The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (6 page)

Audrey shook the car again, jerking it to the left so she was in the left-hand lane. The maneuver nearly knocked Soren off, but he managed to point his body at the passenger side and crawled forward, hoping to break the window and crawl inside the car.

But the car sped up suddenly, and then braked hard. Soren could hear the squeal of tires and smell burning rubber as the car shuddered beneath him. The shift in momentum was too much for him to hang on and he lost his grip.

He was flung into the air, spinning as he went. As he hit the pavement, rolling several times on the road, Soren felt the bones in his arms shatter and ribs crack. There were bright, searing spots of pain all over his body: his legs, his chest, his arms, and his head.

He knew it was going to get worse. He had rolled to a stop facing the car, which gunned its motor. In a minute, Audrey would run over Soren. It was inevitable.

It wouldn’t kill him, but he still dreaded the experience. He thought grimly that at least it was something he could cross off his list when he got home.

The car surged forward and Soren waited for even more pain to come, but the driver surprised him. Though there was little room on the road to do so, Audrey eased the vehicle past Soren, as if she were being careful not to run him over.

Soren was still wondering why when he heard a police siren in the distance. Ken must have figured out what had happened and was coming after them. Instead of being relieved, Soren felt a new thrill of terror.

He couldn’t let Sara or Ken find him this way. Sara had seen him burned in the forest, but he’d claimed that Reapoke had healed him. He didn’t think she would accept it if she found him this way only for his injuries to miraculously recover a few minutes later. She would figure out the truth.

Moving was excruciating, but Soren slowly crawled off the road and into the ditch.

Sara and Ken drove back down Old Dominion for the sixth time in twenty minutes.

Ken had seen Audrey Yong pull out of the neighborhood with Soren hanging on to the roof, but they’d never been able to catch up. Audrey’s car had vanished, taking Soren with it.

“Dammit,” Sara said, and started biting her nails. “She was right there, Ken. We had her.”

“Look, at least we know your theory is right, don’t we?” Ken asked. “You, me, and Soren all saw someone who looked like Audrey Yong, which isn’t possible. So we know it’s a pretender.”

That was little comfort to Sara. She’d been convinced a pretender was behind the murders since she first heard about them. But she was no closer to proving it to Wallace, or uncovering why the pretender had killed that family. Assuming she had a reason. On his blog, Soren had argued pretenders killed because they enjoyed it, but she couldn’t fully accept that was true. There must be some other reason for what they did.

Sara saw someone step out into the road in front of them.

“Ken, look out!” she screamed.

Ken slammed on the brakes and the car came screeching to a halt. Looking up, she saw Soren standing in the glare of the headlights. His face was streaked with dirt while his clothes were torn in several places. Ken rolled down the window.

“Are you insane?” he asked. “I almost ran you down.”

Soren jogged over to the car and got into the backseat.

“Sorry,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think to do. I tried to flag you down the last time you passed by, but you didn’t see me.”

Sara turned in her seat and looked back at him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I got knocked off the car,” Soren said. “Lucky for me, I got flung onto a pile of leaves by the side of the road.”

She nodded her head and tried to look relieved, though she figured the story was bullshit. He probably had been hurt when he was thrown from the car, but had only reappeared after his wounds had healed.

Or there was another possibility. What if he hadn’t been thrown off the car at all? Was it possible Soren was in this with the girl? He had been lurking in the house after all. Maybe he was there to meet with Audrey.

Once upon a time, she would have dismissed the thought as paranoia, but not any longer. Now anything seemed possible.

“Okay,” Ken said. “I think it’s time to get Sara home. Soren, I’ll take you back to your car.”

“No,” Sara said. “We’re going back to the Wallace Institute. I want to test the blood sample we collected.”

“Why? If you wanted me to believe a pretender was involved, I do now.”

“I just want to be thorough,” Sara said. “We’ve never had a sample of pretender blood before. It could yield valuable clues on how to kill it.”

Soren nodded. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “I never had the money to try something like that.”

“Now?” Ken asked. “After all this?”

