”
“Oh, poor babies.” Brand threw his head back and looked up at the ceiling.
Amanda ignored him. “Liz caught me putting in the no-kill buttons, and when I saw the hurt on her face, suddenly it seemed like the worst idea in the world.” Amanda shook her head. “I felt like I’d betrayed my best friend. Like I’d feel if I betrayed you.” She grimaced. “Like I feel right now.”
Amanda looked into my eyes. “I’m really, truly sorry, Kelly. You probably think I was trying to activate your kill switch. I mean, yeah, I was shutting you down, but I had no idea it was happening, I swear.”
“I know, Amanda. You don’t need to apologize.”
“Liz had a lot of people under her influence, like a vampire. Even with the anti-vampire charm juice I drank every morning to guard against Victor, she still got me.”
“Me, too. But I don’t think her charm is magical, at least not with humans. I think she’s just a master manipulator. She had me totally won over when I met her. You remember. Even last night I was trying to find excuses for her. I just couldn’t fight her.”
“Liz took me with her to confront you guys on the hill outside. She told me we could help. I broke free when I realized what she really wanted. Goddess, that was awful to watch.”
Amanda ran her fingers through her hair. “Kess used to have a no-kill button like Jiggs. Good thing she made me take it out.”
“As an example to Bliss, I know.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “Is that what Kess told you?”
“It’s what she told Jiggs.”
Amanda shook her head. “That’s not it, or not all of it. Kess is pregnant. She didn’t want anything to happen to the baby. When I saw the blood on Kess’ face last night, I knew she’d taken a bite. I was worried because sometimes babies can get the taste in utero. The fact that Kess is alive means their baby didn’t get the taste. Otherwise,” Amanda paused, “it would have eaten her from the inside out, Alien-style. It still might, if she eats someone else alive.”
