My turn.
I yanked at his shirt, a bit clumsier, till he drew back and tugged it off with one
hand, as if impatient to get back to touching me, mouth devouring the skin under my
ear, at the base of my neck, at the top of my breast, his hands sliding down the back
of my pants to deliciously scrape my skin with his nails ever so slightly. I pressed
my body against his, but that wasn’t enough.
I need more.
With trembling fingers, breath coming fast, I undid the top button of his jeans. God,
why had I ever waited? This was so right, so perfect. The world around me rocked.
I unzipped Caleb’s jeans.
“What is going on . . . ?” a familiar voice began, and then broke off.
I reached for Caleb. What was he worried about?
Then a girl gasped nearby, and it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t Caleb who had spoken. In
fact, he was sitting up, twisting in the backseat of the SUV.
I stared up at Lazar’s astonished face.
“What the hell?” Caleb said, throwing my shirt over me to cover me up.
Lazar was half in the driver’s side of the SUV, arm braced against the headrest, staring
at us over the seats. He wore his objurer uniform of white shirt, white pants, gray
jacket. On the passenger side, Amaris was standing by the car’s open door, hand over
her mouth, brown eyes as round as a startled fawn’s.
“Oh, my God!” I said. The change from supercharged lovemaking to being caught like
a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car was dizzying. I froze.
Lazar’s face withdrew from view. Amaris slammed her door shut without getting into
the car, and Caleb, still shirtless, pants half undone, rocketed up and out even as
I struggled into my clothes.
“What are you doing here?” Caleb roared. Something slammed into a wall, and Lazar
grunted in pain.
I flung myself out of the car to see Caleb, one hand gripping Lazar’s shirtfront,
holding him up against the wall of the garage. Lazar, as tall and strong as he, made
a twisting move to the side as he slammed his forearm down onto Caleb’s wrist.
The move forced Caleb to release him, but he followed up with a step and socked a
right cross into Lazar’s face.
Lazar’s head whipped to the side, but he didn’t stumble back. A line of blood trickled
from his mouth as he turned and smiled at his brother, brown eyes intent. Then, swifter
than I could follow, he punched Caleb, one-two with what looked like a left cross
and a right uppercut.
Caleb took the first punch full in the face, but he made a swift move with his left
arm in time to deflect the uppercut. His black eyes sparked with furious gold, matching
the dangerous flicker in Lazar’s, and something savage surged up in me, flooding me
with excitement.
I should be stopping this.
But I was still thrumming from feverish near-lovemaking in the car. Now the skin
that had been rubbing against mine was wrestling more violently with someone just
as strong, just as determined. Seeing Caleb, bare chested, his jeans unbuttoned, use
everything he had to defend me was darkly thrilling.
Caleb’s fists loosened, his knees bent, pants riding very low on his hips. He slammed
the heel of his hand into Lazar’s solar plexus.
Lazar expelled all the air in his lungs with an “Oof!” But he still had enough presence
of mind to raise his fists up to guard against the next blow, which I knew from our
exercises with Morfael would be aimed right for his throat. If it landed just right,
it could kill.
But Amaris shoved herself between them. She screamed, “He’s here because of me! It’s
my fault. Don’t hurt him!”
At the last second, Caleb stopped himself from striking and stepped back, breath coming
fast, the muscles in his bare back outlined in tension. “
You
invited him here?”
Amaris opened her mouth to speak, but Lazar interrupted. “I followed her here. I was
worried about her.”
“You were worried?” I walked up next to Caleb. “You weren’t worried about her when
your father married her off to that disgusting old man against her will. Why would
you be worried about her now?”
“He did worry about me then,” Amaris said, more heat in her voice than I’d heard before.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know! He begged my father not to make me do it.”
“Well, maybe he should’ve done more than beg,” said Caleb. “I’d kill anyone who tried
to hurt you.”
Amaris turned to me, pleading. “I’ve been in touch with Lazar for weeks now, talking
things out. He was the one I was on the phone with when that car almost hit us in
the street. When the call ended suddenly with me screaming, he got worried.”
