Hisss

by Skye MacKinnon

  Contents

  A quick word before we get started

  What Happened Before

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also By

  About the Author

  Hisss © Copyright 2019 Skye MacKinnon

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organisations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Ravenborn Covers.

  Formatting by Gina Wynn.

  skyemackinnon.com

  For Natalie, my first cat co-parent, soul sister and one of the strongest humans I know.

  A quick word before we get started

  As you will know from the previous three books, this series is set in a world very similar to our own, but there are some deciding differences. Technology has developed differently, and while there are many devices you may be used to, such as televisions, there are no mobile phones, cars or the internet. No guns, either.

  This book is written in British English and uses some British expressions and idioms. Please don’t see these as spelling mistakes. We say mum rather than mom, use a lot of ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ (cosy, realise, …) and use ‘got’ as the past participle of ‘get’ (instead of ‘gotten’).

  And finally, subscribe to Skye’s newsletter for updates about new releases: skyemackinnon.com/newsletter.

  You’ll even get a free book for subscribing, so it’s totally worth it.

  What Happened Before

  Kat is an assassin who runs M.E.O.W. together with her friends Lily (half-succubus), Bethany (poisons expert) and Benjamin (thief). While solving the murder of a sweetshop owner, she met her old friend Lennox (a wolf shifter) as well as the mysterious Gryphon, who later turns out to be a siren. That’s important because his kind secretly runs not only the city, but also the Pack, the assassin mafia Kat grew up in. While trying to find out who’s behind the murder, Kat and her team stumble across the Fangs, a crime organisation who may just control the entire country, even though very few people have ever heard of them.

  Kat has the ingenious idea of employing the local cat population to help her solve crimes and spy on people. The cats are led by the majestic Ryker, who turns out to be a cat shifter himself. Slowly, she gets closer to Ryker, once he finally learns to shift into a human, but he’s not the only one. Lennox’s wolf claims Kat as his mate and Gryphon seduces her with his siren magic. Suddenly, she’s got three men vying for her attention while she also tries to understand her past.

  She grew up in the Pack where she was forced to become an assassin, mistreated and controlled with a collar. Kat always thought her mother abandoned her there, but now she’s told she’s actually a clone, one of eight, and the woman she thought was her mother was the original template. Kat kills the woman who created her, Jacqueline Fitzroy (aka Grandma Doctor), and sets the laboratory on fire. She gets a little hurt, but oh well, she heals and can soon speak human again too.

  From the files they took from the lab, they discover that there were fifty-three clone embryos, but only ten survived past the age of one (yes, Fitzroy lied about that). The aim of the cloning was to produce an obedient but lethal cat shifter who didn’t need to be collared to be controlled. A drug was given to all the clones and Bethany tries to figure out what it did. Maybe it has something to do with the memories that Kat seems to be missing… The other scientist who worked on the project, Professor Lakefield, turns out to be Kat’s mysterious benefactor who’d freed her of her collar – it was all a lie, just another experiment.

  Kat takes in one of the clones, Little Kat, but that means eight other clones are still somewhere out there, unless they have perished in the meantime.

  The Pack retaliates for M.E.O.W. destroying their lab by kidnapping Benjamin and Gryphon. They’ve created a new kind of shifter hybrid, who can heal extremely fast. Kat manages to kill some of them, but eventually, Ryker and her get captured. Tortured and starved, Kat escapes, stronger than ever before. Her feral side takes over and she goes on a killing spree until she manages to free Ryker. Gryphon is missing though and she traces him to the Pack, where he’s walking around a free man. Has he betrayed them? Kat confronts him and she’s taken to the Pack’s leaders in a collar. It’s all a ruse though and together, Kat and Gryphon kill them all.

  Sadly, the Pack destroyed their M.E.O.W. headquarters, so they’re now living in a wagon. They lost all their belongings, including the research they’d recovered from the Pack labs, so they still don’t have all the answers. At the end of Purrr, two clones appear on Kat’s doorstep… let’s continue the story there.

  Prologue

  They made us at the same time. Like twins.

  We’re the same.

  Completely.

  I know what she thinks…

  …before I do. And I laugh about her jokes…

  …before I’ve completed my sentence.

  We’re the same.

  That’s why they created us together.

  They wanted to see how similar we would be if we grew up in the same surroundings.

  But they didn’t expect us to be this close.

  The original was antisocial. They thought we’d dislike each other.

  Instead, we became one.

  Being apart was…is terrible.

  It was an experiment. Separate us and have us in different cities.

  So far away from each other.

