Lust

by Lana Pecherczyk

  Sloan wrung her fingers, eyes glued to the windowpane leading to the medical room where Parker and Max triaged Daisy.

  “Are you okay?” Liza asked, voice still trembling. “I mean, the toxin… it hasn’t…”

  Sloan shook her head. “I feel fine. A little numb around the lips, but fine.” She met Liza’s eyes. “What the hell was it, sis? You had yellow smoke curling from your mouth and shooting from your hands. If anyone else got that in their system—”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Liza’s eyes blurred as she recalled what had happened. The way the Faithful in her path had paralyzed, seized, and convulsed. “I need to wash this shit off. You too.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “If Max touches you with that stuff on, it could kill him. Mama. Papa. Anyone not genetically modified will be at risk.”

  “Damn it. I’m coming.”

  The two of them jogged to the locker room and then into the bathroom with three shower stalls against the wall. On the other side were the mirrors and vanities. Liza turned on the first shower faucet and ushered Sloan in.

  “Clothes and all,” she said, and then turned on the faucet in the second stall before dunking under herself.

  Water saturated her body. Yellow mixed with the blood of her enemies and dribbled down, leaving a swirling pattern of orange as it disappeared into the drain. Opening her mouth, she let the water clean inside, spat, and then drank deeply. So thirsty. She peeled off her outer layers and remained in her bra and panties, all the while receiving flashes of the bloody devastation from the street.

  What were the Faithful thinking? They’d attacked for no reason. There was no logic to their actions. Anyone and everyone in their way had been the focus of their wrath. But it hadn’t been the first time they’d done this. They’d attacked randomly multiple times over the past two years. They didn’t need a reason, this was what they did—incite chaos.

  Waterlogged inside and out, Liza turned off the faucet and shuddered. If she hadn’t done what she did, more people could have died.

  She’d done the right thing.

  There was no other option.

  “Sloan!” Max’s deep voice roared from outside the room.

  Liza glanced over the stall to see Sloan’s head lift, as though she’d raised on her toes.

  “In here!” Sloan shouted.

  Liza blinked, reached for a towel, and stepped out of the stall just as Max came hurtling into the bathroom, frantic and in search of the fiancée he’d almost lost. His hands were still covered in Daisy’s blood, but he only had eyes for Sloan. She’d barely opened her stall when he charged through, joined her in the shower, and checked her for injuries.

  “You were down,” he said. “I couldn’t see you.”

  “I’m fine. Liza covered me.”

  Max’s wild eyes searched and found Liza’s. Silent recognition and gratitude echoed her way. She nodded in return.

  “Daisy?” Sloan asked, drawing back Max’s attention.

  “She’s fine. Bullet’s out. Bleeding has stopped.”

  “Thank God,” Liza said.

  But no one heard her. Max pushed the stall door closed. Liza caught a glimpse of his lips mashed against Sloan’s, kissing her as though she were the air he breathed.

  Usually, Liza would say something snarky about the lust spiraling from them, but she only had energy for hugging the towel and leaving the room in case she vomited.

  Daisy was okay. Sloan was okay. They’d stopped the Faithful from spreading and wreaking more havoc, but… Joe’s piercing eyes flashed in her mind. When he’d seen the yellow streaks on her face, he looked afraid. She shook her head to get the image out, but it wouldn’t leave.

  “Liza.” Parker’s deep voice lifted her head. He stood in the locker room, Deadly Seven hood down and around his shoulders. The blood had been washed from his hands. Wisps of auburn hair pulled free from the tie he’d tamed it with. He looked wild, wolfish, and pissed.

  “I’m not in a mood for judgment, Parks.”

  “Too bad,” he replied. “You’ve been sitting on that skill of yours for a few days, and you haven’t tested your limits. That’s reckless and dangerous. What you produce is worse than cyanide.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”

  The arrogance dropped from his expression.

  “You know something,” Liza accused. She strode toward her big brother and jabbed him in the chest. “And you’ve been expecting this, haven’t you?”

