33
Mama
. The word rolled off her tongue, ugly and sickly sweet.
I stared, uncomprehending, through the slit in the door at those delicately fringed eyelashes, and something gave way inside of me.
Mommy
.
Mama
.
Sit still, Kali. Sit so still.
“You remember,” the woman who’d told me to call her “Mama” said approvingly. “I thought you might.”
I didn’t, not really. I was three when my mother left—
No
, I corrected myself.
I was three when my father left her.
“He didn’t know about you.” I thought my way through it out loud, my eyes on the vampire’s.
“Your father?” Colette said. “No, he did not. I was your little secret—and Rena’s.”
We had lots of secrets. Mommy, Mama, and me.
“Colette—” Behind her, Rena started to say something, but Colette waved it away with a delicate swish of her hand.
“She’s as much mine as she is yours, darling.” Even through the slit in the door, I could see Colette’s eyes sparkle. “I donated the, shall we say, extraordinary portion of your DNA, Kali. Imagine my dismay when you were born human.”
As if having my entire life rewritten once in a single day wasn’t bad enough. All of my father’s revelations were half-truths, ones he’d believed.
Guess I’m not the only one who was lied to.
Somehow, that didn’t make me feel much better. In the past twelve hours, I’d gone from having no mother to having two—and if there was anything worse than Rena, it was Colette.
“Well, enough chitchat, I suppose. It’s been lovely, Kali, but there’s much to be done in the next few hours.” Colette wriggled her eyebrows. “I hear the FBI is planning a raid.”
She didn’t seem worried—and that terrified me.
“I’m afraid it would be easier if you weren’t conscious for this next part,” she continued. “Rena, did you remember to double the dose?”
Without thinking, I took a step back from the door, but there was nowhere to go.
I was trapped.
I’m sorry, Kali,
Zev said, his sorrow bleeding over into my fear.
I am so, so sorry.
He wanted to help me, but couldn’t.
Wanted to fight her. Couldn’t.
The door opened, and I stumbled backward until I hit the concrete wall. I’d expected to see Colette, but to my surprise, it was Rena standing there. She had a pair of syringes in one hand, each filled with an amber-colored liquid.
“A triple dose,” Rena said. She met my eyes, and for a second, a split second, I thought I saw something else there.
A question.
A plea.
“Stay away from me,” I said, and the words left my mouth as a growl. Drowsy or not, drugged or not, I was stronger than this woman who used to be my mother.
Much stronger.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, moving toward me slowly. “I promise, Kali. It’s all going to be okay.”
The words set off an explosion of memory in my mind.
Everything is going to work out okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?
Skylar was dead. Rena was coming toward me, needle in hand. Nothing was okay.
Nothing would ever be okay again.
“What Rena means,” Colette said helpfully, “is that if you so much as move a muscle, I’ll dose you myself—and I won’t make it pleasant.”
Now that the door was open, I could see that Collette’s hair was a shade lighter than her eyelashes—a light honey brown. There was a dusting of freckles across her nose and an unadulterated cruelness to the set of her features.
She was a hunter. I was her prey.
“Please, Kali.” Rena took my arm. I flinched, but she met my eyes again.
Let me do this.
That was what her eyes said to me, and I bit back the impulse to hit her again—harder, this time, than before. Hard enough to do some actual damage—but for better or for worse, I couldn’t kill someone I remembered loving as much as I’d once loved her.
“I hate you,” I said instead, feeling little and powerless and like nothing I’d ever said or done had mattered in the least. “I really, really hate you.”
Rena pursed her lips. The needle pierced my skin.
“I know,” she said.
At those words, Colette smiled and turned away. Rena pulled the needle out, putting her thumb over its tip. Then she pressed down on the back of the syringe.
The liquid dribbled harmlessly down my arm.
She did the same thing with a second syringe.
Then she reached into her white lab coat and withdrew a third, pressing it into my palm.
“Go to sleep, Kali-Kay.” She closed her eyes, and I realized her hands were trembling.