“My mother is watching Alex at her place,” Sara said. “If I go home, I won’t be able to sleep. I’d rather do it now.”

“Can I come, too?” Soren asked.

Sara inwardly cursed herself. She should have let Soren believe she was going home, but instead she’d opened her big mouth and was stuck. It would seem odd to refuse him, so she didn’t. “Sure.”

*****

The Wallace Institute took up two entire floors of a relatively new building in Arlington. The offices were on the top level, tricked out with an ultrahigh speed Internet connection, and powerful computers capable of sifting through multiple databases with records on worldwide supernatural activity.

But the lower level was arguably more impressive. It was a state-of-the-art lab, stocked with every kind of device imaginable. In there, institute staffers could test blood, DNA, and identify any substance left behind at the scene of a paranormal event.

Wallace had family money and he knew how to spend it. Sara had never worked somewhere with these kind of resources before—or for a boss so willing to deploy them.

The lab’s head technician, Phillip Advoy, greeted Sara, Ken, and Soren as they entered. Although it was late, he seemed fresh and ready, as if this was the middle of his workday. According to Wallace, Advoy rarely went home and often slept in the lab, usually because he was working on various experiments.

Sara gave him the blood sample and asked him to test it immediately. As he disappeared into the back, Soren looked around appreciatively.

“Holy shit,” Soren said. “I had no idea Wallace had this kind of facility.”

“There’s probably a lot you don’t know about his operation,” Sara said.

“It’s pretty big,” Ken said.

“Everything Wallace does is.”

“I don’t get it,” Ken said. “Why do you need this if you’re chasing ghosts?”

“Even ghosts and monsters leave behind evidence,” Sara said. She knew of a room that contained only jars filled with different kinds of ectoplasm, the substance believed to be left behind by certain ghosts, and another with samples of skeletons that didn’t fit the description of any animal known to current science. “The trouble with the supernatural is it’s treated as if it exists outside of science. It’s as if it’s magic.”

“Isn’t it?” Ken asked.

“No,” Soren and Sara said together.

“Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t make it magic,” Soren said.

“Wallace agrees,” Sara said.

“Can I ask you a question?” Soren asked.

“You don’t normally ask permission, Soren.”

“You wanted to collect the blood sample from the pretender that was Audrey Yong,” Soren said. “But why? Wallace has a pretender locked up.”

Sara was confused and let it show on her face.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Annika—sorry, Meredith—gave me information about a pretender,” Soren said. “I made it jump out of a tall window and it ran off. She told me later the institute had nabbed it.”

Sara shook her head.

“Another one of her lies,” she said. “Trust me, if we had a pretender here, I’d know it. Ever since I heard the story you told Meredith, I’ve been obsessed with them.”

“Join the club,” he said.

The thing that got her was that Soren actually smiled at her when he said that. The sheer gall of it was unbelievable. She had a sudden urge to grab Ken’s gun and start firing.

“So Meredith lied again,” he said. “I wonder if anyone else picked up that pretender. The one tonight could even be the same.”

Sara cocked an eyebrow.

“I’ve met pretenders on five different occasions that I know of, including tonight,” Soren explained. “They could have all been the same pretender or five different ones. It’s impossible to tell.”

“I have a few questions if you’re the expert,” Ken said. “How many pretenders are there?”

“Let’s go sit down,” Sara said.

She took them into the break room, a small area with a leather sofa and vending machines.

“I don’t know the answer,” Soren said when they were settled. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, not that many. But a single one is incredibly dangerous. They’re fast, strong, can take any person’s form, and we don’t know how to kill them. They don’t have any obvious weaknesses.”

“How do we know they aren’t running the world?” Ken asked. “Couldn’t one of them just become the president or something?”

“I guess,” Soren said. “Only from what I’ve seen, they never seem to work together. I’ve never come across two at a time, or even heard of that happening.”

Sara couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. Most of what she knew of pretenders came from Soren, and her own research had turned up little. She thought again of whether the pretender tonight was working with Soren. Was he trying to throw her off? But why would he be if he didn’t know that she knew his actual identity? If she let her thoughts keep spinning in that direction, she’d never get anywhere.

