Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts) (2 page)

“Be
glad.”

Eva
shuddered, listening for the guards until they reached the steps. Her
companion’s body shifted away. “Railing,” he said. “I should be fine from here.
As long as we pause at the top. I’m not…at my best.” Then, stiffly, as if it
hurt to admit it, “I won’t be much good in a fight.”

“We’re
running, not fighting. Besides, you need to lead. I don’t know the way out,”
Eva replied, her heart starting to pound with a painful anticipation.

Three
weeks
.

Three
weeks of caging herself, of pacing, of sitting, of being strapped down by Rohe
and her henchmen and being bled and questioned about
magic
of all
ridiculous things, as if she were nothing more than some human’s high school
lab experiment.

Three
weeks without running or playing, without sky or wind or the sensation of dirt
beneath her feet. Three weeks without speaking to her sister or feeling the
Change or simply just breathing in
freedom
.

“Don’t
get excited,” the man said obscurely.

Eva
ignored him.

Light
glimmered beneath the double-doors at the top of the steps. Anticipation
stretched through Eva, straining her control. She took a quick step forward.
Her companion gripped her arm and she jumped.

“There
are humans in there. Listen.”

“Guards?”
Eva hissed, squinting at him; she just was able to make out pale skin and
shaggy hair.

His
voice was dry. “Human guards? Those are patients, Eva. Real patients.
Certifiable ones.”

“I
don’t know how you can tell the difference,” Eva muttered, rubbing the row of
scabs on her right arm. All of Rohe’s toadies were stronger than she was. Which
was just
wrong
.

Eva
shivered and told herself it was from the cold radiating up through the paper
soles of her shoes. “What are they? Rohe’s guards…whatever they are, they
aren’t
right
.”

Her
companion tugged the latch of the door so she could slip through; she heard a
faint hum as the Asylum’s generators kicked in and Eva froze, momentarily
blinded by the bright institutional lighting. The man from 113 cursed. “I’ll
tell you when we get out of here.”

No
arguing there.
Now
wasn’t the time for conversation.

The
atrium was large with stark white walls and a dark growth of plants fringing
the edges. One of the human patients stared vacantly at Eva. He was dressed in
gray sweats identical to hers, drool trickling down his jaw; Eva sprinted
toward the lobby’s outer doors, trying to ignore him.

So
close.
Her heart beat a tandem to her thoughts as she moved forward. She forced
herself to walk, not run, reciting the first principle her Gens had drummed
into her over the years:
move slowly, do not attract attention. Pretend you
belong
. Eva reached the outer door and tested it: the locks held.

“
No
.”
Fear bit Eva, panic bleeding into her veins. Her muscles tensed. Eva gripped
the steel handle of the right door, leveled her foot against the left door and
pulled
.

“Wait!”
A low, harsh order. Her companion ripped her wrist away.

“Wait?
What is wrong with you?!” Eva hissed, fighting to hold on and felt her wrist
pop as it gave beneath his grip; dull pain flared up her arm to lodge a molten
point in her elbow. “What do you think you are doing?”

He
dropped her wrist as if she had burned him. As if he realized what he had done.

Eva
cradled her arm as she whirled on the stranger she had shared a wall with for
the past three weeks, fear and panic combining into raw fury. “
How dare you?
I was trying to get us out of here!”

His
body was tense. “Apologies,” he said stiffly. “I can
hear
them. Don’t
you ever listen?”

Eva
snarled. “
What are you
– ”

He
clamped a hand over her mouth as the sharp tread of a guard boot sounded in the
hall. Eva swallowed her anger, buried her pain, and clutched her wrist to her
chest. She twisted away and sandwiched herself between the wall and a large
plant. She didn’t see where the man from 113 hid.

A guard
opened the door and glanced around the lobby. His dark eyes seemed to latch on
Eva, and a frown crossed his face…but then the drooling patient shuffled into
the guard’s line of vision. Eva’s nose filled with the sour stench of urine as
the patient wet himself. The guard scowled and turned away, moving – Eva
realized with dismay – down the black stairwell they had just escaped
from.

