The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (12 page)

“They get inside your head,” Rakev continued. “And what good is it if a kid knows exactly what you’re going to do to them? So the best way to stop their invasive techniques is to remember a song in your head. And strangely, you know what works best? Eighties rock. Weird, but true. And do you know what song is in my head now?”

Soren’s fingers closed on the pin of the grenade. He kept his eyes focused on Rakev, surprised he didn’t see what Soren was doing. Slowly, Soren started to pull the pin out.

“Not going to guess?” Rakev said. “Come on, that’s no fun. I’ll give you a hint. Pat Benatar 1980.”

As surreptitiously as he could, never taking his eyes from Rakev’s face, Soren pulled the pin.

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Rakev said. “‘Hit Me with Your Best Shot.’”

Soren chucked the grenade in Rakev’s direction. It rolled to Rakev’s feet where it exploded in a blinding flash of light. Soren yanked a knife out of his vest and rushed forward. The grenade wouldn’t kill Rakev, but it should disorient him.

But as Soren plunged through the smoke, he found nothing there. He turned around to find Rakev standing where Soren had just been.

“Not bad, but not good enough,” Rakev said.

Rakev leaned down and picked up one of Soren’s guns on the ground. Soren rushed toward him, but Rakev vanished again, disappearing into thin air. He heard the whooshing sound and spotted strands of black smoke. Rakev reappeared behind him once more. When Soren turned, Rakev threw him the gun.

“Let me show you how pointless this is,” he said.

Soren caught the gun and reloaded it with one of the ammo cases on his vest.

Rakev stood with his arms outstretched, unmoving.

“Come on, fire—” Rakev said.

Before he finished, Soren had pulled the trigger. The bullets headed right toward Rakev—and then kept going right through him, hitting the concrete wall behind him. Except they didn’t exactly go
through
him as if he was incorporeal. Instead, it was like holes appeared in Rakev’s body a split second before the bullets connected, allowing them to travel through the man without actually hitting him. The holes sealed up within a fraction of a second as if they’d never been there at all.

“Shit,” Soren said, starting to feel a panic rising in his chest.

“Oh that’s too bad,” Rakev said. “Not much of a shot, eh? Tough break, buddy.”

Rakev vanished again and reappeared two feet away from Soren.

“Now it’s my turn,” Rakev said. “Let’s see if I can do a little better.”

Rakev moved his hand lazily toward Soren, almost comically slow. Soren tried to block it, but was hit by a blast of force that sent him careening through the air. Some shirkens and a stoneskin dove out of the way as Soren smashed into the wall behind him and for a moment was held there, several feet above the ground. Soren hit his head so hard he could barely see. His vision blurred and the room teetered before him. Worse, he couldn’t breathe. Whatever force was holding him against the wall cut off all oxygen. His hands uselessly clutched at his own throat.

Just when he thought he would run out of air, the force pinning him to the wall vanished and he fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Rakev stood in the same place he’d been earlier, still smiling.

“Fun, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Tell me, have you ever wanted to fly?”

Rakev flicked his wrist and Soren was yanked off the ground, and again thrown into the air. He tumbled head over heels, the ceiling and floor blending together. Soren threw up, the vomit hitting his legs as he tumbled through the air.

“Very nice,” Rakev called.

Soren rose through the air and came to a stop near the balcony, still suspended in midair. His body righted itself and he stood only a few feet from Alex and Lochlan. Soren looked down to see he was standing on nothing; there was no floor holding him up. He felt like a cartoon character who’d run off the edge of a cliff and had just realized there was nothing below him.

“Can’t shoot me, can’t stab me, can’t blow me up,” Rakev said. “But oh, the things I can do to you. Alas, while I do enjoy playing with my food, we’re out of time. I need to get back to work.”

It was such a strange thing to finally get his death wish and bitterly regret it. In this final moment, he’d failed Alex, Sara, John, and the original Soren Chase himself.

“Say goodbye to Uncle Soren, Alex,” Rakev said.

Soren met the boy’s eyes and saw the terror in his face. “I’m so sorry,” he told Alex.

And then came the fall. All at once, he was plummeting back down to the ground at incredible speed. He landed with a sickening thud and felt pain explode in his legs, knees, hip, and chest. He lay on the ground, many of his bones shattered.

