Born to Darkness (26 page)

“No,” she told him, surprised and rattled by his point-blank approach. This was where they were both awkwardly supposed to pretend last night had never happened, not bring it up or discuss any aspect of it. And still he watched her, as if he couldn’t believe his good luck at finding her again. She, however, was having a moment of serious surrealness. Last night, while she was letting him rock her world, she’d never, in a million years, imagined that she’d ever be walking with him, like this, through OI’s tunnels. “It’s, um … Well, I’m not really sure what happens, but having sex is, um …” She cleared her throat. “For me, it accelerates the healing process and … It … 
doesn’t
hurt—really doesn’t—when I’m … Not when, um … I think the pleasure drowns out any pain, so … no.” He didn’t say anything so she kept going. “Plus, you need to understand that—this morning—I was
leaning
on the pain, so I could project it and … I was trying, actively, to use it to take down Rickie Littleton—the joker.”

And take down Littleton she’d done—to the tune of killing him and bringing them back to less than square one, in terms of finding Nika Taylor.

God damn it.

“Ah,” Shane said. “So … It’s not
me
, necessarily. It’s
sex
that allows you to heal faster …?”

“It’s sex,” she agreed, but then admitted, “And you.” She cleared her throat again and changed the subject. “It
was—
probably—the med scan. That you had for the cage-fighting thing. I bet that’s how we found you. Those records go into the international medical database and … We hack ’em, pretty regularly. Your integration level is seventeen, which is significantly higher than the average fraction’s ten percent, which is why that e-mail went out to you. That plus your military training … You’re disciplined. You’re, like, the perfect Potential. You know, aside from being male and … Too old.”

He looked at her, but didn’t comment.

So she continued. “Our usual recruits are girls. Estrogen naturally
boosts integration levels and … But the best age for us to acquire a Potential is around ten or eleven. Pre-puberty. Of course, it’s the hormones that create the spike in most girls’ levels, so we often don’t identify them as Potentials until it’s already too late. And I mean it’s too late only because most girls who are recruited when they’re older don’t stay with the program—I don’t know if it’s a fear of being different or … Ironically, it’s the rare boys who usually excel, regardless of when they join. That’s why we still look to recruit men your age as Potentials.”

His brow was furrowed as he attempted to interpret her babbling. “So … the Obermeyer Institute hacks into the medical records of people—mostly children, and among those children, mostly girls—from all over the world?” he asked.

“There are still some countries whose med records aren’t online,” Mac said. “We’ve gotten some of our best Potentials from them. But it’s unconventional—the way we find out about them. We keep a constant watch for reports of disturbances—so-called poltergeist activity or accusations of witchcraft, or even stigmata or other unexplained physical mutilations or illnesses that can be a part of a belief-induced fervor. Really, they’re looking for anything unexplained that might be traced to an untrained, out-of-control Greater-Than. With the poltergeist thing being the most common.”

“Poltergeist,” Shane repeated. “I’m not sure I’m following. Are you saying that poltergeists—like that old horror movie—are … real?”

“Yes, but, no.” Mac shook her head. “Not like the movie, or … Not like your old dead creepy Uncle Moe who was also a serial killer and is now terrorizing the new owners of the house where he sliced and diced his victims … No spirit-world shit. I’m talking about unexplained events—doors opening and closing, furniture moving, dancing teacups without a Disney animator in sight. Even, yeah, statues crying tears of blood—all of which can be the result of a living person—usually a teenage girl—who has uncontrolled telekinetic powers. Most poltergeist disturbances take place in a home that includes a female child between the ages
of eight and sixteen. Sometimes it’s a boy, but that’s, well, it’s really rare. Anyway, in a majority of the cases, the telekinetic activity takes place unconsciously, usually because the child is under some kind of duress. Sexual abuse being a biggie.”

“Jesus,” Shane said. They’d reached the end of the tunnel, where there was a bank of elevators to take them up into the barracks.

