Authors: Judy Teel
"Finish eating and then get whatever rest you can," Cooper said, interrupting my enjoyable fantasy of how I was going to rid the world of Bellmonte after I offed Danny. "We'll want to be ready for anything in the morning."
*
*
*
In his dream, Danny waited in a black landscape of nothingness. He had no desire to move and maybe he couldn't anyway. Dreams were like that. All that he knew for certain was that something important was coming. Something he'd been waiting his whole life for. He didn't want to miss it.
Impatience and excitement itched through him and he started to take a step, thinking that maybe he needed to find this something instead of waiting for it. When he did, a dark shape coalesced out of the nothingness in front of him. No, it formed from the dark nothingness as if the darkness were alive and had gathered itself into the cloaked shape of a man.
He should have been afraid, but he wasn't. The figure felt familiar to him. It felt comforting.
Danny didn't remember the last time anything or anyone had comforted him. Maybe when he was still with his mother and sister, before Bellmonte had found them — the mysterious new relative who had arrived at their trailer with gifts and food and money for his mother. Danny hadn't understood why she'd cried when she sent him off to spend the summer with their exotic new uncle. Or why she'd hugged him so tightly. Not until he realized that he was never going home.
The next ten years he'd done everything he could to please his uncle, to get back what he'd lost. Until finally he'd cast his childhood dreams aside for bigger and more interesting goals. How quickly the aching desire to please had turned to dust, he thought, remembering that time and the years of brutality that marked his rebellion and his final failed escape.
He couldn't even die to get away from the bastard.
But he wasn't a kid anymore and he knew how to pretend compliance while secretly plotting. Someday he would return to the comfort and peace that had been so brutally stolen from him, he'd promised himself.
And all of those memories carried him to the dark figure.
"At last you've come to me," the stranger who felt familiar said, and a wave of warmth and acceptance swept over Danny. He dropped to his knees from the joy of it.
A gentle hand touched his head, moving down to caress his cheek before offering to help him up. Danny lifted his trembling hand and slipped it into that promise of family. "I've waited my whole life for you," he said as the masculine fingers grasped his palm and pulled him to his feet.
The acceptance of the stranger filled him, and Danny knew how wrong he was to think of him as anything less than home. This man was everything he'd been missing. This man he could trust. This man was his friend.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, joy welling up inside of him and catching on his sob of gratitude.
"No, dear child. It is I who wish to help you."
*
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*
Between the hard bed, the cold cell, Cooper's grunts of pain every time he tried to turn over, and me not being able to reach across our connection to soothe him, I found myself up and restless long before my fellow inmates. So of course, I made plans.
Sometimes the paranormals' arrogance where non-paras were concerned was a cause for joy. And while pretending to be only human might be a pain in the ass, a knife in your boot and another strapped to your calf under your jeans is a joy forever.
When Knox woke up, he rolled over and looked into my cell, blinking against the artificial light from the torches along the back wall. "What good will that do?" he said after a moment. "The main door is locked from the other side."
"During the war, cells full of prisoners were sometimes shot right through the bars," I said, delicately feeling for the second pin of the lock on my door with the tip of my smaller knife. "I'd at least like a fighting chance."
He got up with his blanket over his shoulders. Padding barefoot to the bars separating our luxury accommodations, he watched me with interest. "Since you're standing here telling me that, how would you know?"
"Rescue mission." I carefully lifted the second pin up to the shear line and then held it in place with the top blade. "A mixed group of Weres and practitioners took some of the kids my friend and I looked out for."
"What happened?"
"Along with about a dozen adults, two of them had already been shot after the Weres involved were through with them. Once we got the surviving prisoners out, my friend and I went back and I had a heart-to-heart with them about the virtues of not messing with anyone under my protection. The streets around the jail were a little smelly until their bodies finished decomposing, but they made great 'don't mess with us' signs."