Realized that Colette would kill her if she knew.
My fingers closed around the third syringe. I held Rena’s gaze for another few seconds, and then I nodded. I closed my eyes and slumped against the concrete wall, like she’d knocked me unconscious.
And I waited.
34
I lay in my cell, feigning unconsciousness, for what felt like an eternity.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes.
Three hours and seventeen minutes.
Two hours and twelve minutes.
One hour.
And the longer I sat there, pretending that Rena had knocked me out, the more I wondered what the plan was, if she even had one.
I heard doors being opened and closed. Screams and calls and growls reminded me that I was surrounded on all sides by other creatures that didn’t belong on this earth.
Experiments, like me.
Maybe in another hour, I’d feel for them, feel connected to them, but for now, I was still a hunter, and every instinct I had was saying to claw my way through this prison and
put the monsters down
.
Instead, I focused on diagnosing the meaning behind their screeches and howls and realized that someone was moving them. Evacuating them. Colette must have called in the cavalry, and by the time Reid and his team got here—if they got here at all—they’d probably find the place empty.
Fifty-five minutes
.
Forty
.
Thirty-five.
Ten
.
I couldn’t lie there any longer. I couldn’t afford to wait. In just a few minutes, I’d be human again. I could already feel it creeping up on me, the way other people could tell they were coming down with a cold.
Ten minutes
.
Nine
.
I was seconds away from standing and giving up my cover when the door to my cell opened. The smell of perfume told me it was a woman.
A knowing in the pit of my stomach told me she wasn’t human.
Colette
.
“The pièce de résistance,” she said. “Pretty, isn’t she? I can see why you got attached.”
At first, I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but as he came closer, warmth washed over my body, and each and every one of my nerve cells stood on end.
Zev
.
If I’d been capable of feeling pain, being this close to him and knowing what he’d done to me would have hurt. Even if he hadn’t meant to. Even if he’d tried to stop it.
“Here,” Zev said. “Let me.”
“
No
.” Colette spoke sharply, and I felt Zev’s body freeze, felt her taking him over the way he’d taken control of my body at the ice rink, or in the car with Eddie.
His silver eyes went wild, every muscle in his body tensing at once as he fought her hold. I could feel my chupacabra, feel his, feel the sweat pouring down his temples and the pain that came with disobeying.
I felt him fight. And lose.
His muscles relaxed, and Colette smiled.
She’s too strong, Kali. Too old. I should have killed myself when I had the chance.
I thought of his hands closing around my throat and couldn’t push down the part of me that said that maybe he should have.
“Zev.” Colette said his name in a way that sounded intimate and familiar. Too familiar. “Go check on Rena. Make sure she’s got the A-level subjects evacuated. Anything else can stay here—we might as well give the Feds something to sink their teeth into.”
The irony of hearing a vampire say those particular words did not escape me, but right now, I had bigger things to worry about—like Zev walking silently away.
She doesn’t know you’re awake. She doesn’t know what Rena gave you. That much, I can keep from her. That much, little Kali, I can do.
I pushed down the desire to open my eyes as I digested that statement. Zev knew I was holding a syringe. Colette did not.
Seven minutes.
This was it. Whatever drug they’d used to knock me out, I prayed that it would work on someone as old and powerful as Colette—because, if not, I didn’t stand a chance.
Closer. Prey getting closer. Kill it dead.
I told myself that this was just like any other hunt. My heartbeat didn’t accelerate. I didn’t hold my breath. My muscles were loose and relaxed. Colette bent down to grab me, lifting me like I weighed nothing.
I let my body hang limp like a rag doll. She threw me over one shoulder and turned.
Six minutes.
With every ounce of strength and speed I had, I drove the tip of the needle into Colette’s neck. Her grip on my body tightened—I heard bones pop and knew I’d be feeling it soon, but that didn’t stop me from pressing down on the syringe.
Like a horse bucking its rider, she threw me across the room. I hit the concrete wall, hard. The back of my head warmed with blood. I could taste it in my mouth.