  He tried to backpedal. “I never said that.”

  “Then how the hell do you know what my toxin is made of if you’ve only just discovered it?” Silence greeted her. God damn. “You’ve deciphered Gloria’s laptop, haven’t you?”

  Parker had always claimed he wasn’t able to crack it. None of them could, so they’d left it. Mary and Liza had sought him out the other night but failed to find him. Turned out their instincts were right.

  Parker’s nostrils flared at her accusation. And that’s when she noticed something she never thought she’d see in her brother’s tawny-eyed stare. Maybe denial. Or something darker. Fear.

  “You found something on that laptop. About you,” she said. “And you didn’t like it.”

  “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. The chemical you produce is one of the deadliest neurotoxins on the planet. Tetrodotoxin is a hundred times more deadly than cyanide, and there is no known antidote. We’ll have to make modifications to your battle suit, and you’ll have to wear it. I’m not fucking around here, Liza. You’ll need to get it under control. One slip around a civilian—or your mate—and you will kill them.” He started murmuring to himself, something about proteins and antibodies in her blood, and then strode out of the locker room, leaving Liza quaking.

  She could kill Joe with a kiss… if he still wanted to kiss her.

  “Today, Liza!” Parker’s shout filtered through the basement.

  “Arrogant fucker,” Liza mumbled, and then found a spare pair of baggy sweatpants and a crop top in her locker. She towel-dried her hair and tied it in a low ponytail. When she met Parker in the workshop attached to the operations room, he scowled at her.

  The workshop was half mechanical parts and wiring, and part laboratory with scopes and scientific equipment. Parker, Flint, and Sloan were the main users of the room. The rest of the family usually preferred to use the gym, the weapons room, and on occasion, the multi-screened surveillance in the operations room. They all had their talents, and Liza’s wasn’t in any of these rooms. She preferred to do her saving in broad daylight. Sometimes the weak weren’t preyed on in hard and fast confrontations, they were taken advantage of over time. For them, cruelty was a slow poison seeping into their skins, and Liza was the antidote. She’d been taking pimps and murderers off the streets for years.

  “You know, I heard that,” Parker noted gruffly.

  “Heard what?” She blinked innocently. “The fact that you’re an arrogant fucker, or the sound of your pride slowly choking you?”

  His scowl deepened as he stuck electrodes to her skin, on her chest and temples. “You can’t manage on your own, Liza. None of us can. I’m not too proud to see that.”

  “Aren’t you?” She raised a brow which he ignored.

  “Despite what you think, I’m not doing this to lord over you.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  His jaw flexed. He turned his back and placed his palms on the workbench. Tension tightened his shoulders, and without looking at her, he spoke. “I’m doing this because I love you. You’re family.”

  Her shoulders dropped, and she sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you control your power?”

  She flattened her lips. “It kind of happens when I’m stressed.”

  “Then we’ll work on triggering that response and then see if you can rein it in.”

  Parker hit the Deadly Seven emblem on his chest and said, “AIMI, let me out of the suit.”
>
  The AI he’d created with Flint and Sloan, AIMI, spoke out of the speakers in the ceiling. “Yes, Parker, oh King of Ass-hats. Form-fitting function deactivated.”

  “Fucking Sloan,” Parker shouted in the direction of the bathrooms. “Reprogram AIMI again, and I’ll remove your access.”

  Liza covered her smile. Of course, his small confession of affection would be obliterated by a growling lion. She supposed she was lucky to catch a glimpse.

  Air rushed out of the suit’s neck, and the fabric lost its tension. Once tight and snug on Parker’s large and muscular body, it became loose. He stepped out of it and placed the suit on the workshop bench.

  Liza looked through to the adjoining operations room where white, faceless mannequins in glass cabinets surrounded the center table. When no one wore their battle gear, Deadly suits covered those mannequins. Each one had a different colored fukumen face scarf. Liza’s was fuchsia, bright, and clean as the day it was made. Hers, Wyatt’s, and Sloan’s suits were the only two remaining on the mannequins.

