Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (121 page)

They’d come to watch me burn.

A sharp tremor shot down my spine, and I fumbled my plate. The last pickle spear tumbled into the grass. “Damn it!” I said, with more anger than a simple pickle deserved.

Thatcher’s hand landed on my neck, warm and comforting, and I didn’t pull away. “You okay, Renee?”

“No, I’m not.” I leaned into his touch a little, grateful for his presence. “But then again, neither are you.”

“Is something besides the turnpike fight bothering you?”

“Yes. But it’s not my place to tell anyone else about it.”

“I can understand that.”

“Well, I can’t, especially when someone else does deserve to know about it. Not you, by the way.”

He made a soft noise in his throat, something like a chuckle, but not quite. “That’s a bit of a relief. I’d hate to think everything is always about me.”

I looked at him, unsure of his tone of voice. The arch of one eyebrow and the tilt of his head clued me in—he was teasing me. So I did what any adult woman would do in such a situation. I stuck my tongue out at him.

He laughed out loud this time, and the deep sound rumbled in my chest. The hand on the back of my neck stroked very gently, fingers massaging in a way that seemed more instinctive than deliberate. It felt nice. “Were you injured in the accident?” he asked.

“Not really. Snapped my neck hard, but with my particular powers the pain won’t last long.”

His hand stilled. “Am I hurting you?”

“No. It feels nice.”

He put both of our plates on the bench beside him. I allowed him to shift us both until I was facing away and he was behind me. Both of his hands pressed gently into my shoulders, thumbs massaging both sides of my vertebrae. It felt amazing, and I leaned into the touch. It had been a long time since I’d felt a man’s hands on me in such a comforting way. I craved the attention, the sensation—even if it couldn’t possibly last. He hadn’t seen the scars on my chest, back, and legs.

And who said he ever would, anyway? He was a former Bane, loaned to us from prison for an investigation, and he was heading right back there at some point in the near future. Derek Thatcher wasn’t someone I was allowed to get attached to, no matter what.

But the fantasy was extremely entertaining.

And his hands were extraordinary. I closed my eyes and relaxed under his ministrations, as his deft fingers soothed and loosened tired, aching muscles. If I were a cat, I’d have started purring. No one had paid me this sort of attention in a long time, not since William died. Before him, I’d gotten laid pretty regularly. I couldn’t throw a poker chip in Vegas without hitting someone who was willing to sleep with the extremely flexible blue dancer, which meant I could be picky. Singling out the good ones, the best ones, became something of a game for me. It was in his eyes and in his touch, mostly, and if I couldn’t trust those two things, no way was I trusting a guy with my body.

I trusted what I saw in Thatcher’s eyes, and I trusted the smoothness of his touch. He’d be a hell of a lover—if only such a thing were possible.

“Can I ask you something?” I said without intending to.

“Of course.”

Now that I’d stuck my foot in it, I wasn’t sure how to phrase this. “In Manhattan, there weren’t as many women prisoners as men, right?”

“Correct.”

“So how did you . . . I mean, was it . . . Fuck. Never mind.” I was insanely glad he couldn’t see my face, because I was pretty sure I was blushing like an idiot.

His hands never stopped pressing and rubbing my shoulders and neck. “Are you asking if I’ve had sex in the last fifteen years?” And damn him, I could tell he was smiling when he asked that.

I’d tossed money into the pot already, so I might as well call. “Yes.”

“No.”

I turned around on the bench, stunned by his matter-of-fact reply. He dropped his hands into his lap and watched me with a calm, unembarrassed expression I couldn’t quite decipher. “Seriously?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I didn’t mean that, it’s just . . .”

“What?”

The truth came burbling up and out. “You’re so good-looking.”

His lips quirked. “Thank you.”

“It surprises me no one saw that.”

“There’s more to wanting to sleep with someone than finding them attractive, Renee. Most of us were incredibly angry at the end of the War, not only because of our situation in Manhattan, but at Specter and his manipulations. I was one of the worst, and my anger was only heightened by the news of my wife and son’s deaths. I was an emotional wreck, and so many of the couples who came out of the aftermath chose each other for the support they could give and receive. I was in no place to support anyone, and I was too damaged to take any kindness in return.”

“I’m sorry.”

