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Read Now - snowandraven.net
BONES A Werekin Novel The Ark Trilogy: Book Three By: Jesse Daro 1 Text copyright © 2014 Jesse Daro All Rights Reserved Second Edition Cover Photo by Josh Pesavento Used under Creative Commons license All Rights Reserved 2 What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. - T.S. Eliot For my parents Your love, support, and guidance have given me the courage to live in my many skins 3 Table of Contents Prologue 1: Of Things to Come 2: What was Given 3: The Prince of Cats 4: Swan Song 5: Diamond in the Rough 6: Moonlight Sonata 7: Checkmate 8: Lost in Translation 9: Blood Moon 10: Elders 11: Love Potion Number Nine 12: Mind Games 13: Thicker Than Water 14: Second Chances 15: Call of the Wild 16: The Stars Are Fire 17: Absolution 18: Genesis 19: As We Become 20: Amor vincit Omnia 21: End of Days Epilogue 4 werekin: n. 1. An ancient alien race of shapeshifters with the ability to transform into animals; once inhabited the lost continent of Lemuria, before it sank beneath the sea. 2. Genetically re-engineered alien race having both a human and an animal skin, able to shift between the two at will; engineered by Dr. Elijah Bishop and Dr. Ursula LeRoi, founders of Chimera Enterprises, using alien genetic material discovered inside Mt. Hokulani. 5 Prologue Every night the dream, if a dream it was, began in the jungle, at the base of the bowl-shaped tree. A mountain rose up behind it, a tower to the stars; carved into its side was a temple, its entrance overhung by a curtain of woody vines. A statue had been erected there, greened by moss, weathered smooth by centuries of exposure to wind and rain, but Seth could still make out its shape: the domed shell of its back, its four stumpy legs, the long stalk of its neck. A tortoise. Etched into its back were Lemurian glyphs. Far below, on the beach, the Black Swan had begun to sing, a haunting melody that mingled with the thunder of the black river threading between the trees – trees that seemed alive, less friendly than trees were supposed to be, taller than any trees on Earth. In the distance, where it plunged over a waterfall, the river began to boil, churning up foam-capped waves tinged red as blood. Up above, a shadow moved through the branches. Seth saw it, and began to climb. With claw-tipped nails he hacked through the vines and branches that snatched at him, like the trees really were alive, and holding him back, until he reached the gaping maw of the Tortoise Clan’s temple. The black jaguar leapt down from the trees to stand beside him, skinning as he landed. J.J.’s camouflage fatigues, like Seth’s, were coated in a slimy paste of mud and leaves. They were looking into an earthen tunnel that ran straight back into the mountainside. Moist air, rich with vegetative rot, fanned Seth’s cheeks. Twenty feet ahead, silver light like starlight outlined a set of steel doors. J.J. caught his breath. Seth reached back, to steady him, and they started forward, together. One step over the threshold and a rumble shook the floor. The swan song had reached its dying crescendo, silencing the ceaseless jungle chorus of croaking frogs and whistling birds and rustling leaves. On a boom that seemed to freeze the marrow in Seth’s bones, the entrance at their backs sealed shut, as the doors ahead folded inward. Shapes appeared. Torches had sprung to life on the walls; their wavering light revealed a dozen men in rough-spun brown robes. Their skin was gray as chalk dust, their hair, plaited into thin braids, tipped with slivers of bone. They were chanting, low and sonorous, words in an alien tongue that resonated inside of Seth like the gonging of an ancient heart. Just by looking at them he knew they were older, more powerful, than any other beings on Earth. 6 All were slightly stooped, as though used to carrying heavy weight on their backs. Their chant quickened, faster and faster, louder and louder; the starlight glow behind them grew, brighter and brighter, pushing ahead of it a wall of heat. The skin on Seth’s cheeks began to crisp. J.J. pushed him to the ground, shielding Seth with his body as the lava raced toward them from the deep belly of the mountain; but the floor beneath them split open, and they were falling, losing hold of one another in the darkness… It was darkness Seth woke to. This corridor he recognized from his waking life – the recessed amber lights, the smooth obsidian walls, the cells off to either side. Most were empty. The few that were not were occupied only by bleached bones chained to rusted silver bars. Collars still circled the skeletons’ necks. Seth rose, slowly, sick inside as he stared at his kindred, collected, betrayed, left to die and rot. His first thought was: J.J. He began to run. Shadows danced in crazy configurations across his path; his footsteps echoed back to him in the eerie silence. Finally, in the last cell, he found him, shackled hand and foot to the bars by silver manacles, stripped to the waist, blonde head shaved. Blood crusted the long, deep cuts the hunters’ whips had made across his back. The ornate silver torc around his neck glowed with an evil light, draining his life away. Seth cried out and ran to him, scrabbling at the shackles with the claw tips of his nails. Tears tracked through the dirt and sweat on his cheeks. Hold on, J.J., he pleaded: Hold on, I’ll take you home. J.J. laughed, a hoarse rasp, like a blade striking bone. Not J.J.’s laugh at all. Seth stumbled back as the boy shackled to the bars lifted his chin from his chest. A wave of horror crested over him as he took in the black rosette-shaped spots tattooed around his own golden eyes. On the other side of the bars, J.J. smiled at his shackled twin, a cold, feral smile. “This is how it ends,” he said. 7 Chapter One: Of Things to Come “You know,” Seth said, “I think we’re done.” Tossing the last pillow onto the king-sized bed, J.J.’s twin collapsed face-down on the mattress. J.J. Sullivan straightened up from plugging in his stereo, looked around at the newly-installed bookshelves, the freshlypainted walls, the just-hung curtains, and said, “You know, I think you’re right.” Just when J.J. had gotten used to living in his mother’s basement, his sister Leigh had decided he needed to move to the third floor of their three-story brick house, across the hall from Seth. Problem was, said room was already inhabited, by Leigh. Leigh did not see this as a problem. Leigh saw this as an opportunity to max out her father’s credit card buying J.J. all new furniture at Ikea, then to put her big brothers to work renovating her father’s old study into her new boudoir. J.J. had been dragged out of bed at dawn for all this. Since, like all cats, he was nocturnal, this would not have improved his outlook on the venture even if his nights lately hadn’t been plagued by nightmares. J.J. liked the basement. It was cool, it was quiet, and above all, it was private. Leigh had also done his decorating. His walls were egg-shell white, his sheets and curtains black, prints of black-and-white polka dots on the walls. Leigh said it was sophisticated. Seth said he was lucky she hadn’t gone for shag carpet and lava lamps. J.J. didn’t care. Just about anything beat the closet-sized cell he had shared with his hunter partner Cleo in the Scholae Bestiarii for ten years, or the long pillow at the foot of Ursula LeRoi’s bed where he had been made to sleep after – a fitting den for a pet werejaguar. Captain Hook, the Steward-Sullivans’ recently resurrected Dachshund (long story), hopped up beside J.J.’s twin on the bed. Poe, their psychic one-eyed calico kitten (even longer story), was napping on Leigh’s windowsill. His windowsill now, J.J. supposed. The sky outside was deepening to purple as the sun sank into a ring of molten fire around the treetops. “I wonder what Cleo is doing right now,” Seth said. J.J. started. He was the telepathic one; usually it was him voicing Seth’s thoughts, not the other way around. “I don’t know,” he said. “Did she call you yet?” “I think you should call her,” Seth said. “If she needed anything, she’d call me.” 8 Seth gave him what J.J. had come to think of as The Look. Leigh had one, too. It meant he was not engaging in normal human teenager behavior. “You don’t have to call her about the mission, J.J. You could just call to say hi. You want to talk to her, don’t you?” J.J. shrugged. Just over a day had passed since Cleo had boarded a military jet bound for Roswell, New Mexico, to assist Lieutenant Kate Jensen in guarding the Source, a relic of Lemuria, the werekin motherland, hidden for centuries by the Tortoise Clan, deep in the Amazon. Not even the Gen-0s knew precisely how the Source operated, only that it was designed to open a portal to the world of the Totems. This was next-gen alien technology, so advanced the only way to talk about it on Earth was as magic. Seth said “the Source” was a poor translation of the Lemurian glyphs, which actually implied something more profound than a power source for the Ark. J.J. was taking his word for it. Seth was the one with the preternatural command of symbols. That got him thinking. “Are you still starting your training with Xanthe tomorrow?” he asked. “Yup,” Seth said. “Right after ball practice.” His enthusiasm left something to be desired. Xanthe was J.J.’s Gen-0 telepath tutor – the only teacher J.J. had ever respected, aside from his father, Thomas Sullivan, and Captain Will McLain. Xanthe believed Seth hadn’t yet begun to tap his psychic powers. He wanted to train him, like he had trained J.J. At first, Seth had resisted because he hadn’t trusted Xanthe with his private thoughts. J.J. didn’t think that was the problem now. Now he thought Seth just didn’t want to be more magical than he already was. He wanted to play basketball and apply to college and dance at prom, all of that normal human teenager stuff. He didn’t even want to add his blood, the blood of the Jaguar Clan, to the Ark, to complete it. J.J. didn’t really get it. Then again, J.J. had been raised in captivity, even more secluded from the human world than Seth. While his twin was boosting cars for pocket change in the Philadelphia Underground and teaching himself Russian, Spanish, Italian and French at the public library, J.J. was training to be a warrior in Chimera Enterprises’ army, learning absolute control of his thoughts and emotions so he could fool Ursula LeRoi into believing he was her loyal slave. Sometimes J.J. thought he had learned those lessons too well. The Alliance Commanders still didn’t fully trust him, even though LeRoi was in custody, and J.J. had nearly died helping put her there. It hadn’t helped 9 that he had lobbied for her life to be spared. But, like he had told Ben Schofield, he had his reasons. “That’ll be Mom,” Seth said, bringing J.J. back to the present. The front door had just closed downstairs. “We should clean up. Caroline’s party starts in like twenty minutes.” J.J. nodded. Seth slunk across the hall, whistling tunelessly; a minute later, shower water came on, and the whisper-soft tread of their mother’s footsteps climbed the stairs. She stopped on the second floor. Checking out Leigh’s new room, probably. J.J. was relieved she wasn’t checking on him. He never seemed to say the right thing to his mother. She felt guilty for the years he had lived in captivity, years her ex-husband Jack Steward had enchanted her into believing J.J. was dead, buried in the Royal Acres Cemetery outside of Fairfax. It wasn’t like she could have busted him out of a Chimera facility even if she had known he was alive. J.J. had told her that a few weeks ago, and it had just made her cry. Mostly he avoided her. Thinking about him seemed to make her sad, and he figured she wouldn’t have to if he wasn’t around. To that end, J.J. crossed to the window, pushed up the sash, and climbed out onto the roof. For early March the weather was cool, the unnatural winter heat wave having been broken by the unearthly storm Chimera had unleashed on Fairfax a week ago. A gust of wind blew J.J.’s black T-shirt against his chest. Seth’s room faced the driveway; from his window, it was an effortless drop, for a werekin, from the roof to the Stewards’ three-car garage, from the garage to the lawn. Leigh’s room, which J.J. had to remind himself was his room now, overlooked the in-ground pool and wooden deck in the backyard, nothing below it but his mother’s rosebushes. Idly, he wondered if he could make a jump like that. One way to find out. It was a longer fall than it looked. J.J. landed on his feet, naturally, but hissed at a sharp snap in his ankle; staggered; and caught the rose trellis for balance, snagging his jeans on a thorn. “Need me to take a look at that?” J.J. looked up. He had not been unaware of Marshall Townsend standing beside his brand-new aquamarine convertible, wearing jeans and a thermal shirt. He just hadn’t expected Marshall to speak to him. Seth’s boyfriend had never seemed to like him, and J.J. was certain he didn’t now, what with the small, unresolved issue of J.J. arranging to have him brought back from the dead between them. But his ankle was definitely twisted. Possibly broken. And Marshall was an incredible Healer. “Would you mind?” he said. Marshall closed the convertible’s trunk. “I don’t mind.” 10 He offered his arm. J.J. waved him off and limped across the driveway on his own. No one was home at the Townsends’ posh brick ranch. Marshall’s sister Whitney spent most of her time these days with her boyfriend, Emery Little; Mrs. Townsend kept a busy social calendar; and Dr. Townsend worked long, late hours at Fairfax Memorial. J.J. followed Marshall through a well-appointed living room and up a flight of stairs. At the top, Marshall glanced back, as if startled to see J.J. behind him. “Sorry,” J.J. said. He didn’t mean to be stealthy. He just was. “I would have brought the first-aid kit down to you,” Marshall said. J.J. shrugged. A sprained ankle was hardly the worst pain he had ever been in. That prize went to having his life-force, his animus, drained through his collar by LeRoi. And there were other kinds of pain, he thought, looking down at the lacelike scars on the backs of his hands, that kept hurting long after the wounds had healed. Marshall’s room was bigger than J.J.’s and Seth’s put together, though it didn’t look it with cardboard boxes taking up most of the floor space. The walls were painted Harvard crimson, and at the moment, bare. Marshall directed J.J. to sit on the stripped mattress and knelt in front of him, unlacing J.J.’s combat boot. “Moving out, Doc?” J.J. said. “That’s generally what we call it when someone packs up all of their belongings.” Marshall paused, then went on, more kindly, “I’m staying with Mr. Steward until after graduation.” Seth had told J.J. a little about this, Dr. Townsend forbidding Marshall to see Seth anymore, even as friends, Marshall refusing. He hadn’t realized the situation was serious enough for Marshall to move out. He wondered if the move didn’t also have something to do with Marshall’s parents not really being his parents. Eighteen years ago, Wesley Townsend had cloned himself as part of a top-secret experiment for Chimera Enterprises, thereby earning himself a spot amongst LeRoi’s Partners. J.J. didn’t bring it up, since one he wasn’t supposed to know about the Ovid Experiment, and two, it wasn’t the sort of thing you could easily work into polite conversation. “What did your parents say when you decided to leave?” he asked. “It’s not really up to them, is it?” Marshall said. “I’m eighteen. I can live on my own if I want. Now.” He had peeled J.J.’s sock off and was cupping his heel in both hands. “Rotate your ankle for me, clockwise.” J.J. did. And hissed. “It’s broken,” Marshall pronounced. He tossed his curls out of his eyes. Seth was always going on about how pretty Marshall’s blue eyes were, and they were, J.J. supposed, although he probably wasn’t the best judge, but J.J. found them intriguing for another 11 reason. Marshall was one of the few humans who could see werekin auras. “Was there a reason you were jumping off your roof?” Marshall asked. “Just checking my escape routes,” J.J. said, lightly. “Well, for future reference, even you can’t fall three stories without busting an ankle,” Marshall said. Placing J.J.’s bare foot on the carpet, he started rooting through one of the boxes. The glass shelves above Marshall’s windows, once full of basketball trophies and science fair ribbons, were empty, as were his bookshelves, his desk, and his dresser, hangars all that remained in the closet where Caroline McLain, entranced, had been hidden for nearly a month. Leaning back on his elbows, J.J. closed his eyes. Marshall’s bed was very comfortable. He was tempted to take a nap. Six weeks ago, J.J. could have made that jump, literally with his hands tied behind his back. He was getting soft, J.J. thought. He had been lax about his training since coming to Fairfax. Not by choice; he would much rather have been at Fort King drilling with the Marines or meditating with Xanthe than bored stiff sitting in school all day. But General Burke wanted the werekin to integrate into human society. When you were a seventeen-year-old werejaguar, that meant going to high school. Besides, Seth had this idea J.J. being in school made their mother happy. “No offense, but you look pretty rough. Are you all right?” J.J. opened his eyes. Marshall was kneeling in front of him again, winding an Ace bandage around his ankle. He was deft at it. “I haven’t been sleeping,” J.J. said. “Bad dreams.” “Those are a big deal for telepaths, aren’t they?” Doc, J.J. thought, was too smart for his own good. “That will heal on its own,” he said, in place of an answer. “You don’t have to do that.” “Actually, the downside of your rapid regeneration is that your bones can knit back together improperly if they aren’t set right away. I really should splint it, but if you drink this,” Marshall tossed a glass phial onto the bed, “and leave the bandage on overnight, you should be good as new by morning.” Using a sharp thumbnail, J.J. pried the wax stopper out of the phial and sniffed its contents. The liquid inside was mint-green, and smelled of sulfur and jasmine. “What is it?” he asked. “What does it smell like?” “Healing potion, but not exactly.” 12 “That’s because it’s not. Exactly. It’s something Aphrodisia and I have been working on. It’s safe, I tested it on – ” But J.J. had already downed the contents. Blech. He shuddered even as pleasant warmth trickled into his ankle, relieving the bone-deep ache. “You haven’t improved the taste any,” he managed, handing the phial back to Marshall. “It’s medicine,” Marshall said. “It’s not supposed to taste good.” J.J. didn’t necessarily see the logic in that, but he pulled his sock back on and started lacing up his boot. “So what’s the improvement, if not the taste?” “Effectiveness, for one.” Finished with the first-aid, Marshall went to lean against the edge of his desk. He seemed relieved to have hit on a neutral topic. One that didn’t allude to being kicked out of his house because he was gay, or being brought back from the dead after committing suicide. “We’re trying to increase the potency while decreasing the side-effects.” “I didn’t realize magic potion had side-effects,” J.J. said. “This isn’t Hogwarts, J.J. Healers don’t stand around waving wands and saying ‘abracadabra.’ Alchemy is a science, the distillation of minerals, a lot of which, like mercury, are toxic. You have to get the dosage just right or you can do more harm than good. Werekin aren’t as susceptible, because the magic in your blood burns the toxins off faster, but for humans, including hunters, the toxins can build up in tissues, where they become fatal after a while. Even werekin shouldn’t take too much. An overdose can cause paranoia, hallucinations, dizziness – and no one but me actually cares about this,” Marshall said, “so I’ll stop talking.” He reached for the letterman’s jacket draped over his footboard. “Are you going over to McLain’s?” J.J. was, so they left the house together. The Castle Estates subdivision was quiet. In the crisp twilight, J.J. could hear branches sighing on the wind, underwritten by the sweet, trilling notes of Chopin drifting through the open windows of the columned white house across Kings Lane. The curtains had been pulled back, allowing squares of yellow light to decorate the porch. “Why humans?” Marshall cocked an eyebrow. “Is this an existential question, like, ‘why is the sky blue’?” J.J. laughed. Marshall didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He and J.J. didn’t spend much time in one another’s company. They certainly didn’t laugh at one another’s jokes. “I meant why are you making healing potion more effective for humans. Can they really survive an injury that would take more than one phial to heal?” 13 “You’d be surprised what we humans can survive,” Marshall said, dryly. “We use healing potion as an emergency antidote. The more potent and less toxic it is, the more we can use to stabilize a patient. After that, it’s strengthening potion, to help the body rebuild as it regenerates, without constantly depleting itself. We’ve had to use a lot of both on Connor.” They had just started up the McLains’ walk, and J.J. braced for a snide comment about instincts. After all, just before Connor Burke had been captured and tortured by LeRoi’s lapdogs Derek Childers and Aaron Gideon, J.J. had told Seth and Marshall he didn’t trust him. J.J. had witnessed the torture with his own eyes. There was no denying that even now Connor was lying in the Fort King infirmary, recovering from his grisly wounds. But, to be honest, J.J. still didn’t trust him. A feeling of wrongness had coursed through him the first time he had seen Connor Burke, intensifying every time he had been around him since. Something lurked behind Connor’s pretty hazel eyes. Something he was disturbingly adept at hiding, even from a telepath. Seth dismissed J.J.’s suspicions as jealousy, because Connor made it no secret that he liked Cleo. Maybe J.J. was jealous, a little. He knew Cleo would never feel that way about him, but it was harder than he had thought it would be to see her maybe feel that way about somebody else, especially someone handsome and smart and athletic. And he had to admit, he had no concrete reason for distrusting Connor, other than his instincts, and J.J. wasn’t sure he could trust those anymore. Living in the human world, suppressing his true nature to hide the magic in his blood, sometimes made him wonder if his instincts weren’t being clouded. “Are the potions working?” he asked. “Not well,” Marshall admitted. “Most of the nerve damage was along the spine. We put in a subcutaneous delivery system – sorry, that’s a disc we insert under the skin, to deliver potion continuously as it dissolves, instead of in a single concentrated dose – ” J.J., who was feeling that concentrated dose like a vibration along the bones of his skull, held McLain’s front door open for Marshall to duck through. “I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “It’s something I designed, when Seth was sick.” Marshall announced this medical breakthrough with characteristic modesty. “I thought his body could use the strengthening potion more effectively if it wasn’t being burned off in minutes, but was being constantly supplied to his tissues. I got the idea from LeRoi’s poisoned bullet – leaking silver into the body to constantly deplete it. But then Seth was healed by your Totems, so we never had to use it, until now.” “And?” 14 “And, like I said, it’s not helping much. Aphrodisia had hoped Connor would be able to walk again, but now it doesn’t look like he will. He’s been pushing to come back to – ” “Marshall!” The trilling music that had grown louder as they entered the airy foyer abruptly cut off. A slender, ivory-skinned girl jumped up from a baby grand piano in the living room and rushed toward them. Her glossy black hair was pulled up in a complicated French twist. Her pink T-shirt had a rainbow sequined on the front, her jeans were dotted with rhinestones on the pockets. It was kind of hard for J.J. to imagine that this twelve-year-old girl was his kindred’s queen. He thought she would throw her arms around Marshall, the hero who had spirited her to safety after the battle at Fort King, but she skidded to a stop on the hardwood, grabbed Marshall’s wrist, and hauled him toward the kitchen. “Marshall, you have to talk to Will,” Caroline McLain said. “He’s not letting me go to school…” The back door slammed behind them, cutting off the rest of her words. J.J. could have followed, but he hung back, picking out a few notes of a Mozart nocturne from memory on the ivory keys. I will play the swan, and die in music. Elijah Bishop had appended that line from Shakespeare to the coordinates for a galaxy light years from Earth – the gateway to the Totems’ home dimension. J.J. looked up at the pictures of Caroline on the mantel. Most had been taken in the New Mexico desert, where her brother had been stationed before coming to Fairfax. McLain had also helped train werekin and hunters at LeRoi’s private estate in Connecticut, where J.J. had been raised, secretly working for the Resistance all the while, but he would never have brought Caroline that close to LeRoi. The Black Swan had been left in Kate Jensen’s care when he was away. One photograph, very faded, showed a small, happy family: a darkhaired, dark-eyed man with his arm around a pretty, petite woman holding a newborn baby girl, a proud big brother just on the verge of adolescent gawkiness beside them. Joseph and Madeline McLain, Will and Caroline’s parents, had been human. Caroline McLain was the first werekin child born to two human parents since the Totems had come to Earth and blessed the ancient shamans on Lemuria eons ago. A new breed, the first and only of her kind, destined to raise the werekin motherland from the depths. Ursula LeRoi’s voice echoed inside J.J.’s head. I know you, Jeremy Jonathan. I know the future you have seen. This is how it ends. 15 *** By the time Seth finished his shower, Lydia, Leigh, and J.J. were already over at McLain’s. He slipped his letterman’s jacket on as he bounded out the front door, glancing, by habit, at the dark window of Marshall’s bedroom. It was going to be weird knowing he wasn’t sleeping just across the driveway anymore. He wondered what Marshall was planning to tell everyone at school about the move. A clunker van was parked behind Ingrid McLain’s Prius, so Seth wasn’t surprised when Emery Little hopped up to greet him on the McLains’ back porch. Emery was in his usual hippie gear, hemp T-shirt and faded jeans and Birkenstocks, St. Francis medal at his throat, but there was something different about him. It took Seth a moment to realize Emery wasn’t glamoured. Seth supposed there was no need, with Ursula LeRoi in custody, Chimera Enterprises officially shutdown. He unconsciously touched the pewter jaguar charm around his own neck. “Where is everybody?” he asked, clasping Emery’s arm below the elbow – a gladiator handshake. “I thought this was a party.” “Mom got called to the fort on our way out.” Emery motioned Seth into one of the wicker chairs drawn up in front of the porch swing. Whitney was helping Ms. McLain hang a WELCOME HOME banner above a glass-topped oval table at the other end of the porch. Will McLain was sitting on the railing, sipping iced tea and talking to Seth’s mother, who was twisting an auburn curl around her index finger. “Something about an emergency meeting. The Commanders are always calling those these days,” Emery added, quickly, seeing the look on Seth’s face. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I called Dre’s house, but he and Quinn must already be on their way.” Emery grinned. “And you can probably guess where our guest of honor is.” Seth could. The sweet notes of a Chopin sonata joined the chorus of birdsong in the darkening yard. He had waved to Caroline on his way through the house. He was about to ask where Leigh was when the music suddenly ended, the back door opened, and the Black Swan drug his boyfriend onto the porch. Marshall. Seth’s heart did a funny skip-beat. Just a week ago, he had watched the life drain out of those incredible baby blues, cradled Marshall in his arms as he breathed his last on the blood-sluiced court of the Fairfax High gymnasium. Every time he had seen him since, he had wanted to throw his arms around him, just to feel Marshall’s solid warmth, and know he was alive. 16 He held back, like he always did, waiting to see if Marshall would come to him. Seth was always cautious with Marshall. He heard the queer jokes the other guys cracked, read the graffiti on the bathroom walls. It wasn’t all directed at the two of them, and it wasn’t everybody, or all the time, but it was enough for Marshall to walk the halls with his head down, shoulders hunched like he was expecting a blow. But Marshall had been different since his resurrection. Not in a zombie, brains-for-breakfast kind of way; it was how he held himself, spine straight and chin up, like he had at last settled into his own skin. As if to prove that, he broke away from Caroline, walked straight over to Seth, and tucked a hand under his chin, tilting Seth’s face up for a soft kiss hello. Seth’s brain went instantly fuzzy. “Hi,” he breathed. “Hi,” Marshall breathed back. Someone made a retching sound. Seth glared over Marshall’s shoulder at Leigh. Baby sister had picked up another two members of their party: Seth’s twin and Quinn O’Shea, fresh-faced gorgeous as always in a tank top and fleece pants, her Lady Knights hoodie tied around her waist. Miss Vixen led J.J. over to the porch swing and folded into it beside him, resting her coppery head on his chest. J.J. wrapped an arm casually around her shoulders, plopping his heel on one of the small wicker tables. “Oooh, what happened?” Whitney eyed the Ace bandage around J.J.’s ankle with sisterly concern. She was sitting on Emery’s knee. The butterfly barrettes in her sleek bob sparkled under the porch lights. “Jumped off the roof,” J.J. confessed, wryly. “Doc here had to patch me up.” “And I thought cats always landed on their feet,” Quinn said. “I did land on my feet. Hence the broken ankle.” “Poor baby,” Quinn said. But the hand that brushed J.J.’s hair back from his forehead was gentle. Seth wanted to snap her fingers off. Leigh had flounced into her chair with an exaggerated sigh. J.J. looked wary. Usually when Leigh’s face was full of thunderclouds, he was the target of her rage. That morning she had flipped out on him because he had moved her diary from her dresser to her bed during the Great Room Switch. Leigh had walked in on him holding it, and started screeching about other people’s privacy. Matters had not been helped when J.J. had informed her, with typical J.J. tact, that he didn’t care what she wrote about Blake or Bobby or Whatever-His-Name-Was (Bryce) she had been dating before he had dumped her to take another girl to prom. 17 “This is so unfair,” Leigh announced, without preamble. She must have been upset; she hadn’t even changed out of her paint-spackled jeans. As a rule, Leigh did not appear in Will McLain’s presence in less than full couture. “You try to do something nice for somebody, and it comes back to bite you in the ass.” “You did something nice for somebody?” J.J. said. Leigh glared at him. Emery had attempted to stifle a laugh by taking a giant gulp of tea, and Marshall was now slapping him on the back as he coughed. “Yes, J.J., I did something nice for you, giving you my room and helping you decorate it, which is, like, so much better than you having to sleep on a cot in the basement – ” “I like the basement,” J.J. said. “ – but does that matter? No,” Leigh sailed on, speaking right over J.J.’s interjection. “All that matters is that I used Daddy’s Amex without permission. Like he doesn’t totally owe us way more than a few new pieces of furniture? But now Mom is making me get a job to pay him back.” Huffing, she folded her arms across her chest. “We can take the furniture back,” J.J. offered. “I don’t mind sleeping in the basement.” “J.J.” Leigh’s green eyes brimmed with sisterly affection. “That’s so sweet of you. But we are not kicking you out of your room.” J.J. sighed. “You could work at Re-Spin,” Emery suggested, wiping his damp cheeks with a napkin. “Seth has had to go off the schedule for the postseason, because of all the extra practices, and Chaz has been off a lot since his band is finally starting to get some gigs. Dre picks up some shifts here and there, but McLain keeps him pretty busy with the Alliance. We could use somebody else part-time.” At the mention of Andre Alfaro, Leigh’s porcelain skin had flushed pink. “We’ll see,” she murmured, finger-fixing her curls with a glance over her shoulder at McLain. “Where is Baby Bird, anyway?” Seth asked. This he directed at Quinn, who was busy playing with J.J.’s hands, tracing the lacelike scars on his knuckles. Seth stiffened. “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “When I stopped by to pick him and Alfaro up, their nanna said Dre got called to Fort King.” Seth and Marshall traded an uneasy look. Before Seth could work up the nerve to say anything, Ms. McLain summoned them to the table. Officially, their party was to celebrate Caroline’s homecoming. With the formation of the new human-werekin Alliance, under the direction of General David Burke and Ben Schofield, there hadn’t been a chance to properly welcome Her Majesty home. McLain had ordered pizza from 18 MoJo’s. Seth and J.J. each took six slices, which annoyed Leigh, who was perpetually on a diet. “It sucks we have to go back to school tomorrow,” Leigh said, forgetting their principal was at the table. “Marshall, what are the Knights doing about ball practice now that Seth and J.J. blew up the gym?” “Oi!” Seth was affronted. “J.J. and I didn’t blow anything up. That was Chimera Enterprises.” Technically. “Sacred Heart is letting us use their gym,” Marshall said. J.J. picked a slice of green pepper off his deep-dish veggie supreme. “I thought you guys were rivals.” “We are. But we knocked the Warriors out of the post-season the other night, before all hell broke loose, so they haven’t got anything to lose if we win state. And, I think Connor talked to his coach on our behalf,” Marshall said. “It is so sad about that boy,” Lydia said. “David is simply crushed.” David was General David Burke, Connor’s father. “Does anyone know where his mother is?” No one seemed to. “We won’t be able to hold prom in the gym this year, either,” Ms. McLain said. “The school board is arranging for us to have it at the country club instead.” “That is so romantic,” Leigh sighed. Leigh was the only one of them who didn’t have a date for the big dance. Or Seth assumed J.J. was taking Quinn, based on their lovey-doveyness of late. Marshall had officially asked Seth a couple of weeks ago. Lydia sat forward, fingers tight around the stem of her wine glass. “Ingrid, is that wise? You know most of the Partners are members of the country club. I don’t like the idea of sending our children into enemy territory.” “General Burke already cleared the Partners of any wrongdoing in LeRoi’s latest attack,” Ms. McLain said. “They’ve all disavowed any connection to her.” “I wish I could go to prom,” Caroline said suddenly. She had been quiet most of the meal, picking at her food instead of eating it. Seth looked over in surprise as Lydia patted Caroline’s hand. “You’re a bit young, honey,” she said, gently. “Just you wait. In a few years, boys will be knocking down your door.” “And I’ll be there,” McLain said. “Armed.” Lydia grinned. “But Will won’t even let me go to school,” Caroline persisted, warming up now that she had an audience. “He’s making me do homeschool.” “What’s homeschool?” J.J. asked. 19 “I have to stay home all day, and Aunt Ingrid gives me homework to do,” Caroline said, sulkily. J.J. looked at Seth, who busied himself feeding Marshall a black olive. All right, so he might have neglected to mention the homeschool option to J.J. It was good for his twin to be in school. Even Leigh agreed it wasn’t healthy for J.J. to spend all his time playing soldier and training with Xanthe. Lizardman didn’t even talk. He communicated through these creepy psychic mind-melds. Seth wasn’t even sure he had a tongue. “It’s safer this way, Caroline,” Ms. McLain insisted, as her nephew got up to answer his cell phone. “Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon are still at large. They’re two of LeRoi’s highest-ranking associates. Until Will tracks them down, we need to keep you close.” Caroline was unconvinced. “But the Ark isn’t even complete. I’m no good to anybody until it’s complete, am I?” The bite of pizza Seth had just taken suddenly felt like glue in his mouth. He had to work to chew it up, and swallow. Marshall met Seth’s eyes across the table, a question written on his face: Do you want to tell them now? Seth opened his mouth – and was cut off, by McLain returning to the table. Lydia pursed her lips. “I suppose they need you at the fort?” “Duty calls,” McLain said, affably. Only the set of his narrow shoulders was a warning all was probably not well. “Save me a piece of that cake, all right?” He kissed the top of Caroline’s head before walking briskly inside. Lydia frowned after him. Caroline McLain slumped down in her seat. “I just want to be normal,” Seth heard her say, but he thought he was the only one who did. *** After dessert – Lydia’s angel food cake – Seth went to help Marshall move his boxes over to Jack Steward’s loft. J.J. would have helped, too, but Marshall reminded him he needed to stay off his broken ankle while it healed. They loaded everything in the trunk of Marshall’s new super-sweet Lotus Elise. He generously offered Seth the keys, but Seth shook his head and climbed in the passenger’s side. Alt rock blared from the speakers when the ignition turned over. Seth winced, and Marshall switched off the radio. “Still the dreams?” he asked, as he backed out of the Townsends’ drive. Whitney was standing on the porch with Emery, waving. Seth thought she was crying. 20 “Just the one dream,” he said. “J.J. and I are on Lemuria, in the jungle, with the Tortoise Clan. The river turns to blood. The Black Swan sings, Mt. Hokulani erupts, and we all die, horrible, fiery deaths.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. His eyelids were bruise-tender. “And you’re sure it’s a premonition – what will happen if Lemuria is raised?” “J.J. says seeing the future is an imprecise art. There are too many variables in any scenario to predict what will happen. But Xanthe thinks the dreams are a warning.” If they were dreams. The nightmares felt eerily similar to the dreams Caroline McLain had sent Seth while she was entranced. He didn’t know who would be sending him these dreams, or why. He was hoping Xanthe could show him how to close his mind to them, to make them stop. Marshall and J.J. were the only ones Seth had told about the dreams. And he hadn’t told J.J. all of it. How did you tell the brother who loved you more than his own skin that you woke up every night screaming from a nightmare that he betrayed you? “Hey, Philadelphia.” Seth blinked. He must have dozed off; they were parked on the curb outside the Steward and Regent Law Firm, in the shadow of Sacred Heart Academy’s gray spires. At the end of the block, a street light buzzed like an angry bee. This section of Fairfax had been hard-hit by the storm damage wrought by the Source. There were still rings of mud around the outside of most of the office buildings, marking the progress of the water that had flooded downtown when the levees on the river broke. “Sorry.” Seth smiled sleepily around a yawn. “It’s not the company, I promise.” Marshall shifted so he was facing him. “I can drive you home, if you’re tired.” Seth heard something else in his voice, though. The air in the car had developed its own gravity; it pressed on him, quickening the breaths he had to take to fill his lungs as Marshall leaned across the seat, captured his chin, and covered Seth’s mouth with his. Even at their most passionate Marshall’s kisses had ever been somewhat timid, like he was afraid of doing something wrong, something Seth wouldn’t like. Not now. He parted Seth’s lips with his, in total control of the kiss, crawling across the console and pressing Seth back against his door. The body under his jeans and thermal shirt was leanly muscled; Seth battled the desire to be stretched out underneath it. The convertible’s top was down; he could smell the river, and the fog rolling in, and Marshall, that boy-smell of sweat and cologne. 21 Marshall’s hands slid under his shirt. “We are on the street, you know,” Seth whispered. “Are you suggesting we go somewhere more private?” Marshall whispered back. He sounded devilish. Seth drew back enough to look into his eyes. Street lights played in them, like twinkling stars. “Are you serious?” “Do I sound like I’m joking?” As a matter of fact, Marshall did not. Seth hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t want this – he had wanted it from the first time he had kissed Marshall, in his bedroom, before Marshall had even known he was werekin – but right now, Marshall’s trunk was full of boxes, the detritus of his former life. Seth knew how it felt to wash up on shore after your entire life had been shipwrecked. Wasn’t the best time to make lifealtering decisions. “Indiana,” he said, “what are you going to tell people when they ask why you moved out?” Marshall sat back. Seth was a little disappointed he didn’t press his offer, but Marshall wasn’t the type to pressure somebody into something they weren’t ready for. “I was thinking I’d tell them the truth,” he said. “I don’t see the point in hiding it, do you?” “No,” Seth said, softly. “I guess not.” “Besides, I think they have a right to know.” Seth, who had started to reach for Marshall again, rethinking that whole take-it-slow approach, stopped, frowning. “Wait. Who has a right to know what?” “Everyone at school. At least, everyone in that file Mr. Steward showed you. They have a right to know what our parents made us. If you can even call them our parents.” Marshall looked down at his hands, the blue of his eyes visible even through his lashes. Seth stared at him, aghast. “Marshall. Marshall, the Ovid Experiment is classified above top-secret. Jack wasn’t even supposed to show it to me. You – you can’t just go around telling people they’re clones! It would be like telling people I’m werekin. ‘Oh, hi, have you met my boyfriend? He’s a werejaguar. You know, an ancient alien race resurrected by an evil megacorporation.’” “What would be so wrong with that? Why shouldn’t people have to accept you for what you are?” “Because,” Seth said, angrily. He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. He couldn’t believe Marshall was casually discussing blowing wide open the largest government conspiracy in the history of humankind, exposing his entire race to the world. “People aren’t ready.” “How are we ever going to get them ready, if we don’t talk to them?” Marshall had adopted that unflappable super-reasonable air he 22 always took on when they argued, and which Seth hated. “Seth, it doesn’t matter what happens with the Ark. The Black Swan could decide to blow it up and humans would still be terrified by the power werekin have. Sooner or later, if you want to stay on this planet, you’re going to have to tell people what you are, and I think it would be better to just get –” Screeching brakes startled them both. Seth whipped around, hissing – a true cat hiss that showed his teeth. An SUV with blacked-out windows had roared to a stop on the dark, quiet street alongside the Lotus Elise, and Marines were jumping out of it. Seth shoved Marshall behind him, rising into a crouch on the seat, black rosettes blooming on his cheeks and arms. “Hang on, Seth,” a familiar voice said, as the ranks of heavily-armed soldiers parted. “It’s all right.” “McLain?” Seth said, incredulous. Seeing the captain, he had started to relax – until he saw how grim McLain looked. Seth shrank back, the claw tips of his nails resting on the seat, clearly visible to the Marines surrounding Marshall’s car. “What’s going on?” McLain looked down at him from the curb. His coffee-colored eyes were almost black. “I need you to come with us,” he said. “Right now.” “What for?” Fear made Seth’s voice tight. He could smell the silver bullets in the Marines’ guns. McLain sighed. Whatever he was doing, it was obvious he did not want to be doing it. “Because,” he said. “You’re under arrest.” 23 Chapter Two: What Was Given The armored SUV did not slow for the gate at Fort King; two Marines rushed out of the guardhouse to roll it open. They saluted as the vehicle roared past, slamming to a halt beside the three-headed chimera fountain. Seth was thrown sideways into the door. McLain steadied him as Marines started jumping out. He was still wearing the jeans and flannel he’d had on at the party. “It’ll be all right, Seth,” he promised. Seth did not respond, just jumped down and marched under the prison’s corrugated steel doors on his own power. He had allowed the soldiers to shackle his wrists with silver manacles, had climbed willingly into the SUV, which had raced off while Marshall was hammering on the door of the Steward & Regent Law Firm, trying to raise Jack. Seth could have skinned, run or fought back, but he had decided to trust McLain, as McLain had once trusted him with his sister’s life. There was more activity than Seth was used to on the prison’s upper walkways. M.P.s guarding the hunters that had been rounded up and were being held while Operation Swan Song figured out what to do with them. Seth expected to be marched up to a cell, but McLain steered him straight ahead, toward the rotunda. Their footsteps rang on the obsidian floor. Seth could almost feel the weight of the collar around his neck. Knowing he had defeated the collar’s magic once before was cold comfort, since he had never fully understood how he had managed to survive that night in the clearing. “Will!” Just inside the rotunda, Seth and McLain turned. Jack Steward was striding toward them, in his weekend gear of jeans and a Georgetown sweatshirt. His trim mustache and goatee were more liberally streaked with gray than they had been on New Year’s Eve, when Seth had turned up on his doorstep. Marshall was hurrying behind him. A guard stepped into their path. “Sir, this is a restricted area. You can’t go in.” “That is my son.” Jack’s gray eyes were flinty. McLain sighed. “It’s all right, Corporal. Let them through.” The guard moved aside. Jack stalked into the rotunda and threw his briefcase down on the long table where the Alliance Commanders, minus Ben Schofield, were already assembled, in the shadow of the fifteenfoot-tall black swan statue. When Seth had first been inside Fort King, Caroline McLain had been imprisoned under a glass dome where that statue now stood. Then 24 the windows had been barred. Angelo Alfaro had shattered them, to save their kindred from a cloud of silver powder; they had been replaced by a single pane of black glass etched with a tree made from Lemurian glyphs. The word for home burned like a brand against Seth’s eyes. He looked away. He had never been able to study the tree for long without feeling an odd buzz in the back of his head, like the sick-dizzy high you got off too much caffeine and sugar. Melody Little had risen from her seat. Her small nose was very pink. The other Commanders – freckle-faced Ozzie Harris; copper-haired Josephine O’Shea; boorish Clyde Dowling; cat-eyed Logue Ampon – all appeared similarly ruffled. Logue’s fair hair was downy as fur. “Will, for God’s sake, take the cuffs off him,” Melody squeaked. “I’m under orders.” McLain’s tone was cardboard-stiff, but his eyes pleaded with Melody to understand. She twitched her mousy braid irritably over her shoulder. Marshall and Jack had come to stand beside Seth. “What is it he’s supposed to have done?” Jack demanded. Seth had been wondering that himself. The only thing he could think of made no sense. His blood, Agathon had said. His choice. McLain’s answer was cut short by a flurry in the corridor. J.J. padded into the rotunda – the guard didn’t even attempt to stop him – with Lydia in tow, looking almost as ferocious as Seth’s twin. McLain looked piqued. “Lydia? Who called you?” “We noticed you didn’t,” J.J. said. Pale spots were standing out on his cheeks. McLain tensed. If J.J. skinned, it would not be an accident. The transformation still threatened to take Seth by surprise sometimes, when his emotions were running high, but J.J. exerted absolute control over the magic in his blood. “Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Before anyone could, the guard at the door snapped to attention, saluting General David Burke as he marched into the room. The medals on his uniform caught the light. With him was the oddly matched pair of Ben Schofield and Andre Alfaro. Seth felt a rush of relief. Ben wouldn’t stand for him to be collared. Ben’s flannel shirt strained over his broad shoulders. His belt buckle was a snarling bear. Seemed to match his mood at the moment. Ducking his head, Dre scooted away from him, over to the table, and perched on the edge. Seth wondered if Baby Bird had actually gotten smaller, or if the suede jacket he was wearing, probably for Caroline’s party, just made it seem that way; his quick, dark eyes darted from Seth to Ben as Ben 25 walked over, picked up Seth’s hands, and snapped the silver cuffs with a single yank. “Thanks,” Seth said, softly. Ben just nodded. Under his whiskers, his grizzled cheeks were darkly flushed. Burke wisely chose not to object. Nobody wanted an angry bear on their hands. Taking a seat at the head of the table, Burke waved a hand at Dre, who hopped to his feet, picked up a remote control, and pointed it at the wall, shooting an apologetic glance at Seth, as if to say, I’m not part of this. Mystified, Seth watched the long, flat screen there flicker to life. He gasped. They were looking at the Ark, hundreds of feet below this very room, but an incredible change had been effected in it. The golden liquid that had flowed out from the central orb, pumping like ichor through the crystal web, had turned red, red as blood, coloring the sloping obsidian walls with hellish light. J.J.’s eyes narrowed to metallic slivers, flashing from the screen to Seth’s face. Seth looked down at his shoes. Oops. “As you can see,” Burke drawled, “the artifact is complete.” Logue hissed. Literally. His werelynx eyes were cat-yellow, his sharp nails digging into the wood of the tabletop. Logue was young, and completely cool. He always wore shredded jeans and a skull bandana and motorcycle boots, and he drove a Harley Chopper that made Seth’s Yamaha look like a tricycle. “The artifact? Is that why you’ve arrested the specimen whose blood completed it?” Burke flushed. “The Ark,” he corrected himself. “The Ark is complete. I was informed of this earlier tonight, when Lieutenant Jensen called me to report that the glyphs her team had begun translating on the outside of the Source had mysteriously disappeared.” Glances were traded among the Commanders, suggesting this was the first they were hearing about that. “Then I find out this is going on,” Burke jerked a thumb at the screen, “and it didn’t take much of a leap for me to figure out Seth Sullivan had given his blood to the Ark.” Lydia rested a hand on Seth’s back. “Honey, is that true?” Seth nodded. “Yes, but I – ” “General.” Ben’s thick Louisiana drawl lent weight to his words. “No one here wants a war.” Seth was so taken aback he stumbled into J.J. Keep quiet. J.J.’s voice was clear and cold inside Seth’s mind. His whole body was rigid in a way Seth didn’t like. He wished someone would explain to him why his decision to add his blood to the Ark had become the basis for an interspecies incident. 26 Burke ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. From Marshall, Seth knew the general had been spending hours at his son’s bedside, upstairs in the fort’s infirmary. He looked exhausted. “Commanders, you have to understand the position I’m in,” he said. “Werekin aren’t the only ones taking a risk with this Alliance. My government trusts you not to overpower humankind. Now it looks like you’ve fooled us into leaving your Gen-0s in charge of the Ark, for the sole purpose of completing it with this young man’s blood, at which point the so-called weapon you left in our hands, as a show of good faith for your peaceful intentions, closes up before we can translate the glyphs that might tell us how it works. If that’s not a strategy, it’s one damn big coincidence.” He sat back, waiting on an explanation. Jack turned to Seth. The lines around his mouth were drawn tight. It had not been lost on Seth that Jack had called him his son, though Seth was not. “Seth, maybe you should tell us what happened,” he suggested. Seth glanced at J.J. When his twin gave no sign either way, Seth confessed, “It was pretty much spur of the moment. Cleo and I went for a drive, to talk about her leaving for Roswell, and Marshall was here, visiting Connor, and I just – decided.” It sounded so lame when he put it like that, but Seth did not know how to put into words the series of events that had culminated in his choice the night before. Marshall sacrificing his life to protect the Black Swan. Caroline McLain decreeing that the werekin would remain on Earth, while Lemuria, and the power inside of it, would remain beneath the seas. J.J. deciding to stay in Fairfax. Cleo, telling Seth she was in love with him, and it was breaking her in half. He hadn’t even shared that with Marshall. Burke folded his hands on the tabletop. Like his son, he had hazel eyes. Seth could imagine, before it had turned iron-gray, that his hair had been the same caramel shade of blonde. The resemblance between them ended there. Connor’s features were delicate as glass, his father’s chiseled as if from stone. “Then no one instructed you to do this?” “No,” Seth said. “Who would have ‘instructed’ me to do it? The Alpha Clan guards the Ark, and Agathon told me it was my blood. My choice. That’s the only time we ever talked about it.” “And no one pressured you?” Bewildered, Seth shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand what you’re getting at.” “He thinks I asked you to do it,” J.J. said. “For LeRoi. That’s what they all think.” His golden eyes swept the room. Even Melody lowered her gaze. 27 Burke looked at J.J. like a scorpion he had found crawling over his foot. “You have to admit, it would play into LeRoi’s hands,” he said. “Complete the Ark, secure the Source. Force a war between werekin and humans that would inevitably result in the winning side raising Lemuria, controlling the power of the Totems.” “In case you hadn’t noticed,” J.J. said, “Ursula LeRoi is enjoying a nice long stay in one of this fort’s deepest, darkest dungeons. I don’t see how anything short of a file baked into a pie is playing into her hands.” “I understand the vote to spare her life was a close one.” A cool smile tipped onto Burke’s lips. “You argued for mercy, didn’t you, Jeremy?” Seth looked at J.J., astonished. “I had my reasons,” J.J. said. “Would those be the same reasons you called Ursula LeRoi your mother for seventeen years? The same reasons you haven’t seemed to bond very well with your own mother?” “That is enough.” Lydia’s voice was brittle, like ice about to crack – right before a shard of it spears you through the heart. She laid a hand on J.J.’s arm, facing down Burke with eyes of pure, ferocious emerald. “My son,” she went on, icily, “was kidnapped from our home as an infant, reared in captivity, subjected to the stars know what tortures, in the service of a project under your command.” Burke’s neck flushed red above his uniform collar. “Ursula LeRoi may be a monster, David, but much of what she did, she did with the consent of your government. The only thing my son has ever done is help you stop her from destroying the world. So I think I’ve had enough of you calling him a traitor.” J.J.’s posture did not relax. He just stood there, a granite statue of a boy. Seth wanted so badly to comfort him, except he didn’t know how. Jack cleared his throat. “While we’re on the subject of charges,” he said, “I should remind you, General, that whatever else Seth may be, he is a citizen of the United States. He is not one of your Marines. He is not subject to military jurisdiction.” Burke was dismissive. “Project Ark gave clear discretion to the military in handling all werekin infractions.” “Which is why,” Jack said, “when Project Ark was disbanded, I advised the Commanders to insist that article be revised, ensuring werekin due process outside of military tribunals, in civilian court. It was a condition of their agreement to the Alliance. I have the paperwork right here, if you want to review it.” Jack patted his briefcase. Seth tried not to smirk. There were times having a lawyer for a step-father, particularly one who was willing to mortgage his own soul to win a case, totally rocked. 28 Josephine O’Shea leaned forward. She was an older version of Quinn, if Quinn had worn pencil skirts and tailored blouses. “Personally, I’d like to know what law Seth is supposed to have broken. He gave freely what the rest of our kind had forcibly taken from us. How is that a crime?” Clyde snorted, something about an excellent question. Ozzie was bobbing his head. “Josie, it just complicates things,” McLain said. He sounded tired. Seth bit his lip, stabbed by sudden guilt. He hadn’t thought through what completing the Ark would mean for Caroline McLain. The Black Swan’s blood was now more precious than ever. Meanwhile Regent and Gideon were still out there, LeRoi was still alive, and someone was sending Seth dreams about the apocalypse. Perhaps giving his blood to the Ark hadn’t been the right thing to do after all. Like he was reading Seth’s thoughts, Ben growled, “What was given cannot be taken back. Seth should not be punished for doing what he felt was right.” Seth took a breath. Right now, the Alliance was perched on a knife’s edge. His arrest represented more than a question of his own future. If the Commanders turned on Burke for collaring one of their own, LeRoi would get her wish. Humans and werekin would go to war. “I won’t fight,” Seth said. “If you decide to arrest me, I won’t fight. I didn’t mean to break any laws, but if I did, I’ll accept the consequences.” He could see it was not what Burke had expected him to say. His eyes widened, then narrowed; after a moment, he rose. Seth was reminded of nothing so much as an old lion limping away from his pride at the end of a long, difficult reign. “Go home, Mr. Sullivan,” Burke said, heavily. “I don’t believe you intended any harm by your actions, however rash they may have been. God willing, your part in all of this is finished.” *** Running without Marshall the next morning felt like the end of an era. Their running regimen had been interrupted before, but this was different, a farewell to a part of their past they would never get back, when Marshall was the boy next door. The sound of his lone footfalls on the pavement left Seth oddly hollow. He ran farther than he normally did, leaving the paved trails in Castle Park for the dirt paths through the woods. Birds sang to him from newly29 budded branches; winter was fast losing ground to spring, though a light layer of frost glistened on the grass. The storm damage was more noticeable out here than it was in their subdivision, trees stripped of bark, saplings uprooted, limbs snapped off. For the past week, Seth and the rest of his teammates had helped clear away the trees that had blocked roads and smashed houses. It was a miracle no one had been killed. Lydia wouldn’t have liked him running this far off the beaten path, but Seth, for the first time in his life, was unafraid of hunters. He didn’t even start at sounds in the underbrush. Regent and Gideon might be on the prowl, hatching plots on LeRoi’s behalf, but Seth no longer saw how those plots could possibly concern him. He had given his blood to the Ark. That was all LeRoi had ever really wanted from him. Burke had said it himself. Seth was of no value to Chimera anymore. They could decide just to kill him, but Seth wasn’t really worried about that, either. Regent did not kill without purpose. Even Naomi he had killed to fuel Seth’s rage against the hunters. Seth had not joined the Alliance. He was not a soldier like J.J. Whether the werekin chose to travel beyond the stars or to remain on Earth was out of his hands. Seth thought of his dream, and Marshall asking if it was a premonition, what would happen if Lemuria was raised, then suggesting werekin couldn’t continue to hide their true selves if they wanted to make their home on Earth. Seth couldn’t see how either future would play out, but he had started to wonder: If this wasn’t the right time for Lemuria to be raised, why had the Totems blessed Caroline McLain now? Why had the jaguar gods chosen Seth and J.J. now? For that matter, why had the Tortoise Clan shown Elijah Bishop how to find Mt. Hokulani, setting into motion this whole chain of events? Regent had once told Seth he was missing the forest for the trees. Seth was starting to think he had been right. His thoughts carried him back to Kings Lane, where he slowed for his cool down, hands on his hips. Almost no one was out and about in Castle Estates this early, just a utility truck rolling slowly through the four-way stop at Queens Boulevard, the tinted windows hiding all but the shape of the driver. Since the storm, the power company had been working overtime repairing damaged lines. Lights were on in the Stewards’ kitchen when Seth opened the back door, stamping grass off his dew-damp shoes onto the monographed rug. His mother was at the stove. Will McLain was leaning against the counter, duty cap stuck in the back pocket of his fatigues. His fingers were curled around a steaming coffee mug. The phrase “cut the tension with a knife” came to mind. “Morning,” Seth said, brightly. 30 Lydia placed the skillet on the stove with a bang. She had belted a silk robe over her nightgown. “Honey, why don’t you go upstairs and shower? Breakfast won’t be ready for a bit.” Trying to get rid of him, was she? Seth grabbed a package of Oreos out of the cabinet and hopped up on the teak island in the center of the kitchen. “I owe you an apology,” he said. Startled, McLain looked up from his mug. The ashen cast to his suntanned complexion suggested he hadn’t been to bed since seeing Seth into his mother’s Escalade at the fort last night. He had tried to apologize, but Lydia had slammed the door in his face and roared off with Seth and J.J. in the back. “I don’t see how that would be necessary, Seth,” McLain said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.” “Maybe not, but I didn’t consider the danger I was putting Caroline in by completing the Ark. I know you just got her back,” Seth said, “so…I’m sorry.” Lydia’s eyes cut toward McLain on his sharp intake of breath. “Seth, Caroline isn’t your responsibility,” he said. “She’s mine. She’s been mine for a long time. I would have lost her a few weeks ago if it weren’t for you and J.J. In fact, I’m not sure I ever said thank you for that.” Will McLain was a Marine. He didn’t make a lot of heartfelt speeches. Slipping his cap out of his pocket, he slapped it awkwardly against his leg. “As for the rest of it, like I came over here to tell your mom, I’m sorry it went so far. Arresting you wasn’t an order I wanted to follow, but I hoped if I did, instead of refusing and having Burke send someone else, I could keep the situation under control. Keep you safe. I understand if that’s too little, too late.” “I was never mad at you,” Seth said, honestly. A half-smile caught McLain’s mouth, creasing the tanned skin at the corners of his eyes. Setting his mug down on the counter, he arranged his cap over his dark hair. “Well, I should be going. Thank you for the coffee, ma’am.” He went out then. As the back door closed behind him, Lydia picked the coffee mug up as though considering whether to chuck it out the window, at McLain’s head as he crossed the drive. Smiling knowingly to himself, Seth loped up the stairs to shower. *** Seth had expected Lydia to drive them to school, since Marshall wasn’t next door to carpool with anymore, and he, Leigh, and J.J. all would have been a tight fit on his Yamaha. But she had left for Fort King by the time he came downstairs, dressed. 31 Leigh and J.J. were on opposite ends of the couch, J.J. reading Of Mice and Men, their assignment for Miss Janowitz, Leigh flipping through Cosmo. This just said so much about his siblings’ outlooks on life. “Is Jack picking us up?” Seth asked. “No,” Leigh said. She still wasn’t speaking to her father. “Mom left pancakes for you on the counter.” Seth retrieved his plate from the kitchen and collapsed into Jack’s old recliner. Captain Hook eyed him hopefully from the hearth. “What are you reading about?” Seth asked. Unless baby sister was a speed reader, she was leafing through the magazine rather fast. “Nothing, really.” Leigh turned a page. “Just looking at prom dresses.” Seth swallowed the half a chocolate-chip-and-banana pancake he had just folded into his mouth. “I thought Bryce was taking Yena.” “Who says Bryce Heilsdale is the only boy on the planet?” Seth rolled his eyes. “Okay. I’ll bite. Who asked you to prom? And you better not say Cam,” he added. “We have a deal. You never date Cam Foss. Ever.” Leigh was looking all mysterious, prepared to drag out the suspense (which was just cruel, when your older brother was a cat with a curiosity complex), but J.J. said, “Dre asked her.” Leigh whirled on him, so fast an auburn curl came loose from her ponytail. “How did you know that?” “I’m psychic,” J.J. said. “It was the cat, wasn’t it? Evil. Warlock. Kitten.” Leigh looked around for Poe like she was planning to stab her with her Prada heel. “For the last time,” J.J. said, “Poe isn’t a warlock. She’s a familiar. And she didn’t tell me.” He laid his book down. Might have been just the watery light streaming through the windows, but the shadows under his round golden eyes looked like streaks of tar. “Dre told me.” “He did?” Leigh, for some reason, was whispering. “Yup. And he told me you shot him down. Something about you don’t date freaks.” For once, Leigh did not have a snide comeback. She fixed the hem of her velvet dress over her knees, avoiding her brothers’ eyes. “I didn’t mean because of the werekin thing. I meant because of how he dresses, that stupid hat and those dorky suspenders, and how he’s always got his nose glued to the screen of some laptop. I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known he was going to take it so personally. I don’t think werekin are freaks.” “I’m so relieved,” J.J. said, coldly. 32 Seth gave him a look. Leigh obviously felt bad. “Leigh, just tell him you’re sorry, and you want to go to prom with him,” he said. “Baby Bird is groovy. He’ll be okay with it.” Leigh nodded. She seemed to be trying not to cry, but just then a horn honked. “That’ll be Jack,” Seth said, forgetting Leigh had said it wouldn’t be until he was out the front door, sliding his arms through his letterman’s jacket as he bounded toward – An aquamarine Lotus Elise. Whitney was skipping out the Townsends’ front door, the book of Shakespearean sonnets Emery had given her clutched to her chest. She dove into the back as Seth vaulted over the door on the passenger’s side. “Indiana!” he said, at the same time Whitney cried, “Marshall,” and threw her arms around him from behind, pecking him on the cheek. Marshall laughed. “I should move out more often,” he said. J.J. climbed in the back, with Leigh, and braced his combat boots against Seth’s seat. He only unwillingly doffed the camouflage for jeans and T-shirts on school days. They rode with the top down, though it was a little cool for it. This was the only accommodation Marshall would make to the super-coolness of his new ride. Seth would have been hot-rodding up and down the expressway, seeing how many stoplights he could make in a row. “How’s the ankle?” Marshall asked, looking in the rearview mirror at J.J. “Fantastic,” J.J. said. Marshall raised an eyebrow at Seth, who shook his head. Not about you. Heads turned as the convertible turned into Fairfax High’s upper lot – even for the Castle Estates crowd, the Lotus was a high-end car, on par with somebody turning up in a Lamborghini. Marshall parked in his usual spot, unofficially reserved for him, the ball team’s golden boy alpha, though Marshall would have been mortified to know that. Whitney turned to stare at the school. “Oh my God,” she whispered. Seth felt that pretty well summed it up. Fairfax High was a Burtonesque medieval Alice in Wonderland castle, with turrets on its corners and a white-and-black checkered stone façade. Only now, where the gym had been was a crater filled with twisted girders and fractured stones, glass sparkling in the bottom like glitter. Dump trucks and backhoes were parked around it, the entire east wing roped off with red CAUTION tape strung between orange barrels. The medieval knight that guarded the entrance had lost his sword, so now it looked like the threeheaded chimera he had been about to slay was rounding for an attack. Seth hoped that wasn’t an omen. 33 They all climbed out of the car and started for the school. Seth’s heart was suddenly in his throat, for Marshall had, quite casually, slipped his fingers through his. Seth was sure people were staring at them, but he didn’t really see. They passed the lower lot, where the Haven kids parked their clunker cars. He glimpsed Angelo Alfaro’s beaded dreads but just kept walking, half-aware of Leigh exclaiming about the devastation to the gym, of Whitney wondering aloud who would be taking Dr. Gideon’s place as their Bio teacher now. From the corners of his eyes, he saw people grouping up around lockers, whispering in tight huddles. He checked to see how Marshall was taking this. Marshall smiled down at him, popping out the dimple in his cheek. All of a sudden, Seth was walking on air. They had lost Whitney and Leigh somewhere. J.J. had branched off at the lower lot. (It was like he had a homing beacon for Quinn O’Shea.) They were almost to Marshall’s locker when someone called out, “Townsend! Where you been, dawg? I heard we’re – ” Marshall looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Cam.” Cam had stopped in his tracks. His green eyes had rounded in shock. Bryce Heilsdale sidestepped him. “Dude, don’t stop in the middle of the road. You’re blocking traffic. How ya doin’, Philly?” And he smiled, like there was nothing out of the ordinary at all about Seth and Marshall holding hands. Dark-skinned Topher Simmons and gangly Gabe Cochran, the Knights’ forwards, were right behind him. “You guys see the gym?” Gabe asked, evenly. “It is seriously thrashed.” “I was just saying, you know, if a tornado was going to wipe out the gym, it’s too bad it didn’t take out the whole school,” Topher said. “At least that way we could’ve gotten longer than a week off from class.” “Class beats hauling trees off houses,” Bryce rejoined. Seth could have hugged them all. He had thought Marshall’s pack would be cool with their alpha dating him, but for them to just go on like everything was normal, to just let it be normal, was more than he had dared hope for. “Is it true we’re practicing at Sacred Heart tonight?” Gabe asked. “Right after school,” Marshall said. “That’s where the sectionals championship will be on Saturday, too. I talked to Coach last night.” He and Seth uncoupled for Marshall to shrug out of his letterman’s jacket. Seth grinned as Marshall hung it inside his locker. Underneath he was wearing a Blue Devils shirt. Seth still had the Duke scout’s card in his wallet. 34 “So where’s the victory party gonna be,” Topher said, “your place, or Cam’s? ’Cause we got this trophy in the bag, y’all.” Marshall closed his locker and turned around. “Yeah, about that. I sort of – moved out.” Topher and Gabe looked at one another. “Wow,” Bryce said. “That…that really sucks. Do you need somewhere to stay?” “No, but thanks. I’m staying with Leigh Steward’s dad. He’s got a spare room.” Seth was fidgeting with the cuffs on his jacket; Marshall reached over, taking his hand again. “But the reason I moved out, that’s something I wanted to talk to you guys about.” “Marshall,” Seth hissed. Bryce and Topher and Gabe were shuffling their feet. If they thought Marshall was about to drop the gay bomb, they had no idea what was really in store. Seth was dumbfounded. He had nearly gotten black-bagged last night for adding his blood to the Ark. Had that not shown Marshall the severity of what they were dealing with? “Marshall, I don’t think we need to talk about this right now,” he said. Or, you know, ever. “It’s okay, Philly,” Gabe said, quickly. “We get it. We don’t care.” “Bullshit, Cochran.” Seth had been pretending Cam wasn’t standing across the hall, staring at them with that rattlesnake smirk of his. Now, Cam pushed off his locker and sauntered through the crowd, which was thinning as the first bell loomed. He lifted his chin at Marshall. “So this is how it’s gonna be? You’re just rubbing it in everybody’s faces that you’re a fag?” Topher stood up straight. He was as lanky as Gabe, but even taller than Marshall. “You need to watch your mouth, Foss.” “It’s okay, Topher,” Marshall said, quite calmly, and turned to Cam. He seemed to have been steeled for this. “Cam, Seth and I are going out. If I want to hold his hand, like you do with Shanti, what’s the big deal?” “The big deal is I’m not a faggot,” Cam said. Gabe put a hand on Topher’s arm, to restrain him. Cam sneered at them both. “You guys are really gonna stand here and act like this doesn’t bother you?” No one said anything. No one seemed to know what to say. Cam swung back around on Marshall. His smirk was gone; without it, he just looked mean. “Does this mean you’re over your little crush on my father?” Marshall flushed. The others looked confused, but Seth knew that was a low blow, after how Dr. Foss had acted when Marshall was staying over at Cam’s last summer. “Cam, I think I was wrong about that,” Marshall started. “I think something else was going on that night, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about – ” 35 “I don’t want to hear it.” Cam’s cheeks, normally as pale as his gelled-up hair, were painfully red. If he hadn’t been such a creep, Seth might have felt sorry for him. “It’s not like I haven’t known for a long time what you are. But if you think I’m going to play ball with a bunch of flaming queers, get laughed at every time we come out of the locker room together, you can forget it. I’ll step down from the team today.” “Cam.” Marshall’s hand was ice-cold in Seth’s. “Don’t do this. It’s our senior year. Our last chance to win state. We’ve wanted to be state champs since we were in grade school. Remember? All those hours we put in practicing, talking about having that blue-and-gold banner hanging up across the gym, our pictures in the trophy case to show our kids? We’re almost there.” Cam worked his jaw. Marshall took a half-step toward him. “You’re my best friend. You’ve always been my best friend. Don’t you see? It doesn’t have to be like this.” For a moment, staring into Marshall’s earnest baby blues, Cam wavered. Seth saw it, saw the struggle that was going on inside of him, one he wasn’t sure even Cam wholly understood. But whatever it was he was thinking, when he looked at Seth, his face went hard again. “Good luck winning state without me,” he said, and walked away. 36 Chapter Three: The Prince of Cats About the only thing J.J. could say for the cuisine in the Fairfax High cafeteria was that it offered an abundance of meat, hard to come by in a vegan household, and a necessity for jaguars. In the lunch line behind Seth, he loaded up his tray with two double cheeseburgers and two baskets of fries. “So Calvin really quit the team?” he said. “Cam,” Seth corrected, reflexively. “And yes. He went to Coach after first period. That’s why I got called out of English. Coach wanted to hear from me and Marshall what was going on.” “What did you tell him?” “The truth,” Seth said dully. “That Cam won’t play on a team with two gay guys.” “Did Doc punch him again?” Seth shook his head. “That was kind of a one-time thing. Marshall doesn’t usually hit people.” J.J. felt this was a waste of Marshall’s natural talents. He handed his money to the lunch lady and stepped out of the flow of traffic, waiting for Seth as he rifled through his pockets for change. “What will you do about the championship game?” he asked. “I don’t know. None of the guys on our bench are very good, and I can’t play circles around the other team when General Burke wants werekin kept a state secret. But anyway.” Seth picked up his tray. “It’s just a stupid game, right? I wanted to apologize for not telling you about giving my you-know-what to the A-r-k.” Miss Janowitz frowned at him as she passed by, glasses scooted down to the end of her nose. Even in his letterman’s jacket Seth managed to look like he had a lock-pick secreted on him somewhere. Maybe it was the secondhand jeans and the DON’T HATE THE PLAYER Pac-Man Tshirt. Maybe it was that he was a werecat and slunk when he walked, purred when he laughed. Seth prided himself on blending in with humans, but no werekin ever did, really. “You don’t have to do that,” J.J. said. “Do what?” Seth said. “Act like the stuff that’s important to you isn’t, just because other stuff is important to me,” J.J. said. Seth’s lips twitched, the first hint of a smile J.J. had seen from him since he had gotten called out of class. For Seth, that was a long time. Over at the ballplayers’ table, Marshall was huddled up with his teammates. What’s-His-Face Foss and his snotty little cheerleader girlfriend were across the room with some of the j.v. guys, laughing too loudly. J.J. saw Seth look from them to Marshall, his smile dissolving. 37 “Go on,” J.J. urged, gently. “Sit with Doc. Figure out your basketball strategy. We can talk about the Ark after school. I’ll meet you at Sacred Heart after your practice, and we can ride out to Fort King together, for your training with Xanthe. You’re still going, right?” “Wouldn’t miss it,” Seth said. Fairfax High’s cafeteria was rigidly segregated, humans on one side, aliens on the other: Castle Estates, Haven Heights, on either side of a white-columned dividing line. To an outside observer, the divide would have seemed to be the rich kids and the poor kids. J.J., though a resident of Castle Estates, blended right in with the Haven crowd – secondhand jeans and T-shirt, the magic in his blood strong enough to turn heads. As none of the Haven kids had bothered with glamours today, they were all attracting more glances than usual. At Emery Little’s table, J.J. hooked a chair toward him. Quinn picked her backpack up off the seat and moved it to the floor. “Mind if I sit here?” J.J. asked, belatedly. These little human niceties still escaped him. “I was saving it for you,” Quinn said. She flipped her coppery hair over her shoulder. There was no magic in her blood to call to his, yet J.J. felt a different kind of pull when he looked at Quinn. Angelo Alfaro had the chair across from his. Perched beside him, his adopted brother Dre looked especially miniature; his signature newsboy cap was askew on his dark head, his pinstripe pants held up by limegreen suspenders. Alfaro was wearing the Chicago Bulls jersey that seemed to be his favorite item of clothing, for obvious reasons. J.J. poured ketchup on his cheeseburger. “Does this bother you?” he asked, with real interest. The gap between Aflaro’s front teeth, coupled with the gold bull ring through his nose, made his grin somewhat unsettling. “Would it bother you if my shoes were stitched together with cat gut?” J.J. sighed and reached for his fries. All anyone wanted to talk about was the Ark. Serena Jensen leaned in, the light hitting her gray eyes just right to highlight the slit serpentine pupils. “Kate told me the glyphs on the Source just disappeared, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Why do you think the Totems designed it that way? Don’t we need the Source now that the Ark is complete, if we ever want to raise Lemuria?” J.J. had his ideas, but wasn’t ready to share them yet. “Does Burke know Lieutenant Jensen is your sister?” he asked, instead. Serena nodded. She was a sinuous girl with brown hair cropped short, fashioned into piecey spikes above her ears. She and her girlfriend Zoe Campbell, an olive-skinned wereotter, always dressed in faded jeans 38 and tight rocker-chick T-shirts. The Castle Estates girls all wore expensive gold charm bracelets their boyfriends bought them from Cochran Jewelers. Serena’s slender wrists were laddered with the colorful beaded bracelets Zoe designed herself. She toyed with them as she answered. “Our mom helped form the Underground. She and Ingrid McLain are sisters – Will and Caroline are my cousins. That’s how my parents met. My father is werekin, Gen-2. Kate was born human. If she’d been born in captivity, she would have been raised a hunter, like Cleo.” Quinn snuck a fry off J.J.’s tray. She had stiffened almost imperceptibly. “What effect is this having on the Alliance, Ozzie?” Ozzie Harris, at eighteen the youngest of the Commanders, scraped his fingers through his sandy hair. “It’s a bloody mess,” he said, bluntly. “Clyde wants to pitch the Alliance aside and raise Lemuria before the humans get it in their heads to wipe us all out. Of course we don’t know how to do that now that the Source has closed itself off to us, but you know Clyde. Never one to bother about the details. “Still, if the Black Swan was willing, I think that’s how the vote would come down.” Ozzie shook his head. “Burke shouldn’t have arrested Seth. Treating him like a common criminal for giving his blood to the Ark, when it was partly on Burke’s orders that all of us were rounded up and registered against our consent all the years Project Ark was underway? Shady, mate,” he said, darkly. “Real shady. I called Dre to come warn you guys, but McLain got to Seth before Dre got to you.” “I appreciate it all the same,” J.J. said. “I trust you.” Ozzie’s blue eyes looked levelly into J.J.’s. “You and Ben Schofield and the Black Swan are about the only ones I do trust. I certainly don’t trust Burke.” Emery was chewing on the end of his ponytail – a nervous habit. Whitney placed a hand over his. “What do you think, J.J.?” she asked. J.J. spun the cap off his soda bottle on the tabletop. “I think we have to accept the possibility that the humans may feel threatened enough to go to war with us.” A collective intake of breath swept the table. Alfaro sat back slowly. Before J.J. came along, Angelo Alfaro had been the undisputed leader of this pack, but werecats were the fiercest of the warrior breeds, naturalborn pack alphas. From the moment of his arrival, the Haven kids had looked to J.J. to lead them. Alfaro had never seemed to mind. J.J. got the impression he would have liked to be more like Seth – a normal human teenager. “Do you really think Burke wants that?” “Burke? No,” J.J. said, honestly. “But Burke won’t be the one who decides. He told us to gather our forces, to put on a show of strength that would make his superiors think twice about attacking us. Remember?” 