by I. T. Lucas
“Ouch. After my experience from half an hour ago, I can sympathize. I needed to pee so badly that I would have told anyone anything they wanted to hear in exchange for toilet privileges.”
21
Kian
Kian put his phone away and leaned against the side of the bus. “We are actually lucky that the driver has given us the slip.”
They had followed the tracker to the parking lot behind the mall, but the driver had left already, and they were waiting for him to come back.
Anandur arched one red bushy brow. “How so?”
“One of the other talents is an immune and a clairvoyant. She predicted that Mey was coming for her sister, and she wants to come with us. Since she is immune, we have no choice because she can rat Jin out if we leave her behind.”
Frowning, Anandur scratched his head. “If she is an immune, what does she need us for? She could have walked out during one of the other mall excursions. She is not compelled to stay.”
“True. She could be an informant. But even if she is not, her vision of us coming for Jin is troubling news. She doesn’t know who we are, but there might be others in the program who can use their powers to find out who we are and where we are hiding. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem because no one would have taken them seriously. But given who they work for, that is a security risk for us.” He chuckled. “And for the Doomers, but that’s their problem. I wouldn’t mind if they are found out. That could take care of Navuh for us.”
Anandur’s frown deepened, his entire forehead creasing with worry lines. “That changes things. This is no longer about getting Jin out because of what she can do and because we know that she is a Dormant. If these people are a security risk for us, shouldn’t we take them all?”
“That wouldn’t solve our problem. On the contrary. Whoever is running the program will get more talents and have them focus on finding the missing paranormals. And if they are any good, they might lead the government straight to us.”
Anandur shook his head. “So, what are we going to do?”
“Continue with the plan but modify it for Jin’s friend. Instead of making it look as if just Jin ran away, we are going to make it look as if Jin and Jacki left together. But because Jacki is an immune, we need to pretend to be human and bring her to the keep instead of the village.”
“We can also drop her off somewhere. But on her own, there is a high chance of her getting caught. She will talk.”
“Precisely. Besides, she is a possible Dormant. It would be a shame to let her go.”
“Yeah, but how are you going to test her? We can’t bring her to the village. How is she going to meet her mate?”
Kian crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We can bring her to the keep and tell her that it’s a temporary hiding place until the storm blows over. In the meantime, we can have a different Guardian watch over her every day and see who she clicks with. Arwel says she is a knockout, so that shouldn’t take long.”
“Jacki must be the blonde with the long hair.” Anandur smirked. “The one who was standing next to Jin when Jin was kissing that guy. She is a looker, and I’m sure there will be no shortage of volunteers to induce her, but that’s not the same as finding her fated mate. She is an outsider with no ties of loyalty to us, and a potential spy. Unless she forms a bond with one of ours, we can’t trust her with the knowledge of who we are.”
“I can’t argue with any of that. If she doesn’t bond with one of the men, we will have to let her go. I can’t risk bringing her to the village even if she turns. In fact, I don’t want anyone to have casual sex with her without protection. She should only be induced by her fated mate. If she finds him.”
Anandur rubbed his jaw. “I’ve been thinking about something. What if we find a lesbian Dormant? How are we going to induce her transition if she can’t have sex with a male?”
“That’s a problem. Unless she is bisexual, I can’t see how that could happen. But just like with any other Dormant, she would have to find her truelove mate first, except, in her case, it would be another female.”
Males had it easy. Typically, a Dormant male needed to fight an immortal opponent, spurring enough aggression in him to produce venom and bite him. Nothing else was required.
A female, on the other hand, had to be bitten during sex. Perhaps females who were not interested in sex with males could be induced in the same way males were?
But could the bond form without the help of their mates’ venom?
The other problem would be finding partners. The clan was small, and the selection wasn’t big to start with. There would probably be only a handful of males and females to choose from.
Then again, Kian was learning to trust the Fates and their matchmaking acumen. For those who’d earned the boon, they would find the right partner.
22
Jin
As Mey’s phone buzzed with an incoming text, she glanced at it and then smiled apologetically. “Give me a couple of minutes. I’m getting instructions.”
“No problem.”
It gave Jin time to examine what was stored in her head without the compulsion muddling things up.
What had been her own decision, and what had she been compelled by Marisol to do?
As much as she resented the woman, Jin was glad that the extent of her torture had been not letting the recruiter use the bathroom.
Mostly, Jin was angry about Marisol pushing her into Richard’s arms and him into hers. She could have forgiven the extra push to sign the contract, and she would have been fine staying in the program if the people running it didn’t have nefarious intention of never letting the trainees have a life and breeding them to produce super-babies.
Had that part been sanctioned by the higher-ups? Or was it something the director had cooked up in his sick brain?
Couldn’t they have waited for nature to take its course?
A small group of people spending days on end with each other would have eventually produced couples without any outside intervention. But then they wouldn’t have the right combination of talents to create the type of offspring the director was hoping for.
