Born to Darkness (35 page)

“Uh-oh,” Stephen said, and Elliot turned back to look at him.

“You just got an alert,” Stephen told him, his eyes on the computer monitor, “that says you were e-mailed a med scan report on Michelle Mackenzie.” He looked up at Elliot. “It just came in, but with the communications delay … Yeah, it was sent about an hour ago.”

“Open it,” Elliot told him, and Stephen clicked open the message.

“She’s back down to fifty percent,” Stephen informed him. “And that means—”

They weren’t touching, but neither of them needed to say it aloud. They both knew exactly what it meant.

Mac had left the compound.

This was the same hospital where the missing girl, Nika Taylor, had been scanned, prior to her disappearance.

It was hard for Shane not to think about that—particularly when he went to the ER’s front desk, where a harried-looking medical assistant was performing a financial triage on the injured or ill people who’d staggered in. What type of insurance did they have—if any—and what form of treatment—if any—would be covered under their plan.

Mac wasn’t sitting out in the waiting area with the rest of the masses, which was odd. But maybe a potential head injury was taken before a broken ankle or the flu or even a cooking-knife accident.

But when Shane finally made it to the front of the line and said, “I’m with Michelle—the thirteen-year-old girl who just came in,” he got a blank stare.

“She fell out of a tree and hit her head,” he tried.

The man
—Bob
was on his name tag—shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir—”

“I just dropped her off,” Shane said. “She came in while I was parking …? Short hair, pretty eyes, nasty attitude …?”

Nothing. No lights went on. Zero recognition.

And yeah, the first thought Shane had was that whoever had
taken Nika had—somehow—taken Mac, too. But that was crazy. She hadn’t even been scanned yet. They—whoever the
they
were who made up the mysterious “Organization” that he’d been warned about—had no reason to believe she was anything special and thus worth taking.

Shane’s second thought was far more likely: Mac had never intended to come here to get a med scan. That was just what she’d told him, and he’d played right into it—allowing her to lose him so that she could do whatever it was she’d really intended to do outside of OI’s grounds.

Something probably far more dangerous.

Son
of a bitch.

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” Bob suggested, pointing down the hall, already looking past Shane to the next person in line.

His pulse-rate rising with a righteous mix of anger and worry, Shane went back out to the entrance, to the circular driveway where he’d left Mac. He was well aware that, with her ability to change her appearance—plus she’d said she had a different shirt with her—he could have walked right past her while she was coming out of the ER, and he never would have known it. Especially since he was an idiot and hadn’t been watching for it. Shit.
Shit
.

Of course, the only person out there now was the guard, who was eyeing him suspiciously.

Shane closed his eyes and … He’d hustled in from the parking lot, eager to prove himself indispensable and … He’d definitely walked past a group of three women leaving the hospital.

They’d clearly been together—two middle-aged women supporting an elderly relative. He knew Mac could make herself look younger, but could she also make herself look older? He had no clue. Although he was pretty sure none of the women he’d seen had been wearing olive drab cargo pants and sneakers. And truth be told, he really hadn’t given them more than a glance, because he’d been so fucking eager to find Mac.

Shane turned abruptly and went back through the automatic sliding doors into the ER waiting room. But even before he started scanning for Mac’s brand of sneakers among the crowd, he knew
that she wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel her—not the way he’d felt her presence in the garden, from up on his balcony.

Unless she could somehow turn
that
off, too.

With Mac, Shane realized suddenly, anything was possible.

It was possible that everything she’d told him had been a lie. Everything—including that heartbreaking story about finding her powers upon awakening, drugged and naked … 
I hadn’t been raped yet. Not that night, anyway
.

Except … He’d believed her.

Shane wasn’t a telepath, nor did he have empathic powers anywhere close to Mac’s but … She’d been telling the truth.

It was all he could do, not to overreact, when she’d told him what had happened to her when she was still just a girl. And, like he’d told her, he was pretty sure she’d left out the worst of it.

Still, his instinct had been to play it cool, to not pull her into his arms or even to say much of anything at all.

Shane knew she would read his response as pity, or—worse, in her eyes—possessiveness. But both the tragedy that she’d survived—including the accidental death of that boy on top of the trauma of abuse—and Shane’s realization that she completely rejected any and all emotional connection to him despite their night together, had made his heart ache.

He wanted … He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Regardless of that, he knew for damn sure that he wasn’t going to quit.

So he stood there. Glaring as he looked out at the entire room, his message to her clear:
I
will
find you
. But no one made a break for the door or shifted guiltily in their seat.

He went to the door of the ladies’ head, and keeping one eye on the crowded waiting room, he pushed it open. “Michelle, are you in there?”

But she wasn’t. It was empty.

So Shane began his person-by-person search—looking hard at each of the women and girls sitting or lying on the uncomfortable benches. He didn’t just look at their sneakers and pants, because for all he knew she’d already traded hers for something else.

Of course, then he realized that
she
was the one who’d told him about her appearance-changing talents. For all he knew, she’d lied about her ability to become male—at least outwardly so.

And forget trading her sneakers and pants. For all he knew, she had the capability of appearing—at least to others—as if she were wearing completely different clothing.

Which meant that he was about to be really rude and go through the ER waiting room touching everyone—because there was only one thing he was certain of. And that was that he’d know Mac when he touched her.

A stack of magazines had spilled off the top of a nearby table along with a piece of paper on which a child had drawn what might’ve been a dog. Maybe a horse, no … A dog. Shane bent to pick it up, turning to touch a large black man on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, did you drop this?”

And he could tell right away that no, Mac hadn’t made herself nearly a foot and a half taller and eighty pounds heavier. And a man. And African American. Which, when he thought about it, really didn’t seem possible—even in this crazy world in which he now found himself.