39 Emery and Dre bobbed their heads in unison. They had both been present for the Black Swan’s first meeting with General Burke. You were meant to be united, he had told their queen. If you stand together, no force on Earth will be able to defeat you. What J.J. did not say out loud was that he agreed with General Burke. A war between humans and werekin played right into LeRoi’s hands. More than anything, LeRoi wanted Lemuria raised. Until that happened, the power of the Totems would remain beyond her grasp. That power was her obsession, her life’s work. J.J. didn’t believe the Partners had truly disavowed her. Just weeks ago, Dre had discovered a recording device inside the charm bracelet Bryce Heilsdale had given Leigh for Valentine’s Day, too sophisticated to be anything but Chimera technology. Ursula LeRoi had taught J.J. to always think one move ahead. Being in prison wouldn’t necessarily stop her from carrying out her plans. The bell rang. J.J. almost jumped. School. J.J. did not understand school. Why did humans consent to being herded like sheep at the ring of a bell? Why did their teachers think it helpful to recite to them what they had assigned them to read out of the book? And what exactly was the function of a pop quiz? The entire enterprise was arcane. He thought of spending another year at Fairfax High, and stifled a longsuffering sigh as he rose with everyone else to pitch his trash into the bin by the door; but Quinn put a hand on his arm, nodding to where Marshall was threading through the press toward them, hands balled up in the pockets of his blue-and-gold jacket. Alfaro saw him at the same time as J.J. “Hey, Doc,” he said, warily. Because of Dre, J.J. realized, Alfaro would know Marshall’s father was a Partner in Chimera, though he didn’t know, no one but Seth and J.J. knew – and Cleo, because she had made J.J. swear by the Totems not to keep secrets from her anymore – that Marshall was his father’s clone. “What can we do for you?” “I want you to try out for the basketball team.” Marshall said this with absolutely no lead-up. Alfaro’s mouth fell open. “I…Are you for real?” “We had a spot on the starting lineup open up today,” Marshall said. He did not explain why. “Besides Seth, you’re the best player at this school. I know you’ve never wanted to join the team before – ” because Alfaro had been Underground, where keeping your picture off the front page meant living to see another day, J.J. felt like pointing out “ – but we could really use you out there.” Quinn’s light blue eyes zeroed in on Alfaro, like she was trying to push her thoughts into his brain. J.J. remembered her saying once that 40 Alfaro was no better at resisting the urge to show off than Seth, with his jaguar tattoos and impossible jump shots. The last thing the fragile human-werekin Alliance needed was Alfaro charging down the competition Saturday in a city-wide spectacle. “Just think about it,” Marshall hurried to say, when Alfaro, seeing Quinn’s look, hesitated. “We’re practicing at Sacred Heart tonight. You guys should drop by. If nothing else, you can give us someone worth beating at scrimmage.” “Hold on now, Townsend,” Quinn said. “Are you challenging us to a showdown? Castle versus Haven?” “Only if you think you’re up for it, O’Shea,” Marshall said. His tone was amiable enough, yet there was a certain sparkle in his blue eyes. A challenge. Quinn’s smirk stretched out wide. “Baby,” she said, “I am always up for it.” *** Sacred Heart Academy looked like what it was: an old cathedral. The gym was a separate building attached to the central dome by a river-stone arcade. Seth squinted up at the gray spires as Marshall parked behind Quinn’s battered Jeep. They seemed to wink at him in the sunlight, which was fading as the sun dropped toward the river. “Indiana, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said. “Relax, Philadelphia. It’s just a friendly game.” Marshall spun his key ring around his finger, grinning at Topher and Gabe as they strutted up the sidewalk. Seth knew that grin. It spelled uh-oh. “This better not be some plot to out the werekin,” he said. Marshall caught his keys in his hand. “Do you really think I would do that?” “Ready to feel the pain, players?” a sly voice said. Seth tore his eyes away from Marshall – who was looking truly hurt – to find that Gabe had shouldered open the gym doors. Quinn O’Shea was smirking at them from the sidelines of a high-raftered gym with cinderblock walls checkered red and black, uncannily reminiscent of the Ark pumping his kindred’s blood through its crystal web. The Sacred Heart mascot, a generic tomahawk-and-feathered Native American warrior that anywhere besides Indiana would have made people cringe, leered at them from a mural above the scoreboard. The curtains had been drawn back across the stage; the Alfaro brothers, Emery, Ozzie Harris, and Serena Jensen were gathered there, chatting with Bryce. Leigh and Whitney were in the stands with Zoe Campbell. Topher pulled up short. “Jesus,” he whispered. 41 Seth’s own heart had done a tumble. On stage, surrounded by the Haven kids, was a caramel-haired boy in jeans and a plain white sweater. The boy spun his wheelchair around, a laidback lopsided grin playing around his mouth. “You didn’t tell them I’d be here, did you, Doc?” “You asked me not to, as I recall,” Marshall said. He let the gym door fall shut, closing out the syrupy afternoon light. Seth wanted to throw the door open again; his nose was full of the metallic tang of silver, his ears echoing with the shot that had ended Marshall’s life. He looked away from the goal, determined not to see Marshall hanging from the crossbar in the Fairfax High gym, twine sinking into his wrists, handsome face twisted with agony as Seth was made to kneel in front of him, to be tortured until he gave up the Black Swan… Shake it off, Sullivan. Wheels clicking, Connor Burke rolled down the ramp on the side of the stage toward them. “God, Connie, we heard you got hurt in the storm, but I had no clue it was this bad,” Topher said, softly. “What, this?” Connor patted the arms of his wheelchair. Like his father, Connor had a slight Texas drawl. “This is just temporary while the nerve damage along my spinal cord heals up. I’ll be back mopping the court with y’all in no time.” He dropped a wink at Marshall, then turned to Seth. “Long time no see, Philly.” “Hey, Connor,” Seth said. Connor’s hazel eyes were sizzlingly bright. Seth wondered if it was from the magic potion he was hopped up on, the excitement of finally being released from the fort’s infirmary, or the revelation that he was in the presence of about a dozen alien shapeshifters. After the attack, there hadn’t been much point hiding the truth from him any longer, though Marshall had confided to Seth that General Burke had wanted Xanthe to tamper with Connor’s memories, enchanting him to believe the cover story that a tree had fallen on his Mustang during the storm. Xanthe had refused. Lizardman wasn’t entirely without scruples, it seemed. Their teams divided up. Emery joined the Castle players. Fearless wererabbit that he was, his big feet did not do much for coordination, so they weren’t really gaining much there. But they did have Seth. Haven had Quinn, all-star MVP of the Lady Knights; Ozzie, about as coordinated as Emery, but fast; Serena; Dre; and Alfaro, a force to be reckoned with for sure, as Seth had learned at his own try-out. He looked like a mountain in his Chicago Bulls jersey and sagging jeans. Connor rolled onto the sideline to referee. 42 Alfaro and Marshall faced off at half-court. The ball went up; Marshall tipped it into Seth’s hands, slipping easily under Alfaro’s arm; Alfaro bellowed, partly from surprise, partly from rage, and Seth streaked down the court, narrowly outpacing Quinn – Christ she was fast – and managing to fire off a three-pointer Serena threw her arms up to block – Swish. Bryce jumped up on the bleachers (he was bench-bound, doctor’s orders on account of his broken leg) and started doing a white boy chicken-neck version of the moonwalk. “Go Philly, go Philly, go, go, go Philly!” he chanted. Zoe stared at him, fascinated. Leigh put her face in her hands. Ozzie passed in to Quinn. Miss Vixen sized Seth up as she dribbled toward him; feinted right; dodged; slid around Topher; and threw up a jump-shot – which Marshall, who had raced ahead of everyone else to the basket, blocked. Whitney cheered. Marshall passed to Seth and they ran down the court together, passing back and forth, Seth whipping the ball away before Baby Bird could snatch it and firing it over to Marshall, who dribbled in for a picture-perfect layup. Alfaro pawed the court with his Nike. Connor was canted forward in his wheelchair. He seemed to be studying the werekins’ moves more than following the ball. Watching Dre dribble around Gabe, the ball seeming to leap off his fingertips as he passed to Quinn, Seth tried to see them all through human eyes – their preternatural speed and strength, the markings that hinted at their animal skins: Serena’s sinuous build, Dre’s quick dark eyes, Alfaro’s velvetyblack skin, Seth’s own wedge-shaped chin. Once you knew what they were, it would be impossible not to – The whistle blew, shrilly. Seth swung around. Alfaro was throwing his tree-trunk arms up, like, What? Connor rolled his eyes. “Foul. Marshall, go to the line.” Quinn frowned at Alfaro. Marshall sank both free throws. They were all sweating. This was the hardest Seth had ever had to work on the basketball court. He had never played his kindred before. Ozzie passed in to Quinn. Alfaro shouted to her; she hesitated, but he was wide open, so she passed to him – And somehow Marshall was there, in Alfaro’s face. He moved with cagey energy on the court, nimble as any cat. Alfaro’s nostrils flared. “Get out of my way, buttercup.” “Take the shot, cupcake,” Marshall said. 43 Alfaro elbowed him. Probably he didn’t mean to do it so hard: Marshall was sliding inside to steal the ball right as he threw his elbow up. Still would have been a cheap shot, and as it was, Marshall caught it right in the ribs. His feet tangled up – Seth had never seen Marshall even lose his balance on the court – and he fell, hard, crashing into Connor, overturning his wheelchair and toppling them both to the ground. Seth saw red. Actually what he saw was Marshall, lying face-down on another court, a court flooded with rainwater and sparkling with silver powder. He forgot, for the moment, that Alfaro had been there as well, fighting alongside them, as he had at Fort King, leaping through a cloud of silver powder that had left him permanently scarred to save all of their lives. All he saw was Marshall, fallen, not getting back up, and the magic dumped into his bloodstream like an injection of lava; with a roar he launched himself at Alfaro, scratching with nails that had sharpened into claws. Leigh screamed. Alfaro tried to grab Seth’s arms, to hold him back. Massive as Alfaro was, Werner Regent had trained Seth; size was no match for the skill of a well-trained werekin fighter. Seth rammed a knee into Alfaro’s groin and kicked out as Alfaro stumbled away, sending him flying into the goal-post. The beads in Alfaro’s long dreads clinked as he rounded, feet planted shoulder-width apart, seeming to grow broader as Seth coiled to spring – A flash of gold appeared between them. Seth recognized his twin more by instinct than sight. J.J. shouted something at Alfaro as he threw his arms around Seth, a half-hug of physical restraint that pinned Seth’s hands at his sides. Topher and Gabe seized Alfaro, shoving him against the goal post. Alfaro couldn’t really have been struggling as much as he appeared to be, some part of Seth recognized. Had he been, Topher and Gabe would have been on the floor. Seth. J.J.’s voice echoed inside Seth’s mind. Not here, little brother. Not here. Seth looked down at himself. His claws were fully extended, rosettes bruise-black on his cheeks and arms. Bryce had frozen open-mouthed on the bleachers, gaping at him. Fortunately he was too far away to see anything for sure, and Topher and Gabe were a little preoccupied restraining Alfaro from stomping another one of their starters into goo. But any second now, the cat was quite literally going to be out of the bag. Seth closed his eyes, pulling the magic back down inside of himself. His claws retracted. The rosettes faded from his arms. “Okay now?” J.J. asked, quietly. Seth nodded. 44 Letting go of him, J.J. walked over to where Marshall and Connor were still sprawled in a heap – laughing, from the sound of it. The wheel of Connor’s overturned chair spun sadly. J.J. gripped it by the handlebars to right it. “Everybody all right?” “Yeah,” Marshall groaned. He sat up, slowly, one arm hugged against his ribs. Blood had trickled out of his nose, onto his upper lip. Deep breaths, Seth told himself. Deep breaths. Emery was hopping around the court like he might skin. Dre and Serena together hauled Marshall to his feet. J.J. offered a hand down to Connor, who looked up at him sheepishly. “I think you’ll have to pick me up,” he said. “I can’t move my legs at all.” An odd look stole onto J.J.’s face. He motioned to Quinn. Connor draped an arm around either of their shoulders. Quinn and J.J. picked him up, under the knees, and placed him back in his chair. It didn’t seem to strain either of them, yet Seth saw J.J. flinch. “Sorry,” Connor said, quickly. “Did I scratch you?” “No problem.” J.J.’s voice was unreadable. He shoved one hand into the pocket of his worn-out leather jacket, rubbing at the thin red mark on his neck with the other. “Doc, I’m sorry.” Alfaro looked, and sounded, it. He was walking toward Marshall with a hand extended. His cheek was deeply scratched from Seth’s claws. Seth was certain he would feel bad about that once Marshall stopped wincing on every deep breath. “So much for my tryout, huh?” “Are you kidding?” Marshall was staring at Alfaro with undisguised delight. “If you play like that on Saturday, there’s no way we aren’t taking state this year!” “You mean – ” Alfaro was rendered momentarily speechless. “You want me on the team?” “Hell yes we want you on the team,” Marshall said. He stuck a hand out. Alfaro ducked his head as he shook it. It might have been the first time Seth had seen Angelo Alfaro look truly pleased about something. And even if it was a bad idea, which it probably was, right then, Seth couldn’t help feeling good about it. *** J.J.’s decision to ride to Fort King with Quinn was annoying, if unsurprising. Marshall pitched the convertible’s keys to Seth – yeah baby – and crawled in the passenger’s side. “How are the ribs?” Seth asked. “Bruised.” Marshall shifted with a grimace. “Alfaro has some sharp elbows. I’d hate to feel his horns.” 45 “I’d be happy to bite his arms off for you,” Seth offered. “That’s sweet, Philadelphia. I feel very loved right now.” Marshall smiled at Seth. The wind blew inky curls in his eyes. He hadn’t cut his hair in a while. Seth liked it longer. Liked that he could reach over at the lunch table now and brush it back from Marshall’s brow, touch him, casually, in front of other people. “How was your first night staying at Jack’s?” he asked. “It was good,” Marshall said. “I didn’t set my room up last night, though. We got home pretty late. I thought you could come over tonight and lend me your interior decorating expertise.” “You must be thinking of Leigh,” Seth said. But he didn’t think Marshall was really inviting him over to help hang his Larry Byrd poster, and his stomach tickled pleasantly. “Indiana, about what I said earlier. I want to clarify something.” “I know you wouldn’t really rip Angelo’s arms off.” “I might, if he lays you out again like that,” Seth said, archly. “But that wasn’t it. I wanted you to know that I do trust you. I know you wouldn’t tell the world about werekin.” “No,” Marshall agreed, “I wouldn’t.” He laid his head back on the seat. “I get it, you know. Why this is so hard for you, to tell people a secret that will change everything. I wouldn’t force you into that.” “But?” Seth said. “But,” Marshall allowed, “it’s like you’ve never even considered the possibility of just living as you are. No more hiding. No more lying. You’ve convinced yourself the only way humans and werekin can coexist is if humans never know what werekin are.” He was not wrong. Underground, life had been all about flying under the radar. Before Fairfax, Seth hadn’t had a single friend his age, werekin or human. The life he had imagined since then had been one of blending in, like the Haven kids did – never speaking up with the right answer in class, never leading the team to victory. Those were the orders Regent had given him before his first day at Fairfax High. Do not make a spectacle of yourself. Granted, Seth hadn’t been all that successful at following those orders, but he had never imagined not needing to follow them. “Okay,” he said. Marshall looked at him. “Okay?” “Okay, I promise to think about it, if you promise not to do anything drastic in the meantime, like tell the other guys about the Ovid Experiment. You can’t explain that to them without getting into the werekin stuff, too.” Marshall didn’t seem happy about it, but he promised. 46 The guard at the fort’s gate had to call in their clearance, as neither Seth nor Marshall were Alliance. Once they were allowed through, Seth parked and waved to Agathon through the chimera fountain – to the departed souls trapped there, technically, but he knew they would relay the message. Mothman was tight with the eternally damned. By now Seth knew his way through the fort’s mazelike halls well enough to find the elevator without a single wrong turn. The silver inlaid doors had been freshly polished. With Operation Swan Song officially occupying the former prison, Fort King was getting a facelift; the rusted satellite dishes on the roof had been replaced by state-of-the-art comm units, the gun turrets outfitted with laser sights, one wing of cellblocks renovated into barracks for the werekin looking to relocate from the Underground. Seth tapped the code for the lower levels into the glyph keypad. It was the only floor he had the access code for. He didn’t even know how many levels there were to Fort King, or what was on all of them. “I wonder which floor they’re keeping LeRoi on,” he said, as the doors opened. “The lowest,” Marshall said, adding to Seth’s questioning glance, “Connor told me.” General Burke really had gone all out with the full disclosure, Seth thought. “Connor seems to be taking the whole we-are-not-alone revelation very well,” he said. The elevator lights flickered. They did that sometimes, but Seth thought he saw something flicker across Marshall’s expression as they did. Maybe not, though. Marshall sounded normal when he said, “I don’t know why you think humans would hate werekin. What you can do, all of you, it’s – beautiful.” “You know who you sound like,” Seth teased. “Elijah Bishop.” “I hope,” Marshall said, “you mean that in a good way.” His voice had taken on that growling timber that never failed to turn Seth’s insides to jelly. Shifting his backpack to the floor, Marshall leaned in and brushed his lips across Seth’s. Something tightened in Seth’s chest, something that seemed to intensify every time Marshall kissed him these days. He drew him closer – Someone coughed. The elevator doors had opened, and J.J. was standing on the other side, like he had known they were on their way down. “How did you beat us here?” Seth demanded, flabbergasted, as Marshall stepped back from him. “Quinn’s car wouldn’t start,” J.J. said. “I decided just to run.” 47 “Ah,” Seth said. The Lotus was a marvel, but no mere machine could compete with jaguar speed. The lower levels were a cross between Dracula’s parlor and Frankenstein’s laboratory. In front of a marble hearth, long, low couches were arranged; the Gen-0s liked to hang out there, sipping animal blood from crystal goblets. Shelves of Lemurian texts recovered from Mt. Hokulani and jars of preserved organs harvested from Chimera’s failed experiments lined the walls. Shadows chased one another across the black stone floors and long exam tables. Far below, the hum of the Ark resonated in Seth’s bones, stronger now than ever before. Marshall branched off, to Aphrodisia’s lab. J.J. led Seth down a narrow side passage, ducking a spider web lacing the arched doorway. “You’re not mad about before, are you?” Seth asked. “Have I ever been mad at you?” J.J. said. Seth realized that was true. J.J. never lost his temper with his twin. J.J. never lost his temper. How did he do that, being a cat? Seth was the epitome of temperamental. But J.J., he thought, was the prince of cats. You could see it in the proud tilt of his shoulders, his absolute control over his emotions. Next to him, Seth felt more than ever like the numbskull cub Regent had accused him of being. He swiped self-consciously at his sweaty, dyed hair. J.J. looked over at him. The passage had no lights; the metallic sheen of his eyes was startling in the total dark. “Seth, you haven’t had my training,” he said, not unkindly. “Neither has Angelo, for that matter. We’re warrior breeds. Fighting is in our blood.” “How do you keep it in check?” Seth couldn’t quite disguise the envy in his voice. “You never skin without meaning to. You never go too far and hurt someone. If Alfaro had been human, I could’ve – ” “He isn’t human,” J.J. said firmly. “You knew that. If he had been, you wouldn’t have attacked him. Have you ever attacked Cam for all the stuff he’s said to Doc?” “No, but – ” “Look, Seth.” J.J. sighed. “In the Scholae Bestiarii, if you lost control, you were punished. Severely. The first lesson the trainers taught us was not to skin unless permitted to. The collar is an ever-present reminder not to let the magic in your blood control you.” Seth heard Regent say something very similar: The magic can’t control you. You have to control it. Regent, who had been raised in the Scholae Bestiarii, too, and had every ounce of J.J.’s self-control. “Don’t romanticize what I am, Seth. In more ways than you know, I am what LeRoi set out to make me. What’s incredible to me is that you can control yourself as well as you do, without ever having had my training. You don’t not hurt people 48 because it might expose us. You don’t hurt them because you’re a good person. A peaceful person.” “So are you,” Seth said. “You’re a good person, J.J. And all werekin are peaceful.” A look crossed J.J.’s face that suggested he didn’t wholly agree. Rather than argue, however, he turned away, to the recessed door they had stopped in front of, and opened it. 49 Chapter Four: Swan Song The lair of the Lizardman wasn’t quite what Seth had anticipated. No shrunken heads spinning on hooks from the low ceiling. Not even a jar of flies put by for a snack. The curved walls were home to books – dozens upon dozens of books. Silk cushions appeared to be the only furniture, suggesting Xanthe either didn’t sleep or didn’t require a bed to do so. The cushions had been scattered in front of a flickering fire in a metal grate. Lizardman himself was seated in the lotus position on one of them, tail curled around his legs. The bony ridges on his spine worked like individual fingers. In the firelight, the glyphs tattooed on his hairless chest looked like fresh wounds. J.J. went straight over and sank down beside him, staring earnestly into Xanthe’s flat black eyes. Although Seth now knew Xanthe was one of the good guys, he still found these silent communiques creepy. Plus he had the feeling they were talking about him. He surreptitiously checked that his fly was zipped as he wandered around the room. Books had always been like old friends to Seth. His father had collected books; he could remember their apartment in Harlem crowded with books, books balanced beside Thomas Sullivan’s nubby green chair, books parked two-deep on top of Thomas’ bureau. The titles on Xanthe’s shelves were mostly in English, some French, some Spanish. Machiavelli. Plato. Chaucer. The Gen-0s were humanists, holding an almost spiritual respect for human culture, but still. Seth was getting Xanthe a library card for his birthday. He needed to read something published after the Crusades. “Those belonged to our father.” Seth yelped. He had not seen Agathon standing in the corner; the hood of his black necromancer’s robe was drawn up over his bald head, concealing him perfectly in the shadows. “Agathon! Don’t do that!” Agathon lowered his hood. His antennae were curling and uncurling independent of one another; he looked almost sheepish. For, you know, an eleven-foot Mothman. “I did not mean to startle you,” he rumbled. “Just make some noise next time you’re lurking in a corner, all right? Hum or clear your throat or something.” Seth leaned back against the bookshelf. “How’s married life treating you?” Agathon, who had recently tied the knot with his Gen-0 girlfriend Aphrodisia, beamed. “We are very happy,” he said. Seth didn’t ask for details. He had never been clear on whether the Gen-0s could reproduce. Their anatomy was a subject he didn’t care to dwell on. 50 He took one of the volumes of The Odyssey off the shelf and held it up. The cover was blue fabric patterned with silver stars. “This looks just like the book of sonnets Emery gave Whitney.” “It was part of our father’s collection,” Agathon said. The Gen-0s all called Elijah Bishop their father. He was the closest thing any of them had. “How did Emery’s dad get his hands on one of Elijah Bishop’s books?” Seth asked. Agathon’s eyelids lowered. “We do not know. Aidan McDonagh was born many years after our father left us.” Hmm, Seth thought. Perhaps it was time for a peek at the personal effects Emery’s father had left behind when the hunters had executed him. “Are all of the books like that one?” he asked. “Encoded with messages?” “In a sense.” Leaning over Seth’s shoulder, Agathon ran his tapered fingers over the glyphs penned in the book’s margins. “These were the instructions our father left for us, to guide us after he was gone. Though none are as extraordinary as the message Whitney found inside her book.” Lit from underneath by the fire, Agathon’s mottled cheeks looked hollow. Seth thought of his dad, telling him he loved him, telling him to be brave, as he marched down that alley in Harlem to face the hunters that had come for his son, and a sudden thought occurred to him. “Agathon, did Dr. Bishop even try to run away after he helped the Gen1s break out? I mean, he had to know what LeRoi would do to him for that.” “Our father did not fear death,” Agathon said, which seemed a strange answer to Seth, but Agathon was kind of a strange dude. “Now come. I am keeping you from your lesson.” He placed the book back on the shelf, steered Seth toward Xanthe, and swept out in a rustle of robes and wings. Seth took a seat on a cushion beside J.J. Finished with his psychic chat, J.J. had already sunk into meditation, eyes closed, head bowed. The scratch on his neck was still red and raised, the latest in a long line of old wounds; by morning, it would fade, without leaving a scar. Most of J.J.’s scars, Seth thought, were underneath the skin. Smoky incense curled up from the fire. Through the haze, Xanthe looked more otherworldly than ever. “How do we do this?” Seth asked, suddenly jumpy with nerves. Xanthe extended a hand to him. Tentatively, Seth placed his fingers in his, suppressing a shudder at the papery-soft feel of the Gen-0’s skin, like the skin of a rotted apple. A cold, sibilant voice pierced his brain. It is my power that makes you afraid. 51 Seth swallowed hard. Our minds are not like yours, Agathon had told him once. Coming from a werecat jaguar god, this might have sounded hypocritical, but Xanthe’s mind was the most alien thing Seth had ever encountered. No human mind could have been so vast, so impenetrable. It was like lying outside under the stars and realizing, for the first time, that the universe goes on forever, infinitely, and you are just one tiny little speck in the midst of it. “What power?” he whispered. My gift from the Totems. What humans call “telepathy.” Xanthe sounded disdainful of the term. Lemurian didn’t translate readily into English. The glyphs were layered with more meanings than existed in any human tongue. I could turn your mind against itself, sever the cord that ties you to reality, unmoor you in a waking nightmare you could never escape. I could convince you your arm was a viper, and you would slice it from your body. I could undo every memory you have ever made, twist it, reshape it, and return it to your mind as if fantasy were reality. That is the power I have. “Oh,” Seth got out. You have no reason to fear me, Seth Michael. Xanthe’s lightless eyes stared deep into Seth’s. They were not as gentle as Agathon’s, but nor was there any malice in them. Seth felt his shoulders relax. “Okay,” he said. He was saying more than that, which Xanthe of course understood. Bowing his bald head over Seth’s hand, he lowered the scaly lids over his eyes. Seth took a breath… And a key to a locked door turned in his mind. It didn’t hurt this time, as it had before when Xanthe had mind-melded him; for this time, Seth unlocked the door for him. Images from his dreams poured forth. The primordial jungle. The river churned to blood. The swan’s dying song. The temple carved into the mountainside. Seth gave it all to Xanthe, even the end of the dream – searching the prison for J.J., finding himself collared in his brother’s place. He trusted Xanthe not to share that with J.J. To think Seth didn’t trust him would have skewered J.J. to the core. It is a message. Xanthe released Seth’s hand. Seth blinked. While they were mindmelded, his vision had gone dark, like a curtain had been pulled across his eyes. Now he rubbed at them hard. “Do you know what it means, or who is sending it?” he asked. His voice wobbled a bit. These are answers you must discover for yourself. I can only teach you to find the hidden rooms of your mind. You must uncover what is contained there. 52 Seth’s jaw had dropped. His hands were still pressed over his eyes, but he could hear Xanthe as clearly as if he were speaking aloud. Slowly, he lowered his hands and looked up. “How…How are you doing that?” “Once he connects to your mind, it’s easier for him to convey his thoughts to you,” J.J. said. He lifted his chin from his chest. His golden eyes gave no hint as to where his mind had been this past half-hour. “You probably noticed he doesn’t need physical contact to communicate with me.” So Lizardman had tuned in to Seth’s frequency. Seth wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “What’s the range on this thing? Is he going to, like, psychically page me while we’re at school, or do we have to be in the same room, or – what? What are you laughing at?” J.J. shook his head, still grinning. “He’s not a shortwave radio, Seth. Some kind of contact, whether physical contact or eye contact, will always be necessary for you to communicate. And you don’t have to answer him out loud,” he added. “When your minds are connected, he can hear your thoughts just like you hear his.” Seth turned to Xanthe. Is that true? Yes. Wicked, Seth thought. “So what’s next?” he asked. Speaking out loud was going to be a hard habit to break. “That’s it for today.” J.J. got to his feet. “I’m going to Cleo’s to train. You in?” “What do you mean that’s it?” Seth leaned back on his cushion, perplexed. “We didn’t even do anything!” Regent would never have let him off this easy. Seth had left their every training session bone-bruised and almost too weary to crawl to his bike. “Stand up,” J.J. said. “J.J. – ” “Just stand up,” J.J. said. Exasperated, Seth stood up. And wobbled. Whoa. Head rush. J.J. smirked at him. “You just used parts of your brain you’ve never accessed before. Think of it as a mental workout. You have to start slow or there are side-effects. Memory loss. Confusion. It took me years to get where I am, and I’m still nowhere near as powerful as Xanthe.” J.J. looked at his tutor with real affection. “Can you do what he can do?” Seth asked, suddenly curious. “Take away somebody’s memories?” J.J. shook his head. “Only the Gen-0s have that kind of power. Their connection to the Ark is much stronger than ours. Why do you think 53 LeRoi kept them around?” He slanted a grin at Xanthe, whose spine ridges rippled like this was a private joke between them. “But I was hoping there was a way to shut the dreams out,” Seth said, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Like a telepathic spam filter, or something.” “Give it time, little brother. Give it time.” J.J. spoke softly, rubbing the back of his neck as though it ached. The dark shadows under his eyes stood out like bruises. Seth couldn’t help but wonder if his twin’s dreams had been troubled of late, too. *** J.J. unlocked the door and paused on the threshold, looking around. No lights were on inside the lodge-like house Cleo had taken over from Werner Regent, as there shouldn’t have been with Cleo away, yet just for a moment, he had the sense he was not alone, as though someone had just vanished from sight on the second-floor balcony. His hand moved to the dagger hidden under his worn-out leather jacket. Twin couches crouched in front of the slate-stone hearth, the iron chandelier dangling overhead like a giant spider. When nothing moved after several minutes, he felt along the wall until he found the switch. The bulbs flickered, then blazed up, scattering shadows. The cuffs of J.J.’s jeans were mud-spattered from running through the woods. Marshall had offered him a ride, but he and Seth were headed to Jack’s; driving all the way out here would have been a waste of their time since J.J. intended to run home anyway. Besides, J.J. could see they wanted to be alone. Cleo’s black leather jacket was draped over one of the spindlebacked stools at the bar. J.J. wasn’t sure why she had left it behind. A reason to come back, maybe? He ran his fingertips over the creased collar as he crossed to the shuttered wall and tapped a code into the keypad. 1571. The numbers on Regent’s brand. The brands were how Chimera Enterprises had catalogued werekin in their databases. The brand on J.J.’s own palm stung as he stepped back, looking up as the vertical blinds retracted into the ceiling. Behind the smoked-glass wall, leafy trees reached high up to metal girders crisscrossing a domed skylight. The creek was a silver snake coiling around green ferns far below. J.J. splayed his palms on the glass, staring past the reflection of a slim teenage boy staring back at him. Ursula LeRoi had kept a park like this on her private estate, just for J.J. She had stocked it with live prey. If J.J. wanted to eat, he had had to hunt. One of many barbed reminders that J.J. had not been LeRoi’s son. 54 He had been her pet, the exotic prize she liked to show off at dinner parties, the black jaguar pacing the dais behind her at the head of the table in her opulent dining room. J.J. had dreaded those parties. Inevitably there had been an Arena match afterwards, to entertain LeRoi’s guests. J.J. had never lost an Arena match. At night, he still woke sometimes with the smell of blood-soaked sand in his nose. Another reason he preferred sleeping in the basement. No one to hear you cry out in your sleep. Tonight J.J. scrambled down the branches, not skinning until he reached the creek. The rippling water showed him midnight-black fur spotted with pale rosettes around the snout, a long tail banded with lighter stripes. Then the black jaguar dove into the water, shattering the mirrored surface. For the first seventeen years of his life, J.J. had not been able to skin at will. This was what he had tried to make Seth understand today; his control over the magic was not innate, it was a lesson hard-learned. There had been times, more and more frequent as he entered adolescence, the magic had burned in the marrow of his bones, aching for release. All collared werekin suffered that agony, but it was worse for warrior breeds, and it was why J.J., to the puzzlement of his family, wanted to spend hours running in the woods, climbing the trees in this big cat playground. Cleo understood. J.J. thought she had moved into this house just so he could have somewhere to skin whenever he felt the urge. He paddled around the creek for a while, snapping playfully at the colorful fish, then crawled out on the bank and scaled the tall trees just to leap off the branches into the water. Cleo would usually have been lying on one of the sandstone rocks, laughing at him. J.J. tried not to care that she wasn’t there now. As he was diving into the creek a third time, a glint of something half-buried in the silt caught his eye. He dove down to the creek bed and scooped it up in his jaws. Back on the bank, he skinned, shaking water out of his short hair, and spat it into his hand. It was a diamond ring, about the right size for a man’s pinkie finger. J.J. nudged it with his thumb. An inscription was carved into the back. STEWARD. On impulse, J.J. slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. He had intended to train, but the house’s emptiness had started to oppress him. He ended up drying off upstairs, and took a turn through the many empty rooms just to be sure everything was in its place before running home through the woods. 55 The moon had risen by the time J.J. reached Castle Estates. He skinned as he leapt over the brick privacy fence around the Stewards’ backyard, too late remembering his ankle was probably still tender – but he didn’t even feel a twinge as he landed. In fact, he felt terrific, and had all evening, a jittery sort of amped that had him humming as he crossed the backyard, listening for the sound of a basketball thumping against the pavement in the Townsends’ drive before he remembered Marshall had moved out. He was also starving. Debating whether to phone in a takeout order, he opened the back door. “J.J.,” Lydia gasped, jumping back from the threshold. “Sorry,” J.J. said, quickly. He had to work on the stealth thing. “No, it’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting you.” To come home, Lydia didn’t say. She finished doing up the last button on her pea coat. The air was tainted with wood smoke from a backyard barbecue, more reminiscent of fall than spring. “I was just running out to the store. We’re out of absolutely everything. I worry I neglect you kids these days. What kind of mother doesn’t keep Pop-Tarts in the house?” “You’ve been busy,” J.J. said. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the peg by the back door. J.J. did not look like his father – werekin resembled their Totems above all – and it would have surprised him to know mannerisms like that were very much like Thomas Sullivan’s. Lydia looked down at the car keys in her hand like she had forgotten what they were for. “How is it going with resettling werekin from the Underground, anyway?” “It’s challenging,” Lydia admitted, closing the back door and leaning against it. J.J. was rooting through the fridge. Miraculously, he discovered a package of bacon that had escaped Leigh’s vegan purge. The expiration date was a week past, but it smelled all right when he sniffed it, so he started hunting the cabinets for a skillet. “So many of the children are orphans, their parents collared or killed. They’ve basically raised themselves, living on couches here and there, catch as catch can. They’re ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Like Seth when he first came to us. I didn’t understand at the time. The first thing you think is abuse, but I couldn’t imagine Thomas ever doing anything to hurt him…” J.J. started dropping bacon slices into the skillet. Raw meat wasn’t any more appealing to a werekin than it was to anyone else. “I’m sure things like that scene last night don’t encourage much trust in them,” he said, neatly glossing over the ugly family history his mother had just raised. Lydia fidgeted with a curl. “Honey, about what David said – ” 56 “Thanks for taking my part,” J.J. said. “I should have thanked you last night. I’m sorry.” “I meant what I said. I’m tired of you being called a traitor. None of what has happened can be blamed on you. You are seventeen years old. David Burke is an adult. He knew full well what Ursula LeRoi was doing to your kindred was wrong, just as Jack did, and they allowed it to go on. Profited from it. Nothing can recompense for that. And they don’t get to shift the blame onto you.” Lydia’s green eyes were fierce. J.J.’s bacon had begun to sizzle; he was glad for the excuse to turn away, to dump it onto a plate. “I don’t care if they don’t trust me, except it makes it harder to get them to listen to me,” he said. “Well, the important thing is that you try,” Lydia said, kindly. No, what was important was that he succeeded, but J.J. didn’t say that. Snagging a soda out of the fridge, he backed toward the basement door. “I think I’ll eat in my – ” My room, he had started to stay, but stopped, and sighed. Resignedly, he started for the stairs. He saw his mother grin as she went out the back door. *** Poe was curled up on the windowsill of J.J.’s new room. She meowed as J.J. toed off his boots and scooted back against the headboard, plate balanced on his knees, devouring the bacon one crispy strip at a time. He kept looking over at the sleek black phone Leigh had insisted be installed on his nightstand. Finally, when the last bite was gone and he had licked his fingers clean, he picked it up and punched in a number. “Hello?” “Hey,” J.J. said. “J.J.?” Static crackled over Cleo’s voice. The Roswell installation was an isolated outpost, far out in the desert. Not much cell reception out there. “Is everything all right? Is Seth okay?” Seth. She even said his twin’s name like it was precious. J.J. slipped the ring out of his pocket and folded it in his palm. “He’s fine,” he said. “Then what is it? You don’t sound like yourself.” J.J. heard a door close, suggesting Cleo had gotten up to shut it. He didn’t even have to close his eyes to picture her: super-short brown hair, silvery-blue eyes, muscular build. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I was just calling to say hi.” “Oh.” Cleo was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Hi.” 57 J.J. did shut his eyes then. “Hi,” he said. There was a long pause. J.J. squeezed the ring in his hand so tight it dug into his palm. What was going on with him? He did not call Cleo to say hi. They talked about missions. That was it. Cleo had made it perfectly clear two years ago there was nothing else for them to talk about. He was about to make up an excuse to hang up when she said, “You sound tired, Jeremy.” All at once J.J. was glad Cleo wasn’t lying next to him. Dropping the ring on his nightstand, he rested an arm across his burning eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. That’s not true, he thought. He remembered perfectly well. When Marshall had squeezed that trigger, and Seth’s grief had ricocheted across their psychic link into J.J., splintering inside of him like shards of glass. Before that, it had been the day his father died. After Cleo had taken the bloodstained dagger back from him, every ounce of loathing she felt for him written into her eyes, to be read there as she had known only J.J. could. He had sat in a corner of his shower with his knees drawn up, scalding water beating his naked skin, far away from listening ears and prying eyes, and sobbed until he had thought he would split himself wide open. He had wished for that to happen. Wished he could reach into his chest and rip out his beating heart so he wouldn’t have to feel anymore. So he would not have to carry his father’s last words, whispered in J.J.’s ear as he prepared to plunge the dagger into him – a quick, merciful death. Save her. Save her, and she will save us all. “Seth started his training with Xanthe today,” he said, cuffing at his cheeks. Damn it. What was wrong with him tonight? He rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out of his stiff neck. “How’d that go?” Cleo sounded amused. “He asked what the range was on Xanthe’s telepathy,” J.J. said. Cleo laughed. Pleased by that, J.J. stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “He’s got a long way to go, but he’ll get there. Any changes to the Source?” “Locked up like a drum,” Cleo reported cheerfully. “Jensen has had a team out there all day with sensors and gauges and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t even know what to call, but for now, the Source is just a big hunk of black rock.” “Huh,” J.J. said. But he was only half-listening. First of all, if anything had changed with the Source, Cleo would have called him. Secondly, footsteps were climbing the stairs, a quick light tread he knew was not Seth’s or Leigh’s or Lydia’s. His eyes moved across the room, to the katana on top of his dresser. 58 Before he could move, Quinn O’Shea sashayed into his room. J.J. stared at her. He had not even noticed the Jeep parked in the drive. That was not like him. J.J. noticed everything. Quinn had not changed out of the tank top and fleece athletic pants she had worn for the Sacred Heart scrimmage. Copper hair spilled out from under her blue UA beanie, shot through with streaks of gold like rippling flame. From under his lashes, J.J. watched her saunter around his new room, checking out the books on his shelves (poetry, mostly), the CDs alphabetized beside his stereo, Beethoven to Mozart. Emery had tried getting him into grunge rock, but J.J. was a music snob, raised by LeRoi on symphony and opera. He preferred music you had to think about to appreciate. A volume of Tennyson was turned upside down on his desk. Quinn picked it up, scanned the page J.J. had marked, and laid it back down. “J.J.?” J.J. glanced at the phone still in his hand. “Sorry, I…uh, what were you saying?” “I asked what the Commanders are doing to guard Caroline McLain now that the Ark is complete.” From Cleo’s voice he knew her brow was furrowed. J.J. never lost focus or fumbled for words. Cleo knew him too well not to realize something was up. The whole point of raising hunters with werekin partners was for the hunters to come to know their prey. Made them easier to run to ground. “They’ve doubled guard duty on her,” J.J. said. He had seen the spotted owl on McLain’s roof as he had jumped the fence. “McLain is keeping her close to the house. Although we may have to put an ankle bracelet on her to keep her there.” “Wouldn’t she be safer at the fort?” “Maybe,” J.J. said, “but LeRoi is being held at Fort King for now, and McLain doesn’t want his sister within a hundred miles of her. Has there been any talk about moving the Source?” Quinn glanced sharply at him. She had taken down the katana from his dresser, unsheathing it with a hiss; now she posed, samurai-style, and kicked out, a judo kick that brought her leg up over her head. J.J. raised his eyebrows. She giggled. “I haven’t heard anything about it, but Jensen doesn’t exactly brief – Is someone there?” “Yeah,” J.J. said. “Quinn is practicing for the invisible ninja Olympics.” Quinn made a face at him. “Oh. I should let you go, then.” Cleo sounded crisp. “I’ll call you when I have something to report.” 59 “Okay.” J.J. felt like he should say something more, but couldn’t think of anything except, “Be safe out there.” “You too,” Cleo said, and the line went dead. Quinn leveled the katana at the bed. “Was that Cleo?” “Yup.” J.J. dropped the phone back in its cradle. “You know that’s a real blade, not a prop, don’t you?” “Am I making you nervous, player?” Quinn twirled the sword like a baton. “Do you really think Burke would try to hide the Source from us?” “It’s what I would do,” J.J. said. “We can raise Lemuria, but we can’t open the stargate without the Source.” “So you sent Cleo to Roswell to be your eyes and ears. Crafty, Sullivan, very crafty.” Quinn tossed the sword into the air, like she meant to catch it with the other hand; quick as a blink, J.J. was there, snatching it from over her head by the handle. He fell gracefully back onto the bed, the sword’s razor-sharp tip pointed away from his body. Quinn put her hands on her hips. “My mother taught me how to handle a sword, J.J.,” she said. “Then don’t treat it like a toy,” he shot back. “You’re no fun, you know that?” Quinn climbed onto the bed. J.J. laid back, the sword resting across his stomach. Quinn traced the black jaguar etched into the curved blade. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Thank you. Regent made it for Seth, and Seth gave it to me.” Laying down his sword. A more symbolic act than Seth had even realized. Plucking the sword by the hilt, Quinn moved it to J.J.’s nightstand. She scooted down so she was facing him on the pillow, one freckled hand resting close to his cheek. “Leigh said she helped you decorate your room.” “I’m not sure how much I helped,” J.J. said, and tilted his head. “When were you talking to Leigh?” “I came over to see you, but you weren’t home yet. She wanted my opinion on prom dresses.” “I’m sorry,” J.J. said, and winced. Quinn had kicked him in the ankle. “What did you need to see me for?” “I just wanted to. I went by the fort looking for you after Dre got my Jeep running, but McLain said you’d already left.” Her fingertip brushed the scratch above J.J.’s collar. J.J. fought off a shiver. Lately J.J. had found himself thinking about Quinn at random times. On his evening runs. When he was supposed to be meditating. In class, unable to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, he would find 60 himself remembering something she had said, and the curve of her lips when she had said it, and he would have to shake himself out of the memory, like he sometimes had to shake himself out of counting the freckles patterned like a thousand stars across her cheeks, sprinkled onto her shoulders and arms. This being one of those times. He folded his arms behind his head again, eyes on his ceiling. “I went for a run,” he explained, instinctively recognizing that he should not mention his stopover at Cleo’s empty house to Quinn. “I’m surprised the guards let you past security, seeing as you’re a known associate of mine. I am plotting to bring down the Alliance from within, did you know?” “I’m human,” Quinn shrugged. “Not much of a threat.” “You don’t like being human?” It wasn’t a question, really. Quinn’s eyes lowered. “Do you ever wonder why you’re not?” “You mean do I ever wonder why the Totems chose me, but not you?” Quinn nodded. J.J. rolled onto his side again, facing her. He understood this was a bad idea. He did not have a rein on his emotions tonight, and taking this – flirtation, or whatever it was, with Quinn to the next level was a complication his life did not need, and one hers definitely didn’t. Look what had happened to his mother because Thomas Sullivan hadn’t walked away from his feelings for her. “Do you know why the Gen-0 experiment failed?” J.J. asked. “No.” Quinn was not looking at him. She was looking at his pillowcase. “Because they weren’t born to human mothers. Bishop tried to fashion them entirely from the DNA inside the Ark, but the Totems’ magic doesn’t work like that. Werekin have two skins – animal and human. Those skins can’t be separated.” “Are you trying to tell me I’m special because I’m human?” “No,” J.J. said. “I’m telling you that I’m human, too.” Quinn breathed out. J.J. felt it fan his lips. He held very still as her eyes came back up to his, struggling to cool the heat that had flashed across his skin, and that he was sure she could see in his eyes. It wasn’t magic, this heat, but J.J. had learned to suppress it like the magic in his blood. He had had to, to keep LeRoi from guessing how he really felt about his huntress partner. “I saw the poem,” Quinn said. “On your desk. ‘The Dying Swan.’” J.J. quoted: “The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul of that waste place with joy hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear the warble was low, and full and clear; but anon her awful jubilant voice, with a music 61 strange and manifold, flow’d forth on a carol free and bold; as when a mighty people rejoice with shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold.” “Bravo.” Quinn’s tone was dry. “I have Miss Janowitz for English, too. I don’t remember her assigning Lord Tennyson.” Against the backs of J.J.’s eyes burned the glyphs he kept seeing in his dreams, dreams of a jungle older than any jungle on Earth, dreams of stars raining fire and oceans boiling blood. Xanthe had looked into his mind and translated the glyphs. I am she that controlleth tongues; I am she that maketh the seas to swell and the skies to open and the earth to shake. The Hymn of the White Swan. “It’s not for school,” he said. Those shrewd blue eyes studied his expression carefully, undaunted by his determined neutrality. “Okay, player,” Quinn said. “Keep your secrets. Just remember I’m here if you want somebody to kick around ideas with. I have been told I’m rather clever.” “I’ll keep that in mind,” J.J. said. Quinn scooted down on the pillow. “I can stay, if you want me to.” Heat flared on J.J.’s skin again. “Stay?” he said, unevenly. “While you sleep. I know you’re tired.” Quinn trailed her fingers over the purple half-moons topping J.J.’s cheekbones. Her touch was like a feather brushed over sensitive nerves; J.J. shivered. “When I can’t sleep, it helps to have someone with me. Just to know I’m not alone.” In ways J.J. couldn’t even name, this was a bad idea. He nodded anyway. Quinn got up. Closed his bedroom door. Switched the light off. Turned his stereo on, low, to Schubert. Poe rose up on the windowsill, stretching; looked over at them; and lay back down, purring. The mattress sank as Quinn climbed in beside J.J. again. She draped her arm across him, her thumb just inside the hem of his shirt, stroking the jut of his hipbone. J.J. let his cheek rest against the top of her head. His eyelids lowered, heavier and heavier; the music soared, and J.J. soared with it, into the stars. Into the land beyond dreams. 62 Chapter Five: Diamond in the Rough Bio sans Dr. Gideon was as cool as Seth had always suspected it could be. Their sub, Ms. Krughman, an old battle-axe Navy nurse who usually oversaw detention, passed out blood type cards and pricked their fingers, then regaled them with stories of gruesome battlefield traumas to convince them all to be blood donors. “Does anyone know what happened to Dr. Gideon?” Seth’s lab partner, pretty little Yena Lee, asked, leaning forward on her tall stool. There had not been a cloud in the sky this morning; sunlight turned the tops of the tall black lab tables into sparkling lakes. Their table included Bryce Heilsdale and his lab partner, Dre Alfaro. Baby Bird’s beaky nose, as ever, was glued to the screen of the new MacBook Operation Swan Song had gifted him with. Every two seconds he swiped at his glossy bangs, threatening to knock his newsboy cap off his head. His suspenders were rainbow-striped today, over khaki cords and a yellow Big Bird T-shirt. He didn’t seem to have marked the question. Seth said, “Maybe aliens abducted him.” “They’d bring him back,” Bryce muttered. Yena grinned. She had dyed the red streaks in her hair blue and gold in anticipation of their championship game Saturday. Her just-friends prom date Bryce seemed pleased by that. As if reading Seth’s mind, or possibly because basketball was the front-running topic on Bryce’s brain twenty-four-seven, he said, “Marshall talked Coach into putting Alfaro on the team.” He said it carefully, like Seth might ’roid out on them again. “At least he’ll be on our side,” Seth said. “You know Cam will make a thing of it.” Bryce handed his blood type card to Ms. Krughman. Yena was sucking on her index finger where it had been pricked. “He can’t stand Alfaro.” “The feeling is mutual,” Dre said. They all glanced at him in surprise. Dre rarely spoke in class. He was the only Haven kid in any of Seth’s Honors classes; the others weren’t stupid, they just couldn’t risk excelling academically and popping up on Chimera’s radar. Even registered werekin had been collared and put to LeRoi’s uses. Warrior breeds weren’t the only ones she enslaved. Closing his laptop, Dre canted forward on his stool, ankles hooked around the legs. He was so small and fluttery Seth sometimes expected him to simply take flight. “Angelo feels really bad for what happened yesterday, Seth. He didn’t mean to hurt Marshall.” “I know,” Seth said. Now that he had calmed down, he had remembered all of the times Alfaro had risked his life for their kindred’s 63 cause. He felt like a heel for attacking him like that. “Has Leigh talked to you yet?” Dre blinked. “About what?” “Oh, nothing,” Seth said, airily, as the bell rang. Second period was English with Miss Janowitz. Yawn. Seth and J.J. sat in the back row, their place of banishment, with their feet up on the chairs in front of them. Miss Janowitz was walking up and down the rows passing back the class’ essays on Othello. In all the madness of Marshall dying and the Black Swan returning, Seth had forgotten what he had written. “Has Leigh said anything to you about prom?” Bryce asked. He was working his pencil through a hole in the knee of his jeans. Dark hair fell in his sleepy green eyes. Seth tried not to see his picture in the top-secret file Jack had shown him, stamped with a serial number not unlike J.J.’s brand. “Other than that she’s pissed at you?” he said. Bryce sighed. “I knew it. She hasn’t returned any of my calls. And she doesn’t wear the bracelet I gave her anymore.” “I think the clasp broke,” Seth said, quickly. J.J.’s golden eyes had slanted toward Bryce. He was fidgeting with something in the pocket of his jeans; he had been wired all morning, snapping at Leigh for taking too long in the shower, glaring at Cam as they passed him in the parking lot. They were going to have to adjust his caffeine intake again. “How about things with you and Marshall?” Bryce asked. “Is that all going okay?” Seth was pleased to be asked. “We set up his room at Jack’s yesterday. You guys should come over tomorrow night to check it out. Jack even got him this awesome Wii – ” He broke off. Miss Janowitz had made her way back to them. Square glasses amplifying her owlish eyes, she placed Seth’s essay face-down on the desk with some finality. Bryce was already scanning his comments. He was always trying to impress Miss Janowitz with what a big vocabulary he had. She was kind of pretty, Seth supposed, though Leigh despaired of all the plaid skirts and solid-color sweaters. He turned his essay over. B–? Really? Resisting the urge to call Miss Janowitz a name that started with that letter, he leaned over to J.J. “What’d you get?” he asked, whispering because Miss Janowitz was calling them primly to order. J.J. held up his paper. A+ was circled in the corner, above, literally, a gold star. Testing out his new telepathic skills, Seth looked straight into his twin’s eyes. You suck. J.J. smirked. 64 *** A lean figure in black jeans and a white T-shirt was waiting on Seth outside Ms. Clark’s Geometry classroom after fourth period. “Hi,” Marshall said, unsticking his stunningly attractive self from the wall. “Hi yourself, Indiana.” Seth fell into step beside him. Across the hall, a couple of the meathead j.v. guys, defectors to Cam’s new pack, stared them down as they passed. There was a traffic jam outside the cafeteria. Seth looked around for J.J.; he spotted Quinn’s fiery tresses near the water fountain first, then J.J. standing next to her, talking to Baby Bird. It looked like J.J. pressed something into Dre’s hand, but Seth couldn’t be sure, because just then Emery came hopping up to them with his arm around Whitney’s shoulders. His big ears were red. Should have been Seth’s first clue all was not well. “We still on for your place tonight, Rabbit-E?” he asked. “Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Emery smoothed the front of his PlayBoy Bunny T-shirt – his Valentine’s Day gift from Whitney. Whitney was wearing a corduroy skirt and a sloppy cardigan. Her hands seemed to be balled up in the cardigan’s pockets. “So, uh, it’s such a nice day we, uh, we thought we might eat outside, if you guys want to join us…” Seth started to say sure, but they needed to actually get their food first, if the line ever started moving. Then he saw Marshall staring over Emery’s shoulder, a hard look crystallizing in his blue eyes. Seth looked where he was looking, and felt a zing of anger along his spine. The ballplayers’ table, primo real estate in the farthest corner, had been overturned. Its top had been graffitied with some pretty offensive slurs, of which “queer” was the tamest. The mural of the Knights’ mascot behind it had also been defaced, an anatomically correct drawing of what was under the knight’s armor aimed at – Seth squinted. “Is that supposed to be a…?” “I think so.” Marshall’s tone was neutral. “Excuse me.” He squeezed Seth’s hand before he let it go, maneuvering through the crowd into the cafeteria, where Ms. McLain was conferring with Coach Evans and Miss Janowitz. With her dark hair frizzed out wildly around her white headband, their principal looked as vicious as a jaguar. “It was Cam.” Whitney sounded positively vicious herself. “I know it was Cam. If they don’t expel him for this – ” “They’ll have to have evidence,” Seth said. His blood had turned to ash, a bitter taste filling the back of his throat. How had he not been prepared for a juvenile stunt like this? It wouldn’t be enough for Cam to have his own pack. He would need to run Marshall entirely out of his territory. The beta had finally moved against the alpha. 65 “We don’t have to have evidence to punch his face off.” That was J.J., who, with typical werecat stealth, he had padded soundlessly through the throng to Emery’s side. Emery edged closer to Whitney. In his defense, J.J. was looking rather murderous. “J.J., it’s okay,” Seth said. “Cam isn’t worth it.” “I don’t care. I’m sick of this shit.” J.J.’s golden eyes were much too bright. If Seth hadn’t known better, he would have thought his twin was on something. “Why do these idiots care if you and Doc are together? Is it hurting them?” “Come on, player,” Quinn urged. “Tone it down.” Cam’s pack brothers were looking over at them. J.J. was making no effort to keep his comments private. He looked ready to say more, but Marshall walked back to them, hands deep in his jacket pockets. He wasn’t hunching, though. His chin was high. “Ms. McLain said they’re questioning some kids who saw somebody sneaking out the side door after third period,” he reported. “It wasn’t like this before school. Right now, that’s all anybody really knows.” “Did they search Cam’s locker?” Whitney demanded. “Because I bet you anything they’d find cans of spray paint there.” “Cam wouldn’t do something like this,” Marshall said. Um, hell-o! Seth wanted to say. Cam had quit the ball team because their captain was gay. Sabotaging the Knights’ chances at winning state would be his mission in life now. “That’s a bit generous, don’t you think, Doc?” J.J. said. A menacing softness ran under the words, not quite a purr, but along those lines. How Seth imagined a jaguar would speak right before it bit through its prey’s skull. Marshall shrugged. He had never shown any fear of J.J. “Cam and I have been friends for a long time. Whatever his problem is with me, I can’t see him taking it to this level. And even if I’m wrong,” he said, “I don’t accuse somebody without proof.” J.J. flushed – such a rare thing Seth had never witnessed it before. It seemed to bring J.J. back to himself. As though rubbing away a headache, he rubbed a hand through his short hair. “What do you want to do?” he asked, wearily. “Right now,” Marshall said, “I want to eat lunch.” With that, he took Seth’s hand, and they walked into the cafeteria. *** It wasn’t like Leigh Steward thought she was too good to have a job, okay? She didn’t. It was just that she had a life. She was president of the 66 Student Vegan Society, which now had thirteen members, a respectable number no matter what Seth said, and she was spearheading the campaign to have animal dissection banned at Fairfax High, and she had to keep her 4.0 GPA if she wanted a shot at a decent law school someday. Add in that her brothers were werecats enmeshed in a topsecret government alien conspiracy-slash-cover-up, landing Leigh in lifeand-death situations every other week, and how could her mother honestly expect her to work retail? Charles Bonaparte, Re-Spin’s only full-time employee, nodded in solemn sympathy as Leigh presented her case to him, sitting on a tall stool behind the register to observe her filling out her application. Of course she left out the alien stuff. She just said her brothers got into trouble a lot, and she, despite a sixteen-year clean record, seemed to get swept up in it. Seth and Marshall had dropped her off at the mall on their way to Sacred Heart for ball practice, their first with Angelo Alfaro officially a Fairfax High Knight. Leigh was still fuming over the vandalism to the cafeteria. She had put a call in about it to her dad’s law firm, left a message for him with his receptionist. She could have spoken to him directly, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. Chaz, who, like all hippies, seemed to have an aversion to soap and shampoo, was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley screen-printed on the back. Leigh hoped Melody Little would not require her to don Re-Spin attire for her shifts. She had taken a turn through the secondhand racks in the center of the store, and nothing there was as cute as her chocolate leggings and turquoise tunic. Although the beaded bracelets they were selling on the metal racks alongside the incense and Tarot decks were cool. Leigh picked one up, fingering the clay beads. They made her think of ancient tribal medicine women dancing around a bonfire in the jungle. “Beautiful, aren’t they, mon?” Chaz intoned. “Zoe makes them. Melody just started selling them here.” “Zoe Campbell?” Leigh said, surprised. “Do you know her?” “We go to school together.” Leigh didn’t add that though Zoe was also in the tenth grade they had never had, like, an actual conversation. Only recently had Leigh begun to question the Castle-Haven divide. It was like you could grow up thinking you knew exactly how the world worked and where you fit into it, and one day, out of nowhere, you were hit by the revelation that the world was a much bigger place than you had been led to believe, and you hadn’t even started to figure out your place 67 in it. Or if you even had one, she thought, thinking, with a little stab in the region of her heart, of Seth and J.J. “Zoe is a great artist,” Chaz enthused. “Such a tragedy about her dad, you know?” Leigh laid the bracelet on the counter, fishing through her Coach bag for her wallet. No reason not to put her employee discount to good use. “What happened to her dad?” “He died, about a year ago. Mysterious circumstances. Maybe you read about it in the papers. Ezekiel Campbell? Found him in the river, drowned?” Leigh did not read newspapers, but she did remember overhearing J.J. say to Cleo one night (she hadn’t mean to eavesdrop, okay? she just sometimes happened to pick up the phone while her brother happened to be on it) that he didn’t think Ezekiel Campbell had been killed by hunters. He thought Derek Childers had wanted his seat at the Commanders’ table, so he could discover the identity of the Black Swan. That name, Derek Childers, conjured images of a rangy man with a handsome face ravaged by silver powder scars. The last time Leigh had seen him, he had been about to drive a knife into Seth’s heart, right before Marshall had shot him. Derek had been a spy for Werner Regent inside the Resistance. Had anyone bothered to ask her, Leigh could have told them Regent was a bad guy. Those poor dead creatures he had hung up on his walls like trophies had sickened her even before she had known they were werekin. Saddest of all had been the lioness over his mantle, as harshly beautiful in death as in life. “Here you go.” Leigh jerked back to reality. Chaz was handing her back her change. She slipped the bills into her wallet, slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. “When do I start?” she asked. “Melody said you could start tonight, if you want. I’ve got a gig, but my replacement should be here soon,” Chaz said. “Your band – what are they called again?” “Listening Korn.” Chaz pointed to a flyer in the window advertising a concert at MoJo’s Friday night. The brewery pub always booked live music on the weekends. Leigh had begged her mom to let her go, like the other girls did, but Lydia had this notion that sixteen was too young to be at a place they served beer on a Friday night. Maybe she could talk Will McLain into taking them. His little sister had to get out of the house sometimes, and it wasn’t good for anybody to be on duty as much as McLain was. He needed a night out. She would get Seth onboard, Leigh decided. Their mother couldn’t say no to Seth. 68 *** Emery answered his door in jeans and bare feet, a towel draped around his shoulders. With some appreciation, Seth noted that Emery was not as much of a scarecrow as he looked with his clothes on. “Hello,” he said. Marshall elbowed him in the side. “Sorry, sorry. Come in.” Holding the door wide, Emery motioned the pair of them into the Littles’ apartment. “J.J. wanted to train at Cleo’s after school. I thought I’d be done before you guys were finished with practice, but he really put us through the paces tonight. He was still at it when I left.” He started through the living room, toward a paneled hallway. The carpet was brown shag, the couch and recliners green, like the dinged-up ’70s era appliances in the small kitchen. “How’d Angelo do tonight?” “He didn’t break anybody’s ribs,” Seth said. “So that’s a plus.” “My ribs,” said Marshall, “were not broken. They were bruised. And Alfaro did awesome, as I knew he would. We are going to kill on Saturday.” With which pronouncement he fell back into one of the recliners, wincing at his “bruised” ribs, and pulled one of the grimoires Aphrodisia had given him yesterday out of his backpack. Seth touched his shoulder lightly as he passed. Seth had been inside Emery’s apartment before, but never Emery’s room. Organized chaos was the phrase that came to mind, heavy on the chaos, light on the organized. Half of one wall had been painted olivegreen, suggesting whoever the Picasso was, he had lost interest partway through. Hemp T-shirts and faded jeans were draped over the footboard of a futon bed. CDs spilled off the dresser, onto the low-pile gray carpet, around a stereo with gigantic speakers. The only things on the desk were a box of Cliff bars and a photo of Whitney in a plastic frame. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Seth said, picking his way on tiptoe through the film of gum wrappers and smelly laundry around the bed. “There’s this new invention you might want to invest in. It’s called a vacuum.” “Just because you’re a neat freak,” Emery said. His voice was muffled because his head was stuck in his closet. Seth glanced at the unmade bed, decided against it, and swung his legs over the folding chair at the desk, arms hooked over the back. “Where’s Whitney?” “McLain asked her to hang with Caroline for a while,” Emery said. Her Majesty was not loving the house arrest. Seth couldn’t blame her. “Leigh texted me about some gig Listening Korn is playing Friday night. She thinks we should take Caroline. Like early release for good behavior.” 69 “You mean she wants McLain to come along?” “Exactly,” Seth grinned. “Good luck convincing him of that. Ah. Here it is.” Emery emerged from the closet at last with a cardboard box in his hands, pulling the accordion door closed behind him. The metal screeched against its track like claws on a chalkboard. “This is all I have of my dad’s. It was what he left at Mom’s the day he was killed.” He put the box on the desk, took the items out one at a time. Seth thought of the keepsake box of his and his twin’s baby things above his mother’s sewing table. Two locks of golden hair in a silver locket. The box did not contain much, as Emery had warned. A faded flannel shirt. A stack of yellowed letters. An empty leather wallet. Two photographs, one of a teenage Melody Little (she looked exactly the same) sitting on the steps of Fairfax High in a blue jacket, the other of a boy, probably in his late teens, and a girl a little older than him sitting on a bench against a backdrop of a green river. Seth didn’t think the picture had been taken in Fairfax. Shops and restaurants lined either side of the river, and a sign, in Spanish, warned pedestrians not to feed the pigeons. The boy was tall and lanky, like Emery, with similar strong bone structure, though darker complected, which only served to heighten the silvery-blueness of his eyes. The girl was muscular, like Cleo, with dark eyes and a mane of tawny hair. The boy wore a flannel shirt, dusty jeans, and cowboy boots; the girl was dressed in similar Southwestern style, a short denim skirt and a fringed vest, long feathered earrings in her ears. Seth knew instantly they were werekin. Their blood called to his even in a photograph. Emery had taken a seat on the edge of the bed and was twisting the T-shirt he had meant to put on in his bony hands. “That’s the only picture we have of Dad. I used to keep it by my bed, but Mom cried every time she looked at it, so I put it away.” His cheeks were paler than usual. The night Seth had discovered Emery was werekin, they had sat in the Littles’ kitchen swapping histories. Then Emery had told him Melody Little had met Aidan McDonagh, a werewolf serving in the Resistance, assigned to Fairfax on reports the Ark was being housed at Fort King, what the Resistance had always thought of as just another hub, when she was sixteen. Months later, Aidan had gotten too close to the truth, and LeRoi had sent her hunters to deal with him. Melody had watched helplessly as he was executed in the woods near King’s Creek. She hadn’t even known yet she was pregnant. 70 She had never married. Seth would have been the same, had Marshall stayed dead. You only found your soulmate once. Nothing else would ever compare. “Where was this taken?” he asked, waving the picture. “San Antonio. Dad was raised in the Texas Underground. That’s his sister. She was Resistance, too. She disappeared around the time I was born.” Emery finally pulled his shirt on. “See anything there that explains how Dad got his hands on one of Elijah Bishop’s books?” No, was the answer. Seth sorted through it all again, hoping he might have missed something. His great lead was starting to feel like a dead end. The letters were all from Melody, the typical love letters of a teenage girl to her hunky bad-boy soldier beau. No secrets of the universe there. As Seth was refolding the last one, he noticed something jotted in the margin, in a script too neat and tidy to be Melody’s, which looped and curled all over the page. “Hey,” he said. “What’s this?” Emery looked at the letter over his shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said. He took the letter and smoothed it out on the tabletop. “JJS,” he read aloud. “I don’t know what that means. But could this be an address?” He ran his finger over the rest of the note, written on the next line: CR 7003. Seth shrugged. “It doesn’t look like one. There aren’t any street names.” “Hang on.” Emery picked the letter up and hurried back down the hall with it. Seth padded after him, pushing the sleeves of his letterman’s jacket up past his elbows. “Doc, do you have a web browser on your phone?” “Sure.” Marshall laid the grimoire he had been reading down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. A pencil was stuck behind his ear, notes spread across his knees. “If my father hasn’t turned my service off…Nope. We’re good.” Emery took the phone and walked over to the window. The curtains were open. Seth could see the brick façade of the pawn shop next door, and Emery’s ghostly reflection in the pane. Sitting down on the arm of Marshall’s recliner, he picked his boyfriend’s hand up. “You’re not upset about what happened at lunch, are you, Philadelphia?” Marshall asked. Seth shook his head. A few bullies didn’t get to him. Seeing Aidan McDonagh’s things had just brought back the awfulness of those hours when he had believed Marshall gone forever, when he had stood in his darkened bedroom looking around at the evidence of a life unfinished and wondered how he would get through the next five minutes without Marshall, let alone the next fifty years. “Aha!” Emery said. 71 “What are we ‘aha’-ing?” Seth asked, grateful for the distraction. “It is an address. CR stands for county road. It’s a road number. And according to Google Maps,” Emery said, “in Fairfax, Indiana, the only thing on County Road 7003 is the Royal Acres Cemetery.” In unison, Seth and Marshall groaned. “What?” Emery looked between them, puzzled. Seth just shook his head. “We’ll have to drive,” he said. “It’s too far to walk.” *** Chaz showed Leigh Re-Spin’s back room, a stockroom that doubled as an employee lounge. Nothing a few scented candles and perhaps a beaded curtain couldn’t fix right up. When they came back out, Dre Alfaro was coming in. Cap tipped at a jaunty angle, he smiled shyly at Leigh. “I didn’t know you shopped here,” he said. What, like she was a snob or something? Leigh didn’t have a problem with consignment shops. Rocker tees and ripped jeans just weren’t her style. “I work here,” she told him. “Cool,” Dre said. Chaz had to head off to his gig, so Dre showed Leigh how to operate the cash register, gave her a tour of the used book and CD sections, and explained how trade-ins worked. They made it through this with no interruptions from customers. Leigh didn’t feel that boded well for her job security. “What this place needs,” she declared, sitting down on the stool behind the register as Dre swung up on the counter, turning something over in his small hands, “is a marketing plan. And a better soundtrack.” “We’re vintage,” Dre protested. “The Doors are vintage.” “The Doors are not vintage. They’re just a crappy old band,” Leigh said. “Try mixing it up a little. Throw in some punk and hip hop now and then, put up a few more of these grindhouse posters, maybe dress that mannequin in the window up with a mod dress instead of that Black Sabbath T-shirt, and you could actually attract paying customers.” “I don’t think Mel has much time to worry about the store these days,” Dre said. Leigh did not reply. She had just noticed what it was he was playing with. “Is that real?” Dre glanced at her, hearing something in her voice. Their eyes met, and Leigh was jarringly reminded of looking up into those dark eyes in her garage, both of them soaked to the skin from the rain falling in icy 72 gray sheets: rain dripping off the ends of Dre’s glossy black hair, his long eyelashes, his pointed chin… She looked down at the counter, blushing. “Here.” Dre was blushing a little himself, though his dark skin made it hard to see. He held his hand out. Leigh opened her palm, and he dropped a diamond ring into it. “It was your father’s,” he said. Leigh had suspected as much. Not a day had gone by she hadn’t seen the ring on Jack Steward’s smallest finger, until after the battle at Fort King. Years ago, when Leigh had admired it, he had told her it had belonged to his father. Leigh had thought that meant family heirloom. Now she knew Grandpa Steward had worked for Chimera, too, but he had betrayed LeRoi to the Resistance, for which he had been killed before Leigh was born. She held the inscription up to the light. STEWARD. The name felt like an accusation, like she had been the one working for Chimera. “Why do you have this?” she asked, not very nicely. “J.J. asked me to take a look at it. He found it at Cleo’s, in the creek. I guess your father must have lost it the day he got hurt.” “Are you going to pawn it or something?” “No. All of the Partners had to wear these. See?” From the pocket of his khaki cords, Dre produced a tiny screwdriver, the kind you used to fix the screws in eyeglasses. He pressed it against a knob on the ring Leigh hadn’t even seen, cleverly concealed by one of the prongs; the diamond popped out of its setting, exposing a mishmash of intricate copper wires and green circuits, all in miniature. Leigh caught her breath. “Is it – ” “A recording device,” Dre chirped. When he was excited, he talked even softer and faster. “It’s okay, I shut it off, but this was how LeRoi kept tabs on her associates. Anyone high up enough to wear one of these was required to have it on at all times. If they took it off or tampered with it, LeRoi would know they were hiding something, and…” He drew a finger across his throat. “That’s horrible,” Leigh said, softly. She didn’t want to look at the ring anymore. She was relieved when Dre returned the stone to its setting, and the ring to his pocket. To Leigh, the ring was further proof that everything she had ever believed about her dad had been a lie. He had never even really loved her mom, and her mom certainly hadn’t loved him; Jack had just made her believe she did, with magic. What did that make Leigh? Part of her dad’s cover story? “I didn’t even know stuff like that existed outside of spy movies,” she said, stuffing her cold hands under her knees. 73 “Microfabrication technology. It’s not just for James Bond anymore.” Leigh laughed. Dre was such a nerd, she couldn’t help being amused by his corny sense of humor. “J.J. wanted me to see if I could trace the signal back to its source. The rings were equipped with transmitters, built to broadcast in short bursts. J.J. thinks LeRoi kept a base of operations Burke never knew about, and if we could trace the signal, it might lead us there.” “But LeRoi is in custody,” Leigh said. “Why does it matter where her evil lair was?” “Bad guys always have a backup plan,” Dre shrugged. Leigh did not care for the sound of that. Her brothers had figured too prominently in Ursula LeRoi’s plans up to this point. Further conversation was cut short by a handful of Chaz’s stoner buddies dropping in to check out the new CD offerings. For the next hour they lounged at the counter snacking on the Oreos Seth kept there and chatting about bands, delighted by Leigh’s knowledge of the gypsy punk folk scene. Finally, Dre closed out the register while Leigh showed them out. Crap, she thought. She had “People Are Strange” stuck in her head now. Re-Spin stayed open later than most of the other stores in Fairfax’s mall; everywhere else was closed for the night when they finished locking up. Leigh’s heels echoed on the tile floor as Dre walked her out to the parking lot. Almost every window was a prom display. “Have you rented your tux yet?” Leigh asked, fiddling with the beads on her bracelet while looking at Dre sidelong. His skin was richly brown, like cocoa. Like the quills on his feathers when he skinned. He shrugged. “I figured I’d just wear something I already have.” “Really?” Leigh did not quite manage to keep the judgment out of her voice. You could not wear a Big Bird T-shirt to prom. There were, like, laws about that. “It’s not like I have to match anybody,” Dre said lightly, as he reached around Leigh to open the main doors. On his bicep, just where his sleeve ended, was a small, white circle. He had been shot there, trying to warn Will McLain that Ursula LeRoi was coming to kidnap him. Bleeding, poisoned by the silver in the bullet, he had rushed to Leigh’s house – not for help; to protect her. After she had called him a freak. And what for? To impress Shanti Bruce? Leigh didn’t even like Shanti. Lydia’s Escalade was waiting by the curb, under a street lamp. Lydia was on the phone. She waved to Leigh through the windshield. “Do you need a ride?” Leigh offered, noting there were no other cars in the lot. “No thanks,” Dre said. 74 Well, right. Leigh had forgotten he could just fly home. She took a breath and turned to face him. Headlights on the expressway reflected in his dark eyes. “Dre, listen. I’m – I’m sorry for what I said that day. The day you asked me to prom.” He could have been a jerk about it. Most guys would have been. Not Dre. Dre just smiled. His cap was tilted so it cast shadows on his cheekbones. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked you out. I know you don’t think of me like that. But we’re friends now, right?” He peeked up at her hopefully. “You bet,” Leigh said, managing to smile, even. “We’re friends.” 75 Chapter Six: Moonlight Sonata Out of the city, the stars twinkled like faerie dust tossed into the sky. Marshall climbed out of the Lotus first, zipping up his jacket as he did. Seth wondered how much of the chill he was feeling had to do with the crisp breeze. “Okay?” he asked. Marshall shrugged. Emery had walked over to the arched gate and was peering up at the words ROYAL ACRES CEMETERY, spelled out in bent iron rods between one brick post and the other. “It’s locked,” he called back to them. A ripple moved under his skin. In the next blink, a fluffy white rabbit was wriggling through the iron bars. His pink nose twitched, and there was Emery, in his human skin again, wrapping his fingers around the bars. He had layered a denim jacket over his T-shirt, but his big feet were still in his Birkenstocks. “I’ll go see if there’s a key in the caretaker’s sh – what?” Emery said, a little defensively. “Nothing.” Marshall, who had been gaping at him, quickly closed his mouth. “I’ve just – I’ve always been kind of freaked out by rabbits.” He was dating a werejaguar, and he was scared of rabbits? Seth sighed. “Step aside, Indiana. Emery, watch and learn, grasshopper. Watch and learn.” Taking the narrow metal file out of his back pocket – hey, you never knew when a little B&E would be necessary – Seth slipped it into the keyhole on the padlock. He twisted; jiggled; and smirked, as the lock popped open and the chain slithered through. “Good to know you have options if the Duke thing doesn’t work out,” Marshall said, as Emery pushed the gate open for them. Fog seeped along the grass as though the graves were exhaling it. Royal Acres was the largest, and oldest, cemetery in Fairfax. Somewhere in here was the Steward family mausoleum, the final resting place of Jack’s father. Quite possibly the reason Aidan McDonagh had come to Fairfax to begin with, to follow up on Gavin Steward’s assertion that the Ark was housed at Fort King. They stayed on the paved path to the west corner of the cemetery. There were no clouds tonight; the waxing moon cast a long shadow away from the child-sized angel on top of J.J.’s headstone. The last time Seth had been here, Marshall’s shrouded corpse had been lying on top of that grave, Agathon had been pouring blood onto the ground, and J.J. had been holding Seth back, begging him to wait, to be sure what Agathon was bringing back would be Marshall. When the spell had ended, the bowl-shaped tree beside the grave had toppled straight out of the ground. 