He swallowed and wrapped his blanket tighter around his shoulders. "How do you do it?" he asked after a moment, his voice quiet. "How do you forget and trust again?"
"I don't," I said, feeling the next pin lift into place. I slid my knives deeper into the lock, the anticipation of feeling the tumblers turn tingling through me. "I have to constantly tell myself that there are good and bad people everywhere. Look for the good ones and shoot the rest."
The bolts on the other side of the cellblock door clanked and churned as I lifted the last pin.
Damn
. Pulling out my knives, I slipped them back into their hidden sheaths, promising myself I'd try again later.
I had just settled onto my cot when the cellblock door opened and Rosalind came striding in with the teenager from the day before, and an older man who carried a leather duffle bag. He had a slight build and straight gray hair cut short, and conveyed a level of authority that even Rosalind seemed to respect. He was also human, based on the couple of scabbed over cuts and scrapes on the backs of his hands.
He went right to Cooper's cell. "Open it," he commanded, the lilt of an English accent in his voice.
"Dr. Barrett," Cooper said, wincing as he pushed himself up to lean against the wall.
The doctor made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat as Rosalind held the door open for him. His upset grew exponentially when he reached Cooper and saw the filthy makeshift bandage wrapped around his bicep.
Taking the opportunity to duck out of the line of fire, the kid took the sacks he carried to the table and began to distribute food boxes as Rosalind went to Miller's cell and unlocked the door. I was at the bars in an instant, alarm skittering along my nerves.
"Where are you taking him?" Cooper demanded before I could.
"Stop moving," Dr. Barrett said as he carefully unwrapped Rosalind's torn off sleeve from Cooper's injury. "Individuals of an unconfirmed race must be tested. After that, they can be released."
Rosalind waited patiently as the wounded practitioner eased off his cot and limped to meet her. When he reached the front, she took an iC out of her back pocket — not only the first one I'd seen since we escaped Charlotte, but also one of the newer, more accurate ones. Holding his arm out, she pressed the top of the device to the back of his hand.
About the size of a pack of cards, the most recent models did the work of a phone, species scanner, medical scanner, and a computer. I'd heard the company that made them was even considering renaming them to iComplete or something dumb and market-y like that.
Before I'd started consulting with the FBI, I'd used one of the older scanners, the clunky kind Falcon loved to tinker with. Cooper had given me an upgrade, a model under the one Rosalind was using. I'd gotten pretty attached to the sleek, fast tech, but in the end had been forced to shoot it. When the FBI comes after you for answers, you don't want to carry around a potential tracking device.
Ah, the good old days. When I knew where all the escape hatches were.
Rosalind watched the screen on the iC turn purple, verifying Miller as a practitioner. Her shoulders relaxed and to my shock, she gifted him with a nod of her head, almost a bow. "Bone Clan apologizes for our lack of hospitality, Practitioner Miller. The scanner was unavailable and new protocol dictates—"
"Not a problem, Captain," Miller said.
She nodded again, apparently appreciative of his graciousness. Her pleased look changed as she turned and crossed to my cell. Reluctantly, she unlocked my door. Smart woman.
I stepped out and Rosalind repeated the test as I focused on breathing slow and steady like I had nothing to hide. Usually, my completely weird DNA was too much for the poor things to handle, but this unit was new. Was it more sensitive? Could it pick out the variations in my bloodline or would it land on the most dominant, which now might be Were?
Rosalind frowned at me, but cleared the iC before I could see what it was doing. She pressed it to the back of my hand again and I watched the readout, willing it to revert to human in utter confusion like iCs usually did. If it discerned my mixed heritage, I was screwed considering that offspring of Weres and practitioners were not only rare, but still considered illegal by most paranormal groups.
The iC stuttered around, flickering through yellow, blue and purple like a color wheel on speed. "Looks like whoever had it last got it wet," I offered, glad I could keep my voice steady. One of the better habits left over from my misspent youth — that of covering my ass with conviction.