“They seem very rare,” Soren said. “I worked like hell to track down the first three I found. The fourth was delivered on a silver platter by Meredith. If they were everywhere, I don’t think it would have been that hard to find one.”

“Couldn’t they just be really good at hiding?” Ken asked.

Soren appeared to entertain that thought.

“Maybe,” he said. “I just don’t think so. The biggest flaw they seem to have is a certain mental instability. They look and sound just like the targets they assume, but friends and close family usually start to see differences. That’s what happened in Yong’s case. Based on her file, the pretender replaced the real Audrey two weeks ago. That’s when several friends said she became moody and withdrawn. There was also an incident at school around then. Audrey shoved another girl into a locker and had to be pulled off of her. School officials were bewildered because Audrey had never acted that way previously. That’s consistent with how pretenders behave. Those I’ve met were also . . . odd. I think stealing all those identities and memories has a price.”

“But where do they come from?” Ken asked.

“Nobody knows. Their origin story is a German legend, but it’s contradictory and unhelpful. According to myth, they used to rule the planet. Then—somehow—humans uncovered and defeated them.”

“Here’s the big question—what do they want?” Sara asked.

She tried to keep her tone casual, but she was dying to know his answer.

“Nothing,” Soren replied. “They’re vicious and cruel. They have no agenda that I know of. They enjoy death and destruction. They’re monsters.”

Sara kept her expression carefully neutral as the hate welled up inside her, threatening to overflow. She involuntarily glanced at Ken’s gun.

“So what the pretender did to Audrey’s family? What the pretender did to John Townes and your friends . . . that was just for fun?” Ken asked, sounding incredulous.

Soren looked away, a frown on his face.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “As far as I know, that’s exactly what it was about.”

Advoy walked into the break room holding a folder in his hand. “Well, the full results won’t be clear until tomorrow, but I have some preliminary ones now,” he said. “The blood looks like it was taken from a human female.”

“What?” Soren asked. “That can’t be right.”

“Are you sure?” Sara asked, confused. This wasn’t what she’d expected.

Advoy stiffened, clearly unused to being questioned. “I’m afraid it’s quite correct.”

Sara looked over at Soren, arching an eyebrow. “But you said pretenders don’t have human blood,” she said.

“They don’t,” Soren responded. “I’m sure of it.”

“So the blood on the bed actually belonged to Audrey Yong?” Ken asked. “Is that what we’re saying?”

“As I said, we’ll have full results tomorrow,” Advoy said, his voice cold now. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s late and I’d like to go home.”

He was gone before Sara could stop him. She’d have to apologize tomorrow. “I don’t understand,” Sara said. “We saw the pretender. We all saw her.”

“So it’s the real Audrey’s blood,” Ken said. “Why does it matter?”

“Because our scenario is that the pretender, not the real Audrey, killed the girl’s family,” Soren said. “The pretender then shot herself in the head and pretended to be dead. It should be the pretender’s blood on that wall, not Audrey’s.”

“Maybe the pretender kept the real Audrey Yong’s body around, and shot her at the house when she killed the family,” Ken offered.

“I’ve never heard of that happening,” Soren said. “Pretenders don’t usually try and plant evidence. In fact, my personal theory is that the police know far more about them than they seem. The physical evidence in other cases would be a giveaway.”

Both Sara and Soren turned in Ken’s direction, and the cop held up his hands.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I hadn’t heard of them until Sara told me about them.”

Soren frowned.

“The pretender probably killed Audrey as soon as she stole her identity, and buried her body somewhere people wouldn't find it. Keeping her body around would be an incredible risk. I can’t believe the pretender stuffed her in a closet or something for two weeks while she went around impersonating her. It would be too dangerous.”

Sara could have been wrong, but Soren appeared disturbed by the idea. He abruptly stood up.

“Where are you going?” Sara asked.

“Home,” Soren said. “Tomorrow I’m going to start looking at this from other angles. If the technician’s right, we’re missing something. I’m going to find out what.”