76 It was still there, dismissed as damage from the storm, lying on its side atop a blanket of yellow leaves as its branches died. Roots straggled out of the trunk like stripped veins. The thorny rosebushes that had circled the tree had been crushed beneath it; blackened petals like dead butterflies had floated into the hole its uprooting had left behind. Seth stood at the edge staring down. Marshall was just behind him, shifting his weight. They had driven back to Fort King that night in Marshall’s stormdamaged Audi. Emery at the wheel, Marshall and Leigh and Whitney and Seth scrunched into the back, Cleo in the passenger’s seat. J.J. had run home through the woods. He and Seth had never talked about that night, about when Seth had realized J.J. meant to kill Marshall if he came back wrong, and had pushed him, the only time he had ever touched his brother in anger. J.J. had not pushed back. Aside from one good-natured romp, J.J. had always refused to fight Seth, even in training. At Fort King, Aphrodisia had clopped down the steps and folded Marshall in her arms like he was her own flesh and blood. Dr. Townsend had just stood there, gray in the moonlight, saying nothing. “It’s cracked,” Emery said. Seth swung around. Emery was kicking dirt away from J.J.’s headstone, which was split down the middle, severing the Jeremy from the Jonathan. Sleeping with the Stars. “Do we have to dig it up?” Marshall sounded skeptical. “We didn’t bring any shovels…” “We won’t need them,” Seth said. “Can you use your claws?” Seth could have, but that wasn’t what he meant. He unfolded the letter from his jacket pocket. Emery had given his okay for him to bring it along. Pointing to the JJS, he said, “This is Elijah Bishop’s handwriting.” Emery frowned. “Seth, it can’t be. Bishop was executed decades ago. Before you and J.J. were even twinkles in your mother’s eye.” “While I have never really understood that expression,” Seth said, “your dad died before J.J. and I were born, too. You’re eighteen. We’re seventeen. Your dad died before this grave was ever dug.” Emery blinked. Marshall took the letter from Seth and stepped into a brighter patch of moonlight to study it. “He’s right,” he declared. “I’ve read Dr. Bishop’s journal. This is definitely his writing.” “But how could Elijah Bishop have written a note on a letter my mother wrote after he was dead? How could he have written down an address to a grave that didn’t even exist yet?” 77 Emery was upset. His chest was rising and falling fast. “I don’t know, Em,” Seth said, gently. “But if the grave didn’t exist yet, it stands to reason there couldn’t have been anything in it Bishop would have wanted your dad to find. But there was something here that did exist then. Something I’ve seen in almost every prophetic dream I’ve had since I came to Fairfax.” Seth pointed. At the tree. They all looked down, into the hole. It was deep, deeper even than it should have been with a tree so old ripped straight out of the ground. Emery swallowed loudly. “So.” Marshall looked at the other two. “Who wants to go down the rabbit hole?” *** After a few minutes of macho arguing about who would take the risk, dispatched by Seth pointing out he was the only one who could get back out of the hole without a rope, Seth shucked his jacket off and leapt over the edge. The fall was about eight feet, not quite as far as the hunter’s pit Blondie had once trapped him in. Seth’s basketball shoes landed in a quarter-inch of mud, splattering his jeans. Seth drew back against the wall, having learned his lesson about silver nets. But the bottom of this hole was just dirt. “Seth?” Marshall’s face appeared above him. Seth didn’t know if he was really that pale, or if it was just the moonlight. “Anything down there?” “Aside from man-eating bunnies?” Seth said. He heard Marshall sigh. The hole pretty much looked like a hole. Roots furred the walls; worms were wiggling through the damp soil. But there was something else, something Seth’s keen jaguar eyes had seen from up above. It was a tin box, wrapped inside crystal threads like the web that surrounded the Ark. Seth cleaned mud off of them with his fingers. They glowed at his touch. A glyph had been crudely carved into the box’s lid. Seth spoke the word, in his mind to see if it would work, and the crystal web suddenly turned to powdery white ash, freeing the box. Seth wiped his hands on his jeans. He felt a little guilty. The crystal had almost seemed alive, like a plant. Tucking the box inside his jacket, he gathered his legs under him. “I’m coming up.” 78 There was a scramble overhead. Seth took a breath – a ripple moved under his skin – and a fully-grown jaguar sprang out of the hole, landing neatly on four paws. “Jesus,” Marshall said, but it seemed perfunctory by this point. They all agreed the graveyard was too creepy to hang out in, and besides, they hadn’t eaten after practice; as Seth was ravenous, which always made Emery nervous, they drove across town to Archie’s Diner. The diner was busy for a Tuesday night; the theater across the road had just let out. Seth tried to remember what life had been like when a regular weekday night was catching the latest action flick, not digging up his brother’s empty grave on the instructions of a dead man. Archie’s was a classic diner – checkered floor, chrome counter, even an old Wurlitzer jukebox that still worked. The boys ordered garden burgers and milkshakes from a poodle-skirted server on roller skates, and Marshall got up to answer his phone – it had started ringing as soon as they stepped inside the diner. Watching him walk over to the jukebox, Seth placed the box on the table. “Em, I think you should do the honors.” Emery nodded. “Okay,” he said, and pulled the box toward him. The hinges were rusted, but the lid opened easily, no lock. Inside was a stack of sheet music. Or at least it seemed to be on first glance. Emery picked up one of the papers, his pale green eyes narrowing in bewilderment. “These aren’t musical notes,” he said. “They’re not?” Seth picked up one of the sheets. “No,” he said, “they’re not.” What should have been lines of music were instead lines of glyphs. Emery looked over at him. “Can you translate them?” “Yeah. But I think the Commanders and McLain should see them first.” Seth didn’t want to be accused of doing anything else behind the Alliance’s back. Emery handed the box back. Seth shook his head. “Elijah Bishop meant for your dad to find this,” he said. “You should be the one to give it to the Commanders.” Emery laid his fingertips on the lid, tracing the glyph. Over by the window, Marshall had turned away from them, hip propped against the jukebox. A booth of girls kept stealing glances at him, but Marshall didn’t even notice them. He was listening to whoever was on the other end, not saying much in response. Seth frowned. Why hadn’t he just taken the call at the table? “Do you really think Bishop told my dad how to find this?” The question brought Seth’s attention back to Emery. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how, since he’s supposed to be dead, and I don’t know what we’ve found, exactly, but I think your dad was going to get this box 79 the day the hunters killed him. You told me he asked your mom to meet him at their cabin that day, right?” Emery nodded. “I think Aidan wanted Melody with him before he dug this up. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk LeRoi getting his hands on her and forcing him to make a trade, the box for her.” Emery looked toward the door. Under the fluorescent lights, his eyes were shining. “Em,” Seth said, feeling a sting behind his own eyes. “I know how it feels to lose your dad. I’m sorry.” “I’m not.” When Emery looked back at Seth, he had blinked the tears away. “I’m sorry Dad died. I’ll always be sorry for that. But now I know he didn’t die for nothing. He died doing something important.” Emery’s voice was firm, and without fear. “It’s up to us to finish it.” *** “Who was on the phone?” Seth asked. Marshall turned Weezer down on the radio. They had just left the expressway, taking the exit for Castle Estates, after dropping Emery off in Haven Heights. Seth hadn’t wanted to ask about the call in front of him. The fact that Marshall hadn’t mentioned it seemed ominous. He had been quiet since returning to the table at Archie’s. Seth saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the wheel now. “It was my father. Ms. McLain called him about the vandalism at school today.” “Oh.” Seth picked at a fleck of mud on his jeans, not sure where to look, at Marshall or the road. “Did you want to talk about it?” “Not a lot to say,” Marshall said. “He asked if I was all right, if I felt threatened at school. I said no.” Instead of making the expected left, onto Kings Lane, Marshall turned right, down Queens Boulevard. Toward Castle Park. Parallel with the merry-go-round, he pulled over and switched the ignition off. It had started to rain, so they had put the top up; the convertible’s windows were so darkly tinted Seth didn’t at first realize the street lights weren’t on around the park. A white utility van was parked down the street. “He also said the school is taking the incident seriously. Mr. Steward spoke to the police – ” “Jack? How did Jack get involved?” If Jack knew, Lydia would know, which meant Seth would be walking into a Supermom Goddess firestorm of rage at home. “Apparently Leigh called him. Or his office, anyway. They’ve classified it as a hate crime. That’s a big deal, not just a slap on the wrist and some detention and community service. Dr. Foss called Dad because the police questioned Cam.” 80 Seth could see where this was going. He folded his arms. “And your dad called you because he wants you to call the cops and tell them Cam wasn’t involved, is that it?” “He didn’t say that. He asked me if I thought it was Cam. I said I didn’t, and he asked if I would be willing to tell the police that.” “Let me guess. You said yes.” “I said when the police talk to me, if they talk to me, I’ll tell them the truth.” Marshall tipped his head back against the seat. Seth knew there was more. “What else?” “He asked me to come home.” Marshall did not whisper this, but the words seemed to suck the air out of him. He closed his eyes. Seth couldn’t, really, but he imagined he could see the blue through the lids. Something black and icy, which Seth had felt with Marshall once before when discussing his father’s opinion on boys liking boys – just resist the impulse, Dr. Townsend had said, and it goes away – threatened to wash up inside of him. He took a deep breath to keep it at bay. “What did you say?” “I said I’d have to think about it.” “And you really mean that? You’d be willing to go back there and live with him?” “Seth, they’re my parents.” Marshall sounded pleading. He opened his eyes, twisting sideways in the seat to look at Seth. He had taken his letterman’s jacket off at the diner; his white shirt was the perfect complement to his honey-toned skin. Stubbornly, Seth refused to look at him. He looked at the swings blowing in the wind. He could smell the rusted metal even inside the car, a tang akin to silver powder. “I mean, I know they’re not my parents, not really. Not in the biological sense. I know what my father did with the Ovid Experiment is unforgivable. And I know how he feels about you and I is – complicated.” “Wrong,” Seth said, flatly. “How he feels about you and I is wrong.” “Okay. It’s wrong,” Marshall said. “But he still raised me. He provided for me, for eighteen years. He never hit me, never abandoned me, never treated me like a lab rat. He wanted what was best for me, my whole life. I couldn’t be who I am right now if it wasn’t for him, even the times he pushed me, the times he rode me too hard – the times he was wrong. That’s a lot to give up. And my mom, and Whitney – ” “Still love you,” Seth broke in, firmly. “And you can still have a relationship with them. They’ve never asked you to be anything other than who you are. They never tried to make you into someone else. Into 81 them. Or have you forgotten what the whole point of the Ovid Experiment was?” “No,” Marshall said. “I haven’t forgotten.” He moved to start the car. Seth caught his wrist. Okay, that had been a crappy thing to say. “Indiana, don’t. Please? I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.” “Maybe we need to fight about this,” Marshall said. “If you hate the idea of what my father made me so much. If you’re afraid I’m too much like him.” He jerked his wrist out of Seth’s grasp, face turned away. Seth could see his reflection in the dark window. Anger was written into the hollows around Marshall’s mouth, stretching his lips taut, but it wasn’t only anger. Marshall, Seth realized, was afraid. Afraid what he had just said was true. Afraid he was his father. Seth folded his hands in his lap. What he wanted to say was that he had seen inside Marshall’s mind, a postmortem mind-meld arranged by their friendly neighborhood Lizardman, for the purpose of finding the Black Swan, and from that he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how fundamentally different, how fundamentally better, Marshall was than his father. But it all seemed too complex to put into words. “I just mean that your father wanted to use you as a tool to help Chimera hunt down werekin,” he said, which was not untrue. “If he had ever found out you really can see our auras, don’t you think you and I would have met under very different circumstances? Like with you pointing me out to hunters?” Marshall’s expression changed. Rain streaked the outside of the glass, tracking down his reflection. “No. You’re right. I know you’re right.” He rubbed his hands over his face. It was times like these all Seth wanted to do was pull Marshall into his arms and kiss every drop of sadness inside of him away. And just like that, he realized that now, despite the fact that they were parked on a public street less than a mile from Marshall’s house, he could. He snapped his seatbelt off. “Marshall?” Marshall turned, and Seth kissed him. Instantly, that little spark inside of Seth that only ignited with Marshall blazed up like a four-alarm fire. Without warning he lunged forward, with a speed and grace no human could have matched, and pinned Marshall against the door. Marshall gasped against his mouth. Rain was striking the hood like bullets; they might have been inside the eye of a hurricane – Seth couldn’t even see the park through the sheets of rain. Not that he was concentrating on the view. Marshall shoved Seth’s jacket down his arms. Seth sat back to let him throw it over the seat, but Marshall didn’t stop 82 there. Yanking his own T-shirt over his head, he grabbed Seth by the shoulders, pulling him back in for a kiss so fierce Seth’s teeth sliced his lip. “Sorry,” he gasped. Marshall murmured what sounded like don’t be. He was kissing Seth’s neck, sliding his hands up under his shirt, over his stomach, down his spine. Blood thundered in Seth’s ears. He felt superheated, like he did in the seconds before he skinned. Only this was magic of a very different sort. He did not protest when Marshall picked him up and lifted him into the backseat. The leather was cold, and still smelled new. Distantly, Seth thought of Marshall’s Audi TT Coupe – but he couldn’t remember the Audi without remembering riding in the backseat of it with Marshall after Agathon had resurrected him. He pushed the memory away, and the agony of losing Marshall that sometimes still snuck up on him unawares, twisting him inside out. Marshall had stretched out on top of him and was brushing his lips over the spot below Seth’s ear he knew drove him crazy. Seth traced the backs of his hands up and down Marshall’s spine. His skin was smooth, soft, the knobs of his spine like chips of ivory. Seth pulled his own shirt off, wanting to feel their skin slide together. “I love you,” Marshall whispered. “I love you too.” Seth looked up at him. “I’ll never love anybody but you.” A warm hand cupped Seth’s neck. Lips pressed sweetly against his. Marshall was retreating, back inside their self-imposed boundaries, but tonight, Seth wanted more than just to hear I love you. Tonight, Seth wanted Marshall. “Sit up,” he said. Right away, Marshall sat up. His hair was adorably tousled. “Sorry…I shouldn’t have…I know this was fast – ” “Marshall?” “Yeah?” “Shut-up, okay?” “Oh.” Marshall’s dimple appeared. “Okay.” He lay down. Seth straddled his lap, appreciating how that made Marshall’s eyes darken. Seth was smaller than Marshall, shorter, slighter, more delicate all around. Marshall rested his hands on Seth’s thighs, squeezing as if to feel the muscles there. Seth’s kisses started at Marshall’s jaw and worked down, along the line that split the center of Marshall’s chest, across the ridges in his stomach. Marshall tensed. “Seth. Seth, we shouldn’t – ” 83 “Why?” Seth curled his fingers under the waistband of Marshall’s jeans, his lips tracing the bruise Alfaro’s elbow had left on his ribcage. “Why can’t we?” “Because. We haven’t really talked about this, and…It’s still sex.” Seth looked up at him. Marshall’s eyes were dark as smoke; what he wanted, and how much he wanted it, was written all over his face. “Are you saving yourself for marriage or something, Indiana?” Seth growled. “Because I seem to recall you trying this with me one time, in your bedroom…” “Moment of weakness.” Marshall shut his eyes, biting down on his lip – which Seth found indescribably sexy – when Seth deftly unfastened the buckle on his jeans. His boxers were basic black. “Seth, really…we’re – we’re still in high school, and – my father…” “Your father?” Seth sat up so fast he nearly toppled over. Cats were never that clumsy, but Seth was all kinds of off-balance at the moment. “What does your father have to do with this?” “Jesus, Seth, I don’t know, okay? I’m doing the best I can here.” Marshall threw his arm over his eyes, baring the faint, pale circle above his heart – evidence of the bullet that had killed him. In that single, terrible second, Seth was back in the Fairfax High gym, Marshall staring up at him as the life seeped out of his beautiful blue eyes. “Marshall,” he whispered, just as he had that night. Something in his voice made Marshall look at him. Seth placed two fingers over the scar. Marshall’s mouth twisted; he pulled him down so Seth’s cheek rested on his chest. He had to feel the hot tears escaping Seth’s lashes, much as Seth tried to quell them. He didn’t even know why he was crying. Because he was so tired? So worried about what would happen with the Alliance now that the Ark was complete, the Source closed off? So frustrated at Cam for trying to ruin the best thing in his life? Marshall held him close, whispering that it was all right, he was there. Slender fingers trailed up and down Seth’s arms, raising goose bumps, and the fist of pain that had tightened inside of Seth began to turn into something else. He felt the same slow, hot trickle of desire wash over Marshall. He ducked his head, kissing the tears off Seth’s cheeks. “This isn’t fair,” he murmured, as Seth’s lips found their way back onto his neck. His voice was drowsy. “I’m trying – to be – responsible – and you’re being – ” “Yes?” Seth’s fingers touched Marshall’s zipper and pulled it, slowly, down. “What am I being?” “You,” Marshall growled. “You’re just you, and I should say no to you, but I can’t, because you’re you.” 84 Seth grinned. His heart was pounding, partly from nerves. Much as he wanted this, it would be his first time, too. He tried not to worry that he didn’t really know what he was doing. That he might be bad at it. “We call that circular reasoning, Indiana. Duke would not be impressed.” “You’re lucky you’re getting full sentences out of me right now,” Marshall all but gasped, as Seth’s hand moved lower – The tap-tap-tap on the window was as loud as a bomb detonating: Seth yelled in surprise, leaping back from Marshall, whose blue eyes were slightly panicked. At some point the downpour had slowed to a drizzle. Outlined by moonlight, a man was looking in at them. Seth didn’t spend much time studying his face. He was too busy staring at the muzzle of the gun pressed to the glass. “Hello, cub,” Regent said. 85 Chapter Seven: Checkmate Will McLain could not have been more surprised for his half-hearted response of “enter” to be answered by Lydia Steward stalking through his office door. McLain dropped his pen on the desk he was sitting behind. Like all of the offices inside Fort King, formerly occupied by Chimera Enterprises’ Partners, McLain’s was outfitted with trendy black furniture and state-of-the-art technology, right down to the phone he couldn’t figure out how to use. He had removed the mounted wereowl from above the hearth, given him a proper burial in the woods with the rest of the corpses Ursula LeRoi had held onto as trophies. Lydia was carrying a red umbrella, which she propped against the door after she closed it. Her pea coat was damp, as was her auburn hair. McLain had been so wrapped up in reading Jensen’s latest report from Roswell he hadn’t even heard it raining outside. A cup of cold coffee and an untouched éclair sat on the corner of his desk, weighting down the files on the hunters whose futures awaited his recommendation, whether they would be released under the terms of Operation Swan Song’s amnesty agreement, or transferred to another maximum security installation off-shore, if deemed psychologically unfit to rejoin human society, as the brass put it. “If you’re here about the relocation plans,” McLain began, since he couldn’t see why else Lydia would be speaking to him again, “the Commanders are working their contacts Undergr – ” “I’m not here about the Alliance,” Lydia said. In clipped tones, she explained about the trouble at Fairfax High that day. Ingrid had already called McLain, but he let Lydia talk it out, motioning her into one of the egg-shell-shaped chairs in front of the fireplace. She draped her coat over the back. The yoga pants and T-shirt underneath suggested she had just jumped in the car and driven here without giving it much thought. McLain, having come to sit across from her, leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His arms were still bronzed from the New Mexico sun. “I’m sure they’ll find out who was responsible for the vandalism. Aunt Ingrid won’t stand for this sort of thing. I understand the Foss boy has already been questioned.” “It’s not just that.” Lydia brushed her hair back. When it was wet, it curled against her neck likes vines. “I’m worried about J.J.” “Oh?” McLain kept his tone neutral. “He isn’t sleeping. I hear him, in the night, prowling his room.” “He is a cat. They are nocturnal.” 86 “Yes, but it seems like more than that,” Lydia said. “And this evening, Ingrid told me there was an incident after his Gym class, after Seth had left for practice. J.J. threatened Cameron Foss.” “Threatened him how?” McLain was careful not to let a note of anything other than concern creep into his voice. “She didn’t know. She said the boys who witnessed it were very closed-mouthed about it. They’re all angry with Cameron because they think he’s the one tormenting Marshall and Seth. Ray Evans walked in at the end of it. He said Cameron was white as a sheet, too scared to even file a disciplinary report.” McLain did not doubt this. He had seen J.J. fight in the Arena. No one had ever stood a chance against him. “I’m not sure what it is you’re asking me,” he said, quietly. “I guess I’m – what I want to know is – God, I don’t even want to say it.” Lydia dropped her face into her hands. It was a long minute before she took them away again, looking up at McLain. Fine wrinkles webbed the corners of her eyes. Here and there, threads of gray mixed with the sun streaks in her auburn hair. McLain knew these were supposed to be imperfections. They didn’t seem that way to him. “Will, do you know why J.J. asked the Commanders to spare LeRoi’s life?” “No,” McLain said. “I don’t.” “I would think he would hate her.” Lydia’s voice dropped on the words, as though she was ashamed to hear them coming out of her mouth. “I love my son, Will. But how he was raised…and then for him to ask for mercy, on behalf of that – that monster…” McLain sat back in his chair, hands palm-down on his knees. Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. “When I met J.J., I only knew who he was, who he really was, because of Ben,” he said. “I wouldn’t have guessed otherwise that he was Resistance. His loyalty to LeRoi appeared absolute. I saw him kill for her, and smile while he did it, this teenage kid who for all the world looked like an angel, turned into a savage beast at the snap of LeRoi’s fingers. She delighted in that. She loved showing him off to the Partners. She called him her ‘pet.’ I once heard her say she couldn’t have been prouder of her own son. “Then J.J. came to me, days before he and Cleo were scheduled to graduate from the Scholae Bestiarii. I don’t know if you know this, but to graduate, a werekin had to kill his hunter partner, or the hunter had to kill him. On the rare occasions either refused, both were killed. ‘Failed experiments,’ LeRoi called them. Finally here was a test J.J. couldn’t fake, and he knew it. He begged me to help him save Cleo.” McLain paused, to let that sink in. Lydia’s blanched face relaxed the tiniest bit. “You could see he was in agony. He was in love with this girl. For ten 87 years he had tortured himself, starved himself, all so she wouldn’t have to do those things to him, or be hurt for refusing to hurt him. I can tell you this much. Nobody who served Ursula LeRoi willingly could love someone that much.” Lydia’s eyes went cold. “Jack did.” “If you’ll forgive my presumption, ma’am, I don’t believe your exhusband had any idea what he was actually avowing himself to, until it was too late to back out.” “You mean Leigh,” Lydia said, softly. McLain nodded. “Once she was born, LeRoi had Jack, for life. She would have killed her if he had betrayed Chimera. Probably forced you both to watch.” Lydia exhaled. She was coming back into her own, straightening along that steel spine McLain admired so much. “Do you think I’m overreacting about J.J.? Reading into normal seventeen-year-old boy behavior?” “I think anybody who has been through what J.J. has been through would have trouble adjusting,” McLain answered honestly. “If he gets worse, we’ll go to Xanthe. We can get him help. We don’t have to involve Burke or the Commanders. I won’t even tell Ben, if you don’t want me to.” He stood. “As for why J.J. wanted LeRoi alive, that’s beyond me. But I’ve never known J.J. to do anything without having a good reason for it. And he is the only person who ever beat Ursula LeRoi at her own game.” “Thank you, Will.” Lydia had risen as well, reaching for her coat. Automatically McLain took it from her and held it out for her to slip her arms through. Her hair got trapped in the collar; he lifted it free, arranging it carefully around her shoulders. Half in the circle of his arms, Lydia looked up at him. “I should have asked before. How’s Caroline?” “Furious,” McLain said, dryly. “I haven’t seen her stomp her feet since she was five years old, but she did last night when I told her again she can’t go to school right now. She’s been listening to Brittney Spears nonstop ever since. I’m pretty sure it’s a ploy to drive me insane.” “Teenage girls can do that,” Lydia said, with a faint smile. “Speaking of, Leigh was saying something about this concert at MoJo’s on Friday night, a band some boy she knows plays in. She thought it would be nice if Caroline could come with her. I told her I’d have to chaperone, of course.” “That’s very nice of her to offer, but I don’t think now is – ” The door flew open, with enough force to crash into the wall. Lydia cried out. McLain had shoved her behind him, drawing his sidearm. 88 Dre Alfaro, dripping wet, threw his hands up on the threshold, shaking as the magic under his skin fought to take hold. “Regent,” he gasped, completely out of breath. “Werner Regent. I was flying home, and I saw – Castle Estates – ” McLain didn’t wait to hear more. Taking Lydia by the hand, he pulled her out the door. *** “Tie those knots tight, cub.” Slanting his eyes downward, Seth glared at Regent without turning his head. The cold muzzle of a gun was pressed to the back of Seth’s skull. He was kneeling in the convertible’s front seat, Regent’s broad shoulders blocking out the moon behind him. The silver in the bullets burned Seth’s nose like too much chlorine. He might have magicked himself out of a collar once, but even the Totems couldn’t save him from a silver bullet to the brain. Marshall looked up at him, pleading with his eyes. An old rag had been stuffed in his mouth to serve as a gag. Seth cinched the ropes tight around his wrists. The rope was looped over and under through the steering wheel, a complex configuration Houdini would have been stumped by. Seth had Ben Schofield to thank for his knot-tying prowess, and he had put it to good use here; regardless of what Regent had in store for him, Seth didn’t want Marshall barging into the middle of it any more than his former guru did. “If you hurt him – ” Seth started. “I have no intention of hurting either of you,” Regent said. It was disturbing to Seth how easily he believed him. “Now. Put these on.” He held a pair of silver manacles out to Seth. Seth dutifully clamped them around his wrists. Marshall made a noise around his gag. It sounded like Seth. “Just sit tight, kid,” Regent said. “I’ll bring him back.” That Seth did not believe. Rain puddled like thin tar on the black asphalt. Regent marched Seth across the dark, deserted park, around the swing set and merry-go-round, past the hickory tree with the knot on the side that looked like an old man’s face. The manacles were silver; they didn’t suppress Seth’s magic like a collar, but if he snapped them Regent would just shoot him, largely defeating the purpose of escape. At the utility van, Regent stopped. “Open it,” he said. With shackled hands Seth grasped the lever on the back door and pulled down. Regent prodded him inside and shut the door behind them. 89 Seth was told to sit, so he sat, in one of two rolling chairs in front of a bank of CC-TV monitors. The back of the van had been outfitted like an FBI surveillance van in the movies, complete with cords and wires bundled on the floor. No windows. “Are you still working with Gideon, or did he run off after LeRoi’s takedown?” Seth asked. “Why do you ask?” “Let’s call it idle curiosity,” Seth said. When he had encountered Aaron Gideon last, his Bio teacher had clawed Connor Burke’s skin off. Literally. “Gideon never worked with me,” Regent said. “He works for me.” “And who do you work for? Still LeRoi?” Regent just grunted and sank down in the chair across from Seth’s. In exile, he had lost none of his polish; like a true cat, Regent always landed on his feet. His wool overcoat was impeccable, his red-and-whitestriped beard neatly trimmed, his bowler hat tilted at a slight angle on his ginger head. For the briefest second when their eyes had met back at the car, Seth’s heart had constricted. He thought he had seen the same anguish, longing married to fury, in Regent’s marbled eyes. The last time they had met, Regent had saved him from a whipping at Blondie’s hands, then collared Seth and tried to drain his life-force. Somehow Seth had survived, though Regent had taken the key with him. Nothing was supposed to remove a collar except its key. The pistol, a Glock .9 millimeter, rested on the knee of Regent’s navy-blue suit. “Aren’t guns a little beneath you, General?” Seth said. “Guns have their uses, like any weapon,” Regent said. Still, Seth noticed, he placed the gun on the counter. A small pot of chai tea was steaming on a portable burner. Regent poured some into a clay mug and passed it to Seth, who balanced it awkwardly in his bound hands. Regent drizzled honey into his own mug. Seth looked around at the banks of monitors. He recognized the parking lot of the Fairfax mall, the run-down street Melody and Emery lived on, the metal knight that guarded the front entrance of Fairfax High. A big house on a hill, dark stone climbing with ivy, he did not recognize. Had Regent tapped into the traffic camera feeds or something? The more pressing question was why Regent had Fairfax under surveillance to begin with, as his boss was currently enjoying the first leg of a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Seth shook his hair out of his eyes. He had been allowed to put his clothes back on, but he was still disheveled. “So. What do you want this time, Regent? Place to crash while you’re in town? I don’t think Mom will say yes to that. Maybe you could ask Jack. I’m sure he’s over that one time you tried to maul him to death.” 90 Regent chuckled. “Same old smartass cub,” he said, not without fondness. He took a sip from his mug. The cinnamon aroma had unleashed a flood of unwelcome memories for Seth: long evenings at Regent’s sunken bar, listening to him wax philosophical about courage and honor. Of which Regent had neither, though Seth hadn’t known that then. “Congratulations on the basketball championship. I understand you have a chance at a state title now.” Don’t, Seth wanted to say. Basketball was his thing. Regent didn’t get to taint that, too. “Well, gee, Mr. Regent, thanks,” he said, with as much sarcasm as was (super)humanly possible. “I’m so touched you came back here just to pat me on the back. Nothing says ‘well done’ like a gun to the head. Now, how about we cut the crap and you tell me what you want?” “The Ark,” Regent said. Seth cocked an eyebrow. He was trying hard to play this cool while his mind whirled through escape scenarios. “Anything else?” “And the Black Swan, eventually, but I’ll settle for the Ark for now.” “Wait,” Seth said. “I’ve seen this episode. It ends with you and your traitor pals getting your butts kicked.” That earned him a tight-lipped glare. Seth set his untouched tea down on the counter. He was not foolish enough to drink anything Regent had fixed for him. It could have been drugged, or poisoned. “Give it up, Regent. The smartest thing you can do is hide in a hole somewhere and hope McLain never finds you. What are you even still fighting for, anyway? Your team lost, in case you missed the memo. Chimera Enterprises is finished.” “Cub, if you think Chimera Enterprises could be defeated that easily, you’ve got a lot to learn.” Regent rolled his chair back from Seth. At first Seth thought he was going for a weapon, but what Regent came up with, from a pile of twoway radios and night-vision goggles, was a remote control. He pressed a button. The second bank of monitors lit up with a live feed of the exterior of Fort King. Lydia’s Escalade was parked in the shadow of the threeheaded fountain. The fountain. Animated by souls of the dead, answerable to Agathon. Seeing it gave Seth an idea. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath down into his lungs. J.J., if you can hear me, I’m in the park, J.J., I need help – “Wake up, cub.” Regent snapped his fingers under Seth’s nose. Seth calmly opened his eyes. Regent seemed pleased he hadn’t startled him. Seth wondered just how long the mangy old tiger had been spying on him. Had he seen Seth on his morning runs, practicing his karate stances in the backyard? Did he know he had given J.J. the katana he had forged 91 for him? “We know the Ark is still at Fort King,” Regent said. He had darkened the monitors again. “We know it has your blood in it. All we need now is the Black Swan, and we can raise Lemuria. We can go home.” He was like a broken record, Seth thought. “Point of fact, you need the Source too before you can open the stargate. And General Burke already gave us that option. Our queen decided against it.” Regent sneered. “Don’t tell me you’re that naïve. Do you really think Burke would have allowed you to raise Lemuria, no matter what Caroline McLain decided? Think about the track record of humans and werekin. Do you think your military buddies are just going to hand the power of the gods over to an alien race? Do you expect the United States military to pay for a super-powered warrior to go to college and play basketball and marry that boy back there you’re so head-over-heels for? At best they’ll collar you and your twin and force you both into their army. At worst, they’ll exterminate all of us. They even have a code name for that,” Regent said. “Eden.” What scared Seth was that Regent was not mocking him. He sounded pitying, and that was worse. “I trust McLain,” he said, roughly. “And you aren’t wrong to,” Regent said. “But Will McLain is a captain. In the military they have this little thing called chain of command, and your captain friend is pretty damn near the bottom of it. He won’t be the one who decides the fate of the werekin in the end.” “Neither will LeRoi,” Seth argued back. “From where I’m sitting, we’re still better off than we were when she was running the show.” Regent slapped his palm down on the counter. Seth almost jumped. “Dammit, cub, would you put aside this black-and-white notion you have of the good guys and the bad guys and listen to me for a change? Say for the sake of argument you’re right. David Burke has no designs on the werekin other than what he’s stated. What happens if the rest of humankind finds out about us? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Underground you weren’t just hiding from Ursula LeRoi. You were hiding from humans, period, and you know it.” “I’m sure you have a point to all of this,” Seth said, stiffly. He didn’t want to admit that not only was Regent right, but he had just had a version of this argument with Marshall two days ago, at which time Seth had been arguing Regent’s side. “I do. And here it is.” Regent leaned forward. “Fort King is the best fortified military installation on this planet. I have considered every possible scenario for breaking in there to steal the Ark, and my employers have concluded it’s impossible. But they don’t know what you can do.” 92 “I can’t do anything,” Seth said. His voice shook a little. He wished Regent would hit him, or yell at him, or anything but look at him with such steady purpose, like Seth was his last hope. “You spoke to the Ark in its own language, and it opened for you. You can control it. If you call to it, the power inside of it will obey you. It will come to you. No amount of security can stop that.” “How did you know what happened with the Ark?” Seth stammered, too late realizing if Regent had been bluffing about what he knew, he had just confirmed it. “I have my sources,” Regent said.. Seth pulled his shackled wrists up against his chest. He had this mixed-up fear inside, that Regent might reach out and take his hands, tell him he belonged with him again. He wanted to hate Regent. Someday – and Seth might not have shared J.J.’s prescience, but he understood enough about how the world worked to know this – he would have to kill Regent, and he thought that might be easier if he hated him. “Who is this employer?” he demanded. “It can’t be LeRoi. Who did she leave to run things in her place?” “Well, well, well. I am impressed, cub. You’re finally learning the right questions to ask.” More Yoda b.s. Seth was way over that. “I just want to be sure I know my full options before I decide to betray my own kind,” he said. “Do I get dental? Is there a severance package?” “You wouldn’t be betraying your own kind,” Regent said. “You’d be saving us. Putting our fate back in our own hands. You think about that a while before you decide on your answer.” Seth stared at him. “That’s it? You’re letting me go?” Maybe Regent would have said yes. Maybe he would have picked up that gun and fired into Seth’s brain. Seth would never know, for just then, there was a roar outside, followed by an ear-splitting bellow as something struck the van – struck it with such force the steel crumpled and the whole thing pitched up onto two wheels, sending Seth and his captor flying. *** Seth came to upside down on the floor of the van, underneath the bank of CC-TV monitors. Thin, salty blood filled his mouth from a gash across his forehead – the result of banging it against the edge of the counter. He groaned. Across from him, Regent, flat on his back, was staring dazedly up at the ceiling. 93 Through a rip in the side of the van, Seth saw two things. The first was J.J., racing through Castle Park in his human skin, teeth bared. The second was the bull, rounding for his next attack on the van. As bulls go, this one was massive. Muscles strained under his black coat, which was as glossy as brushed velvet; his hooves kicked up sparks as he lowered his head, snorting around the gold ring through his nose, and charged. There was no time to brace himself. The van tipped up onto its side; teetered for a moment; then toppled, landing with a deafening crash of shattering glass and shearing metal. Seth flew sideways, into the back doors, which popped open. He did not see what had happened to Regent, and he did not stick around to find out; somewhere in the van was a gun loaded with silver bullets, and Seth did not feel like becoming a jaguar trophy on Regent’s wall. Gathering his legs under him, he sprinted toward the park. His skull was throbbing like someone had massaged it with a hammer. Lights were coming on in houses up and down the block. Seth saw J.J. (two J.J.s, really, as he was seeing double at the moment) pour on a burst of speed, vault straight over the merry-go-round, and keep right on running, never once breaking stride. His eyes were blazing like suns, brighter than Seth had ever seen them. “Seth! Behind you!” In the middle of the street, Seth spun around. The movement was too much: His knees buckled, the wave of dizziness that broke over him coinciding with a stabbing pain in the back of his skull. He hissed as his still-shackled hands slapped the wet pavement. About that time, something leapt on top of the overturned van. Seth glimpsed red and orange stripes. Before he could even shout a warning, the Bengal tiger had jumped onto the bull’s back. Fangs sank into Angelo Alfaro’s shoulder. The bull threw his head back and bellowed. J.J. skinned. Somewhere close by, Seth heard Leigh gasp in amazement. She had never seen J.J. skin. The black jaguar did not slow or turn; he stretched out his spine, lengthening his strides so he almost seemed to ripple across the darkness, a shadow against shadows. At the curb, just as the bull heaved his shoulders back, flinging the tiger free, J.J. pounced. “J.J.!” Seth screamed. On his knees, he watched as the tiger hit the ground on his side. Regent rolled gracefully onto his paws, snapping his sharp teeth at J.J.’s throat. The smaller, lighter jaguar batted him aside with a paw. Regent backed away, snarling, onto some unsuspecting citizen’s manicured lawn, favoring his front leg. J.J. paced after him, slowly, snarling in his throat. The sounds were hair-raising. 94 Regent’s eyes were two yellowish-brown marbles. J.J.’s, big, round, and golden, locked onto them. Somehow, that key turned in Seth’s mind again, and he was seeing what J.J. was seeing, feeling what he was feeling, thinking what he was thinking. This was what Xanthe had taught him, over so many grueling years of endless meditation, prolonged fasts, the absolute and utter denial of self: surrender of the world that could be seen to the world that could not…J.J. let a curtain fall around him, shutting out the rending of metal as the bull’s hooves gouged through the side of the van, the shrill barking of neighborhood dogs. Show me who sent you, he commanded. Regent’s marbled eyes widened. Rapid-fire images flashed across J.J.’s mind. A bedroom that looked onto a red-rock desert. A darkhaired, gray-eyed woman standing over a cradle. A logo – a monster with three serpentine heads, the body of a lion, and a scorpion-stinger tail – sewn onto a white lab coat. A hypodermic needle, hidden in the pocket of a red-and-black coat… Regent roared right before he lunged. Seth blinked. He almost didn’t see J.J. skin, diving sideways as the tiger’s claws swiped through the empty air where he had just been standing; his skull was throbbing like it had been split open. Leigh had this notion J.J. was a twenty-four hour psychic channel, but Seth could now fully appreciate what J.J. meant by telepathy being a muscle like any other – using it exhausted you, physically and mentally. It was easier for him with Seth, because they were already so connected, but even then it was much less taxing for them just to direct their feelings at one another than for J.J. to hear the thoughts Seth sent him. And prying into someone else’s mind, especially if they resisted him, like Regent had just now? Nearly impossible. Seth doubted anyone but J.J. would have been tough enough to withstand that kind of pain. Seth tried to sit up. Someone caught him. It was Marshall. Beside him was Leigh. “Lie still, Philadelphia,” Marshall said, gently. The van’s back doors were wide open, glass from its busted windows sparkling like fallen stars on the asphalt. “Leigh, find me something to get these shackles off, okay? Maybe there’s a key in the van.” “Okay.” Seth saw Leigh jump up. He looked up at Marshall. Marshall was very pale, which only made his eyes bluer. “J.J. – Marshall, did Regent – ” “J.J. is fine. Regent just ran off.” Marshall glanced down the street. Seth expected to see tiger stripes, but Lydia’s Escalade was roaring down Queens Boulevard toward them. Before it squealed to a complete stop, Will McLain had dived out of the passenger’s side. 95 He looked from Seth, lying in the middle of the road in Marshall’s arms; to Alfaro, helping Leigh jump down from the back of the bustedup van; to J.J., picking himself up from a trampled flowerbed; to the people peeking out around their curtains up and down the street; and sighed. *** “Next time you send a rescue party,” Seth complained, “can you please choose someone with less impulse control issues than Angelo Alfaro?” J.J. smiled thinly. He was perched on the sink in Seth’s bathroom, observing as Marshall daubed antiseptic onto the gash on Seth’s scalp. He had given him a phial of Healing potion to drink on the short drive home. As a result, Seth’s head was buzzing more than ever. “I had to psychically page somebody to help us,” J.J. reasoned, in his own defense. “Your distress call wasn’t big on details. ‘I’m at the park. I need help.’ For all I knew, an entire army was after you. Lucky Angelo was in the neighborhood, making nice with Toby.” He meant Topher. “And there’s no sign of Regent?” “It’s like he vanished on a puff of smoke.” J.J. slid off the sink. His eyes still had a wild look in them; he couldn’t seem to sit still. “All finished, Doc?” “Just…one…sec. Okay.” Marshall straightened up, tossing a bloody wad of gauze and cotton balls into the trashcan. “The skull is fractured, so for God’s sake please do not bash your head into any walls for a few days, but the potion I gave you has started the Healing process. I can leave behind some strengthening potion if you think you need it. With the game on Saturday, it might not be a bad idea.” “Isn’t that cheating?” J.J. said. Marshall flushed. “Not like that. I mean because basketball games can get physical. If you got pushed down, or bumped into – ” “Both likely, with Alfaro playing,” Seth grumbled. “Yes, but he’ll be on our side now. It’ll be the other team getting their ribs broken.” Marshall sounded quite cheerful about that. Golden Boy sportsmanship did not extend to winning state basketball titles. In the kitchen, they found Jack Steward and Will McLain each drinking a Heineken at the counter, Lydia leaning against the sink, and Leigh sitting on one of the stools at the island. She had done a quick change from the hot-pink pajamas she had been wearing when Seth had psychically paged J.J. to a denim skirt and blue tank top. 96 “From what Seth said, by Regent’s own admission Fort King is the most secure location he’s ever seen. I don’t think Ben will want to move the Ark any – ” Jack broke off as Seth walked in, leaning on Marshall’s arm. His tie was undone, his suit jacket unbuttoned. “Seth. Do we need to take you to Fort King to be checked out?” “Been checked out. Clean bill of health.” Seth sat down on the other stool. Marshall wrapped his arms around him from behind, so Seth could lean back against his chest. Rope burns braceleted Marshall’s wrists. Still, for an encounter with Regent, Seth knew they had both come away unscathed. “What were you saying about moving the Ark?” A look passed between the adults. Oh, let’s don’t bother him with the truth. Leigh saw it too, and said, “Clyde Dowling wants to move the Ark from Fort King. As a, quote, ‘military-trained strategist and West Point graduate’ – ” “Here we go,” J.J. muttered, slouching against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets. “ – he thinks the only way to safeguard the Ark is for you not to know where it is.” Seth was speechless. How could the Commanders think he would help Regent steal the Ark? Just weeks ago Seth had chosen death over disloyalty when Regent had collared him. He had stopped Chimera from overrunning Fort King, called down the Totems to end a battle LeRoi had been on the verge of winning. He had sacrificed Marshall’s life to protect the Black Swan. What more proof that he was on their side did they need? “Relax, little brother,” J.J. said. “Nobody believes you’re a traitor. They don’t trust me, and they know you do. They’re worried I’ll trick you into doing whatever LeRoi wants. I bet the Commanders even think I let Regent get away tonight.” J.J.’s eyes were flat. McLain could not quite meet them. “Like Jack said, Ben convinced the other Commanders not to move the Ark – ” “Like Burke would have let them?” J.J. asked, of the ceiling. “ – so the bigger concern now,” McLain pretended not to hear him, as J.J. seemed to be spoiling for a fight, “should be organizing a protective detail for Seth. Now that Regent somehow found out about his power over the Ark, we have to assume he will remain a target.” Seth envisioned sitting in class with Secret Service agents fanned out around him. Wearing Kevlar under his basketball jersey. These were not pleasant thoughts. “I can watch out for Seth,” J.J. said. Lydia waved a hand. In the other, she was holding a glass of merlot. “Honey, we’ve talked about this. Protecting Seth isn’t your job.” 97 “Yeah, Lydia,” J.J. said. “It kind of is.” Lydia flushed. J.J. had never spoken to her so rudely. Frowning at him, Jack said, “What about Andre Alfaro?” “Baby Bird?” Seth was taken aback. “You really think he could take Regent?” Jack tried not to grin. Lydia had adopted the cardboard-stiff politeness she always did around her ex, tolerating his continued existence for her children’s sake. Jack did his best not to antagonize her with small things like smiling. “I only meant that Dre does scouting on his own already, as he has proven more than a few times. Evelyn has the other werebirds keeping an eye on McLain’s house, for Caroline. We could put Dre on Seth at school. They have most every class together.” “Who’s Evelyn?” Seth asked. “Janowitz,” Lydia said. “Your English teacher.” She set her glass down on the counter. “Jack, I don’t feel comfortable with Seth running around the city right now. And I refuse to put another child’s life on the line to protect his.” Pointed glance at J.J. Seth was still processing what his mother had just said. “Miss Janowitz is werekin?” “Yes. She goes to work glamoured.” Lydia looked over at him. “Why?” “But – ” Seth actually sputtered with indignation. “She can’t be werekin! She gave me a B– on my essay!” “She still has to have standards,” Leigh said. “That is not the issue here, Adleigh.” Lydia’s patience appeared to be hanging by a thread. “Will, I want Seth guarded here at the house until Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon are apprehended.” “We can do that,” McLain assured her. “But school – ” “I don’t want him going to school,” Lydia said. “Not while Regent is out there. He’s gotten to him too many times.” “Mom!” Seth burst out, as Jack sighed, “Lydia…” “I do not want to hear it.” Lydia shot Jack a look that could have frozen water. “I am done putting my children in harm’s way for this cause. Until those men are sharing a cell with Ursula LeRoi, Seth is not leaving this house, and that is final.” 98 Chapter Eight: Lost in Translation “It’s like I’m grounded,” Seth said, “and I didn’t even do anything wrong.” Throwing himself down on the sofa, he took a resigned bite of Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart. On the other end of the line, he could hear Cleo trying not to smile. “It’s not so bad, is it, sweetheart? You get a couple of days off from school, the house all to yourself…You could take a hot bubble bath, watch cartoons all day…” “I don’t technically have the house to myself. I’m under surveillance.” Seth sat forward enough to peer around his mother’s lace curtains. As if to taunt him, morning sunlight washed Kings Lane in brilliant white light, dew sparkling like diamonds on the spider web spun at the corner of the garage. Perched just above it was a red robin. She ruffled her feathers as though waving hello, and Seth fell back on the couch. “And it might be more than a couple of days. Who knows when Regent will pop back up again, or if he even will? And we don’t have any leads at all on Gideon. For all we know, Regent ate him for breakfast. I could be locked up here for years, growing older, all alone, life passing me slowly by…” “I thought you said you were going back to school on Friday.” Cleo was not appreciating his teenage angst. Brushing Pop-Tart crumbs off his sweat pants – why bother getting dressed to enjoy house arrest? – Seth plopped his heels on the coffee table. Poe climbed up beside him, nuzzling against his hip. “Only because of the game Saturday,” Seth said. “You aren’t eligible to play if you miss school the day before a sporting event. McLain practically had to twist Mom’s arm to get her to agree to let me play.” Somewhere in the background, a vehicle, what sounded like a Humvee, rumbled past. Cleo spoke up to be heard over it. “How is it going with Alfaro on your ball team, anyway?” “So far so good.” Seth rubbed the back of his skull. It was still tender. “We’re all getting together over at Jack’s tonight to properly christen Marshall’s new pad.” “I figured you and Doc had already done that,” Cleo teased. “It’s not for lack of trying. We just keep getting sidetracked by this pesky little alien invasion problem. What’s that line from Shakespeare? ‘These times of woe afford no chance to woo’?” Cleo laughed, but the thinness of it was noticeable. Seth wondered if she was thinking of their conversation the day she had left for New 99 Mexico. When she had told him he would always have half of her heart, because she didn’t know how to take it back from him. She quickly changed the subject. “How can you go to a party if you’re confined to quarters?” “Jack told Mom his house counts as my house, too.” Lydia had looked like she was about to choke on her response to that, but had refrained for the sake of peace. “Anyway, Emery delivered the sheet music we found at J.J.’s grave to the Commanders. Lydia is taking me to the fort later to train with Xanthe, so I guess we’ll find out then if they want me to translate the glyphs, and how Elijah Bishop could have left a note for Aidan McDonagh when he’s been dead for half a century.” “What does J.J. think?” Seth sat up. Poe lifted her pink nose from his leg and meowed at him. “I don’t know.” Seth roughed the calico fur along the kitten’s spine. “He didn’t really say.” Cleo’s voice dropped lower. It sounded, from the muted background noises, like she had just ducked into a quiet room. “He’s not acting like himself, is he?” “No,” Seth confessed, relieved to have somebody he could say this to without feeling like a traitor. “He’s so on edge. Like he’s about to snap. I think he would have pummeled Cam yesterday if Marshall hadn’t basically called him on being out of line.” “When did this start?” The day you left, Seth thought. But then he thought back, and realized that wasn’t true. Sunday, J.J. had been furious over Seth’s arrest, but he had not lashed out at the Commanders. Monday, he had calmly broken up the fight between Seth and Alfaro. It had been the next morning when he had started biting everybody’s heads off. “Since yesterday, I guess,” he said. “He was definitely worse this morning, though. He and Mom had a ten-minute screaming match in the kitchen over him threatening to smash Cam’s head through the wall if he ever called me a faggot again.” “But he was okay Monday? Because he sounded weird that night, when he called me,” Cleo said. “He called you?” Seth brightened. He had not given up on Cleo and J.J. “What did you guys talk about?” “Most of it was classified, so if I told you, I’d have to kill you. But he said he called to just say hi. J.J. does not call to say hi. And I think he cried at one point.” Whoa. Seth started to pace, heel-toe, along the couch. Sometimes, when his emotions were ramped up, stillness still eluded him. Poe went to sit on the hearth beside a napping Captain Hook. “Did you guys have a 100 fight?” Seth asked. Fighting with Marshall always made him cranky. Instantly he thought of their argument last night, the possibility Marshall could move back under his father’s roof, to live by his father’s anti-Seth rules. He stepped onto the back of the couch to continue his pacing. “No. We didn’t have a fight.” Cleo paused. “I’m not even sure why he wanted to talk to me. She was there.” She being Vixen O’Shea. “You’re the one he loves, Cleo. But he thinks you don’t love him. Someday, if you just keep waiting around, he is going to fall for somebody else.” “Maybe it would be better that way.” Cleo sounded bleak. Seth leapt down from the couch. “Tell me the thought of him with another girl doesn’t make you want to gouge your own eyeballs out.” “Seth – ” “C’mon, Cleo, say it. Say you really want him to forget about you and move on.” “That is not the point,” Cleo said, tightly. Seth made a buzzer noise: Errhh! “Wrong! Thanks for playing though. It is the point, Cleo.” He swung up onto the stairs, trailing his fingers along the wall where the family photos of Lydia, Jack, and Leigh used to hang before Leigh had taken them all down. “This torch you think you’re carrying for me, that’s just you finding excuses not to be with J.J. You have to stop blaming yourself for hurting him. He tricked you into doing it, to save your life, and now he thinks you’ll never forgive him for that, when who you really can’t forgive is yourself. Both of you are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.” Cleo was quiet for a minute. Seth ducked into his bathroom and started assembling the ingredients for a long soak in his Jacuzzi. Grapefruit-scented bath oil. Fluffy towels. iPod. The journal he had borrowed back from Marshall last night. Finally, Cleo said, “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can say over the phone. ‘Hi, I’m in love with you, but I feel like you should hate me.’” “So tell Jensen you need a weekend furlough and hop a plane back to Fairfax. I could use another cheerleader in the stands on Saturday anyway. I miss you,” Seth said, honestly. “Life in this crappy little hick town is even crappier for not having my Cleopatra in it.” Cleo laughed, an honest-to-goodness laugh this time, and promised to think about it. Seth hung up and slid down in the hot, foamy water until the bubbles lapped at his chin. Seth did his best thinking in the bath; unlike most cats, jaguars loved water. He cranked Green Day on his headphones as he paged through 101 Bishop’s journal, translating the glyphs penned into the margins almost by reflex, the way you couldn’t help reading billboards on the Interstate once you learned how. Before, when Seth had read this journal, it had not occurred to him how odd it was for Bishop to have been drawing glyphs before Mt. Hokulani and its treasure trove of Lemurian texts had been discovered. Now he knew Bishop had encountered Lemurian years earlier. His father Abraham Bishop had found the Tortoise Clan in the Amazon when Bishop was just a child. Tortoises live long lives. They have long memories. Page by page, as Seth translated the glyphs, a story came together, the ending to a tale he had only ever heard the beginning of. By the time he closed the journal, the bathwater had gotten cold, a scud of thin gray bubbles floating on the surface. Seth lay there for a long time even so, staring at his ceiling, headphones on the floor, his ears filled with a girl’s dying song. *** Part-time employment was already cramping Leigh Steward’s style. She wanted to go to the party at Jack’s with everybody else (she had it on Seth’s authority her father would not be there) but she had a shift at ReSpin. It wouldn’t even be with Dre. It would be with Emery. While Emery was cool, Leigh did not see the point of hanging out with a boy you couldn’t even flirt with. And Whitney wouldn’t be there, because she was going to Marshall’s party. Whitney didn’t care about parties. She just wanted to spend time with her brother. Leigh cared about parties, like she cared about prom, yet here she was, dateless, prevented from hanging out with the varsity starting lineup so she could sell some kid in a FRODO LIVES T-shirt another Simon & Garfunkel album. Leigh fumed about this from Fairfax High to Fort King, riding up front with Seth. He had picked her and J.J. up from school in their mother’s Escalade. J.J. was slouched down in the back poking at the seam in the leather with the tip of a bone-handled dagger. “You can’t have knives at school, doofus,” Leigh informed him. “You can if you don’t get caught.” J.J. flashed his smirk at her. Whatever. He was more of a jerk these days than ever. Leigh did not get what Quinn O’Shea saw in him. Okay, in an objective and totally nonincestuous sense, she realized J.J. was good-looking, but the bad boy thing was so passé. 102 “How’s your head?” she asked, swiping a strand of blue hair off Seth’s cheek. “Fine, thank you.” Seth smiled at her. J.J. made a gagging sound at their sibling affection. Before Leigh could suggest a place for him to put his dagger, Seth had parked and J.J. had jumped out, padding up the fort’s front steps, spine arched. Leigh shook her head. “He’s doesn’t even try acting human, does he?” “It’s harder than you think,” Seth said. He always stuck up for J.J. Inside the fort, Seth branched off to the elevator for the lower levels. Leigh did not have a burning desire to hang out in the Gen-0’s creepy underground lab, and besides, she was supposed to be meeting Emery here for him to drive her to Re-Spin. She climbed one of the curved staircases basically at random. A couple of Marines on the upper walkway glanced at her. Leigh knew she was looking fine today; she had worn her newest pair of Seven jeans and a funky gold sweater that slipped off one shoulder, thinking maybe Dre Alfaro might advance his prom date offer again, now that she had manned up and apologized. Alas, he had not. Fort King was unlike any place Leigh had ever been. The black stone looked wet, but when you touched it, it was as dryly glazed as ice. Like the children’s castle she used to love to play in at Castle Park, the inside was a labyrinth: twisting stairwells and glassed-in skywalks and mazelike corridors, turrets at the corners offering a spectacular view of quilted fields and dark forests, the city skyline in the distance. Leigh wandered around for an age before happening onto a set of glass double doors – which Will McLain and another, younger soldier were just coming out of. “Hi,” Leigh said, blushing out how loud her voice rang out. Stupidly, she realized now, she had not anticipated running into McLain at the fort. McLain looked up from the file he had been reading. What they said about a man in uniform really was true, Leigh thought. Those camouflage fatigues made her weak in the knees every time. “Leigh. You shouldn’t be up here. This is a restricted area.” “I didn’t see any signs,” Leigh said. “That’s why there are supposed to be guards.” McLain sighed. “Just wait here, all right? I’ll walk you back down. You.” He turned to the soldier standing behind him. “Stay. Do not move.” His answer was a wordless nod. Only as McLain strode off down the black corridor, muttering under his breath, did Leigh realize the boy was not a Marine. He was built like 103 a soldier, if a little on the slim side, but his reddish-blonde hair was long enough to touch his collar, and anyway he was too young to be in the military, sixteen or seventeen at the most. What she had mistaken for fatigues was an olive green T-shirt and gray sweatpants. His rubber-soled boots had been plucked of laces; his wrists were cuffed in front of him, a chain connecting the shackles to a belt around his waist, another chain running down to the cuffs circling his ankles. Leigh’s mouth went dry. She had heard Fort King was being used to house the hunters captured at the Chimera facilities Operation Swan Song had raided. She simply hadn’t expected to find herself alone in a dark hallway with one of them. The boy was not handsome; his features were strong, more Whitney’s type than Leigh’s. His coloring was very fair, but his eyes, by contrast, were big and dark, almost vulnerable-looking. His lips were very full. They curved into a smile when he saw Leigh staring at him. “Hello,” he said. Leigh blinked. “You’re – British?” “Guilty.” Accent in full bloom, the hunter boy leaned his shoulders back against the glass doors with lazy arrogance. Now who did that remind her of? “Chimera Enterprises is a worldwide conglomerate.” “I think you mean was,” Leigh corrected, coldly, pretending this was not a revelation to her. She had never thought to ask why Ozzie Harris had a British accent. She had kind of assumed it was fake. This boy’s accent was more cultured than Ozzie’s, like someone brought up at one of those rugby-and-polo boarding schools with Headmasters and oral exams and whatnot. “They still seemed fairly operational when I got nibbed,” he said. “How long ago was that?” “A week, give or take a day. Hard to keep track of time in here.” Chains clinked as the boy raised his wrists to scratch his nose. A ropy scar ran from his wrist to his elbow. “You’re not werekin, are you?” Leigh shook her head. “My brothers are. Half-brothers. Both of my parents are human.” “Lucky you,” the boy said. He sounded like he meant it. A buzzer sounded on another level; Leigh jumped. Her fingers were curled tightly into her damp palms. “You don’t need to be nervous, love,” the boy said. “I’m not in the habit of hurting humans. Besides, I’m not really in a position to hurt you.” He displayed his shackled hands. Not quite sure how she felt about that, Leigh edged over to the bench in front of the empty guard station and sat down on the edge of it, keeping her eyes on him. “Where was McLain taking you?” she asked. 104 “Interrogation.” There was no emotion in the boy’s face as he said this. Leigh was spared coming up with a reply by McLain returning, leading two M.P.s. “Take Lukas to my office,” he was saying to them. “I’ll be along in a minute. Leigh, this way.” The guards marched the boy between them down the corridor. Right as they turned the corner, he glanced back, lifting one shackled hand. Leigh wasn’t sure if it meant goodbye or piss off. She hurried to catch up with McLain, who had long legs and always walked like he was late for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. “You know, there’s a reason anything a prisoner tells you under torture isn’t admissible in court,” she said, stiffly. McLain blinked at her. He seemed to have been a million miles away. “We aren’t torturing prisoners, Leigh. There wouldn’t be any point. LeRoi never trusted her hunters with any valuable intel. She saw them as tainted by alien blood.” “But…he said you were taking him for interrogation…” “Then he lied.” McLain did not sound surprised. “We’re conducting psych evals on the hunters, to determine which ones would pose a danger to human society – they are highly-trained killers, after all – and which ones are ready to begin integration.” “Oh.” Had the boy not known that, or had he just been messing with her? Leigh supposed it didn’t matter. Chances were she would never see him again. She put him out of her mind and swept her hair over her bare shoulder. “I have a proposition for you, Captain,” she said. “Yeah?” McLain waved to a guard. They were buzzed through a checkpoint into a corridor Leigh recognized: It led to the infirmary. “Would this have anything to do with a concert at MoJo’s Friday night?” “Mom is chaperoning, but I thought it would be nice for you and Caroline to come,” Leigh said. “Leigh, I appreciate you wanting to include Caroline, but especially after what happened last night, I don’t feel safe having her out of the house.” Leigh had anticipated this. “Let me ask you something. If tomorrow you catch Werner Regent and Aaron Gideon, will there be no danger to Caroline anymore?” McLain stopped and looked at her. They were standing outside the infirmary; the recessed amber lights picked up on the silver swan charm nestled in the hollow of his throat. “As long as the Ark is on Earth, waiting for her blood to be added to it, Caroline will be in danger,” he said. 105 “Then I rest my case,” Leigh said. “You can’t keep her locked up forever. She isn’t just the Black Swan. She’s a person. It isn’t fair for her to never have a life.” The grin that found McLain’s lips was rueful. “Miss Steward,” he said, “you are going to be an excellent attorney.” “I have my moments,” said Leigh. She laid a hand on his arm. McLain glanced at it, then up at her. Leigh tried out the sultry eyes she had been practicing in her mirror: chin tilted down, lashes slightly lowered. Vogue promised it would melt any guy like butter. “Say you’ll come to the concert with us, Will, please?” Will. She had actually called him Will. Leigh’s heart was about to quiver out of her chest. McLain tapped the file folder against his palm. “You said your mom is going to be there?” “Yes.” Leigh failed to see how that factored in, but she didn’t stew on it long, as McLain nodded his assent. Oh, the sweet, sweet taste of victory. Savoring it, Leigh sailed into the infirmary. *** Seth looked up from his cot as Leigh breezed in, smiling like the Cheshire cat. His eyes narrowed. Baby sister looking that pleased with herself was never a good sign. “What have you been up to?” he demanded. “Nothing.” Leigh fell back on the cot beside his, midway along a line of cots underneath a row of arched windows. The opposite walls were glass cabinets lined with potions. The ceiling arched overhead, funneling to a point. Fort King’s architecture was like something Salvador Dali had dreamed up. “How was training with Xanthe?” “Exhausting.” Xanthe had taught Seth deep breathing exercises to help him sink into a waking trance. Five minutes in, Seth’s head had started to pound. J.J. had felt it – shared pain, the drawback of twin telepathy. He had insisted Seth go to the infirmary while he tracked down Aphrodisia to check his healing skull fracture. “What are you still doing here anyway? I thought you were meeting Emery.” “So did I,” Leigh said, just as the door opened, and Emery walked in. Towering over him was a ten-foot tall woman with a pair of delicate antlers sticking up from a cloud of springy dark curls. A pair of fawn hooves peeked out from under her white Healer’s robe. “Seth Michael,” Aphrodisia said, in her chime-like voice, gliding over to the cot and 106 folding one of Seth’s hands in her mottled bluish-gray one. “Are you well?” “My head has felt better,” Seth admitted. J.J. had padded into the room as well; he was scowling, and Seth did not have to ask why. Emery was holding open the door, and Marshall was wheeling Connor Burke through it. “Look what I picked up at ball practice,” Marshall said. “Connor!” Leigh jumped off the cot to hug Connor’s neck. He smiled and blushed as she fluttered around him, laidback charming as always. J.J. sat down on the sill of one of the arched windows and started spinning his dagger around on it, doing that J.J. thing of tuning them all out. Aphrodisia felt of Seth’s skull, shined a light in his eyes, and declared him healing but not healed. She prescribed a phial of strengthening potion for him to drink, to speed up the process. The instant it crossed his lips, the throbbing in his head receded. Meanwhile, Marshall had lifted Connor out of the wheelchair and onto one of the cots. Connor looked very pale against the starched sheets, drawing attention to the hectic splotches of color on his cheekbones. “We can wait in the hall,” Emery offered. He had come to sit next to Seth, avoiding J.J. and his dagger. “Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” Connor said. Emery glanced at Seth, who shrugged. He was honestly curious to see his boyfriend’s Healer expertise at work. Marshall had doffed his letterman’s jacket for a white lab coat. Operation Swan Song still used some of the equipment Chimera Enterprises had left behind; the coat had a three-headed chimera stitched on the pocket. Seth blinked, seeing the same image in Regent’s mind as J.J. had tried to force out of him who he was working for. In the midst of treating his fractured skull and rehashing everything Regent had said to him for McLain, Seth had quite forgotten that he had seen Ursula LeRoi standing over a baby’s cradle in that vision. Marshall pushed his curls out of his eyes. He seemed ill at ease, Seth thought; he kept glancing at J.J., whose expression was blank as paper. Aphrodisia rolled Connor onto his side and pulled his shirt up in the back. Marshall placed one hand on Connor’s back, the other in hers; Aphrodisia’s other hand rested almost protectively on the slope of her stomach underneath her robe. Marshall’s eyes widened, then went blank as their minds fused and he saw with her through Connor’s skin, to the tissue and bone beneath. J.J. had become absolutely still, surrounded by smoky evening light. 107 Seth was not aware of holding his breath until Marshall blinked and Aphrodisia turned Connor gently onto his back again. He pulled his shirt down to the waistband of his jeans. The scars on his back were gruesome, a triplet of angry red furrows scored deep into the smooth flesh. “Well?” he said. “What’s the verdict, Doc?” “It’s not Healing.” Marshall sounded frustrated. “The nerves are still dead. I don’t understand it.” “So increase the dose of strengthening potion.” “Connie, we can’t – ” “C’mon, Doc.” For the first time, Connor’s smile wobbled at the edges. “What’re you worried about? Turning me into the Incredible Hulk? I know all about the potential side-effects of an overdose. I’m not worried about that.” “Well, I’m worried about poisoning you. We’re already risking that with the dose you’re on.” Marshall passed his thumb over a small, raised mark on Connor’s collarbone – an injection site. “We’ll have to work on the formula some more.” “Then what about those other options you mentioned?” Connor said, not to be put off. “You told me about the healing properties of the Gen0s’ blood, how they don’t age because their cells don’t break down. Can’t you just inject me with Aphrodisia’s super-blood or something? I’m up for anything at this point.” “No.” Marshall had whitened around the lips. “Connie, that was all theoretical, okay? We have no idea what a human body’s reaction would be to Gen-0 blood. Your system could treat it as a virus and completely shut down. We’re not doing anything that radical.” “You must be patient, Connor,” Aphrodisia put in gently, when Connor started to argue. “True healing takes time. Marshall, what do you think about…” She drew Marshall into the corner, speaking to him in low tones. Connor hauled himself upright on the pillows, smoothing his dirtyblonde hair where it had gotten rucked up in the back. “Oh, will you all please stop looking like someone just shot your grandmas?” he said, good-naturedly. His Texas twang was more pronounced lately, Seth noticed; it covered over the more northern inflection that had sometimes rounded his vowels. “It’s only been two weeks. I really should be flat on my back still, but instead, I’ve healed enough to wheel myself around in this chair. The rest will come. What I want to hear about is what the Commanders said about this box y’all dug up.” J.J.’s head came around. He had been staring out the window, and Seth was startled by the metallic glint of his round eyes. “Who told you about that?” 108 “The same person who told me Werner Regent attacked Seth last night,” Connor said. “General Burke is my father, you know.” “I don’t care if he’s your friggin’ fairy godmother, you don’t have clearance for this kind of intel,” J.J. all but hissed, through his teeth. “Oh, J.J., button it up, would you? Nobody here is impressed by your top-secret clearance.” Leigh bent over Connor’s cot, plumping his pillows. J.J. looked like he was taking deep breaths through his nose to keep from skinning. About how Seth had looked when Cam Foss had given Leigh a birthday kiss. “What did the Commanders say, Emery?” “Well…” Emery twirled his St. Francis’ medal. J.J. was his pack leader; he seemed reluctant to answer with him glowering, but J.J. was the only one of them who had a problem with Connor. Frankly, Seth was disappointed in how his twin was behaving. It was not a feeling he relished. “They didn’t know what to make of all the Bishop stuff. General Burke is getting the records on his execution declassified, but that could take some time. In the meantime, they gave the go-ahead for Seth to translate the glyphs. Hopefully from those we can figure out what the music means, if it’s some kind of message or spell or what.” Connor swung his easy smile onto Seth. “Hey, maybe your mom will let you come out to my place tomorrow to work on them. I’d love to learn Lemurian. And our house has more security than the Mint. I think there might be land mines on the perimeter.” Seth hesitated. Not over the invitation; hanging with Connor would definitely beat another day of Spanish soap operas on Telemundo. “I think I may already know what the music means,” he said. “Em, did you bring that book of sonnets like I asked?” “Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Hopping up from the cot, Emery dug through his messenger bag. The front of it was covered with buttons that said things like MAY THE FOREST BE WITH YOU and WIND POWER TURNS ME ON. “Here it is. Whitney threatened to pull me out of a hat if anything happens to it, though.” Leigh, bored already, had started buffing out a scuffed nail with a file from her Coach bag. “Is it true she calls you Snuggle Bunny?” she asked, with academic interest. Emery’s ears turned red. The book’s cover was blue fabric, embroidered with silver stars. Seth flipped through until he found the sonnet he wanted, and read, “I will play the swan, and die in music.” He looked up. J.J., though he had gone back to staring out the window, had spoken the words along with him. “That’s beautiful, Seth, but we’ve heard it before,” Leigh said. “It marks the coordinates for the stargate. Although I still can’t believe 109 we’re actually calling it that,” she added, frowning at her French manicure like it displeased her. “Well, interdimensional portal to the home of the Totems is kind of a mouthful,” Emery pointed out. “I see the connection – die in music, sheet music. But what does it mean?” Seth took a breath. “I reread Elijah Bishop’s journal today – ” “God, you were bored,” Leigh said. “ – and when I translated all of the glyphs he had written in the margins, I realized they weren’t random doodles. They tell a story. The story of the dying swan, who sings a song with her last breath, a song so beautiful, so powerful, it calls her Totem down from the stars to join with her. I think Caroline – ” Seth. J.J.’s voice was crystal clear inside Seth’s mind. Not here. Not in front of him. Subtly, without taking his eyes off the window, he inclined his head at Connor. Somehow, Connor saw it. He seemed to know perfectly well what it meant. “It’s all right, Seth,” he said, quietly. Leigh and Emery looked bewildered. Neither of them had marked J.J.’s meaningful nod. “I should be going anyway. Marshall offered to drop me at my house before your party. Philly, could you push my chair over here?” Glaring at J.J., Seth rolled Connor’s wheelchair over to the bed, holding it in position as Connor picked his legs up, swung them over the side of the bed, and hoisted over into the seat, the long muscles in his arms straining as they took the full weight of his body. Marshall saw him and broke off from Aphrodisia, pocketing a hypodermic needle as he turned away from her. “Ready to go, Connie?” “I’m tired.” Connor sounded it. Seth knew how he felt. When he had been recovering from LeRoi’s poisoned bullet, the constant healing had sapped his energy. By the end of the day, he had been almost sick with fatigue. He promised to ask Lydia if he could spend the day at Connor’s house tomorrow – a backhanded apology for J.J.’s rudeness. Marshall wheeled Connor out. Seth said he would be down in a jiff to ride with them. J.J. was spinning his dagger on the windowsill again. Sunlight sparked off the blade each time it went around. “You already know what the glyphs in Bishop’s journal said, don’t you?” Seth’s tone was accusing. J.J.’s was immutable. “Yes,” he said. “And it’s not something Connor needs to know.” “So we’re back to that? All this need-to-know top-secret myclearance-is-higher-than-your-clearance soldier crap?” 110 “No,” J.J. said. “We’re back to that I don’t trust Connor Burke.” “Would that be because he’s Burke’s son, because he has a crush on Cleo, or because he isn’t Alliance?” “Oh for the love of the stars.” Palming his dagger, J.J. stood. He stretched up on his tiptoes as he arched his spine, oozing feline superiority. Never before had Seth been tempted to take a swipe at his twin’s placid smirk with his claws. “I don’t care who Connor’s father is or who he has a crush on. Something is not right about that kid. As for him not being Alliance, his father may decide to break protocol and share state secrets with him, but there are some things that are classified for a reason. If you’re so hung up about not knowing everything a member of the Alliance knows, then join up already. Otherwise, quit whining about how I don’t accept your choice not to, because like I’ve told you, I already have.” “Hey!” Leigh said, hotly. “For Christ’s sake, J.J., what is your problem?” “I don’t have a problem. Seth has a problem, apparently, and it’s not one I can fix.” J.J. slunk over to the door. It was like he didn’t see Seth standing there, looking like his brother had just pushed him off the deck of a ship into a raging sea. “I promised Quinn I’d come to her place before the party, so…See ya there.” The door closed behind him. Emery, Leigh, and Seth all stared at it. “What is going on with him?” Leigh asked. She didn’t sound as though she really expected an answer. Which was fortunate, as Seth had none. 111 Chapter Nine: Blood Moon The Steward & Regent Law Firm had been a warehouse prior to Gavin Steward purchasing it, with Chimera funds, and renovating it into a swanky downtown office. The red brick façade had weathered over the years to a dusty rose. The setting sun reflected off the arched windows, shadowing the central dome and slender spires of the Sacred Heart Academy down the street. J.J. could smell the river from where he stood. He could also hear the angry beat of a heavy metal bass. Quinn slammed the door of her Jeep and joined him on the sidewalk. “Ten bucks says they have a keg,” she said. “We can hope,” J.J. said. She grinned. J.J. hadn’t known quite what to think when Quinn had answered her front door in a dress made of gray T-shirt-like material. It stopped well above her knees, answering the question of whether her legs were as freckled as her arms. She had also dusted her vulpine features with sparkly bronze powder, glossed her lips with something shiny that smelled like honey, and spun her fiery hair into two braids coiled at the nape of her neck with a plastic barrette. J.J. would have felt underdressed in his jeans and black T-shirt, if he had been the type to feel underdressed. He offered her his arm. “Shall we?” Quinn tucked her hand into his elbow. The music led them across a parquet foyer, up a spiral staircase, down a hall of locked conference rooms to a door at the end that stood ajar. It swung inward as J.J. reached for the knob. “Well, lookee what the cat dragged in.” Angelo Alfaro filled the doorway. And J.J. did mean filled. Alfaro was edging toward seven feet these days. The gold beads in his long dreadlocks, J.J. was amused to see, had been alternated with blue ones – the Fairfax High school colors. His hooded sweatshirt had the Knights’ mascot on the back. The other team would probably hide in the locker room when they got a glimpse of him. Alfaro ushered J.J. and Quinn inside, through a tasteful entryway with white columns supporting the ceiling. A wall of glass overlooked the river, a flow of lava under the sunset. J.J. shivered. He could almost feel the rumble underfoot as the temple door sealed shut behind him and his brother, trapping them under the mountain as the lava bubbled up from the island’s core…Seth… “You coming, player?” 