Reckoning (16 page)

The others snickered at the sarcastic way she’d phrased her question. I’d never thought of myself as a leader. I’d always preferred to stay in the background. In elementary school, I’d been bullied by other Supernaturals because I hadn’t wanted to use my power to show off like they had. In high school, I’d been the quiet one, hating to draw attention to myself. I’d hoped to stay under the radar until it was time to do what I was born to do. But the time for remaining in the background had passed whether I liked it or not.

“What’s your name?” I asked the star girl.

“Halo.”

“What I am, Halo, is a girl who doesn’t want her sister to die. I don’t care who I have to fight to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“What makes you sure you would win a fight against any of us?” Boldness dripped from her words.

“The scrolls say a Supernatural with the seven suns of Shimea Prime like King Faulk had was predicted to stop the Great Extinction. One with great power. Tell me what you see in my eyes.”

Halo’s smugness evaporated. “The seven suns,” she whispered, from bold to fearful in milliseconds.

“My biological father is King Faulk. His DNA was taken from our home planet and used to create me. I am the true ruler over the Supernaturals, chosen for the throne even before King Dacce or Riley, but I’m not here to fight for a throne. It means nothing to me. What does is saving the life of my sister.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

I understood their hesitancy. The Supernatural with the seven suns was a prophecy whispered about for years.

“How do we know we can trust you?” a dark haired boy called out.

I turned around and walked up to him. “I don’t care if you trust me or even if you like me. I don’t have a problem with any of you unless you get in the way of saving my sister.”

RILEY

When I walked into the barracks, one of the Supernaturals said, “Sir, we have a big problem.”

“Bigger than the war?”

He flushed. “I…well…”

“Continue.”

The Supernatural looked uncomfortable and glanced at the others, clearly not wanting to continue.

“What is it?”

“Your friend, Henry, told Juliet to kill you.”

There’s no way Henry would turn against me. If there was anyone I trusted with my life, it was him. “How’d you find out this information?”

“Prior to Juliet being brought in from the Void, we set up video and audio in the hospital ventilation system in order to track our wounded. I can show you.” He climbed up on a bunk and pushed at the ceiling tile quickly before removing a black box. He jumped down and opened it. The lid of the box contained a small monitor, and the base of it held a set of speakers. “It’s at the one hour and thirty-two second mark, sir.”

The monitor picture revealed Henry in the operating room. Juliet lay on the table, the wound on her leg exposed. A nurse began scrubbing the area with an antiseptic wash. Henry dropped a surgical tool and leaned down near Juliet’s ear. His words were clear. “You have to kill Riley to save us.”

I straightened, barely able to believe what I’d seen and heard. “Contact Mallen. Have him find Henry.” My muscles ached from the force of having to hold myself back. I wanted to charge from the base and demand answers, but I needed to be rational. In control. Knowing about Henry raised questions about Juliet. Questions that refused to be silenced.

“Then what do you want me to do?” Adler asked.

I knew what he was asking without him having to say it. By making the statement, Henry became a traitor. The others stared at me, knowing what the older Supernatural meant to me, knowing our laws against treason. Unlike the humans, we didn’t use a court system. Crimes were punished immediately. They waited, holding their breath to see if I was a weak king who chose emotion over loyalty. I hated even the idea of calling for Henry’s death, but I was not a king who would turn his back on disloyalty. Leading the people meant making hard decisions for the greater good.

“Find him. Have him held for execution.” I turned away so none of them would see what the words cost me. Heaviness weighed my body down, and it hurt to swallow past the lump in my throat.

Chapter 12

JULIET

The Supernaturals talked among themselves, whispering about me.

The Jeep returning made everyone stop talking. Rick walked over and handed me a bag. “Your uniform.”

I limped forward and took it. “Prison orange jumpsuit?”

“It’s blue,” he said and looked like he wanted to say more, but a second Jeep pulled up and Agent Davis joined us.

He searched through the group and motioned to a girl with uneven blond hair cut so short it looked like someone had put a bowl on her head and hacked it off. I knew her. We’d played together for years as children in the same neighborhood until her parents had moved too far away. I smiled my recognition and she smiled back, but it didn’t change her features. She still had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.

“This is Nixie,” the agent said, unaware I knew her. “She’ll wait here and take you to the dining barracks as soon as you’re changed.” Agent Davis glanced at his watch. “The rest of you grab chow.”

Nixie’s arms were a mass of raw marks crisscrossing each other. Her face was a road map of scars. She darted a look at me from eyes that flashed from blue to black before lowering her gaze.

I walked into the barracks with her moving behind me like a silent shadow. Rows of steel frame bunk beds filled the space. On the empty bunk near the window, I tossed the bag onto the mattress and faced her. “What happened? You disappeared.”

She lowered her paper thin voice, as afraid now as she’d been as a child. “I had to for a while. The humans were hunting me. A girl in my class at school said she’d seen me heal.” Twisting her hands together, fearful of talking about her abilities, she said, “We have to go. If we’re late, we won’t get to eat and I’m hungry.”

Since she looked like a strong wind could blow her away, I pulled the uniform from the bag and quickly changed into it. The material had piping down the sides of the sleeves and the center. I thought it was a weird choice for a prison uniform and said so.

She sent me a sad smile. “The piping glows in the dark. Makes us easy targets if the humans want to shoot at us at night.” She glanced at the door of the barracks, and when she turned her head, I saw the small violet dot near her pupil before it disappeared.

“Your mark is showing.”

She blinked quickly. “Still there?”

“No, it’s hidden again.”