“You’ve been reconciling with him?” Caleb stared in disbelief at his sister. “After
everything he’s done?”
“You don’t know what it was like being raised the way we were, Caleb,” she said. “It
can make you do horrible things, crazy things. He’s still my brother, and we still
care about each other.”
“How did he know where to find you?” I said sharply. I was still trying to focus,
but I knew one thing. If Lazar knew where the school was, either the Tribunal already
knew, or they would know soon. They’d laid waste to our last school, shot Morfael,
and kidnapped Siku. We couldn’t let that happen again.
“I turned the GPS on my phone off, like Caleb showed me,” Amaris said. “But Lazar
found me anyway.”
“I hacked into her phone, found the nearest tower, and came looking after I heard
her scream earlier,” said Lazar, wiping the blood from his mouth. “No one else knows
I’m here. I turned off the GPS in my own car and on my phone. No one followed me here,
and I parked half a mile away and walked the rest.”
“Then welcome,” said Caleb mockingly, spreading his bruised hands out wide. “Because
it looks like you’ll be spending the rest of your very short life here.”
Lazar lifted his chin, a vein throbbing angrily in his temple, but said nothing.
Amaris, flushed with shame and anxiety, looked back and forth between me and Caleb.
“He won’t tell them. He promised me. He wants to leave the Tribunal, the same way
I did.”
Caleb let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Did he cross his heart and hope to die? Well,
I’m convinced. How about you, Dez?”
“As traps go, it’s pretty obvious,” I said. “I expected better from you, Lazar.”
“They’re not going to believe you.” Amaris turned to her brother. “You have to tell
them what you told me.”
“No.” Lazar clenched his jaw. I’d seen Caleb do the same thing a hundred times. “I
will not justify myself to them. God knows my heart.”
“Paraphrasing Luke won’t help you,” said Caleb. “If you can’t prove what you say,
you won’t leave this place alive.”
Lazar drew in a slow, even breath, as if trying to control himself. I could see the
bruise where Caleb had hit him darkening his cheekbone. His eyes glittered dangerously.
My skin prickled, and I braced myself against the possible power of his voice, ready
to shift into tiger form.
Caleb felt it too, Lazar’s explosive energy just underneath the surface. And he, reckless
with fury, decided to provoke it. “Fine,” he said, and took a quick, boxer’s step
forward.
Lazar saw the attack coming and drove a fist at him.
But Caleb was ready. He faked left in time to draw the punch, then danced right. He
grabbed Lazar by the wrist, pushed him around, and shoved his arm up behind his back.
Lazar let out a strangled cry of pain; then Caleb pushed him face-first against the
wall, wrenching Lazar’s arm up to the breaking point.
Lazar turned his head to the side, cheek smashed against the wall, tendrils of dark
blond hair wet with sweat curling over his forehead.
I got in close. “That arm of yours Caleb’s twisting. Isn’t that the same arm Siku
broke?”
Lazar exhaled an appreciative laugh. “It just finished healing, actually. Thanks for
asking.”
Caleb jammed his knee into the small of Lazar’s back, eliciting a groan from his half-brother.
“Give me one good reason not to break it again,” he said.
“Maybe you should tell me what’s really going on,” I said.
Even smushed against the wall and helpless, Lazar took a moment to assess me, as if
weighing what was best to do. I flushed as he slid his gaze over me, remembering how
he’d found me with Caleb moments ago.
Why can’t the world leave us alone so we can be like everyone else?
Lazar stopped pushing back against Caleb, as if he’d come to a decision. He said,
“We knew you’d rebuild somewhere. So have we.”
Caleb and I exchanged a glance. “Where?” I asked.
“Make him let me go first,” he said.
I shrugged at Caleb.
Your call.
Caleb gave me a look that said
I’m going to regret this
and released his brother. He took a step back, breath misting in the cold garage,
muscles in his bare arms and shoulders defined and glistening with sweat from the
fight. “Where?”
Lazar rubbed his wrist. “About an hour from here, north and slightly east.”