112 J.J. turned. His feet had carried him over to the window. Quinn’s expression was quizzical. J.J. forced a smile he didn’t feel. “Yeah,” he said. “Right behind you.” Following Quinn, he slunk through an arched doorway into a living room separated from a galley kitchen by a granite-topped bar. Kids were sitting on sofas, swaying to music in front of the hearth, sipping soda from plastic cups in the kitchen. (No keg. Marshall would have vetoed that.) Most of them were cheerleaders and ballplayers, some the kids in Seth and J.J.’s Honors classes: faces J.J. knew, names he hadn’t learned. Why form attachments to people who could never really know you, who you would eventually have to leave behind for good? Some names he did know. Serena Jensen and Zoe Campbell were chatting animatedly with a pretty little Asian girl (Yena – J.J. could remember that one; she was Bryan-Billy-Brady-Whoever’s prom date) at the bar. A little bushy-haired werekin boy everybody called Squirrel was sitting on the counter, chattering away with some of the younger ballplayers. Ozzie Harris was deep in sober discussion with some stoner types over by the stereo, probably debating which had more soul, punk or folk. There were new faces, too, kids whose blood called to J.J.’s – Quinn and Alfaro’s new neighbors in Haven Heights, recent transplants from the worldwide Underground. None of them were glamoured. And the strangest part was, the Castle kids didn’t seem put off. They seemed fascinated, though they couldn’t have known by what. “What’s-His-Face didn’t come?” J.J. said. “I assume you mean Cam Foss,” Alfaro said, “and I doubt he’ll be poking up out of his hole anytime soon. Not just because of you,” he put in, quickly, seeing the sideways glance Quinn had thrown J.J. “His little stunt in the cafeteria backfired. Nobody’s too happy about him quitting the team when we’ve finally got a chance to win state, and whatever else they might think, everybody likes Seth and Marshall. Foss didn’t even come to school today. Now, come on. The real party’s this way.” Alfaro jerked his thumb at a staircase spiraling up from a corner of the living room. It let out into a spacious loft bedroom with black-and-chrome furniture. Marshall’s core group was assembled there, around a flatscreen TV. Seth was sitting on the floor by the bed, leaning back against Marshall’s legs, wielding a controller for some high-tech game console. Whitney Townsend sat beside him, her legs sticking straight out from under her corduroy skirt. They were racing virtual cars on a virtual racetrack. 113 “She’s good,” J.J. commented, after a minute. The corner of Quinn’s mouth drew down. “You think a girl can’t play videogames?” “I didn’t think girls could drive,” J.J. said. He probably would have gotten smacked for that, but Seth had heard his voice and twisted around. The smile froze on his face. J.J.’s heart did a painful backwards skip. Seth always looked so young, with that insane blue hair and those flamboyant tattoos. It didn’t matter that they were the same age. J.J.’s instinct had always been to protect his twin. Now that he had met him, seen the essential goodness inside of Seth, he wanted more than that. He wanted to shield him from what was coming. And he couldn’t. I’m sorry. The thought crossed J.J.’s mind before he could catch it, a butterfly floating free of a net. Seth heard it. The light came back on in his golden eyes; he tossed his controller up to Alfaro and bounded over to J.J., squeezing his twin’s neck in a one-armed hug. “I wasn’t sure you guys were gonna make it,” he said. “Quinn had to do her hair,” J.J. said. And did get smacked for that. They played videogames for a while. Then Ozzie broke out his guitar to play slow songs and Quinn wanted to dance, so J.J. left his soda on Marshall’s nightstand and trailed her downstairs. He hadn’t danced much, but LeRoi had seen to it that he knew how; while everyone else stumbled around in slow circles, he took Quinn’s hand in one of his, placed his other on her waist, and stepped effortlessly into a waltz. She closed her eyes, letting him lead. Her head felt right resting against his shoulder. “This is nice,” she said. “Mmm,” J.J. murmured. He was looking at Seth. Having migrated downstairs with Marshall, he was on the couch with his head on Marshall’s knee. Marshall was stroking his hair. Quinn followed J.J.’s gaze. “They look good together, don’t they?” she said. “They look happy.” “Yeah,” J.J. said. “They do.” His voice was softer, throatier, than he meant for it to be. Quinn tipped her head back to look up at him, studying his eyes like she was reading something there. Then, “Come on,” she said, and led him out of the apartment. *** 114 “Where do you suppose they’re going?” Marshall said, dryly, as Quinn pulled J.J. off the dance floor. Seth made a face. Cleo needed to get her divine huntress booty home before Miss Vixen sank her claws any deeper into his twin. It was getting late, and tomorrow was a school day, for those partiers not under house arrest. The Honors kids started to take off first, in twos and threes; soon the crowd was thinning, everybody calling out “bye” and “thanks” and “good luck Saturday” as they went out. Seth stretched. He knew they needed to start the cleanup – Jack would flip if they left his bachelor pad in its current state of post-party disaster – but he was so tired, all he wanted to do was curl up in Marshall’s arms and go to sleep. His training with Xanthe had had the opposite effect from the desired one. Rather than blocking out the dreams, it had made them more vivid. Last night he had woken up on his bedroom floor, thrashing around in his tangled sheets. “Let’s get you to bed,” Marshall said. Seth started to protest, but Marshall scooped him up in his arms. Topher and Gabe glanced their way from the kitchen. Like the true-blue pack brothers they were, they had already started gathering up plastic cups and potato chip bags. Alfaro was toting three bulging garbage bags out the front door for a dumpster run. “Is Philly all right?” Gabe called out. “His headache is coming back,” Marshall said. Migraine. Seth’s excuse for missing school that day and the next. “You’re getting better at that,” he observed, as Marshall carried him up the stairs. “Better at what?” “Lying,” Seth said. “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Marshall said. He laid Seth down on his bed, fussed the covers up around his chin. Seth yawned. He was fighting sleep, but there was something he had been dying to ask all evening. “Marshall, what did you take from the infirmary today?” “You mean this?” Reaching into the pocket of his letterman’s jacket, which was hooked over the bedpost, Marshall produced a syringe – the one Seth had seen him pocket in his lab coat that afternoon. “It’s strengthening potion,” he said. “Or it was. It’s all gone now.” “Self-medicating for the big game, are we, Indiana?” Marshall rolled his eyes. “I took it to give to Connor. Aphrodisia told me to. Ask her, if you want.” “I trust you.” Seth took the empty syringe from Marshall. A few chartreuse droplets clung to the inside of the glass bowl. The syringe 115 reminded him of something. He was just too tired to remember what. “I didn’t know you gave potion by injection,” he said. “You don’t really need to, to werekin. But human anatomy and werekin anatomy differ in important ways. This is something Aphi and I are working on, for treating humans.” Seth handed the syringe to him. Marshall laid it on the nightstand and kissed Seth’s cheek. “Go to sleep. I’ll be up later.” “Promise?” Seth said. Marshall’s lips brushed his ear. “I promise,” he whispered. Seth snuggled deeper under the covers. Already slipping under, he did not see Marshall stash J.J.’s soda cup in his desk drawer before he went out, closing the door behind him. *** Along the bank, the river was clogged with dead limbs girdled by a flotsam of leaves and trash. Quinn led J.J. down to the water’s edge via a concrete staircase from the paved walking path above, where people jogged and biked during the day. No one was around this late. Above them, lights twinkled like stars in the high-rise office buildings. Near the Kentucky shore, a tugboat pushed a coal-laden barge beneath a stone bridge spanning the dark water. Clouds had filled in, smoke across the fiery orange moon. A few lines of poetry came back to J.J. – Yeats, he thought, though he wouldn’t have sworn to it: For wisdom is the property of the dead, a something incompatible with life; and power, like everything that has the stain of blood, a property of the living; but no stain can come upon the visage of the moon when it has looked in glory from a cloud. “Do you want to talk about it?” Quinn asked. J.J. kicked a beer bottle out of his path. The only asphalt down here was the floodwall rising beside them like a concrete wave; his boots crunched over flat stones, pushing them down into the sandy bank. “Talk about what?” “Whatever has been on your mind all evening.” J.J. sighed. He wasn’t used to anybody besides Cleo reading his moods so well. He leaned back against the wooden pylon of one of the fishing piers that stretched out into the river. Brown waves lapped gently at its base. “You were at the school the night Seth and I joined with our Totems,” he said. “Did you see what happened?” Quinn nodded. She was standing in front of J.J., the wind blowing her dress against her body. “It was the most incredible thing I’d ever 116 seen. These two jaguars made entirely of light just falling from the sky and burning all of those hunters to ash, and you and Seth just standing there, right in the center of this inferno, like you had fallen from the stars.” She shivered, hugging her elbows, a reminder that she did feel the cold. J.J. draped his leather jacket around her shoulders. “I had never felt power like that,” he said. “When Seth spoke to the Ark, and it opened, and LeRoi’s captive werekin at Fort King were freed from their collars – for that instant, it was like I knew how it must feel to be a god. To know everything, to see everything, but to be removed from everything, like none of it was really happening to me.” Quinn looked up at him. “This has something to do with those pages of music they found at the cemetery,” she said, “doesn’t it?” “It isn’t music,” J.J. said. “It’s a spell. Seth can translate it, but only the Black Swan’s voice can give it power.” J.J. turned then, looking out across the water. The barge had made it past the bridge; the river was empty again, and black, like the river in the jungle of his dreams. When he spoke, his voice sounded far-away. “I thought it was strange that LeRoi risked kidnapping Will McLain that night. If she hadn’t done that, Dre would never have seen her, and he and Leigh wouldn’t have rounded up all of you to come to our rescue at the school. Ultimately that cost LeRoi the battle. Ben called it a tactical error, but Ursula LeRoi does not make tactical errors.” He paused. Quinn stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on. Trusting that he had a reason for telling her all of this. J.J. supposed there must have been one. He had a reason for everything he did. “When Seth and I joined with our Totems, we could see what was happening at Fort King. I saw McLain strapped to the Source, and the glyphs carved into it glowing like they had just been branded. I asked him about it later. He thinks LeRoi just wanted him there to have a front row seat to seeing the soldiers under his command die, but he also said he could feel part of himself draining away when the Source began to glow. He chalked it up to blood loss. Derek Childers gave him a hell of a beating that night.” “But you know better,” Quinn said. She had come up behind J.J. He could see her shadow beside his as the moon rose higher over the river. “The Source is designed to operate only with the Black Swan’s blood. McLain isn’t werekin, but he is the Black Swan’s brother. Their human blood is the same,” J.J. said. “It was enough to operate the Source – not fully, that would have been like dropping a nuclear bomb on the city, but LeRoi didn’t need its full power to take back the Ark. 117 “What the Source is meant to do is open the stargate. When the Black Swan’s blood completes the Ark, the ship the Totems left for us on Lemuria will rise. When the Black Swan is chained to the Source, it will draw on her life-force, just like a collar would. It will drain her, just like a collar would. And as she dies, she will sing a song, a spell, set to music, that will call down her Totem. Their energies will fuse, and that will give the Source enough power to rend a hole through the fabric of space and time. If that power isn’t channeled somehow, there won’t be anything left. Nothing on Earth, nothing that isn’t already onboard that ship, will survive.” The White Swan had seen this. It was why she had sacrificed herself and all of her kindred to sink Lemuria beneath the seas. McLain didn’t know. He didn’t have the clearance, and Burke wanted it kept that way. If McLain had known what raising Lemuria would really mean, he would have hidden his sister somewhere no one could ever find her. Ben and the other Commanders knew. The Alpha Clan knew. Elijah Bishop had known. Ursula LeRoi knew. J.J. knew. Now Seth, and Quinn. That was it. A dozen souls on the planet knew the blood of a twelveyear-old girl could destroy it. This is how it ends. Arms slid around J.J. from behind. “Us,” Quinn said. J.J. glanced back at her. “What?” “You said ‘us.’ The ship the Totems left for ‘us’ on Lemuria. But I’m not one of you. I’m not werekin.” J.J. turned around. Quinn kept her arms around his waist; he lifted his hands to her face and cupped it in his palms, using his thumbs to trace the pattern of freckles on her cheekbones. “I told you,” he said. “I’m human too.” “Prove it,” Quinn said. Her mouth was very close to his. Too close. She smelled like honey and vanilla and she was warm and soft like some kind of rare, exotic flower, and standing there with the moon pulling on the magic in his blood like the tide being pulled out to sea, there was no fighting it anymore. J.J. closed his eyes, and kissed her. J.J. had never kissed a girl before. Not a lot of romantic prospects in a government-controlled laboratory, and the one girl he had wanted to kiss, he would have been put to death for kissing. But J.J. was a warrior, trained to listen to his instincts, so he didn’t think too much about it; he just slid his hands around to the back of Quinn’s neck, unfastening the barrette that secured her braids as he tasted her lips with his. Quinn made a sound of surprise in the back of her throat. J.J. spun her around, trapping her against the wooden pylon. He had never 118 appreciated just how petite she was, swallowed up by his jacket, which he slid down her arms and tossed into the sand. He was trying to go slow, to be gentle, but Quinn grabbed the hem of his shirt and ripped it free of his jeans, up his arms, over his head. Her fingers buried in his hair. She was kissing him fiercely, and J.J. responded in kind: picked her up, swung them around so his back was against the post, her legs around his waist. Heat. He was nothing but heat, and electricity, everywhere her skin touched his. He couldn’t kiss her deeply enough. He pushed off the post – Quinn gasped, but they didn’t fall, they sank, gracefully, J.J. on top, laying her back on top of his jacket, near enough to the shallows little waves broke over their feet. Quinn’s dress was rucked up around her hips. J.J. ran his scarred hands up the smooth, freckled skin of her thighs; she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over the blood pounding in his veins. He couldn’t think, and he didn’t want to think. He was tired, tired of never wanting anything for himself, of never letting himself feel anything, of always being in control, the soldier, the chess master… Quinn’s hands pressed against his chest. Her skin was hot and flushed, blood close to the surface. J.J. had a sudden, vicious desire to rend that skin with his teeth, to lap up the blood as it spilled from her veins – He jerked back. Quinn was staring up at him, deathly pale. Her hair, free of its braids, wreathed her face like flame. J.J. staggered away from her, over to the pylon. He was sick. Dizzy. He hit the ground on his knees, not even feeling the rocks digging into his skin, his chest hitching up and down. The fever had faded; he was shaking, ice-cold inside and out. “I’m sorry,” he said, into his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m – ” “J.J., it’s okay.” Quinn knelt in front of him. J.J. flinched away. The button on his jeans was undone. “We both got carried away. I should have said stop sooner…” “No.” J.J. shook his head. He couldn’t look at her. He looked at the water swirling in eddies around them, soaking his jeans, the hem of her torn dress. It seemed impossible that he could still hear traffic crossing the bridge. “You don’t know what I’m like. You don’t know – the things I’ve done – ” “I do know you.” Quinn’s tone was firm. “You’re not that guy, J.J. I wouldn’t go for a walk in the middle of the night with that guy. I’m not stupid. Something is going on with you right now, I don’t know what it is, but look at you, my God, baby, you’re shaking – ” 119 Quinn reached for him. So, so much J.J. wanted to fold into her arms; he couldn’t remember a time he had ever needed comfort so desperately. But he didn’t deserve it. He looked up at Quinn, and all he could see was her lying underneath him, asking him to stop, panicking because he didn’t, because he didn’t even really seem to hear her. And it hadn’t even been her face he had seen, that had stopped him. It had been Cleo’s, bruised, bloodied, resting in the Arena’s bloodsoaked sand with the sun reflecting off her silvery eyes as he raised the dagger over his head to drive into her heart. You’re nothing but an animal, she had spit at him. You’re nothing but an animal, J.J. Sullivan, and I hate you. “No.” J.J. pushed Quinn away, not roughly, but swiftly. She fell back in the shallows. He didn’t look back to see if she tried to follow him; he just ran, along the shore, his spine stretched out as his four paws hit the ground, carrying him off into the night. Quinn did call after him, she did chase him, but the black jaguar never slowed. Watching them from the shadows of the pier, the boy hidden there smiled to himself. Gotcha. 120 Chapter Ten: Elders The Burkes lived in the largest house in Fairfax, on one of the gentle hills that swelled up from the flat farm ground, down a lane even longer, narrower, and more winding than the one that led back to Regent’s. The house, a mansion really, had been empty for decades before General Burke bought it and fixed it up three years ago, when he had moved here with his son from New Mexico. So Jack told Seth as he slingshot the Beamer around yet another treelined curve. “I should impress upon you how rare this invitation is,” Jack said. “David Burke is a notoriously private man. A lot of deep pockets in this town have never forgiven him for buying up this ‘historic landmark’ and not even throwing a decent dinner party so they could gawk at it.” “You should ask him to host a Steward campaign fundraiser,” Seth said. “Charge a thousand bucks a plate.” “Something tells me I will not have David Burke’s vote come November.” Jack braked, inside a circular drive centered by a plashing fountain. Seth stared out his window at the dark stone house. Ivy choked the walls; white star flowers hugged the foundation, spilled out of vases along the columned portico, their perfume a white haze in the morning air. The Gothic windows blocked the light without reflecting it, like lidless eyes. The house should have been beautiful, but wasn’t. It was as cold and remote as a mausoleum. “You’re sure you’re all right with this?” Jack asked, as though reading his thoughts. “Yeah. Fine.” Flashing a smile, Seth grabbed his backpack off the seat. Seth climbed out. Jack waved as he pulled away. The mansion’s front doors were oak, carved with shooting stars. As the Beamer drove off, Seth raised a hand to lift the silver knocker, but the door opened, and there was Connor. “Hola, Philly,” he said. “Mi casa es su casa.” “Gracias,” Seth said. Connor wheeled back, motioning him inside. Seth looked around. The floors were silver-veined marble, and echoey. A marble staircase flowed up from the foyer, branching into two streams at a landing beneath a stained-glass window made of checkered red-and-black panes. A design of shooting stars was painted on the glass. “Like your school,” Seth said, looking at the pattern the alternating squares cast on the marble walls. “The LeRois founded Sacred Heart Academy,” Connor explained. “This house used to be theirs.” 121 Seth was so taken aback he stumbled. “This used to be Ursula LeRoi’s house?” “Try to resist the impulse to burn it down,” Connor said lightly. “Come on, I’ll show you my room.” Seth followed him as he wheeled down the hallway, past a long oval mirror that captured their reflections. Seth was in jeans and a T-shirt. Connor was dressed even more casually, in holey sweatpants and a Warriors hoodie. At the end of the hall, in front of a bay window with a view of an English garden, he pressed the button for an elevator. Seth was impressed. “Your house has an elevator?” “My father does love to spend money. Guess we’re putting it to good use now.” Seth couldn’t tell if he had imagined the sourness in Connor’s voice; the doors had opened, and he had wheeled inside. Seth stepped in after him. Connor’s room was wicked. He had the entire basement to himself. It was tricked out with black velvet wall hangings, electric-blue rugs, and funky neon-colored floor lamps. There were vintage pinball games; a TV that took up one whole wall; cube-style shelves of books bolted above a jumbo-sized waterbed; fully-stocked mini-fridge…Around a Mensa membership certificate, science fair ribbons from schools in Connecticut and Texas and Indiana created a collage across a giant bulletin board. A chrome desk beneath it boasted computer equipment Dre Alfaro would have drooled over. Connor supplied Seth with Oreos and Mountain Dew, and they wasted an hour zapping aliens on his Xbox, talking basketball and girls (and guys, as Connor didn’t seem to have a preference) and colleges. Connor’s plans on that front were still vague. He wanted to travel, he said. See the world. It was the rare golden boy who could be so blasé about The Future. Finally they got down to business. Seth dumped his backpack out on the desk. Connor parked his wheelchair beside him, fingers knit under his chin. His long tawny hair had dried in waves from his shower. “What am I looking at?” he asked. “These are glyphs.” Seth placed the tip of his index finger on the parchment page, which crinkled though it wasn’t creased. Connor’s hazel eyes glittered like chips of gold. “Is it a song?” “That’s what I’m about to find out. In general, though, we think it’s a spell.” “For what?” 122 Seth hesitated. Yesterday, he wouldn’t have. Yesterday, he had forgotten something he had woken up this morning remembering. He trusted J.J. And J.J. did not trust Connor. “We’re not sure,” he lied. Connor nodded. He would have had no reason to question Seth, yet Seth had almost been ready for him to. “The Commanders think these pages probably came from Mt. Hokulani, some of the ancient Lemurian texts Bishop and LeRoi recovered along with the Ark. But they were never catalogued in Chimera’s databases, so it’s possible the Tortoise Clan gave them to Bishop and he never shared them with anyone else.” “How do you read them?” “It’s like you try not to read them. You just look at them, until they start to make sense.” Seth shrugged at Connor’s expression. “It’s hard to explain. Just watch.” Settling more comfortably in his chair, he moved his eyes across the page, bottom to top, right to left, deliberately unfocused. A lesson, like stillness, Regent had taught him. The trick worked. Seth picked up a pencil; as the glyphs began to whisper in his mind, he moved his hand quickly across the page. When he finished, he sat back and stared at what he had written. Connor was leaning forward in his chair. The lights in his bedroom were low; Seth wondered if that was why he seemed so pale. “They’re not words,” he said, softly. “They’re notes. Musical notes.” “It is sheet music,” Seth pointed out. From the corner of his eye, he saw Connor glance at him as though annoyed. But when Seth looked up, Connor was grinning. “Let’s get some lunch,” he said. “I’m starving.” *** The Burkes’ housekeeper, Elke, served them deli-style ham sandwiches and potato chips on the terrace. She was a matronly woman in a starched white apron; looking at her, Seth thought of Naomi, who had kept house for a wealthy family in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood in Philadelphia. He spoke to her in Russian. She responded with the eagerness of one who rarely hears her native tongue. “Did Elke come with you from Texas?” he asked, after she disappeared back inside. “Oh, Elke has been with us forever. My father likes to have someone around to keep an eye on me.” Connor crossed his elbows on the table. He hadn’t touched his food, despite his claim that he was starving. Seth had already packed away both of his sandwiches. 123 The terrace overlooked the garden. The furniture was stone, weathered like it had been built about the same time as the house, a century ago. The whole scene felt out of place for Fairfax, land of strip malls and chain restaurants: the pond with the stone bridge, the flowerlined walkways, the gargoyles on the roof. It reminded Seth, not pleasantly, of the courtyard of Ursula LeRoi’s other home, the estate where she had ordered J.J. to kill their father. “Are you coming to the game Saturday?” he asked, to steer his mind into less painful waters. “I am,” Connor said. “But listen, Seth, I…I wanted you to come here today because I haven’t been completely honest with you. I knew about werekin before I met you.” He paused for a reaction. Seth didn’t have much of one. He had long felt Connor had acclimated to the aliens-among-us stuff far too readily. “Your father told you?” “No. My father never wanted me to know Project Ark existed. He made my mother swear not to tell me. But she did anyway.” “Your mother wasn’t werekin, was she?” Nothing would have surprised Seth at this point, yet Connor seemed almost bemused by the question. “Both of my parents are fully human,” he said. “I was raised by my mother back East, before I went to live with my father in Texas.” “Yeah, I remember you saying that,” Seth said, unsure where this was going. Connor was tracing the beads of condensation on the outside of his glass, reluctant to meet his gaze. The gray crescents under his eyes were tinged pink. “Connie, if you need to go rest – ” “I have to show you something.” Abruptly, Connor wheeled away from the table. Seth, after a moment, slunk after him into the garden. The floral perfume was even headier under the trees, cloying in its sweetness, like funeral flowers. Connor rolled across the bridge and turned down a narrow path crowded by thorny bushes. Seth had to stop to free his jeans from a snag. When he caught up to him again, Connor had stopped, outside a stone cottage with windows grimed from disuse. The windows were stained glass, checkered red and black, etched with a design of silver stars. “There should be a key,” Connor said. “On top of the doorframe. Can you…?” “Yeah. Of course.” Seth stretched up on tiptoe. Above the round wooden door, his hand closed around something small, but weighty. He took it down. It was an old-fashioned brass key. Connor fit it into the lock, and the door creaked open on rusted hinges. 124 The air was cool and musty. Seth blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Once this had probably been a guesthouse. A round wooden table with two spindled chairs stood before a plain stone hearth. There was a stand in the corner, beside a wooden screen, holding a chipped washbasin, and a brass-framed oval mirror with wavy glass on the wall. Four indentations in the floor underneath the window marked where a bed had been. Flanking the hearth were tall bookcases, empty of books. The floor in front of one was scored like something heavy had been drug across it. “There.” Connor pointed at the wall. “This is what I wanted to show you.” Seth walked over. Hanging there was a framed black-and-white portrait of two men, obviously from the previous century. They wore dark suits, posed stiffly with their hands behind their backs in front of the stained-glass window in the Burkes’ foyer. “The founding fathers of Fairfax, Indiana.” Connor had rolled up to Seth. “This is Abraham Bishop,” he pointed to the shorter man, who had a freckled face and kindly blue eyes behind square spectacles, “and this is Maxim LeRoi.” Cold gray eyes stared down flatly at Seth. He shuddered. Underneath the stink of mildew was a sharper, chemical scent he couldn’t place. Connor folded his hands. “Seth, didn’t you ever wonder why Chimera Enterprises brought the Ark to Fairfax?” “Not especially,” Seth shrugged. “I just figured they were looking for the last place on Earth anybody would expect to find alien technology.” “Chimera Enterprises was born here. It started with the discovery of an ancient Lemurian text in an Indian burial mound out where Fort King is now. The Cahokia nation once occupied what is now Fairfax. They were one of the oldest Indian tribes on record, wiped out long before the Europeans came to these shores. Archaeologists have found Mayan and Aztec artifacts in their burial mounds, suggesting they had trade routes clear from the Ohio River to the Amazon. Abraham Bishop came to Fairfax to study what was found, and it eventually led him to the Amazon, to the Tortoise Clan, on an expedition Maxim LeRoi, the wealthiest man in Fairfax, funded. Bishop and LeRoi were looking for the werekin homeland half a century before their son and daughter found it.” “Why are you telling me this?” Seth asked. His mouth was dry. Connor’s eyes were hard and bright. He did not look like the carefree boy Seth had just been playing videogames with. 125 “I’m telling you this because you have a right to know the truth,” Connor said. “And because I’m tired of keeping secrets for my father. I’m telling you this because Ursula LeRoi is my mother.” Seth was speechless. Literally. His mouth moved. No words came out. Connor tapped his wrists hard on the arms of his chair. His lashes had lowered onto his cheekbones. With a sickening twist in his gut, Seth knew where he had seen those perfectly sculpted features before. “My parents met after Mt. Hokulani was discovered,” Connor said, quietly. “My father was just a young officer then. He wasn’t in charge of Project Ark. Your grandfather, Michael Shepherd, was. My father was assigned to guard the Ark at Fort King, and he and my mother fell in love. They never married, though, and not long after I was born, they split up. “They had been on the rocks for a while. They’re both stubborn people, and the longer Project Ark went without producing a Black Swan, the more desperate my mother became to raise Lemuria, and the more convinced my father became that the werekin posed an unacceptable threat to humankind. When he found out about the Ovid Experiment, that was the last straw. He left. Went back to Washington, started working to have Project Ark shut down.” “But you told J.J. you don’t want to be like your father,” Seth blurted out. “You’d rather be like your mother?” “Seth.” Connor raised his head. His expression was twisted. “Do you know what my father wants to do to your kindred? Do you know what his solution to the ‘werekin problem’ was going to be?” “Eden,” Seth said, tonelessly. Do you think your military buddies are just going to hand the power of the gods over to an alien race? They’ll exterminate all of us. They even have a code name for that. Eden. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that walketh upon the earth,” Connor quoted. From having been dragged to Mass by Naomi every Sunday of his childhood, Seth recognized the creation story from Genesis. “Seth, my father wants you dead. All of you. He may pretend to be on your kindred’s side, but that’s just to keep you appeased while he finds an excuse to do away with you.” “And your mother? What does she want?” Seth knew he was being harsh. He couldn’t help it. He felt like he was about to choke on the dusty air. “Power,” Connor said. “She wants power. It’s the only thing she ever has wanted.” 126 A breeze blew in through the open door, ruffling Connor’s hair. The day had turned warm; sweat shone on his upper lip, on his collarbone above the injection sight, and guilt twanged in Seth’s chest. Connor was on their side. He couldn’t help who his parents were. He took a deep breath. “Did Gideon know who you were, when he…?” Seth gestured at the wheelchair. Connor nodded. His face had set into the granite mask Seth had seen the first night they had met, when Connor had stood up to Cam Foss on his behalf, nearly instigating a courtside brawl. “He knew. My mother was there that night. Did you see her rush to my aid? No.” Connor shook his head. His words were brittle. “I’m not her son anymore. I chose my father over her. In her mind, no crime is greater than disloyalty. “When she told me about Project Ark, she took me to the Arena to see the werekin fight. It was sickening, these smug, pampered humans cheering these spectacular creatures on in a senseless death match. I’d never seen anything so barbaric. I couldn’t be part of that. I told her I was going to live with my father. She warned me that he would prosecute her for treason if he found out what she had told me, so I pretended I didn’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have told him. But…she is my mother…” He trailed off. Seth couldn’t take it. He turned and walked out into the garden. This was too much to process standing still. Once again, he felt he was missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. The forest for the trees. He headed for the bridge, looking up at the gargoyles on the mansion’s roof, the ivy choking the stone – and one piece of that puzzle clicked into place. He had seen this house before. On Regent’s surveillance feeds. Seth turned, scanning the garden. There, and there, hidden in the branches of a weeping willow, visible only to a werecat’s eyes. Cameras. “Do you hate me now?” Connor had rolled onto the bridge. He was looking down at his hands, at the star flower cupped in his palm. Seth leaned back against the railing. “Of course I don’t hate you, Connie.” “You don’t?” Squinting against the sun, Connor looked up at him. Seth shook his head. “Who our parents are doesn’t determine who we are. Look at werekin. Our skin doesn’t depend on our parents’. It depends on our Totems. Each and every one of us gets to choose who we want to be.” “Somehow I don’t think J.J. will agree. He already doesn’t trust me.” Connor tossed the flower into the water. It sank slowly. “J.J. doesn’t not trust you,” Seth said, because it seemed kinder than the truth. “He 127 just thinks you’re hiding something, and you are. J.J. is a telepath. He picks up on that stuff. But if you don’t want me to tell him,” Seth said, “I won’t.” Connor’s expression registered genuine surprise. “Thanks,” he said, softly. Seth nodded. He didn’t like keeping secrets from his twin, but Connor’s secret was a big one. It wasn’t his to tell. “I do need to ask you something, though,” he said. “Anything.” Connor sounded eager. “Do you think your parents could still be working together?” “I would deem it highly unlikely,” Connor said, “since my father just had my mother locked up for the remainder of her natural life.” True. And yet, the cynical part of Seth’s brain reasoned, what else could General Burke have done once LeRoi had attacked a military installation with stolen alien technology? Publicly disavowing her would have been the only way to keep himself out of prison. Like the Partners. But Regent was still working for someone, someone with enough connections on the inside to have learned about Seth’s power over the Ark, someone with the wherewithal to place half of Fairfax under surveillance. And, since teleportation wasn’t one of Regent’s mad weretiger skills, someone with the means to spirit him out of town under the noses of the dozen Marine units McLain had dispatched to scour the city for him. Seth explained this to Connor as they headed back to the house. Elke had cleared their lunch dishes from the terrace, leaving the pitcher of lemonade and two tall glasses. Connor poured himself one. “A lot of the Partners are wealthy and powerful,” he said. “It could be any one of them. Doesn’t J.J. have any idea who it might be?” “No,” Seth said. At least his twin wasn’t sharing, if he did, which was entirely possible. “I do know he has Dre trying to track down some super-secret headquarters of LeRoi’s.” “Track down how? I thought Alfaro pretty well destroyed the electronic equipment in the van.” “J.J. found this ring of Jack’s, that LeRoi used to keep tabs on the Partners. Dre is tracing the transmitter back to its home base. He has to get it working first, though.” Seth’s source on this was Leigh. She had been irked that J.J. hadn’t told her about the ring, as it pertained to Jack, and Jack to her. Connor’s hands were clasped tightly around his glass. The strain of all of this seemed to be wearing him out; his face was gray again, striped with color across his cheeks. “I should call Jack,” Seth said, standing up. He had been sitting on the low wall around the terrace. “Have him pick 128 me up so you can take a nap. Marshall will kick my tail if I end up getting you sick.” “I suppose I should rest a while,” Connor said, softly. Putting his glass down, he wheeled over to Seth and stuck out his hand. Seth clasped it. Connor’s skin was hot and dry. Inside the sleeve of his sweatshirt, his wrist looked bruised. “Seth, I can’t tell you how glad I am we’re friends.” Seth smiled at him. “Me too.” *** Not telling J.J. about Connor’s parentage was a decision Seth second-guessed pretty much from the moment he buckled himself into Jack’s Beamer. By the time they made it back to Castle Estates, he had nearly talked himself out of keeping Connor’s secret, but the dilemma turned out to be moot: When he unlocked the back door, Lydia came rushing at him, white as death. “He’s gone,” she said. Seth froze. “Who’s gone?” “Your brother. He’s gone.” Lydia pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks. Those looked like the same jeans and cashmere sweater she had worn the day before, just a lot more wrinkled now. “He didn’t come home last night. I waited up. I just had this feeling something was wrong. Then Ingrid called this morning and said he didn’t come to school…” “Lydia, take a breath.” Jack moved around Seth, as Seth couldn’t seem to lift his feet to step out of the doorway, and steered Lydia onto one of the tall stools. “J.J. goes off on his own whenever he pleases. You know that. It doesn’t mean anything has happened to him.” His tone was gentle. Lydia looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Jack, the things I said to him – I was so angry, I told him if he couldn’t control himself, he was going to ruin everything – ” “It was an argument. You didn’t mean it.” Jack loosened his tie. His getting-down-to-business mode. Seth was inexplicably relieved. It wasn’t as if Jack could somehow make things better just by being there, yet he felt like he could, like when Ben used to check his closet for hunters when Seth was little. “Did you go to Cleo’s? Call McLain to see if he’s been to the fort?” “I drove to Cleo’s myself. Twice. I broke a window to get in the second time. And Will hasn’t heard from him. He offered to send out a search party, but then David would know…” Lydia’s voice cracked. Jack nodded, to himself. “That’s wise. We shouldn’t involve Operation Swan Song if we don’t have to.” 129 He glanced at Seth, who, during this, had managed to unglue his tennis shoes from the threshold and close the door behind him. “He left the party with Quinn,” he said. Lydia perked up. “Do you have her number?” “In my phone…” Seth dug through his backpack. “Here.” He offered the phone to Lydia. Jack cleared his throat. “Um, Seth, maybe you should call her.” Right, Seth thought. Quinn wouldn’t want to tell their mother if J.J. was shacked up with her. The call seemed to take forever to connect. “Hello?” a sly voice finally said. Seth turned his back on his parents. “O’Shea, it’s Seth.” “Yes, Sullivan, I have caller I.D.” Quinn sounded like she was outside. Probably walking to her car after school. “What’s up?” “Have you seen J.J.?” A pause. Brief. Telling. “Not since last night. Why?” “Last night,” Seth pressed, “or this morning?” “Please tell me you are not calling to ask if I had sex with your brother.” Before she could hang up on him, Seth said, “J.J. didn’t come home last night, and no one has heard from him.” Quinn breathed out audibly. Seth went back out on the porch, shutting the door behind him. Lydia had started crying again. His mother’s distress on top of his twin’s disappearance was more than Seth could take. He wouldn’t just leave, he thought. He wouldn’t not say goodbye. “Quinn, if you know something – ” “He ran off.” A car door slammed, and an engine rumbled. “We went for a walk, we had a – fight, and he ran off. I assumed he was going to Cleo’s.” “And you didn’t wonder where he was when he didn’t show up to school today?” “I’m not his babysitter, Sullivan,” Quinn said sharply. “I figured he’d stayed home with you. He was on edge all day yesterday, being separated from you with Regent and Gideon out gunning for you.” “Quinn.” Seth gripped the porch railing. His claws had slid out; he felt them digging into the wood. “You have to tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me.” She swore under her breath. The engine noise died down, like she had pulled off to the side of the road. Seth stared at a spot just above their backyard fence. The place he had heard J.J.’s voice in his mind for 130 the first time, warning him to go back. Seth hadn’t listened. It had nearly been his last mistake. “We made out, okay?” Quinn sounded like she would rather have been prying her toenails off than telling this to Seth. “He got a little rough, I said stop, and I think…I think he thought he’d hurt me. He didn’t,” she said, quickly. “I wasn’t even really sure I wanted him to stop. I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept saying he was sorry, that I didn’t really know what he was like, and then he ran away.” “Where?” Seth couldn’t keep the hiss out of his voice. He wasn’t angry with Quinn. He was scared, for J.J. He hadn’t heard his twin’s voice in his head all day. He told himself he would know if J.J. was dead. “Where did this happen?” A minute later, when Seth opened the back door, Leigh was sitting at the island patting Lydia’s back. Jack was on his cell phone in the dining room, gesturing with his hands. “Did she know where he was?” Lydia asked, shakily. “No. But she last saw him down at the river. They argued – ” Lydia, Seth had decided, did not need the gory details “ – and J.J. ran off. I’m going down there to start looking for him.” “What about Poe?” Leigh said. “What about her?” “Well, J.J. did program her to be the psychic warlock kitty,” she pointed out. “Can’t she locate him?” “Great idea,” Seth said. “Why don’t you go ask her?” Leigh glared at him. She didn’t say anything, though, as Jack chose that moment to stalk back into the kitchen. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. “I just spoke to Agathon. Xanthe is going to try to locate – ” Lydia screamed. The basement door had just opened, and a figure had appeared. J.J. looked up. He was sleep-rumpled, in a white T-shirt and black boxers. Dried mud flaked off his feet onto the linoleum. Lydia flew at him, and would have knocked him back down the steps had J.J. not seized the doorframe with both hands. “Jesus, woman,” he gasped. “What the f- ” “Jeremy Sullivan! Where in the world have you been?” Lydia cupped his face in her hands. J.J. was still blinking sleep out of his eyes. “What do you mean where have I been?” He ducked away from her, slinking like a cat when it senses danger and is about to bolt. “I’ve been in my room. Asleep.” 131 Leigh stood up, hands on hips. “The basement is not your room, J.J. It’s a basement. Have we or have we not talked about this?” “Oh.” J.J. looked honestly chagrined. “I forgot. Sorry.” Lydia’s eyes narrowed. Apparently, sorry was the wrong thing to say. Jack seemed to be caught betwixt amusement and exasperation. “You didn’t check the basement?” “No, I did not check the basement!” Lydia whirled on her ex, unkempt curls flying. “I told you I was up all night! He never came home!” “I came home,” J.J. said. “This morning. No one was here.” He stretched, yawned, and slunk over to the fridge. Lydia stared at him. Her cheeks were now rouged with scarlet spots. Seth couldn’t decide if he was relieved to see his twin alive, or ticked at his devil-maycare attitude. Couldn’t he see their mother was half-sick with worry? Didn’t he care? He closed the fridge with a sigh. “I’m hungry. Can we order Chinese?” “J.J. Sullivan.” Lydia was breathing hard. Leigh edged closer to Seth. Captain Hook and Poe had already beaten a path down to the basement, through the door J.J. had left ajar. “Where were you all night? Were you with a girl?” Only a flutter of the pulse in J.J.’s neck clued Seth in that his twin wasn’t quite the cool cat he was acting. What’s wrong with you? he wanted to scream. Why won’t you talk to me? “I went for a run, after the party,” J.J. evaded, scratching his ankle with one muddy toe. “I didn’t feel like coming home.” “Oh, I see. You didn’t feel like coming home.” Lydia was using her super-controlled voice. This was not good. “And did you also not feel like going to school?” “No,” J.J. said. “I didn’t.” “Lydia – ” Jack started. Lydia fired a look at him. Stay out of it. “Go to your room.” She raised a hand, pointing up the stairs. J.J.’s eyebrows shot up. Rarely did anything surprise him. “What?” “Go. To. Your. Room.” Lydia bit the words off like each one was an individual strip of leather. “You are grounded, young man.” “You’re not serious.” J.J.’s tone was flat. “Yes, I am. I have had enough of this behavior. Dragging in at all hours, coming and going as you please, never leaving notes, never calling to say where you are. Snapping at all of us over nothing. And then standing there, acting like you’re – like the rules don’t apply to you.” Lydia squared her shoulders. Getting all of that out seemed to have 132 lifted a weight off of them. “Well, I have news for you, Jeremy Jonathan. The rules do apply to you, and as of now, you are going to start following them.” J.J. leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. The edges of his smirk were as hard and sharp as glass. “You’re grounding me,” he said. “You’re seriously grounding me.” “Yes.” Lydia’s voice shook the tiniest bit. “I am.” “From what? From training with Xanthe, so I can use my gift to save the world? From working out over at Cleo’s, so the next time someone tries to kill Seth, I can be there again to save his life? From helping the Commanders decide my kindred’s fate? Because in case you hadn’t noticed, Mom, I don’t play basketball. I don’t have friends. I’m not here to pretend I’m a real live boy. I’m here because I’m needed.” “J.J.,” Seth admonished, softly, too shocked to say anything else. He had never heard J.J. speak to their mother this way, ever. J.J.’s golden eyes flicked to him. Just like when Marshall had called him on the Cam thing, he flushed, and seemed to come back to himself. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I just didn’t sleep well. Bad dreams.” He took a deep breath, rubbing the back of his neck like it was sore. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’ll go upstairs.” Lydia made as if to reach for him. J.J. looked so forlorn, the anger seemed to wash out of her in a single wave. “J.J. – ” “Lydia.” Jack interrupted gently. “Let’s let him get some rest, all right?” The look J.J. threw their step-father was almost grateful. Lydia watched J.J. slink up the stairs, head down, spine arched. When he disappeared at the top, Jack turned her toward him, and Lydia rested her head on his shoulder. For the briefest instant, watching his parents embrace, Seth thought it would all be all right. Then Lydia heard the breath Leigh sucked in, looked up, and saw the accusing look on her daughter’s face. As though she had been awoken from a trance again, she jerked roughly away from Jack, slammed the basement door, and marched out of the kitchen without another word to any of them. 133 Chapter Eleven: Love Potion Number Nine Dre Alfaro almost hopped off the step when Leigh Steward plunked down beside him. “What are you doing tonight?” she asked. “Uh…” Dre blinked. Students were splitting around them, streaming through the main doors of Fairfax High. Dre had flown to the school hours ago, camped out on the steps with his laptop and Jack Steward’s ring, determined that today would be the day he would get this transmitter working. Nanna always had to prod Angelo out of bed, but Dre did his best thinking around sunrise. There was something to that early bird getting the worm saying. He shifted his MacBook onto the step below him, swiping his bangs out of his eyes so he could look at Leigh. As always she belonged in a magazine – crocheted cranberry-red dress, brown boots that zipped up past the knee, auburn curls twisted into a high ponytail. She had taken to wearing the beaded bracelets Zoe made, and today, her earrings were red feathers. Synthetic, but still, it felt like a signal, like he might not have imagined her sidelong glances these last two weeks after all. Dre ducked his head shyly. “I have to work,” he said. “Not anymore you don’t,” Leigh informed him. “I talked to Emery. He’s taking your shift at Re-Spin tonight, and you are coming with me to MoJo’s.” “I am?” Dre said. “Uh-huh. Listening Korn is playing.” Leigh rose. Dre shoved his laptop in his bag and darted after her. Every guy in the hallway turned to stare as she walked by. “Leigh, have you ever heard Listening Korn perform?” Dre asked. “No,” said Leigh. “Why?” “Well, if you tell Ozzie I said this, I’ll deny it to the grave, but they suck.” Leigh grinned. She handed her books to Dre; he held them while she opened her locker, quick-checking her lipstick in the mirror on the inside. Pictures of her friends were taped all over the place. There was one of J.J. and Seth on the Stewards’ brick fence, showing off their curled biceps. One of Marshall holding up a Blue Devils shirt in the gym, before it got destroyed by the Jaguar Totems. Whitney kissing Emery outside of Archie’s Diner. Dre, bent over his laptop in the library. “I don’t remember posing for that,” he said. Leigh shut her locker. Her cheeks were pink. “Well,” she linked her arm through his, “the fact that the band sucks just means our friends need us there for moral support even more. Right?” “I guess,” Dre said. 134 “Terrific. So my mom has this rule about chaperoning, but I’m trying to get a bunch of people to go, so it shouldn’t be totally lame. Did you want to come by my house before and maybe…ride together?” They had reached Mr. Talbot’s classroom. Leigh looked up at Dre with wide green eyes. Was she, Leigh Steward, asking him, Dre Alfaro, on a date? Dre felt color creep up from the collar of his plaid shirt. “Sure I can come by your house. If you want me to…” “Awesome.” Leigh glanced over her shoulder. The classroom was empty; the bell wouldn’t ring for another ten minutes. “Come in here. I wanted to ask you something.” Dre followed her in. The click of the classroom door closing was echoed by a jump of his heart. It seemed very quiet without the hallway noise. Leigh sat down on the edge of her desk. Dre put her books on the one beside it and dropped his backpack on the floor, hooking his thumbs through his suspenders for something to do with his hands. Through the window he could see the parking lot. Ms. McLain was on her cell phone, talking animatedly to someone as she paced. “Where did Ozzie grow up?” “The Liverpool Underground,” Dre answered, with automatic honesty. The question had caught him off-guard. Leigh wasn’t thinking of dating Ozzie, was she? He had a girlfriend. Chelsea Stone, the drummer in his band. “He didn’t come to Fairfax until two years ago, when the Resistance made him a Commander. Why?” “I was just – thinking.” Leigh twisted one of the curls that had come loose from her ponytail. “Are there lots of werekin overseas?” “Oh yeah.” Dre bobbed his head. “There are werekin all over the world. Chimera Enterprises has Partners in every developed nation. China. Japan. Russia. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Europe. Look, I can show you…” He dug his laptop out and opened it on Leigh’s desk. She leaned in to see. “There.” Dre pecked two-fingered on the keyboard. “These are the addresses I pulled off LeRoi’s PDA when I cracked the encryption a few weeks ago. The same time I found the Source in the Amazon.” “Nice work, by the way,” Leigh said. “Thank you. Anyway, McLain’s men have raided all of these, but there could be dozens more out there we don’t know anything about.” Leigh’s pupils reflected back the addresses scrolling across the screen, Shanghai to Istanbul. “It just seems so hopeless,” she said. “How can you destroy something this huge? It’s like a dragon, or something.” She blushed, but Dre, finding the analogy apt, nodded. “In most stories, to kill the dragon you have to cut out its heart,” he said. 135 “Do you think Ursula LeRoi is Chimera’s heart?” When Leigh asked things like that, it was proof she was more substance than style. Dre hesitated. He probably knew more about the inner workings of Chimera Enterprises than just about anyone, from all the files he had decrypted for McLain. Dre only had to look at something once to remember it forever. Angelo said his brain was the planet’s tiniest super-computer. “No,” he said, after a moment. “I think someone else is still running things.” “I think so, too.” Leigh put her hand on Dre’s shoulder. All he would have had to do was tilt his head, and his eyelashes would have brushed hers. “It would be safer for you all to leave Earth, wouldn’t it?” “Yes,” Dre admitted. “Then – and please don’t take this the wrong way,” Leigh said, “but why don’t you?” “I guess…” Dre paused, to find the words he wanted. “I guess because we have reasons to stay,” he said. Leigh lowered her eyes. “Oh.” Dre’s heart beat fast anyway; for birds it was natural, a necessity for flight. He didn’t think his had ever beaten this hard, though. About that time the bell rang, and he turned away to shut down his laptop before Leigh could see the pulse fluttering in his throat. “Did you still want me to come over tonight?” he asked. “Yeah,” Leigh said. Her voice was softer than usual. “If you still want to.” “I’ll be there at seven,” Dre said. *** Baby Bird hopped onto his stool at the Bio table approximately two seconds ahead of the first bell. Nice, Seth mouthed, as Ms. Krughman shot him a look. “I have some bad news,” their substitute announced, addressing them at attention with her hands folded in the small of her back. She still wore her white nurses’ uniform and rubber-soled shoes. “You’ve got to stick your fingers again. Some smarty-pants broke into my office last night and stole your blood type cards.” Several kids groaned. “This is medieval,” Bryce complained, as Ms. Krughman passed out the rectangular cards. “You shouldn’t have to bleed yourself to pass eleventh grade. What would somebody want with blood type cards, anyway?” Seth shrugged, wincing as Yena helpfully stabbed his finger. His mind wasn’t really on Biology. 136 J.J. had stayed locked up in his room all night, so Seth had not been able to tell him that Connor Burke was Ursula LeRoi’s son. By this morning, he was second-guessing his decision to renege on his promise to Connor. Connor was on their side. He had withstood torture for Seth’s kin. He might never walk again because of what Gideon had done to him. What right did Seth have to betray his confidence? No matter what he had said yesterday, he didn’t believe J.J. would ever trust Connor once he knew who he really was. Especially not now. J.J.’s mood had worsened overnight, progressing from snappish to brooding. He hadn’t said a word at breakfast. He hadn’t said a word on the drive to school. In the parking lot, he had walked right by Quinn, and Miss Vixen had looked so hurt Seth couldn’t even be happy on Cleo’s behalf. Marshall had been almost as preoccupied as J.J. He hadn’t called Seth last night, and Seth’s repeated texts had gone unanswered. Then this morning he had made up some excuse about working on a special project with Aphrodisia to get out of going to the concert at MoJo’s. Seth had not been fooled. Marshall was moving back in with his parents, plain and simple. Back where he was not allowed to be Seth’s boyfriend. The only good things that could be said about the day were that (a) it was Friday, (b) Cam did not show up, and (c) it passed quickly. Coach called a team meeting in the cafeteria after last period. No practice tonight; tomorrow was game day. Coach, propping his foot on one of the metal folding chairs, started out by ordering them all to get a good night’s sleep. The mural of the Knights’ mascot behind him had been scrubbed clean of graffiti, but Seth still avoided looking at it as he slouched down between Topher and Alfaro. Marshall had glanced at him when he hadn’t taken the seat next to his. “Here’s the score, princesses,” Coach said. His clipboard was resting on his hairy knee. The fact that they didn’t have a gymnasium anymore hadn’t stopped him from coming to work in running shorts. “I’d say we’ve finally got a decent shot of winning state this year. I know it’s been a tough season, and it hasn’t all gone the way we would have liked, but you ladies have really come together this week. Our first game is against the Montrose Military Institute. Their new captain is good, but Connor Burke and Sacred Heart sent the cadets home last year, and this year we sent Sacred Heart home. So let’s go out there tomorrow and win that sectionals title. Whatta ya say?” “GO KNIGHTS!” the team yelled, in unison. “All right.” Coach waved a hand at them. “In bed by ten. I mean it.” Seth had to wade through the usual post-practice jostling and razzing to get to the door, where Marshall was waiting. They were both wearing 137 Fairfax High Knights T-shirts, though Marshall’s jeans were Abercrombie, Seth’s from Re-Spin. “Did you need a ride home?” Marshall offered. “Or do you have to travel by armored car these days?” His smile was teasing. Seth did not return it. “I’m going to the fort,” he said. “Cool,” Marshall said. “I wanted to check on – I mean, I wanted to see Aphrodisia anyway.” The Lotus was the last car in the lot. They dropped their bags in the back; when Seth turned from closing his door, Marshall cupped his chin, and kissed him. Seth pulled back. “We’re at school,” he said. “Someone could see.” “So?” Marshall said, trying to pull him in again. Seth turned his head away. Marshall sat back and ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up on the side. One of his habits Seth adored, like he adored Marshall’s hands, and his dimple, and his blushes, and his kindness. He stared at the crane swinging above the bombed-out gym, determinedly dry-eyed. Why did Marshall have to do this to them? Seth had already worked out why he wanted to drive him home. He was gathering his nerve to tell him it was over, he had chosen to live by his father’s rules. “So,” Marshall said, after a few minutes of silence. “Do you want to tell me what you’re pissed about, or do I have to guess?” Seth glanced at him sidelong. “Who says I’m pissed?” “Well, usually when I kiss you, you kiss me back, so I’m going out on a limb here and saying I’ve done something to make you mad.” Again, was implied. Being temperamental was part of being a cat, but Seth could see, objectively, how that could get frustrating. He blew out the breath he had been holding in. “Are you moving back in with your parents?” Marshall looked baffled. “Where did you get that idea?” “From you,” Seth said. “You said it was a lot to give up.” “I know I said that, but come on, Philadelphia, do you really think I’d decide something like that without talking to you?” Marshall shook his head. The top was down; the breeze that ruffled his messy hair was laced with a tang of silver powder, carried over from the remains of the gym. “We have to make those kinds of decisions together now.” Seth’s heart swooped a little. “What kinds of decisions?” “Decisions about our future,” Marshall said, simply. Seth stared at him. He didn’t know why – Marshall had told him he loved him, he had overturned his perfect Golden Boy life to be with him. Yet Seth had never understood, until now, that when Marshall looked to The Future, it was their future he saw, not just his. 138 Seth kissed him. Marshall wasn’t expecting it, and murmured in surprise. Undone by that in some way he couldn’t even explain, Seth wrapped his arms around his neck to bring him closer, moving his body against Marshall’s as Marshall’s mouth moved against his. “Don’t start this if you’re going to tell me to stop,” Marshall whispered, brushing back the strands of Seth’s hair that had gotten trapped between their mouths. His hands were shaking. “Not today. I don’t want to stop today. I want you too much.” He looked almost stricken when Seth sat back, but Seth was only reaching around him to start the car. “Then drive fast,” he said, “before Jack gets home.” *** MoJo’s was Leigh’s favorite restaurant. She liked the black-andwhite photos on the exposed brick walls, of Fairfax back when people drove cars that looked like boats and girls wore long skirts with wide belts and blouses with ruffled sleeves. She liked that the wooden booths had been imported from an old London pub and had dates and initials carved into the tops, from couples all the way back to the 1950s. She liked the fire that crackled in the stone hearth year-round, dancing on the liquor bottles lined up behind the polished bar. Eating here had always made her feel grown-up. She could remember ordering a Shirley Temple from the bar and make-believing it was a martini when she was a little girl. The hostess took her coat, and Lydia’s, and Dre pointed to the back room, which was only opened for parties and concerts. “I see McLain,” he said. Leigh smoothed down her crocheted dress. “Let’s go,” she said. They had to fight the crowd to get through the arched doorway. Dre grabbed Leigh’s wrist; he was good at darting through little gaps she wouldn’t even have seen. The music got louder and the lights lower as they pushed closer to the stage. Listening Korn was already into its first set. “You’re right,” Leigh shouted in Dre’s ear. “They are terrible!” She heard him laugh. Ozzie was slamming away on his guitar, backed up by Chaz, on bass, and on drums, a girl with spiky green hair and a lip piercing. An oliveskinned boy with a shaved head was screeching into a microphone on vocals, hopelessly off-key. Leigh glanced behind her. Her mother had stopped to talk to Melody Little at a high-topped table in the corner. Lydia looked utterly out of her element in her gray silk pants suit. 139 Melody, in a denim dress and cowboy boots, looked completely hip. Leigh prayed that would be her at thirty-five. “Where’s your better half, Miss Steward?” Leigh turned around. Will McLain was leaning against one of the carved wooden posts that supported the back room’s ceiling. Colored lights strung across the rafters pulsed in time to the music, candy-colored circles on the hardwood floor. McLain was drinking from a longneck bottle – of nonalcoholic beer. Was he on duty, or just staying sober to keep an eye out for Caroline? He wasn’t in uniform. He was in ripped jeans and a long-sleeved white Tshirt that should have been outlawed for skin that bronze. Caroline was perched on one of the chairs along the wall, talking to Connor Burke, who was wearing his Warriors’ letterman’s jacket despite the back room’s stuffiness. Caroline’s ivory cheeks were flushed with excitement. No wonder, Leigh thought. She was the center of attention for all of the Haven kids, Serena and Zoe and Squirrel and Quinn and Alfaro. Alfaro must have talked Topher and Gabe and Bryce into coming, too. Bryce had his arm around Yena Lee. They were all drinking from bottles like McLain’s. “I wasn’t aware I had a better half,” Leigh said, sidling closer to McLain to be heard over the music. Good God, what was this song? “Fingernails on a Chalkboard”? “Nails in Your Eardrums”? “I meant Whitney,” McLain shouted back. “You two seem pretty close.” Cake and Ice Cream, Marshall had called them as kids. Not so much these days. “She’s with Emery. At Re-Spin.” Leigh rolled her eyes, to let McLain know how juvenile she found Whitney’s crush. He grinned. “So who does a girl have to know to get a drink around here?” “Connor bought us all a round. But I think Dre has you covered.” With his bottle, McLain pointed at the small, dark figure slipping toward them through the crowd. “He’s sweet on you, you know.” Leigh was glad it was too dark for McLain to see her blush. His cheeks were bright as well, as were his eyes. Will McLain had amazing eyes. They were the perfect shade of mocha-brown for his dark hair. “We’re not dating,” she said, quickly. “Why not? He’s a nice kid.” “Maybe I’m not into kids,” Leigh said, testing out those smoldering eyes again. McLain’s mouth twitched. He looked away, onto the dance floor. Quinn had dragged Caroline out there. They were dancing in a big group, laughing, stumbling into one another like they really had been drinking. 140 “Here you go, Leigh.” Dre appeared and pressed a Diet Coke into her hand. The bottle was cold. She sipped gratefully. It was only like a thousand degrees back here. “Hi, Captain. Is Caroline having fun?” “Looks like,” McLain said, mildly. “Any luck getting the transmitter in Jack’s ring to work?” “Oh no.” Before Dre could answer, Leigh shook her head. She had worn her hair down; this caused it to fly around her cheeks. “No work tonight. We are here to have fun. Dre, hold these for us, would you?” Plucking the bottle out of McLain’s hand, she handed their drinks to Dre. McLain protested, but Leigh pulled him into the center of the dance floor, directly in Dre Alfaro’s line of sight, and linked her arms behind his neck. “Are you trying to get me arrested?” McLain growled. “Since when is dancing against the law?” Leigh said, sweetly. McLain didn’t seem to have an answer for that. He set his hands lightly on her waist, holding her farther away from him than was practical in such a press. Sweat dampened the collar of his shirt – gross, on most guys; sexy, on him. Leigh slid a finger under the swan charm he always wore. “Did Caroline give this to you?” “Yes.” McLain cleared his throat. Leigh’s fingertips rested against the pulse point in his throat. She could feel his heart hammering. “For my birthday one year.” “I got Seth a jaguar charm for his birthday,” Leigh said. “I know. He wears it every day.” “I would get J.J. an asshole charm, but they don’t seem to make those.” McLain laughed. Leigh had managed to edge close enough that she felt it vibrate in his chest. She moved her hands down, from his neck onto his shoulders. His skin smelled sweet, like lemons or honey or something. She tried not to stare at his mouth, which was almost as distracting as his eyes, and extremely kissable. “Your mom has been worried about him,” McLain said. It sounded thick, like he was having trouble concentrating, too. They had somehow moved to the edge of the dance floor. The music wasn’t as loud here. Either that or Leigh’s ears were rebelling against the assault. “She said he hasn’t been acting like himself.” “He has been edgy lately. Well,” Leigh sniffed. “Edgier, if you know what I mean.” “Yeah,” McLain said. “I think I do.” His smile was out of focus; Leigh’s head had started to spin. The song wasn’t slow, but she rested her head on McLain’s shoulder anyway. 141 His hands opened on her back. She felt the heat of them through her dress. “When did you know Caroline was werekin?” she asked. “She skinned before she was a year old. My parents helped form the Underground. They knew about werekin, about Lemuria, so they realized immediately what she was.” “The Black Swan,” Leigh murmured. She peeked over McLain’s shoulder. Caroline was sitting with Connor again. She didn’t see anybody else around. Where had Dre gotten to? And why did she care? He had made it, like, so apparent he didn’t intend to ask her out. Irritated with herself, Leigh snuggled closer to McLain. He tensed when her nose bumped his jaw. “They must have been terrified,” she said. “About like when Thomas and Lydia realized your brothers were werejaguars – direct descendants of their Totems. My parents kept Caroline glamoured from then on, hoped LeRoi would never find out about her skin. She had no reason to suspect the Black Swan would be born to my family. My parents were human.” “How did they die?” “Car accident, on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was fourteen. Caroline doesn’t even remember them.” “And that’s when you came to Fairfax, to live with Ms. McLain?” Leigh felt McLain nod. His chin was resting on top of her head. The music seemed far away, like they were on an island somewhere, just the two of them, and the heat was the sun baking off the sand. “Why did you join the Marines?” “To help the Resistance. Aunt Ingrid and Ben Schofield are old friends. I knew him. I respected him. I wanted to help.” “God, that’s so brave.” Leigh looked up at McLain. “I wish I was that brave.” “I think you’re very brave, Miss Steward,” McLain said. His voice was not a boy’s voice. The timber of it was deeper than a boy’s, more resonant. Leigh had never felt so young. She had only been kissed a couple of times – by Bryce Heilsdale, on Valentine’s Day, a short, slobbery make-out session in the movie theater; by Topher Simmons, in a game of spin-the-bottle ninth grade year, just a quick peck on the lips; and by Cam Foss, at her Sweet Sixteen, when he had shoved his nasty tongue down her throat. She was nervous, suddenly, and not at all sure what she was doing here, or what she wanted. “Will,” she whispered. McLain blinked. He seemed surprised to be standing stock-still with her in his arms on the periphery of a crowded dance floor. He let go of her fast. “I – I need some air,” he said; or Leigh thought he did – he was already walking away. She tried to run after him, but he slid effortlessly 142 away into the dancers. He had turned pale, the hectic light shutting off in his eyes. Was he sick? Leigh could smell that weird smell, which she didn’t think was liquor, clinging to her skin, passed from his. But what did she know? Maybe he was drunk. He could have been drinking before she showed up. He was twenty-four. Resignedly, she picked her way back to where she had left Dre. He wasn’t there. After some searching, she finally found him in the hallway outside the bathrooms. Topher was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees, moaning. Somebody on the other side of the door was retching horribly. Leigh unzipped her boots – the heels were stilettos, and her feet were killing her – and yanked them off. “What is going on?” she demanded. Her head felt a hundred times clearer than it had minutes ago. She was mortified at what McLain must be thinking of her right now. Such a silly little girl, freaking out right as he was ready to kiss her… “Something they drank,” Dre said. He had stuffed his newsboy cap in the pocket of his pinstripe trousers. His fringe of bangs was pasted to his forehead with sweat. “Somebody must have spiked their drinks.” “Who is in there?” Leigh wrinkled her nose. The retching had started up again. “Gabe. Bryce already passed out.” Dre nodded at a shape curled into a ball behind a case of pizza sauce near the back door. “Serena and Zoe are taking care of Quinn and Yena in the ladies’ room. They’re both in a pretty bad way.” But Dre seemed fine, and apparently, Serena and Zoe were, also. Leigh thought that was weird. She had seen Seth get tipsy off sips of their mother’s merlot at dinner. Werekin were not immune to drugs or alcohol. “Who’s with Caroline?” “Connor.” Dre seemed determined to answer Leigh’s questions in as few words as possible. “I’ve got this, if you want to go dance some more.” Oh, now he was jealous? After she had dropped like a million hints about prom? “Will got sick, too,” Leigh said, invoking McLain’s first name as though it gave her some purchase on him that she knew it did not. “I should go check on him. And somebody should warn the manager those drinks were tampered with.” “Connor already did,” Dre said, stiffly. “He said they couldn’t have been, and if we didn’t all leave, he was calling the cops on us for underage drinking. Angelo went to get the car.” Crap. They could not have two-thirds of their starting lineup arrested the night before sectionals. Coach would bench them all, and Seth and 143 Marshall, wherever those two lovebirds were, could not win the game by themselves. “I’ll go find Mom,” Leigh said. “Leigh?” “Yeah?” Leigh swung around, hope, or something like it, lifting her heart up against her ribs. Dre looked down at his loafers. “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind.” *** For the love of the stars, what was wrong with him? A sixteen-yearold? He ought to be locked up, McLain thought. He tipped his head back against the alley’s wall. He had made it outside at last, after fighting his way off the dance floor. Across the parking lot, a black van was idling, headlights switched off. McLain shut his eyes. Will McLain had never thought of Leigh Steward as anything other than what she was – a kid. Like Caroline. He could not explain what had happened in there, why his body had been made of heat, pulse pounding, blood boiling. He hadn’t been able to think. He hadn’t wanted to think. Then she had said his name, Will, timidly, and he had wanted to throw up. So far he hadn’t. He had sank down on his knees in the alley, heaved a few times, but nothing had come up. He hadn’t even had a beer tonight, but this awful spinning queasiness was worse than the time the salty old dogs in his unit had bought him a fifth of tequila and dared him to chug it. “There you are.” McLain forced his eyelids up. The world tilted; Lydia Steward grabbed his arm. “Oh no,” she said, amused. “Not you, too. Leigh told me somebody put something in the kids’ drinks.” “Must be high-end stuff,” McLain groaned. “Caroline – ” “Is fine. She’s with Connor. I gave Leigh the keys to bring the Escalade around. We’ll give you a ride home.” Lydia wiped beads of sweat off McLain’s brow with the back of her hand. “A Marine who can’t hold his liquor. I am shocked, Captain.” McLain tried to smile. And moaned. Lydia reached for him, but he pushed her away and ducked into the alley, where he finally coughed up something green and bitter behind the dumpster. “Jesus,” he swore, spitting to clear his mouth. “Do I need to take you to the hospital?” 144 Lydia rested a slim hand on his back. Not many women would have had the grit to kneel over a puking soldier in a filthy alley, especially while wearing a thousand-dollar silk suit. “I’m all right,” McLain said, wryly. He did feel better now. Just weak. “Let’s stand you up, then.” Lydia gripped his arms and guided him back against the wall. He was shaking with cold. “Will, you’re scaring me. You don’t look well.” “I’m sure I smell lovely, too.” “You may have had more attractive moments,” Lydia said. She was smiling. Lifting a hand, McLain tucked a curl behind her ear. Now she shivered. He saw his reflection in her eyes grow larger as she swayed into him. Or was he drawing her in? Somehow his hands had dropped to her shoulders – The door to McLain’s right burst open. Caroline stumbled through it, giggling madly. McLain’s heart twisted. Caroline was so slender and fragile in that sleeveless pink dress she had begged him to let her wear, their mother’s pearl earrings dangling from her earlobes. Still a little girl playing dress-up. “Look, Connie, we found them!” she said, happily, and giggled again, as Lydia hurriedly moved away from McLain. “Oooh! Were you guys kissing?” Connor Burke coughed. He had locked the wheels of his chair in place on the threshold. The hallway behind him was dark, as was the alley, but McLain had the fleeting impression that he was not pleased to see them. Must have been the drugs. Hadn’t Caroline just said ‘we found them’? “What’s going on?” he asked. “We were looking for you,” Connor said, quickly. “It’s a madhouse in there. I couldn’t get my chair out the front, so we decided to try the back way.” “Is that what you decided.” A shadow separated from the end of the bricked-over alley. At first, it seemed too long and too low to be the shadow of a boy. Its eyes shone brightly in the moonless dark. J.J.’s eyes still shone as he stepped into the light. He was wearing black camouflage. The bone handle of a dagger poked out of his combat boot. The katana Regent had forged for Seth was strapped in a baldric across his back. A swan, the symbol of the Resistance, was carved into the thick pewter cuff around his right wrist. McLain thought of the first time he had seen J.J., padding out of the jungle garden on LeRoi’s estate. This is my pet, she had proclaimed, as the black jaguar skinned into a beautiful twelve-year-old boy with leaves caught in his golden curls. My Jeremy. 145 “J.J. Sullivan.” Lydia sounded at her wit’s end. “Do you or do you not recall me grounding you?” “I’m not here for the concert,” J.J. said. Indeed, his wet shirt suggested he had been standing outside in the drizzle for some time. “I’m here because I don’t trust him.” He jerked his chin at Connor. McLain moved between them. J.J. was making him uneasy. He hadn’t seen him since Sunday. The change in him was dramatic. “J.J., Connor is not the enemy.” “Really, McLain?” J.J. glared at him. “You’re not the least bit curious how your drink got spiked? You’re not wondering at all why he was ducking into an alley with the Black Swan, alone?” “I did not spike anybody’s drink.” The door banged shut as Connor rolled out of its path. He whirled his chair around to face J.J. “I bought the drinks from the bar. I didn’t open them.” “Like you don’t have the cash to pay off a bartender,” J.J. sneered. “Fine,” Connor snapped. “Go ask her. And as for what I was doing with Caroline, I was trying to find her brother. You want me to try protecting her in a crowd like that? What was I supposed to do if somebody grabbed her – chase them?” His voice broke. McLain laid a hand on his arm. Poor kid; he was trembling. By rights he should have still been in the infirmary. “Look, I think we all just need to go home and get some sleep,” he said. “And I think you need to wake up already, Captain.” J.J.’s nostrils flared. He smacked a palm against the side of the building. “Damn it, Will, why won’t you listen to me? I am telling you. He. Is. Lying.” There was a hiss in J.J.’s voice. Shadows played across his delicate features, throwing into relief the pale spots on his cheeks. McLain straightened up from Connor. His hand had closed around the brass knuckles he carried in his pocket, tipped with silver spikes. He did not want to use them, but Will McLain had done many things in his young life he had not wanted to do. “And I’m telling you to go home, soldier,” he said, coldly. “We can sort this all out in the morning.” J.J. set his jaw. J.J. recognized an order when he heard it. He was tempted to tell McLain what he could do with his orders, but unlike Seth, J.J. was Alliance. The chain of command did apply to him, and the consequences for disregarding it. “Fine,” he snapped. They didn’t want to listen to him, fine. On their heads be it. Headlights appeared at the mouth of the alley. Leigh tapped the Escalade’s horn. McLain took the handles of Connor’s chair, wheeling him toward the car. When he turned back, the alley was empty, and J.J. was gone. 146 Chapter Twelve: Mind Games Starlight whitened the Arena’s sand to a pearlescent glow. Blood spatters from his last fight were scattered on the sand like bouquets of black flowers. J.J. looked up. Directly overhead, a handful of stars formed an unmistakable shape. A swan. The stands were crowded. Faces leered at him, ghoulish in the dark. J.J. saw Lydia, bloody tears staining her white cheeks, holding onto his father, who was corpse-white, the front of his shirt sticky and wet. Thomas Sullivan’s pale blue eyes were enormously sad. Eerie music wafted from the orchestra pit, where the Alpha Clan swayed together to the music their instruments made. Connor Burke was conducting them. The Ark glowed as he cupped it in one palm. The smile he flashed was sharp, teeth pointed like a shark’s. From the crowd, a slender girl in a long robe of black feathers rose and began to sing. J.J. shouted for her to stop. Glyphs fired on the Arena’s curved walls; the stars overhead burned brighter, a harsh white light that seared J.J.’s eyes as the stargate slowly opened. He looked down. The sand was rising, churning, turning from white to red, and things were rising with it, things dead and rotting: Marshall, wound up in a bloody linen shroud; Dre, heart missing from his torn-open chest; Cleo, flesh charred like paper tossed into a furnace. Her blackened lips moved. “You’re nothing but an animal, J.J. Sullivan…” The song broke apart on its final note. Silver rain fell from the stars. J.J. screamed as his skin blistered. He fought through the sand that tried to suck him down, even as the iron gate at the end of the Arena rattled upward, and a jaguar paced through it toward him. The cat’s paws skimmed the surface of the bloody sand without sinking into it. J.J. held up his hands. The brand on his palm was bleeding. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said. The jaguar’s roar melted into a teenage boy’s brittle laugh. “You might have to someday,” Seth said, “so take this.” *** J.J. woke with his hand wrapped around something. Something that was cutting into his palm. Hissing, he bolted upright, staring down at his mangled hands. He had fallen asleep with the jaguar katana on his nightstand. At some point in the nightmare, he must have grabbed it by the blade. Blood 147 sank into the etchings, black against the steel. Two jaguars, one light, one dark. J.J. had never questioned Seth’s decision to give him this sword. Protecting Seth was all J.J. had ever done. Deep down, though, he had been relieved for Seth to lay down his sword, for purely selfish reasons. I know the future you have seen. Stop it. J.J. spoke the words clearly in his own mind, pressing the heels of his bloodied hands against his eyes. Xanthe had probed his mind countless times for the source of these nightmares – nightmares in which he betrayed his twin, collared him, whipped him, even killed him. He insisted they were only dreams. J.J.’s latent fear that he would lead LeRoi to his twin without meaning to. Then why, J.J. had asked him just yesterday, hadn’t the nightmares stopped once LeRoi was in custody? J.J. wasn’t leading a double life anymore. So why did he keep dreaming about betraying Seth? Fear is a powerful emotion, Xanthe had replied. Only love is more powerful than fear. J.J. made a face no one else was in his bedroom to see. Xanthe’s answers were usually right, but right didn’t always equal satisfying. He cleaned the blood off his sword with his shirt sleeve and returned it to its sheath. The cuts on his hands had already knit back together; a hot shower and a change of clothes later, J.J. was in the kitchen, digging the package of bacon he had hidden behind the goat cheese out of the fridge. No one had been waiting up for him after the concert last night. J.J. had taken the long way home through the woods, stopped in at Cleo’s just to look around, and by the time he had unlocked the back door, his mother and his sister had been in bed. He had looked in on them, like he always did. Seth’s bed had been empty. J.J. had a pretty good idea whose bed was not. Grinning to himself, he folded a slice of bacon into his mouth. “What are you so happy about?” Leigh demanded, yawning as she breezed into the kitchen. Her pajamas were leopard-print. J.J. didn’t know whether to be amused or offended by that. “It’s barely seven o’clock. Aren’t cats supposed to be nocturnal?” “I’m just having a nice morning,” J.J. said. He was. Energy fizzed in his veins. Sucked that he had to go to Seth’s game. Not that he didn’t want Seth to win. It just would have been a beautiful day for a run – cloudless blue sky, soft spring breeze. The spotted owl on McLain’s roof hooted to him through the window. “Did you and Dre have fun last night?” he asked. 148 “For your information, there is no ‘Dre and I,’” Leigh said. “We just rode to the concert together. That does not make us a couple.” “Because you blew it with the prom thing,” J.J. said. He was figuring out the high school dating rules, slowly but surely. Yet Leigh looked offended. “I didn’t blow it, all right? I turned him down. I’m perfectly within my rights to turn a boy down when he asks me out. Something which, if you were a normal big brother, you would be happy about, by the way.” Leigh sniffed. “And besides, I apologized for calling him a freak.” “Did it make you feel better?” Leigh stuck her tongue out at him. She was popped up on her tiptoes, taking a glass down from the cabinet. “What are you eating, anyway?” “Bacon,” J.J. said. “Where did you get – oh my God!” Leigh shrieked. J.J. jumped back from the counter with a hiss. “J.J., you can’t eat raw meat! You’ll get sick!” J.J. started to say he wasn’t eating anything raw. Then he looked down at the pink and white strips swimming in blood on his plate, and his stomach lurched. He hadn’t cooked the bacon. Even worse, it had tasted good. J.J. threw the plate into the sink with a crash. Suddenly he was shaking all over, cramps squeezing his middle. He heard Leigh say his name as he slid to the floor. Go away, he thought; don’t touch me, stay back, go away – “…call the fort.” His mother’s voice penetrated the haze that had clouded J.J.’s mind. He lifted his chin from his chest. Lydia was kneeling over him, the hem of her silk robe tucked between her knees. Something blessedly cool passed across his forehead. A wet rag. “Where are you sick, honey?” All over. He was sick all over. J.J. shut his eyes tight; the dizziness was awful, but after a moment, it passed, and he was able to sit up. “I’m all right,” he managed. “I just got dizzy.” “Mom? It’s Will.” Leigh appeared behind Lydia, holding out the phone. “He wants to know if you need help bringing him in.” “Bringing me in where?” J.J. croaked. Lydia placed a glass of cold water in his hand. The sides were smudged with the green clay mask she hadn’t yet scrubbed off her face. “Fort King,” she said. “I think Aphrodisia needs to have a look at you.” She’s lying. The voice inside J.J.’s mind was soft as a purr. He recognized it instantly. He tensed. 