Second Nature (6 page)

I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat as I
came back to the abandoned Mustang. Sariah sat in the passenger
seat, rooting around in the glove box for something. Opening the
driver’s door, I put up the top and pocketed the keys. Something
told me he wouldn’t be coming back for the car on his own, but if
he did, Xander knew where the hide-a-key was. We both climbed out,
and Sariah was holding a small electronic device in her palm. She
touched the screen a few times and a map popped up. This didn’t
look like a standard GPS—there was a glowing red dot with Xander’s
name flashing near the top edge of the screen.

“Our phones are Lo-jacked?” I asked.

“Phones, cars, even some of our personal
items. We have to keep each other safe, Lia, and we can’t do that
if we don’t know where someone is.”

The streets were starting to empty due to
the late hour, so Sariah was able to run red lights and get us to
the flashing dot in about ten minutes. We were in an area
surrounded by empty warehouses, but I could feel steady base and
see colored lights flashing occasionally through the broken windows
of one of the buildings. What was going on?

I followed my sister into the building, and
realized I was at my first underground rave. Sariah grabbed my arm
in an almost painful grip.

“Don’t drink anything I don’t hand you,
don’t touch anything you don’t absolutely have to touch and if at
all possible stay right by me!” As she turned around, she appeared
heavier with lackluster blond hair that had seen one too many
bottles of bleach. I put my hand on her shoulder, and we waded into
the crowd. I prayed we would find my brother somewhere in this
mess.

THERE WERE SO many people stuffed into the
warehouse, it seemed like they would run out of oxygen. Strobing
colored lights washed the swaying sea of sticky bodies in a
constantly changing rainbow. The place was thumping, and the crowd
surged as one to the beat. My eyes must have been the size of
saucers as I tried to take it all in. People in crazy combinations
of clothes were decked out with glow sticks from head to toe. Some
of them even had them in their mouths.

A man standing a few feet away, spinning a
glow stick until it made a purple circle in front of him, caught my
eye. There was a strange ethereal quality to him I couldn’t
explain, a compulsive charisma that drew me closer. Before I knew
it, I had released my sister’s shoulder and taken a step toward
him. My spidey-sense tingled that he was Otherworldly, and I
focused on it. His skin sparkled in the glow of the lights, and my
jaw dropped. It had to be a joke. I couldn’t be looking at a real
life
sparkling
vampire!

Sariah seized my wrist in an iron grip and
turned me to face her. She jerked her head toward the back of the
warehouse, and I nodded, glancing back at the vampire, but he was
nowhere to be seen. My sister tugged on my hand, and I found myself
staggering after her. I noticed water bottles everywhere and half
the people had sucker sticks or even pacifiers hanging out of their
mouths. A girl decked in glow sticks had her dark hair swept up on
her head with suckers protruding like hair sticks. Something felt
off about the girl, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. If it
had something to do with the Otherworld, I’d never felt anything
like it. Before I could contemplate her further, my sister pulled
me onward. We worked our way through the crowd until we made it to
the back of the room. A big, hairy man with a chest as massive as a
Coup Deville stood from a plastic chair. How had the flimsy thing
held up under his weight? I didn’t need my extra senses to tell me
he was supernatural, he just screamed werewolf. And not the hot
kind teen girls swooned over, but the stalking the foggy moors of
England kind. I swallowed, but Sariah barely paused.

The guy put an arm in front of us. My sister
looked down at it then back up to his face. “Really?” she asked,
the frumpy older woman fading back into the familiar face with
brows raised. The man’s features set as he realized what she was. I
could tell he wasn’t going to budge. Sariah knew it to, so she
stared at me, the message in her eyes clearly stating she wasn’t
backing down. I waited until she started brawling with the man
before I darted past, up the stairs and into the room beyond.

I don’t know what I expected to find behind
the door, but it didn’t match the reality. The room had been an
office at one time, but now it was filled with what looked like
chemistry equipment. A shoebox filled with plastic baggies of pills
sat on a table near the door. I grabbed one and stuck it in my
pocket to examine later. I crept toward what must have once been
the inner office of the foreman or whatever the head of the factory
would have been called. I could tell there had once been a door
there, but it had either been taken down or damaged. Now it was
just open. I could hear two voices arguing, a man and a woman. I
held my breath a moment hoping they hadn’t noted the rise and fall
of the music as I slipped in the door, but they seemed too caught
up in their bickering to notice anything. As I crept closer, I sent
out my senses for anything I could use. I could tell they were
human and alone.

I peeked my head around the corner and tried
not to gasp. My brother was strapped to a steel table with a IV
coming out of the crook of his arm. The full tube led into a steel
bowl. His almost black blood flowed through the tube in a steady
stream, steaming and bubbling as it fell into the metal bowl. I’d
never felt a rage quite like the one that washed over me. I sprang
into action without thinking.

I jumped on the woman’s back, pummeling her
with my fist anywhere I could reach. She shook me off and the air
huffed out of my lungs as I landed on the ground. The man kicked me
in the stomach, and I grunted, but it didn’t stop me from climbing
to my feet. Xander had taught me to fight—I just don’t think he
imagined it would be to save him. I deliberately turned and let the
man wrap his arms around me from behind, swinging my elbow back as
hard as I could. I caught him in the spot right below the
breastbone and he let go and hunched in on himself. I spun around
and kicked him in the back of the legs, causing his knees to
buckle. As he collapsed, I brought my foot up between his legs.
Tears gleamed in his eyes as he curled into the fetal position
cupping Johnny and his boys. I turned to the woman but she was
nowhere to be seen.