“Yeah,” Mac agreed, pushing the button. They were almost there. God help her. “A few years ago, we pulled a girl out of Iraq after she’d essentially burned her village to the ground. She was thirteen years old at the time. She’d lived most of her life in London, but she was illegal and hadn’t been to see a doctor. So no med scans and no records, right? When she was identified as a noncitizen and sent back to her grandfather—her parents had died—she was immediately given away in marriage. Her husband-to-be was Kurdish and about a million years old, and he insisted that she get circumcised—here in the West, we call that FGM. Female genital mutilation. The scar tissue that’s created acts as a chastity belt—that’s if the girls who are cut actually survive the procedure.”

“I know what FGM is,” Shane said quietly.

“They dress up the maiming with a fancy ceremony,” Mac told him. “But this girl? She wasn’t having it. She tapped into some pretty crazy powers when the village elder first began cutting her. We’re still not sure if she actually started the fire spontaneously, or just used standard telekinesis to knock some stuff into an open flame. Either way, the blaze spread really quickly, and the old man she was supposed to marry was killed. She escaped, and was being hunted when our research team heard the stories about the
devil bride
. Our rescue squad went in, and we found her first. She’s pretty powerful, but she’s also still pretty messed up.”

“I can imagine,” he murmured. The elevator opened and they got in. Shane was silent as he pushed the button for his floor, so Mac kept going.

“We’ve got a three-person research team down in Analysis dedicated to searching for that type of story,” she told him. “In chat-rooms, on YouTube, on all the Internet blogs. Of course, we look
for the extra-freaky here in America, too, since so many people can’t afford health care. Did you know there are over thirty million children in this country who’ve never seen a doctor—who’ve never received a medical scan?”

“I didn’t know the number was that high,” he said.

“It is,” she said, “and it’s growing.”

“So this girl you mentioned, the one who’s missing …”

“Her name’s Nika Taylor. She was on our list of Potentials—and there should be another category for girls like her, and like the girl who torched her village. We should call them Definites. Anyway, Nika was kidnapped by the scumbags who make Destiny—the drug that made Littleton joker. They do what we do—search for girls who are Potentials. Only they don’t train them. They use them. They literally bleed them for the hormones that make the drug.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence, and it wasn’t until the doors opened on the third floor that Mac cleared her throat again. “So, which suite is yours?”

“Three-fourteen,” he told her, leading the way down the hall.

She could feel his surprise as she took out her master key.

“I would’ve thought you wouldn’t need that,” he said. “I read—in the material I was given—that opening locked doors was a pretty basic skill—”

“Telekinesis isn’t one of my strengths,” Mac admitted. She glanced over and found that he was watching her again. She held open the door and gestured for him to go in first. “What did …” She started over, sounding as lame as she felt. “Didn’t Elliot tell you anything … about me?”

Shane shrugged as he looked back at where she was still standing in the open doorway. “Not much,” he said. “He said that you’re one of these Greater-Thans, and … Frankly, I didn’t really believe any of it until … Well.”

He scratched his head, bringing his hand down to rub the back of his neck, and it was hard not to think about the way he’d tried
to entice her to see him again, with his offer of dinner and a massage. Mac knew how good his hands would feel on her shoulders, her neck, her back …

She sighed, because that part of their relationship was over. It had to be. It
would
be after she told him the truth. It was one thing to use her create-an-instant-boyfriend abilities on a stranger, another entirely to seduce a co-worker. “Yeah, some people really have to see it to believe it. And some don’t accept it even then. There’s this crazy group of Fundamentalists, a fringe group of about twenty Bible-thumpers from freaking Kansas, who
do
believe we’re real—and that we’re evil. Satan’s foot soldiers, they call us. They picket out front every few months or so. But most people don’t know we’re here.”

“I sure as hell didn’t,” Shane told her.

“So Elliot didn’t tell you anything about my particular skill-set?” Mac asked.