And speaking of impossible, the idea of parading down an entire row of people, touching them and asking if this drawing was theirs … 
That
was going to raise some eyebrows or even get him smacked. He might as well just run down the crowded rows of seats, touching the tops of the peoples’ heads and saying,
Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck …

“Shane!”

Goose
.

Yeah, that
was
Mac’s voice, and it was coming from behind him, from the double doors that led into the actual ER, and he spun around as she added, “Sweetheart! There you are! I’m over here!”

And there Mac was—she was actually waving—and Shane definitely felt her as well as saw her. He also felt a rush of relief, and that now-familiar heat.

She’d changed back to an adult, but she looked slightly different.
Her hair was longer—crazy how she could grow it in a matter of minutes—and she’d pulled it back into a tight ponytail that made her seem older—or maybe she’d somehow adjusted her face to create that effect. She’d also changed her shirt. She was wearing a red blouse over a very non-thirteen-year-old body, and held her leather jacket over one arm.

Still, he would have recognized her, no problem, even without the wave. She may have changed her face and hair, but those were still Mac’s eyes.

It was the words she spoke next that were the puzzler.

“I’ve found him,” she told him as he headed over to her. “I found Grandpa!”

What the …? Had he heard her right? “
Grandpa
.”

“Yes, he’s here. My missing grandfather. He must’ve had another episode while he was at the mall,” she said, adding, “Play along,” under her breath as he got close enough.

So he just barreled into her personal space and threw his arms around her. “Praise God! Grandpa’s here. Grandma and Aunt Betty were so worried.”

“What are you doing?” she hissed, her face against his chest as she simultaneously attempted both to not touch him and to look as if she were returning his embrace. She was thinner in places—more fragile-seeming. Less muscular. Which was strange. He liked her better when she was herself. Except maybe
this
was her real self.

Either way, he was hit with some pretty X-rated images upon contact, and he was certain she was experiencing the same. Were they his memories or hers?

It almost didn’t matter.

“I’m playing along,” Shane whispered back, adding in his regular voice, “Oh,
sweetheart
, this is
such
good news.” He pulled her chin up to kiss her because, damn it, he wasn’t likely to have this chance again, but she stepped on his foot. Hard enough for him to let her go. “Ow! Is he? How is he?”

She shot him a darkly exasperated look even as she motioned for him to follow, so he did just that as she led the way back into
the ER, dodging several nurses and a doctor or two. “He’s not doing well. I need to call, um, Aunt Betty, to arrange for a private ambulance to pick him up so we can get him the care he needs.” She took his arm and pulled him closer, but only to whisper, “Did you
really
think that I ditched you?”

She let go of him again, a little too fast.

Obviously Mac knew what he’d been thinking—or more likely what he’d been feeling, since empathy was her strength. So he didn’t try to bullshit her as they swiftly walked past a dozen curtained-off rooms, the beds filled with people in need of medical help. “Yeah. You were gone. I thought—”

“While you were parking,” she told him, her voice still low, “an ambulance brought in an elderly man I met just this morning in a parking lot and—” She cut herself off. “It doesn’t matter where or how I met him. I just did. He was living out of his car and it had just broken down and he was going to work for JLG—a drug-testing lab. I told him not to—I gave him some money—but I think he went anyway. Shit, I know he went, and I know they tested Destiny on him, because he’s accessed some powers that he didn’t have before.”

Shane stopped short. “Did he
joker
?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know.” Mac shook her head, her face grim as she refused to stop walking—to the point of taking him by his sleeve and dragging him with her. Despite her fragile appearance, she was still quite strong. “He’s unconscious. The paramedics told me they answered a call about a man lying in the street, so the drug-lab motherfuckers must’ve dumped him—they do that. His med scan shows that he’s had a massive heart attack. I’m pretty sure most of the powers he acquired have been shut down as his body focuses on repairing itself.”

“
Most
of the powers?” Shane repeated.

“Yeah, he can still throw a kind of feeble mental bitchslap,” she told him. “But even that’s fading fast. When he first came in, it was like an ice pick in my sinuses—like, damn. But then I realized that the guy at the triage desk felt it, too. He goes,
Ooh, weird, an ice cream headache—where’d that come from?
And I turned around,
and they were wheeling this guy in and … I recognized him. And I knew. So I went into the bathroom to change”—she said it so casually, but Shane knew she meant more than simply to change her shirt—“so I could come back out and be his worried granddaughter. If we have any hope of saving him, we’ve got to get him to OI. Immediately.”

She pulled Shane with her behind the curtain down at the very end of the entire row, where a very old man was strapped into a bed and hooked up to an IV, oxygen tubing beneath his nose. His eyes were closed. He didn’t look dangerous, but Rickie Littleton hadn’t looked very menacing when he wasn’t flying around and breathing fire.

Still, Shane turned to Mac, and said, “What can I do to help make that happen?”

She exhaled, as if she’d been holding her breath for a long time, and said, “Stay with him. Make sure no one gives him anything—no medication, nothing. Don’t let them move him and don’t let anyone get too close. I didn’t want to bind his hands”—she handed him several standard issue plastic restraints that she’d apparently been carrying in her pocket—“but if you can figure out a way to do it without killing him, go wild. I honestly don’t know if he jokered, or if he’s just under the influence of the drug. I can’t use my cell phone in here, so I’m going out to the lobby to call Elliot and arrange for the medevac chopper to come pick him up. I’ll be fast.”

“I’ll be here,” Shane told her.

“Thanks,” Mac said, adding, “If he comes to, and you believe that he
has
jokered? Don’t wait for him to start flying around the room. Kill him.”

And with that she was gone.