He looked up to see Rakev strolling toward him. The smile was gone, replaced with a look of mild disapproval.

“You’ve had quite a run, buddy,” he said. “The great Soren Chase, supernatural investigator. You didn’t even give me a run for my money. Too bad.”

Soren lay there unable to move. He could feel his bones starting to heal, but it wasn’t happening fast enough. He didn’t even have the strength to hold up his arms as Rakev leaned over him. Rakev’s cold hands grabbed both sides of his face and began crushing his head.

The pain was enormous, so intense that Soren lost the ability to do anything but scream.

A moment later, the crushing stopped and Soren felt a brief flicker of relief. But then Rakev grabbed his chin and, instead of squeezing, began pulling up. There was a sharp and jagged pain in his neck—Soren had never felt anything like it—and an awful tearing sound. Then there was suddenly no feeling at all.

Soren’s mouth remained open, but no sound passed through it. He could still see, and found himself looking at his own mangled, broken body on the ground. Rakev turned Soren’s head to face him, and he was smiling again.

“I should mount you on a pike and put it outside my door as a warning to others,” he said. “But it’s not worth it. Not much of a challenge in the end. Lochlan, put the body in the incinerator, and Gregory, prepare to move locations. I don’t want some other jerkoff finding us.”

And with that, Rakev threw Soren’s severed head across the floor.

Soren’s head came to rest more than a dozen feet away from his body.

He stared at his body because he had no choice. His eyes couldn’t blink, nor could they look away. He had no control whatsoever. He just watched as Rakev barked an order, and the shirken, stoneskins, and gaunts filed out of the room. Rakev never even glanced in Soren’s direction as he stomped back up the stairs.

Soren heard Alex start crying and then there was a wet, meaty slap that cut the sound short. Soren wanted to jump up and run to the boy, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t even understand how he could think. His brain was no longer receiving blood.

There was the sound of a slamming door, and then Soren heard footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Lochlan came into view. He barely looked at Soren as he walked out the door of the warehouse, and came back a moment later with a large wheelbarrow.

Lochlan rolled the wheelbarrow over to Soren’s body. He leaned down and picked it up, grunting with apparent effort as he tossed it inside. Soren’s legs were still dangling over the side as Lochlan rolled the wheelbarrow over to Soren’s head. Lochlan leaned down and picked Soren’s head up, putting it into the wheelbarrow with the rest of his body.

Soren’s nose hit the metal edge of the wheelbarrow, but he felt no pain. He supposed he needed a spine to feel pain and that had been forcibly disconnected.

He couldn’t see where they were going, but there was the sound of several doors opening and closing and—strangely—of Lochlan whistling. After several minutes, they came to a stop.

The wheelbarrow was tipped over and Soren’s head and body came tumbling out. As he rolled, Soren could see they were now in the incinerator room. Soren wanted to start screaming again, but he couldn’t open his mouth to do so. He couldn’t do anything.

He didn’t think the burning would kill him; he’d been lit on fire two months ago. But he remembered the pain from it, and it wasn’t something he wanted to repeat. Worse, if he was trapped in the incinerator, there would be nowhere to go. He would just stay there, burning and burning but never dying, until the fire went out or the world ended.

Instead of throwing him into the flames, however, Lochlan picked up Soren’s head and looked at him for a long moment.

“Yer a dumb fookin’ bastard, ya know that?” the leprechaun said. “I go out of my way to keep ya out of things, and look what it gets me. The boss is mad and yer, well, yer beside yourself, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

Lochlan chuckled a little at his own joke. He lowered Soren’s head, and he got a look at his own body again. The legs, which had been bent at strange angles earlier, now appeared normal.

Lochlan stuck Soren’s head back on the stump of his neck, and then leaned against the nearby wall. He pulled a pipe from his vest jacket, lit it with the end of his thumb, and began smoking.

“We’ve got a little time before the boss will want to yell at me some more,” Lochlan said, looking directly at Soren’s face. “And I know ya can’t talk yet, so I’m gonna talk for ya.”

If Soren could have registered shock on his face, he would have.

“Of course, I know what ya are,” Lochlan said, as if he’d read Soren’s mind. “Ya faced down a gorgon—looked it dead in the eye—and didn’t turn to stone. Ya were so focused on pretenders; I shoulda guessed why.

