Freaks in the City (10 page)

One by one, she takes out the rest of the
squad. She’s more careful now, more aware of how fragile humans can
be. She knocks each man unconscious before fracturing one leg and
the fingers of both hands, ensuring each man is incapable of
wielding a weapon. It would be more efficient—easier—to kill. But
even if she kills them all now, the killing won’t stop. The man
calling the shots, the man who wants to possess her and her
secrets, to use and control her, will keep sending people after
her.

There is only one way to stop this. He must
believe she’s been obliterated, leaving behind no useable
remains.

She drags the last man out of harm’s way and
heads for the backyard of the property. For her plan to succeed she
must leave evidence behind—incontrovertible evidence.

She pulls the wrapped package from the
waistband of her jeans, tears away the protective wrapping. She
knows what she is—she’s always known. So why is it suddenly so
shocking to gaze at this hand—so humanlike until one looks closer
and sees gleaming metal where there should rightly be bones. This
hand she has constructed would be considered a scientific miracle
but it is still artificial, inhuman. Like her.

She flings the hand into swimming pool. And
after one last scan of the vicinity, she thumbs the timer-switch to
start the countdown.

Ten. Nine. Eight—

Tears sting her eyes, pool, and track down
her face. She doesn’t want to leave Tyler but to keep him safe she
has to give him up.

Five. Four. Three—

She spots movement from the corner of her
eye.

Her heart skips a beat and then plummets to
her toes. Tyler. She’d recognize him anywhere. He shouldn’t be
here.

He shouldn’t be here!

Somehow, he is. Somehow he’s tracked her.
He’s standing by the ranch slider, squinting into the darkness,
searching for something.

Searching for her.

Even though logically she knows it’s too
late to save him, with every fiber of her being she’s compelled to
try. She launches herself at him just as the explosion lights up
the sky.

