No Peace for the Damned (12 page)

Or had I?

No, I’d never made it back to the house. I’d walked to the southern gardens when…what? I was shot. In the back. No voices, no movements, but a thought, a train of thoughts in the distance from the one with the gun
.

Markus
.

That little pissant had shot me! God, what a fucking coward!

I’d fallen, but not from the wound. The shot wasn’t a bullet, it was a dart filled with one of Father’s experimental drugs. In the
next moment, Markus and Malcolm had sneered down at me, their handsome features twisted in grins of deluded pleasure
.

I’d only registered the blade for a moment, recognized it as one of Father’s favorites, and then the pain had hit me. Cutting, burning, I’d reached for my throat but I couldn’t move past the drugs. I had tried to scream but no longer had a voice. They’d decapitated me
.

An icy breeze cut through the trees and I shivered. With shaking fingers I touched the fresh sleekness of new flesh just beneath my chin
.

I looked up to the dark and cold sky, blanketed in clouds waiting to snow. And there, forcing back the clouds, was the moon. Bright…and full
.

The next thing I knew, I was moving. Running. Within seconds I was back inside Uncle Mallroy’s shed
.

I wrapped the sheet that had covered me in a tight ball before throwing it back into my deep hole. With my powers, I quickly packed in the upturned dirt and debris until it looked as if it had never been disturbed
.

And then I ran
.

Faster than the cold, I ran. And I didn’t stop. Not for the wall surrounding the estate—doubt and hesitation had me pausing for only an instant—and not for the sounds of movement behind me. I ran until I was a good five miles or more from the estate, safe on the empty highway
.

In a heap, I collapsed on the pavement. Release poured out of me in sobs. That’s when the SUV struck me head-on
.

I woke in the backseat of a moving car. The expensive leather interior and spot-on detail were of true luxury. I panicked. They weren’t taking me back. I wouldn’t let them
.

Silently, I reached up behind the driver. In a blur, I wrapped the seat belt around his neck and pulled. The car swerved, knocked
me off balance. The seat belt slipped from my grip. I fell to the floor as the car squealed to a stop. The driver scrambled out of his seat and wrenched open my side door. I attacked. A lifetime of being put down for even attempting to fight back had me clinging to this stranger and not letting go
.

His head banged against the pavement as I pounced. He was enormous—my hands couldn’t close around his thick throat. I ripped open his mind in a mindsweep, tearing into his most recent thoughts in the most painful way possible. His eyes closed tight and he shrieked in pain
.

His mind held nothing of the estate or my father. But there was another face I recognized. Carter. One of Uncle Max’s personal secretaries
.

But this big man hadn’t taken orders from Carter, he’d interrogated him. He’d held Carter for hours, launching question after question about a meeting Uncle Max had with some Egyptian diplomat. Then about the newest Kelch Inc. product launch. Then about my family’s supernatural abilities. Who the hell was this guy?

Every time Carter had balked in responding, this man had hurt him. Badly. But Carter worked for my family. He knew what would happen if he talked. The man had turned his back for a second when Carter pulled a knife from the guy’s back pocket and slit his own throat
.

The guy had been horrified, but frustration had surpassed any other thought. He’d left Carter dead on a cement floor. Five minutes later, he had plowed into me
.

I pulled out of his mind. He trembled beneath me. Slowly he opened his eyes. He looked familiar. Had he been to the estate? My hands still choked him, but he did nothing to fight me off. His eyes stared up into mine and I knew that he recognized me
.

“Who are you?” I shouted
.

He opened his mouth but only a gurgle escaped his bruised throat. I loosened my grip. “Thirteen,” he muttered after a moment. I recognized the number as a name; one from my father’s thoughts. No wonder he knew our secrets—this was an enemy
.

But wait—was he my enemy?

I let him go and he fell back against the pavement. Now what? Steal his car? I couldn’t drive. Run some more? I had nowhere to go. Warily, I eyed him. He was shocked to actually meet me. He hadn’t been sure my brothers and I really existed outside of files. His thoughts were so honest, I didn’t understand them. I kept waiting for a plot to use or hurt me. Or an intention to return me to the estate. But there was only curiosity and concern. And amazement
.

I knew the evil inside him would come out eventually, but I would see it before it surfaced. So when he suggested driving me to one of his safe houses, I let him. He couldn’t hurt me the way Father could. And after a few hours in a warm place, I could come up with a plan
.

He never tried to hurt me. Not once. Instead he had offered me shelter, food, and the first kindness that I had ever experienced.

But when Theo touched me…it was so much more than kindness. It was peace. And that peace was so unbelievable that I knew it had to be just that: something not to believe in.

I opened my eyes, my back still against the bedroom door, my legs still folded in front of me. Voices carried from the other rooms. How long had I been back here?

Slowly I stood and wiped a hand over my face. I tried to take in the room around me, but all I saw was the dirt of the shed floor, the pavement as Thirteen’s car crushed me. The look in Theo’s eyes.

“…nobody cares about that, Heather.” Marie’s shrill voice brought me back. “Whether she was
really
attacking Theo or not doesn’t matter.”

Nice
. I’d had worse wake-ups, but still. Whispering about me from the next room over? Did they seriously think I couldn’t hear them?

