Shattered (25 page)

“It’ll be a few minutes, Mom. I have to eat something. Then I can
come.”

“Great. See you soon,” she said. She waved and toyed with her phone
for a few seconds before ending the video.

I sprinkled the antidote on one of the slices I’d saved for Nathan
and ate it.

The noise was instant this time–horns, scrambled voices over
radios, screaming, crying, and the sound of a building collapsing. I shut it
out and wondered if now was the time to tell Mom about what I’d seen and that I
agreed with Pop about her plan being doomed to failure. She already knew about
the antidote. I was probably in trouble already. The least I could do was warn
her of the second war.

“I’ve been caught,” I said. “With any luck, she won’t tell my dad
or Sophia. I’ll be right back. She never has more than a few minutes. Cover for
me?”

Emma nodded while focusing on painting her pinky toe.

I closed my eyes and opened them in the lobby of Mom’s office.

A red laser scrolled over my face as soon as I landed, and my old
friend, the robot, introduced me. “Alert. Visitor bypassed secured door.”

“The door’s open,” she yelled from her office. I didn’t want to
waste her precious time, so I jogged to the door and shut it behind me. Her
chair was turned to the side and her fingers were flying over the keyboard of
her desktop computer while she frowned at the screen.

“That must be one intense email,” I said, meeting her at her chair.
I wedged myself into her lap and wrapped my arms around her. Oddly, she didn’t
hug me back. For a few awkward seconds, her hands hovered over my back as if
she couldn’t decide if this sort of contact was appropriate.

With my head still on her chest, I peeked up at her face. She
looked shocked and unsure of herself. “Mom?”

“Yes, um … dear, what is it?”

“Nothing. You’re just acting sort of weird. Are you mad at me? Of
course … you’re mad. I know I’ve been dishonest, but I’ve actually been really responsible.
Doesn’t that count for something?”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at me with her honey-colored
eyes and smiled. Something was very wrong with the way her lips curled. It was
off. Sinister.

She finally hugged me. Her arms tightened and tightened until my face
was pressed against her neck and I couldn’t move my own arms. “Mom,” I said.
“Ouch.”

She didn’t respond, but a few strands of her hair fell into my
face. It smelled like … hair. Just hair, just a neutral, unremarkable scent. No
oranges.

My powers warned me too late. As soon as the thought:
she isn’t my mother
entered my head,
someone grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me out of her arms.

I fell on my butt, and Kamon dragged me away from the desk.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said.

“Let me go!” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself somewhere
else, anywhere else, but a foot rammed into my stomach. It knocked the wind out
of my chest and the thought out of my head.

One of the triplets had kicked me, and all three of them were
following my body as Kamon pulled me to the middle of the room.

“It’ll be your head next time,” one of them said. “Keep your eyes
open. Keep your mind clear. Trust me, I’ll know if you’re trying to do
something.”

Above me, my mother (or whoever that was), came to Kamon’s right
side. A force I couldn’t see rammed into my head, and their faces blurred. The
same force yanked at my skin. Kamon, or someone in the room, was trying to move
me.

I fought it, yanking myself in the other direction and blocking the
psychic energy that felt like waves of steam over my skin. I was not weak
enough to let this happen. Not like this. Not this way.

Kamon grunted. “Let’s go! This is over!” he screamed.

I sensed that he was trying to bring me somewhere to show me off … to
my mother. He wanted her to see me die. A quick death wouldn’t satisfy him. As
more of his thoughts came to me, I realized what hearing them meant. At least
in this moment, I was stronger than Kamon.

Because of my mother, I could do all sorts of things, and because of
Gregory Ewing pushing me to accept my powers, they were currently blazing as
strong as they’d ever been.

“I can end this quickly, little girl,” Kamon spat. Before he even
moved, I sensed the needle. Then he snatched it out of his pocket and tightened
his grip on my hair.

M
oments
felt like very long minutes. Time moved in slow motion. Between one heartbeat
and another, my eyelids closed and opened slowly, a breath hissed out of my
nose, and I took the needle from Kamon’s hand.

“Impressive,” he said, and smiled. “But what else would I expect
from Lydia’s copy?”

“I’m her daughter!” He laughed, a menacing chuckle that made me
shiver, and flicked his hand in the direction of mine. The needle obeyed me and
stayed in place. Someone else tried to take it from me, the triplet in the
center, I sensed, but he failed too.

“Is that what she told you?” Kamon asked. “She said you were her
daughter?” He laughed harder. “I’m sorry. That’s just hilarious. Doesn’t being
a parent require her to actually do something for you other than make you a
lethal weapon?”

The triplets laughed. I noticed they were dressed in jeans and
t-shirts then. They didn’t look a day over sixteen today. They looked like normal,
handsome boys.

Kamon kneeled at my side, still clutching my hair. “Or do you call
her your mother because she raised you the right way? The hard way? Lydia is
more callous than I could ever be. Even though I knew it would make them
weaker, I still kept them and raised them under one roof.” He smiled. “Lydia
had to be coldhearted to make you stronger than them.”

“Thanks, Dad,” one of the copies said. “How very encouraging of
you.”

Raised them? Dad?

“Carter,” Kamon said. “Don’t make this about you, son.”

Son? Carter? A name? A real name?

I’d never really thought about them as real people, so I’d never
thought about them having names, but they did. I didn’t need to ask to be
brought into the loop. Their names came to me as I stared at them. William,
Carter, and Owen Yates. Not C-13, 14, and 15. They were real boys with real
lives. I closed my eyes and saw them laughing with each other and wrestling
like Paul and Nate. I saw them in preppy uniforms like they’d gone to school, a
real school.