  Naked except for his boxer shorts, Parker found a swab kit and took samples of Liza’s toxin from his suit.

  “While you’re doing a stress test,” he said. “I’ll test the toxin for due diligence.”

  “Where is everyone else?”

  Serious eyes met hers. “Most are with Daisy.”

  “How come you’re not?”

  “Someone needs to make sure you can handle yourself before you’re set loose on the world again.”

  Liza didn’t think that was the only reason, but if Parker felt anything like Liza, he was nervous as hell to be around Daisy. And it wasn’t purely because she’d been working for the enemy for most of their lives. Liza and Parker were the eldest. They remembered Daisy. As children, she’d held them when they’d cried. She sang them songs to make them feel better and told stories at bedtime.

  Daisy was living proof of a nightmare future they’d escaped. She was who they would have been if Mary hadn’t made the sacrifice to save them at Daisy’s expense.

  Liza crossed her arms. “I handled myself just fine, thank you.”

  A lone, indignant brow arched. “And have you checked to see if you caught any innocents in your wake? Do you know what your toxin has done to the insides of those it caught?”

  He had a point. Joe was out there still.

  “He’s fine,” Parker said, reading her expression. “The poisonous mist dispersed quickly, and tetrodotoxin is at its worst when inhaled or somehow imbued into the bloodstream. A little on his skin won’t kill him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Griff is on the roof, keeping an eye on things. The effects of your poison works fast. If Joe was affected, he’d be down by now.”

  Liza received another flash of the dead bodies and the blood-covered Faithful.

  “It was a mess, Parker,” Liza breathed. “Why would they do that?”

  Solemn eyes met hers. “I don’t know. But there’s more to it. And I don’t believe Daisy’s suddenly turned a new leaf. The two are connected. We need to take precautions.”

  “She got hurt protecting Max.”

  “She got hurt knowing she would heal fast.”

  Liza spent the next twenty minutes running at full pelt on the treadmill in the gym. Electrodes on her chest and temples fed information back to AIMI who compiled data for Parker on his laptop. He’d tested the biohazard samples from his suit and, true to his hypothesis, it was tetrodotoxin, the same chemical pufferfish produced. Similar to what the bombardier beetle squirted.

  Parker had inspected Liza’s mouth and identified glands at the back of her throat, but they found nothing on her palms. They must be too tiny or under her skin.

  She rubbed her hands together as she jogged on the treadmill in the gym, eyes forward and steady on the wall before her.

  “Stop,” Parker growled from his perch on a workout bench, his laptop balancing on his knee. Sometime between testing the samples and coming into the gym, he’d sourced a pair of sweats, but remained shirtless and shoeless, which meant only one thing—he planned on sparring. “This is getting nowhere. You’re supposed to be triggering your stress response.”

  She hit the stop button on the treadmill and waited for the belt to slow. “Keep talking, brother. Maybe we’ll have success after all.”

  An eyebrow quirk was his response. With a smooth glide, he got off the bench, put the laptop to the side, and pointed with his finger for her to get on the sparring mat.

  “I’ll be back,” he said and left the room.

  Puffing, Liza strode to the mat. She eyed the boxer’s tape on the floor next to the weightlifting chalk but dismissed the idea. Knowing her brother, he’d have an exact notion of how this sparring match would go.

  While she waited, her thoughts shifted to Joe, and she knew she’d have to see him in the next day or two, or the sin in her system could shift to unbalanced in the blink of an eye. Panic caused her pulse to beat a staccato rhythm in her chest, bouncing against her ribcage. Parker had been right. If she wasn’t careful, and she blacked out as Sloan had once, then anyone in her vicinity would die. Just like that.

  There is no known antidote.

  Sloan had accidentally sent her family to sleep, but Liza could kill them with poisoned breath. Sloan said her lips had been numb, and that was only from having a light mist touch her skin. But what if next time she inhaled an actual direct hit of the poison?

  There were too many variables to consider, and she couldn’t afford to see Joe until she knew the answer to all of them. There were no maybes in this world.