How far were he and his supervisors willing to go to get that?
If they were willing to compel people into having sex with each other, she wouldn’t put it past them to go one step further and harvest eggs from the females and sperm from the males. If they did that, they could cook up super- babies in a lab and experiment with different combinations.
Jin shivered.
Yeah, that was definitely wrong, and she couldn’t stay and allow that to happen. Her children would arrive the natural way, born out of love, and raised in a loving home. They were not going to be part of an experiment, their future decided for them by power greedy government officials.
As Mey put her phone away, Jin put her hand on her sister’s arm. “I’m coming with you.”
Mey smiled. “I knew that you would not turn your back on immortality.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about that. I don’t want my children to grow up in a lab and get raised to serve their puppet masters.”
Mey tilted her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. We will have plenty of time to talk once we are out of here. What about Jacki, though? You didn’t want her to hear you telling me about the immortality part, so I assume she is not a candidate for that?”
“She might be. But until we know for sure, we can’t bring her into the clan’s secret hideout. We will have to put her in another secure location.”
“I understand. Which probably means that I can’t tell her about the clan and the immortality.”
“Correct. It’s going to be difficult for everyone involved, but my friends are going to pretend that we are a group of talents in hiding. Carol already did a great job with that. All we have to do is stick to what she said.”
“How are they going to determine whether Jacki is a candidate or not? And
how do they know that I am?”
“Because I already transitioned successfully, there is no doubt that both of us are carriers of the godly genes. You are a Dormant for sure. Jacki might be just a paranormally gifted human. I’ll explain later about how it is done.”
Jin shook her head. “Hold on. You lost me at the godly genes. Godly?”
Mey smiled. “You heard me right. We are the descendants of gods.”
“Cool. I can’t wait to hear that story. But back to Jacki. I’ll go with her to that other place. She is my friend, and I don’t want her to be all alone and freaking out in some safe house or wherever they plan on taking her.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. But just so you know, the clan’s hideout is a beautiful village steeped in greenery, while the other place is an underground facility.”
Jin grimaced. “I really don’t like living underground. But it’s only temporary, right? Until they find out whether Jacki is also a descendant of the gods.” She shook her head. “I wish I could tell her that. She would lose her shit, and just so you know, Jacki never loses her cool. This would be so worth seeing.”
Mey laughed. “When the time comes, I’ll do my best to ensure that you are the one delivering the news to her.”
Jin leaned against one of the sinks and crossed her arms over her chest. Now that she’d made her decision, apprehension gripped her as she thought about the actual escape.
What if someone noticed her and Jacki walking out? They were supposed to inform Doctor Roberts when they wandered outside the mall. Would anyone check with him?
“So, what’s the plan? How are we getting out of here?”
Mey smiled. “We had an ingenious plan that hit a snag when Jacki joined, but Arwel came up with a solution.” She patted her phone, indicating that this was what the texting exchange had been about.
An image of deep turquoise eyes flashed in Jin’s mind, momentarily distracting her. “Are you going to tell me about it? Or is it a secret?”
“It’s not a secret, and we need you and Jacki to point out to us each of the other trainees and the group’s escort. Arwel is going to thrall them to remember that you and Jacki came down with the flu and stayed at the base. My other friends are going to do the same with the bus driver. That will buy us many hours of a head start. By the time they get back to base, and the guard checks the roster, we will be on the other side of the country.”
Jin lifted a hand to stop her sister. “First of all, what the hell is thralling? And secondly, the trainees are scattered all around the mall. If you make someone forget that Jacki and I came along, but then he or she sees us approaching someone else, it’s going to ruin it. We will be going in circles.”
“Thralling is like hypnosis, it’s a mental suggestion, but an immortal doesn’t have to actually say anything to the subject. They can enter their minds and plant the suggestion. And as for being seen, that’s not a problem either. Yamanu, who is my mate, is going to shroud us, and no one is going to see you or Jacki. It’s good that she is the only immune, or it wouldn’t have worked.”
“Wow, my head is spinning with what these people can do. How are we going to explain to Jacki what’s going on?”
“Easy. We stick to what she assumes. We are a group of people with various paranormal talents. The other option is to pretend as if I’m the one performing all those fabulous tricks.”
“Can you?”
“Not yet. I’m a baby immortal. The other former Dormants who I’ve spoken with can’t do any of those things either. It takes time and practice, and most of them don’t bother because they have no use for thralling or shrouding. There is a bunch of rules for when it’s okay to thrall and when it’s not, and I don’t have them down yet, but from what I’ve seen, it’s only reserved for emergencies and to hide the clan’s existence.”
“I’m glad that they follow rules of conduct. The ability to manipulate minds can lead to corruption.”
Mey nodded. “The Clan Mother is very wise. She keeps her clan members in check.”