But somehow, I stood up.
I met her eyes.
She took a step forward, then stopped. “What have you done?” she asked, frowning, like I was just a naughty child, and she wasn’t about to kill me dead.
“Triple dose,” I said, wishing I had a knife, a sword, a gun—anything other than my fists.
She wobbled on her feet, but didn’t fall. “Oh, I am going to kill that—”
She never got to finish that sentence, because a second later, she went down.
It took me a moment to process the sound of gunfire echoing in the chamber and to see the tiny hole in the back of her head, the blood dying her light hair red.
Someone shot her,
I thought dully.
I drugged Colette, and someone shot her.
I lifted my eyes to the open doorway—toward Rena and her smoking gun. All business, she walked forward and knelt next to Colette’s prone body.
She put the gun to the vampire’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Again. And again. And again.
“She won’t stay down long,” she said finally. “An hour or two at most. We have to get you out of here. Now.”
“You shot her. In the head. Five times.” I processed those facts. “I couldn’t heal from that.”
Rena dropped the gun onto the floor, her creamy brown skin tinged gray and pale. “She can.”
I heard a scream—human, this time—and took a step toward the door.
“Anything we couldn’t transport, Colette ordered let loose,” Rena said. “The paperwork shows this facility as belonging to one of Chimera’s competitors. They’ll be faced with the fallout, and if the Feds get anyone from Chimera, it will be Paul or me.”
Poor you
, I thought, but after everything that had happened, I still wasn’t the kind of person who could say something like that out loud. It must have shown on my face, though, because Rena responded like I’d slapped her.
“You have no idea what I just risked for you, Kali.”
“I do know,” I said, my voice soft. What I didn’t say was that it wasn’t enough, might not ever be enough.
“We have to get out of here.” Rena reached to steady me, and she frowned. “You’re bleeding.”
Out of habit, I surveyed the damage. “Two broken ribs. A concussion. And I’m pretty sure she snapped my wrist.”
Three minutes.
Not enough time to heal.
Rena latched her hand over my good arm and tugged gently. “There’s a back way,” she said. “We’ll leave and seal it off. The Feds could be here any minute.”
Realizing the implication of her words, I pulled back away from her grasp. “Where’s Zev?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”
I considered her question. I saw Zev in my mind’s eye. I felt his fingers closing around my neck, felt him cutting off the flow of air. I saw him, wild-eyed and fighting vainly against Colette’s hold.
He’d betrayed me, but he hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t wanted to. And Rena was just going to leave him here—with the place in chaos and Colette a ticking time bomb, waiting to wake up on the floor. And once Colette woke up, she’d be able to control Zev again. She’d stick him in another cage—if the FBI didn’t beat her to it first.
He’d still be in my head. I’d still be in his. Eventually, someone would use him to find me, and the whole thing would start all over again.
“No.”
“No, what?” Rena’s voice was tinged with desperation, and the din in the background rose to new heights; a man’s screams melding in with inhuman ones, as an alarm—jarring and violent—pierced the air.
“The Feds are here. This place is coming down, Kali. As your mother, I am telling you to move.”
I looked at her, and my stomach lurched. She’d saved my life. That didn’t make her my mother.
Without a word, I sat down next to Colette’s body. Almost on cue, a bullet fell from her skull. She was already healing, faster than I ever had before.
It’s the Nibbler. You feed it. It heals you.
The words Zev had once spoken came back to me with a vengeance, and I did the math. Colette probably kept her parasite very well fed.
“Kali, I have to go. Please don’t make me leave you here.” Rena’s voice broke.
“Please.”
“Knife,” I said.
Apparently, that wasn’t what she’d expected as a response.
“You have my knife,” I said, lifting my eyes to hers, falling back on my senses while I still had them. “I’d like it back.”
“Kali, the FBI is going to find you here. Eventually, Colette is going to wake up. You can’t—”
“Give me the knife,” I said. “And then go.”