  But I felt her.

  I kept hearing her thoughts.

  And we made plans to escape.

  They never knew we could communicate over distances.

  We made sure they didn’t know that.

  After we escaped, we found each other again.

  We’re more than the sum of our parts.

  So much more.

  We knew there were others, but we couldn’t hear them like we can hear each other.

  We searched for them. Found one, but it was too late.

  She was too young to die. They’ll pay.

  Yes, they will pay.

  Now we’ve found another.

  The first of us. The oldest.

  She’s started the battle here in the city where we were created

  but she doesn’t know the full picture. She’s not realised yet

  how deep the roots have spread.

  We’re going to have to tell her or it might be too late.

  She has others with her. They might distract her.

  She’s the priority. If they get in the way of our plans…

  …we’ll dispose of them.

  Chapter One

  The two girls sit on the sofa, their thighs touching, their hands entwined. It’s like I’m seeing myself in a mirror from six years ago. Plus double vision. It’s slightly disconcerting how alike they look. Not just l
ike each other, but also like me.

  My sisters. They’ve introduced themselves as Four and Five, although Five goes by Ivy. They’ve not really said anything else, and I’ve been too busy staring at them to start a conversation. Everyone else is doing the same, staring, looking startled and confused.

  Nobody expected any of the clones to find us.

  “Nice wagon,” Ivy says eventually. Even her voice is exactly like mine, although she has a slight accent I can’t quite place.

  “It’s only temporary,” I say, distracted by the whole situation. “Our house was set on fire.”

  “The Pack?” Four asks, and I nod.

  “They didn’t like us torching their labs.”

  The two girls exchange a look and grin. “We thought that may have been you,” Ivy says with a smile. “We knew about you, but because you were working with Lakefield, we weren’t sure what side you were on.”

  Lakefield. Mystery Man. I’m still not over that betrayal. The man I thought I could trust, who I believed had saved me from the Pack, had actually been one of my creators.

  “Don’t worry, he’s dead,” I spit. “I definitely wasn’t working with him. He deceived me.”

  Four nods. “He does that. Did. It was good to hear of his death.”

  “You two seem very well informed,” Gryphon remarks. He’s sitting on top of the kitchen cupboard, his long legs dangling.

  “We need to be,” the two say as one. Okay, now that’s really creepy.

  “We escaped two years ago,” Four explains. “We’ve been running ever since. Knowing what our enemies are up to has kept us alive.”

  “We’ve wanted to kill him for ages,” Ivy adds. “But that would have meant going out in the open and we weren’t ready for that yet. Now, we are. We’ve trained, we’ve gathered as much intel as we can. We’re ready to fight.”

  There was only one mention of twins in the clone files, and according to those, these two girls are only about fourteen years old. They behave like they’re older than me, in a way. Creeeeepy. They’re my sisters and I should probably feel some kind of instant connection with them, but for now, I’m hesitant in opening up to them. It could be a trick. They could easily still be in the hands of the Pack. K4 and K5, that means there were two other clones in between them and me. Many opportunities for the Pack scientists to perfect their methods, to make the clones more obedient. It could all be yet another trap and I’m not going to spring it.

  Lily studies them curiously. “How do I tell you apart? Do you have different birthmarks or something like that?”

  The girls smirk, exchanging another mirthful look.

  “You can’t,” Four says with a wide grin. “When we were at the Pack, they put numbers on our shirt and made us have our hair at different lengths. Now, we’re taking advantage of being twins. Nobody can tell us apart.”

  I stay quiet. I think I can already. Not by looks but by scent. They smell incredibly similar, but Ivy’s scent is a tiny bit sweeter.

  “Do you live here in town?” Bethany asks. I’m grateful my team are doing the interrogation. I’m way too confused to do much more than stare and listen.

  Four nods. “We returned three months ago. When we first escaped, we ran as far as we could, but we got tired of behaving like prey. We decided it was time to come back and do some damage. Hunt the people who did this to us.”

  “Did what?” Bethany leans forwards, her hands clasped beneath her chin. She reminds me of a detective questioning her suspects, but she’s the good cop, the friendly one. It’s completely the opposite of her usual grumpy, bored manner.

  The twins look straight at me. “The memories,” Ivy says with a slight grimace. “Do you have any missing, Kat?”

  It’s the first time they’ve used my name. A shiver runs down my back. It feels wrong to have a version of myself say my name without it belonging to them.

  “It’s not like I miss them,” I say hesitantly. “I didn’t know any were missing at all until that doctor told me I’d seen him before yet I couldn’t remember. He showed me pictures of people I ought to recognise, but I just drew blanks. But it’s strange, I don’t feel like I forgot something, if you know what I mean.”

