Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (142 page)

I thought of the gun safe at Bethany’s house, of the zombies mobbing me and the way the weapons sung in my hand.

“I’m not three years old anymore,” I said. “And I’m not human.”

After all these years of keeping secrets, of dancing around even the simplest truths in our relationship, it was suddenly very easy to say.

“It started when I was twelve—right after my first period. I woke up really early one morning, and everything was different. I needed to get out of the house. To hunt.” I looked back at the knife on the counter. “That’s what we do, you know. People like me. We hunt the things that go bump in the night. We feel them like bugs crawling beneath our skin, and we hunt them down, and we keep them from killing anyone else.”

My father didn’t say a word—not a single word.

“Didn’t you ever wonder?” I asked. “Didn’t you ever see the clothes in the trash, the blood? Did you even notice when I wasn’t in my bed at night? And in the papers, they were always talking about vigilantes and poachers and whatever else they call people who hunt the monsters instead of calling Preternatural Control. God, Dad, I broke into your lab.”

“The zombies,” he said dully. “My work. That was you?”

“It was always me,” I said roughly. “Because that’s what I am. That’s what you made me—only I didn’t know that. I never knew why. I didn’t even know what.”

“But that’s impossible,” my father said, shaking his head, as if that could make what I was saying any less true. “I tested
you, every year, just to be sure. You took physicals. And your blood work always came up clean.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes I’m human. Sometimes I’m not. It’s not all that difficult to miss an appointment and reschedule it for a time when I’m just a girl.”

Just an ordinary girl
.

Yeah, right.

“Does your mother know?” His voice was honey-smooth and clear, like he’d recovered his composure, but his eyes were as dead as any zombie’s. “If she does, we have to leave. Now. Tonight. It won’t be easy, but I have some money set aside. We’ll be fine for a while.…”

“I have no idea what that woman knows,” I said, “but I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

It shocked me that he wanted to, that he would pick up and leave everything behind—his career, our house, his friends.…

He’s done it before
, I thought, and the reminder almost broke me all over again. The two of us had never been more than ships passing in the night. He had his life, and I had mine, and the only time the two coincided was when he needed a plus one.

“What Rena and I did was wrong, Kali. I know that. I’ve known it for a very long time, and when I look at you, when I think about what we did to you …”

I’d spent all of these years thinking he didn’t care. And maybe he didn’t, not the way fathers were supposed to, but there was something between us—something so powerful and awful and overwhelming that it hurt him to look at me.

“I was never good at this. She was, your mother. She
knew how to play with you and how to talk to you, and God, you adored her. You asked for her every night, every single night.…” He trailed off. “She loved you, in her own way, but this—her being here, you being different … it’s too much, Kali. It’s a risk.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

“It’s my risk to take,” I said finally. “One way or another, it’ll be over soon.”

I waited for him to ask what I meant.
If he asks, I’ll tell him
.…

This time, he didn’t.

There comes a moment in every kid’s life when they look at their parents and realize that they’re people—stupid and fallible and as breakable as the rest of us. Standing there, an ocean of space between me and my father, I realized that maybe he had tried. That maybe it hadn’t been easy for him. That I’d never made it any easier.

I realized that maybe he did love me, just a little.

I hated him—for what he’d done to me and what he’d never done for me. I hated him because for years, I’d been going through this alone, and if he’d told me, given me even a single hint about the way I’d come into this world, I wouldn’t have had to.

I hated him, but I loved him, too. And when it came to family, I didn’t have anyone else—I wouldn’t ever have anyone else.

For better or worse, this was it.

“Don’t worry about me,” I told him, walking toward the door and pausing just long enough to press my lips to his temple. “I promise, Daddy—I can take care of myself.”

So now I knew—what I was, how I’d gotten that way, why my father had never been able to look me straight in the eyes.

I collapsed on the end of my bed and set the cell phone he’d bought me to the side.

My mother was a psychopath.

My father was the good parent.

And I was an experiment they’d whipped up in some test tube.

Kali?

Until I heard Zev’s voice, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Missed him. But right now, I didn’t want someone else in my head. I didn’t want anyone or anything. I wanted to be left alone.

Close your eyes.

What was the point in convincing myself that I didn’t care if he could tell that I did? I wasn’t okay. I might never be okay again.

Just close your eyes, Kali.
It wasn’t an order—just a request—and I let my eyelids get very heavy, let them close all on their own.

And just like that, I wasn’t sitting on the edge of the bed.
I was standing in a forest, and Zev was standing next to me. He lifted one hand and trailed it over my cheek.

“Hello.”

Laughter burst out of my mouth. We were having some kind of psychic rendezvous, and
that
was what he had to say for himself?

“Hello, Kali.” His breath was warm on my skin, his presence coating my body, beckoning me forward as he repeated the first words he’d ever spoken to me, back when I was human and half afraid I was losing my mind. “I’m Zev.”