Rushing to the table, I ripped off the tape
holding the IV tubes in place and pressed my finger down the way
I’d seen my mom do it a hundred times. When the tube pulled free, I
tried not to wince as his blood met my skin, scorching my finger. I
cast around for something to put on the wound but I didn’t see
anything. I don’t think they had intended to worry about stopping
the blood when they were done. They had planned to take it all. I
just let it burn me, knowing the little burn would be nothing
compared to the pain of losing my brother. Fortunately, he healed
fast and the tiny puncture closed before I was too injured.

Now I had to get him out of here. I hurried
around the table and unbuckled the restraints, but Xander didn’t
rouse. Shaking his shoulders, I got no response. My hands on my
hips, I stepped back and studied him unsure what to do. The guy
still rolled around on the floor, but he would recover soon if we
didn’t get out of here. I was tempted to strap him onto his own
table and bleed him as mercilessly as he had my brother. While my
conscience would never allow me to do that, I could swap his place
with Xander’s.

Apologizing to the unconscious Djinn, I
rolled him off the table until he fell to the floor on the opposite
side. I grabbed the man from behind in a stranglehold, bracing my
knee against his back. He squirmed and struggled, but Xander had
taught me how to do this well. As soon as he went limp, I released
him, waiting a moment to see his chest rise and fall. Reassured I
hadn’t killed him, I dragged him to the table. I wasn’t strong
enough to lift him straight up on my own, but perhaps if I climbed
up onto the table I could drag him with me. Hopping onto the cold
metal, I wrapped my arms under his and tugged. His back would be
all scraped up, but I found I didn’t care. After what felt like
five minutes of straining and pulling, I got him onto the table and
strapped down. Then I ran around to my brother. He still wouldn’t
wake up and there was no way I could carry him. I had no idea what
I was supposed to do.

As horrible as it seemed, I would have to
drag him. With a sigh, I hooked my hands around his chest and slid
him closer to the door. It seemed like I needed a longer break for
every foot we moved. Time stretched as I tried to pull him to
safety, but a glance at my watch while catching my breath showed
I’d only been in the room ten minutes. So I kept going.

I just reached the corner when a gunshot
froze me in my tracks. I dropped my brother and spun around to look
at the woman with wide eyes. I figured she had split after our
confrontation, but apparently, she ran for her gun. I prayed she
hadn’t called for reinforcements. At the sight of the revolver in
her hand, my mind stopped working. My eyes traced the barrel back
to her brown eyes, which were possibly more startled than mine.

I launched myself at her without a second
thought. My hands locked around the pistol, shoving my finger
behind the trigger. We wrestled it back and forth, falling to our
knees as we both tried to pry the other’s fingers lose. My finger
suddenly felt like it was on fire as a horrible crunching noise
signaled my finger breaking. With a yelp, I yanked my injured hand
away and the woman ripped the gun from my grasp. I stared her in
the eyes and willed her to put down the gun. Her hand shook, and
fear clouded her vision. Neither of us moved as we stared at one
another. Her eye twitched and the deafening roar of the gun filled
the hallway.

The room seemed to tilt oddly, and I
couldn’t figure out why. I looked up at Xander and wondered how I’d
ended up on the floor, but the shock had halted my thought process
to a standstill. Should I be in pain? It seemed wrong I wasn’t. The
sharp metallic scent of my own blood mixed with the sulfuric scent
of my brother’s. I had no idea where the gun had been pointed when
she fired, but she couldn’t have missed me in such close quarters.
I tried to sit up, but pain tore through my stomach. I fell back
knowing I had to do something. My attacker was still armed, and I
didn’t think she would hesitate to shoot me the second time. I had
fallen back into the room so the metal bowl of Xander’s
still-boiling blood sat just beyond the tips of my fingers, if I
could just get to it. Gritting my teeth against the horrendous pain
in the region of my naval, I pulled myself until I had a firm grasp
of the rim. The metal was so hot it scorched my hand, but that was
the least of my worries at this point. Taking a deep breath against
the pain it would cause, I turned to see the woman walking around
to point her gun at my head. Without hesitating, I threw the
steaming contents of the bowl into her face. She shrieked and
dropped the gun, her hands trying to get the sticky blood off. I
grabbed the gun in weak fingers and clutched it desperately. My
vision faded at the edges, but I had to keep myself conscious until
Sariah got there. If my brother and I were going to survive, I had
to keep my wits about me.

The music got louder for a moment as the
door opened. I held my breath. If the werewolf had beaten my
sister, we were all as good as dead. If the woman had called for
reinforcements, none of us would ever walk out of this room. Air
rushed out of my lungs in relief as the familiar head swam into
view. Her dark eyes were hard as she took in the scene in front of
her. She rushed at the woman, who had run to the small sink to try
to stop the burning.

“You stupid bitch!” My sister grabbed the
woman’s shoulders and turned her until their gazes met. “You picked
the wrong family to mess with.” Her hand swept down, fingers
elongating into talons. I turned away, not wanting to see what she
did to the woman. The pain in my stomach caused another black wave
to threaten to sweep me away. This time I let it.