When Jin opened her mouth to ask who that was, Mey lifted a hand to stop her. “Later. We need to go.”
23
Arwel
With Yamanu shrouding the entire bathroom area, Arwel didn’t need to hide Jacki in the men’s room, for which he was grateful. He wasn’t a clean freak like Anandur, but even leaning against the wall felt gross.
It didn’t seem to bother Jacki, though. Despite being a knockout, she wasn’t acting like the typical pretty girl. She had a no-nonsense attitude and a ruthless vibe that reminded him of Eva. And she was also highly suspicious, which might be the reason she was immune to mind manipulation.
In fact, she emitted very little emotion. She was right next to him, leaning on the same wall beside him, but he wasn’t suffering the onslaught of emotions such proximity to a human would have typically brought.
It reminded him of Eleanor. Except, Jacki wasn’t a borderline sociopath like Ella’s aunt, who had mental walls up that were a foot thick. Was it because she was protecting her mind from invasion by other paranormals? Or was it something deeper than that?
Perhaps a hard life experience had caused her to erect protective shields that strong.
“How did you know where to find Jin?” Jacki asked.
“We got lucky. Someone who knew Marisol mentioned something about her moving to West Virginia, and we found a travel guide in Jin’s room with the Quiet Zone earmarked. Two paranormal talents traveling to the same place could have been a coincidence, but we decided to follow the thread. We found Marisol, and we got her to tell us where to find Jin.”
Jacki’s eyes blazed. “Did you torture the bitch?”
He chuckled. “If you count preventing her from peeing as torture, then yes, we did.”
“That’s all? I was hoping for much worse.”
It was a harsh thing to say, but it wasn’t accompanied by extreme emotions, which he found strange. Then again, Jacki might be feeling angry but not broadcasting it.
“Do you hate her that much?”
Jacki shrugged. “I’ve met worse. I hate her type, and unfortunately, there are many more like her out there. I wish I was an empath so I could tell the bad from the good. But all I get are visions of future events that usually have nothing to do with me. A worthless talent, if you ask me.”
“Count yourself lucky. I’m an empath, and most days, I have to get stupid drunk to drown out the emotions of others.”
“How did you people find each other? I know that the government is using sophisticated equipment to flag people talking about paranormal stuff, but I’m sure no private organization has access to something like that.”
“Psychic conventions.” He blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.
Luckily, Jacki wasn’t an empath, so she couldn’t tell that he was lying.
“Really?” She arched a brow. “It would have never occurred to me to look for paranormals in those freak shows. Most of the participants must be fakers and crazies.”
That was what Julian had reported. And yet he’d found Vivian in one of those, which had led him to Ella, his fated mate.
“You are right about that, but a few are the real thing. You have to sift through the grit to find the gold.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her. “So, what do you do? You approach someone who you suspect of being golden and offer them membership in your club?”
“Something like that. We follow them around for a while before we approach them, though. With the government collecting talents, it’s risky to just walk up to someone and tell them about us. We need to be careful.”
“Who foots the bill?” She glanced at Lokan. “He looks rich. Is it him?”
Arwel really didn’t enjoy lying, but it was necessary, and since he’d started weaving a certain story, he decided to go with it. If Jacki turned out to be a Dormant, he would apologize to her later.
“We have several members who are very wealthy. The
telepaths usually are.” He thought of Kalugal. “Imagine walking into the stock exchange with insider information that you’ve gathered from the minds of CEOs. You could make a killing. Or being a compeller like Marisol and pocketing huge amounts of money for every recruit she brings in. She has a hundred percent closing rate.”
“How much did she get for each of us?”
“Headhunters get between ten to twenty percent from a recruit’s first-year salary. If she got twenty percent, that’s fifty thousand per head. But since each of you signed a five-year contract with a large bonus at the end of it, she might have gotten more.”
Jacki whistled. “Not bad. There were fourteen of us in the group. That’s seven hundred thousand excluding the bonus in three months, and she didn’t even work full time. She spent one day convincing us to sign the contract, and another day to deliver us in person. That’s just twenty-eight days.”
He nodded. “That much money is one hell of a motivator. She didn’t feel even a smidgen of remorse for making you sign your lives away.”
24
Jin
As her sister called the others to come back, Mey’s boyfriend had to stay outside and keep shrouding them, and that was a damn shame. Since the shroud affected Jin like everyone else in the mall, she hadn’t seen him yet, and she was dying of curiosity.
For some reason, Mey called him her mate, and Jin had made a mental note to ask her about it later. It was one more in the ten thousand questions she had.
This was so exciting. She’d thought that meeting other paranormal talents would be fascinating, and it had been, but that couldn’t compare to meeting an entire clan of immortals and learning about their godly origins.
Was she dreaming all of this?
Was it just one of the hallucinogenic trips, and now was she back at the base, reclining in an armchair after being forced to experiment with drugs?