Long ago, there had been numerous healers among the Supernaturals, but they’d been hunted for their skills. Many of them had died struggling to escape, some went into hiding, and others had been caught. Human doctors and pharmaceutical companies had fought over which one had the rights to keep a captured healer in captivity.

“The humans caught me once. They made me heal people until I almost died.” She shrank away as if she could escape the memories of what she’d suffered.

Every time a Supernatural with the gift healed a human, it weakened them, making them more susceptible to human illnesses, diseases, and even death.

She moved forward reluctantly, as careful as a small mouse sensing a cat nearby, and touched the ever present ache in my leg. “You’ll need your strength. I’ll heal you.”

“Stop.” I moved away from her. “I don’t want you to hurt for my sake. Besides, you may need your strength.”

Nixie’s mouth opened in surprise and she stood slowly, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Even when they knew what it did to me, no one ever tried to stop me from healing them.” Adoration filled her eyes. “I knew you were different when we were kids.” She bowed low. “I pledge my loyalty to you.”

Hero worship made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t a hero. Far from it. Touching my bandaged area, I said, “I’ll find Henry and see if there’s anything more he can do for me.”

“After he made the humans remove his band, I thought he’d leave the base, but he’s still lurking around.” She smiled as she said it.

“Probably hiding from the humans,” I said. Him needing to keep out of sight meant I couldn’t ask him to risk getting caught taking the tracker out of Maisy. I would have to find a plan B.

“We should go. The agents will wonder where we are,” Nixie said.

The distance to the dining barracks wasn’t a long one, but it was hard on my leg, not to mention freezing outside. The temperature couldn’t have been above forty degrees, and none of us had jackets. I shivered.

“The humans don’t like us to have jackets because they think it gives us a way to hide contraband like weapons to use against them,” Nixie said. She walked up the wooden steps leading to the door of the barracks and paused to wait for me to catch up. I had to swing my good leg up onto one step, drag the bad one up, put my weight on it, grit my teeth against the pressure, then repeat the process.

By the time Nixie pushed open the door leading into the eating area, I was exhausted.

A soldier wearing military fatigues motioned us forward and scanned our bands with a handheld device that beeped as it passed over them.

“They track us this way,” Nixie whispered. “To make sure we eat. A group of Supernaturals went on a hunger strike.”

A tall woman with blond hair in need of a dye job leaned her butt against a table behind the soldier. She stared at us with assessing eyes. Dipping her hand into the pocket of her lab coat, she withdrew a peppermint, and still staring at us, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.

I’d seen friendlier expressions on a Ragespawn, and those creatures really hated us. “Who’s that?” I asked.

Nixie shuddered. “They call her Dr. Death. She euthanizes Supernaturals who cause trouble.”

“Euthanizes?” Bile rose in my throat.

“Rumor is she does it while smiling,” Nixie said as we slipped past her.

We grabbed trays and slid them along the metal railings to choose food dishes. Nixie leaned over to pick up a bottle of water.

I glanced around to make sure no one was listening but lowered my voice just in case. “I need to find someone who can get a tracker out of my sister.”

She sent me a worried look. “The Supernaturals won’t help you. They’re afraid of you because you look different from them.”

We walked over to an empty table, and I put the tray down. Pulling out one of the metal folding chairs, I sat. “Everyone is staring at you.”

She gave a panicked look around before she relaxed. “Not me. You. It’s your eyes. The humans don’t know what the seven suns mean and the Supernaturals think you’re—” She stopped talking and dipped her head, embarrassed.

“They think I’m what?”

“A freak,” she mumbled, looking up, an apology in her eyes.

I twisted the cap off a bottle of water. I understood their misgivings. If I were an ordinary Supernatural and I’d seen a girl with weird markings in her eyes, I might have thought the same thing.

I glanced to my left, to the group of tables lined up near the long, rectangular windows on the wall. Though Riley was seated with a group of other Supernatural boys and had a tray in front of him, he wasn’t eating. As if he felt me looking at him, he turned slightly in his chair. His easy smile warmed me and he winked.

I squeezed my fingers around my fork until it was painful. It would help if he wasn’t hot. If I hadn’t given him my heart and my body. If I could only tell him…the if-onlys turned into missiles lobbing themselves at me, each one finding its target and destroying a little more of me. He loved and trusted me. How could I kill him?

“What can I do to help?”

I took a sip of my water, grateful for her interrupting my thoughts. “I can’t do anything until the tracker is taken out of Maisy. I need a Supernatural doctor.”

She gave a determined nod. “I know someone I can ask to help us find one.”

I let out a long breath.

“If it gives you any comfort, a few of the Supernaturals are watching out for the children, including your sister.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t stop my voice from cracking. I blinked back tears.

“I know it can’t be easy standing alone, on the side of the humans after what they’re doing.”

“We don’t get to choose our destiny.” If I had that option, I wouldn’t be here and Riley’s life wouldn’t be in my hands. My chin trembled and I looked down at the table.

“For what it’s worth, I admire your strength.” She stopped talking abruptly when Agent Davis made his way over to the table. He crossed his arms, staring down at us.

“You were tardy.” He leaned back and gave Nixie a hard look, zeroing in on her eyes. Staring longer than I liked with a puzzled expression on his face. I couldn’t let him figure out she was a healer.

I knocked my drink over, letting the liquid slosh across the table. “Oops.” I jumped up to wipe at the spill, trying not to let my he-suspects-Nixie-worries run rabid. The diversion worked. I piled the soggy napkins in the middle of the table and settled in the chair again.

The agent drummed his fingers on the table. “It might interest you to know we brought a friend of yours to the base.”