“Aside from the accelerated-healing thing,” he said, “no. Your friend Diaz, he, um, managed to put me into some kind of wrestling hold from across the room. I was totally immobilized. Bach did it to me, too. I guess I was assuming that you could do the same …?”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I can’t do that. As far as telekinesis goes, I’m only good for the big things. I can knock down a wall or tear off a roof. I
could
throw you across the room, sure, probably farther than Diaz could dream of doing, but … Your landing would be a little messy and you’d probably be killed, so it’s really not a good idea to try it unless we’re in a padded testing lab. You know, one of the basic skills that most Greater-Thans master is an ability to shield—to protect ourselves from violence—to make ourselves bulletproof. But that’s a form of telekinesis, too—it’s related. And I’m about a second-grade level when it comes to that. I can shield, but only if I focus completely on it—to the point that I’m virtually useless when it comes to utilizing any of my other powers.”

She kept going. “I also suck at telepathy. Dr. Bach can read your mind, but not me. I don’t know what you’re thinking—but I
do
know what you’re feeling. My specialty is empathy. I can read emotions. Pretty clearly. I can even pick up on emotional events from the past—just by being in the place where they went down.”

He was silent, just standing there in the entryway of his recently assigned apartment, listening, so she kept going.

“I’m also highly skilled at self-healing, which you already know,” she told him. “And, connected to that—it’s a similar neural pathway—I can change my physical appearance at will. To a degree, of course. I mean, I can’t turn myself into a bat, or a panther, or even a man, although that would be useful if I could. I’m stuck with the basics of what I’ve got.”

Mac paused then, because this was where it was going to get difficult, and she found herself searching for the right words.

But Shane took her silence as a signal that she was finished, and he asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”

Before she could answer, he added, “Or are these apartments monitored the way that all of the corridors and elevators and tunnels are?”

“No,” she told him. “There are no cameras in the private residences. So feel free to jerk off in the shower.” Okay, that was stupid—to bring up sex in any way, shape, or form.

Shane smiled, still just briefly. “I was asking because I was assuming you’d want privacy before I said … some of the things I was waiting to say to you.”

They wouldn’t have that privacy with the door wide open.

Mac stepped into the apartment, letting the door close behind her with a
clunk
.

For some reason, her coming inside made him happy. Happier, anyway. “Can I get you something?” he asked as he went into the kitchen, like she was actually there on a social call. “Coffee, or—”

“No,” she said, purposely leaving off the
thank you
. “And I’m not coming in. Not any farther than this. But you’re right, privacy is better for what
I
still have to say to
you
, too, so—”

“I understand why you couldn’t tell me where you worked.” Shane came back out of the kitchen to say. “I get it. And I also get why you thought you needed to break it off. You’re one of these
super powerful Greater-Thans, and I’m … Not. I understand the hazards of fraternization within an organization, I really do. But all that has to mean is that we keep it on the down-low. You’ve got that apartment in Kenmore Square. I say we meet there—”

Damn, she must’ve still—somehow—been doing it. Charming him. She didn’t think she was, and yet … She’d learned to control her abilities, post Tim, thank God, yet it was possible that her attraction to Shane made it kick on, without her awareness, and despite her attempts to stifle it.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said.

He laughed. “Like hell I don’t.” His smile faded. “Look, there’s something between us that I want to pursue—and it’s more than just sex.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ve never been so certain of anything as I am about the fact that we … We just
fit
. Mac, I know you felt it, too.” He came toward her, his intention to pull her into his arms and kiss her written all over his face.

Mac backed up, hands up, and smacked her head on the door. “Shit! Stop!”

He stopped his advance, but only physically. “We can make this work,” he insisted. “You and me, Mac—it was magic. You can’t deny that.”

“No,” she agreed. “I can’t. Although, I’m more inclined to use a slightly more scientific word for what happened last night. It was biology and psychology—but mostly biology.” She forced herself to look him in the eyes as she just said it. “One of my biggest skills is my biological ability to attract men.” She corrected herself. “Others. It works with gay and bi women, too.”

It was obvious that Shane didn’t truly understand what she meant—he didn’t understand why he should care. Because his response was to shake his head and shrug as he exhaled a laugh. “You say that like it’s some kind of unique talent. I’m pretty sure this won’t be a newsflash, but last night, I was looking for some action. It’s not like I was bound for the seminary and you waylaid me en route. Pun intended.”