The device gave a final, frustrated blip and settled on yellow for human. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet.
Rosalind reset the thing and tried again. This time the iC wanted no part of the mess I presented and went straight to yellow, bless it. Finally satisfied, she gave me the same formal nod that she'd given Miller, though without the warmth in it. "Bone Clan apologizes for our lack of hospitality," she said through clenched teeth.
I grinned, enjoying her discomfort. "Apology accepted." I patted Rosalind's cheek as I shoved past her to stand next to Miller. Never pass up a chance to horrify a Were's delicate sensibilities, I always say.
I helped Miller limp to the front of the cellblock and we stopped next to Cooper's cell, waiting for Rosalind to bring the iC and finish the testing. Instead, Dr. Barrett exited and she relocked the door behind him.
"Hey," I said, nodding at Cooper. "He wasn't there when Travis died. Uncollar him and let's go."
"Three days," that white-haired bitch, Rosalind, said. "No exceptions."
As the kid shoved the last box of food and then two bottles of water into Cooper's cell, I wondered if I could safely disarm and neutralize her with him standing that close. "At least take off the PRC so his body can heal."
"He's
Aesei
," she said as she took two water bottles from the teen's almost empty bag and pushed them through the bars of Danny's cell.
Danny stopped the bottles rolling toward him with his foot. "Haven't you heard? Being the
Aesei
makes him faster and stronger than the rest of them."
"And motivated, I hear," Dr. Barrett commented mildly, watching me with a look of speculation that I didn't care for.
I gave him my best grouchy face. "Miller's almost lame because your Weres attacked him. Shouldn't you take a look at his— Ay-what?"
"It was a rock," Miller objected. "By the creek. And it's nothing but a contusion and a scratch."
The older man's soft blue eyes twinkled. "No need to worry, young lady. He's on my list."
Cooper sat down on his cot with his rations. "I'm fine," he assured me, opening the box and taking out the block of cheese. I studied his pale face and promised myself that I'd find a way to get him out.
"Put in a few good words for me on the outside, won't you sweetheart?" Danny said, biting into a piece of bread.
"You mean like, 'send Bellmonte his head if you don't get the ransom'?" I commented as I turned to follow the others, worry over Cooper eating at me.
"I was thinking more along the lines of 'diplomatic immunity' but whatever does the trick."
Rosalind motioned for Dr. Barrett to start up the stairs on the other side of the cellblock door. "Noah, help Practitioner Miller."
The kid, Noah, retraced his steps and had just reached for Miller when Knox screamed — a sound of pure terror. I flinched and spun round, my heart pounding.
"Oh, God. No," Sharon choked out, appearing at the front of her cell in a blur of movement, gripping the bars as she strained to see Knox.
Rosalind grabbed Noah and shoved him up the stairs behind Dr. Barrett, slamming the cellblock door behind him and shocking the hell out of me. Grabbing Miller by his arm and me around the waist, she backed us up against the door. Then darting to the middle of the cellblock, she took up a defensive stance as if she meant to shield us from something, though what I didn't know.
"Get to the wall farthest away from him," she ordered Cooper and Sharon. "Now!"
Sharon strained against her bars. "Knox!"
Panic tightened Rosalind's shoulders. "Get to the back wall!"
"It should have been me," Sharon wailed as she sank to the floor, sobbing. "I was his mate."
Another scream cracked against the stones around us and Knox collapsed to the floor, his back arched in agony, his teeth bared. I lunged for the end of the row.
"No, Addison," I heard Cooper shout. "He's out of control."
"He needs help!"
Rosalind grabbed my belt as I tried to dart around her and yanked me away before I reached Knox. My anger surged and I tried to twist out of her grip, but she held on, dragging me back toward the front of the cellblock. "He's hurt," I snarled, twisting around to grab her wrists.
"He's contagious," Rosalind snapped. "The pathogen went from Travis into him."