149 She’s lying to you, my pet. They want to collar you again. Make you a slave. They know it’s the only way to control you. J.J. shrank back against the cabinet, eyeing his mother warily. Lydia’s green eyes were wide and clear now, but he had read doubt in them last night, in the alley. She thought he was dangerous. She questioned his motives in wanting LeRoi kept alive. “I’m fine,” he said, more forcefully. “I just haven’t been sleeping, and I felt sick for a minute. But I’m fine now. I don’t want to miss Seth’s game. Please?” Lydia hesitated. Then, “All right,” she sighed. “Leigh, tell Will it was a false alarm.” Leigh sent her eyes skyward and stalked away, back into the living room. Lydia traced the arch of J.J.’s cheekbone with her knuckles. “Are you sure you’re all right, honey? You’re so pale, and your eyes – ” J.J. lowered his gaze. His eyes were his giveaway. “I’m fine,” he said again. “Well…all right. If you’re sure.” Lydia helped him to his feet, satisfied when he finished drinking the glass of water, placed it in the sink beside the bloody plate, and smiled at her, his most charming smile. He waited for her back to be turned to check that the dagger was stowed underneath his shirt. *** In the morning light, Marshall’s face was all planes and angles framed by tousled curls. The black silk sheets stopped at his waist. The muscles in his stomach were hard and flat, the skin across his shoulders dark and smooth. Seth traced the small white scar above his heart with two fingers. Marshall stirred. “Morning,” he murmured, drowsily. “Good morning.” Seth bent over and placed his lips where his fingers had been. A delicious shiver moved down Marshall’s spine. He raked his hands through Seth’s tangled blue hair and dragged his mouth up to his, rolling over on top of him as they kissed. Seth’s hands skimmed down his back, feeling the muscles bunch as Marshall shifted over him. “I vote we stay in bed today,” Marshall murmured. “What do you say?” Seth raised an eyebrow. “What about the game?” “The – ” Marshall sat up fast, looking around for his alarm clock. “Jesus, what time is it?” 150 “Relax. It’s only seven.” Seth sat up as well, circling his arms with his knees. Marshall had begun frantically snatching clothes up off the floor, but even with the tournament looming, Seth was so content he was practically purring. This could be his life now, he thought. Waking up next to Marshall every day, going to sleep beside him every night. You couldn’t ask for more than that. “We don’t need to leave for another halfhour. Sacred Heart is just down the street. Jack was making us breakfast.” One arm through his T-shirt, Marshall spun around. “Jack? Jack was up here? Did he see us?” “Um, yes.” Seth might have been enjoying this just a little bit. Golden Boy discomfiture was cute, especially when Marshall was all sleep-rumpled and pouty-lipped from kissing. “He has seen us sleep in the same bed, you know.” “Yeah, but do you think he knows we…?” Seth leaned back, stretching luxuriously. “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.” Marshall glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Seth smiled innocently. Marshall stuck his other arm through his shirt. “Listen, after the game – ” “After our victory party, you mean,” Seth said. “Of course,” Marshall agreed. Screw Cam Foss. They had this sectionals trophy locked with Alfaro on their side. “So after the victory party, I want you to come to Fort King with me.” “Is this about that special project you and Aphrodisia are working on?” “Oh.” Marshall looked like he had forgotten mentioning that, and possibly wished he hadn’t. “No, this is about something else. Something big Aphrodisia is announcing today. And I’d like for you to be there.” That was all he had to say. “Okay.” Seth scooted off the bed and kissed him, quick. “I love you, Indiana.” Marshall’s smile was more brilliant than the sunrise. “I love you too, Philadelphia.” While Marshall went to shower, Seth padded downstairs in the jeans and shirt he had worn yesterday. His wardrobe didn’t really matter, as he would spend most of the day in his jersey. Jack was just setting two spinach-and-cheese omelets on the counter. He was wearing faded jeans and a Fairfax High Knights sweatshirt with Seth’s number on the back. “Coffee or milk?” he asked. “Milk, please.” Seth sat down at the bar. “Jack, can I ask you something?” “Of course.” Jack put a glass of milk down in front of him. 151 “Do you want to get back together with Mom?” Jack took the question remarkably well, coming as it did at seventhirty on a Saturday morning from the punk alien step-son whose boyfriend was living in his spare room. “I don’t see that happening, Seth,” he said, gently. “No. I know,” Seth said. “I just wondered if you wanted it to.” Jack hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “Lydia and I were never in love. Chimera’s telepaths unraveled her memories and gave her new ones, but even the enchantments they placed on her couldn’t make her love me. Your mother loved Thomas. To me, she was always Tommy’s wife. I married her to protect her, and I tried to be a good husband, but every day of our lives together was as much a lie for me as it was for her. The only honest thing between us was Leigh.” That was sad, Seth thought. “Have you ever been in love?” he asked. “Once. A very long time ago.” “And?” Seth speared the last bite of his omelet. If Marshall didn’t get down here, he was in danger of losing his. “What happened?” “Let’s just say I wasn’t as brave as you,” Jack said, “and he left.” There was no chance for Seth to respond to this, for the apartment door opened, and who should walk in but Cleo. Seth cried out. So did Marshall, at the top of the spiral staircase. For a minute it was all hugs and laughter, like they hadn’t seen one another in weeks. Seth was almost surprised Cleo didn’t look any different. Same skintight jeans and spike-heeled boots. Same razor-cut brown hair and silvery-blue eyes. He snapped the strap of her black tanktop. “You got a tan in the desert,” he teased. “Well, it wasn’t from sunbathing, I can tell you that. Jensen is a slave driver.” Cleo let him hug her again, and laughed. “I missed you too, sweetheart. Has Doc been taking care of you?” “Oh yes,” Seth said. Marshall blushed. “Nothing is wrong, is it?” he asked, leading Cleo over to the couch. Jack had disappeared into his bedroom for his wallet and his keys. “The Source is fine. Still locked up like a drum, but secure. I just came back for a visit.” Cleo glanced at Seth. He was sitting on the arm of the couch beside Marshall. “Is J.J. coming to your game?” “As far as I know,” Seth said. “You want me to call him?” “No,” she said quickly. “I’ll just see him there.” “And to that end,” said Jack, emerging from his bedroom, “we should go. Coach will want you boys there early for warm-ups.” They walked, as it was a gorgeous day and Sacred Heart was a block from the law firm. Marshall explained to Cleo how the tournament would work – a round of semi-final games this morning, to determine which 152 two teams would face off for the sectionals trophy, and a bid to the state championship, that night. Every game was winner-take-all: Losers went home, post-season hopes dashed. Fairfax would be playing Montrose, a private military school just up the river, first. Cleo listened politely, but Seth could tell her mind was elsewhere. Team busses were already lined up outside Sacred Heart’s central dome. Seth and Marshall said their goodbyes to Jack and Cleo and walked around to the gym, duffel bags slung over their shoulders. Suddenly, Marshall stopped. “What?” Seth said, looking where he was looking – at the alley behind the school. “Nothing,” Marshall said. “I just thought I saw someone, but…it couldn’t have been.” “Who?” Seth asked, curiously. “Let’s hope it was your fairy godmother,” someone drawled. Seth let go of Marshall’s hand as he turned around. On the chance his claws slid out, he didn’t want to scratch him. “What do you want, Cam?” Marshall asked it before Seth could. He sounded resigned. Cam Foss leaned back against the gym doors, through which Seth could hear the thump-bump-swish of the other teams warming up. Having foregone his letterman’s jacket, Cam was wearing a plain gray jacket over his jeans. Seth hadn’t seen him since the cafeteria incident on Tuesday, and was only mildly curious how he had come by that stellar black eye. Cam Foss had been pretty low on his list of priorities of late. Cam curled his lips up in his rattlesnake smile. “I just wanted to wish you luck, Townsend. From what I hear, you’re going to need it.” Seth snorted. Cam was so full of himself. “I think we’ll survive without you,” he said. “Come on, Marshall.” He attempted to steer Marshall inside, but Marshall resisted. “Why haven’t you been at school?” Was he actually concerned? For Cam? Seth stared at them both as Cam stood up straight, and shrugged. “My father kept me home for a few days, to let things cool off.” By “things,” Seth figured he meant J.J., who had threatened to bash Cam’s skull in if he ever picked on Marshall and Seth again, but a look passed between Marshall and Cam that suggested something else was going on here. “You could have called me,” Marshall said, quietly. “If it was – bad.” “If what was bad?” Seth demanded. “He thinks I was behind the graffiti,” Cam said, ignoring Seth. “Everybody does. The cops came to my house. Coach pulled all the 153 letters of recommendation he wrote to colleges for me. Shanti dumped me. I hear she’s sniffing around Alfaro to ask her to prom.” “If you say it wasn’t you, I believe you,” Marshall said. His voice had that rough edge of earnestness Seth couldn’t help loving him for. Cam blushed to the roots of his gelled-up hair. “It wasn’t me. But that doesn’t mean I’m interested in being friends with a faggot.” “Cam – ” But Cam was already walking away. Marshall sighed. “What was that about?” Seth wondered aloud. “Nothing. Human stuff.” Marshall yanked open the gym door. “We better go see what’s up.” Seth wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but he found out soon enough. When they walked into the locker room, Gabe was lying on one of the benches with his arm across his stomach, like he was trying not to throw up. Topher was hunched against the wall, wearing oversized sunglasses. Coach was pacing like a caged lion. Alfaro stood beside the sinks, kicking the heel of his Nike against the concrete floor. Marshall dropped his duffel bag. “Okay. What happened?” *** “How bad is it?” Leigh wanted to know, as she slid onto the bleacher between Whitney and Emery. J.J. sat down on the end. The gym was packed, flooding his senses with the human scent of sweat and soap. The bone handle of his dagger was reassuringly cold against his spine. “Bad,” Whitney said. Like Leigh, she was dressed in their school colors, #11 painted on one cheek, for Marshall, #4, for Seth, on the other. “Topher and Gabe are still sick as dogs. Marshall said Coach is furious with them. He doesn’t care if their drinks were spiked, he told them to go home and get some sleep, and instead they went to a party. He threatened to bench them and Alfaro and pull in two replacements from the second string.” “Are they forfeiting?” Leigh tugged anxiously on a curl. Their mother had joined McLain a few rows over. J.J. saw her glance at them. “No. They can’t – they’re done if they forfeit. Coach is putting Angelo at center, Marshall and Seth at guards, and they’re hoping that will make up the difference.” J.J. leaned around Emery. “Why don’t they just ask Quinn to play?” Leigh gave him The Look. “Quinn is a girl, J.J. Boys and girls play for different teams.” “That’s dumb,” J.J. said. “And who says chivalry is dead?” 154 J.J. turned around slowly. Quinn was sitting on the bleacher behind his. She had on athletic pants, a Lady Knights hoodie, and her UA beanie, yet J.J. saw her in the sand, dress rucked up around her thighs. She looked at him coquettishly through coppery lashes. The effects of whatever she had been drugged with last night appeared to have worn off. “Want to buy me a Coke, player?” “You’ll miss tipoff,” Emery protested. The Knights were trotting onto the court. J.J. hadn’t really paid attention to which team they were playing. Some military school. Marshall was shaking hands with their captain, a brown-haired about his height. Quinn stood up. “We won’t be long,” she said. There didn’t seem to be much choice but for J.J. to follow her. The corridors of Sacred Heart Academy were black stone cut by stained-glass windows. At the concession stand, J.J. bought two Cherry Cokes from Yena Lee’s mother, and they walked over to a flight of stone steps that led into the school proper. Quinn sat down on the bottom one. The doors at the top were chained. J.J. padded up and paced in front of them, heel-toe. “I’m going to give you the benefit of a pretty big doubt and assume there’s a reason you haven’t called me,” Quinn said. J.J. sipped through his straw. The soda was too sweet, like syrup, but at least it was cold. “I didn’t know I was supposed to call you,” he said. “Don’t be a jerk, Sullivan.” Quinn pursed her lips in that yes-you’re-cute-but-don’t-think-thatmatters expression she had perfected with him. J.J. smirked. “Okay. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say to you. How’s that?” “Better.” Quinn set her drink down on the step. “What did you want to say to me?” “That I’m sorry, about what I did.” There now, J.J. thought. That hadn’t been so bad. “And what is it you think you did?” At the end of the stair, J.J. pivoted back around. Quinn had her shoulders against the wall. Her hair fanned across her shoulders. In his fingers, J.J. recalled, it would separate like strands of silk. “You told me to stop,” he said. “And I didn’t.” “I said ‘wait.’ Not ‘stop.’” “Same difference.” J.J. had been raised in captivity, not a hole. No meant no. Period. “It’s not the same,” Quinn insisted, lifting her chin even as a blush seeped under her freckles. “I wanted you, too. As much as you wanted me.” 155 No one had ever said that to J.J. Oh, he saw the looks, in the hallways, on the street, from boys and girls. He knew it was only partly due to the magic in his blood. He had just never cared. He had been in love with the same girl his entire life. She left you, my pet. You know why. It’s nothing to do with those scars on your hands. She could have forgiven you for that, if she hadn’t met him. Seth. The name was on the tip of J.J.’s tongue. Yes, Ursula LeRoi’s voice purred inside his mind. He could hear her smiling. Everything Cleo despises in you, she adores in him. She loves him more than she loves you. She wants him like she never wanted you. She would have killed you to protect him. Right then, the part of J.J. that knew he would have wanted Cleo to kill him to protect Seth was shut off. He stayed put as Quinn climbed the stairs to stand in front of him. He could smell her, blood under the skin, sweat in her pores, shampoo in her hair. It made him dizzy. “That’s not the only reason you haven’t called me,” she said, “is it?” “No,” J.J. admitted. He saw no advantage in lying. He wasn’t out to break Quinn’s heart. “Are you in love with her?” Quinn didn’t have to say who. They both knew who she meant. J.J. nodded. “Yes.” It was the first time J.J. had ever acknowledged that out loud, and it almost stole his breath. “But she doesn’t feel the same way about me, so…” “Are you sure?” “Pretty sure,” J.J. said. Quinn caught his wrists then, and set his hands on her hips. “Do you know why I like games so much?” she asked, softly. J.J. shook his head. Her palms had run up his arms, over the swell of his biceps, to his shoulders, her body finding the exact right way to fit against his. “Because I always win,” Quinn whispered. J.J. would never know if he would have pushed her away or crushed her mouth under his – his skin was on fire again – for just then someone called his name, softly. J.J. whirled around. At the bottom of the stairs, a tall, muscular girl was staring up at him. He wasn’t sure she had spoken aloud. Sunshine poured in the stained glass windows, outlining her in red and gold, but her eyes were silver as moonlight, frozen to ice. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, coldly, and spun around on her heel. “Cleo!” 156 Shoving Quinn aside more roughly than he intended, J.J. leapt down the stairs, straight from the top to the bottom. Right then, he didn’t care who saw. He slip-slid in front of Cleo, blocking her route into the gym. “You’re here,” he said. A stupidly obvious statement, true, but what J.J. meant was that he hadn’t known she was there. For years he and Cleo had trained together, fought together, lived together. She lived inside his skin even deeper than Seth did. J.J. had always been able to feel when she was near, but now, she was standing in front of him, and he might have been seeing her through ice, visible but unreachable. Seth. He couldn’t feel Seth, either. J.J. swung around, with somewhat less than catlike grace. The crowd was on its feet. Defenders were scattering before a charging Alfaro; Seth raced along in his wake, dribbling so fast the ball was an orange blur. Too fast. He whipped the ball to Marshall, who fired off a flawless threepointer. The Knights’ fans crowed as it swished. J.J.’s eyes were drawn into the stands. McLain was on the edge of his seat. J.J. could read the lines in his suntanned brow: They were giving away too much, Seth and Alfaro, playing too hard to make up for their teammates’ illness. A reporter from the local paper was snapping photos like crazy. People were exchanging glances and murmurs. A killer jumpshot was one thing. If either of them lost control and skinned… Cleo’s fingers touched his wrist. Was her skin like ice, or was his still aflame? Every smack of the ball against the court exploded inside his skull. “Talk to him,” Cleo urged. J.J. shook his head. “I can’t.” “Oh, for the love of the stars, J.J., it’s a stupid game! Just tell him to tone it down. So what if they lose? It’s not the end of the world.” To Seth it would be. But that was not the issue. “You don’t understand.” J.J. spoke each word calmly. “I’m trying to. And I can’t. I can’t hear his thoughts. I can’t make him hear mine.” Cleo rocked back on her heels. Eyes narrowing, she took in the blueblack smears under J.J.’s eyes, the flush topping his cheeks, the thinness of his frame, sparer than when she had seen him just seven days ago. “Jeremy.” J.J. shivered. His name, his full name, not his nickname, on Cleo’s lips had always shot through the center of him like an arrow. “What is it? What’s wrong?” “Cleo! You’re back!” Cleo tore her eyes off of J.J. He didn’t miss the flicker in them as she looked down at Connor Burke, beautiful and fragile as broken glass in his sleek chrome chair. “Connor,” she stammered. “I – I didn’t realize you were still…” 157 “On wheels?” Connor’s smile lit up the green specks in his hazel eyes. He had worn his black-and-red letterman’s jacket. J.J. didn’t see how he could stand it in the sweltering gym. “Marshall keeps promising it’s only temporary. I have faith in him. Oh, I’m supposed to tell you.” Connor turned to J.J., his smile dimming in wattage. “Dre is looking for you.” J.J. glanced away from the game. Alfaro had just fouled the Montrose captain, again, and Coach Evans’ forehead vein was throbbing like it did before he called timeout to chew on somebody. Might be J.J.’s only chance to speak to Seth. “Where is he?” “Like I said. Looking for you. I told him you went off with Quinn,” Connor added. Cleo stiffened. J.J. would have gladly kicked Connor’s wheelchair over, but that would have just been bad form. “Thanks,” he said, coolly, and jogged off as the whistle blew. The Knights huddled up around the bench. J.J. eased around a referee and Billy-Bryan-Brady-What’s-His-Face on the sidelines, coming in on the tail end of something Coach was saying about fundamentals. Gabe and Topher were gray-faced and sweating profusely. Marshall didn’t look much better. He had been playing twice as hard as usual to keep up with Seth and Alfaro, and Marshall never gave basketball anything less than his all. J.J. caught Seth’s eye. Mopping his brow with the hem of his jersey, his twin motioned Marshall over to the sidelines with him. “¿Que pasa, hermano?” “Seth, you have to be careful.” J.J. pitched his voice low, cautious of listening ears. Most of the Castle kids’ parents were former Partners. Any of them could still be working for LeRoi. “You and Alfaro. You’re getting noticed.” “Noticed by whom?” Marshall said. “Everybody,” J.J. said, looking deep into Seth’s eyes. There was just nothing. Total blank-out. Psychic static. The harder he pushed, the worse his head throbbed. “We can’t risk exposure in front of all these – ” “J.J., in case you haven’t been paying attention,” Marshall said, “we’re getting killed out there. We need Seth.” J.J.’s temper flared. “It’s a game, Doc. Nobody dies if you lose.” Marshall’s flushed cheeks paled. Damn it. J.J. took a breath. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “Doc, I wasn’t trying to bring up what happened to you.” “I know.” Marshall looked down. “This is just so wrong,” J.J. thought he heard him mutter. 158 Seth patted his arm. “It’ll be okay, Indiana. We’re only down by six points. We can win without superpowers. And, if we don’t, Baby Bird can do a fly-by on their bus.” Marshall looked at him through his fingers. “Do I even want to know what that means?” “It means these cadets are gonna need to hit the super-duty carwash on their way home,” Seth said. J.J. couldn’t help but grin. Seth slipped his twin the thumbs-up as the referee called them back onto the court. As play resumed, J.J. climbed up and sat down beside Emery, checking the stands for Quinn’s flaming hair. He didn’t see it. Secretly, he was relieved. He didn’t want to get into what had happened back there in the hall. This girl stuff was too confusing with his head pounding like it might burst. “Dre was looking for you,” Emery announced, shouting as the crowd cheered a three-pointer – the first one Topher had put in the hoop the entire game. J.J. glanced down at Cleo and Connor. They were still by the doors, still talking. He looked away when Cleo looked up at him, tugging the collar of his shirt away from his neck. It was so ungodly hot in the gym. He wished for the Coke he had forgotten outside. “I heard. Do you know what he wanted?” “Something about a ring.” The transmitter. J.J. jumped to his feet, to scan the crowd for Dre, but it was futile; everyone else had jumped up as well, counting down together: “Nine! Eight! Seven!” J.J. looked down at the court. Seth had the ball. As the final seconds clicked away, he was running toward the basket as fast as he could. Except he wasn’t, J.J. knew he wasn’t, and he could see the effort it was taking for his twin to hold himself back: three seconds on the clock, the Knights down by three…Seth started to pop off his toes, then switched it up, firing the ball to Marshall…Marshall spun around, arched his spine, lobbed a three-pointer at the hoop – The buzzer rang. The ball hit the court and bounced, hollowly, twice. Marshall fell to his knees. He looked stunned. The shot had hit the rim and glanced off. He had missed. Marshall never missed. It was over. The Knights had lost. Alfaro kicked a chair. As the Montrose team went wild, Seth looked up at J.J. His eyes were big and round and golden, and hurt, because he had let his pack down. He could have taken that shot. Instead he had passed to Marshall, for the sake of the Alliance, and now Marshall, who felt every failure so keenly, would have to carry the weight of being the one who had lost the game. 159 “J.J.?” Emery said, uncertainly. J.J. didn’t hear him. He was loping down to the court. Bodies knocked into him; they smelled of blood and sweat and silver, like bodies in the Arena. Images splashed over the reality before his eyes, of his kindred, ripped and torn by his claws. Something fiery burst on the back of his tongue, spilling down inside of him, molten lava at his core. On some level J.J. knew something was terribly wrong with him. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. He scented danger everywhere, enemies all around. Seth had his arm around Marshall as he drew him off the court. Cam Foss was standing on the sidelines, smirking at them. J.J. saw him raise a hand to blow a mocking kiss to Seth. A cloud of glitter lifted off his palm. Like – silver, J.J. thought. He smelled it before he saw it, before he saw Marshall’s eyes widen as he looked from Cam to J.J., screaming something – stop, J.J. would know it was, later, but it was too late. He had already skinned. 160 Chapter Thirteen: Thicker than Water When the black jaguar leapt off the court, Seth did not move. He was waiting to wake up. This had to be a dream. J.J. would not skin in the middle of a crowded gymnasium just to shred Cam Foss for glitterbombing him. Then claws flashed. Something warm and wet sprayed Coach Evans’ face. Fans started screaming. And Seth did not wake up. Cam hit the court on his back. The black jaguar was instantly on top of him, snarling. Seth heard Alfaro bellow. The Montrose captain was charging toward J.J., shouldering aside panicked spectators – a stampede had started for the exits – in an attempt to help Cam. The black jaguar whipped around on him, fangs bared. Montrose's captain froze. Seth knew the other boy was about to die. In that single instant, he made his choice, and skinned. Pandemonium ensued. Almost no one had seen J.J. skin. They had just seen a jaguar appear out of nowhere and maul a boy. Hundreds of people saw the ripple move under Seth’s skin, saw the shimmer of displaced air before the sweaty blue-haired punk from South Philly disappeared and the tawny jaguar that had appeared in his place lunged at the other, hissing cat. The cats collided, and rolled. As jaguars, Seth and J.J. were the same size, five-and-a-half-feet long, though J.J. retained the hard sheath of muscle Seth lacked in his human skin. Seth came up on top, trying to pin J.J., but he was also trying not to hurt him, and J.J. flung him off easily, roaring as he rounded, slashing his claws across Seth’s snout. Seth hissed and leapt at him again. This time his teeth nicked J.J.’s throat, but before he could clamp down, J.J. had skinned back into a boy. Seth saw the spark but not the dagger. He felt the burn across his ribs as he spun away, skinning mid-turn; he came down in a crouch on all fours, blood soaking the side of his blue jersey. J.J. twirled the dagger, hissing with his lips drawn black. Blood freckled his cheeks and arms. More blood, not his, ringed his mouth. Marshall was kneeling over Cam. “Stay back!” Seth shouted. Alfaro had started toward him. Massive as he was, Alfaro wasn’t trained. J.J. would kill him. The gym had all but emptied. J.J.’s wild eyes flicked around the stands, hollowed of everything that made him J.J. Sullivan. J.J. is vicious. Feral, really. Keeping him collared is the only way to control him. Seth had not believed Cleo when she had said that. Now he wondered if he should have. 161 J.J. He focused, as Xanthe had shown him, capturing his twin’s gaze as he rose, cautiously, from his crouch. J.J., it’s Seth. I don’t want to hurt you. Please, put the knife down. Nothing. No response, no sign J.J. had either heard or understood. It was like screaming down a well, only his own voice echoing back. J.J. pivoted. Seth did not see why, at first; the phht of the tranq dart leaving the barrel had been lost inside his own thundering heartbeat. He did see the dagger spinning end-over-end into the bleachers, glimpsed the silver spark of the dart just as J.J.’s spine curved, yet somehow, as though the huntress standing on the highest bleacher had anticipated this, the tranq stuck neatly in the small of J.J.’s back. He howled. The dagger missed its mark and embedded in the wall behind Cleo’s head. Seth sprang to catch him as J.J. slumped, but arms wrapped around him from behind. “Dude, you can’t,” Alfaro said, desperately, dragging him away. J.J. was writhng on the ground. “If he doesn’t get the full dose, he won’t stay down.” He was right, but Seth couldn’t stand it. This was J.J. Everything inside of him screamed at him to protect his twin from the pain signing along his nerves as it sang along J.J.’s, a symphony of shared agony. Cleo flung the tranq gun down as she rushed to J.J.’s side, capturing the hands scrabbling at his back and gently pinning them to the court, palm-up with her fingers laced through his. J.J. stared at her with bleary, bewildered eyes. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry,” Seth could see her whispering. J.J.’s spine arched. “Cleo,” he gasped; and then, at last, mercifully he was still. Seth sagged in Alfaro’s arms, feeling the bigger boy’s chest heaving against his back. His wrists were locked around Seth’s waist. Only now did Seth see the ragged lines his nails had scored in Alfaro’s dark skin. “I’m sorry – ” he began, but Alfaro brushed aside his apology. “He’s your brother,” he said, simply. “Come on. You need to sit.” Seth sat, on the Knights’ bench. He was shaking all over. What was happening outside? Were the SWAT teams rolling up – or, the stars forbid, news vans? Jack was working his cell phone, damage-controlling. McLain had led Lydia down to the court. She had pulled J.J.’s head into her lap and was stroking his hair back, murmuring what sounded like a lullaby. Up in the stands, Emery was guarding Leigh and Whitney, his green eyes, pale as colored glass, fixed on Cam. Cam. Seth almost didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to. By the Knights’ bench, Marshall had stripped off his jersey and was holding 162 it against Cam’s chest. For the first time Seth had ever seen, Marshall’s capable hands were shaking. Blood pooled around them, washing up out of the three bone-deep claws marks stretched from Cam’s shoulder to his hipbone, like he was a sponge being pressed. His lips were blue. Seth was not sure he was breathing. “Dad,” Marshall whispered. His tone was agonized. He was looking up at the tall man in the tailored blue suit standing over him. Seth had not even known Wesley Townsend was still in the gym, but somehow, there he was, kneeling next to Cam. “Let me see him, Marshall,” he said, calmly. Marshall scooted back. Dr. Townsend, after laying his fingers against Cam’s wrist to feel of his pulse, drew a syringe and a phial of magenta liquid – Healing potion – from the inside pocket of his suit. “We need to slow the bleeding down. Inject this, right there, in his neck.” Marshall took a deep breath. With steadier hands, he took the syringe from his father and slid the needle into Cam’s neck. Cam didn’t even flinch. Dr. Townsend glanced around, spied Alfaro hovering over Seth, and snapped his fingers. “You. We need towels. Clean towels, as many as you can find. Go.” Alfaro raced down to the locker room. Everything seemed to be happening inside a dream. Seth hugged his arms around his middle, aware on some level that he was badly cut and bleeding from J.J.’s dagger. On the court, McLain had rolled J.J. onto his back to pull out the dart, as Lydia tipped something to his lips. The antidote. “But – ” Seth started. He had been about to say, But he could skin again. Then he saw the small silvery key McLain was tucking into his pocket. The torc around J.J.’s neck was the same one he had worn the night Seth had at last met his twin face-to-face. Ornate, scrolled with glyphs, it cast a bruise-like shadow on his throat. Asleep, J.J. looked very young; the antidote would counter the silver poison in the tranq, but he could be unconscious for hours, unable to skin for days. Or ever, if the collar stayed in place. There were implications here Seth could not process, of Cleo carrying a tranq gun on her, of McLain having J.J.’s collar in his bag. As though they had suspected he was losing control. How had Seth not seen it? J.J. was his twin. He lived with him. Cleo had known from a single phone call. Or had he seen it, Seth asked himself, and just not wanted to? “We can’t do this to him,” he whispered. 163 McLain sat back on his heels. “Seth, we have to. We can’t risk him hurting anyone else.” He was right, but – this was wrong. Seth could feel it, like the night he had left Cleo at Regent’s to be tortured. Still, what could he say? J.J. had just skinned in front of a thousand people. He had just attacked an innocent, defenseless human. He had tried to kill Cleo. He had tried to kill Seth. McLain stood up. “I’m going to call the fort. They’ll have to send a prisoner transport.” “We need Medivac, too,” Dr. Townsend said crisply. Alfaro had returned with the towels. Marshall was pressing them against Cam’s chest; the white edges had already soaked through with red. “Tell the Healers to prepare an operating bay.” McLain nodded and walked off, flipping open his phone. Seth looked up at Cleo, who was prying the bone-handled dagger out of the wall with fierce purpose. The tip was stained with blood. Seth’s blood. He remembered a dream, so real it was like a memory, the first dream in which J.J. had ever appeared to him in his human skin. I don’t want to fight you, Seth heard himself say, as his doppelganger handed him the dagger hilt-first, the bowl-shaped tree fanned out behind him. You might have to someday, J.J. had said, so take this. *** Noises pierced J.J.’s brain like needles. Groggily, he pried open his eyes. The world came together in pieces. Sounds first: the clang-clomp of boots ringing on walkways, the buzz of locked doors opening, the hum of something much more powerful than a generator deep, deep belowground. The stone floor, the steel cot, and the silver bars told the rest of the story. He was in a cell. He rolled off the cot, onto his feet. Bare feet; looking down, J.J. saw that he had been dressed in thin cotton pants, no shirt. He raised his hands to his neck and hissed a breath through his teeth. He was collared. The boy sitting on the cot across from his raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t much older than J.J., if at all; his reddish-blonde hair was cropped close to his scalp, but his chin was scratchy with a three-day beard. “You look like you’ve had better days, mate,” he observed. “How long…” J.J.’s voice rasped; his throat was dry as sand. The boy rose, fluidly, and poured water from a metal pitcher on the cell’s single narrow shelf into a tin cup. J.J. accepted it and drank deeply, 164 shaking his head when more was offered. The stiffness in his joints suggested silver poisoning, from a tranq. Drinking too much too fast would just give his cramping stomach something to expel into the cell’s stainless steel commode. Even so, he felt better, clearer, than he had in days. He pushed out tentatively with his mind. The familiar snap rebounded inside of him, like someone had plucked a string tied to his heart, and the tension in J.J.’s shoulders relaxed. Seth was close. He could feel him again. At the game, he hadn’t been able – The game. J.J. swallowed. “How long have I been here?” “Couple of hours. You were in a bad way when they brought you in.” The boy nodded at the tangled sheets on J.J.’s cot as proof. “You’re a werecat, aren’t you?” “Yes,” J.J. said coldly. He recognized a hunter when he saw one. “Thought so. Cats are always easy to spot. I believe I met your sister the other day.” A buzzer sounded, closer this time. The glass doors at the end of the hall opened. The hunter boy’s eyes – they were a dark shade of amber, striking against his ice-white skin, with pupils that were slightly oval-shaped – widened. “Well, pussycat,” he said, “I’d say your day is about to get a whole lot worse.” J.J. did not respond. He was shivering, from more than the residual poison in his veins. The last thing he remembered was fighting Seth in the Arena. But that was impossible. The Arena no longer existed, and if it had, J.J. would not have agreed to fight Seth. Arena matches were to the death. They had been at a basketball game, and Seth’s team had lost, and Cam Foss…Cam Foss blew a kiss at Seth, a sparkling cloud lifted off his palm, and one side of J.J.’s brain called it silver powder, the other side harmless glitter. J.J. had lost hold of what was real after that. The bars clanked as they retracted into the cinderblock wall. The hunter boy stepped back on a growled command, but J.J. stepped forward as General David Burke beckoned. “Cuff him,” Burke commanded. Cleo glanced at him. She was back in her hunter gear, black leather jacket over tank-top and jeans. J.J. silently extended his wrists, showing her it was all right, he wouldn’t fight. She snapped the silver cuffs in place without looking at him. On the other side of Burke, McLain, in his desert fatigues, was working his jaw like he wanted to protest. J.J. personally thought the cuffs were overkill when he was collared, but maybe they thought he could open a collar like Seth could. That, J.J. thought, could prove to his advantage before this was over. 165 From his cell, he was marched down one of the fort’s many winding passageways, at last descending a staircase outside the rotunda. A guard saluted them through the steel doors. Ben Schofield froze at the head of the long oval table, interrupted in the heat of an argument with Clyde Dowling, whose jowly neck bulged above his bowtie. Ozzie Harris was canted forward, tufts of sandy fur sticking out of his ears; when J.J. appeared, he sat back, looking torn. Melody Little was pink-cheeked, as angry as J.J. had ever seen her. Logue Ampon’s eyes were cat-yellow, his slim hands curled into fists inside black motorcycle gloves that matched his leather jacket. BAD KITTY was spelled out in silver studs across the back. Seth and Marshall were leaning against the black swan statue. Agathon towered over them, wings folded so they looked like part of his long black robe. Through the window with the Tree of Songs etched into it, the sun was a red sliver on a purple horizon. Agathon’s flat insectile eyes met J.J.’s. Xanthe? J.J. asked silently. Agathon shook his head. Below. With the Ark. Begging the question of who was guarding the Source, as Cleo was standing beside J.J., and Lieutenant Kate Jensen was standing at attention beside the flat-screen monitor. Burke walked past Josephine O’Shea’s empty seat to the end of the table. He was in full military regalia, as if to counter Ben’s flannel and jeans. “Jensen,” he barked. “Talk to me about damage control. Right now I’ve got about five hundred people convinced they just saw two teenage boys transform into jaguars.” “We’ve shut down communications in and around the city, sir,” Jensen said quickly. “But there’s a lot of chatter online right now, and we’re having trouble casting the net wide enough to catch it all.” “Black it out if you have to. The whole city. Shut down the grid if that’s what it takes, Lieutenant, but you keep this thing contained until we figure out what the hell we’re going to do.” Jensen started tapping furiously on her PDA. Burke swung around. “Agathon, can your telepaths help us out?” Agathon’s wings rustled. “Xanthe has begun the process of memory reversal.” “Can it be done?” McLain looked at Agathon with a mixture of hope and skepticism. “Can he make it so no one who was in that gym will remember what they saw?” Agathon’s antennae curled downward – not a good sign. “It will not be easy, with so many minds to clear. For most there will be the confusion common to a traumatic event. But…some may remember.” 166 For a moment, J.J. thought Burke would shout. Then he laughed, dryly, spun his chair toward him, and sat down. “Well, Jeremy,” he said, “looks like you got your wish. Ursula LeRoi is going to get her war.” “I never wanted a war,” J.J. said, coldly. And I’m not your son. Burke leaned forward, a lion staring down the upstart cub. The collar rested heavily on J.J.’s neck. He raised his chin above it. “If you never wanted a war, then why in God’s name did you skin in front of a thousand witnesses?” “He couldn’t help it,” Marshall said. No one was expecting him to speak, least of all J.J. . He glanced from Burke to Marshall, as the general spared Marshall an annoyed glance. “Son, now is not the time – ” “General, if I may.” Ben Schofield’s voice, though soft, carried around the room. “I believe Marshall Townsend has earned the right to address this Alliance whenever he pleases. Don’t you?” Flushing, Burke sat back in his chair. Marshall stepped away from the statue. Seth was still in his torn jersey. Marshall was in green scrubs, like he had just come from surgery. “I’ve been worried about J.J.,” he said, again to J.J.’s surprise. He hadn’t figured on Doc worrying about him. You had to care about somebody before you could worry about them. “He hasn’t been acting like himself these last few days. He’s been moody. Restless. The change was so sudden, if he hadn’t been werekin, I would have said he was doing drugs. “That got me thinking. A few nights ago, I threw a party, and J.J. left his soda cup behind. I brought the cup in to Dr. Bishop’s lab, and Aphrodisia and I ran some tests on the saliva. This is what we found.” Marshall aimed a remote at the screen. It flickered to life with a complex chemical equation. “This is the formula for strengthening potion – at three times the normal dose. More than you would give an elephant, if you’ll pardon the expression.” Melody was appalled. “And – this was in J.J.’s saliva? Was he…doping? Deliberately?” She glanced at J.J., motherly concern on her face. “I don’t think so,” Marshall said. “I think he was being poisoned.” “Poisoned.” Burke’s expression was dubious. “Someone has been trying to kill him with strengthening potion? Seems a peculiar way to go about it.” “I know it sounds strange.” Marshall spoke patiently. “General, potions are made of toxic substances. Werekin are less susceptible than humans to most of them, with the exception of silver, but if I injected J.J. with a dose like this,” he gestured at the screen, “all at once, it would most definitely kill him. The toxins would overtake any benefits the 167 potion was meant to provide, like in any drug overdose. Which is why I realized the potion had to have been administered to him gradually, over a period of days, building up in his system and causing his increasingly erratic behavior. There would have been other side-effects, too, as the toxins built up in his tissues. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been having dizzy spells, running fever, feeling sick to his stomach…” “He did pass out this morning,” McLain put in. “Lydia called me before the game.” Burke glanced at him sharply, but Ozzie Harris had raised a hand. “How can you feed somebody potion without them knowing? No offense, Doc, but the potions you Healers cook up don’t taste like licorice.” “It’s possible to disguise the taste of small amounts of potion, if you put it in something either very sweet or very bitter,” Marshall said. “But in this case, I would say the potion was released directly into the bloodstream. Through one of these.” He dipped his hand into the pocket of his white lab coat and came up with a small, flat disc. The Commanders watched it roll down the table like a dime. At the end, before it could roll off, Burke slapped a hand on it. “What is it?” “It’s a subcutaneous delivery system,” Marshall said. “You insert it under the skin and it dissolves, delivering a continuous dose of potion to the patient. I designed it. We’ve been using it on your son.” Burke’s brow wrinkled. J.J. caught the quick-beat of the pulse in his throat, and the back of his neck tingled uneasily. J.J. was trained to read body language as well as minds. General Burke was hiding something. “I don’t see any marks on him.” Clyde Dowling waved a hand at the smooth, fair skin on J.J.’s chest and shoulders. “Wouldn’t there be marks, if he was injected?” “There would be on a human, but J.J.’s skin would have healed over within hours from a wound that small, literally the size of a pin-prick,” Marshall said. “The disc would have been concealed, even from him, and it would have begun to dissolve almost immediately. The effects would have been gradual. By the time he realized anything was wrong, he wouldn’t have been thinking clearly enough to ask for help.” Melody twitched her long braid over her shoulder. “And an overdose of potion would cause him to skin?” “Werekin control their magic through mental will – you decide which skin to inhabit. Impair the mind, you impede that control.” Marshall spoke with the relaxed assurance of someone who had given the subject intensive study. “A dose of this magnitude would cause visual and auditory hallucinations, paranoia, violent mood swings – a break 168 with reality. Imagine being hooked up to a drip of LSD. If J.J. noticed anything at all, I’m sure he thought he was losing his mind.” That wasn’t exactly what he had thought, and J.J. had a feeling it hadn’t been what Marshall had thought either: He ran a hand through his dark curls, the only sign of nerves he had shown since taking the floor. J.J. knew what Marshall had thought, and why he felt guilty for thinking it now. He had thought J.J.’s true nature was finally taking over. Proving he really was just an animal. J.J. didn’t blame him for thinking it. He had never given Marshall much reason to like him. “So this potion was building up in his system, and then what?” Burke still did not sound like he believed any of this. His heavy brows were drawn together in a single line. “This morning things just conveniently reached their boiling point and caused him to skin, at the most inopportune moment imaginable?” “The Coke,” J.J. said. A few of the Commanders looked around like they had forgotten he was in the room. “I bought a Coke at the concession stand. It didn’t taste right. It was too sweet. Quinn – ” “She got sick,” Marshall said, and hurried to add, as J.J.’s head came up, “She’s all right. Her mother is upstairs with her, in the infirmary. She’s resting.” “Let me be sure I understand you, Marshall.” Ben’s heavy Louisiana drawl extended the “ah” in Mah-shall. “Someone poisoned their drinks to get to J.J., knowing that would push him over the edge. Is that right?” Marshall nodded. Ben turned to Burke. His whiskers were like wire bristles. He scratched at them with one paw-like hand. “General, if Jeremy was poisoned, we can’t hold him accountable for his actions.” “Well, Mr. Schofield, someone is going to be held accountable. The same someone who knows what’s become of the Source, since it disappeared from Roswell this morning about the same time your Jeremy here went off the reservation.” Looking satisfied to have dropped that bomb so neatly, Burke sat back in his chair. You could have heard a pin drop before all of the Commanders started talking at once. J.J. eased away from McLain. When no one tried to stop him, he quickened his pace around the table. “You’re shivering,” Marshall said. He shrugged his lab coat off and wrapped it around J.J.’s shoulders. “You should be lying down – ” J.J. waved that aside. He felt terrible, but they had bigger problems at the moment. “Did Cam survive?” “He came through surgery,” Marshall said. A guarded response. J.J. read between the lines. “I’m sorry,” he said. 169 “Don’t.” Seth finally looked up. This entire time he had been looking at his basketball shoes. The soles were stained with blood. “Don’t apologize to us. All right?” J.J. swallowed the bitter taste of bile. Understandably, Seth would not want his apology. J.J. had just ruined any hope he might have had for a normal human life. “Seth, Xanthe can make those people forget what they saw,” J.J. said, knowing it was a lie even as he told it convincingly. “You won’t be exposed – ” “You think I’m worried about what people saw?” Seth looked stricken. “J.J., you’re collared! They locked you up! Marshall just stood here and said you’ve been sick for days, thinking you were going crazy, and I didn’t even notice! I didn’t get you help!” “Sweetheart, you did notice,” Cleo said gently. J.J. had known she was behind him. He just wasn’t ready to turn around and face her yet. He was too afraid of how she would look at him. “We all noticed, but none of us knew what to think. How could anyone have imagined something like this was going on?” “In other words,” J.J. said, “you thought I was in a snit.” “Well. You do have those, from time to time.” There was something in Cleo’s voice J.J. wasn’t sure he had ever heard before, at least when she was talking to him. She took his arm, tentatively. He let her turn him around. Cleo tilted his chin down, looking in his eyes; J.J. knew enough about tranqs to know the fields of gold would still be spotted with silver. Her fingertips brushed the healing scratch on his neck from Seth’s teeth. Inspecting him for damage as they had inspected one another every night in their tiny cell after a long day of training in the Scholae Bestiarii. J.J. remembered the first time Cleo had drawn her shirt up and he had noticed how the flat muscles of her stomach melted into the curves of her hips. Treating her wounds, having her hands on his skin as she treated his, had become another kind of torture altogether after that. There was a reason Chimera separated hunters and werekin once they came of breeding age. Cleo did not apologize for tranqing him. J.J. would not have wanted her to. Instead, she unlocked his cuffs and stuck them on her belt. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she said. J.J. grinned. “Paris,” they said together. *** Paris. Cleo and J.J. were staring deeply into one another’s eyes, both half-smiling, and Seth didn’t know whether to smack the two of them or usher them into a private room to just make out already. Holding up a 170 hand, he pointed over J.J.’s shoulder, to where Ben was attempting, unsuccessfully, to call the meeting back to order. “Does someone want to tell me what that is all about?” he demanded. “The Source,” Cleo said, automatically. “Somebody stole it.” “I got that part,” Seth said. “I didn’t,” Marshall said. “It’s a twenty-foot-tall slab of rock. How do you steal a twenty-foot-tall slab of rock off a heavily fortified military base in the middle of the desert?” “I’m gonna go with magic,” J.J. said. Marshall glared at him. “Look it. Burke thinks the Gen-0s orchestrated this all somehow, to get control of both the Ark and the Source. The Commanders think Burke is behind it and blaming it on the Alpha Clan to cover his tracks, hiding the Source somewhere we’ll never find it, so we could never open the stargate. The problem is, neither side really trusts the other here. You can bet LeRoi is banking on that.” “That seems like a cynical way of looking at things,” Marshall said. “Our father always said there could be no peace until the werekin were free to choose their own destinies.” For the last ten minutes Agathon had seemed to become part of the obsidian statue. Now he unclasped his hands. His wings stirred the air gently behind him, casting shadows on the walls. “The Alpha Clan does not remain below because we must,” he went on, in his quiet rumble, as they all looked up at him. “We remain below because we understand that humankind is not ready to accept us. We make this sacrifice for the good of Earth. This,” Agathon lifted his tapered fingers to his neck, to indicate the torc that circled J.J.’s, “is not choice. A slave cannot choose to serve its master.” Seth had never looked at the collars quite like that. He glanced at J.J. To his surprise, J.J. looking down at his bare feet. For seventeen years, J.J. had been collared. Seth doubted you ever got used to that, but how much harder must it be to go back to being someone’s slave once you had tasted freedom? “He’s right,” Marshall said. “It’s what I’ve been saying about the werekin coming out of hiding. Humans have to see you as equals. Then they have to choose to treat you as equals. Otherwise you’ll never be free. You’ll always be hiding, and you’ll always be hunted.” “But the Ark – ” Seth said. Marshall cut him off. “Agathon, if the Alpha Clan could find a way to destroy the spaceship that’s down there on Lemuria, would people still be afraid of the Gen-0s?” “Yes,” Agathon said. “We are alien. Humankind fears that which is Other.” 171 He looked down at them with his flat black eyes as he said it, and Seth recalled his reaction to the Gen-0s the first time he had seen a picture of one in Elijah Bishop’s journal. It shamed him now to think he had been relieved that LeRoi had exterminated them, but it also proved Agathon’s point. Gen-0s had to hide because they didn’t have human skins. Werekin hid inside their human skins, for the same reason. They feared what would happen if people knew what they really were. “I’m not arguing that the power of the Totems doesn’t need to be protected,” Marshall said. J.J.’s metallic eyes were watching him from under their lashes. “It’s the same principle as keeping a nuclear bomb out of the hands of terrorists. But that’s a separate issue from what happens to your kindred. Your fate and Lemuria’s fate aren’t one and the same.” “You think Xanthe shouldn’t make anyone forget,” J.J. said. Marshall crossed his arms on a shrug. “I think the truth comes out eventually, no matter how hard you try to stop it.” His voice was even, as even as J.J.’s half-smile. Well, well, well. Maybe the planets had realigned, Seth thought. Marshall and J.J. were actually getting along. They seemed to be the only ones. Behind them, Ben growled something, and Burke banged a fist on the table. The sound echoed up to the rotunda’s high ceiling. Cleo looked at J.J. “How do you want to play this?” J.J. hesitated. It wasn’t indecision; rarely if ever was J.J. not ten moves ahead of everyone else. Seth looked at him hard. What is it? Slowly, J.J.’s eyes came up to his. Do you still trust me? Seth nodded. He had always trusted J.J. Even before he had met him. J.J. spoke quickly then, inside Seth’s mind. Seth’s eyes grew bigger and rounder as he did. “Can you do it?” J.J. asked, out loud. Marshall and Cleo frowned in bewilderment, not having been privy to the psychic twin confab. “I don’t know.” Seth tugged on his jersey. The knife-wound in his side had already healed, but the jersey was crusted to the blood on his side. “I’ve only done it once, and I don’t really know how I did it. But I can try…” “Just don’t let him know it’s you. He needs to think it’s me.” J.J. took a deep breath. “Agathon, is everything else ready, like I asked?” “We are ready,” Agathon said. Marshall sighed. “What are you up to now, J.J.?” J.J. smiled. *** 172 When J.J. hopped up on the table, Seth saw Burke frown. He did not seem pleased that his prisoners’ cuffs had been removed. “Look,” J.J. said, as the startled Commanders fell silent. “There’s no point standing here pointing fingers at one another. Burke isn’t hiding the Source. The Gen-0s aren’t hiding the Source. We all know Ursula LeRoi is behind this. She wants Lemuria raised and the stargate opened. The Black Swan refused to do that, so now, she’s using whoever she has working for her on the outside to turn us against one another and force a war that will push us to do what she wants.” “I thought LeRoi’s only endgame would be to have someone break her out of prison,” Burke said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she has a plan for that as well,” J.J. rejoined, without missing a beat. “Right now what we need to do is figure out who she has working for her. We find them, we find the Source.” He hopped down from the table. Burke glowered at him. “How about we just find the Source?” he growled. Jensen coughed. “Permission to speak, sir?” Burke did not remove his icy glare from J.J., who was smirking placidly. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.” “The Source gives off one mother of a heat signature,” Jensen said. “But we’ve retasked every satellite over North and South America, and so far, we haven’t found a thing. It’s like the Source isn’t just hidden. It’s like it disappeared, off the face of the Earth.” “So you see?” J.J. sat down in Josephine O’Shea’s empty chair, dropping his bare heels on the table. “Searching for the Source is a waste of time. We need to find whoever is hiding it, and we need to shut them down before they find some way of getting their hands on the Ark and the Black Swan.” “Fine.” Burke’s patience was at an end; he spoke tersely. “McLain, get that Alfaro boy in here and start running down every gigabyte of data we’ve got on Ursula LeRoi’s Partners. I want hourly updates on your progress. In the meantime, we need to let Washington know we’re handling this mess, before the media starts reporting an alien invasion in Indiana.” He started for the door. J.J. cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?” He laid a scarred hand on his throat. Burke reached into his pocket; J.J. tensed, and Seth felt the same twinge in his bones, the expectation of pain. Most werekin are raised in captivity. From the time they’re old enough to walk, every time they disobey their masters, no matter how slight the infraction, they’re given a demonstration of the collar’s power. Just the memory of the pain is powerful motivation to obey. 173 “Captain,” Burke said, “return this prisoner to his cell.” Melody gasped. Clyde Dowling snorted out of his seat. “Now see here, General, you’ve already heard the evidence – ” “The evidence, Mr. Dowling, can be presented at court martial.” Burke’s eyes glittered. Seth hadn’t realized before just how badly Burke wanted J.J. out of the Alliance. Why, he wondered? What did Burke have against his twin? “Unlike his brother, this boy is under my command, and I say he stays locked up until he is formally cleared of treason.” “General, please.” Melody pressed her small hands down on the tabletop. “You can’t do this. We need J.J.” “Need him for what, Miss Little?” Burke countered. “To advise us? To help us outsmart LeRoi? If he truly is a member of this Alliance, I am sure he will still be willing to do that.” “From a cell,” Logue Ampon said. “You want him to help you from a cell. Collared.” His cat’s eyes flashed dangerously. Burke drew himself up to his full height. “Commanders, with all due respect, this is not your call. It is mine.” “Only as long as you hold that key,” Ozzie said. He had gotten to his feet. So had Logue and Ben. Seth’s heart was beating fast. He nearly cried out when J.J. spoke in his mind. Now. Seth shut his eyes. He pictured the glyphs on J.J.’s collar, written across his mind like white letters on a black screen. He sank into himself, as Xanthe had shown him…felt the Ark, suffused with his kindred’s blood, tugging on his bones…and there it was, spread before him, a jungle more vibrant than any jungle on Earth, the temple of the Jaguar Totems under the full moon and the blazing sun – a place with no separation between light and dark. Power roared inside of Seth, and he spoke a word, a single, shining word, in his mind, as J.J., taking it from his thoughts, spoke it out loud. The collar around his neck began to glow. Cleo yanked the bonehandled dagger off her belt, misunderstanding, thinking Burke was killing him – but the torc simply opened, and clattered to the floor. Seth opened his eyes. Mouths were hanging open. Melody Little squeaked. For real. She had actually skinned in her chair. The little brown mouse’s whiskers were twitching. Drawing his hand out of his pocket, Burke stared at the small silver key. “You…you have the power to…” “We are not going to be collared anymore.” J.J. had never sounded more like a prince than he did at that moment. Scooping up the collar, he 174 tossed it contemptuously onto the table, a useless hunk of metal singed around the edges. Cleo was looking at him with her lip pinned between her teeth, brow slightly furrowed. “My kindred are not slaves, General. We choose not to overpower you, because we want to live in peace, but you are not going to collar us. Not any of us. Not anymore.” Burke’s expression was impossible to read, and as stony as granite. Dropping the key back into his pocket, he signaled to Jensen and McLain to follow him out. Even as the Commanders burst into applause, Seth felt his heart sink. For all their sakes, he hoped whatever game J.J. was playing here, he was playing to win. Burke had been willing to exterminate the werekin before when he believed they posed too great of a threat to humankind. According to his son, he had been looking for an excuse to follow through on that ever since. What would he do now that he couldn’t control them? 175 Chapter Fourteen: Second Chances Leigh did not know why Dre wanted her to meet him at Re-Spin at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, but that was what his message had said. It had been delivered through Miss Janowitz. Though Operation Swan Song still had the phones shut down, birds didn’t need cell towers to communicate with one another. The mall had been closed for hours when Leigh parked Seth’s Yamaha around the back. She skirted bags of trash lined up around the overflowing dumpster outside Re-Spin’s employee entrance – a metal door, one of a dozen facing into the alley – then jumped back as something fluttered in the shadows. “Dre!” she gasped. “Sorry.” Dre shook his bangs out of his eyes like he was ruffling his feathers. He was dressed tamely, for Dre, black cargo pants and a black T-shirt, white gloves without the fingers. Cargo pants were so over, but the gloves were kind of chic. “Did you bring the stuff?” Did he think she would go to all the trouble of sneaking out of the house and swiping her brother’s motorcycle without bringing what he had asked for? Leigh dug through her Coach bag for the sheet music she had found under Seth’s mattress. Seth hid everything under his mattress. Like that wasn’t the first place a kid sister would look. “I still don’t see why you couldn’t just come by my house to get it,” she grumbled. “J.J. didn’t want anyone in the Alliance to know I had it,” Dre said. “Captain McLain does live across the street from you.” “It’s not like he spies on us,” Leigh said, and was puzzled when Dre blushed. Boys were so weird. “So…you’ve talked to J.J.?” The last time she had seen her big brother, Marines had been carting him out of the gym on a stretcher. Leigh had seen Seth wounded and helpless. Never J.J. He had looked very small. She had wanted to go with him, but her father had insisted Emery drive her home. Her mother, the traitor, had sided with him. Thus Leigh had been in the dark all day, with no way to call anybody at the fort, and no clearance to get past security if she had driven out there. Dre relayed that Seth and J.J. were both fine, waiting for the Commanders to straighten out who had poisoned J.J. and who could be hiding the Source. Cam had been transferred to Fairfax Memorial’s ICU. With the Source missing, the Gen-0s had the Ark on lockdown, and extra security had been dispatched to the Black Swan’s house, just in case. Dre stepped up on the curb. Leigh watched him scuff his loafers along the concrete. “J.J. asked me to do something else for him,” he said. “He’ll probably kill me for this, but I think you should come, too. It involves you.” 176 “It involves me?” Leigh drew her Burberry coat closer around her. The night was cool. A pinkish haze of city lights screened out the stars; she could only see Dre’s outline in the shadows inking the alley. “What about me?” “It’s your dad’s ring. I got the transmitter working.” “You know where the signal is coming from?” “Burke’s,” Dre said. “The signal leads back to General David Burke’s.” Leigh blinked. “You’re sure?” Dre bobbed his head. His small hands fluttered, coming up with a sleek handheld computer from one of his many pockets. “See this blip there, on the screen? That’s where the transmitter broadcasts back to. It’s here in Fairfax, south of the city, on General Burke’s estate.” “What are you going to do?” Leigh whispered. “Check it out. J.J. doesn’t think Burke would betray us like that, and he doesn’t want to accuse him without proof he’s working for LeRoi. If we find proof…” Dre stuck the computer back in his pocket. His chirp of a voice had become even softer. “Things will really get complicated then.” *** Seth turned the silver torc over in his hands. He didn’t know why he had picked the collar up off the Commanders’ table after J.J. had dropped it. He just had. He also didn’t know why his feet had carried him outside, to the trees that surrounded Fort King. Yet here he was, sitting cross-legged in the shadow of a pine tree that was leaking sap like candlewax. Supposedly he was waiting on Marshall, but Marshall had been down on the lower levels for hours, conferring with Aphrodisia. Her big announcement had apparently been canceled in the wake of their game day disaster. Half an hour ago, J.J. had padded out the fort’s front door, looked up at the chimera fountain like he might have something important to say to it, then sat down on the lip of the concrete bowl and started polishing his dagger. The jets inside the serpents’ mouths had been turned off tonight; the water at the bottom of the fountain was clotted with dead leaves and brown pine needles. From where Seth was sitting, the clouds drifting across the moon created the illusion the scorpion-stinger tail was swaying. McLain had given J.J. a pair of jungle fatigues to change into. The jacket was folded beside him, the jaguar katana Seth had given him 177 rolled up inside of it. Looking at him, Seth was reminded of his dream – the Lemurian jungle, the Tortoise Clan, the swan’s song. Something about that, and the air J.J. was giving off, like he had come out here for the express purpose of avoiding anyone, had kept him hidden in the shadows. J.J. didn’t appear to know he was there. His thoughts were shuttered tonight, even from his twin. Now, the front door opened again, and Marshall came out. He hesitated on the top step a moment, looking around for Seth. Seeing J.J. instead, he said, “You know this is a bad idea.” “What’s a bad idea?” J.J.’s tone was equitable. He was his usual, unflappable self again now that he was off the crazy-making potion. “Whatever you’re planning to do and not telling Seth about.” Marshall sank down on the ground, leaning back against the front tire of his father’s Lexus. He still had on his scrubs. He looked worn out. “You’re not omniscient, J.J.” “I believe we’ve had this argument already. As usual, I turned out to be right.” J.J. flipped the dagger around, offering it hilt-first to Marshall as he stood. “Give this to Seth for me, would you?” Marshall ignored him. “There’s something I haven’t said to you.” “Really.” J.J. leaned a hip against the hood. “What’s that? That you think I’m an asshole? ’Cause you’ve implied that strongly, on a number of occasions.” “Thank you.” J.J.’s nose wrinkled – a cat twitching his whiskers. Seth had done the exact same thing at the exact same moment. “What are you thanking me for?” J.J. demanded. “For insisting on bringing me back. You don’t need to deny it,” Marshall said, heading off J.J.’s attempt to do just that. “I thought it was Seth, but Aphrodisia said you were the one who made Agathon promise to try.” Marshall scooped up a handful of gravel, let it pour through his long fingers. Seth knew he should announce himself – this was obviously meant to be a private conversation – but he was a cat. Curiosity got the better of him. “She also said you were ready to kill me again, if the ritual didn’t work like it was meant to.” “So are you thanking me for bringing you back,” J.J. said, “or for being willing to kill you if I brought you back wrong?” “Both, I guess. I wouldn’t have wanted to live if I wasn’t still me.” Brushing dirt off his scrubs, Marshall rose and held out a hand. After a moment, J.J. placed the dagger in it. “Don’t you want to know why?” Seth, who had been about to stand up, froze. 178 Halfway to his car, Marshall turned back. The wind sighing in the trees blew shadows across his face. Seth saw him on a riverbank, lighting candles around Caroline McLain as he cast the spell to entrance her. Was J.J. seeing the same thing? He had been inside Marshall’s mind with Seth after Marshall died. He knew more about Marshall than he really had a right to. “I assumed you did it for Seth,” Marshall said. “I know things.” J.J. didn’t sound like he was bragging. He was just stating the truth. “Sometimes I don’t even know how I know them, I just know them. When you pulled that trigger, I knew you weren’t finished. You weren’t supposed to die that day. You had more to do in this world. Not just for werekin. For you.” J.J. leaned back against the car. “I didn’t bring you back for Seth. I brought you back for you.” “Pulling that trigger – it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.” Marshall sounded surprised to be confessing this, least of all to J.J. Seth couldn’t have spoken up then if he had wanted to. He couldn’t breathe. He and Marshall had talked about what had come after he had died, but never about before, that final second when he had looked at Seth and said, I wouldn’t change it. “I wasn’t really scared of dying. I just kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do with my life that I wouldn’t get to. I mean, I’m sure everybody feels that way. Even if you had a thousand years, I think when it came down to it, you’d still want just one more minute. One more breath. One last kiss.” Marshall whispered that, kiss, looking down at the dagger he was holding. Heat stung Seth’s cheeks. “There was something I regretted, though.” “Yeah?” J.J. shifted position against the car. “What was that?” “Not telling Seth sooner how I felt.” Marshall still blushed easily, and probably always would, because he was Marshall, but his gaze, Seth thought, was more direct than it had been two weeks ago. “I should have told him every day from the day I met him that I loved him.” “Why didn’t you?” “I guess…” Marshall glanced toward the tree line. Seth shrank deeper into the shadows. “I guess because I was afraid, of what my father would say. Of what people would think. But I’m not afraid of anything now. I’ve seen what comes after. It showed me that all that matters is what we do here, in this life. This is all we get. There are no second chances.” “Unless you know a good necromancer,” J.J. said. “Just for the record,” Marshall said, “you really are an asshole.” He was grinning. J.J. grinned back at him. Marshall held up the dagger. “I’ll give this to Seth for you. Anything you want me to tell him?” J.J. shook his head. “Just watch out for him, Doc.” “I always do,” Marshall said. 179 Seth took a breath. It seemed he hadn’t breathed in minutes. Marshall was walking to his car, flipping open his phone – to call Seth, probably, to ask where he was, if he had waited on him or gone home with Lydia. Seth made to rise, and that was when hands touched his shoulders from behind. Seth was a werecat. Sneaking up on him was nigh impossible. He started to turn, but he didn’t get that far; the hands holding him from behind (the skin was hot and dry; he could feel it through his jersey’s mesh) tightened, and a word was spoken, in Lemurian – a word that spoke of memories and lies. All of the locks in Seth’s mind turned at once, forced open like the first time Xanthe had reached into his mind and drawn up the dreams Caroline McLain had been sending him; and Seth would have cried out, if the world hadn’t fractured around him: memory, reality, dream burst from their separate compartments, fused, and then receded, washing the color from the world in a wave of prismatic light, all the atoms emitting light inside wavehood… He saw Thomas reaching down to swoop him up from a sandbox in a city park, the sun setting over the Queensboro Bridge in the distance; Naomi carrying a birthday cake with six candles over to the kitchen table, the flames dancing in the windows of their row house; Lydia sitting on the railing of a wraparound porch, a forgotten cigarette burning down to her manicured nails; J.J. moving like a dancer across the white mat in Regent’s Bat Cave, sword singing around his blonde head; Marshall’s eyelids fluttering down as Seth stretched up on his tiptoes to kiss him, snow sifting down softly outside the window at his back… As the images rose up, the light swallowed them, obliterating them like the wave of light and heat that follows a nuclear blast. When it was over, Seth blinked, and smiled at the boy standing over him, who smiled back. Gotcha. *** As Marshall’s convertible eased down the drive, the shadow at the back of Wesley Townsend’s Lexus shifted. J.J. turned toward it. “If I told you I didn’t want you to come with me, what would you say?” “I’d say I’ve seen you drive, and you’re going to need me if you want to make it past the first roadblock,” Cleo said. J.J. shot her a sour glance. She had taken her jacket off; her arms were more bronzed than he had ever seen them. “When are we leaving?” He didn’t ask how she knew his plan. Only Agathon and Xanthe were supposed to know, but Cleo knew J.J. inside out. “In about ten 180 minutes,” he said. “Wait for us down by the creek.” Cleo saluted with her keys. This late, the fort was quiet. A sleepy corporal buzzed J.J. through the glass doors outside the infirmary. He entered quietly. Curtains had been pulled around the bed where Marshall’s father had operated on Cam Foss. A red biohazard container was open at the foot of the bed. Something rancid curdled in the back of J.J.’s throat. More innocent blood on his hands. By habit he started to reach for Seth with his mind. But no, J.J. remembered, just in time. Safer for Seth not to know where he was or what he was doing right now. At the moment only one of the infirmary’s cots was occupied. J.J. sat down on the edge of it. During the day, the infirmary was the sunniest room in the fort. At night, the moonlight on the walls rippled like cold water. Healers had dressed the girl on the bed in a thin white hospital gown. J.J. stopped just short of touching her cheek, his hand resting instead on the pillow. “Quinn.” Quinn stirred. Moaned something about five more minutes. J.J. didn’t have five minutes. All hell would be breaking loose in about three. “Quinn, wake up,” he said. “J.J.?” Quinn sat up, blinking herself awake. Her skin was warm, flushed with sleep. “Are you all right? Mom told me what happened, but they wouldn’t let me out of here to see you…” A freckled hand reached out to his throat, to touch the collar that wasn’t there. J.J. gently caught her wrist. “I’m fine. I just wanted to say goodnight.” “You’re leaving.” Quinn did not phrase it to imply she expected him to be back in the morning. “You’re going to find the Tortoise Clan, aren’t you?” “Okay,” J.J. said. “Now I know why Seth freaks out when I do that.” Quinn smiled slyly. Even sick she was pretty, lips a pale pink against her colorless cheeks. “I don’t have to read your mind. It’s what I would do. Your dad was a werefox, my mom is a werefox. They taught us strategy.” “I’m glad someone thinks I have a strategy,” J.J. said. “You always have a strategy. It’s what I like about you.” Quinn twined her fingers through his. “Come here.” Against his better judgment, J.J. let himself be drawn down on the pillows. His body was heavy, still aching from the poison in the tranq. He closed his eyes while Quinn tickled his palm. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me, down at the river,” she said. “You want to know 181 why the Totems didn’t leave werekin a way of returning to their dimension without destroying the Earth. You want to know if it’s possible to open the stargate without wiping out humankind. And if anyone would know, it would be the only Clan to survive the sinking of Lemuria.” Quinn turned J.J.’s hand over. “You haven’t told Seth what you’re planning, have you?” “I don’t want him to know,” J.J. said, firmly. “He’ll be questioned after we’re gone, and if Burke thinks he had a hand in this, he’ll execute him.” “He’ll execute you too, you know.” J.J. shrugged. “Not if my plan works. Then they’ll give me a medal.” Quinn had begun tracing the scars on his hands. It was more distracting than J.J. wanted it to be. “Well, if you’re really going,” she said, “I guess I should let you off the hook.” “For what?” “For kissing me,” Quinn said, with perfect frankness. “The only time you did, you were drugged. I know how I felt on that stuff last night, and this morning, before I got sick. It was like I was burning up from the inside out. I probably would have ripped Clyde Dowling’s tweed suit off if he’d been standing in front of me.” “Thank you,” J.J. said, “for that mental image.” He felt her smile, and opened his eyes partway. Quinn had her lower lip folded in her teeth, looking at their joined hands. He could have let it go, but he said, “I didn’t just want to kiss you because of the potion.” Quinn lifted her chin to look him in the eye. Her face was mostly in shadow. “But?” “But look at my mother. She married my father, and she spent the next seventeen years living under one of Chimera’s enchantments, believing she let me die when I was a baby. The guilt nearly destroyed her. Look what’s happened to Doc in just the few weeks he’s been involved with Seth. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.” Quinn propped up on an elbow. Her hair was loose. It spilled around them on the pillows. “Okay, first of all, your mother wasn’t born into this. I was, and from what I gather, Marshall was, too. We’re already a part of your world, even if we are human. Or hadn’t you noticed that my mother is a Commander in the Alliance?” “This isn’t about human or werekin, all right? You go to school. You have friends. You have a life.” J.J. pulled his hand out of hers and wrapped his fingers up in the sheets. “That’s not how I was raised. That’s not something I ever wanted.” “Seth wasn’t raised like that, either, and he’s adjusted.” 182 “Yeah, well, I know it’s hard for everybody to keep straight, but I’m not Seth.” J.J. couldn’t quite keep the sharpness out of his tone. “I don’t want what he wants.” “You want to go home,” Quinn said. “Back to Lemuria.” J.J. just went on staring up at the pitched ceiling. Six weeks ago that had been unequivocally true. Six weeks ago, his family had only existed as a picture in his mind. His beautiful mother. His bratty kid sister. His twin brother, the light to J.J.’s dark. Living in their world had changed things for J.J. He didn’t know what he wanted now. The experience was alien to him. Growing up in captivity, there had never been much to want. “It’s probably a moot point,” he said. “The Tortoise Clan stayed hidden for millennia. If they don’t want us to find them, we won’t find them. Even if we do they may not have the answers I’m looking for.” “You do know this is exactly what she wants you to do,” Quinn said. “I know you think you can outsmart her, J.J., but the first rule of battle is: never underestimate your enemy.” J.J. turned his head, serving up one of those silky feline smirks. “Precisely,” he said. Quinn rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just remember, player, she’s the one who taught you the game.” Their time was up. Quinn seemed to know it; she leaned in, J.J. thought to kiss his cheek, but at the last second, she turned his chin with her finger and kissed him, lightly, on the lips. Just enough of a kiss to make J.J. want more, but a rumble moved under the floor, and somewhere, an alarm began to blare. “Go!” Quinn cried. J.J. was already gone. In his human skin, J.J. was fast. In his jaguar skin, he was a silverblack blur. The tips of his claws clicked as he bounded out of the infirmary and down one winding staircase after another, streaking along hallways lined with high-tech offices that slammed shut as the fort went into lockdown. Red and orange emergency lights painted circles on the walls. Orders were being shouted over a P.A., every able-bodied soldier in the fort, human and werekin, funneling down to the main corridor. Something huge was barreling along that corridor. From a skywalk three floors up, J.J. saw McLain marshaling a dozen Marines outside the rotunda. They were firing at – J.J. was expecting it and almost couldn’t believe it – a monster with three serpentine heads, the body of a lion, and a scorpion tail. Cracks webbed along its stone flesh each time it lifted one of its legs. Its paws were grimed with sludge from the fountain; the souls of the dead that looked out through its blank eyes seemed to slither 183 across its heads, giving the stone expression. The black jaguar poured on a burst of speed. Thank you, Agathon. At the end of the hallway, the elevator doors stood open, waiting for him. J.J. skinned as he passed through them. They closed, and the cage started down automatically. Skinning so soon after being tranqed had taxed every ounce of J.J.’s willpower. His hands shook as he strapped the katana on his back, in easy reach over his left shoulder. He was tensed for a fight when the doors opened, but the two guards were on the ground, unconscious. The recessed amber lights flickered. J.J. couldn’t be sure if he really saw a pair of flat black eyes melt into the shadows, or if his mind was playing tricks. Down here the alarms were muted. J.J.’s breath hung in the dank air. In the pane of glass across the end of the hall, he watched himself approach. Beside the bedraggled reflection of a slim boy in jungle camouflage, the dark-haired woman in the gray jumpsuit waited patiently, almost as though she had been expecting him. J.J. touched the keypad on the wall, and a door to the side opened. The prisoner turned gracefully and walked through it. “Hello, Mother,” J.J. said. Ursula LeRoi’s smile was thinner than a blade. “Hello, my pet.” *** Dre insisted they leave the Yamaha at the entrance to the Burkes’ drive. While Leigh appreciated the need for stealth, this still made for a long walk in the dark. Leigh was not scared of the dark, all right? She was sixteen. But this was like dark dark. No street lights. No headlights. Just trees. And some creepy white star-shaped flowers that emitted a phosphorescent glow that was almost scarier than the dark. “Are you cold?” Dre asked. Leigh shook her head. She was, a little, but as this was the first thing he had said to her that hadn’t directly pertained to their mission, she decided to take the opening. “You could have just asked me to dance,” she said. Dre glanced over at her. They were walking down the center of the paved drive, stepping on shadows. “What?” “At the concert last night. You’re mad because I danced with Will, but you didn’t ask me to dance.” “I didn’t know you wanted to dance.” 184 “Girls always want to dance, okay? If you’re at a party, and there’s dancing, just accept that every girl there wants somebody to ask her to dance.” “I meant I didn’t know you wanted to dance with me,” Dre said. Leigh frowned. “Why wouldn’t I want to dance with you? I asked you to go to the concert with me, didn’t I?” “No. You asked me to ride with you. That’s not the same thing.” Dre had stopped walking. Leigh did as well, hugging her elbows. The living fence of trees behind them swayed in the wind. “Leigh, how long have we gone to school together?” “I don’t know,” Leigh said. “Two years?” “In two years, how many times have you said hello to me in the halls?” “How many times have you said hello to me?” Leigh held up a hand before Dre could protest. “Listen. I get the whole ‘I’m-a-werekin-andwe-had-to-stay-away-from-humans thing,’ for safety or whatever, but it’s not like I knew that. I didn’t even know werekin existed until Werner Regent tranqed me in my own house. I thought you saw me as some spoiled little brat, like Shanti. So don’t act like I was being this big snob, refusing to talk to you while you were trying to get my – ” Dre clapped a hand over her mouth. Leigh was so insulted she nearly bit him before she saw the headlights racing up the drive. The car was big, some brand of SUV, and driving fast. Dre tumbled Leigh sideways, into the bushes; almost before she felt the hot rush of air, the car was gone, around the curve. By the light of the moon she glimpsed the gabled roof of an enormous house above the treetops. The SUV was heading straight for it, at ninety miles an hour. Dre’s gloved hand slipped away from her mouth. Leigh was sprawled on top of him; he had absorbed the brunt of their fall. “Are you hurt?” she asked, breathlessly. Dre shook his head. They were close enough for Leigh to appreciate that his bone structure was very fine, and that those dorky clothes concealed a body less skinny than she had originally believed. She felt her heart speed up to match his, and hoped he couldn’t feel it through her sweater and her coat. “We should keep moving,” he said. Disappointed in some obscure way, Leigh got up, brushing white petals off her jeans. Dre slipped his fingers into hers, leading her into the trees – the driveway didn’t seem safe anymore – into darkness so absolute it had density. “How do you know where you’re going?” Leigh hissed, ducking a branch that snatched at her loose hair. “Birds have excellent night vision,” Dre said. “Bollocks, Alfaro. You’ve got that GPS thing out, don’t you?” 185 Dre cackled wickedly. Pretty soon the trees opened up into a silvery-green lawn that spilled into a picturesque garden. Floodlights on the foundation lit up the mansion’s stone façade in inverse pyramids. Sneaking uneasy glances at the gargoyles on the roof, Leigh allowed Dre to pull her across a stone bridge above an oily pond, over to a stone cottage trellised by more of the weird white flowers. Leigh lifted her hair off her neck. She was suddenly clammy with sweat. “Okay.” Dre tucked the handheld computer into one of his multiple pockets. “This is it. Are you ready?” Ready for what? Leigh wondered, as he swung open the round door… She had to blink for her eyes to adjust. The cottage was like the ones she had pictured when her dad used to read to her from Grimms’ Fairytales. The cold hearth. The dusty floor. The cracked washbasin and wavy mirror. She started to ask if Little Red Riding Hood was in cahoots with Ursula LeRoi, but Dre pressed a finger to his lips, nodding at the hearth. One of the bookcases beside it was open a quarter-inch, like someone had tried to pull it shut behind them and it had gotten stuck. Leigh shivered. A secret passageway. She couldn’t decide if she was excited or terrified. Dre inched across the room. Leigh followed, clinging to his hand. “Shouldn’t we call someone?” she whispered. “How?” Dre whispered back. “The phones are down.” “So? Do your bird call thing.” “There aren’t any werebirds out here for me to call to. We’re too far outside of town. The Alliance doesn’t guard out here.” Leigh glanced nervously at the window. She thought something had moved there, but it must have just been a tree branch blowing on the wind; she didn’t see anything now. “Why not?” “Burke has his own security.” Dre peered around the bookcase. “It’s a ramp,” he said. “It looks steep. And it smells – wrong.” Leigh didn’t smell anything except mildew, but the fact that Dre could did not settle her nerves. His quick, dark eyes jumped back to her. “Stay close.” Leigh nodded. The air, as they sidled by the bookcase, was cold and damp, a sepulchral image she steadfastly resisted as Dre picked his way along surefooted. He had slipped his gloves off. His hand was warm in her icy one. At the bottom, he swore. 