This
time her companion beat her to the outer door. He wrenched against the lock,
and she heard metal stress and groan. The cold steel buckled outward,
stretching slowly, unwillingly, until Eva finally heard a grinding
click
as the lock broke.

The man
from 113 stepped back then slammed the base of his palm against the door. It
crashed outwards with a muted, distant
boom
.

Eva’s
sucked in her first breath of freedom in three months as she stepped outside
into the waning blizzard. Thick snow swirled around the Asylum like silver
dust. Frozen air and ice-chips bit her cheeks, making her feel more alive.
“Beautiful,” Eva whispered, because it was. “It’s like a postcard.”

Her
companion made a low sound of disbelief.

“Okay,”
Eva agreed, fixing her gaze on the shadowed tree line as she wondered how many
bodies were buried beneath those drifts, “A
dark and
ominous
postcard.” She shivered.
Scratch that
. Not a postcard: a newspaper
clipping. One where the headline read, “Unsuspected Psycho Killer.”

It
didn’t
matter. Eva would survive worse to escape. She wouldn’t be one of
those bodies.

Eva turned.
She couldn’t see her fellow prisoner very well, but his shaggy head was tilted
back as he gazed up at the dark snow-torn sky. His throat was pale, corded and
marked with fading scars. Eva looked away, rubbing her own wounds. “Do you know
where we are?”

“The
nearest town is in that direction.” He pointed unerringly through the thick
trees without looking at her. “West. Approximately eight and a half miles along
I-91.”

I-91.
So we’re in New England. Thank god.
Not
too
far from her
Gens in North Carolina.
“Okay.” Eva edged toward the trees, fighting the
urge to Change and run. She didn’t know the man’s name. But neither did she
need to know. Their path ended here, so Eva sank all the gratitude she could
into two words: “
Thank you
.”

The man
from 113 spared Eva the briefest glance from gray eyes that chilled her far
more than the blizzard ever would. “Goodbye, Eva,” he said, turning to face the
darkness. “And Godspeed. Rohe’s come hunting. Run fast.”

“Tell
Seth I’m shipping back to Europe. I’d rather be fodder for the Sakai than go
through
that
again.”

Brand
Kade snorted tiredly. “Don’t tempt him. He’ll tie you up and dump you on the
next boat out.” He switched lanes, taking the interstate north into Vermont and
squinted at the road through the snow. “Come to think of it, I might too.” The
blacktop hummed beneath the car’s tires. He could feel his cousin weighing his
words. Though old snow in the ditches reflected their headlights back at him,
the night mirrored the leaden fog of Brand’s mood. Boston had been a bust and
all he wanted was to get home to Stronghold.

Joshua
growled. “I doubt it. You need me too much. My point being that those kids
didn’t have a hell of an idea what they were doing. They don’t even know to use
their claws. Cubs these days are fucking blood fodder.” Joshua kneaded the
thick scar tissue on his right hand. His sandy brows were pulled low over
steely eyes.

Brand
frowned. Of course the kids in Boston hadn’t stood a chance. Joshua was one of
the best fighters at Stronghold. But Brand also knew Joshua wasn’t angry at the
kids’ lack of skill. No, Joshua was angry that the young blood tigers had
risked drawing attention to the larger Kaspian community.

He was
too. Brand was just better at keeping his head about these things. “Agreed. But
we have other things to worry about at the moment. If Cateline was here –
”

“She’d
say I sound like an ‘old
râleuse
,’” Joshua snapped. “But she’s not here,
she’s shopping her little heart’s way through a Sakai-riddled Paris. And keep
her out of this. I have enough headaches.”

