Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (147 page)

No.
Zev’s voice was quiet in my mind, but it was still there.
I wouldn’t do that to you. Not unless you were in danger—and even then, I didn’t do it on purpose.

I wanted to believe him, but he’d brought me here. He’d strangled me. He hadn’t mentioned, even once, that this was a trap.

I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me. I tried.

I could feel the hatred in his voice, loathing for himself, for her. I felt his emotions as intensely as my own and knew that he was wishing he’d killed himself before he could bring this kind of trouble to me.

I tried.

This was too much. It was just too much.

I’m sorry, Kali.

I wasn’t sure that mattered. I also wasn’t sure he had
anything to apologize for—he’d tried to warn me; he’d tried to fight. The only thing I
was
sure about was that in another four hours, I would be human again. I would be weak, defenseless.

I would hurt.

“You keep looking at your watch. I have to say, that surprised us. We hypothesized that a successful hybrid might have a portion of our skills, perhaps muted. Maybe it has something to do with the exact graft we used on your DNA, but the idea that you shift from form to form according to some circadian rhythm …” She trailed off.

“We?”

On the other side of the door, the woman smiled and turned her head to the side. “Didn’t you tell her, Rena?”

The woman’s use of my mother’s name was like a knife, straight to my heart.

“I didn’t exactly have the chance, Colette.”

Colette. So now the psychotic woman had a name. I tried to concentrate on that—and not on the sound of my mother’s voice.

“How rude of me,” Colette said. “I haven’t even introduced myself. You may call me Colette, if you wish, Kali. Or,” she added, stepping back from the glass so that I could see her lips twisting into a smile, “you could always call me
Mama
.”

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.

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.