  Parker entered the room with a collection of weapons. Liza couldn’t help wondering if she was using this as an excuse to avoid Joe, and he was using it to avoid Daisy. She’d been around Joe for two days without any ill effect, and around her family for the same. She was fine sitting in close quarters in a car, or touching Joe intimately in the garage. Deep down she knew her lack of control over her power wasn’t why she avoided Joe.

  The same look echoed in Parker’s eyes. This was a distraction for him too.

  He liked to think he was infallible, but he wasn’t. If only he let someone in, he might not have to deal with his issues alone.

  “What’s your poison?” He held out the weapons and then smirked at his joke.

  “You’re so funny, Parks,” Liza mocked. Then made a show of shopping for the best weapon. “You should start your own comedy act.”

  He had a katana, nunchaku, and a ninjato sword. But it was the curved karambit knife that took her attention. Sleek, dark, and sharp, the blade resembled a raptor’s claw, had an ergonomic handle, and a safety ring she was well versed in using.

  Being a cop, she’d had little use for these sorts of weapons. Her hand hovered over the karambit and Parker gave a knowing snort.

  “How did I know you would take that? Mary would be proud.”

  “Hello, old friend,” Liza crooned and fitted the knife to her right palm.

  She stepped back, swirled the blade around her finger in a showy display, and then crouched into an attack position, muscles loose but ready.

  Parker discarded the two swords and kept the nunchaku—two sticks joined by a chain—returning her display with a flourish of his own. The fact he chose a weapon that didn’t draw blood was cocky, arrogant, and so very like him. It said he didn’t need that extra violent step, he could decimate her without it. With his free hand, he beckoned her.

  Oh, how Liza would enjoy watching him fall.

  She prowled around him on the mat.

  He casually echoed her steps and left the nunchaku resting over his shoulder, as though going out for an afternoon stroll. He wasn’t even trying to prepare himself. Liza narrowed her eyes.

  “Remind me, what’s the point of this?” she asked.

  “I get you afraid, and you release the poison.”

  She feinted, he lunged back.

  “And what if you get sick?”

  He shrugged
. “I’ll survive.”

  A snort escaped Liza. She jabbed at Parker’s smug face, using the knife ring on her finger as a knuckleduster for improved impact. He let her hit him.

  She stepped back and cocked a hip. “This isn’t going to work if you—”

  He flicked the nunchaku at her head and hit her sternum with the heel of his palm. The wind knocked out of her, and she stumbled back.

  “Jerk,” she gasped.

  “You’re rusty, Liza,” he scolded, looking down at her. “I let you hit me once, and you drop your guard enough for me to take you out.”

  “I can hook your artery and rip it right out of your arm.”

  He bared teeth. “Try.”

  Liza swiped, jabbed and lunged, but missed or was blocked every time. He was right. She was rusty, and she only had herself to blame.

  “So,” he said casually. But nothing was ever casual with Parker. “Your mate is little Joey. Figures.”

  She glared, readied her knife, and circled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Sizing her up, he smirked. “All the others ran away quaking in fear, but he was the only one stupid enough to stick around.”

  A growl ripped out of her throat. She stepped forward, hooked his face.

  Block.

  “He’s not stupid,” Liza said. “You are.” Yeah, real mature, Liza.

  Jab-jab.

  Block.

  Then something he’d said baffled her enough that she stopped. “Wait. What did you mean by, the others ran away?”

  She wasn’t that jaded and mean.

  A look crossed his expression—the cat got the mouse—and when he grinned, sharp canines made him look more beastly than man. “Think, Liza. Why would a family of genetically modified warriors, who knew how you’d feel every time you sensed sin, want horny teenagers away from their sister?”

  “You warned them off me?”

  He gave an evasive half shrug, but it was all she needed to see red. Thick, viscous anger surged in her veins. Assholes. Complete dickwads. Amoebas. Fleas on rats. No wonder no one ever wanted to date her. There had always been a Lazarus brother around to scare them away.