Scorpio Sons 1: Colton (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

Present Day, SAN FRANCISCO

The night was warm for early December and silky on his skin, like a lover’s satiated fingers lazily stroking his flesh. If he didn’t breathe in too deeply he could maintain that illusion and not have it corrupted by the reality of exhaust fumes clogging the air.

This was new. When did he ever fantasize about a lover's touch?

Above the rumble of passing vehicles, he heard a sound he’d never expected to hear again. That sweet, totally unique voice that was impossible to forget. Even after nearly four years, it hadn’t faded in his memory.

Increasing his pace, he followed the sound. Connor wordlessly aligned his prowling gait to Colt's strides. More than any of the other Sons, Connor matched his temperament and understood his needs, without recourse to too many words.

The sound – the song, for that was what it was – was coming from an electrical storefront. In a mesh-protected window sat a massive TV screen, a ridiculous price-tag attached to the upper corner. How many people had that sort of money to waste on entertainment? Too many, he answered himself in the next thought. And that's what the Guild wanted.

But he had no time to think of out-of-control consumerism when she was there in front of him. After four, long years his eyes were being gifted with the sight of her again. And his ears. Oh, the sweet, plaintive melody she sang made tears prick his eyelids and form a lump in his throat.

He wasn’t the only one staring at the huge screen. A short, black guy in gang colours was staring at Alyssa too, his mouth agape. When he noticed Colt and Connor at his side, he closed his mouth abruptly and assumed a cocky stance.

“She’s sure sumthin’, ain’t she? Don’ usually listen to shit like that, but when she sings it...Man, she’s sure sumthin’ else.” The admiration was close to idol-worship and Colton couldn’t blame the guy. What did they say about music soothing the savage beast? Well, hers sure did something to
his
beast. And obviously he wasn’t the only one.

“Word is she’s signed with
Feronic
even before the contest’s over. That bullshit
Star Quality
isn’t worth shit, but this time they’ve found sumthin’. She prob’ly won’t win. Them talent shows ’re all fixed. But with a recording contract she don’t need to.” Was this street dude always this chatty with strangers or was their shared interest in Alyssa creating an artificial bond between them?

He didn’t need a bond with this guy. Artificial or otherwise.

“Aye, she’s a rare songbird, that she is,” Connor replied, his soft Irish lilt apparent in every melodic syllable.

“I met her once,” Colt found himself saying, drawn into the camaraderie despite himself.

“Don’t bullshit me, man. Where’d a dude like you meet sumthin’ that sweet?’

He knew what the black guy saw: a rough-around the edges street-fighter dressed in white tee-shirt, black leather jacket, low slung jeans, heavily studded belt, and three day’s growth on his chin. His collar length hair was soaked in sweat, and he probably didn’t smell so good either. Not that the black guy could have smelled him over his own stench.

The guy was right. He’d had no right to meet her. Never would have, if that arsehole Hastings hadn’t played dirty that night.

The black guy looked at them more closely. “Hey, you guys brothers or sumthin’?”

Or sumthin’
was right: Same height; same powerful, feline build; and same features. Only Connor’s buzz-cut altered the shape of his face enough to let them pass as brothers rather than what they really were.

Instead of answering, Colt turned away and started prowling down the street again. Connor was a step behind but covered the distance between them faster than was natural.

Connor had to stop doing that. People weren’t as unobservant as the Irishman thought. Blending in was what they were supposed to do. Not start up conversations with street thugs who asked too many questions, and then watch as they walk away too fast to be natural.

“You met her? Don’t think you can drop that into the conversation and just walk away, boyo. I want deets.”

Casting a subtle glance around for eavesdroppers, Colt shrugged. “Nothing to tell. She was in trouble, I saved her. End of story. It was four years ago. Nearly four years ago.”

“Before Chase found you?”

“Yeah, a couple o' years before then. I was living rough, moving around. You know the drill. I liked hanging out in this College library. I was into sociology, trying to make sense of... well, you know. Came out of the library one night and saw her being attacked by three guys. I stopped it. She told me her name. I left. End of story.” Every casual word felt like a betrayal of what he’d felt back then. What he still felt, if he was honest. But he couldn’t let Connor, or anyone else for that matter, know how much she’d affected him. He trusted the Sons more than he’d ever trusted anyone, Connor most of all, but that didn’t mean he
really
trusted them. Not with the things closest to his heart.

“I’d have got a wee bit o' gratitude from the damsel-in-distress, if it were me,” Connor said with a knowing wiggle of his eyebrows. Eyebrows that would have been identical to Colt’s own had Connor not got a cut over his left eye sometime in the distant past that left that brow split in half by a scar.

“I’m not you.”

“Still, pretty wee thing. Pity to miss out on a bit o’ casual comfort.”

“Shut the fuck up, okay. You don’t know shit about it. She was seconds away from being raped. That’s hardly a turn-on. But the beast didn’t care about that. So I got outta there, okay?”

“Hmm. How’d you get your moral code living like you did all those years? What, seven when you ran away?”

“My code’s my own. If you don’t have a code, you may as well be an animal.”

“We
are
animals.”

“No. Just part of us. The rest is still human. We still have consciences, we still know right from wrong.”

Connor shook his head. “You fight your instincts too much, me boyo. Let the panther rule.”

“Cats don’t organize. Cats don’t work together for the greater good. The panther serves, it doesn’t rule us.”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is that wee lass would've been sweet. A voice like that crying your name as she comes. Oh, yeah, real sweet.”

He didn’t expect the blinding rage that overtook him. Before he knew what had happened, he had Connor against a wall, several inches off the ground, their noses almost touching. A deep, feral growl rumbled in his chest.