186 There were lights down here, green lights, along the edges of glass cases lining a long, low room. Leigh shoved her hand into her mouth to keep from gagging. Inside the cases, dead animals had been preserved under glass: cats, frogs, pigs, rats, chimpanzees, swimming in murky formaldehyde. In the center of the room, inside an upright glass tank, a cadaver floated in pinkish liquid. Not human. A Gen-0. Her mottled bluish-gray skin, leeched of blood, had faded to the color of clay, but the tail that took the place of her legs, scaled like a fish’s, retained its vivid emerald-green coloring. Long, dark hair floated around her like seaweed. Below her elbows were scaly fins, below her ears, two sets of delicate gills. She was the saddest, most beautiful thing Leigh had ever seen. Parked beside the tank was a metal table holding all manner of medical implements. Judging by the jars of preserved organs lined up on it, they had been used to dissect the mermaid girl. “What is this place?” Leigh asked, on a shudder. Dre shook his head. He had walked over to a table piled high with medical charts. He picked something up; it was a rectangular card, with a boy’s name written on it in blocky script. “Bryce Heilsdale,” Leigh read aloud, over his shoulder. Her forehead wrinkled. “Aren’t these the blood type cards that got stolen from school? What would Chimera want with – ” She screamed. Off to their right, behind a door Leigh hadn’t seen, something crashed. Leigh did not see Dre grab one of the scalpels off the dissection table. She barely saw him move, he moved so fast, yet suddenly the door had been flung open, and she was looking into a room full of state-ofthe-art computer equipment. Two figures were grappling there. Dre staggered back as the bigger one hurled the smaller one into the table Leigh had been standing in front of. Screaming, she ducked out of the way. “Connor!” When she cried his son’s name, David Burke, on the threshold, looked up at her. His teeth were bared; his face looked like a skull. Leigh stumbled into the glass tank, transfixed by horror as Burke reached down and picked Connor up by the throat, fingers sinking deep into Connor’s flesh. Connor beat at his chest with his fists. His wheelchair had been overturned inside the computer room, wheels spinning. Leigh could not imagine what was happening. Dre lunged. His arm slashed downward, and Burke released Connor with a cry. A dark red line appeared on his cheek. Dre pivoted, bringing the scalpel around again, but Burke backhanded him, sending him crashing into the glass cases. Leigh screamed again. 187 Connor had scrambled to his knees. That seemed wrong, but Leigh didn’t have time to think about it: She saw him draw something from the pocket of his letterman’s jacket, saw the green lights glint off of it as Burke picked Dre up, by the arms, whispering to him as he set him on his feet – Dre’s eyes widened – he shoved Burke aside, spinning to face Connor – whatever Connor had thrown struck him, full in the chest – There was a slow motion lapse between Dre’s small body going rigid and him crumpling to the floor. The part of Leigh’s brain that continued to function realized time had not actually slowed down, only her perception of it. She was not aware of falling to her knees, bruising them on the stone floor. “No,” Connor whispered. Leigh didn’t know why that got her frozen blood pumping again. General Burke was bending over Dre like he meant to plunge the knife buried there deeper into his chest. Leigh grabbed the metal dissection tray and screamed, this time in fury, as she flew at him, swinging the metal tray in a wide arc. The arm Burke threw up was a second too late. The tray connected with his temple, and he collapsed like a felled tree, shattering the glass cases. A syrupy flood of formaldehyde gushed over Leigh’s shoes. She hardly noticed. She dropped the tray, and her bag, and fell to her knees over Dre. The ends of his glossy hair were soaked in chemicals. Red bubbles frothed on his lips – he was trying to say her name. Shushing him, Leigh laid her hands gently on either side of the blade. Just the hilt, formed in the shape of a star, protruded from his breastbone, above his heart. Silver will stop him from healing. Leigh heard Marshall’s voice like he was standing next to her. She wished he was. Her little crush last fall aside, Marshall had been like her big brother her whole life. She swiped at her cheeks, then closed both hands around the hilt. Dre’s eyelids fluttered. One swift jerk and the knife was free. For a second, Leigh was sure she had killed him. It was the longest second of her life before Dre took another breath. “Leigh, is he…” Leigh glanced over. Connor had skittered back against the wall. “He’s alive,” Leigh said. She didn’t know what to do with the bloody knife, so she just dropped it. “But he’s hurt. We need to get him out of here, and you, before your father wakes up…” “Your phone.” Connor stuck his hand inside her bag. “I’ll call the fort.” 188 “The phones are dead. J.J. is the only one who knows we’re here, but it might be hours before he starts to worry,” especially since he hadn’t known Dre was bringing her along, Leigh didn’t add, “so I guess…” Leigh took a breath, straightening out her tangled thoughts. They needed to let the Alliance know what they had found here, but the most immediate concern was getting Dre to a Healer. “I guess we can tie your father up, and I’ll drive you guys back to the – ” She never finished that sentence. A shadow had appeared at the base of the ramp. Looking up, Leigh saw that it was Seth. He had changed clothes, his ruined blue-and-gold jersey traded for black camouflage. The blue dye had been washed out of his hair; he would have been indistinguishable from J.J. had it not been for his jaguar tattoos. His golden eyes, when they fell on her, were blank of recognition. “Are you all right?” he said. He wasn’t asking her, Leigh realized. He was asking Connor. “I’m fine,” Connor said. “Did you take care of Elke?” “Regent did. He’s waiting with the car.” Regent? Did he mean Werner Regent? Leigh started to ask what in God’s name was going on, why Seth was working with Werner Regent, but Connor had risen to his feet – which was just so incredible, Leigh could only stare. As Connor rose, he shucked his jacket off. To Leigh’s horror, his arms were mottled bluish-gray like the Gen-0s’, stained purple by small round bruises. Needle tracks. What had he done to himself? And what had he done to Seth? Did Seth not see his little sister kneeling on the floor over the body of his friend? He didn’t seem to. All he seemed to see was Connor, who smiled as he dusted himself off, taking in Leigh’s open-mouthed expression with obvious delight. “Well, whatta you know,” he said. “I’m feeling much better.” 189 Chapter Fifteen: Call of the Wild “I have a theory about how you stole the Source,” J.J. said. Ursula LeRoi looked over at him with mild curiosity. On the plane – Chimera maintained a private airfield outside of Fairfax – she had shed her prison jumpsuit for jungle fatigues like J.J. and Cleo’s. In Manaus, while J.J. had put his rusty Portuguese to use bartering for supplies from a local contact in a rundown warehouse near the Rio Negro, she had purchased a pair of oversized sunglasses and a green bandana to cover her dark hair. She looked as at home in the rainforest gear as she would have in her tailored black suit and white lab coat. At the back of the canoe, which J.J. was guiding down the center of a murky green stream, Cleo was asleep with her head on a waterproof duffel bag. This was not the Amazon River. It was one of its many offshoots, a slender thread stinking of rotted plant life, close-packed by towering trees that screened out most of the dawn light. Algae grew like aquatic grass along the banks. Heat seemed to rise in vapors out of the thick brown mud between the trees, giving birth to clouds of gnats that sang above green ferns. Colorful birds swooped and soared overhead. J.J. stayed alert for the warning ripple of an alligator approaching their small wooden craft. His chest and back were slick with sweat. Jaguars could kill alligators, but J.J. was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary. He was tired. Exhausted, more like: not yet fully recovered from the poison in the tranq, running on the few hours’ sleep he had managed to catch on the flight from Indiana to Brazil. He and Cleo had traded off. Neither was comfortable leaving LeRoi unattended. LeRoi took a sip from her metal canteen, offering it to J.J. before clipping it back on her belt. The water tasted of metal. “What if I told you I didn’t steal the Source?” she said. “I’d say two evil geniuses trying to raise Lemuria is one serious coincidence.” LeRoi smiled. It was a knife-edged smile that suggested she was in on a joke J.J. wasn’t, and he didn’t let on that it ruffled him. She could have been lying simply to achieve that effect. With the dark glasses hiding her eyes, it was harder for him to judge, although he might not have been able to anyway. Ursula LeRoi was an excellent liar. Almost as good as J.J. “So tell me your theory,” she said, leaning her elbows back on the side of the canoe. J.J. pulled the oars through the water in one long stroke. “The Source was designed to open dimensional portals, to create a rift in space and time,” he said. “That means it can travel through dimensions. It may need full power to move from one dimension to another, but very little of 190 its magic would probably be needed to send it from one point to another in the same dimension. I think that’s how the White Swan sent it and the Tortoise Clan away from Lemuria to begin with. It’s how the Tortoise Clan sent the Source from the Amazon to Fairfax the night you tried to use it to steal the Ark. It’s how you got it off of the military base at Roswell, and how you’ve been hiding it from our satellites ever since. You’ve kept it on the move. Dimensional hopscotch.” “Bravo, my pet.” LeRoi clapped politely. “So where do you plan on raising Lemuria from?” “I,” LeRoi delicately stressed the word, suggesting she wasn’t the one trying to raise Lemuria now, “always intended to raise it from Fairfax. No reason to risk moving the Ark.” “I thought so. That’s why you brought the Black Swan to Fort King after Regent collared her, rather than bringing the Ark to her.” J.J. pulled the oars again, steering them toward the bank. Up ahead the stream split around an enormous tree. He did not have to be told this was their destination; he had seen those branches sweeping down from a great curved bowl in every dream he had ever had of Lemuria. Elijah Bishop had planted a tree just like it in the Royal Acres Cemetery, where he had hidden the swan song. “What I’m not clear on is how you can raise an island from the bottom of the ocean on land.” “Remember that the laws of physics and the laws of magic are not the same,” LeRoi said. Her tone was the one she always used when discussing difficult concepts with J.J., patient but with an undercurrent of condescension, giving him to understand he would never grasp anything as fully as she did. Very different from Doc, who didn’t seem to appreciate the depth of his brilliance. Of course megalomania was not a flaw of Marshall’s. “What the Ark will raise is not an island. Lemuria was a piece of the Totems’ world left behind for your kin, but the White Swan destroyed it when she sank the Ark, the same way Earth will be destroyed when the stargate opens. Nothing can restore what was destroyed; Lemuria is ashes. What will rise is the ship that was left behind there. A ship designed to travel through, and between, dimensions. You can call that ship to any point on Earth where the Source and the Ark are joined.” “You know,” Cleo said, “the White Swan could have saved us all a lot of trouble and just jettisoned the werekin off this rock eons ago, instead of sinking Lemuria.” The canoe had bumped up on the bank. J.J. didn’t know if that had woken Cleo, or if she had been awake all along; her eyes were alert as she sat up, stretching in a manner that wasn’t totally convincing. LeRoi smiled frostily at her. She had seemed annoyed by Cleo’s presence on 191 the flight as well, like the huntress was intruding on her special alone time with J.J. Cleo helped him drag the canoe up the spongy bank and tie it off on one of the huge trees that marched up the hillside, away from the stream. J.J. shouldered the black duffel bag. “I can carry that,” Cleo said. He shook his head. The remaining flecks of silver in his eyes were still absorbing slowly into his gold irises, but a fresh wave of energy had rolled over him as soon as he had set foot on the bank. “Which way?” he said. LeRoi pointed down a dirt path disappearing into the underbrush. “This way. It’s a difficult hike. It will take us most of the day.” For once, LeRoi was true to her word. The path sloped upward gently, but the rainforest flanked them on all sides, an army of monstrous trees trailing woody vines like hairy tentacles. Ferns grew shoulderheight along the trail, budded with jewel-bright flowers that gave off strange, heady aromas. J.J., in the lead, had to hack a path with his katana. Cleo brought up the rear. She never lowered her pistol from LeRoi’s back. At midday, they stopped on the banks of a small stream that spilled over moss-covered rocks in miniature waterfalls. The rocks were glassine, black as nighttime. Obsidian. J.J. looked up at the trees’ arcing limbs as Cleo plopped down on one of the rocks, pistol resting on her knee. LeRoi was taking strips of jerky and dried apples out of the pack J.J. had shrugged off his shoulders, along with his fatigue jacket. They were all sticky from the moist heat. “This isn’t really the Amazon, is it?” J.J. said. Cleo raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You’re not still wigged out on potion, are you?” J.J. made a face at her, and she grinned. “Look at these trees. Trees don’t grow this tall even in the rainforest. And I’ve never seen flowers like this, have you?” He pointed to the carpet of white star-shaped flowers giving off a moonlit glow under the canopy’s endless twilight. Their perfume was intoxicating. Cleo shrugged. “There are all kinds of undiscovered species in the rainforest, J.J.” J.J. was undaunted. He knew he was right. He sensed power all around them, calling to his blood. Power not of this Earth. He sat down on a rock that hung out over the stream, swinging his boots, and bit into the jerky LeRoi handed him. “You could hunt,” she remarked conversationally. “Cleopatra and I wouldn’t mind to wait. You must be starving, and the forest is teeming with game.” 192 Cleo opened her mouth, but J.J. caught her eye. Not worth it. LeRoi smiled, with just one corner of her narrow mouth. “Oh, I see. You’ve decided to play housecat like your brother, is that it, my pet?” “You know, Mother,” J.J. placed his katana on the rock beside him, “it might work against your interests for me to follow the law of the jungle.” LeRoi laughed, silvery as the water tumbling over the rocks. “You haven’t seen it, have you? What being here, in your natural habitat, has done to you.” She swept her arm toward the stream. “Go on. Have a look.” She was baiting him. Sound judgment told J.J. to ignore her and get moving again, they were wasting precious time, but curiosity got the better of him – that, and Cleo’s sudden reluctance to look him in the eye. Shifting forward, he peered into the stream. Golden eyes stared back at him. Bright as suns, rounder, wider, more metallic than human eyes were meant to be. His canines were sharp as fangs. J.J. looked down at his hands gripping the edge of the rock. His nails were claw-tipped, pale spots blooming on his bare, hard-muscled arms, the tips of his ears elongated to points. Long whiskers even sprouted around his nose. He sucked in a breath. J.J. knew he was both, a cat and a boy, but his skins had never been this close to fused. He hadn’t even felt the magic in his blood stir. It was like this was his natural state, the separation of his two skins a mask he wore. “Don’t you see, Jeremy?” LeRoi leaned over so she was watching his reflection with him. The long braid of her hair fell between them, brushing J.J.’s arm. “This is what you are. Your true face. Lemuria was a tiny piece of another, pristine world. If you help me open the stargate, you can go there. You know you don’t belong in this world. You belong in that one. Can’t you see the freedom I’m offering you, and all of your kin who join with us?” “At the expense of Earth.” A hiss slid under J.J.’s words. “You want to open a doorway to a new world at the expense of this one. We won’t help you do that.” “A ruined world.” LeRoi’s gaze had snared J.J.’s in the water. “A world too polluted to survive. A world crowded with people too ignorant to live in peace. Why would the Black Swan have been born now if the Totems weren’t telling you this planet is beyond saving?” She cupped J.J.’s face in her hands, tearing his eyes away from the wild, alien creature in the water. She had taken off her glasses. Her eyes were stormy gray, the fingers stroking J.J.’s cheeks cool and dry as snakeskin. A shudder of suppressed magic rippled down J.J.’s spine. 193 LeRoi had never touched him like this when he wasn’t collared. She had never dared get this close. “Jeremy, my pet, my beautiful boy, I know you have asked yourself that very question. I know you have seen how this world ends. And you came for me, for me, when the Alliance failed you, because you knew I would forgive you for betraying me. I should have seen how much you love your brother. I should have understood you would do anything to protect him. But I never meant to hurt him. Those were lies Ben Schofield fed to you. I only needed Seth’s blood to complete the Ark, so I could do what I swore I would do when Bishop and I found the Ark: take you home.” “Let go of him.” Cleo’s voice acted on J.J. like a bucket of ice water. He sprang back from LeRoi, further, faster than any human could have, coming up in a crouch against the nearest tree. Some frozen creature had crawled into his chest and begun to melt there, seeping ice into his veins. He felt rather than saw the rosettes fade from his arms, the whiskers melt from his cheeks. He was shaking with the memory of a dream, his twin collared and betrayed, by him. God help him, for a moment there, when LeRoi had said home, he had been tempted to believe her. LeRoi looked coolly over her shoulder at Cleo. “What I have to say to my son does not concern you, Cleopatra.” “He’s not your son, and he’s not your pet.” Cleo looked at LeRoi down the barrel of the pistol she had aimed at her head. “You collared him for seventeen years. You ordered him to kill his own father. You tortured both of us, and you enjoyed every second of it. You’re the one who should be asking for his forgiveness, so stop with the mind games, bitch, or I’ll pull this trigger and show you how this ends.” LeRoi’s smile cut like a blade. “Poor Cleopatra. How you do love him. But he doesn’t love you, does he? No.” She shook her head, poised on the lip of the rock like she might spring. “Because he’s an animal, and his loyalty is to his own. You should have remained loyal to me, my dear. Once I collared Seth, I could have made you the breeding partner for them both. That’s the only way you would ever have had either of them.” Most girls would have blushed. Cleo paled. J.J. cried out, seeing her finger move on the trigger – but Cleo was only lowering the gun as she turned on her heel and strode off into the trees. Cursing under his breath, J.J. sheathed the katana across his back and pointed at LeRoi. “Stay,” he said. He didn’t look back to see if she obeyed. He didn’t care. The jungle was J.J.’s domain. If his prey ran, he would find her. 194 Cleo had a good head start on him. Even with his werekin speed, this still meant it took J.J. more than a mile to catch up to her. When he did, she was standing stock-still in a valley between two tree-covered hills, in a circle of those strange white flowers. Her back was to J.J., and he didn’t immediately see what she was staring at. Out from under the canopy, the sun was punishingly bright. He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Cleo – ” Something hissed. J.J. heard it, and he saw Cleo spin around, away from the trees at the edge of the valley; he did not see her fall, as he was leaping, skinning in the air, landing on four paws in front of the jaguar as she bounded out of the tree toward her prey. The jaguaress hissed again, shrinking back from this new danger in her path. J.J. hissed back at her. She was a young cat, with none of the spark in her round golden eyes that J.J. had in his. No humanity. She was purely animal. A different breed of intelligence from his, yet an intelligence all the same. Black rosettes rippled along her spine. Her tawny fur was sleek, her long tail banded black. The black jaguar twitched his whiskers at her, laying his ears back in warning. She tilted her wedge-shaped head. J.J. tilted his at the same time, capturing her gaze. The snick of this lock being turned was unlike anything J.J. had ever felt. There were no thoughts. There were sensations – sight, smell, sound, taste, touch – that gave an impression of her life in the rainforest: a cool den under an outcropping of rock, a stream perfect for bathing, a marshy meadow fertile with peccaries and caiman… J.J. broke the contact with a low whine. Cautiously, the wild jaguar lay down on her side, baring her snowy chest to him. Accepting the invitation, J.J. crept forward and sniffed her experimentally. She batted at him with a paw; he batted back, tongue lolling as he danced away. Laughing. The wild jaguar rolled to her feet, tail twitching as she tracked him with her eyes. “Would you two like to be alone?” The wild jaguar did not move when the black cat disappeared and the blonde boy appeared in his stead. J.J. knelt in the grass, plucking a weed and sticking it in the side of his mouth. “Can I help it if she finds me attractive?” he said. “I am one good-looking cat.” “Just as long as she doesn’t find you good enough to eat,” Cleo said. “She won’t hurt me,” J.J. said. To prove it, he extended a hand to the jaguar. She sniffed it, nudged it with her snout, then, seeming to decide this was less entertaining than a romp, she streaked off into the 195 shadows under the trees. J.J. closed his eyes halfway. Peace be with you, sister. An echo, not words, something deeper, rebounded through him, and he smiled. “That’s rare,” Cleo said. She had stretched out beside him in the grass. The white flowers formed a crown behind her dark head. Where they touched skin, they left behind a silvery residue that smelled like nighttime; she brushed some off her cheek, smudging a streak under her eye. “What’s rare?” J.J. asked, lying back beside her. The sun was a gold disc in the white sky, for miles around the only two things, aside from the flowers, that weren’t green. “For you to smile like that,” Cleo said. “You heard LeRoi. I am in my natural habitat. Apparently it suits me.” Cleo shot him a slantwise glare. “Stop doing that.” “What?” “Deflecting. You’ve been deflecting since I came back from Roswell. And don’t say you haven’t,” she said, rolling onto her side with her chin propped in her hand. “I’ve asked you a dozen times how Seth is, and you just say you don’t know. When I ask how you are, you make some pithy remark.” “My remarks are not pithy,” J.J. said. “They’re sarcastic.” “I rest my case,” Cleo said. J.J. sighed as he sat up. He was not unaware of time passing, or of the woman they had left back at the stream, but Cleo was right. He hadn’t given her a single straight answer this entire trip. She was risking her life just by being here. He owed her honesty, at least. “I don’t know how Seth is because every time I try to reach out to him, all I feel is the sense that he’s there, that he’s alive, but that I can’t reach him.” “Why?” Cleo’s voice was soft. J.J. glanced at her. Lying in his shadow, her eyes were a purplish shade of blue, the streak of white flower-pollen on her cheekbone like stardust. “It’s happened before. After you showed him how Dad died, he was so furious with me he shut me out.” “And you think he’s shutting you out now because you helped LeRoi escape?” “I didn’t tell him what I was planning. I asked him to free me from that collar, and to let the Commanders believe his power was my power. Then I turn around and free the one person on this planet he hates more than anyone: Ursula LeRoi.” J.J. took the weed out of his mouth and tossed it away, into the grass. 196 “J.J., Seth trusts you,” Cleo said, softly. “He knows you wouldn’t betray him, or any of us. He knows this is part of your plan, even if he – even if none of us know what that plan is.” “How can he?” J.J. turned his head to look at her, really look at her, letting their gazes meet and hold for longer than a few seconds. “Look what I did to Cam. Look at the mess I made, everything Seth wanted out of his life – ” “You didn’t do that, J.J. Someone was poisoning you. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill you feeding you that much potion.” Cleo sat up, too. She didn’t touch J.J., but they were sitting very close; he could feel the heat of her sun-kissed skin. It made him aware of his own skin, of how it felt against hers when they fought. “If he’s shutting you out now, I think it’s to protect you. Maybe Burke is trying to force him to track you down like LeRoi always wanted you to track Seth down, all those years in captivity when you shut him out for his own good.” “Maybe,” J.J. said, unconvinced. He had uprooted another weed. Cleo took it out of his fingers, covering the back of his scarred hand with her rough palm. “How are you?” she asked, gently. J.J. couldn’t even say he didn’t know. He was too many things at once. Tired. Anxious. Confused. He rested his temple against Cleo’s forehead, breathing in the sweet scent of the flowers around them, and the sharper scent of their sweat. “Cleo, why did you come back?” Implicit in the question was his knowledge of why she had left in the first place. J.J. had seen Cleo’s face in the cemetery when Seth had run to Marshall. J.J. was a telepath. Not many thoughts were hidden from him. Even ones he would rather not have known. “How can you want to touch me?” Cleo whispered, the pad of her thumb sliding over the lacelike scars on J.J.’s fair skin. “After what I did to you, how do you not hate me?” While this did not answer the question, J.J. thought perhaps it did, and his unspoken one of what had sent her away from Fairfax to begin with. “You did what I wanted you to do,” he said roughly. “If anyone deserves the blame for that day, it’s me, not you.” “Why? Because you didn’t kill me like you should have?” “Because I didn’t tell you what McLain and I had planned.” That brought Cleo’s head up. J.J. drew his knees up and laid his cheek against them, hands locked behind them, out of sight. He hated that his scars caused her pain. More pain than they had ever caused him. “I wanted to tell you,” he said. “But that fight had to be absolutely real. LeRoi had to believe we would have killed each other. I knew the only 197 way to make you want to kill me was for you to think I would have killed you.” “But why?” Cleo sounded like this was the part she had never understood. “Why put yourself through that just to save me? Why torture yourself all those years in the Scholae Bestiarii when I wouldn’t follow orders and torture you myself?” “It wasn’t selfless.” J.J.’s voice was harsh. He was sick of being treated like a hero. He was not a hero. “The trainers wouldn’t have just punished you for disobeying. They would have forced me to punish you, and I would have had to do it or else LeRoi would have known I wasn’t really bought into her whole master-and-slave dominatrix game. Then she would have hooked me up to a silver drip until I broke and found Seth for her. I couldn’t stand that. I wanted to protect both of you. Don’t you see how weak I really am? I could hurt myself, Cleo, but I could never hurt you.” He looked away, jaw clenched. “J.J., you are not weak.” Cleo spoke fiercely. “Look what Doc did – sacrificing himself because he couldn’t stand for Seth to be tortured, but he couldn’t stand to give up Caroline, either. You didn’t call him weak, did you?” When J.J. didn’t respond, she shifted closer to him. “You want to know why I came back to Fairfax? I knew something was wrong with you. I could hear it in your voice the night you called. Then I talked to Seth, and he was worried about you, too.” “Seth,” J.J. said, flatly. “You came back for Seth.” “I would have come back for Seth, if I had thought he needed me. But I thought you needed me, so I came back for you.” Cleo stood up. She didn’t just stand up, though. She turned her back on him, and J.J. remembered, although it was hazy from the potion, the look on her face when she had seen him with Quinn at the game. He got to his feet as well and stood behind her. Sweat had left her short hair damp in the back. There was a tiny star-shaped mark on the bony knob at the top of her spine, like a scar, or a birthmark. “She wouldn’t have done it, you know,” he said. Cleo stiffened. “Who wouldn’t have done what?” “LeRoi. She wouldn’t have made us breeding partners. She never allowed hunters and werekin to breed. Do you know why?” “No,” Cleo said shortly. “Because she wanted hunters to see werekin as animals.” J.J. had never needed to be gentle with Cleo – in a fight, she could hold her own – but he was gentle now as he set his hands on her shoulders from 198 behind. “She wanted us to hate each other. Hunters and werekin, natural born enemies. Except we’re not. We’re the same, under the skin. Our blood is the same.” “J.J., I never thought of you as an animal.” Cleo was all but whispering. “I tried to, but – I never could think of you as anything except J.J.” “And I never thought of you as my enemy,” J.J. said. He dipped his head. As his lips touched that small white mark on her neck, Cleo’s spine arched; then she had turned in his arms, and her hands slid into his hair as his mouth found hers. There was nothing hurried about it. No frenzy of fire, no potion exploding in his veins: The only heat between the two of them was the heat that had always been there. J.J. didn’t have to think about how to kiss Cleo, he just knew, like he knew how to breathe. And Cleo knew how to kiss him, nudging his lips apart with hers, tracing the sensitive skin on the nape of his neck with maddeningly gentle sweeps of her thumbs. J.J. had never wanted anything like he wanted this – not warmth, not sunlight, not even air. His hands ran down Cleo’s arms to her hips, edging under her T-shirt, onto the damp skin of her flat stomach. She was scarred, as scarred as he would have been if his wounds hadn’t always healed. J.J. didn’t mind the scars. She wouldn’t have been Cleo without her scars. “Tell me this is real,” he whispered, against her mouth. “Tell me this isn’t a dream, because I’ve dreamed about you so many times – ” “It’s not a dream,” Cleo gasped, losing her breath as his hands moved up her sides, under her shirt. “It’s real, and I – ” He silenced her with a kiss, the type of kiss that said just how far his dreams of her had gone. Cleo stumbled back into the tree the wild jaguar had leapt out of. J.J. pinned her there with his body, raising his arms for her to slide his shirt off over them. They were both shaking. This might have been their first kiss, but it had been years in the making. Cleo put her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back a little. J.J. cupped her face, doing his best to control his breathing. “Am I – are we going too fast? We can – slow down – ” “What about Quinn?” Jerking back, J.J. stared at Cleo incredulously. He felt like she had just sliced him with a blade. “What about her?” “I know you care about her. Are you sure – ” Cleo blushed suddenly; they were close enough J.J. felt the heat of it “ – are you sure this is what you want?” 199 Could she not feel how much he wanted her? It was taking every ounce of J.J.’s willpower not to take this any further than they already had. It wasn’t like he had planned for an interlude in the rainforest. He didn’t have protection with him, and he doubted Cleo did, either. “Quinn isn’t like us,” he said. “She has school, and basketball.” “That’s not an answer, J.J.,” Cleo said, softly. Maybe not, but it was the only answer J.J. had. “What about Seth?” he said, figuring turnabout was fair play. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be doing this with him?” “Goodness,” said a bemused voice. “This is awkward.” Holding onto Cleo’s waist, stopping her from pulling away from him, J.J. turned, languidly, to face LeRoi, who was standing in the middle of the valley. When he did not move away from Cleo, from the corner of his eye, he saw the motherly mask LeRoi had worn back at the creek slip. The eyes behind her dark glasses sparked like blades of ice. That’s your true face, Mother, he thought. LeRoi smoothed a silky smile back over her sculpted features. Through some unexplained mystery of nature, she managed to appear cool and collected even in the steamy heat. “If you two are finished,” she said, “you might be interested to know that we’re here.” J.J. slid his shirt back on. Darkly flushed, Cleo had stepped back from him and was setting herself to rights. “Can you be a little more specific?” he said. “Where is ‘here’?” “‘Here’ is there.” LeRoi pointed, at the hill J.J. had mistaken for, well, a hill. Only now, on closer inspection (or had it not been there before?), he saw that the grass was growing over gray stone, not brown earth, and that while the features of the statue had long since weathered away, the shape was unmistakable. A long neck. Four stumpy legs. Domed shell of a back. They had found the Tortoise Clan. *** When Leigh woke up, she couldn’t at first figure out why her mouth tasted of bile, or why, more importantly, she was lying on a marble floor veined with silver like rivers of starlight, under a dome buttressed by black wood. Through the bars of a silver birdcage, she could see a wide center aisle splitting dozens of rows of intricately-carved wooden pews. A deep fissure ran up one side of the dome, webbing outward in smaller cracks. Plaster dust lay like snow on the floor beneath it. 200 Then she saw Dre slumped against the bars nearby, and everything came flooding back. The cottage. The underground lab. Connor throwing a knife at Burke; Dre stepping in front of him; and Seth – Leigh sat up, pushing tangled hair behind her ears. Her coat and shoes had been removed. The back of her neck was sore as a wasp’s sting. She had fought when they tried to carry her up the ramp back at the cottage, but Connor had managed to inject her with something that had sent her spinning into darkness. “Can I offer you a drink?” Leigh spun around. A mistake, as her head was still wobbly on her neck. “Screw you, Connie,” she spit out, steadying herself against the bars. Kneeling on the other side, Connor smiled. How could she have ever thought he was cute? His features were perfect. Like they had been chiseled from ice. All of the easy warmth that had made him so appealing was gone from his hazel eyes; the heat in them now was the kind of burn that might come from touching a glacier. “Now, now, Miss Adleigh,” Connor said. “Language. You are in a church. Or what used to be a church.” Leigh glanced around. She hadn’t spent much time in churches, since Jack was a staunch agnostic, but she recognized the rows of pews, the crucifixes on the stone walls, the red-and-black stained glass windows as belonging inside a cathedral. Falling stars were etched into the window behind the altar, the reflected pattern scattered across the walls. The sun shone through the window, riding high in the cloudless sky. It had to be midmorning. Her parents would be looking for her, and J.J., and – Seth, she thought again, and straightened. “What have you done with Seth?” Connor’s lazy smile stretched wider. He had donned his red-andblack Warriors jacket again, covering his mottled arms. His jeans had a patch sewn on one knee. “He’ll be back soon. I sent him to the library to finish translating those glyphs.” “This is your school?” Leigh’s voice was raspy. “Yes, but today is Sunday, so don’t bother screaming. There isn’t anyone around to hear. And on the off-chance you still happen to be here tomorrow, the cathedral hasn’t been used in years. The storm damage was the last straw. Father Andrew had it walled off.” Connor pointed at the long crack in the ceiling. Explained the cobwebs lacing the blownglass wall sconces and the faint smell of mildew underlying a fainter smell of incense, Leigh thought. Connor passed a bottle of water through the bars. “You should drink this. Sleeping potion dehydrates you.” 201 Leigh scooted over to take the bottle. The cage was tall enough for her to stand up in, but her legs didn’t feel ready to hold her yet. “Was it you who stole the Source?” she asked, after a few sips. Connor shrugged. “That’s what Operation Swan Song is calling it. Seth says the glyph for it implies more about origination than a power supply.” And why was Seth sharing this information with the enemy? Leigh screwed the cap back on the water bottle. “Why are you doing this?” “Is this the part where I’m supposed to reveal to you all of my diabolical plans?” Connor leaned back on his palms. He was sitting cross-legged just outside the cage. Leigh wanted to grab him by the lapels and bash his smug face into the bars. “All you need to know is that I do have a plan. One you weren’t supposed to get caught up in, but you showed up at a very unfortunate time, and thus, here we are.” He frowned over his shoulder. A door to his left, leading into what looked like a choir room, was ajar. Someone was rustling around inside of it. “People are going to be looking for me, Connor,” Leigh said. “I’m sure they are.” He turned back to her. “But right now, all anybody knows is that you’re missing. I doubt they’ll think to look for you at Sacred Heart Academy, since nobody suspects me of any wrongdoing. They probably think J.J. offed you before he busted my mother out of prison and ran off with her and Cleo.” Leigh stared at him. “Your mother?” “Oh, you don’t know? I guess Seth kept his word not to tell. My mother is Ursula LeRoi.” Okay. So much about this was just wrong. “J.J. busted Ursula LeRoi out of prison?” Leigh said. “I knew he would, if I could shake the Alliance up enough. J.J. always has to control everything.” Connor’s lip curled. Leigh had known Connor and J.J. disliked one another. She had not realized Connor truly hated her brother. Why? Because Ursula LeRoi had invested more in him than in her own son? “Now he’s off to find the Tortoise Clan, trying to prevent a war that has always been inevitable, and McLain will devote the full might of Operation Swan Song to searching for him, and that will make what I have planned so much easier. My mother,” Connor leaned forward like he was confiding something vital to Leigh, “is a very useful scapegoat.” Impressed with yourself much? Leigh thought. She didn’t say it, though, for Dre had stirred. She crawled over to him. The water had helped clear her head, but she was still weak. “Dre?” 202 At her voice, his eyelids fluttered. His shirt had been removed; an ugly red line was scored across his chest, where the knife had pierced his heart. Leigh had heard Seth say there were some injuries even werekin couldn’t recover from. The sleeves of her white angora sweater were stained rust-red from where she had pulled the knife out of him. Even though Dre wasn’t bleeding anymore, Leigh didn’t like how ashy his skin was, or the blue cast to his lips. An ornate silver torc, singed around the edges, circled his neck. Leigh looked back at Connor, crouched like a young lion on the other side of the bars. “Take it off him,” she said angrily. “I don’t think so.” Connor placed the small silver key on the altar, tantalizingly out of Leigh’s reach. “Werekin are powerful creatures. They need to be controlled. My mother’s first mistake was forgetting that. Believing their loyalty could be bought, or earned.” “So she left you in charge when she got caught?” “Are you asking me if I’ve been plotting this all along?” Connor sounded amused. Of all the times it would have paid to be able to skin. Leigh would have mauled Connor Burke in a second if she’d had the power. “I suppose that depends on what you mean by all along. Since I reached the age of five and become smarter than either of my parents? Or since Derek Childers and Aaron Gideon did me the favor of maiming me and waking me up from the enchantment that Gen-0 lizard freak put me under?” Leigh’s hand tightened around Dre’s. His fingers were ice-cold. “When did Xanthe enchant you?” “Four years ago. After my mother let me in on her little pet project, and my father found out I knew.” He had lived with his mother back East, Leigh recalled Connor saying. To think she had felt sorry for him because his parents were divorced. “Your mother must be so proud,” she said, sarcastically. “Evil genius seems to run in the family.” “I like to think I’m a different breed than either of my parents,” Connor said, as the door behind him opened the rest of the way. Leigh’s mouth fell open. She did not know who she had been expecting, but it had not been Aaron Gideon. He looked flabbier than ever, Leigh observed unkindly, gross and sweaty in his lab coat and ill-fitting trousers, skin the grayish-white of a poisonous mushroom. Behind his thick glasses, his muddy brown eyes were bulging. “He’s not cooperating,” he informed Connor. “Of course he’s not cooperating,” Connor said. “That’s when you persuade him.” “My methods appear to be ineffective,” Gideon said, stiffly. 203 Connor sighed. “Watch them for a minute,” he ordered, and got up and went through the door. It closed behind him. Gideon leered at Leigh through the bars. Disgusting. He always had been a perv. The sort of teacher who tried to walk behind you on the stairs if you were wearing a short skirt. “Nice job turning your boss into a science experiment,” Leigh sneered. By force of will she had not reacted to Dre’s fingers abruptly tightening around hers, pressing something into her palm – the first sign he had given of being truly awake. “Who, Connor?” Gideon shook his head bemusedly. “Oh no, Miss Steward. The credit for that goes to Marshall Townsend. He’s even more brilliant than Wesley, which is saying something.” “Marshall would never work with you,” Leigh said fiercely. “No,” Gideon agreed, “but Marshall Townsend was the one to design a delivery method for strengthening potion that would allow a human system to withstand infusions of Gen-0 blood. Not that he envisioned it being used that way – he was just trying to save Connor’s life. Still it was the piece we needed to achieve something Chimera had attempted several times before, but the human subjects never survived.” Leigh thought of the mermaid girl floating in her tank. She stood up. She had to hold onto the bars for balance, but that was all right. Gave her an excuse to keep her hands behind her back. “Who was she?” Gideon looked up from cleaning his glasses on the hem of his lab coat. “Who was who?” “That girl you cut up back there in your Frankenstein laboratory.” “I don’t bother about specimens’ names, Miss Steward.” Blinking slowly like some vile life-sized insect, Gideon returned his glasses to his nose. “Elijah Bishop was the one to start the nonsense of naming those things. To me, they are all numbers. Your brother, for instance, is Specimen Number 4331-dash-7. Your boyfriend there, whose remarkable brain I am very much looking forward to dissecting, is Specimen Number 8102-dash-7. Giving them names implies they are human, like you or I. The fact is, Miss Steward, they are not.” “I wouldn’t,” said Leigh, “call you a human.” She struck. The scalpel in her hand crossed the bars, and would have plunged into Gideon’s fleshy neck, if a hand hadn’t gripped her wrist. Leigh screamed as her arm was cruelly twisted. Her hand opened; the scalpel pinged off the marble floor. It was kicked away from the bars with a booted foot before Dre could seize it. “Doesn’t anybody check prisoners for weapons anymore?” Seth wondered aloud. 204 He released Leigh and she staggered back, cradling her arm. The pain was sickening, though not as sickening as Seth’s round golden eyes looking not at her but through her, like she was a perfect stranger. “Seth,” she whispered. He wrinkled up his nose. God, how many times had she seen J.J. do that? He looked just like him. Okay, they were identical twins, but Seth had never moved like J.J. J.J. was contained. Seth was fluid. Seth smiled. J.J. smirked. “I’m not Seth,” Seth said. No shit, Leigh thought. Seth would never have broken her arm. “You are too. You’re my brother. Seth Michael Sullivan. They’ve done something to you, put some kind of spell on you, like they did Mom – ” “My mother abandoned me,” Seth said coldly. “She and my father handed me over to Chimera Enterprises to be trained.” “No. That’s not true.” Leigh wrapped her good hand around the bars, trying to see past the screen that had been pulled over Seth’s eyes. Dre had passed out again. Moving even the littlest bit had sapped the few ounces of strength he had regained. He needed a Healer. Just by looking at Seth, Leigh knew what had happened to him was not like what had happened to J.J. when he had been drugged. Then he had still been J.J., just amplified. This was like when her mother used to kneel at J.J.’s grave, vividly recalling the death of a son who had not died. Enchantments didn’t wear off like potions. It had taken seeing J.J. alive to break the enchantment Chimera had placed on her mother. What would it take to break Seth free from his? “Seth, look at me,” Leigh pleaded. “I’m your sister. You grew up Underground, in Philadelphia with Ben Schofield and Naomi Franklin. If you were raised in captivity, where is your brand?” Seth blinked. Leigh pressed on. “You and I only met a few weeks ago. I gave you that charm you’re wearing – ” “This bauble?” Connor had appeared out of nowhere. Deftly he plucked the pewter jaguar charm off Seth’s neck, balled the leather cord up, and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. The momentary darkening of Seth’s eyes lightened, turning them opaque as sun-gilded glass again. “I bought that for Jeremy. Our little joke.” Jeremy. Oh God. Understanding hit Leigh, and she almost fell down again. “You – you made him believe he’s J.J.?” “Quit calling me that. I didn’t keep the stupid nickname my father gave me. I go by Jeremy.” Seth looked at her with thinly disguised impatience. A look J.J. had perfected. Leigh wanted to scream. It was like Seth had been hollowed out, and a puppet that could perfectly mimic his twin was speaking and acting in his stead. 205 Connor leaned in to the bars. He smelled like salt and rust. Before Leigh could draw back, he had picked up her broken wrist, not gently, and stabbed a needle into it. Leigh cried out. “Calm down,” Connor said, shaking his long hair back from his face. “It’s just healing potion. I don’t have any interest in torturing you, Leigh.” He dropped his voice lower. “As for what your brother believes, you want to be very careful about trying to break a spell as powerful as the one I’ve put him under. You could damage his mind, even destroy it. As long as he’s under the spell, I can make him believe anything. Just like your father had Xanthe do to your mother.” “Seth is still in there,” Leigh hissed back at him. “He survived being collared. He’ll find a way out of whatever you’ve done to him.” “You think so?” Smirking, Connor turned and held out a hand to Seth. “Kiss me,” he said. Seth grabbed his outstretched hand, pulled Connor forward, and kissed him. From the night they had met in her kitchen, Leigh had never seen Seth look at another boy besides Marshall. Yet he was kissing Connor now with abandon, soft, hungry kisses that implied a history of long intimacy that simply did not exist, and Connor, clearly relishing the little show he was putting on, was slanting his mouth across his, teasing him. Seth growled in the back of his throat. He was stronger than Connor, and the taller boy laughed as Seth spun them around, trapping him against the bars, and sealed his mouth with his. “Stop it!” Leigh smacked the bars. A zing of pain shot through her healing wrist, but she was too furious to care. “You are sick, Connor, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!” “That’s not fair.” Connor wrapped his arms around Seth’s waist, smiling sideways at Leigh as he brought their foreheads together. His lips were red as strawberries. “Your brother is an excellent kisser.” “That is not what I meant,” said Leigh, through her teeth. “He doesn’t know who he is. I bet you even made him forget Marshall, didn’t you?” “Hmm,” was all Connor said. He didn’t need to say anything else. Seth’s expression hadn’t even flickered at Marshall’s name. Leigh hated Connor Burke right then, more than she had ever hated anyone, for taking Marshall from Seth. Gideon cleared his throat. Like the pervert he was, he had been standing off to the side, eagerly taking in Connor’s display. “There is the small matter of the Ark still to attend to,” he said. His tone was obsequious. Leigh wondered if he saw the flash of distaste in Connor’s face as he let go of Seth. “You’re right,” he sighed. 206 “Duty calls.” He saluted, a mockery, Leigh assumed, of his father, which begged the question of where General Burke was. She glanced at the closed choir room door. “We shouldn’t be long. Tell Regent not to get frisky. I want them both alive when we get back.” “Of course,” Gideon said, silkily. Leigh stood still as a stone until Gideon had waddled out of the room after Connor and Seth. Only when she was finally alone did she slide down beside Dre, rest her forehead against the bars, and give up on fighting tears. 207 Chapter Sixteen: The Stars Are Fire Whitney Townsend hadn’t known Will McLain all that long, but she was certain it was rare to see him unshaven, uniform wrinkled, sitting with his head in his hands. The table McLain was resting his elbows on was the long mahogany one in the Stewards’ dining room. There was an ugly scratch on his cheek someone had taped together with butterfly strips, and a gash on his wrist crusted over with blood. Whitney had not been at the fort to see the chimera fountain come to life, but Emery had told her it had taken McLain lobbing a grenade under it to stop its rampage. Miraculously, no one had been seriously injured. Nevertheless, as distractions went, Whitney was inspired by Agathon’s ingenuity. “Has anyone heard from Burke?” McLain asked, into his hands. “Not since last night, sir.” Kate Jensen wasn’t usually so formal with McLain, who was her cousin after all, but things with Operation Swan Song were fairly tense right now. Sitting over against the bay window, through which Whitney could see the front porch of her own house, Emery was gnawing freely on the end of his ponytail. “Connor said he came home late and left early for Washington. Do you want me to try his numbers again?” McLain nodded, and Jensen hurried out through the French doors. Caroline McLain, swathed in a hot pink bathrobe like one of Leigh’s, bit her lip, looking after Jensen like she wanted to go with her but wasn’t sure she was allowed. Marshall draped his arm across the back of her chair. He was even paler than McLain; they had both been awake all night, Marshall at the hospital with Cam, McLain at Fort King sorting out the aftermath of LeRoi’s prison break. Jack Steward had been with him, overseeing the work-in-progress efforts of the Alpha Clan to memory-wipe every spectator at the sectionals tournament. From what Whitney understood, twenty-four hours later the communications freeze was starting to raise more questions than it was helping to contain the problem. Televisions, radios, and cell phones had been nothing but static for more than a day. The decision to lift the net that had been dropped over Fairfax would have to come from McLain. With Burke MIA, he was in charge. And his day, Whitney thought sympathetically, just kept getting worse. LeRoi had escaped. J.J. and Cleo had vanished. The sheet music Seth had been translating, that had cost Emery’s dad his life, was nowhere to be found, and neither was Seth. Then half an hour ago, Lydia Steward had showed up on the Townsends’ doorstep in a panic because Leigh’s bed hadn’t 208 been slept in. Whitney had immediately called the fort and asked to speak to McLain. Which was how they had all ended up here, in the Stewards’ dining room. Coffee and muffins sat untouched in the center of the table. The big wooden clock on the wall announced that it was ten-twenty-two, backed up by the sunshine gilding the Stewards’ front yard. “What are you thinking, Will?” Jack asked, from the end of the table. Lydia was sitting next to him. Her oval face was as colorless as her silk robe. “I think we need to keep Washington in the dark about what’s going on here for as long as possible.” McLain ran his hands distractedly through his hair as he sat up. “Agathon insists J.J. took LeRoi to help him find the Tortoise Clan. I believe him, but I doubt anyone else is going to see it that way. General Burke, assuming we ever get in touch with him, could decide to declare J.J. a traitor. In that case, the order will be to shoot on sight.” Jack covered Lydia’s hand with his. She had pressed her other fist against her mouth like she was forcing down a scream. “And Seth and Leigh?” “We’re combing the city, but at this point, I think we have to assume Werner Regent, or someone else working with him, has Seth. They probably took Leigh to force him to come after the Ark.” McLain glanced at Jack and Lydia’s linked hands, then lowered his gaze to the wood grain of the tabletop, following it with his callused fingertips. Whitney sat forward, playing with the cuffs of her Fred Flinstone pajamas. She still didn’t really feel like part of these proceedings, but McLain treated her like she was, because she had found the coordinates to the stargate. “Are you going to move the Ark?” “The Alpha Clan guards the Ark,” McLain said. “They have to be the ones to decide if we move it.” “What about Caroline?” Lydia asked. McLain glanced at his sister. “We have her under guard. I don’t know what else to do.” “Would you please not talk about me like I’m not here?” Caroline said, sulkily. “Caro, nobody is – ” “Don’t call me Caro, Will. I hate that nickname. I’m not a baby anymore.” Caroline’s ivory skin flushed splotchy red. Whitney felt for her. How well she remembered twelve. An awkward age, an in-between age, too old to like the things you had liked when you were a little kid, dolls and cartoons and ponies, and too young to do all of the things you wanted to do, like date boys and drive a car and go to prom. To be the 209 mythical savior of your kindred on top of that was a load. “I’m sick of being locked up. If you’re going to treat me like a zoo animal, you might as well just put me in a cage like LeRoi did.” “Caroline.” Lydia spoke sharply, the way she spoke to Leigh when she talked back. McLain had whitened to the lips. “Your brother is doing his best to protect you.” “Well, maybe I’m tired of being protected, did you ever think about that?” Caroline snapped. Kicking her chair back, she stormed out of the room. A minute later, the front door slammed. “Let her go,” McLain said wearily. Lydia had started to stand, but McLain waved her back into her seat. “Evelyn is next door. She’ll keep an eye on her.” “We need to find Seth,” Marshall said, as Lydia sat back. His body was bent forward like a wire about to snap. In his scrubs, he was a perfect eighteen-year-old replica of their father, if Wesley Townsend had ever worn his black curls just a wee bit long. “He’s the only one with the power to take the Ark from the Alpha Clan. If we get him back, the Ark is safe, and so is the Black Swan.” “Marshall, we’re trying. But we don’t even know where to begin.” McLain scraped his hands through his hair again. He looked like he wanted to yank it out. “The last anyone saw of Seth was inside the rotunda at Fort King. That was more than thirteen hours ago. We know his motorcycle is missing, but that’s our only clue.” “You must have a contingency plan for keeping him from stealing the Ark,” Marshall reasoned. A muscle jumped beside McLain’s mouth. Whitney saw it, and she saw Marshall see it, too; his eyes instantly frosted over to the frigid blue of arctic ice. “Does it have something to do with those snipers on the fort’s roof?” “If it came down to that,” McLain said, “I believe Seth has already proven he would prefer death to betraying his kindred.” “Here’s an idea,” Marshall said. “Why don’t we just kill Caroline? Take out the Black Swan, and it doesn’t matter who has the Source or the Ark, you can’t raise Lemuria, and you can’t open the stargate. Basically solves our problem.” “Marshall,” Jack said. Lydia had gasped. “What, Mr. Steward? You’d rather see him kill Seth?” Marshall’s tone was obstinate, but he was blushing. “You know Seth will do anything to protect Leigh. He would never let anyone hurt her.” Almost unconsciously, he picked Whitney’s hand up. His mouth twitched when she squeezed his fingers, gently. “We need to figure out who’s holding them,” Emery said, from the window, speaking up for the first time. “J.J. called it yesterday: If we 210 find who has been helping LeRoi on the outside, we’ll find the Source, and we’ll find Seth and Leigh. Without anybody getting killed.” McLain nodded. “You’re right, Emery. We’re working on that, too. Has anybody heard from Dre? He was running down a lead for J.J. when he left the fort last night.” That was too much for Lydia. She shoved back from the table. In yoga pants and a long T-shirt, even without makeup, she looked young enough to be Leigh’s older sister. “Will, for the love of the stars, what is the matter with you? Dre Alfaro is sixteen years old, and you’ve got him running down some lead my seventeen-year-old son came up with? Marshall whisking Caroline off to safety in the midst of a battle? These are children! They need to be protected, and they’re the ones protecting us! Doesn’t that bother you?” “Lydia, this isn’t helping,” Jack said. He rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. Lydia whirled on him. “Please do not lecture me about helping, Jonathan.” Jack colored. There was a beat of silence before Whitney said, “The hunters.” McLain looked over at her. His fingers were laced under his chin, squeezing the blood away from his knuckles. “Come again?” “The hunters,” Whitney repeated. This was probably a stupid idea, but now that she had started on it, she decided to just put it out there. “I was just thinking that Fort King is housing a whole bunch of hunters right now. Can’t any of them track down Seth?” “We already questioned them.” McLain’s tone, though dismissive, was not unkind. “We’ve been evaluating which ones are ready for integration into human society. None of them know anything useful. LeRoi wouldn’t have shared anything damning with them.” “But they’re still hunters,” Whitney said. “They’re trained to track down werekin. To think like they do. Right?” Emery had sat up straight. He looked handsome in his camouflage fatigues, yet Whitney wasn’t sure she didn’t prefer his frayed jeans and word shirts. “She has a point, Captain. If Cleo were here, she could track Seth, like she did the night Regent chased him into the woods. Xanthe has already tried to locate him, and he can’t get a sense of him at all. Maybe we should give a hunter a try. If there was someone who knew werecats, like Cleo – ” “Absolutely not,” Lydia said hotly. “You are not sending hunters after my son.” “Not to hurt him, Lydia. To find him.” McLain sounded impressed by the idea. Whitney was pleased. She didn’t have much to contribute in 211 the superhero category. It was nice not to be utterly useless now and then. McLain thought he knew someone who could help. He went out to make a call. Lydia followed him. She still didn’t look thrilled to be setting hunters on Seth. Whitney heard them arguing quietly as they disappeared into the kitchen. After a minute, Jack got up as well. Whitney heard him climb the steps to Leigh’s room. Marshall laid his head down on his arms. He had taken out his cell phone to check his messages; whatever the news was, from the slump of his shoulders, it didn’t seem to be good. Whitney rubbed his back. “Was that about Cam?” “No. Aphrodisia needs my help at the fort.” Whitney felt the muscles in his back expand, then contract as Marshall sucked in a breath and blew it out, sitting up as he did. Her brave, beautiful, brilliant brother, she thought tenderly. Marshall’s eyes were ringed with shadows, darker than a winter sky. Whitney wondered what, if anything, had been said between him and Cam last night at the hospital. “I shouldn’t have said that about Caroline. It was an awful thing to say.” “It’s nothing Burke hasn’t said,” Emery said, reaching down to pet Captain Hook. The little dog had picked up on the somber mood and was looking morose. Whitney cleared her throat. Emery saw the glare she was shooting him; his big ears reddened, and he hastened to add, “Sorry, Doc. I just meant McLain has heard it before.” In the doorway, someone coughed. Whitney looked around. Quinn O’Shea was standing there, copper hair pouring out from under her UA beanie. Angelo Alfaro was right behind her. “Trust me,” Quinn said. “He hasn’t heard all of it.” *** The tunnel into the hillside looked the same as it had in J.J.’s dreams. He didn’t find that comforting, given that those dreams ended with his fiery death as the mountain exploded. But this was not a mountain, it was just a hill, and this rainforest was not the Lemurian jungle. Sending messages through dreams was like writing backwards on a mirror in a foreign tongue, then throwing the mirror in the ocean to hopefully wash up on some distant shore: You never knew if the person who received it would recognize the language, or know to set the mirror in front of another to straighten out the words. J.J. had tried several times to speak to Seth through dreams before he had managed to do more than show him a cemetery Seth had never seen and 212 a girl he had no reason to suspect was a hunter. Try as he might, he never had been able to warn him about Regent or Jack. Whoever had been sending Seth and J.J. dreams of Lemuria had clearly wanted them to find this place, Earth’s last connection to that lost land. J.J. hoped the fiery death part would be just a metaphor, too. The tunnel sloped downward at an almost imperceptible angle. The earthen walls were haired with yellow roots; a quarter-inch of water lapped at J.J.’s boots when he stepped cautiously over the threshold, halfprepared for the entrance to seal shut. It did not. “I see a light,” Cleo said. J.J. glanced at her. “At the end of the tunnel? That’s very optimistic of you.” She glared at him. Darkly satisfied by that, J.J. motioned to LeRoi. “Come on. You’ve been here before. You can show us the way.” LeRoi had taken the bandana off her hair and tied it around her neck. Her braid was fraying, damp strands clinging to her cheeks and neck. “They won’t let me in,” she said, “but I can take you to the door.” J.J. spread his arms. “Lead the way.” Ben had never told J.J. anything about his visit to the Tortoise Clan, other than that he had asked them to give LeRoi the Source. It had been a bold move, but the Tortoise Clan wouldn’t have agreed to it if they hadn’t believed the werekin could use the Source to defeat their enemies. Tortoises lived long lives. They had long memories. The Tortoise Clan would know secrets no other living creature remembered even existed to be forgotten. They were the original telepaths, the first necromancers, the most skilled Healers, the White Swan’s priests and advisors on Lemuria. Like the Alpha Clan was for the Black Swan. The deeper they descended, the brighter the light grew, outlining a set of massive silver doors scrolled with interlocking glyphs. J.J. wished for Seth’s ability to speak the language of magic – the gift of tongues, so much more useful than J.J.’s gift of foresight. He reached out instinctively with his mind, reaching for the tether that bound him to his twin. Seth? Can you hear me? His mind slid off the surface of something opaque, like fingertips sliding off an iced-over windowpane. J.J. frowned. That wasn’t right. He knew how it felt for Seth to lock him out. This was like Seth was locked in – Cleo gasped. The tunnel’s entrance was a corona of daylight far, far behind them – too far to turn back to, as the doors they stood in front of suddenly folded inward. LeRoi moved behind J.J., one thin hand fluttering up to her throat, as if to touch the key to the collar he no longer wore. “It wouldn’t 213 open for me,” she whispered. “I was here once before, and it wouldn’t open for me…” The rest of her words were lost in a wash of silver light that made them all stagger back. J.J. drew the sword over his shoulder. The etched blade glowed like a slice of starlight as he threw his arm up to shield his eyes. Cleo’s elbow bumped his; she had drawn the pistol off her belt, moving into position beside him like they were back in the Arena, fighting as a matched pair for the Partners’ sport. J.J. felt her breath on his cheek as she glanced at him, looking for his signal to attack. A shape appeared in the light. No. Several shapes. As the light dimmed, the shapes became distinct, and J.J. lowered his sword. Taking her cue from him, Cleo lowered her pistol. The dozen men in rough-spun brown robes were familiar to J.J. from his dreams. Still, being in their physical presence was overpowering. The alienness of them pressed on his mind as they fanned out, surrounding the interlopers. A chalky powder seemed to cover the men’s gray skin. Actually, J.J. saw, it was a fine downing of hair. The eyes in their skull-like faces tunneled straight into their sockets, the irises as colorless as their skin and their long, snarled hair, which was tipped with slivers of bone that clinked when they moved. They seemed to be a unit, their odd, shuffling gait perfectly in time, shoulders stooped like they were used to carrying a heavy weight on their backs. One wore a necklace of small animal bones around his long stalk of a neck. His gnarled hand curled around the wooden shaft of a bronzetipped spear. Marking him as their leader, J.J. bowed. We are not kings. The voice that spoke in J.J.’s mind was multiplicitous – the Tortoise Clan seemed to think with a hive mind. He kept his head bowed, trying not to flinch from the pressure of the voices. His brain felt like it was trapped under a rock. You do not bow to us. I bow from respect, J.J. thought back. You are my elders. I come with questions. An urgent need – We have no answers. We are not who you seek. “You’re not?” J.J. was so surprised he spoke aloud. “No,” said a light, bemused voice. “I am why you have come. Or, I can show you to the one who is, at least.” J.J. raised his head. LeRoi had uttered a cry like Grandpappy Tortoise had just stabbed her with his spear. Standing on the threshold of what J.J. glimpsed to be a jarringly modern room, the white-haired old man smiled. He was a man; his blood did not call to J.J.’s as the weretortoises’ did. He was wearing a sturdy 214 pair of brown trousers, well-worn hiking boots, and a cotton shirt buckled over with a khaki utility vest. Kindly blue eyes sparkled behind his half-moon spectacles. “You’re not Elijah Bishop,” J.J. said. For it had been Bishop he was expecting. Bishop he was certain had summoned him to this place, through dreams, no matter what Project Ark’s records said about an execution. The old man shook his head. “No, I am not. My son left this world many years ago.” He glanced at LeRoi, and the sparkle in his eyes was suddenly more like the flash of a dagger-point. “This isn’t possible,” LeRoi said, through bloodless lips. “You were lost.” “Not everything that vanishes is lost, Ursula. Sometimes it chooses not to be found. But forgive my manners.” The old man’s eyes warmed again as they returned to J.J. “I am Abraham Bishop. If you’ll come with me, it would be my very great pleasure to introduce you to my son.” *** Okay, so there was, like, nothing even slightly romantic about being confined inside a birdcage with the very pretty but badly hurt and possibly dying boy you might have had the teensiest little crush on for a few weeks now, in spite of his atrocious fashion sense and self-professed love of role-playing games, not to mention his unfortunate ability to quote every line from The Lord of the Rings. Except if said boy murmured your name in his sleep when he turned over. Leigh ran her hand through Dre’s glossy dark hair. After rousing briefly to sip some water, he had fallen asleep again with his head in her lap. For the past two hours, Gideon had left them alone in the cathedral to do whatever it was mad scientists did to while away spring afternoons, and Leigh, after crying herself into puffy eyes, had watched the sun progress across the sky through the stained glass window. The cathedral was pretty. Leigh wasn’t religious, but she appreciated the artistry of the tortured Christ on his cross, the beatific Madonna holding her babe. Rosy lights burned low in blown-glass sconces between the boarded-up windows, adding their discordant light to the red-and-black squares the stained-glass window cast on the wooden pews and silver-veined marble. The pattern of stars on the window seemed to shift if Leigh stared at it too long. Whitney was always reading her poetry, and some stupid line from Whitman or Poe or somebody was stuck like a bad song in her head: Doubt that the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love. Honestly. What did that even mean? 215 Dre shifted. Leigh let her hands settle lightly on his shoulders. There were thin, corded muscles there. It made her appreciate the physicality of how his wings must beat, the strength it would take to fly. She had never been jealous of what Seth and J.J. were that she wasn’t, but she almost was now, and not only because, uncollared, Dre could have flown right out of this cage. Werekin were beautiful. Those dark eyes opened. Leigh blushed like she had just said that out loud. “Hi,” she said. “Hi,” Dre said. Leigh helped him sit up. His color was still bad; it worsened when he touched the torc around his throat. She wasn’t sure he had been properly awake enough before to realize he was collared. “What happened?” he asked. Leigh quickly filled him in about Connor, Seth, and Gideon. “That’s what General Burke said to me, right before Connor threw that knife at him,” Dre said. “He said, ‘We have to stop him. He’s Ursula’s son.’” “So on the strength of that, you decided to take a knife for him?” Dre shrugged. “I knew I might survive. He wouldn’t have.” Leigh touched the red line on his chest with the tips of her manicured nails. Like the scar across Seth’s hipbones after LeRoi had shot him, the wound had healed on the outside, but inside, Dre didn’t seem to have healed at all. She could tell by his pallor. “Come here,” she said. Dre let her guide his shoulders back into her lap. Leigh closed her eyes, resting her head against the bars. “It’s like Connor isn’t even human anymore,” she said. “He can’t be fully human and have done what he did to Seth,” Dre said. “Only Gen-0s have that kind of telepathic power.” “But I thought telepathy was a gift from the Totems. Like your skin. Something science can’t replicate.” “Connor must have already had some telepathic powers. Some humans do. The Gen-0 blood would just have enhanced them.” Dre folded Leigh’s hand in his. She looked down at him. His eyes were very large in his delicate face. “Leigh, if we get out of here, do you want to go to prom with me?” She burst out laughing. It was all just so absurd, and yet somehow, absolutely perfect. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. She swept her hair over one shoulder, to hold it back as she leaned down, touching her lips to his cheek. She felt Dre breathe out, felt his eyelashes brush her nose, and it would have been the perfect moment for her to kiss his mouth, had Gideon not waltzed back in. 216 He was wheeling a gurney ahead of him. Leather straps dangled off the sides, studded with cruel silver spikes. Leigh scrambled to her feet. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “I told you, Miss Steward.” Gideon parked the gurney next to the cage. “I intend to have a look at this specimen’s brain. Did you know he has a photographic memory?” “No.” Leigh’s hair whipped across her cheeks as she shook her head. “Connor told you, I heard him tell you to leave us both alive – ” “What Connor doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Gideon said lightly. “I’ll tell him the specimen expired. Without Healing potion, given the damage to his heart, it’s the most likely outcome anyway.” “He is not a specimen.” Leigh wrapped her fingers around the silver bars. She was fairly trembling with rage. “He is a person.” “Miss Steward, from a purely scientific standpoint, let me assure you that thing is not a person.” Gideon flicked a glance of pregnant loathing at Dre, who was sitting up, arms locked around his knees. Leigh could tell by his breathing he was battling the urge to skin, which the collar would not allow him to do. A dark shadow passed across the window, painting his ashen skin in shades of gray and blue. “I have never understood the desire of humans to mate with these creatures. It’s like mating with a cockroach. Although I understand that now even the Gen-0s are being permitted to mate with one another, if you can fathom such a thing.” Finding that beside the point, Leigh said, “So Dre has alien DNA. He’s still a living being. He feels pain. How can you strap down a living being and cut out his brain?” “Vivisection is a long-accepted practice for the advancement of medicine. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the sake of science.” “This isn’t science,” Leigh spit at him. “It’s just murder. You take lives for no reason other than because you can.” Locking the wheels in place, Gideon leaned back against the gurney. The scalpel Leigh had tried to stab him with earlier was clasped in his hand. Leigh thought, with a suppressed shudder, there might be another reason Aaron Gideon took lives. Like because he got off on it. “I am a man of vision, Miss Steward. Something Ursula LeRoi failed to appreciate while I was in her employ.” Leigh frowned. Wasn’t he still in LeRoi’s employ, by proxy, through Connor? “She and Elijah Bishop were both woefully shortsighted in their view of what resurrecting the werekin could mean. Bishop had this laughably naïve plan to learn from them about ‘world peace.’ LeRoi is obsessed with sending us to new, unblighted worlds, as pristine as the island of Lemuria, with the superior technology to conquer them for the future of humankind. That was the 217 vision that brought them together initially. A perfect world. Bishop wanted to create heaven on Earth. LeRoi wants to leave Earth behind for the real thing.” “What does Connor want?” Leigh said. “Connor,” Gideon said, “recognizes what Eve was bright enough to grasp that Adam could not. Within the Ark lies alien DNA with the secret to perfecting the human race. A race that never falls prey to disease or the ravages of age. A race that never weakens, never dies. We can be immortal, but as Eve knew, the only way to become a god is to acquire the knowledge of the gods.” “I think you’re forgetting how that turned out for Eve,” Dre said. Gideon started to laugh, but the sound was swallowed up by a terrific splintering as the stained-glass window burst apart. The gurney overturned – Gideon had dived behind it, throwing up his arms. Leigh jumped back, out of the way of the shower of red-andblack glass; something bellowed, and a second later, the shadow she had seen loomed up in the empty pane, a massive bull with hide like black velvet. Angelo Alfaro leapt over the sill. He pawed the marble, kicking up sparks, then charged the gurney, which flipped up and over his horns, to crash onto the dust-laced keys of the pipe organ. The amplified boom seemed to presage the end of the world. Gideon took off at a sprint. Leigh did not straightaway recognize the boy who dove through the window and sprinted off after him, loosing an arrow from the string of a high-powered bow. She did recognize Quinn O’Shea, Emery Little, and – “Whitney?” she gasped. “Leigh!” Whitney ran to the bars, looking all around for some way to unlock the cage. Emery and Quinn had disappeared into the choir room on the archer’s heels. “How do you open this thing?” she said, desperately. “Move over.” Alfaro gently pushed her aside. He was wearing baggy jeans and an AKO hoodie, the shoulders of which sparkled with broken glass. Seizing the bars in both massive hands, he yanked once. They came free easily, like they were made of straw instead of metal, creating a doorway wide enough to walk through. Alfaro rushed over to Dre, palming something small and silver – the key Connor had left on the altar. Whitney threw her arms around Leigh. Her cheeks were wet. “How did you find us?” Leigh asked, hugging her back just as tight. She had never been happier to see her best friend. 218 “Lucky,” Whitney said. Although Leigh had absolutely no idea what luck had to do with anything, she nodded. Alfaro scooped up Dre. He looked even more fragile in his adopted brother’s arms. Before Leigh could go to him, Quinn reappeared, pocketing her cell phone in her Lady Knights hoodie. “There’s still no service.” She turned to Leigh. “Where’s Seth?” “Not in here,” drawled a distinctively aristocratic voice. The archer had stepped back into the cathedral. He was sporting a fresh scratch below his eye, like a bullet graze, dressed in jeans now; his longish hair had been recently cropped, standing up in short spikes all over his scalp, but that crooked smile was the same as it fell on Leigh. “Hello again, love,” the hunter boy said. “Okay,” Leigh said. “Who the hell are you, and what is going on?” “This is Lucky,” Whitney said quickly. “Well, Lukas, but – anyway, he’s a hunter. McLain let him out to track down Seth. We started at the fort, and he followed the trail out to the Burkes’, then from there to here.” “How?” Leigh asked, impressed in spite of herself. “You’ll have to ask him. He was scarily good at it.” Lucky beamed. Emery, coming up behind him, did not look pleased to hear his girlfriend complimenting a hunter. In particular one with a sexy British accent and a cool leather jacket, like a modern-day Robin Hood with that bow slung across his back. “Gideon got into a car in the alley and drove off,” Emery said. “I think someone else was driving it.” Damn. And Leigh had been so looking forward to witnessing his death by lethal jaguar when J.J. got his teeth into him. “I did find General Burke back here, though. He’s in a bad way. We need to get him back to the fort.” “What about the Ark?” Leigh said. Lucky wrinkled his nose. Leigh stared at him. So. Familiar. “What about it?” Blank faces looked back at her as Leigh glanced around their small circle. Her mouth went dry as the truth sank in: They didn’t know. “Connor just took Seth to steal it,” she said. 219 Chapter Seventeen: Absolution There must have been a time when Will McLain’s decisions were simple. He just couldn’t remember when that was. McLain was twelve years old, to the day, when his sister Caroline was born. Their mother had worried he would resent sharing his birthday with a sister so much younger than he was, a “surprise” baby who would take up so much of his parents’ time just as he was entering his teenage years, but McLain had never minded. He had loved Caroline on sight, this tiny, perfect creature with hair black as night, surrounded by a nimbus of light like a halo. He had pointed the light out to his parents. They hadn’t seen it. They didn’t see the blurred image of Uncle Ben or the other werekin in Fairfax their son had to blink away from his eyes, either. But when Caroline was a week old, she skinned, and after that, nothing had been the same. Joseph McLain, a Chimera scientist, an ally of the Resistance on the inside, had requested a transfer out of Fairfax, away from the Ark. They had kept Caroline glamoured, prayed to the Totems no one would ever suspect what she was. Two years later, holding his aunt’s hand in a snowy cemetery while the priest said a final prayer for his parents, McLain had hated himself because in some inchoate way he was relieved they were gone. For now if he failed to protect Caroline, his parents would never have to know. He looked over at his sister. Caroline had grudgingly dressed in jeans and a plain black sweater and tied her glossy hair up in a ponytail for traveling. McLain was also in jeans. Their luggage was packed into the trunk of his rusted Pontiac, which still had its New Mexico plates. Though he had told no one they were leaving, once Quinn O’Shea had finished telling them what J.J. had told her about the swan song, McLain didn’t see how anyone could have expected him to stay. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” he said. “Did you want to come in or stay in the car?” Caroline folded her skinny arms. The sky outside her window was cherry-red as the sun lowered into a bank of ominous clouds in the west; it picked out the copper streaks in her hair. McLain had those same streaks, a jarring reminder that their human blood was the same – enough for McLain’s blood to have powered the Source. She isn’t just the Black Swan, Leigh Steward had said. She’s a person. Leigh. Another little sister he had let down. “You said we could stay in Fairfax,” Caroline mumbled, to the dashboard. 