  “You can’t remember that you can’t remember,” Four mutters softly. “Right?”

  I nod. “Exactly that. It’s the same for you?”

  “Yes, but I have less missing than Ivy. She-“

  “I can’t remember the first seven years of my life,” Ivy interrupts. “That’s what they did to me. They took my memories without bothering to replace them. I know they’re missing because for me, it feels like a gaping black hole within my mind. Four has told me what happened back then, yet even knowing, I can’t remember. It’s just gone, all of it.” She swallows visibly. “I want them back.”

  Four squeezes her sister’s hand. “And we’re going to get them. Somehow.”

  Gryphon clears his throat. “Girls, I’m sorry to say this, but we kind of torched the Pack labs plus killed a lot of people working there.”

  “We know,” Ivy snaps. “But you didn’t destroy all of them.”

  I sit up straight. “There’s more?”

  She nods. “We know of at least one other lab. We’ve not been strong enough yet to go there, but with you on our side, it should be safe enough. She’s a bitch, but even she can be overwhelmed by three of us.”

  “She?” I ask, alarm bells ringing in my head.

  The twins look at each other. “She doesn’t know,” Ivy whispers, her eyes wide.

  Ominous much?

  “How many of us do you know about?” Four asks me cautiously.

  “Little Kat, that’s K8, and now the two of you. We were going to look for the others, but the Pack destroyed my headquarters and we lost most of our intel. We’re going to have to start from scratch again.”

  The girls exchange another look. I wish they’d stop doing that. It makes me feel stupid, like I only have half the puzzle pieces and they’re refusing to give me the rest of them.

  “We thought you’d know more by now,” Ivy says, almost accusingly. “You’ve been here while we were out of town. You had all the advantage.”

  “I’ve been out of the Pack’s clutches for only a few months-“ I swallow hard. No, that’s wrong. “Days,” I correct myself. “I thought I was free, yet they’ve been monitoring me the entire time. Until we broke into the lab, I didn’t even know I was a clone, nor that there were others. I’m still catching up.”

  “We know.” Ivy rolls her eyes. “That’s why we didn’t contact you until now. We had to wait until you were truly free.”

  I stare at her. “So you could have contacted me before? Told me that the Pack was watching me?”

  She shrugs. “Yes, but we were busy hunting for the others. We knew where you were and that you were fighting on our side, more or less. It’s all about priorities.”

  They’re only supposed to be fourteen, right? Yet they’re so jaded that they seem a lot older.

  “How many do you know of?” I ask her.

  “You, K2 and K7. K3 and K6 are dead. You said you know K8, so that only leaves the youngest ones.”

  She doesn’t even blink when she says that two of us have died. K3. K6. Did they ever have a real name? Did they ever get a taste of freedom? I decide not to ask. This isn’t the time to dwell on the past. Once we’ve razed the Pack to the ground, I’m going to mourn her. Until then, I need to focus on the present.

  “We don’t know how many there are,” Four adds. “Do you?”

  “Doctor Fitzroy told me seven, but then we found files mentioning ten...clones. Maybe there are even more, but let’s assume ten at the very least. That means K9 and K10 may still be out there. Who’s K7?”

  “She’s...different,” Ivy says hesitantly. “She’s still with them. We weren’t sure we could take care of her if we freed her.”

  “Different how?” Bethany asks, taking the words right out of my mouth.

  “It’s hard
to describe. One moment she’s a normal child, the next she’s rabid, feral. They didn’t put a collar on her, so we think they did something to her that made her this way.”

  I shudder at the thought. Yet another one of us whose future they destroyed.

  “Where is she now?”

  “Attenburgh. They don’t call themselves the Pack there, but they’re the same, more or less.”

  “I know the people in charge there,” Gryphon hisses. “They’re the worst. Even my father tried not to do business with them if he could avoid it.”

  Sirens that other sirens were afraid of. That was bad.

  “We’ll have to get her out of there eventually,” I say, pushing down the tremble that’s trying to sneak into my voice. “And destroy the people keeping her captive. We need to make sure nobody ever gets the chance to do this to others. Let us be the last ones.”

  Four nods. “Are you aware of the Fangs?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  She grimaces. “Yeah, I know what you mean. We only found out about them recently, but it’s clear that it’s them pulling the strings. And even if we eradicate the Pack here and in Attenburgh, they might still have the information on how to do the cloning. We need to go all the way to the top.”