As I thought about it, I didn’t know why I would ever believe they
lived in glass boxes. How would anyone keep a copy somewhere against their will
… without drugging them? Walls and doors wouldn’t keep them in.

They drove cars and went on dates and lived a life with Kamon that
I wouldn’t have thought possible. William had something close to a girlfriend,
Carter had a few, and Owen was fond of a guy who worked for his father.

It was amazing how fast value can drain from you. In a moment, I
felt unremarkable, like there could be thousands of me, like my past and what I
knew about my mother didn’t make me any more special than they were. I had a
name. They had them too. I had someone I didn’t have to call master. So did
they.

“Christine, darling,” Kamon said. “Please enlighten me on how she got
you to believe you weren’t a copy?
 
That’s just so ridiculous to me. I have to know. I have to know before
you die.” I didn’t answer. The needle in my hand moved very slightly. “How do
you think you got your powers?”

“Accident,” I said.

The needle moved again. It was angled towards my skin now. I
struggled to move it back.

“Accident?” Kamon laughed. “How would someone accidentally make the
strongest copy we’ve seen in years?” The triplets moved closer. The needle did
too. “Accidents,” Kamon said. “…perform like accidents. I would know. I’ve
drowned many accidents.”

I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that. There were
many things about my past that didn’t add up, and because I loved her, I’d
forgiven everything without asking a lot of questions. Like … why were my powers
so strong if she only used hers to defend herself? Or why didn’t she just leave
me on my father’s doorstep so I could at least have one parent?

Kamon’s theory of her raising me the hard way would answer the
doubts I hadn’t allowed to form in my head. But even as he leaned over me, laying
all of her sins out there to be judged, I didn’t believe it. Logic would say my
mother was a bad person, but my past was not a matter of logic. It was a matter
of sacrificial love. And if there was anything I knew for sure, it was that my
mother loved me. That was something I could believe in. Kamon, on the other
hand, was a lying sack of shit that had now–to his
misfortune–pissed me off.

They were even closer now. The fake Lydia Shaw reached for my hand,
and I imagined her body flying to the other side of the room. Because she still
looked like my mother, I cringed as she slammed into the wall.
Black smoke lifted from her
skin as she slumped over, knocked out from the impact, and her blonde hair
faded to dark curls. I sensed that she was a witch. To say Kamon hated magic so
much, he sure used a lot of it.

I was outnumbered.
I should’ve been more afraid, but this feeling, this down but not
out feeling, felt comfortable. It felt like something I could handle.

There was one needle, four of
them, and one of me. I liked my odds.

As easily as I could imagine three
more needles in my hand, my brain took the extra step of bringing that fantasy
to life.

I blinked, and Kamon grabbed
for my hands just as I willed one of the needles to fly into his neck. He
lifted his arm to block it one heartbeat later. One heartbeat too late. I
sensed that his hunters called the contents of these syringes Ketamine Cocktails.
Kamon was tossing one back now, his muscles relaxing as he slumped to the
floor.

With his hand finally out of
my hair, I flipped up to my feet. In the next heartbeat, I took out Owen Yates.
Chunks of mud flew from his boots and streaked across the floor as he crashed.
William managed to get his hand around my throat. I broke it and sent a needle
into a vein in his neck with outstanding accuracy.

I was sure we looked like a
blur of colors in the office. So much had happened in the past few seconds. There
was only one conscious copy left.

Carter Yates screamed in my
ear, and I moved out of his path just as he manifested a knife. It would’ve
gone into my neck.

“Do you think that’s
something special?” he spat. “You can create needles. So what? You’re not the
only powerful one here, princess.” He waved his hand in my direction and yanked
me back. I stopped myself just before my stomach reached the tip of his knife.

Carter seemed stronger than
the others, or maybe the seconds of watching his father and brothers fall had
given him enough time to react.

“Let’s see here,” he said.
“What can I make for the little princess?” He held his dagger out in front of
him and smiled. It turned into a machete. “This would take your pretty head
right off.” He twirled it in his right hand and held out his left. A gun
appeared there a second later. “Or do you want to really play? Christine, we
could have tons of fun here. The possibilities are endless!”

He was right. Anything could
happen with us. Two powerful brains in young bodies stood before each other,
weapons in the midst and more weapons just a thought away. I was a fan of being
resourceful, however. Why create what was already there. I took control of his
knife and gun and turned them on him. He laughed.

His death would be
easy–one swipe of the knife, one blast of the gun, and this copy and the
others would be gone. But … I wasn’t the kind of person who would enjoy such a
thing. I wasn’t raised the hard way by hunter standards. I was raised to be my
own person.

“I hope you had fun,” Carter
said. “We’re going to rip your life apart. That shifter, your father, the old
lady, your friends. They’re all going to …”

A needle piercing his neck
shut him up. Apparently being raised by Kamon made him prone to useless
speeches. Unfortunately for him, the sisters at St. Catalina hadn’t given me
that tendency. Acting first and talking later seemed much more productive.

His head banged against the
office floor, and I finally took a breath. I opened my hand and pulled Mom’s
phone from her desk. If they had her phone, they had her too. “Where is she?”

My powers stirred and twisted
my stomach. Suddenly, my entire body felt numb, like I’d been drugged.

I closed my eyes while
thinking of her–her voice, her face, her eyes. My mind sped through a
blur of images. I saw flashes of long black boots with a high heel, a floral
rug, a ceiling fan,
blonde
hair falling over my eyes,
then the boots again. My limbs felt weak.

“Where are you, Mom?”

The answer hit many of my
senses at once. It whispered into my ears, brushed against my skin, and settled
in my brain in the same moment.

“Condo,” I said. “She’s in L.
A.” I was suddenly sure that hunters had ambushed her there. And she was still
there, unconscious, in need of my help.