His eyebrows furrowed and his mouth pressed into a line.

“Not that you weren’t getting any,” I said, trying to recover my verbal fumble. “I mean, I’m sorry that you were in such a bad place. That there was no one to be there for you.”

He shrugged. “I had some friends. Freddy and I were always close, and I was happy for him when Andrew was born. I was happy for him when he found out Ethan was his son.” Something in his voice still sounded hollow.

I touched his knee. “You can be happy for a friend and still envy their happiness, you know.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Yep.”

He brushed the pad of his thumb down my cheek, a gentle touch of skin on skin that made my spine tingle. “You deserve to find your own happiness, Renee. I sincerely wish that for you.”

I angled my head up, unsure what to say to that. His gaze flickered down, then back up. He leaned in. My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Hey, guys?” Sebastian’s voice echoed from the building archway.

We pulled apart. I glared at Sebastian over the back of the bench. “What?”

“Thatcher has a phone call.”

•  •  •

I held up the wall in the conference room while Thatcher spoke with Mai Lynn for a few minutes. His side of the conversation was somewhat muffled and he was typing information onto a tablet, but I knew he’d share as soon as he was finished. I couldn’t help replaying those final moments on the bench and wondering if he’d have really kissed me had we not been interrupted. My money was on yes.

Damn you, Sebastian, and your terrible timing.

Thatcher hung up after less than five minutes.

“So what’s new?” I asked.

“Mai Lynn found some information that might be useful.” He held up the tablet. “She found two other prisoners who did what I did during the War.”

“Gave up all contact with their kids to protect them?”

Something like pain flashed in his eyes. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“Peter Keene.”

Keene had been in Central Park during the final day of the War. He’d also died last month—ironically, in Central Park—when a copter crashed down on a bunch of people, including Thatcher.

“Keene had an infant son he never met,” Thatcher continued. “He and his mother disappeared after the War ended. The boy would be sixteen or so now. She thinks his name was Tate, but she didn’t know the mother’s last name.”

“That’s a start, though. Who was the other one?”

“Dana Parks. She was Whitney and Andrew’s mother.”

Right. Dana had died in Manhattan a few years ago. Whitney died a few months ago, and we were all unclear on just who the father had been, since no one was volunteering that information. “Dana had a third child?”

“Supposedly Dana had a daughter she left with her parents. Mai Lynn thinks the girl would be about twenty now. Her name was Sasha.”

“So Andrew has another half-sibling out there somewhere.”

“It seems so.”

“It isn’t a lot, but it’s something to start with. Let’s get this—”

As if he’d been summoned by my thoughts, Marco walked into the conference room. Thatcher gave him the tablet and summarized the information on it. Marco promised to begin searching immediately.

It was still pretty early in the evening, but I’d had a hell of a weekend, and now the idea of a shower and my bed was dancing in front of me like a merry mirage. I decided to grab hold of the mirage and crash until someone inevitably needed me again for one crisis or another. I told Thatcher, so when we hit the hallway again. He just nodded and followed me upstairs.

We stopped at my bedroom door and for the first time since we’d met, I felt kind of awkward.

“I’m going to go sit with Landon for a while,” he said.

I almost asked why he’d followed me all the way upstairs if he was going back down, but curbed that question. The answer was kind of obvious. He’d wanted to walk me to my room. “That’s good. You two may not really know each other, but I bet right now it helps to have his father close by.”

His expression softened. “Your parents were never there for you, were they?”

“My real parents? No. I was eight years old when my Meta powers kicked in and my skin turned blue. They thought I was a demon, and they tried to have me killed.”

Now, why had I gone and said all that?

His eyes narrowed, then understanding widened them again. “The Rangers saved you.”

“Yes, they did. And after the War, my foster parents were amazing.” I shrugged, hoping none of the roiling emotions inside showed on my face. “Family isn’t always determined by blood. Sometimes blood turns on you.”

I hadn’t meant my words to be a warning about Landon, or any of the other kids we were looking for, but he seemed to take it that way. His face went blank and he straightened his shoulders. “You may be right,” he said.

But I’m probably wrong.
“Good night, Derek.”