Brand’s
grin was slightly vicious as the other Kaspian slouched into the leather seat.
“Who knows? Perhaps one of these days you’ll get hit on the head one too many
times, realize she’s your amati, and go running back to her…”

“Fucking
bastard. None of your business. You can’t sidetrack me so easily.”

Brand
slanted a glance to where his cousin scowled at the window.

“I
should have stayed,” Joshua finally growled. “We stopped the battle, but those
kids have no idea what they are. What they could be. In Europe, the Sakai would
have picked them off like fat geese. Here…” Joshua’s face reflected age,
“they’re idiots and they all forget.”

Brand
slanted a look from the corner of his eye. “
Hierarchy
, Joshua. There’s a
reason for it. Reminding ‘those kids’ of their heritage is their Gens leaders’
job. Not yours.”

“Their
Gens leaders are children too.
Lazy
children. They don’t know anything.”

Brand
couldn’t disagree. Knowledge, garnered by immortality, weighed on all of the
older Kaspian. As for what weighted on
him
…he ground his teeth, pushing
against the old guilt. “Perhaps you should go back,” he said, focusing on the
road again.

Joshua
shook his head, brow creased in thought. “I have an errand at Stronghold.”

The
interior of the car drifted into a brooding quiet. Snow began to come down,
hitting against the windshield in thick, full chunks. Brand flicked on the high
beams and turned up the radio, then yawned.

“Pull
over,” Joshua said abruptly. “The next exit. Rest area’s there.”

“I was
going through.” Brand fought the edge in his voice; they were both short on
sleep, and had several days’ drive before they reached Stronghold. Now wasn’t
the time to lose his temper.

“You’re
not. You spent the entire last week negotiating with bloodthirsty tigers,
trying to talk sense into a Gens full of imbecile children all the while
conferencing Stronghold by phone. You didn’t rest – I did. So you sleep,
I’ll drive.”

Joshua’s
words were sharper than his tone; still, Brand let a low rumbling growl seep
through the confines of the car. Claws shifted under his fingernails, prickling
the skin of his fingertips.

“Seth
sent me to watch your back. So I’m watching your back,” Joshua reminded in a
logical tone Brand was far more used to hearing from himself. “Pull over. I’m
too irritated to sleep. And I’m the reason we’re not taking a plane right now.”
Joshua’s hatred of flying trumped everything else.

Brand
tightened his lips.

His
father was long-dead but he had taught Brand well: if it came to a fight, a
tired Kaspian was a dead Kaspian. Brand couldn’t afford to let himself slip, to
be lulled into the same sense of relative safety that had caused the Boston
Gens’ blissful oblivion. There was nothing worse than forgetting.

Or remembering,
for that matter.

Both
were a curse.

His
curse.

“You’re
giving the report when we reach Stronghold. I’m not. So pull the fucking car
– ”

“Who
made you my goddamn babysitter?” Brand snarled as he veered off the ramp toward
the rest stop.

“Seth. Your
goddamn brother. He made me babysitter for the whole damned lot of you.”

To
hell.
Sleep now, punch him when I wake.

Eva
picked her way through deepening snow as she made her way into the trees
outside the crouching bulk of the Asylum. Ice soaked her sweatpants and snow
swirled around her, but she wasn’t quite ready to discard her clothes or her
human form. Despite the need to hurry, despite the icy temperature, she savored
the feel of the earth beneath her toes. It had been too long.

She
would leave tracks, but that couldn’t be helped. She needed to find a place to
Change first. She didn’t know how she was going to get back to North Carolina,
but she knew that navigating this forest would, at least, be much easier in
blood tiger form.

So
would evading Rohe.

Eva
hadn’t Changed to tiger form in two months, so it would not come easily. It
would be rough, wild, and leave her vulnerable.
Well, more vulnerable
.
Eva shivered.

She
stopped beside a thick tree that had fallen over a hollow, just out of hearing range
of the Asylum. Rohe’s guards were strong – too strong. Whatever they
were, they weren’t Kaspian…but they had possessed a Kaspian’s hearing.