The blast sears the clothes from her body,
snatches her breath. She will survive of course, and for the first
time since her creation she hates that she’s practically
indestructible… because this fragile human boy she loves with all
her heart is not. He’s dead. And she is responsible—

~~~

A noise ripped Tyler from sleep. He lay
there, heart thumping, blinking in the darkness to shake off the
last remnants of unconsciousness. Sometime during the night he’d
rolled on his back and sprawled across the bed, taking up his share
of the mattress and someone else’s. He lolled his head to the side
to check on Jay, half-expecting to find she’d gotten up during the
night and left him the bed. But she was still there, lying on her
side, facing away from him.

A moan, like someone in pain, threaded its
way to his ears.

“Jay?” He rolled over, hand outstretched to
shake her awake.

Another moan, more anguished than the
first.

He froze mid-gesture. The fine hairs on his
nape stood to attention. Something was wrong, he could feel it in
his bones.

Instead of touching her, he groped for the
light switch, bathing the room in a warm, comforting glow.

“No!” The shout that issued from her
contorted mouth sounded like it’d been torn from her throat.

A nightmare. That’s all it was. A nightmare.
Okay. He could deal with this.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and shook
her gently. “It’s okay, Jay,” he crooned in a singsong voice. “It’s
just a bad dream. It’s not real.”

She shuddered beneath his touch and he shook
her again. “Wake up, Jay.”

“No! You weren’t supposed to follow me,
Tyler. You were supposed to be safe.”

Chills skated up and down his spine. He
rolled her onto her back and smoothed the tangle of hair from her
cold face. Tears smeared her smooth, too-pale cheeks. His heart
contracted. This was one badass nightmare all right.

“You weren’t supposed to die. Noooooo!” Her
howl reverberated through the room, bouncing off the walls.

Shit! Tyler clamped down on his shock and
knelt beside her to shake her harder this time, his voice ringing
loud and insistent in the silence. “It’s okay, Jay. I’m here. I’m
not dead. It’s okay. Wake up.”

Her eyes snapped open but her gaze was
vacant, like there was nobody home. And then she screamed his name
so loudly that he had to clamp his hands over his ears.
“Tylerrrrrr!”

The bedroom door burst open and Nessa
skidded to a halt in the middle of the room. “What the hell is
going on? You two murdering each other or something?”

Damned if he wasn’t grateful to see her. He
sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly to calm his racing heart.
“Jay’s having a nightmare. She thinks I’m dead. I can’t wake her
up.”

Nessa approached the bed and stood staring
down at Jay. “Shit. She doesn’t look too hot. What did you give
her?”

“What the fuck makes you think I’ve given
her anything?”

Nessa snorted. “Gee, I dunno. For one, that
Pete guy reeked of pot. And two, the way she’s lying there staring
at nothing, like she’s on a really bad trip or catatonic or
something.”

“I don’t do drugs. And neither does
Jay.”

“We should call the medics.”

“No!” The prospect of Jay in the hands of
medical staff filled him with horror. He drew on everything he had
to speak calmly, firmly. “It’s a nightmare is all.”

Nessa bent to peer more closely at Jay and
clicked her fingers a bare inch from Jay’s nose. “Some nightmare.
We should try and wake her up. Grab a glass of water and—”

Jay’s hand shot out in a blur of motion to
grab Nessa by the throat. Nessa gave a strangled gargle as Jay’s
grip tightened.

“Jay! Let her go!” Tyler shook Jay's
shoulders.

Nessa gasped for breath and clawed at Jay’s
fingers. Her struggles became more frenzied.

Tyler slapped Jay’s face. No reaction. He
pressed his mouth to her ear and yelled as loud as he could, “Jay!
It’s just Nessa! She’s not a threat to you. Let her go, Jay!
Please.”

She didn’t appear to be able to hear him.
Her eyes had turned gunmetal gray. Tyler hazarded a guess some
automatic self-defense system had kicked in and at some base,
instinctive level, she viewed Nessa as an enemy. So he did the one
thing he knew always affected her deeply. He kissed her. On the
mouth. Hard, putting all his hopes and dreams and heart and soul
into it.

And then Nessa fell to the floor in a huddle
and Jay was kissing him back and Tyler knew he should check on
Nessa but he didn’t want the kiss to end.

He tore his lips from hers and backed off,
panting. His gaze darted to Nessa, who had backed up against the
wall and was massaging her throat.

Jay sat up and scooted back to prop herself
against the padded bed-head. “I’m very sorry, Vanessa. I was having
a nightmare. It seemed so real that I overreacted. I didn’t mean to
hurt you.”

Nessa’s response was an undecipherable croak
and a look that conveyed she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Jay, uh, got mugged awhile back,” Tyler
improvised. “It was pretty traumatic. Her unconscious must have
perceived you as a threat and her natural reaction was to lash
out.” The last part was true at least.

Nessa coughed and winced. “Some
reaction.”

“I’m very sorry, Vanessa,” Jay said again.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She sounded so lost and unsure and
un-Jay-like, Tyler figured he better take charge and sort this. He
crawled off the bed to help Nessa. “C’mon. Some ice for the
bruising and some Tylenol should help.” He stuck out his hand.

Nessa hesitated and then grasped it so he
could haul her upright. “Thanks.”

She was a bit shaky on her feet—not
surprising. He steadied her by grabbing her elbows. What a damn
mess. Please God he’d be able to convince her not to press charges.
Otherwise….

He didn’t want to think about
“otherwise”.

He glanced over his shoulder as he helped
Nessa from the room. “I’ll be back soon, Jay. You just rest,
okay?”

~~~

Jay watched him go. There were so many things
she wanted to say but she couldn’t form the words. She felt like
she was swimming in a thick, soupy fog that clogged her brain. She
lay back down, rolling over to Tyler’s side of the bed and hugging
his pillow to her chest. She breathed in his lingering scent,
closed her eyes and let her mind drift.

Of course the drawback to letting her mind
drift was that it tended to dwell on problems and search for
possible solutions. And right now, because she refused to think
about Vanessa, her mind flicked to another problem she couldn’t
solve.

Tyler had told his parents he’d met “Jaime”
after transferring from Appleton Performing Arts School to
Wasserman College of Fine Arts, where he was now majoring in
songwriting, and minoring in drawing and painting. Of course
Marissa and Mike had approved his decision to transfer. The college
had an excellent reputation—exactly the reason Jay had chosen it
after Tyler expressed the desire to narrow his focus. She’d
announced it was her Christmas gift to him, and the delighted
expression on his face had provoked her to smile so widely in
return that if she’d been human, her facial muscles would have
ached.