“Hello, Zev,” I said, leaning into his touch. “Have you been enjoying the show?” My voice was sharp, bordering on bitter. “Drama, revelations, betrayal … just another day in the D’Angelo household.”

“You’re hurting,” he said.

“I’m an experiment,” I countered. “What did you call that thing at the ice rink? ‘Unnatural’? And what does that make me?”

Cooked up in a test tube. Manufactured so my parents could run tests on my blood. A
thing
.

“That makes you special,” Zev said, bringing his free hand to the other side of my cheek and cupping my face. “It makes you unique.”

He meant the words. I knew he did, but that didn’t make me believe them. It didn’t make them true.

“You’re my other self,” Zev said, sensing my refusal, pushing harder. “We’re two halves of the same whole.”

His hand trailed down my face, my neck. He lifted it off my skin, and my back arched, longing for the contact. His palm landed on my stomach, and I felt a burst of warmth under his
touch. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of the parasite inside of me: I could feel it, like a tiny ball of light, and for the first time, I felt something from it other than
thirst
.

On instinct, I reached out my own hand, rested my palm on Zev’s chest, just over his heart. Another burst of warmth, a realignment of the world, a
yes
overtook my body, my mind.

“Nibblers come in pairs,” Zev said. “The one inside of you, the one inside of me—they’re matched.”

I thought through what Zev was saying and realized that it was his bad luck that the chupacabra matched to his had chosen someone like me. Not natural. Not normal. Not real.

“If given a choice,” Zev said, “believe me, I’d choose you.”

I closed my eyes, laid my head on his chest, listened to his beating heart.

“This isn’t real,” I murmured.

“No,” he agreed. “It’s all in my head. It’s all in yours.”

It didn’t feel imaginary. It didn’t feel fake. It felt safe and warm and like here, in our minds, we could make the world anything we wanted it to be.

“Now you know,” Zev said, “why two years is nothing.”

Two years. That was the amount of time he’d spent in Chimera’s possession. I wondered if he came here, to this place in his mind, whenever they took their pound of flesh.

People like us couldn’t feel pain.

We couldn’t feel fear.

And once we’d been bitten, we were connected.

Brrrriiiinnggggg!

I came out of the trance suddenly, and it took me a moment to pinpoint the sound that had brought me back—the ringing of a phone. I spent one second wondering who
could possibly be calling a number I didn’t even know myself, but the answer became readily apparent the second I answered the phone.

“I have an address,” Skylar said. “According to Reid, it’s an old military base that hasn’t belonged to the government since the fifties. It’s supposed to be abandoned—something about radiation—but satellite scans suggest there’s geothermal activity.” She paused. “This
is
Kali, right?”

I made a face at the phone. “Did you just dial a number at random?”

I could practically hear her smiling. “Maybe?”

I glanced down at my watch.
Twelve hours and two minutes
.

I wanted to see Zev—see him for real. I wanted to save him, and I didn’t have much time.

“Hey, Skylar?” I said. “Can you send me that address?”

If I can’t break out of here, what makes you think that you can break in?

Zev’s question may have been rhetorical, but I did him the favor of answering, anyway.

Easy
, I replied, slipping my cell into my pocket.
The bad guys
want
me in
.

For the first time since I’d recognized my mother, I smiled without feeling nauseous. I could do this.

I would do this.

I had to.

Shutting my mind against Zev’s voice—velvet and smooth inside my head—I set to work. The moment I turned my mind to what needed to be done, I felt a slight vibration in the air, a song singing me closer, luring me in. The palms of my hands itched as I scanned the house for weapons.

I could do this.

I would do this.

I had to.

I started in my bedroom and worked my way quickly through the rest of the second floor. I didn’t have as many
weapons as another person might have had in my position, but I’d been hunting for five years, and during that time, the weapons I did have had been stashed all over the house. A knife here, a dagger there, the occasional sword.

My dad had a gun.

One by one, I tracked each of them down and tucked them into my clothing, heightened awareness of each blade bringing what I was about to do fully into focus. I saved the gun for last and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans, nestled against the small of my back.

Ready
.

Armed to the teeth, I slipped out of the house, the way I had a thousand times before. This time, there was a chance my dad might actually miss me before I returned.

If I returned.

The thought gave me pause—but not nearly enough. I took one step away from the house, and then another. A moment later, I was walking, and a second after that, I broke into a run.

The address Skylar had given me was outside of town. Driving would have been easier and faster, but if things went well, I deeply suspected I wouldn’t want to leave even a trace of evidence behind.

Getting Zev out of there wouldn’t be enough. To end this, really end this, we’d have to make sure that there wasn’t anyone left to chase us.

We’d have to crush Chimera—and everyone who worked there—to dust.