Caleb’s black eyes flickered with his thoughts. “Near the nuclear test range?” When
I threw him an alarmed glance, he said, “They no longer test bombs there. It’s just
a classified bit of desert now.”
Lazar nodded. “Very near there.”
So close to the school.
“Why there?” I asked. Dread made me shiver.
Could the Tribunal have somehow acquired a nuclear weapon?
“Tell her, Lazar,” Amaris said, and when he didn’t speak for a moment, she flared
with anger. “When you came here, you not only risked yourself, you put the good things
I have here at risk too. If you don’t tell them, I will.”
Lazar looked down. Apparently, Amaris could shame him still. “No one will tell me
why they picked that spot, but the construction’s nearly finished,” he said. “I didn’t
know it existed till we moved there last week. It must have cost them millions. But
they’ve built a particle accelerator, a circular collider, underground. Part of it
runs right under the nuclear testing range.”
“Particle accelerator?” I’d heard the term before, in my AP physics class. Scientists
built huge underground tubes where they shot beams of subatomic particles at each
other at nearly the speed of light to smash them and see what they were made of.
“Like the one in Switzerland?” asked Caleb.
“Yes, but not that large,” said Lazar. “I’m still trying to figure out why.”
The Tribunal had a history of using technology against the otherkin, but this was
far more advanced than anything we’d seen in their old compound, requiring huge amounts
of money and expertise. “How did they build
that
?” I asked. It was difficult to believe.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. The one thing we excel at is secrecy. Or maybe they
bribed or killed anyone who stood in the way. But they must have been working on it
for decades.”
“And you have no idea what they’re planning to do with it?” I forced myself to breathe.
This was very bad news. Whatever the Tribunal wanted with a particle accelerator,
it had to mean a new level of danger for the otherkin.
“Not yet,” Lazar said, then held up a quelling hand as I opened my mouth to protest.
“I was going to try and find out and then meet with Amaris tomorrow night. But she
wouldn’t agree to anything without talking to you.”
Amaris nodded. “That’s what he and I were arguing about on the phone when the car
nearly ran us over.”
“So you could still try to get that information,” I said to Lazar. “For us.”
Caleb shot me a look, dark eyes flashing. “You can’t let him go.”
“I don’t know,” I said in what I hoped was a calming tone. “But this is a whole new
level of threat. We have to consider it.”
“Consider allying ourselves with someone who drugged you and kidnapped you?” His voice
grew louder with anger. “You want to make a deal with the piece of scum who killed
my mother
? No!” He swiped his hand in a chopping motion. “He cannot leave here.”
“It is risky,” I said, looking at Lazar. “What kind of guarantee do we have that you
won’t just tell your father where we are? That would get you a lot of brownie points
with him.”
Lazar’s lips were pressed together hard, like he wasn’t happy with what he was about
to say. “I’m done currying favor with my father. He’s . . . he’s asked too much of
me, and I see now it will never stop. I want out. That’s your guarantee. I need—”
He stopped, reluctant to go on.
“He’s got no money,” Amaris said. Lazar exhaled in frustration, clearly not happy
she was telling us this. “Our father controls every penny and doles it out as needed.
Lazar’s got nowhere to go, and if he ran, they’d track him down for sure.”
Now it began to make sense. “You need our help,” I said.
His lips tightened. “And you need mine!” He slammed his open hand on the wall next
to him, then gave one sharp shake of his head and paced away in agitation, only to
walk back a second later. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice taut.
“It’s hard to ask for help,” I said. “Especially from people you’ve hurt.”
He looked away. “Yes.”
“It takes a lot of nerve,” said Caleb. “Unless it’s all a long con to infiltrate our
ranks.”
Reflected in Lazar’s golden brown irises, I could see the curve of the white SUV where
Caleb and I had almost made love. “I don’t expect you to let me come stay here with
you,” he said. “I’m not a complete fool. But even a hundred dollars would help me
disappear. Then you’d never hear from me again.”
I had more than that in my own bank account, waiting to use for a college education
that, at this rate, would likely never come. “What would we get for our money?” I
asked.