“Look, I know we all agreed to work with her and listen to her,” Marie continued. “But I’ve been thinking about this lately. Network members didn’t start disappearing until after she was
already living at Thirteen’s safe house. How would the Kelches know who was even in the Network?
We
don’t even know who’s in the Network, but suddenly the Kelch family has the inside track on how to capture any one of us? She’s a plant, Thirteen. I’m sorry, but she is. And I for one am done getting all chummy with her and making her job that much easier.”

The bulb in my bedside lamp shattered. It should have been Marie’s head.

“I understand your concerns,” Thirteen said, not whispering at all. “She’s powerful. She’s a Kelch. It makes sense that you would be wary.” His voice got hard. “But the fact remains that she is a part of this team now.
My
team. She has trained you, provided crucial information to you. And this morning, she even saved some of you. If you still do not feel comfortable working alongside her, then by all means, let me know. There are plenty of other missions I can assign you.”

I brushed the hair out of my eyes. After everything that had happened these last couple of weeks—my rage at being asked to train, disobeying his orders—he still took my side.

In her mind, Marie fumed. Being picked for Thirteen’s team had been a privilege. Reassignment, even requested reassignment, would be a total slap in the face. And it would be all my fault.

No one spoke when I entered the kitchen. I went straight to the fridge and took down my whiskey. I didn’t look at Thirteen, or Heather, or anyone. Not even Theo at the other end of the table. What had he said during their little “trust Magnolia” debate?

Marie leaned with her bony ass against the far counter. I poured my drink. Slowly I met her eyes. She gulped. It wasn’t nearly satisfying enough. I wanted to see her shaking. Her face paled as her thoughts finally caught up with what the rest of the room had already figured out.

That’s right, bitch—I hear everything
.

Thirteen’s cell phone rang. Several people jumped. Jon cursed under his breath. Thirteen looked at me as he answered, his face set in a dire warning.

Do not touch her, Magnolia
.

Gee, was I that obvious?

I nodded to Thirteen’s thoughts. He turned to finish his call in the great room. Marie’s hand shook as she took a drink. Good. Almost immediately, Thirteen came back.

“Chang has finished getting the property details. We need to survey them immediately.”

Chairs scraped the floor, hands grabbed at the food, bodies struggled to exit the tight kitchen. Even though she was farthest from the door, Marie was the first out of the room
. Yeah, you better run
. Thirteen stood across the table from me. The softness was back in his eyes—warm now with genuine concern.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said. I gave him a small smile.
Go get ’em, Thirteen
. I didn’t say it, but for the first time, I meant it.

I shook my head and took a long swallow. God, now I was as delusional as the rest of them.

The next couple of nights I hardly slept at all. When I dozed, my color dreams were especially vivid—tinted with that oh-so-fabulous unease and confusion that constantly rode shotgun in my life these days.

When dawn came after the third sleepless night, I grabbed my whiskey and an apple from the fridge and decided to take back my control: I was going to decorate. After all, curtain therapy was as good a distraction as any from my current emotional landslide.

I’d
finally
picked up some sun-yellow sheers the day before at a Super Target. The quality was horrible—nothing like the thick silk drapes used at the estate—but they were
mine
, so they were awesome. Shopping still sucked—all those strangers going loopy when they looked my way—but I was getting better at the whole normal thing. I’d even picked up some decent groceries while I was there.

I was hanging my new sheers in the front window when Thirteen’s car pulled up the drive. He parked in the grass. Heather emerged from the passenger seat of his SUV. Maybe this was more than just the situational update I expected.

I opened the front door as they approached. Thirteen looked serious as ever, but Heather had a wide smile brightening her face.

“Nice curtains,” she said as they came through the door. “When did you get those?”

“I did a little shopping at Target last night. With everyone out scouting buildings and businesses, I had some free time.”

Her head tilted a little as she eyed me. The question was loud in her mind, but she thought it was rude to ask. She was right, but I answered anyway.

“I have my own money,” I said deliberately. “An account with my mother’s maiden name. It has money from her family that my father doesn’t know about. So yeah, I paid for the curtains.”

Her cheeks reddened. “I didn’t think that you stole…”

“Yeah, you did.”

Against my will, an image of my mother flashed in my mind.
Aged long past her years, eyes half crazed, she was still beautiful. I had her hair. And her lips. I hadn’t seen her since I was a toddler, but that night she’d left her suite to ambush me in the eastern gardens. She took in my torn and bloody clothes, the quickly healing wounds, and spoke in a fast whisper. Her voice was scratchy, as if she hadn’t spoken for years. There was an account, she said, created in my name, using her grandmother’s maiden name. All her father’s family inheritance had been funneled into it. The account was unknown to my father—she swore she never once thought of it—and supposedly untraceable. Then she disappeared into the shrubbery
.

Two days later, the newspapers announced her death
.

A chill ran up my spine.

I walked Heather and Thirteen into the kitchen. “We found a building,” he said, “a Kelch private holding that we didn’t know existed until now. Chang found it among some sealed title work from the seventies. Another Network team scouted the building and they found something. Evidence that David Sasser had been held there.”