It’d also been the perfect opportunity to
muddy the paper-trail Tyler Michael Davidson had left behind at
Appleton. She’d registered him at Wasserman under the name T.
Michael Rowen—Rowen being his mother’s maiden name. It’d been
ludicrously easy to hack into first Appleton’s computer system, and
then Wasserman’s, and alter all Tyler’s records to show transfers
to and from completely different colleges. Next, Jay—or Jaime
Smythson, as she’d called herself—had dropped out of Appleton and
seeded a paper trail that had “Jaime” transferring to a college in
London. Soon she’d be off the grid, untraceable, but these things
took time to do properly and she’d been programmed to be
meticulous.

Tyler hadn’t batted an eyelid when she’d
informed him what she’d done. She hadn’t needed to explain. He was
intelligent enough to understand why she’d deemed these steps
necessary. He’d even managed a convincing lie to explain to his new
roommates why his surname was Rowen instead of Davidson, like his
parents’.

He hadn’t been quite so relaxed about
discovering Jay had paid his Wasserman tuition fees in full,
however. They were still “discussing” that aspect of her gift. And
surprisingly, Jay, who usually had all the answers, didn’t enjoy
these “discussions” one iota. All her logical reasons to justify
her actions meant nothing when it came to convincing her irate
boyfriend to accept financial assistance from her.

She knew she’d angered him but she didn’t
quite know why, and not knowing made her stomach squirmy and
uncomfortable, like she’d swallowed a live snake that had somehow
survived her digestive juices. She suspected his attitude stemmed
from that illogical state human males termed “masculine pride”.

Life had been far less complex before she’d
started to evolve—before she’d possessed the capacity to experience
emotions. She wished she could ask Tyler’s father for some insight
into his son’s often baffling thought-processes. Unfortunately,
considering her fraught relationship with Tyler’s parents, now
wasn’t the right time to admit she lacked such basic human
insights.

The mattress dipped. Tyler crawled into bed
beside her. She feigned sleep, wondering what he would do, whether
he would blame her, fear her.

There was no hesitation from him. He cuddled
up behind her and drew her into his embrace. “You okay?”

“Yes.” No. She was not in the least “okay”,
but she didn’t know how to ask for help because she didn’t know
what she needed. The way she was feeling, the way the dream still
affected her—it was all completely beyond her experience.

A sob caught in her throat. And another.

Tyler’s arms tightened around her. “It’s
okay to cry if you’re scared,” he murmured. “I won’t think any less
of you if you’re not a kickass babe twenty-four-seven.”

A tear trickled down her cheek. Right now
she hated this body. Why would it not obey her?

Tyler rolled onto his back, bringing her
with him so she ended up tucked under one arm, snuggled into his
chest. With his spare hand he gently stroked away the tear. “Must
have been one hell of a nightmare, huh?”

A ragged laugh bubbled from her throat.
“Yeah.”

“You know, sometimes talking about bad
dreams can help.”

“Not this one.”

“Okay.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Try and get some rest.”

Only when she was certain he was asleep and
would not witness her folly did she give in to the pain she’d been
keeping locked inside her. She cried—silently this time—because she
was devastated by the thought of losing him. And she knew that some
day she
would
lose him, because he was human and that was
the natural order of things.

How long would she have to live with only
vivid memories of Tyler to sustain her? How long before her own
“unnatural” lifespan ended? That was anyone’s guess. Jay would go
on—keep on living, existing… whether she wanted to or not.

~~~

Nessa tossed and turned, and finally gave up
trying to sleep. She switched on the bedside lamp. The glow from
the bulb pushed back the darkness and made her feel a little
better.

Huh. “Better” was a relative term
considering what had just gone down with Tyler’s freak of a
girlfriend.

She stared at the ceiling, gnawing her lower
lip. She hadn’t done anything wrong—yet. Not until she made her
first report, at least. She could still walk away, leaving Sixer to
shove his threats and his money up his ass. Not that she’d ever
dare tell him that to his face.