“But happily, the boss doesn’t know. He knows how to kill your kind, but I took pains to always imply you were one lucky human son of a bitch. He underestimated ya.

“Of course, ya underestimated him, too, dinna ya? How daft are ya? Ya march right in here like fookin’ Rambo. I thought yer kind was devious, but yer about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Didn’t ya look into Rakev? Don’t ya know what he can do?”

As Lochlan spoke, Soren felt a strange numb sensation in his neck. It was almost ticklish. A few minutes more and he suddenly felt heavier somehow, though he hadn’t moved at all.

“So here’s how it’s gonna be,” Lochlan said. “I owe ya one for saving me from the gorgon, so I’m gonna let ya go. But yer gonna disappear. Soren Chase is dead. Find someone else to be. As for the boy, I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t suffer too much when his end comes. It’s the best I can offer ya.”

Soren heard the words but could barely process them. He could suddenly feel his arms and legs again, and they were in significant pain. He opened his mouth to cry out, and realized he could actually open it for the first time since his dismemberment. He tried to talk, but only a dry rasp came out.

“Yer back already? That was faster than I thought,” Lochlan said. “I have to go. The boss will be suspicious if I take too long. He’d be suspicious if I was too quick, too. The boss gets suspicious for no reason at all; it’s his way.

“But we’re fully square now, do ya hear me? I’d do more but . . . He’s got someone I care about, too. And I want to make sure when he completes his plan, she’s kept alive. Ah, love. It’ll kill us both, Soren, or whatever the fook your real name is.”

Soren sat up and then wished he hadn’t. Everything in his body was either in pain or felt strange and unfamiliar. He opened his jaw and closed it again, feeling like a zombie who could no longer remember how to talk. He tried to say something, but he just made another rasping sound.

Lochlan watched him patiently as Soren struggled to say a word. Finally, he moved his lips in the right way to get it out.

“Why?” he asked, the sound of it coming out like a cough.

Lochlan nodded his head.

“A big question,” Lochlan said. “And I don’t know the answer. He’s collected them for decades, the kids with power. He waits a while and then kills them. I don’t know why, but I know this. Alex is the last. Whatever the boss has in motion, it’s almost over.”

Lochlan moved away from the wall, and started to walk toward the door. “There’s a door out the back here,” Lochlan said. “Find it and get gone. I never want to hear from ya again.”

Lochlan reached the door and grasped the handle before Soren could manage another question, one he desperately needed the answer to.

“How. Kill. Rakev?” he managed.

Lochlan shook his head.

“Don’t make me regret helping ya,” Lochlan said. “This fight is done. Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no way to kill the boss. Nothing will stop him, Soren Chase. Not an army, not the Council, and sure as hell not you. Whatever plan he has in mind will get completed—and then God help us all.”

Sara paced in her office at the Wallace Institute to keep herself from sitting down. If she sat down, she might fall asleep, and by the time she woke up again, Alex could be dead.

The police were doing everything they could, according to Ken. They’d launched an extensive manhunt and held a press conference. Her story was all over the local news and had even made a couple of the national broadcasts.

But she already knew the police would fail. They weren’t equipped to handle this. A pretender had taken her boy and it could be anywhere—and anyone—by now. At least she thought it was a pretender. She’d been so sure immediately afterward, telling Wallace that was what it was. But looking back, she thought of the cop’s odd skin, the way he wasn’t dressed for the cold. Was it possible it was something else? The thought only made her more terrified for Alex.

She’d received a message from Wallace that Soren was following up a lead. He’d vowed to bring Alex back. Once upon a time, that would have given her comfort, some shred of hope.

But now she wasn’t so sure. Soren had saved Alex before—that was true. But now that she knew what he really was, she doubted his intentions. What if he was secretly behind Alex’s kidnapping?

Soren had taken everything else from her. Maybe he’d decided to take the last part of her life that had any meaning. She’d heard the way Soren talked about pretenders. They were vicious and cold. What could be crueler than this?

Yet at the same time, Soren had saved her more than once. As much as she hated him for what he’d done, was it possible he wasn’t completely evil? Could he really be working to save Alex?