“Good night.” He reached out, and for one brief, terrifying moment, I thought he might actually try to kiss me. Instead, he lifted my right hand and brushed his lips across my knuckles. The unexpected gesture made my insides quivery. My mouth went dry.

I didn’t say a word as he walked away.

Holy smokes, what was I getting myself into?

Fifteen

Dead Man’s Hand

T
he emergency alert tumbled me out of bed and into my uniform before I really understood what was going on. It was the Alpha leaders alert, which meant it wasn’t going to everyone’s room. I blinked bleary eyes at the clock on the wall—not quite six in the morning.

Way to start off the day.

In the hallway, I crashed into Thatcher, who grabbed my elbow before I could fall over onto my ass. “I can see you’re not a morning person,” he said with way too much energy for this hour.

“Never claimed I was,” I snapped. Guess he got the alert, too.

A few doors down, Ethan and Aaron came out of their room. Sebastian appeared across the hall, rubbing at his own eyes. We made our way to the stairs, no one really talking. I spared a glance at Aaron, who didn’t seem overly stressed. So he still didn’t know about Double Trouble. Annoyance bubbled up inside me, as well as anger on his behalf. He deserved to know, but I’d promised Teresa to keep my mouth shut.

Teresa, Gage, and Marco were already at the conference table. The only person missing was Lacey, but she was probably still in Annapolis with her team. As we took seats around the table, another person entered who made me do a double-take. Bethany glanced around until she spotted me and Thatcher. She came over and plopped down next to him, exhaustion pressing down on her like an invisible weight.

If she was here . . .

“Fifteen minutes ago we received an anonymous email,” Teresa said, her booming voice getting everyone’s attention. She stood by the two main monitors. Marco was already at work at the computer, getting something ready for her. “The subject line read
Lesson One
. The only content to the email was an attached video file.” She swallowed. “After we were positive it wasn’t a virus or a worm, we watched it.”

“What is it?” Ethan asked.

Gage, who was sitting in the chair nearest Teresa, looked like he was going to be sick. “A message.”

“To who?”

“All of us.” He glanced down the table. “But especially to Bethany and Landon.”

Bethany jerked in her chair. “Me? Trying to kill us on the highway yesterday wasn’t enough?”

“Not for these people,” Teresa said with a fierce edge to her voice. She nodded to Marco.

The main screen flashed to life with the paused image of two blurry figures against a dark background. The scene jerked into motion, and the two figures came into focus. A teenage boy and girl, chained up by their wrists, somewhere dark—a large basement, a warehouse, an auditorium. Their feet didn’t touch the floor, and both wore a collar similar to Ethan’s. They were alive, not gagged or otherwise bound, but they weren’t moving much, either.

Probably drugged.

“Say your names, for the record, please,” a distorted, off-camera voice said. It sounded male, but could easily be a filtered female voice.

“Louis Becker,” the boy said.

The girl said, “Summer Jones.”

“Why are you both here today?”

The camera moved closer to the pair, giving us a clearer view of their faces. They were definitely young, and both of them were crying. Summer had glowing purple eyes, and Louis’s hair was the color of my skin.

“We’re here to send a message to the traitors,” Summer said in a voice choked with tears. Louis finished with, “We’re here to die.”

Several chairs squeaked. People murmured. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to somehow reach through the screen and save those two kids. But this wasn’t live. Whatever happened to them had happened already. Beneath the table, Thatcher’s hand found mine and squeezed hard.

“Tell them,” the filtered voice said.

Summer looked right at the camera, anger mixing with her grief. “You betrayed Uncle and everything we’ve worked for. We’ll all be punished now, because of you. It’s all your fault.”

Bethany made a soft, choked sound. Thatcher leaned closer and put his arm around her shoulders, without ever letting go of my hand. My chest ached and my eyes stung. We were watching a nightmare unfold, and my only small consolation was that Landon didn’t have to see this.

In the foreground of the screen, a hand came into view. A hand holding a familiar black box—the collar trigger.

I closed my eyes. Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I covered my eyes with my free hand. I couldn’t watch it. But I heard it. The buzz of electricity, the short screams that turned into gurgles. The clank of chains. Then silence from the screen, while gasps and soft sounds of disbelief and anger erupted around the conference table. Bethany dissolved into hysterical sobs. Thatcher let go of my hand as she threw herself at him, and he held her while she cried. I glanced up at the screen, at the pair of swinging bodies, and I swallowed hard against the sudden urge to vomit.