There was a long moment, an elongated silence, and then she nodded, her face going as blank and calm as mine. She reached down to her boot and pulled out my knife, the motion eerily similar to one I’d made myself a million times.
She handed it to me, hilt first. She brushed one hand over my cheek. And then she turned and walked—no, ran— away.
One minute.
I had sixty seconds—no time to heal, no time to think, no time to process the sounds of animal screams and gunshots in the distance.
All I had time to do was act.
Kneeling next to Colette’s body, I cut open her shirt. The swirling pattern laid into her skin was complicated, and my eyes traced the interweaving circles and lines back to a central point, just over her collarbone.
An
ouroboros
.
“You don’t want her,” I said, my voice shaking as I brought the tip of my knife to my left arm.
Cut. Cut. Cut.
“You want me,” I said. “I’m smarter. I’m younger. And I’m one of a kind.”
Now
that
was the truth.
“You don’t want her.” I painted Colette’s body with my blood, flashing back to that moment in the hallway with Bethany. “You want me.”
I willed it to be true.
Ten seconds.
Nine
.
Nine seconds, and I would be human.
I couldn’t do this.
Darkness lapped at the edges of my mind. My temples pounded. My breath came fast and short—and then there was a sound like a gun going off, and a smell like rotten eggs.
I stumbled backward, hit the wall, and sank to the floor.
Four seconds.
Three seconds.
Colette’s body twitched, the lines on her skin disappearing like sidewalk chalk under the force of a hose. For one horrifying moment, I thought she might wake up.
But she didn’t. Her limbs stopped twitching. Her mouth went slack. And that feeling in my stomach, the one that told me that something preternatural was close, flickered like a lightbulb and died.
One
.
The second I shifted, the pain was blinding, overwhelming, everywhere. I was little and human and bleeding.
I hurt.
“Kali.” Suddenly, Zev was beside me, holding my head in his hands. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, checking me for injuries, staring into my pupils. “You’re going to be just fine.”
In his words, I heard an echo of Skylar’s.
You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?
I gave myself over to the pain. Searing, blinding pain. I could get through this. I could.
The warmth of my skin built to an incredible, cleansing heat. I felt like I was wearing my body for the first time, like it was wearing me.
Here we go again
, I thought.
I tried to smile, but it came out a sob. “Look,” I said, tears dripping down my cheeks, my breath catching raggedly in burning lungs. “Now we both have two.”
Zev followed my gaze to the ouroboros on my shoulder. His eyes went to Colette, lying still on the floor.
“You …”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. I laid my head back against the cement, insane laughter bubbling up inside of me.
There were two chupacabras inside my body. My very human body.
“Guess I do have a savior complex,” I said.
And then I laughed. It was a crazy, pitiful sound, like the mewling of kittens, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
“The Feds are here,” Zev said. “Colette moved some of her pet projects out, but the ones she left are … unpleasant. They’ll keep our friends occupied while we duck out, but if the Feds are lucky, they’ll survive.” He ran his hand lightly over my hair. “We should go.”
Before, when Rena had asked me to go, I’d said no because I didn’t want to leave Zev, didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for the woman who’d been pulling his strings. But now …
“Come with me,” Zev said. “We’ll leave, Kali. You and me. There’s nothing here for you. We’ll slip out of here, and we’ll leave town, and we’ll disappear.”
I could see it—the two of us, spending our days in this world and our nights together in dreams. We’d hunt together, and we’d live together, and it would be so easy.
So right.
“I—” It was there, on the tip of my tongue, to say yes, but a volley of images flashed through my brain.
Faces.
One after another after another.
Bethany and Elliot.
Skylar.
My father.
If I left, he’d never know what happened to me. Even if I managed to say good-bye, he’d be alone.
Bethany and Elliot would never know what really happened to Skylar.
I’d never get to make this—any of this—right.
That was the second I realized that I had a choice. I could run and run, farther and farther away. I could make myself forget. I could be what Zev was, do what he did.