Connor could have escaped him. He was every bit as good as Colt at hand-to-hand combat and dirty street tactics, but instead, he got a silly grin on his face and lifted his arms in surrender.

“Touchy, touchy, boyo. Didn’t know you’d staked your claim.”

He dropped his partner like a hot coal and stepped back. “I haven’t. I just don’t like hearing her talked about like that. She was a virgin, for Chrissakes.”

While he straightened his vintage Metallica long-sleeve sweat-shirt, Connor studied him closely. “Whatever, boyo, whatever. But sure as I’ve never kissed the Blarney Stone, I can tell you that this ain’t the Middle Ages and virginity ain’t worth shit no more. Don’t you be puttin’ no wee lass on a pedestal, ‘cause they all just tumble off eventually.”

Colt rubbed his face in frustration. He felt guilty for attacking his brother. He felt confused by how the beast had totally come to the surface and taken control. It didn’t happen like that. Not since he was a kid. Colt ruled the panther, it didn’t rule him. And Connor was right on most of what he said. It shouldn’t matter where his fantasies took him with 'Lyss. But the idea of that honey and almonds sweetness under Connor, that skin-tingling voice calling
his
name, just drove him crazy.

“New recruit arrives today,” Connor said to change the subject.

Gratefully he accepted the opportunity to turn his thoughts away from the girl of his dreams at last. “Where from?”

“England. Cameron Haversham Smythe. Posh bastard, from what Caleb was saying. Do you think anyone would notice if I put a wee bomb in his bunk?”

Choosing to ignore the IRA reference, which Colt knew was a joke, he asked instead, “Do you think it was intentional? Giving us all names starting with ‘C’, I mean.”

“I don’t think they had any input into that part of it, just so we could disappear without a trace. Probably more the nurture versus nature thing-a-me-jig at work again. You know how twins who grow up not knowing about each other call their kids the same names, and marry women who look alike and have the same name. That sortta shit.”

“Hmm,” was all he could think to say in reply. There was a lot of uncanny stuff about them. If you thought too long about it a person could go crazy.

By ten that night the Scorpio Sons had gathered in the common room of their facility. From the outside, Scanlan Industries looked like any other high-tech facility in the Silicon Valley. But courtesy of 1950s paranoia, subterranean strata had been added to the complex in case of nuclear attack. That made for the perfect location for a covert organisation like theirs. And mysteriously, all record of that architectural feature had disappeared once Scanlan took possession of it in the '80s.

They didn’t even enter the building by the normal route. Instead, there was a truck-sized tunnel that led from their building, under the nearest road, and brought them out into a warehouse some distance away.

Of course, many of the workers above ground knew of the secret activities going on beneath them, but their confidentiality clause was not so much legally binding as life-threateningly binding. Many thought they were working for a covert government agency, and that suited the Sons just as well. What fear for their lives wouldn’t keep quiet, patriotism could.

There were forty of them now. And another sixty Sons out there somewhere, yet to be found. No, less than that. There had been a hundred of them to start with, but some they knew hadn’t survived. Five dead that they knew about. Statistically that would mean another six or so were likely dead out of the remainder. It had taken Chase and Scanlan Industries eight years to track down the forty of them. Maybe it would take another ten to collect the rest.

What might the Guild have done to the world by then? This was too slow. There had to be a faster, more effective way of finding the Sons and bringing them home.

As he lounged on a sofa watching a football game on the wide-screen TV, one much larger than the expensive number they’d seen only a few hours ago in the electrical store window, he sipped his beer and waited for the new arrival.

It was part of the orientation. They all gathered in one place to give the newest recruit the full impact. It was hard to deny you’re a clone when staring at forty faces that look just like your own. Oh, there were slight variations amongst them. What was called ‘copy number variations’ in the genetic coding: Pieces of the code missing, other bits duplicated; little glitches that accounted for evolution.

So, while this Cameron Posh Dude would see forty men who looked like him, if he looked really closely, setting aside the environmental effects and personal choices in clothes and grooming, he might see minute differences between them. Especially as his vision was better than any human's ever could be.

Even their fingerprints were slightly different, although they shared the same gross markers. That meant that if any of them were in the system, they’d find themselves blamed for crimes across the world they’d never committed.

So their fingerprints weren’t in the system. Well, not for long, anyway.

It was one of the methods used to trace the Sons. And once traced, their fingerprints were removed from the system, as if they never existed.

Fingerprints in police databases across the world. Facial recognition software that trawled driver’s licences and passports. Blood test scans from millions of hospitals. Media accounts of unusual, violent altercations. These were the methods used to track the cloned warriors. But it wasn’t easy. Most of the Sons who knew what they were – or at least knew they weren’t quite human because their cat had come out to play – kept a low profile.

Colt had only been found because of a stupid accident. A drunk driver had mounted the curb and run him down. He’d woken up in hospital with concussion, cuts and bruises, and an official-looking dude standing guard at his door. They’d brought him in, just as they were bringing in Cameron Posh Dude, so he could see what he was a part of. So he could see why he was saved at birth from the Termination Decree.

At that moment, the door to the common room opened and the noisy chatter around him ceased. Someone muted the TV and the guys playing pool at the other end of the room looked up. All eyes were riveted to the two men entering the room

Chase ushered in the new recruit. Chase was their founder, the ‘trust fund baby’ of one of New York’s premier families. To look at him, no one would have picked him as adopted. He looked just like his father. He should. They all should, because Charles Scanlan’s DNA was the core code into which the rest of their genetically engineered DNA was embedded. Anyone of the hundred baby boys in those incubation tubes could have been the one chosen to become the son of one of the wealthiest men in the US. That it was Chase seemed like fate. His role suited him down to the ground.