“They were just fucking kids,” Ethan said.

“I’ll make this easy for you,” the filtered voice on-screen said. “The bodies are closer than you think. You may even hear the lion’s roar.”

The screen went blank, but the images of those two dead kids were burned into my brain. I glanced around the table, catching the same horror and rage on everyone’s face. The need to find these other kids before Uncle executed them, too.

“ ‘You may even hear the lion’s roar,’ ” Aaron said. “What does that mean? A zoo? A place with a lion statue?”

“Perhaps,” Marco replied. “I am already searching for potential matches within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

“He wants us to find the bodies,” Teresa said, as furious as I’d seen her in a long time. Her eyes flashed bright with tears, but her jaw was tight, her shoulders back. “Which means we could very well walk into a trap.”

“He’d have to know we’re expecting that, though,” Aaron said. “No one’s going to walk in blindly.”

“No. We’ll be ready for anything.”

“That floor looked like wood,” Ethan said. “Marco, can you zoom in on just the floor?”

“Of course,” Marco replied.

He did, and Ethan was right. The floor was old, unpolished, and badly in need of repair, but it was definitely wood of some kind. It kind of reminded me of a gymnasium floor.

Ethan slapped his palm against the table, which made most of us jump. “Lions,” he said. “I know where they are.”

•  •  •

The mascot for Lincoln High School in Jersey City was the Lions. Granted, the school hadn’t functioned as anything except a place for transients to roost for the last ten years or so, but Ethan’s prediction turned out to be correct. We found the bodies of Summer Jones and Louis Becker hanging from the rafters of the old gymnasium, near the three-point line. Gage and Panther-Marco sniffed the room for clues while Ethan, Sebastian, and I cut the bodies down. Teresa watched everything with a frozen horror that worried me.

The bodies weren’t stiff, so they hadn’t been dead long. Calling the police felt wrong, somehow, and yet taking them back to HQ with us seemed even worse. We were waiting for Teresa to make the decision. Involving the police now meant explaining the video, which could be a problem for Bethany and Landon’s current anonymity.

“Huh,” Ethan said after a few minutes.

“Huh, what?” I asked.

“Nothing has exploded, shifted, or otherwise attacked us since we’ve been here.”

“Doesn’t mean it still isn’t a trap.”

“If it’s a trap, it’s taking its sweet time to spring.”

Fifty feet across the gym, Gage and Marco were sniffing around in a shadowed area, probably trying to pick up any clues left behind by the Overseer—or whoever the executioner had been. Panther-Marco lifted his head and growled, a low sound that carried across the distance. Teresa’s head snapped toward them. Gage froze, listening.

Oh, Windy, I think your trap’s about to—

“Get down!” Gage shouted.

The gymnasium roof exploded, raining noise, glass, and wood debris on top of us. We scattered. The gym had no actual cover besides a single section of open bleachers on the opposite side. Sunlight streamed down from the bus-sized hole in the roof, creating a giant dust moat illuminating the debris-covered bodies. A quick glance around told me everyone was on their feet.

Teresa’s hands glowed purple as she brought her power to the forefront. I reached for my holstered Coltson, glad I’d thought to grab it before we left. Sebastian’s cheeks hollowed as he pursed his lips and did whatever he did while preparing to spit acid at a target.

Two things happened simultaneously. The gym doors closest to Gage and Marco swung open, spilling in more exterior light and illuminating the shapes of four people. Two more shapes appeared in the roof’s giant hole, one of them flapping a pair of big, feathery wings and holding the second person in his arms.

“Hold,” Teresa said, before any of us could make a move. They’d attacked the roof, not us.

The flying pair (both boys) descended in a great gust of wind, stirring up enough dust to make me want to cough. The quartet (two boys and two girls) walked carefully around Marco and Gage, making a wide circle away from us to join their pals near the wreckage they’d created. No one spoke. Even in the dimness, I could tell the six newcomers were young, period. Teens or early twenties, and they all looked equal parts terrified and angry. The boy with the yellow-feathered wings was the only one who outwardly appeared Meta, but I knew better than to assume any of them were powerless.

A girl stepped away from the sextet. She wore black jeans and a black T-shirt—a uniform shared by the other five teens. Her black hair was shorn short, accentuating her stunning cheekbones and coffee-colored skin. As she moved into the light cast from the hole in the ceiling, her eyes sparkled like they were coated in white glitter. She crouched next to Louis’s body and touched his cheek with her knuckles.

One of the boys behind her made a grief-stricken sound. They all seemed caught somewhere between wanting to burst into tears and needing to punch something. I could definitely sympathize, having been there myself way too many times.

Our own group had reassembled on the other side of the bodies, gathered in a U-shape behind Teresa. We were evenly matched, six to six, but with no idea of their powers . . . well, this little standoff could go down a lot of ways, and I knew Teresa was hoping for peacefully.

“I’m so sorry,” Teresa said.

Sparkle Eyes stood up. She was taller than Teresa, and she had a lot more anger behind her right now. “You didn’t do this, Trance,” she replied. “Our fight isn’t with you.” Her voice had a Southern lilt to it.

“Your fight is with the man who ordered these children executed.”

“Our fight is with the traitors who made this happen. We’ve all been abandoned by Uncle now, thanks to them.”

“We can protect you.”

She laughed, a sound that turned into a sneer as she pointed at former Bane Sebastian. “You made your own choices by taking in our enemies, so no, thank you.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Sebastian said. He came a few steps closer, hands by his side in a gesture of peace. “Anyone who would kill a child so coldly is the enemy of us all.”

Sparkle Eyes glared at him.

A boy with brown hair and a long scar across his left cheek stepped up next to Sparkle Eyes. “Let’s go, Sasha,” he said with a similar accent. “In case this is some kind of trap.”

“I have a feeling the trap was all of us meeting in anger,” Teresa said, “and this turning into a massacre.”

He flexed his right hand, which made an odd, crackling noise. “There’s still time, lady.”

“Stop it, Tate,” Sasha/Sparkle Eyes said.

Sasha and Tate. We’d found two of the kids that Mai Lynn told us about. Tate, the son of Peter Keene; and Sasha, daughter of Dana Parks. Andrew McTaggert’s half-sister. I glanced at Ethan, who was watching Sasha intently. They weren’t blood-related, but they shared a half-brother, and I knew Ethan well enough to know that meant something to him.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Teresa said, “but Uncle isn’t the savior you want to believe he is. He’s lied to you your entire lives.”

“He saved us,” Tate said.

“One of the boys we rescued from Uncle? Landon? The people Uncle works for murdered his mother and stole him. They fed Landon lies about his father. About all of the Metas imprisoned in Manhattan. And they made his father believe his son was dead.”

“Landon turned against Uncle,” Sasha said. “So did Bethany. They’re traitors. It’s their fault Uncle exiled us. We’ll be his enemies if we side with you.”

“Maybe Uncle will forgive us if we kill the people protecting the traitors,” Tate said, giving our group a significant look. “We should have killed them when we got here.”

The odds of that being Uncle’s intention were pretty high. Six powerful, pissed-off teenagers hell-bent on revenge, not only for the deaths of two of their own, but also for losing the protection of the man who’d raised them? We could have been in serious pain right now if Sasha had been a little less in control. If she’d been as volatile as Bethany.

Sasha looked at Tate, then at us, like she was actually considering his suggestion.

Bring it on, sister.

“Do you really want to be our enemies?” Ethan asked. “To go off on your own, the six of you? When you have family out there who will help you? When we want to help you?”

Sasha snorted. “What family? The Banes who murdered children? Who murdered your friends and parents?”

At least they knew their War history. Sort of.

“Your mother, Sasha?” Ethan said. “She had another son. You have a half-brother.”

She stared at him, then narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. And I think he’d like to meet you one day.”

“You’re not buying any of this, are you?” asked the boy with the yellow wings. His longish hair matched the feather color, and even the shape of his face was somewhat birdlike. “We decided as a group we wouldn’t go against Uncle. That we’d find a way to fix this.”

“Of course I don’t buy it,” Sasha snapped back.

Big fat liar.

“Please consider my offer,” Teresa said. “We’ll do our best to protect you. Some of you do still have living family who would love to see you.”