220 Patience, Will, Aunt Ingrid would say. Caroline had been remarkably brave these past few months. She hadn’t told LeRoi her brother could see werekin after Werner Regent had collared her. If she would have, LeRoi would have killed him, for hiding the Black Swan all these years. Then she had entranced herself to stay hidden from the traitor inside the Resistance and made the difficult, adult decision to remain on Earth with the rest of her kindred. Caroline was a queen, as the White Swan had been, but she was also twelve years old. McLain had never gotten the parenting stuff down. Aunt Ingrid had always handled that part. “Look,” he said, nodding to the guard at Fort King’s gate. “I want to stay here too, Caro – Caroline,” he corrected, quickly. “But it isn’t safe.” Usually his lopsided smile worked on Caroline. Tonight she was having none of it. She turned her head to look out the window. “Connor was right about you,” she said. McLain put the car in park, next to what had been the chimera fountain yesterday and today was an empty, cracked concrete bowl. The only thing certain in life, he remembered his father saying, is that it changes. “What did Connor say about me?” “That you don’t want me to have a life.” Caroline snatched her iPod out of her sparkly pink purse. “I don’t want to go in. I’ll stay here.” “All right,” McLain said. “But don’t leave the car.” He rolled the windows down – leaving her the keys in case the clouds loosed their rain – and jogged up the steps into the fort. Inside was a beehive of activity. Sergeant Scott Sommers saluted as McLain started up a flight of stone stairs, changing course to walk with him. “We’ve got a problem, sir,” he reported. Oh well, McLain thought. Nice to have one of those for a change. “What is it, Sergeant?” The stocky, ginger-haired Sommers passed him a print-out. It was a high-res photo of two jaguars, one light, one dark, leaping at one another across a basketball court as panicked spectators pushed and shoved to get clear of them. McLain cursed. Anyone who hadn’t been at the game would probably dismiss it as a hoax, but those who had been might see it and remember what had really happened. Enchantments were tricky things. You never knew what might be enough to break them. “I thought we had the city blacked out,” he said. “We’ve shut down cell towers, land lines, wireless Internet, told people it’s a problem caused by the storm damage, but some local reporter found his way to the edge of town and managed to upload this from his iPhone.” Sommers paused. McLain stopped outside his office to wait for the bad news his sergeant didn’t want to deliver. “He also went on quite a rant about the military essentially cutting off the city in order 221 to contain news of an alien invasion. He specifically named Operation Swan Song.” McLain swore. Loudly. Profusely. “Find Jensen,” he ordered, throwing open his office door. “I want to know where we are in contacting Burke. And get Ben Schofield up here. I need to talk to him. Has anybody heard from Emery Little?” “No sir. The tracking device on Lucky – sorry, I mean Lukas – that’s the hunter, sir – ” “I know who Lucky is,” McLain growled. “What about him?” “Sorry, sir.” Sommers flushed. He was younger than McLain; he had only made sergeant a few weeks ago. “The tracking device is still active, and it looks like they’re on their way back to the fort. We haven’t spoken to them. Communications are still down.” “I want a full report the moment they get here.” “Yes, Captain.” Sommers snapped a salute and started to go, then turned back. McLain had just spun his chair away from his cluttered desk. “Did you want to speak to J.J. Sullivan as well, sir?” Slowly, McLain turned around. “J.J. Sullivan is here?” “Yes sir. He arrived with Connor Burke about twenty minutes ago.” Sommers looked baffled by McLain’s sudden pallor. No one but Jensen knew J.J. had orchestrated LeRoi’s escape, with Agathon’s help. “Where are they now?” McLain demanded. “On the lower levels,” Sommers said. “With the Gen-0s.” And somehow, McLain just knew. “Shut it down!” he said. “The whole fort, Sommers, lock it down. And get a guard outside to bring the Black Swan in here, now!” *** Quinn pitched her useless cell phone over the backseat. It landed amidst the crumpled-up soda cans and old concert flyers on the van’s floorboards. “Still nothing,” she announced. Leigh winced as Emery hit a pothole on the highway at seventy miles an hour – top speed for Chaz’s clunker van. Guitar stands rattled dangerously against the back doors. The engine had been whining for the last five minutes, knocking ominously in the depths. Leigh scooted Dre’s shoulders higher into her lap, trying not to let him be jostled. They had found a stash of Healing potion in the medical bag Gideon had left behind at Sacred Heart. Some they had fed to General Burke, the rest to Dre. Dre was still breathing shallowly. Alfaro had carried him to the van. 222 Emery and Lucky-the-hunter had carried General Burke between them. The general was conscious, but only just barely; his face was black and purple, one of his eyes swollen shut. Whitney was tending to him in the other corner of the van. Alfaro and Lucky were talking in low tones, Lucky’s fingers rubbing absent circles on a red, raised mark on the inside of his right wrist. “Crap,” Emery said. His knuckles had whitened on the wheel. Whitney’s chin came up. “What’s the matter?” “They must be on lockdown again. There’s a roadblock.” Emery’s big ears twitched. Peering around him, Leigh saw flashing lights in front of the gate at the top of the fort’s long, winding drive. “Don’t slow down,” Burke growled. As he hadn’t spoken until now, everyone stared at him. “What?” Emery squeaked, glancing over his shoulder. Quinn hissed at him to watch the road. “Drive through it,” Burke commanded raspingly. “You see those clouds over in the west? Those aren’t rain clouds, son. I know that because rain clouds don’t move against the wind. We don’t have time to answer questions. Just keep going.” Alfaro muttered a curse. “Seatbelts!” Emery squeaked. Would have been a lovely idea, if Chaz’s van actually had seatbelts. The back had been hollowed out to make room for Listening Korn’s instruments. Quinn, in the passenger’s seat, snapped her belt in place. Alfaro dove on top of Leigh as Burke pushed Whitney down on the floor. Leigh saw Lucky brace himself against the back doors. Was he actually laughing? “Won’t they shoot us?” she shrieked. “Keep your head down,” Burke shouted back. There wasn’t much time to be scared. A half-beat later, the van slammed nose-first into the chain link gate – which popped up onto the hood, fractured the windshield, and skidded across the top of the van before bouncing off the back. Leigh heard guards shouting for them to stop and the rat-tat-tat of gunfire when Emery kept the pedal to the floor. “Emery!” Quinn screamed. He slammed on the brakes. Leigh would have been thrown into the front seat if Alfaro hadn’t been on top of her, practically squishing her. Dre moaned. “Crap,” Emery said again, breathlessly, as the smell of burned rubber filled the van. “Oh, Chaz, is gonna kill me…” “Focus, Emery,” Quinn snapped. The van was being surrounded. By men with guns. Alfaro sat up, positioning his bulk in front of Leigh and Dre as the back doors were 223 jerked open. Lucky hastily raised his hands. “What the – ” Taking them all in, Ben Schofield lowered the sawed-off shotgun from his shoulder. “What in the name of the stars is all this?” “We’ll explain later,” said Quinn, diving out of the van. “Connor and Seth are here, and they’re trying to steal the Ark!” “You know, I think they might already know that,” Emery observed, looking out the shattered windshield at the armed guards on the roof, the spotlights sweeping the wooded hillside. Ben slid an arm around David Burke’s waist and helped him limp into the fort. Alfaro jumped down and reached back to scoop up Dre. His eyelids looked thin as paper over his eyes, which were not darting around like they usually did. Leigh grabbed the hand Whitney offered to help her down and held onto it as they raced inside the fort. Leigh had never mapped the internal geography of Fort King, but even with Marines swarming down the narrow corridors and twisting staircases, it wasn’t hard to keep Angelo Alfaro’s beaded dreadlocks in sight. She would realize later the soles of her bare feet were cut from the broken glass back at the cathedral, but she didn’t at the time notice the bloody footprints she was leaving on the black stone as they burst into the infirmary. Marshall looked up. He was standing just inside a curtain that had been pulled around a cot at the end of the room. A white lab coat was open over his scrubs. “What’s happened?” he asked, as he hurried toward them. Alfaro arranged Dre gingerly on one of the cots. “Connor Burke stabbed him,” he said. “Silver knife. To the heart.” “How long ago?” Taking a penlight from his pocket, Marshall shined it in Dre’s eyes. He had only started a little when Alfaro had mentioned Connor. “Maybe twelve hours ago?” Leigh said, shakily. “It was last night.” “Has he had any potion?” “Just a little.” Leigh wanted to hold Dre’s hand, but she also didn’t want to get in Marshall’s way. “Marshall, will he – he’ll be okay, won’t he?” “Was the blade treated with anything?” Marshall asked. “Silver powder, or…?” “I don’t know,” Leigh whispered. “I don’t think so.” Marshall glanced at her. His eyes were bluer than Leigh had ever seen. “Seth?” he asked, softly. It was Whitney who explained what Connor had done to Seth, while Marshall worked on Dre, checking his blood pressure, hooking electrodes to his chest, tipping strengthening potion to his lips. His color 224 improved a little after that. Whitney nudged Leigh forward; she walked over to stand by Alfaro, who laid a hand on his brother’s bare shoulder. “What can we do, Doc?” he asked gruffly. Marshall draped his stethoscope around his neck. Alarms had started to sound down below – either that, or Leigh had just become aware of them. She saw Lucky motion Emery and Quinn out into the hallway. Marshall, glancing after them, touched the pocket of his lab coat as though checking something was there. “His heart is damaged. It would have been better if he’d been treated right away, but we’ll give him as much potion as we can. Angelo, stay with him. If he gets worse, call out to me. Whitney, Leigh, I need you to help me.” “Help you what?” Leigh demanded. She didn’t want to leave Dre. He looked – well, not good. That was as far as she was willing to let her mind go down the path of what it meant for his heart to be damaged. “Where’s Aphrodisia? Can’t she do her psychic X-ray thing on him?” “Aphrodisia is a little busy right now,” Marshall said. He reached to draw back the curtain around the cot at the end of the row. Leigh set her hands on her hips. The Ark being stolen was a big deal, she realized, but Dre could be dying. “What is she doing she can’t take a minute to look at my boyfriend?” she demanded. Marshall shoved the curtain back. Leigh and Whitney both gasped. “She’s giving birth,” he said. *** J.J. felt like he should say something clever as Abraham Bishop led them through the Tortoise Clan’s temple, but at the moment, he was fresh out of pithy remarks. “Bunker” would have been a more accurate description than “temple.” The walls, the floors, the ceilings were all black stone, quarried from the same vein as that which fashioned Fort King. Fluorescent lights hung from low wooden rafters, swinging their shadows around corners. The hallway they were following had lots of twists and turns, and J.J. felt some sympathy for a rat trapped in a maze. Doorways opened off to the sides – more low-ceilinged rooms crowded with computers larger than most people’s television sets; radar screens; satellite feeds; blinking motherboards of indeterminate function. The room they had first entered had been like the bridge of a ship, a central command platform surrounded by computerized work stations. So far the only living beings J.J. had seen were the twelve warriors who had greeted them, but he would have bet his sword this place was home to many more members of the Tortoise Clan. 225 Abraham Bishop chatted about the problems of deforestation and pollution facing the Amazon as he walked ahead of them, holding aloft a kerosene lantern he didn’t really need. J.J. wondered how the temple was powered. They had to be off the grid down here. Hydropower, maybe? He didn’t feel the vibration of a generator… He also wondered how Abraham Bishop could still be alive. He had not been a young man when he had disappeared into the rainforest, years before his son would discover Mt. Hokulani. He had to be well over a hundred years old by now. “It’s strengthening potion,” Abraham said. J.J. glanced at him in surprise. The old man smiled. “I could guess what you’re thinking, young man. The secret to my longevity is a small infusion of strengthening potion once a year, on my birthday. Keeps me young. Not forever – I still age, slowly – but then, no one needs to live forever.” LeRoi sniffed. She was walking between Cleo and J.J., shrinking closer to him as the air grew heavy with the musky aroma of incense. The hallway before them opened up into a wide chamber that finally looked like it belonged in the temple of an ancient alien race. Torches burned low in iron brackets around the circular room, their fire stuttering green instead of red. Glyphs had been carved into the floor in swirling patterns, like water flowing over stone. J.J. was almost certain this was where the Source had been housed; a pyramid shape had been scorched into the center of the floor, as though something superheated had stood for centuries on that spot. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above them, rising to a central point. A curtain of vines woven with jewel-bright flowers screened a dais at the front of the room. When LeRoi hesitated, Cleo grabbed her arm and marched her along. No one spoke. The incense came from small brass censers hanging at varying lengths amidst the vines of the curtain. J.J. wondered if the incense was made from the star-shaped flowers; that was what the smell reminded him of as Abraham made to sweep the curtain back. His eyes met Cleo’s, hers lupine silver in the dark. The memory of those few stolen kisses burned between them…J.J. caught his breath… And he was looking down at a corpse. Or what he mistook for a corpse until he noted the flush of color in the man’s cheeks and lips. He waited. The chest did not rise and fall. No pulse fluttered in the throat. He glanced at Abraham, about to ask for an explanation, when a voice spoke – whispered, really. Jeremy Jonathan. 226 J.J. jerked back, saved from falling off the dais by his catlike grace. Cleo stared at him. Obviously no one else had heard the voice, although LeRoi was ashen. “He’s – alive?” J.J. said. “Entranced.” Abraham knelt beside the simple stone altar the man’s body was laid out on. The man had been dressed in a blue robe stitched with silver stars. His hair was long and fair, untouched by gray. He was probably forty years old, or had been when he had been entranced. For a second J.J. was inside Marshall Townsend’s mind again, the night Marshall had entranced Caroline McLain. In stasis, she won’t need to eat or drink, won’t experience cold or hunger or pain. The magic in her blood will sustain her, until the spell is released. The man’s hands had been folded lovingly on his chest. LeRoi was eyeing them as though convinced they would suddenly reach for her. “I saw him die,” she said thinly. “I was in the room when Michael Shepherd injected him – ” “With sleeping potion,” Abraham said. “He injected him with an overdose of sleeping potion. A sleep he could never wake from.” Tenderly, he brushed his son’s brow. “His mind remains alive. We have cared for his body here all these years.” “My God,” Cleo said. The words were more of a breath. “This is really Elijah Bishop?” Jeremy Jonathan. The voice was more insistent that time. Kneeling, J.J. placed a hand over Bishop’s. His skin was like ice. Like the Black Swan’s when Seth had carried her out the Townsends’ back door and J.J. had helped him arrange her in the backseat of Jack Steward’s Beamer. Father. He felt Bishop smile, though his face did not change. You have a father. Thomas Sullivan was a great man. You are father to us all, J.J. said. Xanthe has been teaching you. There was a sigh in J.J.’s mind, ripe with longing. I miss him. I miss all of my children. They miss you, Father. They have done as you asked. They have guarded the Ark. But now – J.J. felt the connection start to slip, some outside force pressing in; he closed his mind to it, but it left him with a feeling like razors scraping his skin. Now the Ark is complete. I came here to ask if there is any way to use it without destroying the Earth. I know what is in your heart, Jeremy Jonathan. The voice in J.J.’s mind was not gentle, but it was free of judgment or reproof. You want to go home. The word home seemed to act as some sort of spell. The world shimmered around the edges like J.J. had just walked through a waterfall of light. The cold, dark temple disappeared, and the next thing J.J. knew, 227 he was standing on a beach of sparkling white sand like powdered diamonds. A jungle ran down to the beach, vibrant with hues of blue and green, like the water lapping at the sand, turquoise against the shore, darkening in rings of lapis and sapphire out to sea. A mountain capped in white fog loomed over the beach, easily a day’s hike through the jungle. Dark clouds seemed to be gathering over it, though the rest of the sunless sky was a clear, arresting blue. Overcome by a sense of nameless dread, J.J. turned from the shelllined path he seemed to have just stepped off of and looked at the man in front of him. He was sitting on a piece of driftwood bleached to the color of bone by the tropical sun. “Is this Lemuria?” Elijah Bishop’s smile lit his light blue eyes. He was dressed in lightweight linen pants and a white cotton shirt. No shoes. His long hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a length of white ribbon. “Lemuria doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “Then you’re saying we’re nowhere?” J.J. knelt, pointedly sifting the white sand through his fingers – real sand that had been warmed by a real sun. “Sure feels like somewhere to me, Father.” Bishop pushed his wire-framed glasses up his freckled nose. “There are worlds inside your mind, J.J. Sullivan. Some might say the mind is the most infinite universe of all.” I can only teach you to find the hidden rooms of your mind. You must uncover what is contained there. The first lesson Xanthe had ever taught J.J. about telepathy. He shivered again. Some rooms you did not want to unlock. Bishop stood. “Walk with me,” he said. They started together up the shell-lined path, into the cool quiet of the trees. J.J. wasn’t filthy or sore from the long trek through the rainforest anymore; he was wearing black trousers and a long black coat perfectly cut to his frame. The coat buckled along the side with silver snaps. The jaguar katana was sheathed across his back. Reaching up, he felt a thin circlet of beaten gold on his head. Bishop smiled at his lifted eyebrows. “You would have been a prince on Lemuria,” he explained. “You and your brother. Direct descendants of your Totems. Like the Black Swan. The first and only of her kind.” “I’d rather be a warrior than a prince,” J.J. said. “I see nothing in history to tell me you couldn’t have been both,” Bishop said. J.J. didn’t answer, because they had just turned a corner and were looking down on a city. 228 The buildings were all made from black volcanic stone, glistening in the sunlight. There were palaces with colonnaded walkways, enclosing courtyards with babbling fountains and exotic gardens; temples crusted with jewels, silk curtains billowing in their glassless windows; bathhouses with arched doorways that smelled of jasmine and sandalwood. Wide shell-lined boulevards connected the buildings to one another, adorned with giant statues of the Totems like the one the Alpha Clan had made of the Black Swan inside Fort King. Nothing appeared to have been built. Everything seemed to have grown, straight out of the ground. Across the city, the statue of the White Swan – the only white stone in the city – looked down on them with more vigilance than benevolence. Her skins were fused, the graceful neck curving into feathered wings. There was intelligence in the blank stone eyes, and very little kindness, like the blind eyes of Justice. Behind her, a black pyramid etched with glyphs pointed to the sky. J.J. saw that he had been wrong: The clouds were not gathering over the mountain; they were gathering above the pyramid. Bishop motioned him to follow. They walked through the deserted city – the silence was oppressive – to an open-air building surrounded by a lush garden. The white star-shaped flowers grew everywhere, exuding a perfumed haze J.J. could feel on his skin like clammy dew. The building was a library. Shelves of books circled a glyph carved into the center of the floor. J.J. recognized this one; it meant understanding. A less practiced eye might have translated it as knowledge, but there was a difference between knowing a thing and understanding a thing. Stone staircases so delicate they might have been fashioned of air spiraled up to a second floor, where silk curtains danced like ghosts on the ocean-scented breeze. Nothing about it was inviting. Its beauty was that of a dead flower preserved in wax. All of the books had the same blue fabric covers embroidered with silver stars. Bishop watched J.J. walk over and take one down at random. “Amor vincit Omnia,” he read. “Virgil. Good choice.” He stuck the book back on the shelf and turned around. “Father, can I ask you something?” “You want to know how I told Aidan McDonagh about the swan song when I was here,” Bishop gestured vaguely at the walls that looked like stone but were really as translucent as vapor, a world inside his mind, “entranced.” J.J. nodded. Bishop sat down on the sill of one of the tall, open windows. He seemed perfectly at ease, but at the same time, melancholy. Resigned to his fate. “I spoke to him the same way I speak to you. 229 Through dreams. Aidan was never trained. I’m not sure he realized someone was sending him dreams. But he knew they were meant to guide him, and he had the courage to act on them.” “But it was your writing,” J.J. insisted. “On the letter Seth and Emery found.” “Have you heard of automatic writing? I spoke through Aidan that last night. It’s a crass way of putting it, but he ‘channeled’ me, if you will. It took a tremendous force of will on my part, but he had opened his mind fully to the dreams by then.” Bishop looked down at his hands. They were careful, elegant hands, like Marshall’s. “I sent him to his death. If I had known the hunters were so close – ” “We don’t control the future, Father. We only try to shape it.” Bishop grinned. Suddenly he could have been a teenager. “You are Xanthe’s student. Does he still watch Casablanca?” “Every Saturday night,” J.J. said. Bishop laughed. It had probably been a long time since he had laughed with anyone, and J.J. felt a little guilty for spoiling the moment, but a sense of urgency was growing in him. Shadows rippled across the city. The clouds above the pyramid had thickened, and if he listened closely, he could hear thunder off in the distance, like the mountain was growling. “Is there a way to send us home without destroying the Earth?” “The White Swan didn’t believe there was.” Bishop peeked around the silk curtain at the statue staring down at them. “She sank Lemuria to save this planet.” “Because Earth is blessed with a special magic,” J.J. said. “Humankind.” “The Totems thought so. They came down to Earth to bless them.” Swinging up onto the staircase, J.J. leaned back against the rail. He was still amazed by the gritty texture of the stone under the soles of his thick boots. The illusion of this place was real enough to trap you. “LeRoi thinks the Black Swan was born now because humans have lost that blessing.” Bishop’s mouth tightened. “I spent too many years listening to what Ursula thinks. I’d rather know what you think.” “I don’t think it’s an accident the Jaguar Totems chose Seth and I now, and that we have the gifts we do,” J.J. answered readily. “But I don’t think the Totems want us to destroy the Earth. I think they saw a chance for us to save it, because thanks to you, we have something the White Swan never had. The Alpha Clan.” There was no sun in the sky, but the light outside frosted the lenses of Bishop’s glasses, hiding his eyes. “You have kept this from Ursula?” “We’re not what you’d call bosom friends,” J.J. shrugged. 230 “Yes, but there are not many minds in this world as cunning as hers.” Bishop shifted, or perhaps the light outside dimmed, for J.J. could see his eyes again. They were deep as the roiling ocean. “If you succeed in this, you will have beaten her at her own game not once but twice.” “Will it work, then?” “Theoretically, yes,” Bishop said. “The Gen-0s would have the strength to channel the Source’s power. The question is: What do you want them to channel it into? Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form. The White Swan called upon her Totem to close the stargate the day the Source was created, and she sank her homeland beneath the seas.” “So there has to be a sacrifice,” J.J. said. “Think of it as an exchange.” That was kind of like calling death a long sleep, but whatever. J.J. had never expected saving the world to be easy. He hopped down from the stairs. The curtains were whipping wildly now as the wind blew through the library, riffling the pages of a book, a journal bound in cracked leather, that had been left open on a tall podium. Words in black ink lifted off the parchment like butterflies. Bishop made no effort to rise, even as the floor beneath their feet began to crack, fissures appearing in white lines across the black stone. “Come back with me,” J.J. shouted, over the thunder of the wind. “I can take you back with me, Father. I know I’m strong enough to take us both – ” Bishop shook his head. White flowers drifted in the windows, dancing with the black butterflies. “There is no absolution for the works that have been wrought on your kindred in my name,” he said, calmly, his voice almost lost in the sudden storm’s cacophony. “I do not ask for forgiveness, Jeremy Jonathan. I did not bring you here to save me.” J.J. stared at him, the horror of this place just beginning to dawn on him. Because there was another quote from Virgil, he recalled, from the Aeneid. Each of us bears his own hell. The butterflies’ wings had razor edges. They slashed the silk curtains, slashed shallow cuts on Bishop’s arms and cheeks. His blood splashed onto the stone floor; the glyph carved there began to glow like it was newly branded. The white petals formed a whirlwind that drove J.J. back, toward the door. He cried out again for Bishop, but the stone beneath his feet fractured apart in a blaze of golden white light; when J.J. hit the ground on his knees, it was the stone floor of a cold, dark temple. Someone was saying his name. J.J., slumped against the altar, lifting his chin off of his chest with an effort. Cleo’s eyes registered relief. She was kneeling beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “What did he say?” she asked, her voice soft with wonder. 231 LeRoi was staring at J.J. hungrily. Abraham stood behind her. Very slightly, he shook his head. “He said it’s time to leave,” J.J. said. 232 Chapter Eighteen: Genesis McLain had just enough time to load a clip into his sidearm before the alarms started to blare. He sprinted into the corridor, shouting at the first group of soldiers he saw to come with him. Ozzie Harris happened to be among them. “What the bloody hell is all this, Captain?” he demanded shrilly. The orange freckles on his cheeks stood out like spots. “I think Seth is stealing the Ark,” McLain said. There was no chance for Ozzie to reply beyond a high-pitched laugh of disbelief, for they had reached the elevator, and McLain ordered the dozen Marines inside. It was a quick but nerve-wracking ride. McLain had seen his share of action. The wiring tension never really went away; you knew you could die, believed you wouldn’t. There was no other way to channel the fear into a sharper focus that let the training take over, helped you stay alive. By long habit he kissed the swan charm around his neck, just as the doors swooshed open. He saw the blood first, viscous, arcing silvery-black spatters of it, spackling the glass-fronted cabinets, the long leather couches. Bodies, Gen-0s, were crumpled near the hearth, in the corners. Something ferocious had torn through here. A fresh black streak of silvery blood like the trail of a comet ran along one wall; a bloody paw print marked the threshold of the corridor that branched off to the chamber that housed the Ark. Silently, McLain motioned his men forward. The air in the lower levels was chill. No lights burned; eyes fixed to their night-vision rifle scopes, the Marines moved forward in formation. Shapes seemed to drift in and out of the shadows around them. It might have just been nerves, or it might not have been. The lower levels were the domain of the Alpha Clan. McLain had never ventured down here. His knowledge of the honeycombed tunnels came only from the fort’s blueprints. He could probably have found his way without even that, though. The Ark hummed in his bones, its magic growing stronger the deeper he led his men into the lightless maze. At last they were standing outside a round wooden door. The chains that had been drawn across it pooled on the floor like sleeping vipers. McLain pushed it with his fingertips – Something exploded from the darkness – a snarling mass of red and orange stripes. Shots rang out. Burning pain seared McLain’s scalp; he rolled to the side, through the open doorway, into the Ark’s chamber. 233 There was a flash of marbled eyes in the Ark’s sinister red glow as the five-hundred-pound Bengal tiger rounded again, hissing. Sommers jumped in front of McLain. Regent swiped his claws across the young sergeant’s chest. Blood spurted into McLain’s face, mixing with the blood already gushing from his torn scalp. McLain squeezed the trigger on his pistol, but the shot went wide as something struck him from the side. The pistol flew out of his grasp and skidded over the edge of the pit that sloped down hundreds of feet, crisscrossed by crystal fibers like a giant spider’s web. McLain was thrown sideways into the wall. He ducked before Connor’s boot could connect fully with his skull. The blow was glancing, enough to leave his ears ringing, but McLain managed to stagger to his feet. Connor Burke smiled at him. The light in his hazel eyes was manic, the sleeves of his letterman’s jacket soaked with silvery-black blood, clearly not his. There was something wrapped around his neck, some sort of thin tissue. McLain couldn’t make it out in the dark. “Hello, Captain,” Connor said. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to kill you.” McLain flicked blood out of his eyes. Sporadic bursts of gunfire in the corridor told him his men were still fighting. He pressed his back against the cold stone wall and looked at David Burke’s son, feeling his heartbeat against his spine. McLain had never known Connor well. Apparently, he had never really known him at all. “What have you done with Seth?” Connor’s laughter reverberated around the room. His eyes weren’t just manic. They were crazed. “Sorry. Seth isn’t here right now.” He snapped his fingers. The boy standing in the shadows stepped forward. Without the jaguar tattoos circling his right eye, brow to cheekbone, McLain would have sworn he was J.J. It was more than just the black camouflage and freshly-washed golden curls. It was how he moved. J.J. was a cat in a tree, poised to pounce. For all of his natural grace, Seth had never moved like that. He hadn’t been trained to. Cupped in his hands was an orb made of dense, translucent glass, filled with scarlet liquid too thick to be wine. McLain could see the red cast through his fingers. He swallowed as he stared at it. Connor yawned like he was bored by all of this. A weapons belt was strapped around his slim hips, bristling with throwing stars, a silver knife, a braided leather whip. “Haven’t you ever seen the Ark, Captain?” The answer was no, but McLain chose not to give it. “Am I to assume your mother also had you retrieve the Source?” 234 “You can assume any damn thing you like,” Connor said pleasantly. “But if I were you, I’d be deciding if I had any last words.” He snapped his fingers again. “Jeremy, take care of this, would you?” Seth smirked. Before McLain could ask why Connor had just called him by his twin’s name, Seth had pitched the Ark to Connor, and lunged at McLain. He skinned midair. McLain saw the shudder down his spine as he turned, sliding under the cat’s claws; a wave of dizziness broke over him – his scalp was clawed to the bone – and he stumbled into the railing that circled the pit. The tawny jaguar’s roar was earsplitting in the stone chamber. Seth lunged again, claws out – but this time, something whizzed by McLain’s ear and struck the jaguar in the shoulder, just above the joint. With a howl, Seth rolled sideways. Connor whipped around. As the tall figure in the doorway went to knock another arrow on the string of a high-powered bow, something leapt out of Connor’s hand, spinning like a razor-edged flower through the dark. Lucky cried out and clutched his hand. Connor took a step forward – only to take a step back as a bright banner of flame whirled into the room. Coppery hair flying around her head, Quinn O’Shea landed a roundhouse kick against Connor’s chest. Connor crumpled. Seth roared, fur bristling along his spine. Before the jaguar could lunge, Quinn yanked the whip off Connor’s belt and snapped it at him. Seth paced back, growling. Lucky’s arrow was sticking out of his shoulder. McLain hardly noticed any of this. His vision was shifting in and out of focus. He dimly saw Emery swing a quarterstaff at Connor, and Connor counter with a kick that struck him in the ribs. Quinn and Lucky – McLain had recognized the hunter immediately, the one he had sent after Seth, against his own misgivings – advanced on the jaguar, who backed away, hissing. Blood dripped off Lucky’s fingers. His leather jacket was ripped below the wrist. Tranq him, McLain thought. He would have said it, had he been able to. The railing dug into the small of his back as he held himself upright by the elbows. In some dim corner of his mind he was wondering where Caroline was, but he couldn’t remember if she was at the fort or at home. Numbness was spreading from the crown of his head down to his toes. The collar of his shirt was soaked with blood. Lucky drew a tranq gun from his belt. There was a snarl; it sounded almost like a warning, and Lucky shoved Quinn out of the way as the tiger crashed into the room. Connor yelled something, the words 235 indistinct; McLain saw him punch Emery squarely in the jaw, then race out the door as Emery fell, the jaguar and the tiger bounding after him – Connor glanced back. Unless McLain was hallucinating from blood loss, his teeth were pointed as a shark’s, and the tissue around his neck flared into – gills. He laughed at McLain’s look of horror. His hand shot out like he was blowing a goodbye kiss. The sound the throwing star made as it spun toward McLain was the whisper of a razor parting silk. Acting on pure instinct, McLain flipped his body over the rail. His fingers, slick with his own blood, lost their grip; there was a sense of weightlessness even as the weight of his body pulled him over the edge. He plummeted, shattering the crystal web, which was springier than he would have imagined, like a plant…He shut his eyes…He could see Caroline, the first time their mother placed her in his arms, and the awesomeness of his responsibility for this other life had risen up inside of him like an ocean swell…He could hear his heart thundering in his ears now just like it had then, and he did not know the thunder was actually wings; his eyes had already closed in anticipation of the end as a shadow swooped down into the pit. He did not feel the long, tapered fingers seize him by the shirtfront, arresting his fall like a star captured on its way to Earth. *** A searchlight hit the infirmary’s arched windows, throwing Marshall’s shadow up onto the cabinets. Potions sparkled there like liquid jewels. Leigh hadn’t the faintest notion what half of them were for, just as she didn’t know what half of the instruments Marshall had instructed her to put out on the metal table were for. “Do you actually know what you’re doing?” she said. Marshall didn’t answer. This could have been because he was rolling a stool up to the foot of the cot, peering under the sheet that had been draped over Aphrodisia’s lap. Her delicate hooves had been hoisted up into two stirrups, spreading her legs wide. Whitney was bathing her forehead with a cool cloth. She had pulled a gauzy yellow gown on to protect her corduroy skirt and brown cardigan. Aphrodisia’s curls were sticking to her cheeks, but so far, she hadn’t loosed so much as a whimper of pain. “Okay, Aphi.” Marshall folded the white blanket up to her hips. She had been dressed in a plain blue hospital gown, a shade paler than her hairless skin. Her eyes met Leigh’s, flatly black with no whites. Leigh, thinking of the mermaid girl floating 236 in her tank, managed a tremulous smile. “I think we’re ready for you to push,” Marshall said. “Agathon?” Aphrodisia asked, in her bells-on-water voice. “I don’t know where he is, Aphi, I’m sorry.” Aphrodisia nodded. Alarms continued ringing throughout the prison. Leigh had all but tuned them out. An occasional rumble of distant thunder overwrote them. She wanted to ask how this was possible. For starters, she had not realized the Gen-0s weren’t sterile. You saw giant moth and snake and deer people, and you just, like, assumed. She remembered Marshall had said something to Seth once (Leigh had been in the backseat of his Audi, discussing prom dress options with Whitney, not really listening) about artificial insemination, so maybe that explained it, but still, she had just seen Aphrodisia a few days ago, and her belly had not been nearly this swollen. Leigh would never have guessed she was pregnant. “Will it be human?” Whitney asked. Leigh thought that was a ridiculous question, but Marshall didn’t seem to. He rested a gloved hand lightly on Aphrodisia’s knee. Leigh didn’t want to look at what he was doing with his other one. “There’s no way to know. Some of the genetic material is human, but Aphi’s isn’t. And no human fetus could gestate this rapidly. She was only fertilized about three weeks ago. We didn’t expect to get lucky on the first try. I mean – ” He blushed. “You know what I mean.” Leigh, wholly from nosiness, asked, “Whose genetic material did you use?” Marshall hesitated, but Aphrodisia said, “Jonathan Steward’s.” Leigh looked down at Aphrodisia’s elegantly molded face. The Gen0s were all beautiful in their own alien ways. When Leigh looked at Aphrodisia, the tips of her delicate antlers poking up from her curls, her eyes slightly more sloped than Agathon’s or Xanthe’s, she thought of a faun out of the old Roman myths. “Jack Steward’s? As in my dad Jack Steward’s?” Marshall sighed. “Men donate sperm all the time, Leigh. It’s not like we have a limited supply. Aphrodisia and Agathon wanted a child, and Mr. Steward wanted to help them out.” “But…he didn’t have to, like…” Marshall rolled his eyes. “We call it ‘artificial insemination’ for a reason.” “Just checking.” Leigh was unabashed. After all, Aphrodisia was married. “Okay, Aphi.” Marshall patted Aphrodisia’s knee. “Push.” 237 Balling her hands up into fists, Aphrodisia took a deep breath and bore down, eyes shut tight. No sound escaped her until she released the breath on a gasp and fell back on the pillows, panting. Whitney smoothed her hair back. Leigh had to remind herself to breathe. “That was good,” Marshall said. “Now I need you to push again for me. Come on, Aphi, big push – that’s it – I can see the shoulders, come on – ” The something sliding out of Aphrodisia was pink, not blue or gray. Leigh didn’t see much else about it, other than that its dark hair was slick with silvery-black fluid the consistency of oil, like how Leigh envisioned a star might bleed, because about that time, Alfaro shouted. Leigh almost jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t forgotten about Dre, being watched over by his big brother a little further down the ward, but she had been about to witness an actual alien birth. She had gotten a little caught up. The infirmary doors had crashed open; that was why Alfaro had shouted. All of a sudden the room was filled with people: wounded soldiers, human and werekin, being carted in on stretchers, carried in their comrades’ arms. Logue Ampon deposited a young man with ginger hair on the cot next to Dre’s and stormed back out, cat-yellow eyes blazing. The soldier gurgled on his own blood. His chest was a mass of gore, and Leigh thought, Seth. She ran toward Emery, who had just staggered in, supporting Ozzie Harris with an arm around his waist. “Did they get the Ark?” she cried. Emery nodded. Quinn had pushed in behind him; she helped Ozzie over to the windowsill, as the cots were filling up fast. White-robed Healers were suddenly everywhere, like they had materialized from the woodwork. Leigh had never seen so many of the Gen-0s aboveground all at once. She thought of that Fuseli painting The Nightmare, seeing these giant aliens with snake tails and spider legs and ram’s horns tending to Marines that looked like children compared to them. “Regent is with Connor,” Emery said, bringing Leigh’s attention back to him. “We tried to tranq Seth, but he got in the way before we could. Agathon is bringing McLain up now.” Leigh’s knees went to jelly. “What’s wrong with Will?” Emery didn’t have to answer. Agathon had just ducked under the doorway, cradling Will McLain against his chest. McLain’s dark hair was matted to his scalp with blood. The crimson was startling against his colorless cheeks. Too stricken to move, Leigh simply stared as Agathon carried him over to an empty cot. “Is he…?” 238 “He’s alive,” Emery said grimly. “Listen, I have to go help. The Source is here. That’s what this storm is all about. We’re trying to find Connor before he gets past the perimeter with the Ark.” “Emery!” Emery spun back. His ponytail was coming loose. Maybe it was the tracks of blood on his cheeks, but he looked too tough to be Whitney’s hippie wererabbit boyfriend. Leigh laid her hand on his arm. “Now that Seth has the Ark, can’t he just call down the Totems to wipe us all out?” Emery shook his head. “He needs J.J. for that. They have to channel their Totems together.” “You don’t…” Leigh dropped her hand back to her side. “You don’t think they’ll kill him, do you? It’s not Seth’s fault Connor enchanted him. He’s not a traitor.” “I know,” Emery said, gently. Then he was gone, lost in the sea of bodies flowing in and out of the infirmary. Leigh stood there a moment, adrift. Leigh was not a Healer. Up here she would only be in the way, she thought. As if to prove it, at that instant, a Healer almost tripped over her scurrying by with a tray of potion. Leigh quickly stepped back against the wall. What good was she going to do up here? She could sit by Dre’s bedside, yes, but much as Leigh wanted to be with him, was that really going to help anyone? Her brother was out there, mindjacked by an evil teenage genius hell-bent on world domination. She had to try, Leigh thought. Even if it was hopeless, Seth would never have given her up for lost. She chose the quickest route she knew out of the fort, which was straight down the cellblock where she had met Lucky earlier in the week, out a side door that opened into the trees. Hunters shouted questions to her as she ran past their cells. As Leigh had no answers, she ignored them. An alarm went off when she opened the door, but it was just another shrill cry in the jangling cacophony; she didn’t expect to be called back, and she wasn’t. She tore down the hillside, limbs slapping her cheeks, wind whipping her hair as raindrops began to patter the grass – Leigh cried out. A hand had snaked out of the dark and dragged her behind a tree. “Shh,” someone hissed. “Don’t shh me, Lukas-Lucky-Whatever-Your-Name-Is.” Leigh yanked her wrist out of his grasp. “And don’t grab me. It’s rude.” “So sorry, m’lady.” Lucky bowed mockingly to her. Something sticky coated Leigh’s wrist. Looking down, she saw that it was blood. Lucky’s fingers were wet with it. “You’re cut,” she cried. 239 “Just a scratch,” Lucky said. The bone-deep gash on his forearm did not qualify as a “scratch” in Leigh’s book, but he signaled her to follow him without giving her time to argue. Together, they knelt in the shadows at the bottom of the hill. Hours seemed to have passed since Emery had ploughed through the fort’s gate; tipping her face up to the light rain, Leigh was surprised the sun was only now slipping under the horizon. She thought of this myth Seth had told to her after the battle at Fort King. They had spent a lot of time talking during his recovery, getting to know one another once he didn’t have to hide who he really was anymore. The Maya, Seth had said, believed the sun was a jaguar racing across the sky. At night, when the sun set, the jaguar’s skin turned black, and he traveled the underworld slaying demons. The light jaguar ruled the land of the living. The dark jaguar ruled the land of the dead. Leigh shivered. J.J., she thought, where are you? On a gravel road not thirty feet from where she crouched, Seth was sitting on the hood of a black SUV. Werner Regent, impeccable in a tailored navy suit, seemed to be treating a wound on his shoulder. Leigh’s Seth would have been joking around, talking about his nine lives or something. Connor’s Seth endured the pain stoically. “I did that.” Leigh had forgotten Lucky was with her. He was quiet as a cat. “You did what?” she hissed. “Shot him. In the shoulder. With an arrow.” Lucky patted the bow and quiver slung across his back. “Listen, Robin Hood,” Leigh said, “that’s my brother you’re bragging about shooting.” “Which is why,” Lucky said, “I didn’t shoot him in the heart.” He drew her back into the trees and shrugged his bow to the ground, one-handed sliding a thin knife off his belt. “What are you doing?” Leigh demanded, backing up. “I might ask you the same thing.” He held his injured arm out. He placed the tip of the knife against the raised mark on his wrist, over the pulse point. The growing shadows cast favorable planes on his aristocratic features. He reminded her of someone Leigh couldn’t place. “Were you planning to waltz out there and beg your brother to come home with you? Hoping the mere sight of you would wake him up from this dream he’s trapped in?” “No,” Leigh lied, glad the shadows also hid her blush. “Good. Because it wouldn’t have worked.” Lucky plunged the knife down suddenly. Leigh gasped as blood welled up under the blade; he shot her an amused glance, like cutting his own wrist open was nothing 240 at all for anyone to be bothered by, and reached down to pluck something small and shiny out of his skin. Leigh let him drop it into her palm. The bloodstained copper disc was no bigger than her smallest fingernail, like the transmitter hidden inside Jack’s ring. “What is it?” she whispered. “A tracking device. You didn’t think McLain would just turn me loose, did you? Chimera Enterprises never loses its investments if it can help it.” He extended a palm. Leigh let the tracker slide off her fingers into his. “Will McLain isn’t Chimera,” she said stiffly. “He’s Alliance.” “Didn’t have any qualms about collaring your brother, did he now?” Lucky’s tone was derisive. Leigh had been waffling up till now on whether or not she liked him. She decided on the not. He was arrogant and smug and – a lot like J.J., her inner voice whispered. “Let me tell you what’s happening here, love, since you seem quite well in the dark. Ursula LeRoi decided to stop pretending she was following orders. Therefore, your General Burke declared her an enemy of the state and set about shutting her operation down. But that doesn’t mean he intends to set an alien race free into the world. What’s he been doing since LeRoi was captured? Something she never managed: Luring the werekin out of the Underground in droves, registering them here at Fort King, and implanting them with these,” he held up the tracker, “before he allows them to leave. They’ve all known so little of actual freedom, they think they’re being let off the leash. “I heard about what your brother did, with taking off that collar. You can bet the minute Burke gets to a phone he’s going to call in Eden. That’s the kill order for every werekin on the planet,” Lucky said, when Leigh opened her mouth to ask. “Without the collars, Burke knows he can’t control werekin. He won’t risk them overpowering humankind. He’s wanted to exterminate them all for years anyhow.” “McLain wouldn’t let him do that,” Leigh said. “Will McLain isn’t in command. Last I saw, he wasn’t even conscious. But it wouldn’t matter if he was. The first werekin Burke will want dead is McLain’s sister. The Black Swan.” Leigh hated that everything he was saying made sense. “What are you going to do,” she demanded caustically, “help him?” Lucky’s reply was to wink at her, swinging his bow up to his shoulder with an arrow somehow knocked on the string. If Leigh had been blessed with werekin reflexes, she might have been quick enough to stop him. But she wasn’t, and before she could even shout a warning, Lucky had let the arrow fly. It thunked into the SUV’s rear tire. 241 Seth leapt off the hood. Regent was halfway inside the car, buckling Caroline McLain into the back. Leigh heard her scream as Connor jumped behind the wheel, shouting at Seth: “Jeremy! Come on!” Seth’s golden eyes swept the trees. They lighted directly on the spot where Leigh was standing. She was certain he saw her, in spite of the shadows; she tensed to run, knowing she could never outrun a jaguar, but Seth grabbed the door with one hand and swung up off the running board, lighting gracefully in the passenger’s seat as Connor punched the gas and roared away down the gravel road. Leigh coughed. As the dust cleared, she was looking through the now-steady rain at a collapsed bridge over a dark ribbon of creek. “Nice shot, Robin Hood,” she said sarcastically. “They got away.” Lucky laughed. He had dropped his bow; voices were moving toward them in the dark. Leigh put her hands up. Lucky did as well, and she saw that tracker no longer rested in his palm. Her eyes widened. “You just shot that tracker into their tire, didn’t you?” Lucky’s smirk was the definition of feline. “Bull’s eye,” he said. 242 Chapter Nineteen: As We Become When McLain opened his eyes, it was to the moonlight-glazed darkness of a room he did not immediately recognize. He moved to sit up, and a hand touched his arm. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea just yet, Captain.” “Lydia?” McLain let his aching shoulders fall back on the pillows. Now he recognized the pitched ceiling and the glass cabinets, the muted hush and the pungent scent of mercury and sulfur. He was in the infirmary. Rain tapped the arched windows, blown into the glass in sharp bursts by gusts of intensifying wind. Lydia Steward was sitting with her legs tucked up under her in a chair beside McLain’s cot. Her curls were tied up with a rubber band; a thin blue blanket was drawn around her shoulders, over her T-shirt and yoga pants. White-robed Healers glided almost silently around the dark ward, bending down to check their charges. Before he even asked, McLain knew. “Caroline?” “I’m so sorry, Will. Connor has her.” Connor was right about you. Of course Caroline would have gone with Connor, McLain thought, as his hands curled into fists. She didn’t know about his plans, what he really was. He had played on the fact that he was a good-looking seventeen-year-old boy and she a naïve twelveyear-old girl to see to it that she trusted him. Lydia shifted over to McLain’s cot, placing a glass of water in his hand. McLain watched her hand come up to the bandages on his forehead as he mechanically put the glass to his lips. The water was cold, and helped settle his churning stomach. “Did we ever reach Burke?” he asked. “After a fashion.” Lydia’s tone was wry. “He’s upstairs, in the command center. They’ve started evacuating the city.” She glanced at the window just as a flash of lightning lit it up, briefly turning it into a mirror that reflected the ward. “What about Seth?” Lydia explained about the enchantment, the lab Leigh and Dre had discovered at the Burkes’, the experiments Connor had conducted on himself with Gen-0 blood. Considering the gills and shark teeth, they seemed to have worked. “Did you know he was Ursula LeRoi’s son?” Lydia asked. “No. Burke never told me.” McLain handed the empty glass back to her. Lydia set it on the windowsill, tossing the blanket over her chair. McLain had managed to scoot up so he was sitting against the pillows. A 243 turban of bandages was wound around his head. Every movement pulled the edges of the healing wounds on his scalp. “Has there been any word from J.J.?” “Not yet.” Lydia sounded wan. “He’s going to have a field day with the ‘I told you so’ about Connor,” McLain said. Lydia’s lips twitched. She looked away as the smile melted, trembling at the corners. McLain picked her hand up off the sheet. “We’ll get them back, Lydia. Caroline. Seth. J.J. Cleo. All of them. We’ll get them back.” “You sound so sure,” Lydia murmured, searching his eyes as if for some doubt. “We got Leigh back, didn’t we?” Lydia glanced at the next cot over. Leigh was asleep there, her head on the pillow beside Dre Alfaro’s. Wires snaked from electrodes on his bare chest to a monitor that was beeping unsteadily. Drawing his hand back from Lydia’s, McLain rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “You were right. I shouldn’t have sent him to check out any leads. I forget they’re all just kids.” “They aren’t just kids. They’re much more than kids. Every single one of them is remarkable,” Lydia said. McLain couldn’t tell if she was amazed, or disturbed, or both. “You should have seen Marshall tonight. He was so composed, taking care of everyone, giving instructions to the Healers like a man twice his age.” “But still,” McLain said, roughly. Lydia gave him a stern look. “This is not your fault, Will McLain. You didn’t start Project Ark. You helped to stop it. You do not bear the responsibility for what has gone wrong here. No one’s blood is on your hands.” McLain knew she didn’t just mean Dre Alfaro’s. He pretended to believe her. “Can you hand me those fatigues over there? I should report in with Burke, check on my men – ” “Your men are fine. They all survived.” Lydia rested her hands on McLain’s shoulders. “You have to rest, Will. You nearly died. If Agathon hadn’t caught you when you fell into that pit, you would have died. And I still sat here and watched them pump a pint of blood into you, and about a gallon of Healing potion.” “I’m fine,” McLain insisted. “Well, then, you need to lie there and listen to me, because I’m ninety-nine percent certain the world is going to end tonight, and I have something I need to say to you.” In the dark, Lydia’s eyes were green like a cat’s. McLain felt the steadiness of them pin him down on the mattress. “All right,” he said. 244 Lydia took a breath. When she spoke, she spoke quietly. “It’s not like I don’t remember the past seventeen years. I remember marrying Jack. I remember raising Leigh. I remember remembering that J.J. was dead, and that Thomas had left me and taken Seth with him because of it, and I also remember not remembering that Thomas told me, the night he proposed, who he really was and what my father had really been part of at Fort King. The only thing I can’t remember is the night J.J. was collared and Thomas got away with Seth. That’s just blank. “When I saw J.J. in Regent’s yard that day, everything Chimera had made me forget flooded back in, all at once.” Lydia touched her temples as though remembering the sensation. McLain was hardly aware that the nighttime life of the busy ward continued around them, that the rain had begun to fall harder outside, a gray curtain drawn across the city. Everything had receded for him except Lydia’s voice, and the fluttering of a pulse in the back of his throat, just behind his Adam’s apple. “All of the locked doors in my mind opened up, and I was furious with Jack for what he had done to me, and most of all for this helpless, broken person he had turned me into. I swore right then I would never depend on anyone else again the way he had made me depend on him. I would be strong enough to do everything on my own – raise three children, two of them werekin, and never ask for a minute’s help. But then…” She bit her lip. McLain shifted slightly on the bed. “But then?” “Then you moved in across the street.” Lydia’s eyes jumped from the rain-lashed window to McLain’s face. “Every single time I’ve called you, day or night, you’ve been there. When the boys blew up the backyard resurrecting that dog. When J.J. got sick. When he went missing overnight. When Seth was kidnapped. You’re there every time I need you to be there, and that scares me to death.” “Why?” McLain asked, softly. “Because I need you to be there,” Lydia said, and leaned over, and kissed him. A throat cleared. McLain looked up, reluctantly, his hands still tangled in Lydia’s curls. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Can this wait?” Kate Jensen smiled down at her combat boots. “I’m afraid not, Captain. General Burke said to bring you to the command center if you were awake, and…Forgive me, sir, but you seem pretty awake.” McLain sighed. Lydia kissed his whiskery cheek. “Go on,” she said. “There’s someone I want to meet anyway.” *** 245 Dre liked watching Leigh sleep. A few mornings (and he realized this could have come off as creepy stalker behavior) he might have hopped along her windowsill, peering around her curtains as the first rays of daylight slanted across her porcelain face. He had never seen her asleep up close, though. Never been able to admire how the slope of her nose became the slant of her cheekbones and the swell of her lips. She had fallen asleep with her head on his pillow and her hand on his chest. Under her palm was a faint pink line that by tomorrow wouldn’t even rate as a scar. Dre wasn’t fooled, though. He had heard Marshall tell Angelo it would take weeks for the damage to his heart to heal. It might never heal enough for him to fly again. Angelo was gone now. He had slipped in and out most of the night, wanting to help with the hunt for Connor and Seth, wanting to be by his brother’s side. An hour ago, Dre had finally convinced him just to go, he would be fine. None of them would survive if they didn’t stop Connor and LeRoi. Leigh stirred now as thunder growled outside and her mother and Captain McLain followed Jensen out of the infirmary. “What time is it?” she asked, sleepily. “Close to dawn.” Dre kept his voice low so as not to disturb the other patients. The soldier next to him moaned in his sleep. One of the Healers, Philo her name was, bent over him, her long beak clicking as her giant feathered wings slowly beat the air. Leigh looked from her to Dre. Her expression was thoughtful. “You know, I’ve almost never seen you skin. Only in a fight.” “I’m not really up for it right now,” Dre said, touching the wires hooked to his chest. “Wuss.” Grinning at him, Leigh sat up and tucked her messy curls behind her ears. Someone had given her a pair of mint-green scrubs. Naturally, because she was Leigh, she had accessorized. The beaded bracelet she had bought from Re-Spin circled her wrist. Dre touched it; she laced her fingers through his, turning her wrist to display the bracelet for him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Zoe really has a gift.” “She carves glyphs into the beads. See?” Dre turned one around. “This one means ‘hope.’” Leigh studied the small, delicate etchings. Suddenly, she slipped the bracelet off and tied it around Dre’s thin wrist. “It’ll be your good luck charm,” she said. Dre’s cheeks went warm. Back at the cathedral, he was pretty sure she had been about to kiss him when Gideon had barged in. It took some doing, but he managed to persuade Philo to let him go for a walk. (Leigh stood to one side gaping as the Gen-0 hooted and 246 chirped and Dre answered her in Lemurian.) The compromise they came to was that Leigh had to push him in a wheelchair. Grumbling, Dre stepped into the sweatpants Angelo had left for him. Leigh found an old gray robe to wrap around his shoulders. “Where are we going?” Dre asked, as she wheeled him out the glass double doors. “It’s a surprise,” Leigh said mysteriously. As they rolled along, she filled him in on what he had missed. Some of it Angelo had already told him, but Leigh was never one to spare the details. She even told him what the hunter, Lucky, had said about Burke. “Do you think he would really order his men to kill all of you?” she asked. Dre swiped his bangs back from his eyes. The elevator doors had opened; he felt like an invalid as Leigh wheeled him inside. “I think our best hope is for J.J. and Cleo to find the Tortoise Clan,” he said. Leigh sucked in a breath. She was staring straight ahead at their reflections in the polished doors. They couldn’t hear the storm in here. “What?” Dre said. “Nothing.” Her tone was cool. “I just didn’t realize you were so anxious to leave Earth.” “I’m not anxious to leave Earth,” Dre said. “But I’m not anxious to be genocided, either.” Leigh raised her chin without replying. Great, Dre thought. Now he had blown it for sure. Dre had heard Ozzie tell Angelo the lower levels were a slaughterhouse – something had torn a swath through the Gen-0s. He steeled himself, but when the doors opened, there were no bodies, no blood. No evidence of any carnage at all. A fire burned low in the stone hearth. Backlit by it, Agathon was standing over Aphrodisia, who was reclining on one of the long, low couches. Lydia Steward was sitting beside her, cooing to something that was swaddled in a white blanket. She smiled when she saw Leigh and Dre. “Come have a look,” she said. Agathon stepped away from the hearth to greet them. The firelight revealed the tracery of spidery veins in his wings, cast a scarlet sheen over his flat black eyes. Dre knew, if Agathon had wanted to, he could have called up a host of the damned to slaughter every living soul in Fairfax. He didn’t like to dwell on what Connor Burke had done to himself to become more powerful than the Gen-0s. “Andre,” Agathon rumbled. “Is your heart well?” From the corner of his eye, Dre glanced at Leigh. The spots of angry color hadn’t yet faded from her cheeks. “It’s been better,” he admitted, and saw her teeth catch her bottom lip. “What’s all this?” 247 Lydia beamed. “This is the newest member of the Alpha Clan.” She held up the swaddled bundle. The infant’s skin was a perfect, downy peach, features distinctly human. Dre stared at it in awe. A thatch of raven-black hair curled over the forehead, around the shells of delicate ears; the eyes that blinked up at Dre were a mesmerizing shade of amber, almost burgundy around the pupils, fading out to gold around the edges. At the corners, stretching up to the temples, were red and gold lines that formed the shape of – “Butterflies?” Leigh said, glancing up at Agathon. Her eyes were shining. Agathon nodded proudly. “We do not yet know what the markings mean. There are more on the shoulders and back.” He gently folded the blanket down, freeing the baby’s chubby arms. Red, gold, and onyx lines scrolled in intricate designs all over the tiny body. Dre thought of the Tree of Songs in the fort’s rotunda, fashioned out of glyphs. He had never seen glyphs like these before, but if Seth had been there, he was sure he could have translated them. They made him think of leaves, dancing on the wind. “Is this what all Gen-0s look like when they’re born?” Leigh asked, breathlessly. “No,” Aphrodisia said, in her chime-like voice. “This child is the first of a new clan.” Leigh glanced from the baby to Aphrodisia. “Have you chosen a name?” A tactful way of asking if the baby was a boy or a girl. Dre couldn’t tell either. “The name will not be chosen for some time,” Agathon said. “Names are sacred to the Alpha Clan. Our names are not fixed at birth as yours are. They become, as we become.” As we become. Dre liked how that sounded, liked the idea that you were not born who you were, but that it was through living that you became. For a moment, both canted forward, he and Leigh just stared at this tiny being. Dre could feel his heart struggling in his chest, but it seemed far away, and not that important, when faced with the miracle of a brandnew life. Leigh wiped at her cheeks. Dre looked up at Agathon. “Is it just over, now that Connor has the Ark?” The Gen-0s’ expressions were hard to read, but Agathon’s rumbling voice was solemn. “The future is closed to us. Even Xanthe cannot see it. Our father appointed us to guard the Ark, but the Totems have chosen another to speak to it. We must trust that Seth will honor that gift.” 248 “But he isn’t Seth right now,” Leigh said, standing up straight. “Connor has him convinced he’s J.J., and not even our J.J. – a J.J. that’s loyal to Chimera!” “Yet he cannot collar him,” Agathon said. “We take comfort from that. Enchantments can be broken. And Seth is very strong.” “So is Connor.” Leigh jerked her chin at a lingering smear of silvery-blackish fluid along the hearth that Dre’s eyes had initially missed. He wondered what had become of the bodies, and just as quickly, wondered if he wanted to know. Leigh was flushed and breathing hard. One of Agathon’s antennae curled up as the other curled down. His tone was kind. “Connor Burke draws upon a strength that is not his. Magic is not sustenance. Even the strongest potion fades.” A sharp look dawned on Leigh’s face. “Gideon told me Connor only survived the infusions of Gen-0 blood because of the strengthening potion in his system.” “He asked Marshall to infuse him,” Aphrodisia said. The baby kicked its small feet as it smiled up at her. It seemed to like her voice. “Marshall refused. He warned Connor that his body must heal on its own. These are lessons every Healer learns: No being, human or werekin, can be sustained by magic alone. The potion Connor believes strengthens him even now begins to poison him.” “So he’ll die.” Leigh said it flatly. “Will Seth be free of the enchantment then?” “No, honey.” That was Lydia, speaking softly. “Magic doesn’t work like that. Spells aren’t tied to their casters.” “Then we have to find a way to make Seth remember who he is,” Leigh said. Dre cleared his throat. It sounded more like a chirp, though he didn’t know that. “I might have an idea for how,” he said. *** Normally once a mission went to hell, people were scrambling around like ants whose hill has been doused with gasoline, attempting to salvage something even as they burned. What worried McLain when he limped into Fort King’s command center was that it was absolutely quiet. General Burke was standing in front of the flat screen monitor that dominated one entire wall like a screen in a movie theater. The computer stations surrounding him were empty, headsets abandoned on keyboards. Their screens blipped with new messages now and again, an out-of-tune electronic chorus no one was around to mark. 249 McLain let the door sealing shut announce his arrival. Burke didn’t even turn around; he just said, “Come in, Will.” Will. Not Captain, or McLain. McLain walked over to stand beside his C.O. Burke was wearing desert fatigues, chewing on the end of a fat Cuban cigar he hadn’t yet lit. His iron-gray hair was buzzed close to his scalp. McLain could see old scars under it. He had been with the general when he had come by a few of those, in battles that would never be read about in any history book. Burke glanced at the bloodstained bandages around his head. “I understand you took a chance on the hunter. Lukas, isn’t it?” “Yes sir.” “You’re not concerned by his…history?” McLain shrugged. “We can’t help who our parents are.” A barbed reference to Connor. McLain let the sting of it linger before nodding at the screen. “Are we waiting on orders?” “Our orders have already come down. The brass doesn’t want a repeat of the Storm of the Century, so we’ve begun evacuating the city. Should be complete within the hour. Right now we’re waiting for a message to be patched through, but Jensen tells me they’re having trouble with the satellite, because of the storm.” Burke rolled one of the leather chairs toward him and lowered into it, looking up at McLain, who continued to face the blank screen. “So. You know about Caroline.” “I know the Source is designed to drain her life-force, at which point she sings that spell Seth and Emery found in the graveyard, her Totem joins with her, and the Earth is destroyed as the stargate opens for the werekin,” McLain said. “What I don’t know is why you never told me the truth.” “The luggage in the trunk of your car might have something to do with it,” Burke said, dryly. Was he asking for an apology? McLain sat down on the railing that separated the stone floor from the screen. He wouldn’t usually have presumed to sit in the presence of a superior officer without being asked, but right then, Will McLain didn’t give much of a damn about the chain of command. Burke took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at him. “How old were you when we met?” “Eighteen,” McLain said. “Just a kid. Green as they come, and cocky, to boot.” Burke smiled, remembering. “But you outperformed everyone else in basic training. Scored off the charts on your intelligence tests. Nobody could figure out why you weren’t at West Point. I probably should have asked more 250 questions about you then. I might have figured out you were working for the other side all along.” So the Resistance was the other side. Whose side did that make Burke on? LeRoi’s? “Are you going to court martial me, sir?” “Son, if I was going to court martial you, I would have done it when you disobeyed a direct order and helped J.J. Sullivan free the Black Swan from Chimera Enterprises.” Burke laid the cigar down on the armrest of his chair and tipped back, fingers laced behind his head. “I didn’t tell you about the Black Swan’s destiny before that because you didn’t have the clearance, and I didn’t see any reason for you to know. After I knew she was your sister, I didn’t tell you because I was sure you’d run off, like you tried to do tonight, and the best way to protect her, and this planet, seemed to be having her here where the Alliance could watch out for you. LeRoi already found her once. I didn’t doubt she could do it again, no matter where you tried to hide her.” Burke leaned forward. “I never meant for Caroline to be captured, Will.” “Not because of her,” McLain said. “Because of the mission.” Burke shrugged. “What do you want me to say? My mission is to safeguard this planet. Yes, Operation Swan Song had a mandate I never told you about. Prevent the stargate from being opened at all costs. Conceal the existence of werekin from the world.” “Even at the cost of exterminating them?” McLain shook his head. “General, they aren’t specimens. They’re people.” “I know that,” Burke said, with quiet force. “You forget that I’ve been with this project since its beginning. I never saw werekin as specimens. I fell in love with a woman who did, but for all of the years we spent together, I never understood Ursula’s way of thinking. But werekin aren’t human, either. They are superior to us in every way. I’ve been a soldier a long while, Captain. I know the underdog does not win in real life.” Burke rose, abruptly, and began to pace. McLain watched him. The muscles in his arms were cramping from how tightly he was gripping the rail; he couldn’t hear the thunder in here, but he could feel it, vibrating along the rail, growling in his bones. “Thus far I’ve been able to persuade Washington that we can control the werekin. Learn from them. The files Andre Alfaro decrypted from Chimera Enterprises describe experiments that could virtually eradicate human disease. Cure cancer. Prevent AIDS. Repair damaged organs and bones. Stop the aging process. We need werekin for their blood, so I convinced my superiors not to destroy them. But I’ve had to put certain measures in place, to track them, to monitor them – ” 251 “And Connor used that against you,” McLain said. “He hacked into your surveillance feeds and had Werner Regent spying on Seth and J.J. and the Commanders. On all of us. They knew exactly where to find Caroline tonight. They knew every security protocol we had to secure the Source and the Ark. You handed them everything they needed to get everything they wanted.” “Connor was not supposed to be a part of this.” Burke’s voice was cold, but his eyes burned dangerously. “I had his memory wiped clean after Ursula told him about Project Ark, something she never should have done. I tried to have it wiped clean again after the storm, but the Gen-0s refused to cooperate.” “Because Xanthe is tired of doing your dirty work.” McLain was so disgusted he felt the words curdle on his tongue. “I believed you when you told me all you wanted was to protect Connor from the danger that came with knowing about Chimera Enterprises. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? You weren’t protecting Connor. You were protecting us from him. You knew exactly what kind of monster slithered out of your wife seventeen years ago. You’re willing to give the kill order now, murder hundreds of innocent werekin to safeguard this planet, but you weren’t willing to kill one boy?” “He is still my son,” Burke bit out. “And Caroline is still my sister,” McLain said. He had surged to his feet without realizing it. He blinked, startled to find himself toe-to-toe with Burke as a pattern of colored lights fell on their faces. “Is this a bad time?” someone said. McLain spun around. Burke reached out automatically to steady him when he stumbled. Lit up on the screen, live and in color, J.J. Sullivan was smirking at them. His blonde hair looked wet; his jungle fatigues were soiled, discordant with the luxurious leather interior of the private jet surrounding him. He was sitting cross-legged in his seat, laptop resting on his knees. Cleo was leaning in over his shoulder. “LeRoi – ” Burke started. “She’s right here.” J.J. panned the webcam mounted on the side of the laptop. In the row behind his, Ursula LeRoi was handcuffed, and appeared to be calmly studying the storm outside the oval window. The camera panned back to J.J. “So listen,” he said. “We found the Tortoise Clan…” While he talked, Burke sank back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin. McLain leaned against one of the computer stations. He 252 itched to take the bandages off his head. His scalp was tingling as the claw marks healed over. Quickly he explained what had gone down on their end. J.J. called Connor a few creative names, then glanced over his shoulder at LeRoi. “I honestly don’t think she knows anything about what he’s doing.” He sounded puzzled. McLain did not sleep well at night when things puzzled J.J. “If Connor is running his own game, it could make his next move hard to predict,” he said. “No.” J.J. shook his head. “His motives may be different from LeRoi’s, but his means will be the same. He’ll add the Black Swan’s blood to the Ark to raise Lemuria, and once he has the spaceship, he’ll use the Source to open the stargate. He wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to set up the pieces if that wasn’t his endgame.” “Tell me you have a plan for stopping him,” McLain said. “First I’d like to know what General Burke’s plan is,” J.J. said. McLain glanced at Burke. The light from the screen turned Burke’s eyes opaque as he leaned forward. “The simplest thing to do would be to kill the Black Swan,” he said. “You know where she is.” J.J. did not phrase it as a question, but, “We do,” Burke said. McLain swallowed hard. His mouth tasted of metal. “We do?” “Lukas planted a tracking device on their vehicle,” Burke said. “They’re still in Fairfax. At Sacred Heart Academy.” And that, McLain understood, was why the command center was so calm. The mission had not failed. A team had been dispatched to take out the Black Swan. The Ark would be retrieved; the Source would be found; the werekin would be killed if they couldn’t be collared, but all Burke had to do to solve that problem was to kill the Sullivan brothers. The only two werekin to have ever escaped their collars. McLain just stood there, feeling the floor open up beneath him. But J.J. said, “There is another way.” Burke seemed surprised by the mildness of his tone. “What’s that?” “It’s messier,” J.J. admitted. “You probably wouldn’t be able to keep werekin a secret anymore, at least not from the people of Fairfax. But half of them are wrapped up in this somehow anyway.” He explained what he wanted to do. Burke’s granite mask gave away nothing of what he was thinking. “And you can guarantee this will work?” he said, once J.J. finished. “I could lie and tell you I’ve seen that it will work, but the only future I’ve seen is the one where we all die when the stargate opens,” J.J. said. He leaned closer to the screen, lowering his voice so LeRoi couldn’t hear. “If I were in your shoes, General, I know the safer strategy would 253 be what you have planned. But I’m asking you to believe that fate hasn’t brought us to this moment just so my kindred could be destroyed. I’m asking you to have faith.” McLain could not look at Burke. He looked at Cleo, looking at J.J., the fierceness of her love for this boy, who was not properly a boy but something, as Lydia had said, much more, written all over her face; and even if Burke couldn’t see the fusion of J.J.’s skins as McLain could, he thought the general had to at least see the truth in what J.J. had said. The werekin could not have been resurrected after thousands of years simply to be wiped out again. No universe was that cruel. At last, Burke shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jeremy.” J.J. cocked his head. A pocket of turbulence had just shuddered through the plane’s cabin, momentarily fritzing out their connection. “What?” “I’m sorry,” Burke said, “but your kindred’s fate is out of my hands. The order has been given. Operation Swan Song is over. Operation Eden is underway.” 254 Chapter Twenty: Amor vincit Omnia Evacuating an entire city was no less complicated in actuality than it had always seemed to Marshall on the news. Riding in his father’s Lexus to Fairfax Memorial, he had been reminded of cities in the path of a hurricane: vehicles clogging the streets, police officers directing traffic around orange cones. Now, as light leaked across the sky, Marshall watched through the windows of the hospital’s cafeteria as the wind turned the leaves silver-side up. Growls of thunder rumbled ahead of fast-moving black clouds. The cafeteria was deserted. The Lexus had been one of the last cars in the hospital’s lot. All but the most seriously injured patients had already been evacuated; as dawn approached, those that remained were being loaded into the backs of ambulances. Marshall could see the red and blue lights from where he was sitting at a round table with Topher, Gabe, and Bryce. They hadn’t said a word in the ten minutes since Marshall had finished telling them about the Ovid Experiment. About what Seth and J.J. were, and what their parents had made them. Topher had his head in his hands. Gabe’s head was tipped back, hands covering his eyes. Bryce was still reading silently through the files Jack Steward had copied for them. No one had given him clearance to do this. Marshall didn’t see how it mattered. The kill order had been issued; the war had begun. He wasn’t on the side that required clearance to tell the truth. Quietly, leaving his friends to process, he got up and slipped out, past the vending machines, out the sliding glass doors into the deserted hallway. He paused under the archway that separated the E.R. from the waiting room to read the text Leigh had just sent him. After sending a reply, he slid his cell phone back in the pocket of his lab coat and ducked into a stairwell. Growing up, Marshall had spent as much time at Fairfax Memorial as he had in his own house. His father had been Chief of Surgery here for over a decade; as a little boy, Marshall had loved to tag along on his rounds. He had no trouble finding his way up to the ICU. A harried nurse barely glanced at him as he passed by her station. In his scrubs, she probably thought he was his father. Part of Marshall appreciated the dark irony of that. The ICU was a long ward of private rooms cordoned off by automatic glass doors. The real Dr. Townsend was just coming out of the room Marshall had been making for. They froze in the tiled hallway, not father and son, though Marshall couldn’t stop thinking of them that way, 255 and stared at one another under the bright fluorescent lights. “Have they taken him yet?” Marshall finally asked. Wesley Townsend twisted the diamond ring on his pinkie finger. There was a shadow of a beard on his chin, rings of fatigue around his blue eyes. “They’re coming for him now. Any minute.” He handed the chart he had been studying to Marshall, glancing at the square window down the hall as lightning scissored the black clouds. His stethoscope was tucked into the pocket of his lab coat. Marshall wore his around his neck. He knew it was stupid to seek out meaning in these meaningless differences between them, as if that proved something about who they were as men. “How is he?” he asked. “Much better. He has a long ways to go to a full recovery, but the internal damage is healing. That new formula you and Aphrodisia designed is nothing short of a miracle drug.” “There are no miracles. There is only science.” Marshall flipped the chart closed. “You taught me that.” “Marshall,” his father said, softly; or maybe he didn’t really say his name – maybe Marshall only wanted him to. At any rate, the thunder that shook the hospital just then made it impossible to know for sure. Wesley ran a hand through his dark curls, causing them to stick up on one side. Marshall almost winced. “I don’t expect you to understand the choices I’ve made. Jack and I did believe we were doing what was best for the world, but in our youth we were also very arrogant.” It was as close as Marshall would ever get to an apology. And it was not enough, not nearly enough, to make up for the things his father had done. His fingers touched the bone handle of the dagger in his pocket. He wasn’t thinking about using it; Marshall was not a violent person. He was thinking about J.J. saying, You had more to do in this world. For you. “I don’t think ‘arrogant’ is a strong enough word,” he said. Wesley’s face changed. He turned away before Marshall could decipher exactly what the change was. “I told your – I told Meredith to be ready to leave the house in ten minutes. I understand Whitney has chosen to remain at Fort King. Are you…?” “I’m staying,” Marshall said. “Until it’s over.” Wesley nodded. Marshall stood there as his footsteps moved off down the hall, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the tile. Giving his father a chance to call out to him. It wasn’t until he heard the elevator arrive at the end of the hall that he stepped through the sliding glass doors into the last occupied room on this floor. 256 Cam was flipping through the channels on the TV above his bed. Each one was nothing but static, but he pretended to search for another minute before dropping the remote onto the bedside table. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.” Marshall walked over, put his stethoscope against Cam’s chest, and listened to his heartbeat through his striped hospital-issue pajamas. Wesley had probably just done that, but it gave him something to do besides stand there. “They’re coming up to move you now. Do you need anything for pain?” “The nurse gave me something already.” Cam shifted as Marshall sat down on the edge of the blue recliner next to his bed. Fairfax Memorial was a relic of the ’80s, yellow walls meant to mirror sunshine clashing with the gray tile that cleaned up easily and the plastic furniture that could be replaced cheaply. Every inch of it smelled of disinfectant. “Did you want to see?” Cam started to lift the tape on the thick bandages under his shirt. Marshall shook his head. “I saw. I was there when it happened.” “Right.” Cam curled his fingers up in the starched sheets. He had been unhooked from all of the monitors behind the bed, but the I.V. tube snaking into the back of his hand made him seem frail. Cam was not frail. He was solid as a rock. He worked out every day. “That’s all kind of fuzzy for me.” “But your dad told you what happened, right? He told you about the werekin?” Cam nodded. Marshall dropped the chart on the floor and linked his fingers behind his head. Outside, lightning cut like a jagged tooth down to the river. Fairfax Memorial was only a few blocks from Sacred Heart. From Seth. Determined not to think about that for the moment, Marshall focused on Cam. All of the potion had left him with a ruddy flush across his cheeks. His black eye had faded to a greenish-yellow shadow. Marshall could remember when he used to wear his hair almost shaved, with a little rattail in the back. That had also been the phase of Cam’s Pokemon obsession. “You know what I was thinking about last night?” he said, and didn’t wait for an answer. “The day we went off the high-dive for the first time. Do you remember that?” “I remember you screamed like a little bitch,” Cam said. Marshall popped up on his toes, lifting his chair legs off the floor. “It was those older kids who dared me to do it. We couldn’t have been more than six, and they were like twelve. I wanted to walk away, but you grabbed my arm and marched me up the ladder. It seemed like we were a 257 thousand miles above that pool. I’ve never forgotten what you said to me when we got out to the end of the board.” “Don’t look down?” Cam guessed. “You said, ‘We’ll do it together.’ And we did.” Marshall put his chair legs down. Cam turned his head to stare out at the storm. “It wasn’t me,” he said, through tight lips. “That stuff somebody painted on the wall in the cafeteria. It wasn’t me.” “I know,” Marshall said. “It was Connor.” “Burke?” Cam’s gaze jerked back to him. “What does he have against – ” He stopped himself and finished: “You?” “Nothing, that I know of. I think it was part of his plan to get to J.J. He was messing with his head. Trying to make him angry enough to go after you in public.” Cam looked down at his bandaged chest. In times past, Marshall could have touched his arm. They used to be able to touch one another, a slap on the back, a hug, and it hadn’t been any big deal. Now, though he had been elbow-deep in Cam’s blood twenty-four hours ago, he wasn’t sure what the boundaries were. “Cam, when you said you knew what I was, you didn’t mean about me being gay, did you?” “No,” Cam said. “But I knew that, too.” “How?” “Because of that faggy look you get when I take my shirt off.” Marshall rolled his eyes. Cam, turning back from the window, smirked at him. His eyes were a light shade of green. The exact shade of his father’s. “Sorry. I guess you meant about the science experiment stuff. Unlike you, Townsend, I’m not above snooping through my dad’s drawers. I read about the Ovid Experiment when we were in junior high. It’s why my parents split up. My mom found out what Dad had done, and she freaked. I can’t blame her. I’m not really her son. We’re not anybody’s sons.” Marshall rested his elbows on his knees. “Is that when your dad started hitting you? After she left?” Cam shrugged. “Before, he just hit her.” Another great blast of thunder rattled the windowpane. They both looked up. Marshall could hear voices in the hallway, drawing nearer; an ambulance had pulled up to the doors down below, and behind it, windshield wipers working furiously against the rain, a battered Jeep. He stood up. “Looks like your ride is here,” he said. “Yours too.” Cam nodded at the Jeep. “Is that about your boyfriend?” His tone was snide. Marshall replied as though it wasn’t. “If you knew about the Ovid Experiment, then you must have known about 258 werekin, too. You must have known what Seth was. Can you – see them?” Cam shook his head. “Can you?” There was no reason in the world for Marshall to trust Cam Foss with a secret like this. Yet he nodded. “I’ve never actually told anyone else that,” he admitted. “I was afraid they’d lock me up in a lab and scoop out my brains.” “I won’t tell anyone,” Cam promised. Just for a moment, Marshall was back on the sidewalk of Castle Estates, watching Seth back away from him, sweaty-tousled from their morning run, flushed because he had just confessed to Marshall that he liked boys. Marshall’s heart had been about to beat out of his chest. He had never been more elated, or more terrified, in his life. He smiled. Nothing about Cam, not his posture, not his expression, not his tone, suggested that he needed or even wanted Marshall to say anything else; but the thing about loving somebody was that they didn’t have to tell you what they wanted, and sometimes you knew what they needed better than they did. “I know,” Marshall said, as he backed away. “Why do you think I told you?” *** Cleo wanted to take LeRoi straight from the airfield to Fort King, but, J.J. reasoned, there wasn’t time. If Burke’s assassin squad hadn’t already hit Sacred Heart, they would any minute. Cleo didn’t like it, but she couldn’t argue when J.J. asked her to name one time he had been wrong about battle strategy. She pressed the pedal to the floor, rocketing her Ford F150 away from the tarmac. Rain hid everything around them like a gray blanket had smothered the world. J.J. braced his combat boots against the dashboard, furiously texting on the high-tech cell phone he had swiped from the private jet. LeRoi was sandwiched between him and Cleo. She had showered on the flight (Chimera’s jets had all the bells and whistles) and changed into black slacks and a white silk blouse. Her hair was loose, and damp. A string of pearls circled her neck. J.J. and Cleo were still in fatigues. Cleo had informed J.J. he smelled like a cat. One that had been dead a while. It was almost all she had said to him the entire flight. “Okay.” J.J. stuck the phone in his pocket. “Leigh says Doc is on his way, and McLain has everything else we need. They’re going to meet us at Sacred Heart.” He looked at LeRoi. “If you know anything about what your son has planned, now would be an excellent time to negotiate for a nicer cell or grounds privileges or something.” 259 LeRoi just smiled coldly. J.J. hadn’t really expected anything else. He wasn’t sure she had an answer. Connor was going to a lot of extra trouble to complete his mother’s work. Why poison J.J.? Why expose werekin to the world? Why bother about anyone on Earth at all if he only planned to annihilate them? “What about the Partners?” Cleo’s knuckles were white on the wheel. J.J. was trusting she could see where they were going. For all he could tell, they could have been driving straight into the river. “You must have had a plan to get them onboard that ship before you opened the stargate. Are they working for Connor now?” “The transmitters,” J.J. said. “The rings she made them wear. They send a signal when it’s time for Lemuria to be raised. Don’t they?” “Well done, my pet.” LeRoi’s gray eyes glittered coldly in the dashboard lights. “Unfortunately, I have no idea who my Partners are loyal to now. Knowing them, whichever side they believe will win.” She gasped then, as Cleo hairpinned around a corner and jammed on the brakes, flinging them all back against their seats. “We’re here,” she announced. “Clearly,” J.J. said. Rain was sheeting down too hard for him to see anything except the spires on either side of Sacred Heart’s central dome, acting as lightning rods. A white flash exploded a street lamp down the block, showering sparks into the overflowing gutters. LeRoi flinched, and J.J. slammed the truck door in her face. Already soaked to the bone, water streaming out of his short hair, he held up the key to her handcuffs. “Wait here,” he said. “We’ll be right back.” “You know she can get out of those,” Cleo shouted, as they raced for the doors to the gym. The wind nearly tore her words away. J.J. just shrugged. If LeRoi got away, she got away. With any luck the storm would drown her. The Black Swan was his priority right now. He tried not to dwell on Bishop’s warning. If you succeed in this, you will have beaten her at her own game not once but twice. Ursula LeRoi did not lose gracefully. J.J. had to shoulder open the gym doors; the wind kept tearing them out of his hands. He stumbled inside, Cleo after him, and hissed as a light hit his eyes. “Easy, player,” Quinn said. She lowered the flashlight, rather slowly, down the length of him. J.J. felt Cleo go rigid all over, and was suddenly thankful they had a battle to focus on. 260 The electricity had been knocked out. Flashlight beams bobbed toward them in the dark. There was still a red stain under the basket J.J. did not look at. “Are they here?” he asked. Emery Little nodded anxiously. He was in fatigues. So were Alfaro and Quinn. Marshall was in scrubs. The beam of his flashlight lit his features from underneath with a ghostly glow. J.J. wasn’t sure about him being there, but Leigh had insisted Xanthe agreed Dre’s plan just might work. Since no living soul knew as much about enchantments as Xanthe, J.J. was deferring to his teacher in this instance. “They’re in the cathedral,” Emery said. “We know Connor and Seth are in there with Caroline. They have the Ark and the Source.” “Regent?” Cleo asked. “We don’t know. The werebirds have been trying to find him, but Miss Janowitz had to call off the search. They can’t fly in this storm.” “He’s at Burke’s,” Quinn and J.J. said in unison. Quinn swished her hair back with a shrug as everyone looked at them. “Their communication systems are all at Burke’s mansion. It’s out of range of the storm. If Connor wants the Partners called here to board the Lemuria Express, that would be the best place to contact them from.” “What’s the plan here, J.J.?” Marshall asked. J.J. pushed sopping hair off his forehead. Lightning strikes were coming faster now, strobe-like pulses that rebounded off the gym’s black-and-red checkered walls, filling the air with the scent of ozone. Putting aside his gut-level conviction that he was precisely where Connor Burke wanted him to be right now – why else would he have kept Seth alive once he had the Ark, unless to lure J.J. to him? – J.J. said, “Our first priority is the Black Swan. Burke’s kill order begins with her, and his squad is on their way. We have to stop them, even if that means letting Connor raise Lemuria and open the stargate.” “Not to be the heartless cow in the room,” Alfaro said, “but won’t that just kill her anyway? I thought the whole point was for her to sing that spell as the Source drains her life-force.” “Some kinds of dying you can survive,” J.J. said. “Assuming for a second any of us know what that means,” Marshall said, “what happens if we save her? Either the Earth still blows up, or Burke’s men exterminate all of you.” “One mountain at a time, Doc,” J.J. said, and before Marshall could call him the name he plainly wanted to call him, said, “Everybody ready?” Everybody was, and so they went. A windowed arcade connected the gym to the academy proper. Alfaro took the lead. He hadn’t bothered with a weapon, but then, J.J. 261 thought, Alfaro was a weapon. Even in his human skin he was strong enough to kick open the padlocked doors at the top of the stairs with a single thrust. Quinn had a bow across her back, a knife in her boot. Emery was twirling his quarterstaff. Cleo had her pistol, and probably some knives and a few throwing stars hidden under her camouflage jacket. The jaguar katana was strapped across J.J.’s back. “Do you have the dagger?” he asked, putting a hand on Marshall’s arm as they started down a dark, carpeted corridor lined with classrooms. Marshall patted the pocket of his lab coat. “I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do. Do I say something, or – ” “Just try to make him remember you,” J.J. said. “Whatever you think will trigger his memories, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to the rest of us. And stay close to me, because this is probably going to get messy.” “You think?” Marshall muttered. Two pieces of plywood had been nailed across the cathedral’s ornate double doors. Between the cracks in them, J.J. could see flashes of light, timed seconds before the lightning strikes outside. Alfaro broke into a run. The rhythm of his boots striking the ground became the clip-clop of hooves; his loud breathing became a bellow; moments later, the massive bull struck the boards with his horns, plowing straight through them with a splintering crack. There was no time for J.J. to take in the towering black pyramid placed where the chapel’s altar should have been, red glyphs on its sides glowing like fresh blood. There was time only for him to glimpse Caroline McLain, slender as a wraith in a white linen shift, bound to the Source with a silver chain looped around her hips. Then the windows on either side of the aisle exploded in a perfectly-coordinated assault, and black-garbed soldiers poured through them. J.J. kicked the first Marine he came to in the stomach. The soldier crumpled. J.J. seized his rifle, knocked him out with the butt, and swung the barrel around like a club, sending another soldier flying into the wall. Alfaro was charging up the aisle, bullets kicking sparks up around his hooves. He lowered his head and thrust his horns under one of the pews, ripping it right out of the floor; it flipped end over end, knocking down a row of soldiers like bowling pins. Movement behind J.J. brought him around in a spinning kick. The soldier ducked; his gun came up, aimed at J.J.’s chest, first, then on up, to the rafters. A shadow had fallen over J.J. He spun around, but he was too late to do more than yell as the jaguar pounced on the soldier’s chest, claws slashing across his throat. Blood sprayed the painted face of a Madonna on the wall. 262 The tawny jaguar skinned as he rose. J.J. paced back, fetching up against a marble fountain filled with holy water. Seth’s black camouflage was wet with rain and blood. “Hello, little brother,” he said. *** “I think that’s enough for now,” Connor said. He had to shout it, but a moment later, the wind began to die down, and the pulsing glyphs on the Source’s black façade dulled to a fiery glow. Caroline whimpered. She was shivering, soaked from the rain that had blown in through the busted windows. As the Source wound down like a dying battery, Connor leapt off the dais. The storm outside had abated as swiftly as it had sprung up. J.J. was not stupid enough to think this was over, though. Connor was just getting started. Standing in the back of the cathedral, J.J.’s golden eyes measured the taller boy as Connor sauntered down the aisle. As theatrical as his mother, he had dressed for the occasion: His tuxedo was basic black, his vest and tie blood-red. His long caramel hair had been brushed to a high gloss. There were, however, noticeable changes from the pretty, slimhipped boy J.J. had met a month ago. A pair of gills cut into the mottled blue-and-gray skin below Connor’s ears. His teeth were pointed like a shark’s. Membranous webs stretched between the fingers he flexed, like he was planning to wrap them around J.J.’s throat. By silent agreement, the members of J.J.’s pack assembled behind him. The soldiers, with the exception of the one Seth had killed, were scattered unconscious around the cathedral. Seth moved to stand next to Connor in the center aisle. Now that they weren’t being lashed by rain and blinded by lightning, J.J. could appreciate the differences in his twin. His hair was its natural blonde, though still longer than J.J.’s, as Connor seemed to prefer it. The running and training and ball-playing had added a new layer of muscle to Seth’s slim physique. He filled out the black camouflage – J.J.’s – well. Absent his sweet-natured smile, his tattoos no longer made him look young. They made him look mean. “What the hell did you do to my brother?” J.J. said. “Now, now. Play nice, pussycat.” Connor’s hazel eyes conveyed a warning. Enchantments were potent magic. You could break a mind trying to break the spell. Did he honestly care what became of Seth, J.J. 263 wondered, or did he still need him for something? He tried to push his mind into Connor’s, but it was like shoving against a brick wall. He felt a mental push back, hard enough to stagger him into Cleo. Nobody but Xanthe had ever been able to do that to J.J. I can unmake you too, J.J. Sullivan, if you push me. Even as he spoke in J.J.’s mind, Connor said aloud, “We’re pleased you all came over to our side so easily. We could have handled it, but all the same we appreciate the help in stopping our father’s last-ditch effort to derail our plans.” Our? We? What was he, J.J. thought, the bloody King of England? “Listen, Fishsticks,” Cleo said, “we didn’t come here to sign up for your doomsday squad. We came here to protect the Black Swan.” “Is this where you tell me to hand over the girl and I can walk away with my life?” Connor shook his head. His smile was ugly. “The whole lot of you is annoyingly predictable. How was your sojourn to the Amazon, anyway? Have an enlightening chat with Elijah Bishop?” J.J. blinked. Connor laughed at his surprise, linking his webbed fingers through Seth’s as he sat down on the back of a pew. Marshall tensed, but Connor had eyes only for J.J. “I know all about where you’ve been. You and my mother and your girlfriend here went to visit the Tortoise Clan, and Elijah Bishop told you how to open the stargate without burning down the world. I knew he’d never tell me, so I had to give you a little push to send you on your way. Threatening you with Operation Eden seemed like the most expedient way.” “Why me?” J.J. said. “Don’t you have minions for that sort of thing?” “One, because I rather enjoyed messing with you,” Connor said, “and two, because I knew you were a strong enough telepath to speak with Bishop directly, not through dreams. I think we can all agree we don’t want any mixed messages for an undertaking as delicate as raising Lemuria, can’t you?” Emery’s mouth fell open. “You…you don’t want to destroy the planet?” “Of course I don’t,” Connor said derisively. “What would be the fun in that? I want to be worshipped by my own kind. That would be difficult if I killed all of them. Don’t,” he said, suddenly, and coldly, for Alfaro had just attempted to edge around the pew, toward Caroline. J.J. slunk away from Marshall. Connor’s bright eyes jumped back to him. Though the day was far too cool for spring, sweat stood out on his cheeks. J.J. didn’t think he was sitting down because he wanted to. He remembered quite well how it felt to be hopped up on too much magic 264 potion. “Please tell me your plan is not as mundane as all that,” he said. “You want to rule the world? That’s your endgame?” “I realize it’s not as noble as Bishop wanting to achieve world peace or even my mother’s misguided desire to send the chosen few off to a fresh start on a new world, but hey.” Connor shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a millennial. My needs aren’t that complex. They’re just wrapped up in a lot of unnecessary angst.” “You know what I think?” J.J. said. He leaned his elbows on the back of the pew in front of Connor’s. The other boy’s gaze was sharp with dislike. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell us,” Connor said. “I think,” J.J. said, “you’re acting right now. Playing the part of the hip comic book villain who always gets the cleverest lines in the snappy superhero dialogue. I think what you really want is to get Mommy and Daddy’s attention. Must have sucked being an afterthought to them all these years, but can Little League and spelling bees really compare to resurrecting a master alien race? This is you acting out. Proving you’re smarter than either of them ever gave you credit for. And it has got to be pissing you off that they still aren’t here to see the show.” “How very Freudian of you,” Connor said. But his pupils had expanded, spreading across his irises, making him more shark-like than ever. “If I wanted to be Freudian,” J.J. said, “I’d say you were jealous your mother had me sleep at the foot of her bed, and not you. Although your attraction to my little brother casts doubt on that theory.” Seth stood up straight, his fingers slipping out of Connor’s. “I’m not your little brother,” he said. “You’re my little brother. I was born first.” “Who told you that?” J.J. asked, softly. For the briefest moment, Seth looked confused. It passed, his golden eyes clearing quickly, like clouds dispersing after a summer storm. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I do,” J.J. said. “I told you. The night Marshall died.” Seth wrinkled his nose. “Who is Marshall?” “No one,” Connor said sharply. His gills flared wider as he stood up. “Come on, Jeremy. It’s time. Bring me the Ark.” “Aren’t you going to wait for the Partners to arrive?” J.J. said. Connor glared at him. Weren’t expecting me to know that, were you, Shark Boy? Seth had begun to pad up the aisle, but Cleo called after him: “How did your father die?” Seth froze. When he swung around, his metallic gaze was flat. “I killed him. I stabbed him in the heart.” 265 “Why?” J.J. spoke over Connor’s protest. He had slid into the aisle, even with where Connor was standing, fists clenched. Behind his back, J.J. made the slightest motion. He sensed rather than saw Marshall ease closer. “Why would you kill Dad? He loved you. He loved us.” “Because he gave me up,” Seth said icily. “He let me be collared, and he hid you to keep you safe. He condemned me to a life of captivity while you lived free in the Underground. I would still be there if Connor hadn’t freed me.” “No, brother.” J.J.’s gaze had captured Seth’s. He could not break through to his twin’s thoughts, but that tether still connected their minds – no spell could sever that. Death might not even sever that. Seth and J.J. were more connected than any werekin had ever been. One light, one dark. Two halves of the same whole. “I was the one Dad gave up, and I never should have told you that. You didn’t need to carry that guilt on top of everything else. I’m sorry for that, little brother. I truly, truly am.” “Look it.” Seth took a slinking step forward. “I always knew it would come to this. You, me, the Arena. I didn’t want it, but I swear by the stars, if you call me little brother again, Seth Michael, you spoiled little – ” “Philadelphia.” Connor snarled, but Seth just stopped and stared at Marshall, no light, no warmth of recognition in his round golden eyes. He might have been staring at a blank stretch of canvas. J.J.’s heart plummeted. If Connor had placed the enchantment that deep – if he had used whatever power he had acquired from the Alpha Clan’s blood to make Seth forget Marshall, there might be nothing of Seth left that they could save – Amor vincit Omnia. The words whispered in J.J.’s mind, catching him midway to shoving Marshall behind him. Love conquers all. Marshall was taller than Seth by several inches. As he approached, Seth tipped his head back to look up at him. Slowly he took in Marshall’s angular features, just asymmetrical enough to be as interesting as they were handsome; his inky curls, rain-damp and smelling of dawn; his baby-blue eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes. “Who are you?” he asked, for the first time sounding unnerved. Connor licked his lips, but he couldn’t seem to think of a way to intervene. Marshall said, “My name is Marshall Townsend, but pretty much from the day we met you’ve called me Indiana. At least, you do when you’re in a good mood. Your brother wanted me to give you this,” he added, before Seth could reply. His golden eyes were narrowing to slivers. Marshall reached into his pocket. He came up with J.J.’s bonehandled dagger. Seth took it from him, the tiniest crease appearing 266 between his eyes. “He didn’t have a message for you,” Marshall went on, softly, “but I do.” “Oh yeah?” Seth flipped the dagger around so the tip was pointed at Marshall’s chest. His voice was practically a hiss. “What’s that?” Marshall kissed him. Would not have been J.J.’s play. J.J. would have kissed him, then given him the dagger, just to be on the safe side. Seth gasped; he didn’t seem to know how to react for a second, and it was in that second, as his shoulders tensed to plunge the blade into Marshall’s heart, that J.J. saw the illusion that had been placed over his twin’s eyes like a mirror facing inward, reflecting back only what the enchantment projected there, fracture. His mouth softened under Marshall’s, his body remembering what his mind needed only another moment to catch up to. Connor saw it, too, and lunged – not for Seth; there was no point anymore, the enchantment was broken. He lunged for J.J., with a speed and strength as astonishing as it was unlooked for in a human. J.J. actually cried out as his skull impacted with the marble floor. He had drawn the katana over his shoulder before he even realized it. Connor danced back from him. He was laughing, laughing as he raised his hands, stretching the membrane connecting his fingers taut, and cried out a spell that rolled through the cathedral as a wave of pure, shimmering energy. The spell slammed into Alfaro first. He flew into the wall, exploding one of the blown-glass sconces. Cleo had the presence of mind to drop to the floor, dragging Emery with her. Quinn managed to fire off an arrow at Connor before she was thrown back into the corridor. The arrow broke into harmless splinters as it passed through the shimmering wall. J.J. raised the katana for a backhand slice, but his arm kept moving, dragging him backwards with it – he hissed as his shoulder pulled free of its socket, combat boots lifting straight off the floor. Then he was being flung forward with no time to adjust to the change of direction, spinning dizzily past the black pyramid (he felt its power touch his skin with the cold burn of glacial ice) into the jagged remnants of the stained glass window. An explosion of pain in his right side nearly caused him to black out. He landed on his knees amidst broken glass, hissing as he rolled unsteadily to his feet. The prick of a sword point backed him up into the wall. From the other end of it, Werner Regent’s marbled eyes looked at him coldly. “I made this for your brother,” he said. 267 “He outgrew it,” J.J. managed to say. He was almost gagging on his own blood; his dislocated shoulder felt like it was packed with glass. “Right about the time he outgrew you.” Regent drew his arm back. J.J. knew he did not have time to skin before the blow fell. But it was Regent who fell. To his knees first. The katana slipped from his grasp. J.J. grabbed it with his good hand: instinct – he already knew, because he had seen his share of death in the Arena, there was no need. Regent’s mouth opened. He reached around as if he could pull the bone handle of the dagger from between his shoulders, but someone else yanked it free. Somehow Regent managed to speak. “Cub,” he moaned. Standing behind him, Seth raised his chin to look at J.J. Tears slid free of his lashes, and that was how J.J. knew this was Seth. Their Seth. Because Seth should have hated Regent, but Seth couldn’t hate anyone. Not really. The love that filled Seth up could have flooded the world, washing it anew. J.J. moved to close his hands around his twin’s shoulders, wincing as he forced himself upright. His right side was on fire. He didn’t know if he was hoping to pass comfort into Seth or draw Seth’s grief into him, and he never found out; for Seth staggered back before they touched, watching, helplessly, as Ursula LeRoi stepped down from the dais, holding a blood-stained knife. “Too late, my pet,” she purred. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.” Caroline McLain’s lovely dark eyes met J.J.’s across the room. The chapel was suddenly crowded as men and women in expensive suits fanned out around the walls. To the Black Swan’s credit, though J.J. had failed her, there was no accusation in her eyes. She even tried to smile as the orb clasped in her bound hands fired from red to gold, blood to ichor, then to silver, rimming her in starlight as the blood from her gashed palms seeped into it. J.J. heard the furious thrumming of the Ark even where he stood. Ursula LeRoi threw the knife down victoriously, as deep beneath their feet sounded the trumpet that signaled the end of days. 268 Chapter Twenty-One: End of Days Seth was dizzy. The kind of dizzy where you wanted to either pass out or throw up. He dropped the dagger – it clattered on the marble – as he turned, and stumbled into – “Indiana?” he whispered. “Come here.” Marshall’s fingers touched Seth’s face. Closing his eyes, Seth let himself be turned around in the circle of Marshall’s strong arms, his back against Marshall’s chest. The steady cadence of Marshall’s heart against his spine timed the beats of his own bruised heart. Regent had fallen face-first onto the dais. His marbled eyes were closed. The rumble deep in the earth had shaken dust down from the cracked dome. As it died away, LeRoi stepped lightly back onto the dais, taking the Ark from Caroline’s trembling hands as she turned to face her Partners. Seth was relieved not to recognize most of the faces. It would have been too awful to look across the cathedral and see Mr. Heilsdale, or Dr. Foss, or Mr. and Mrs. Lee, or Mr. Cochran, the parents of his friends who had sworn under oath they had disavowed Ursula LeRoi. But the black curls and blue eyes of Wesley Townsend were impossible to mistake. Marshall breathed out sharply. “My friends. My dear, loyal Partners.” LeRoi’s voice was honeyed as poisoned wine poured in the ear. Jarringly elegant in her silk blouse and cultured pearls amidst the warzone of the cathedral, she held the orb up for them to see. It was silver as malachite. “Behold, the fulfillment of all our hard-won dreams! The Black Swan’s blood has been added to the Ark. Even now Lemuria is rising. Soon the stargate will open. And we have my son to thank for it.” She turned to beam at Connor, who was standing silent in the shadows. More than anything Seth wanted to skin and bite Connor Burke’s smirk right off his face. His own face burned with the memory of these last twenty-four hours under Connor’s enchantment. He had believed he was J.J. Believed Connor had freed him from his collar, believed they were in love. He understood now what Jack had said. Enchantments could not create love. Seth’s feelings for Connor, all of that passion, had been hollow, and had vanished like the moon at sunrise with Marshall’s kiss. But Seth had still acted on those feelings, and he remembered acting on them. He wanted to slough off his skin. He also remembered the plans Connor had shared with him. Thus he knew LeRoi’s Partners were in for a nasty surprise. 269 Connor came forward shyly, head ducked, so much like the laidback golden boy Seth had played basketball against he might have doubted Connor was really one of the bad guys had it not been for the mottled skin and fish gills. He accepted the Ark from his mother in cupped palms. The Partners exchanged glances. They were used to dealing with LeRoi, elegant and poised. Her mutant teenage son was another matter. Connor turned to them. “I know how I look to you,” he said, softly, all golden boy charm. “Think of me as the first step down a path of new, accelerated evolution. The first member of a master race. “Four years ago, when my mother told me about Lemuria, I knew she was right,” Connor said. The Partners couldn’t seem to look away from him, as intrigued as they were repulsed. “That much power could not be left at the bottom of the ocean. But what good is it to open the stargate if we destroy Earth? What if there was a way to have it all – the power of the Totems at our disposal, a mechanism to create bridges to other worlds and the technology to travel there, to conquer new races, to mine new energy sources, to populate new planets? All without losing the home we cherish, all while defeating anyone on this planet or any other who would dare oppose us, with our very own army of werekin?” An appreciative murmur rippled through the crowd. Seth recalled how easily LeRoi had swayed the Partners with promises of limitless power the night Thomas Sullivan’s revolt had been put down. His eyes sought out J.J. His twin was leaning back against Cleo much like Seth was leaning back against Marshall, in front of the shattered window, through which Seth could see Fairfax’s flooded Main Street. Power lines were tangled in trees; there was a crack in the roof of the Steward & Regent Law Firm. But the destruction might as well not have existed for all the mind Seth paid to it. J.J.’s right side was soaked in blood from a deep gash above his hip, yet his bruised eyes were piercing the back of Connor’s head. Seth was sure he too was thinking about that night in LeRoi’s courtyard. Thomas Sullivan’s dying wish. Save her. Save her, and she will save us all. “But here’s the thing.” Connor cradled the Ark in one hand, bringing the other up as though calling for silence, which instantly fell. The black pyramid cast a longer, darker shadow over him as he stepped closer to it. “This isn’t a victory any of you have earned. You are sheep. All you know how to do is follow. You followed my mother when she wanted to destroy Earth. Then you turned on her and followed my father when he wanted to exterminate the werekin. Now you’re willing to follow me because I offer you the world on a platter. You know nothing of loyalty. You are not worthy to serve me, for I,” Connor said, “am a god.” 270 His voice changed in tonality on that last, a resonant, booming growl that stole the daylight from the sky. The Partners screamed, too late realizing the summons they had answered was their own death knell. A petal of something black and sulfurous rolled off Connor’s tongue. Crimson at the center like the heart of a star, it spun into a ball of black fire, and exploded, enveloping the Partners as they crashed into one another, attempting futilely to flee. Heat scorched Seth’s skin. Marshall cried out: “Dad!” He started forward, instinctively, but there was nothing he could do – there was nothing any of them could do; Seth wrestled Marshall back, pinning his arms to his sides, his own helplessness in the face of Connor’s power as bitter as blood in his mouth. Seconds later, the fire swept out through the broken doors with a roar that sounded almost human. The air tasted of soot. Ash floated on the breeze, tiny, greasy specks that clung unpleasantly to skin and eyelashes; the pews and walls were untouched, but, Seth saw as he raised his chin and looked around, melted to the marble floor like macabre sculptures were the charred bones of Chimera Enterprises’ Partners, warped to the size of children. “Dad.” Marshall whispered it this time. He had gone limp in Seth’s arms. Connor laughed. His hand shot out, seizing Caroline by her glossy black hair. Caroline whimpered. Connor shoved the Ark into her hands. His eyes were completely black now, with no whites at all. “Sing,” he growled. “Seth showed you the song. Sing it.” Caroline’s wide, terrified eyes met Seth’s. Sing. J.J.’s voice rang in Seth’s mind from across the room. Seth wanted to turn and look at him, but he remembered Xanthe’s training: He would need eye contact with Caroline to speak to her. Tell her to sing, little brother. Seth licked his lips. Caroline. Sing. It’s okay. J.J. says to go ahead and sing. It was one hell of a leap of faith, yet Caroline nodded, closed her eyes, and parted her lips. The melody was haunting, and different to each person present. To Emery Little it was the sighing of wind in the trees the night he first kissed Whitney Townsend on her stoop. To Cleo it was the lullaby of J.J.’s breathing as they slept in their tiny cell. To Angelo Alfaro it was his little brother’s chirping laughter as he swung him over his head to tickle him. To J.J. it was the beat of his mother’s heart while he was inside her womb. 271 To Seth, who spoke the language of magic, it was the ocean at high tide; the forest in a gale; the desert under wind. And it was Naomi Franklin’s rich gospel choir alto, and Thomas Sullivan’s quiet reading voice, and Marshall Townsend’s warm laughter, and Ben Schofield’s gentle growl, and J.J.’s voice inside his mind. He did not know what it was to Ursula LeRoi, but she paled even further than she had when Connor had massacred her oldest allies. “Stop!” she cried, shrilly. “The ship isn’t here yet, Connor, stop her!” Connor swung his smile around on her. LeRoi, who had been about to grab his shoulder, shrank back. Connor’s lips stretched impossibly wide around twin rows of shark teeth. “What’s the matter, Mother?” His voice was garbled like he was speaking underwater. “Afraid of a little hellfire? Did you really think I wanted you to rule with me?” LeRoi screamed, a combination of terror and fury. Drawing her arm back, she poised to drive the silver knife she was still clutching into Caroline McLain’s heart, to silence her as the Black Swan’s song rose to its crescendo, firing the glyphs on the black pyramid like they were sinking freshly into the stone – A shot rang out. LeRoi gasped. For a split-second Seth, still nervelessly clutching Marshall, thought she was only startled by the sound. Then her face changed. She looked down at herself, and Seth saw her see the tiny, smoking hole in her white silk blouse. A crimson flower bloomed around it, opening swiftly across her chest. “No,” she said, sounding more shocked than anything. Then she slumped, hitting the ground on her side. At the back of the cathedral, Will McLain lowered his pistol. Melody Little was standing on one side of him, Ben Schofield on the other. The rest of the Alliance Commanders and an army of werekin filled the corridor behind them, but even that was not as shocking as the Gen-0s climbing through the broken windows. They were so tall they had to duck. “What’s happening?” Seth whispered. He was asking no in particular, but Marshall shook his head. His hair, his skin, his scrubs were powdered gray with ash. Beneath the dusting he was white as bone. “I don’t know, Philadelphia. I just don’t know.” Connor seemed to. He turned his smirk on J.J. His face was normal again, no shark teeth, no black eyes, except – gray, from more than the ash. He looked ill. “I knew you’d come through for me, J.J.,” he crooned. Blood trickled out of his nose. He didn’t seem to notice. “Tell you what. When I rule the world, I’ll enchant your brother again so he doesn’t 272 remember how to remove a collar, and you two can fight our first Arena match to celebrate my new reign. Whoever wins can have your two girlfriends – one for supper, one for dessert. I think I’ll keep your little sister around a while. Gideon has a fancy for her, and she is of breeding age – ” He snapped his fingers. The report of McLain’s gun was silenced as the bullet melted into a silver clump, dropping harmlessly to the marble floor. “Try that again, Will,” Connor warned, through his teeth, “and I’ll gut you like a fish and feed you to my new slaves.” J.J., white with pain, shook his head at McLain. Cleo appeared to be the only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor. Caroline McLain was breathing fast. Her song had faded away on a final, shimmering note. The music of it lingered in Seth’s mind. It was a minute before he realized the music had not stopped. It was coming from inside the Source. As though something, or someone, inside the pyramid was singing back. Even Connor moved away from it. Seth pressed Marshall back against the wall. He was saying something in Seth’s ear, but Seth couldn’t make it out; the music was building, kicking up a wind that stirred clouds of dust and ash. Bits of broken glass stung Seth’s cheeks. He threw his arms up over his face as a wave of volcanic heat rushed upward from the base of the pyramid… The cathedral’s dome began to rattle like the lid of a boiling pot. Suddenly it blew off, shooting like a saucer across the bleak morning sky. It was then that the Alpha Clan ringing the walls of the ruined cathedral lifted their arms, as the glowing doorway that had appeared on the side of the pyramid opened. *** Light. All Seth saw in that moment was light. The brightest light you can imagine, whitening the world like the moon had fallen from the sky. Shadow came next; there seemed to be shapes inside of it, shimmering, but they dispersed, and a thin ribbon of a girl with glossy white hair like a feathering of snow stepped out onto the dais. A simple golden torc circled her graceful neck. Not a collar; a signet of power. She wore a white gossamer gown made for a queen. Her skin was black as coal. For the briefest glimpse, as the light inside the Source died, she was only an outline of delicate bones. Then she was a girl, young and lovely. Caroline McLain stared at her, too weak to even lift her hands. The White Swan placed hers over them, her eyelids fluttering down as her 273 fingers touched the smooth surface of the Ark. Seth could not believe he hadn’t grasped this before – what the Source contained, why only the Black Swan could speak to it. Just like he and J.J. could only call upon their Totems when joined, so was it for the werekin queens. They might have been separated by thousands of years, but in the eyes of their Totems, the Swans were twins. Direct descendants of their Totems. The first and only of their breed. The White Swan opened her mouth and began to sing. This time there were words, in Lemurian. Seth recognized them. They were etched on the outside of the Source. The Hymn of the White Swan. Clouds filled in above the dome. The world seemed to spin on its axis; suddenly stars appeared overhead, in the shape of a constellation in a galaxy far from Earth… Seth did not see the Swans join with their Totems. He saw an inferno of light engulf them; saw Ben wrestle McLain to the ground as he tried to run to Caroline, who was wrapped in a robe of feathers made of stars; saw Agathon, like a god of old, spread his powerful wings and draw the light deep into his chest. The fiery glow centered above his heart and ran along his veins, out the tips of his tapered fingers. Xanthe stretched out a hand; Aphrodisia stretched out hers; and a chain of light raced around the room, linking together the Alpha Clan. The sizzle of magic that should have reduced the Earth to dust burned on Seth’s skin. Connor Burke was all but dancing with glee. He barely spared a glance at his mother, bleeding on the marble, or the two girls lying motionless before the pyramid, their song ended. His hazel eyes were the only color in his gray face. That and the blood on his chin, leaking from his nose. He turned to look out the window behind him. And it was the strangest sight. Hovering an inch above Fairfax’s flooded main street was a long, sleek black ship, etched with glyphs, taller than Sacred Heart’s central dome. Like the stone that formed Fort King, the ship seemed organic, as though it had been birthed rather than built. Crystal strands crisscrossed the hull. They looked like fuel lines, suffused with dark red liquid like blood. “Well.” While everyone else still stood frozen, Connor bent to pick up the Ark from the Swans’ hands, curled together like delicate glass. Neither of them moved. “J.J., why don’t you bring my mother aboard? She seems to have a few breaths left. I’d like her to share this moment with her sons. She can die knowing you’re going to be my slave now.” Very clearly, J.J. said: “Screw you.” Connor laughed. “No thanks. You’re not my type.” He winked at Seth, who felt the blood rise hotly in his cheeks. “But I will burn all of 274 your friends here to ash if you don’t do what I say. I’ll start with your two little tramps.” “We can stop you.” That was Marshall. His voice was as scorched with fury as Seth had ever heard it. Connor glanced at him. “I’m not your enemy, Marshall,” he said. For a moment, he sounded like the old Connor, like they were on the ball court again and his team had just won the game. “We’ve got a great partnership ahead of us, you and I. You’re the reason I have the power I have. I want you with me. We’ll build a world our mothers and fathers never dreamt of.” “You think I would do that,” Marshall said. “You think I would work with you.” “I know what you are.” There was a blade of ice under Connor’s words now. Marshall stiffened as it sliced. “I know all about the Ovid Experiment. Can’t you see? You don’t have to be what your father made you. You can be something much, much more. If it’s just about Seth,” he added, as an afterthought, “you can keep him. We’re allowed pets. I’ll find another one.” Marshall shook his head. He looked grieved. “I’m sorry, Connie.” “Sorry?” Connor was baffled. “For what? You saved me, Marshall. I owe you everything. I wouldn’t be here if not for you.” “I know,” Marshall said. “And that’s why I’m sorry. Because if I had known what you were, I wouldn’t have just let you die. I would have killed you myself.” The friendliness vanished from Connor’s eyes, turning them all black again. “I’d like to see you try,” he said. Ben Schofield cut in. “You may be powerful, son, but we have the Alpha Clan – ” “Yeah, Agathon looks a little busy right now, Ben.” Connor smiled at the towering, immobile mothman. “Quite a job keeping the world from exploding. I hate to say this,” he swung back around on J.J., “but I think you’re the ones who are pretty well screwed. Now, I suggest you do as I say and carry my mother onboard that ship, before I run out of patience.” Meaningfully, he tapped a fingernail against the Source. J.J. let go of Cleo. Slowly. Every movement seemed to cause him excruciating pain, and Seth involuntarily winced – Wait just a minute. He didn’t need to wince. That didn’t make any sense. Shared pain was the downside of twin telepathy. He even felt it when J.J. cut himself shaving. Why didn’t he feel anything now – not even a twinge? The answer was simple, and occurred to Seth accompanied by a flare of hope inside his frozen heart. J.J. was faking. Ergo, J.J. had a plan. 275 He watched as J.J. limped convincingly over to LeRoi. Scooping her up seemed to stagger him, and Cleo – who was pale also, with fury – ran to help him. Seth saw J.J.’s eyes flash. He wanted her to stay back, but he couldn’t very well say that and maintain his invalid ruse. Between the two of them, they lifted LeRoi through the window frame. She stirred, moaning. It surprised, and touched, Seth that J.J. was trying to be careful with her. He made it two steps toward the ship Connor had already strolled proudly over to before crumpling to the sidewalk. Cleo cried his name. Connor sighed. “Get up, J.J., or I’ll drag you over here by your – ” “Caroline!” J.J. shouted. “Now!” Connor’s eyes rounded. J.J. dove on top of Cleo. Seth didn’t see exactly what happened; he did see LeRoi’s eyes fly open, a blackness of pure hatred shining out of them, and a streak of something red across his vision; everything else was blotted out by the silver-white light released from the Alpha Clan on the Black Swan’s final, purest note. The Source’s energy returned to the orb in Connor’s hands like a lightning bolt drawn to a rod in a storm. There was a percussive sound like a cork being pulled from a bottle; for one single instant Connor was filled with the light, as though his skeleton had turned to silver and was shining through his skin. On a shimmer of air, he was lost inside the explosion as the ship behind him began to rise, surrounded by a fireball of green and orange flame. Instinctively Seth threw Marshall down on the dais as the noise of the ship’s thrusters built, and with a sudden plosive pop, released a shockwave that rolled down the street, leveling every building on the opposite side of the road, including the Steward & Regent Law Firm. Seth did not see what became of the ship. As the buildings crashed down, the ground underneath them was sucked into a giant sinkhole nearly a mile wide. Water sprayed up from broken mains, dust and debris pluming into the clouds. Distantly, Seth heard a splash. He imagined a tidal wave rising up from the Ohio River and washing over the Kentucky shore. It was several minutes before the dust settled enough for him to see and his ears stopped ringing enough for him to hear. The ship was gone. Seth sat up. Marshall sat up with him, coughing. They were both covered in chalky white dust. Marshall shook his head, scattering plaster out of his curls. “Is everyone all right?” Voices called back as people helped one another to their feet. Melody Little had her arms around Emery. She looked like she was crying. Ben had a paw-like hand on Alfaro’s shoulder. Ben’s temple was 276 cut, but he smiled at Seth through the ashy haze, as if to say, It’s over, runt. We did it. Seth was not so sure. For one thing, as Marshall clambered out the window to see about LeRoi, Humvees were rolling up and Marines were jumping out of them. General David Burke was in the lead. For another, McLain had crawled up the dais to Caroline’s side. She fell back limply in his arms when he pulled her into his lap. “Caro,” Seth heard him whispering. “Caroline, please, no…” “She is not gone.” The White Swan spoke haltingly, as though learning the shape of the words she wanted to say in English. She had risen gracefully to her feet. As powdered by debris as any of them, she was nevertheless unearthly beautiful. Her melodic voice rang with power. “She has joined with her Totem, as I did, for thousands of years – my body entranced inside this sarcophagus, my consciousness in the stars, looking down on all of you.” The White Swan smiled at them. Seeing her, General Burke had gone starkly white, framed by one of the shattered windows. His Marines pulled up short on the sidewalk and stared at the alien queen, waiting for a signal from their commander. “It was you,” said Quinn. She was kneeling in the center aisle. Her mother Josephine had a hand resting lightly on top of her coppery head. “You told the Tortoise Clan to direct Bishop to Mt. Hokulani. You wanted the werekin resurrected.” “The time had come,” the White Swan said. “And now you have made your choice. The vessel the Totems left for us is gone. We have no means to return to the stars. You have chosen to remain on Earth, and to protect it, as the first werekin chose to do eons ago, when we gave up our home, and our very lives.” “Then you saw this?” Quinn sounded angry. “You saw that Chimera Enterprises would torture your people, enslave them, murder them, and you still told Bishop how to find the Ark?” Agathon spoke in a rumble. His voice was not without sympathy. “The future cannot be read like a book already written. The future is in the hands of those that shape it.” Quinn snapped her jaws together. Her mother murmured softly, hushing her. The White Swan placed a graceful hand on McLain’s shoulder. “You know your sister better than anyone, William Joseph McLain,” she said. “Would she wish to go with me, to live in the stars with our Totems? Or would she remain with you?” 277 McLain looked up at her. Tears tracked through the dust on his cheeks. “She can do that? She can stay here?” “I can free her from the spell. I could have freed myself at any time, had I wished it. The Totems are not cruel. But know this. In the stars your sister will have power unimagined on this Earth. She will see, she will know, more than any human being ever could. She will rule from the stars for eternity. On Earth, she will be only a girl, as frail as any living creature. Humankind desires nothing so much as power. What it cannot conquer it destroys. Our kindred may yet learn to live in peace with humankind, but as long as your sister remains on this Earth, I cannot promise she will never again be in danger.” “I don’t know.” McLain was whispering. “I don’t know what she would want.” To be safe, or to be free. Seth understood that choice. He had been safe in the Underground, he had been safe hidden inside his human skin, but he had not been free. “I do,” he said. “She would want to stay. I heard her say it. She said, ‘I just want to be normal.’” McLain looked down at Caroline, fragile, lifeless in his arms. Seeing, Seth imagined, everything his sister would miss even as she gained the stars. He looked at Ben and Melody, as though asking them to understand. “She’s not just the Black Swan,” he said. “She’s a person, too. She deserves to have a life.” “Then so be it,” Ben said. Seth saw the White Swan kneel over her twin, but he did not see how she released her from the trance. He had finally turned to see what Quinn and Emery were staring at, and with an effort like he was swimming up from the bottom of the sea, he had risen. An arm, Cleo’s, went around him, helping him over the sill, which was jagged with broken glass. On the fractured sidewalk, LeRoi was sprawled face-up, unseeing, a little ways away from where Marshall knelt beside a charred body, stethoscope around his neck. The devastation to the street was truly incredible, but that was not what took Seth’s knees out from under him, dropping him into the grass beside Marshall. “Regent,” he whispered. “Hello, cub,” Regent managed. Seth could feel J.J. standing behind him, his shadow long on the dust-covered grass. The stench of burning stung Seth’s sensitive werekin nose, from the crater in the middle of the street, still smoking, from the blackened skin on Regent’s face and arms. His eyes had never looked more like marbles. 278 “Doc, can we do anything?” Cleo asked, softly. Her hands were gripping Seth’s shoulders from behind. “I’ve infused him.” Marshall stripped off his latex gloves. “Any more healing potion will damage his tissues. We can try strengthening potion, but – the burns, they’re so severe…” “How?” Seth whispered. Regent’s face blurred as his eyes misted over. He didn’t see the burns. He just saw Regent. The person who had taught him stillness. “I thought you were – I thought I had – How did this happen?” “It was LeRoi.” J.J.’s voice was brittle. His shadow shifted as the sun struggled out from behind a cloud. “She tried to push me into the path of that light when Caroline released it, to burn me alive, but – Regent skinned, and pushed me out of the way.” “Why?” Seth whispered again. He was asking so much more than why Regent had saved J.J. Staring down into Regent’s eyes, he knew Regent had to know that. He didn’t answer; Seth wasn’t sure he could. He was shaking, fighting magic, or pain, or both. His hand came up, knuckles like bolts under tufts of reddish-brown fur. He brushed the tears off Seth’s cheeks. “Marshall can help you.” Seth heard the panic in his voice. Here was Regent as he had always wanted him to be, fighting with courage, dying with honor. Standing with Seth in the end. “Just hang on, Regent. Please –” Regent’s back arched; Seth cried out, thinking he was in pain, but Regent was only drawing him closer, to whisper in his ear. Three words. Proud of you. Seth closed his eyes. The tears he had been holding back slid out from under them. Very gently, he caught Regent’s hand and cupped his palm against his cheek. Death, Agathon had said, is a transference. The body ceases – begins, immediately, to decay. But the soul never ceases. The soul could not be destroyed, by any magic on any world; the soul was immutable, and the soul lived on, slipping from one plane of existence to another. Traveling weightless beyond the stars. Behind Seth’s eyes the curtain of the sky drew back, and he could see the stars, diamonds in a clear blue sky; for the stars were shining under the noonday sun, and he was running through the jungle, under trees taller than any trees on Earth. The tiger and the jaguar raced side by side, the power of that place singing in their bones, as their strides lengthened out toward the distant sea shimmering on the horizon. 279 Regent caught his breath as their minds connected. Seth spoke softly to him, without words. Don’t be afraid. Let me show you where you’re going. 280 Epilogue The tailored ivory jacket was not heavy enough to protect from the chill in the lower levels, but J.J. didn’t feel the cold now any more than he ever had. He didn’t know what had made him think he would. The Gen-0s’ main chamber had been empty when he had stepped off the elevator. Xanthe, J.J. thought, must have sensed his approach and sent everyone away to allow him some privacy. Or it could have been that the Alpha Clan didn’t spend as much time belowground these days. As part of the agreement the Commanders had struck with Burke, negotiated largely by Jack Steward, Operation Eden had been called off, but the Alpha Clan would for the time being remain inside Fort King. The world, Agathon said, was not ready to embrace the Gen-0s yet. But the world, J.J. thought, was changing. Aphrodisia’s laboratory was deserted when J.J. passed by. At the next corner, he turned right, into a long, vaulted chamber sparkling with deposits of mica like a starry night sky. Agathon called it the Hall of Souls. It was almost as deep belowground as the Ark’s chamber. Footsteps echoing back to him, J.J. padded around the room, trailing the tips of his fingers over the names chiseled into the walls. Nicanor. Solon. Karpos. The members of the Alpha Clan whose bodies rested inside these walls had never been given last names. They were all fatherless, and they were all kindred. Elijah Bishop’s creations. The black pyramid in the center of the chamber emitted a faint, cold glow. If J.J. reached out with his mind, he could feel the girl who slept inside it, but he chose not to tonight. Tonight, he was here to see someone else. He sat down cross-legged on the cold black stone and reached out, stopping short of touching her name. What was he doing here? J.J. shook his head, unable to answer his own question. On the other side of this wall was nothing but bones, slowly rotting. Ursula LeRoi was gone forever. She would never collar J.J. or any of his kindred again. J.J. was not grieving for LeRoi like Seth was grieving for Regent, whom they had buried in the Royal Acres Cemetery, under a stone with J.J.'s name on it. Ursula LeRoi had never been a mother to J.J. She had been his captor. The lessons she had taught him had helped him defeat her, but the more important lessons he had learned from the father she had ordered him to kill. Loyalty. Courage. Mercy. Ursula LeRoi would have made J.J. a monster like her own son if she could have. 281 Defeating her had given J.J.’s life purpose. What was his purpose now that she was gone? Where did his life go from here? J.J. drew his knees up, palms splayed on the cold, living stone. The Commanders wanted him to remain with the Alliance, but J.J. was no longer certain he still wanted to be a full-time soldier. Maybe it was time to give that normal human teenager thing a shot. J.J. was blackly amused that, for once, his own future was something he simply could not see. Xanthe said it was because he had a choice to make – a path to tread, not a destiny to find. J.J. had come here tonight with some vague notion of finding answers, but he felt nothing. He didn’t even feel the cold. He looked down at his ivory tuxedo. The cummerbund and bowtie were black. Jack had loaned him a pair of diamond cufflinks, and Lydia had combed his hair, which was getting a little long, so it curled onto his forehead. “Don’t you want to go?” she had said, when J.J. had protested that he still didn't get the whole prom thing. Just like that, for the first time in his life, J.J. did know what he wanted. For himself, not for anyone else. He stood up, brushing off his trousers, and looked one last time at Ursula LeRoi's tomb. “Goodbye, Mother,” he said. *** “I can’t believe he bailed on prom,” Leigh said. Whitney sighed. The girls were crossing into the Castle Estates Country Club garden; the soles of Whitney’s practical ballet slippers swished on the sidewalk, a whisper to the scream of Leigh’s clacking stiletto heels. “I don’t think J.J. really cares about a high school dance, Leigh. He did save the world a month ago.” “But still,” Leigh said. “It’s prom.” Leigh was about to fizzle with excitement. Like literally. Effervescent bubbles were rising up from her toes, into the top of her head. She practically floated over the ground. Four weeks ago, she would have been excited about prom. Forget spaceships and shapeshifters. Prom was the event of your high school experience. But tonight, she wasn’t just excited to be going to the dance. She was excited by who she was going with. Though, honestly, it was nice to do something normal for a change. Half your city gets leveled by an alien aircraft, and things get a little weird for a while. Fairfax was slowly resuming a semblance of normalcy. School was even scheduled to start up again on Monday, though with all of the conspiracy theories about alien invasions flying 282 around, Leigh wasn’t sure how “normal” that was going to be. Probably as normal as high school ever was. General Burke had kept a surprisingly tight lid on the whole affair. Some of the whacko conspiracy theorist “The Truth Is Out There” websites had published that picture of Seth and J.J. fighting at the sectionals game, but really, who listened to whackos besides other whackos? (Leigh conveniently ignored the fact that in this instance, the whackos happened to be right.) 60 Minutes hadn’t descended on Fairfax or anything. The news had reported a, quote, “giant sinkhole” opening after a “gas main explosion” caused by the “second violent weather anomaly in as many weeks” that had “seriously wrecked downtown.” Well, that last part was a paraphrase, not a quote. Marshall had argued passionately for the Commanders to simply let the truth come out. Burke’s superiors had refused. The compromise had been to call off Operation Eden and allow Burke’s unit to continue assisting werekin in secretly integrating from the Underground into human society. Operation Swan Song had ended, but the Alliance had survived the storm. “Hello, love.” Wrapped up in her own thoughts, Leigh hadn’t seen the two boys standing in the pale circle cast by one of the country club’s old-fashioned street lamps. The one who had spoken smirked at her. He was dressed quite differently from the boy he had been talking to. Emery Little was wearing a powder-blue tux that matched Whitney’s dress, a retro-funky affair (like Whitney) that had a puffed-out skirt and a low-cut beaded bodice. Lucky was wearing dark jeans and a black leather jacket that was most likely concealing a weapon. The shirt underneath was white Vneck. An old burn scar marked the U where his collarbones met. Leigh looked away from it, her eyes catching onto his in the moonlight. His were dark amber. “You’re going to our prom?” she said. “I thought you were in prison.” “They let me out early for good behavior. Seems that tracking device I planted on Connor Burke’s car led you all to the Black Swan in time to prevent the apocalypse.” Lucky’s tone was dry. Whitney gave Leigh a look. What? Was it Leigh’s fault he had been born a hunter? “Emery says you’re joining the Alliance, officially,” Whitney said, kindly. “I am,” said Lucky. “You’re joining the military?” Leigh dubiously took in Lucky’s leather jacket and unlaced Doc Martins. “Don’t they have, like, a lot of discipline?” 283 “I was raised in the Scholae Bestiarii. I doubt McLain will come down any harder on us than the trainers.” Lucky glanced over Leigh’s shoulder, and for some reason straightened up from slouching against the street lamp. “I should go. Don’t want to keep Cinderella from her ball.” Sweeping a mocking bow to Leigh, he sauntered off, whistling under his breath. Leigh shook her head. Boys were so weird. She soon forgot Lucky, however, as Serena Jensen and Zoe Campbell met her walking under the stone archway into the garden proper, which smelled like jasmine in the moonlight. Serena and Zoe looked super-cute in matching men’s suits. Serena’s short hair was gelled into Tinkerbell spikes; Zoe’s sleek black tresses, which Leigh was insanely jealous of, were pinned up in a complicated chignon. She was keen to show Leigh the new earrings she had made, white feathers threaded with tiny black beads. She was branching out from just bracelets. Swept along in the growing crowd, Leigh did not mark the small brown falcon hopping along the grass behind her. The garden had undergone a stunning transformation into fairyland. White and black roses had been arranged in crystal vases on round tables around the terrace. More roses hung off the sides of a gazebo in the center of the garden, a kind of lover’s bower surrounded by a small crystal pond. White lights were strung through the branches of the trees, touching softly on the faces of the dancers circling in front of a raised bandstand. Ozzie Harris was seated on a stool there, strumming a wooden guitar. He was actually pretty good without Chaz murdering his bass on backup. His girlfriend Chelsea Stone, mermaid-slender in a green slip dress as bright as her shorn hair, crooned into the mic. The night was pleasantly warm, with a soft breeze that tugged at Leigh’s elaborate curls. When someone literally tugged one of those curls, she spun around from the punch table with an indignant gasp. “Hey! Do you know how long this up-do took?” “Oops.” Dre Alfaro smiled crookedly at her. He was not in a tux; he was in pinstripe trousers and a wrinkled white dress shirt and black suspenders, newsboy cap tilted jauntily on his dark hair. He could have been in a garbage bag with armholes for all Leigh cared. She looked up at him, and everything she had rehearsed saying to him flew right out of her head. All that came to her was: “Hi.” “Hi.” Dre shyly brought his hand around from behind his back. He was holding a single red rose. “I know it’s not a corsage – ” “It’s perfect,” Leigh said. And it was. He was perfect, down to the beaded bracelet tied around his wrist. She tucked the rose skillfully behind her ear. “There. How does that look?” 284 “Beautiful,” Dre said. Leigh lowered her eyes. For a second there she had forgotten how dressed up she was. Lydia had taken in one of her Vera Wang gowns for her. The silk was wine-colored, designed to cling at the chest and hips, slit on the sides to allow for easy dancing. Couples drifted by, dipping punch from the crystal bowl Miss Janowitz was guarding like a hawk (or an owl, to be more precise). Leigh rested her hand lightly on Dre’s chest through his shirt. She wondered if he had a scar there. Most likely not. Werekin didn’t scar easily. She felt the fast-beating heart under her fingertips surge at her touch. “Do they know yet,” she asked, “if you’ll ever be strong enough to fly again?” “Aphrodisia said to give it time. I can still skin, but the flying – ” Dre shrugged. "We’ll just have to see what the strengthening potion can do.” “I’m sorry.” Leigh let her hand slide from Dre’s chest onto his shoulder. He was still muscular, if a little thinner. “I wasn’t sure you would really get to come tonight,” she said, suddenly shy. “I almost didn’t. But Aphrodisia left the window open... ” “Andre Alfaro!” Leigh jerked back, almost knocking into Gabe Cochran, who was walking by with his date. “You did not sneak out of the infirmary!” Dre cackled. “No. I didn’t. I would have, but Marshall talked Aphi into letting me come.” “You jerk.” Leigh punched his arm. But she was smiling, and she didn’t stop him when he bowed his head to kiss her mouth, as tenderly as Leigh had ever wanted a boy to kiss her. She was breathless when he stepped back. “Now,” he said, with a devilish grin. “How about that dance?” *** Seth scowled as Leigh linked her arms behind Dre’s neck on the dance floor. Baby Bird needed to watch the hands. “Stop looking so ferocious, Philadelphia,” Marshall said. “People are staring.” Seth looked around. They had just walked out of the country club, a two-story slate stone building with a hilltop view of King’s Creek. The lights of Castle Estates twinkled like stars in the distance. “I don’t see anybody staring,” he said. “You never do,” Marshall murmured. If people were staring, Seth thought, it was at Marshall. His boyfriend looked like the modern reincarnation of Adonis in a straight 285 black jacket and silver-checked vest, a complement to Seth’s black-andgold ensemble. Lydia had posed them in front of the Stewards’ fireplace for pictures, and Meredith had gone all dewy-eyed about what a handsome couple they made. Their mothers were probably even now sitting by the fire, sipping merlot and scrapbooking as they planned the wedding and named the grandcubs. “You know,” Seth said, “we could skip the dance and get straight to the after-prom part…” “Not a chance, Philadelphia.” Marshall put his hand in the small of Seth’s back. “I didn’t put on a tux just for you to take it off. Let’s mingle.” Seth sighed. It took them a while to make their way around the dance floor, as everybody wanted to say hi to them, Castle kids and Haven kids. That divide still existed, although out on the dance floor, it seemed to matter very little, as just about everyone was dancing in a big group to Ozzie’s rendition of “YMCA.” The tables, on the other hand, were split more or less between Castle and Haven, human and alien. The ballplayers’ table being one exception. Bryce, Topher, and Gabe, all of whom knew the truth, were seated there with Angelo Alfaro. Yena Lee was tucked under Bryce’s arm. She looked like a rose in a red off-the-shoulder dress. She kissed Seth’s cheek in hello. As soon as he and Marshall sat down, Seth turned to Alfaro. “What’s up, PimpDaddy?” Alfaro grinned. His tux was white; he had added to it a silver top hat and cane. The bullring in his nose and the beads in his dreads sparkled under the icicle lights. “Where’s J.J.?” he asked. Seth puckered. He had just taken a sip of the cranberry punch. “Guess he decided not to come,” he managed. He wondered if that decision had anything to do with J.J.’s ongoing girl dilemma, which J.J. had been studiously avoiding by throwing himself into the Alliance negotiations these past four weeks. He hadn’t been to Cleo’s at all. He spent most of his time at Fort King these days. There, or in the woods. Seth had let him be. J.J. didn’t ask for much. If he needed space to figure out what he wanted now that returning to their homeland was no longer an option, it was the least Seth could give him. Losing Lemuria had been a bigger blow to J.J. than it had been to Seth. It was times like these, sitting at a cloth-covered table with his friends, talking about college and basketball and graduation, that Seth could hardly believe how much his life had changed in the four months he had lived in Fairfax. A year ago, eking out his lonely existence in the Philadelphia Underground, he would never have believed he could be at 286 a school dance with friends, human and werekin, who knew exactly who and what he was. Not hiding from hunters. Not worrying if his laugh stretched into a purr or his spine arched when he walked. He touched the jaguar tattoos circling his eye. He wished Naomi could be here to see him tonight, safe and happy and free. Mostly he just wished she could be there. Like he wished Thomas and even Regent were there. It didn’t seem right for life to go on after the people you loved were gone. Standing in front of his mirror earlier while Jack had helped him tie his tie, Seth had almost felt guilty for being excited about something as ridiculous as prom. But there was nothing for it. Life went on. It didn’t mean you ever forgot. “What are you thinking about?” Marshall asked, laying his arm across the back of Seth’s chair. Seth realized his cheeks were damp and rubbed at them with his sleeve. Before he could do more than shake his head, someone tapped the microphone. “Go Ms. M-C!” Alfaro bellowed. “Thank you, Angelo.” On the stage, Ms. McLain smiled. “It is always my great pleasure to announce the prom court – ” “Like this is gonna be a surprise?” Bryce said, winking at Marshall. “ – who are chosen by the senior class to represent the best of us. However.” Ms. McLain adjusted her wide headband. In deference to prom, she was wearing a skirt, but it was still navy pinstripe. “This year, by special request of the senior class, we are doing things a bit differently. And not just because we aren’t holding prom in our own gym. In recognition of these changing times,” there was something in how Ms. McLain phrased that that made the students glance at one another, and Seth’s heart skip a beat, “this year, by unanimous vote, the senior class asked me to announce that instead of a king and a queen, they have decided to honor a royal couple. A couple who has something to teach us about what it means to live honestly, true to who you really are. Living honestly isn’t easy. It takes courage to show the world your truest self. It takes strength not to just go along with what everyone else tells you is ‘normal,’ and not to be convinced that you are wrong for being who you are.” Ms. McLain paused. “I am proud to announce this year’s Fairfax High royal couple…” Seth had seen this coming, of course, but as Ms. McLain said Marshall’s name, then his, it was still one of those unforgettable moments when the world just seemed to freeze, everything around you perfectly illuminated. He would know later that he was laughing as Marshall pulled him gently to his feet, but at the time, what he heard was the applause, what he felt was his hand clasped in Marshall’s, what he 287 saw was the smile on the face of the golden-eyed boy standing alone on the edge of the crowd – a little apart from everyone else, but there nonetheless, to witness his twin’s special moment. *** As Marshall led Seth onto the dance floor, J.J. turned and walked back inside the country club. He wasn’t quite to the front doors when he heard a familiar laugh. He spun around. The country club had cherry-stained floors and opulent crystal chandeliers; a valet was checking coats in a small closet to the left, while to J.J.’s right, inside an elegant dining room with French doors thrown open onto the terrace, couples were sitting around tables covered by white cloths. A large stone fireplace took up one wall. In front of it, under the stern gaze of a portrait of Abraham Bishop and Maxim LeRoi, two girls were talking. One wore a buttery gold sheath dress that spun out the golden streaks in her copper mane. The other wore skintight jeans and a black leather jacket and spike-heeled boots. Cleo saw J.J. first, and moved casually away from the hearth. Quinn turned to see what she was looking at. Their eyes met, and J.J. pulled up short, trying to read what was in Quinn’s. The last thing he had expected was to find Cleo at a dance, talking to Quinn. He hadn’t seen Quinn in four weeks. He had only seen Cleo at the fort. There they had only spoken about official Alliance business. She hadn’t asked him to come over, and J.J. hadn’t turned up uninvited like he would have before their trip to the Amazon. He considered turning around now and leaving, but his feet had other ideas. He found himself walking toward the girls before he had made up his mind what to do. Quinn said something to Cleo, who nodded. Setting her cup of punch on a table, Quinn sauntered out the French doors onto the deck. “What was all that about?” J.J. asked, looking after her. Cleo shrugged. “Girl stuff.” She was sipping from her own cup of punch. By deeply-ingrained force of will, J.J. did not notice the becoming red stain on her lips. “I didn’t know you were into girl stuff,” he said. “Sometimes,” was Cleo’s reply. “Well…” She put her cup down next to Quinn’s. “See ya.” And she turned, walking away. J.J. hesitated just for a moment. He could see Quinn on the terrace – her hair was unmistakable – and even though she very pointedly was not 288 looking at him, he knew she knew he was there. She couldn’t possibly have planned this, but now that they were all three here, J.J. understood this was it. His test. His moment of truth. “Wait,” he said. Cleo stopped. She was outside the dining room, in the foyer. She looked genuinely puzzled when J.J. gripped her elbow and steered her into the parking lot. “I didn’t come here to mess up your night,” she protested. “I just came to see the coronation. Whitney told me about the vote, and anyway, I couldn’t miss seeing Bunny Bread in that tux – ” “I need to talk to you.” J.J. pulled her through a gate in the brick fence that surrounded the club. The wood beyond it was the same wood that stretched from Castle Estates to Fort King, deep and quiet under the moon. A half-mile in, J.J. found a rotted log and sat down, jerking the knot out of his bowtie. Cleo leaned against a budding maple. Moonlight reflected back from her silvery-purple eyes. “I hear you’re getting a new step-sister,” she said. “I don’t think McLain has popped the question just yet,” J.J. replied, dryly. “But if Lydia says yes, I think that makes Caroline my aunt, not my sister. Who told you about it?” “McLain,” Cleo said. J.J. had expected her to say Seth. His twin had been on daily romps in the big cat playground, as fine a place as any to stitch up the hole Werner Regent’s death had torn in his heart. Cleo stuck her hands in her pockets. J.J. wondered if she was cold. “There's something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “Clearly,” said Cleo. Reluctantly, J.J. grinned. Cleo never let him off the hook about anything. “I wasn’t going to prom,” he started. Cleo raised her eyebrows at his tux. J.J. sighed. Why wasn’t he better at this? He could speak through dreams, predict the future, even save the world, but he couldn’t tell a girl how he felt. “I mean, I got dressed to go, but then I went to the fort. I went to LeRoi’s grave. I was hoping it would give me closure. Affirm for me that we really won. That she’s really gone.” “And?” Cleo said, softly. “And it didn’t,” J.J. confessed. “I know she’s dead, but that doesn’t tell me what I’m supposed to do now, with my life.” Because the truth was, deep down, J.J. had always believed his kindred would win. He just hadn’t expected to survive to enjoy the victory. He stepped up on the rotted log, balancing along the length of it heeltoe. Cleo watched him, a curious look on her face. “Seth knows exactly what he wants,” J.J. said. “All of that back there. Normal human teenager 289 stuff. For a long time, he thought I wanted him to give that up, but I don’t. I want him to live his life. I only just realized tonight that Seth wants the same thing for me. He never asked me not to leave Fairfax, not to get on that ship when it took off for Lemuria. He doesn’t need me to be a normal human teenager to be part of his life. Which is a good thing,” J.J. said, as he pirouetted down from the log, “because I’m not. Normal. Or human, entirely. And I don’t want to be.” He was standing in front of Cleo now. She looked up at him. Tall as she was, she wasn’t taller than J.J. “What do you want?” “I want to be a soldier,” J.J. said. “Not because I have to. Because I want to. There are things in this world worth protecting, and I want to protect them.” Cleo nodded. She wasn’t quite looking at him, until J.J. tucked his knuckles under her chin, tilting her face up to his. The last face he saw when he fell asleep at night; the first face he thought of when he woke up in the morning. He couldn’t remember a time it hadn’t been that way. “And I want you,” he said. “Just you. I don’t know if you still want me, but – ” “J.J.” Cleo was still looking at him with that inexplicable, almost bemused expression. “You don’t get it, do you?” Now she would say it. I never wanted you. I wanted him. J.J.’s hand dropped from her face. “Get what?” “When I met Seth, I couldn’t believe how different you were.” Cleo’s voice was steady. J.J. crossed his arms so she wouldn’t see his hands shaking. “He was so good and kind, and you were so – cold, and ruthless. I looked at him and I saw you, the way you had always seemed to me growing up, no matter how hard you pretended you weren’t good underneath. Until that day in the Arena when I looked up at you and your eyes were just blank. I could have forgiven you for killing me, for saving yourself, but you looked so…so empty, like you didn’t feel anything, and I didn’t know how I could have been so wrong about you. How I could have fallen so deeply in love with this – ” She grabbed his wrist. J.J. had started to turn away; everything inside of him was turning to stone, and he didn’t want her to see that in his eyes. But Cleo forced him around. The branches over their heads danced shadows across their faces. “But you weren’t empty,” she said. “You were blank then like you are now because you were hiding everything you really felt from me. To protect me. You always protected me. Once I knew that, that awful day when you tracked me down at Chaz’s apartment and told me what you were really in Fairfax to do, to save the Black Swan, I knew I had been right about you all along, and it killed me that I had hurt you for it. Because you are like Seth. Not exactly, you’re 290 different people, but in here,” she pressed her palm over J.J.’s heart, which was racing, “where it counts, you are the same. You’re both good.” “Do you love him?” J.J. whispered it; he couldn’t catch his breath. Cleo nodded. “Yes. I’ll always love Seth. I couldn’t love you and not love Seth. When I left here six weeks ago, I thought I had to cut that love out of me, but you can’t cut your heart in two. Love doesn’t work like that. And if I have to give my heart to one of you,” and Cleo at that picked up J.J.’s hand, bringing it to her chest, “there isn’t any question. It has always belonged to you.” There were stars in her eyes. J.J. knew it was just a trick of the moonlight, but he watched them grow brighter as he leaned in. Her breath touched his lips; he breathed her in, into his bloodstream, feeling the thunder of her heart under his palm as his other arm slid around her waist, drawing her against him. He whispered in her ear. Cleo smiled. Sliding her arms up to twine around J.J.’s neck, she rested her forehead against his and spoke, as he could have spoken to her, inside his mind. I love you, too. *** The dance floor had filled up again, though Seth wasn’t really paying attention. Ozzie had taken up his guitar again. The melody was slow and sweet. Seth folded into it as he folded into Marshall’s arms, resting his head against Marshall’s chest. Nearby, Whitney was circling in Emery’s embrace. “What are you thinking?” Seth murmured, returning the question Marshall had put to him earlier. “I was thinking about my father.” Seth had guessed as much, but he still wasn’t sure what to say. Marshall had gone alone, without even Whitney or Meredith, to scatter his father’s ashes in the river. He was living next door again, and Seth knew he had been gone for hours that day, because he had sat in his window watching for him to come home. Marshall and Jack had taken some long drives around Castle Estates since then, ostensibly for Jack to pick out a new house, but Seth understood there were questions about Wesley Townsend’s involvement with Chimera only Jack, one of his oldest friends, could answer. Although there would be questions, Seth was sure, the ones that really mattered, no one but Wesley Townsend could have answered. Like if he 291 had seen Marshall as his son, or a failed experiment. Like why he had sided with Ursula LeRoi in the end. “We don’t have to stay,” Seth said now. “If you want to go somewhere and talk…” “Nice try, Philadelphia. You aren’t getting me off alone that easy.” Seth made a face against Marshall’s shoulder, muttering about golden boys. “I’m okay. I was just wondering if this would have changed my father’s mind about you and me. To see us being accepted.” “Do you think it would have?” “I hope so. Otherwise it’s like he hated me and not just what people would think about me, and about him because of me, if that makes sense.” “You know,” Seth said, realizing something for the first time, “I’m not sure how my dad would have felt about you and me.” “From everything you’ve told me about him,” Marshall said, “I think your dad would have been happy as long as you were happy.” He stopped circling then, and suddenly drew Seth off the dance floor. Other couples smiled at them as they hurried by. Seth looked around for J.J., but he had melted away into the night. And a beautiful night it was. Marshall pulled Seth along one of the flowered walkways, into the gazebo that sat a short distance apart from the crowd. They sat on the white bench inside of it, Seth turning sideways with a knee tucked under him. He was more nervous than he had been since the night he had worked up the nerve to kiss Marshall for the first time. “There’s something I’ve been putting off telling you,” Marshall said. “Okay.” Seth’s mouth was very dry. He couldn’t handle more bad news right now. “A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Duke University. They’ve accepted me into their pre-med program. They want to offer me an athletic scholarship to play basketball for them.” Seth whooped, startling the sparrow who had been hopping around the gazebo’s stairs. She squawked into the sky. “Indiana, that’s awesome! Why didn’t you tell me?” “Well…because.” Marshall ran a hand through his hair. His baby blues were focused on his loafers. “Seth, can I ask you something?” “Shoot.” Seth cocked a finger at him. “It’s kind of a jerky thing to ask,” Marshall warned. Seth sighed. “I hate it when you do that.” “Do what?” 292 “Preempt me getting mad by being all reasonable and mature.” Seth kicked his ankle when Marshall bit his lip. “I’m kidding, Indiana. Ask me. I won’t get mad.” “Did you like kissing Connor?” Oh man. Seth felt like an idiot for not seeing that one coming. He slumped back on the bench. In times past he would have paced, but for some reason losing Regent had ratcheted up his stillness quotient. “I liked it at the time,” he said, figuring honesty was the only possible way to answer such a question. “It was like I couldn’t not like it. But if you’re asking me if, prior to all of this, was I physically attracted to Connor, then the answer is no. I never wanted to kiss him before he put the whammy on me. And the moment the enchantment broke, I was so grossed out by the things he made me believe I wanted to do, I felt like slicing my lips off with J.J.’s sword.” “I’m glad you didn’t,” Marshall said. His eyes had darkened to cobalt. Seth sat perfectly still as he leaned over on the bench, placing his hands on either side of Seth, and brushed his mouth over his. Seth wanted him as badly now as he ever had. Some things you only wanted more of the more you had of them. My bounty is boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite. “What’s that from?” Marshall whispered. Seth blushed. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “Romeo and Juliet. And don’t you dare laugh,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Okay,” Marshall said, but there was laughter in his voice. “Just – I want to be clear here. You’re Juliet and I’m Romeo.” “Screw that,” Seth said. “I’m totally Romeo. He gets all the good lines. But we’re getting a little off-topic. Why did you getting the Duke scholarship make you ask me about Connor?” “Because I didn’t take it.” Seth’s chin dropped. “What? Why not?” “Two reasons,” Marshall said, “and I want you to hear me out on both of them before you freak out. Okay?” “Then talk fast,” Seth said. Marshall sat back with a sigh, hooking his arms over the bench. Music and laughter floated toward them on the breeze. “Reason One is that I got a better offer, so to speak. McLain asked me to sign on officially with the Alliance, now that I’m graduating. Dre has been decrypting LeRoi’s files, and there’s some pretty scary stuff in them to do with genetics, alchemy, even Healing. Burke and McLain have been impressed with my work as a Healer so far. McLain said they couldn’t afford to lose my expertise right now, but if I want to go to Duke after 293 you graduate, the Alliance will foot the bill, and they’ll see to it my acceptance isn’t denied, just deferred. In the meantime, I’ll probably learn more from studying with Aphrodisia than I would from med school anyway.” Seth kicked his heel against the bottom of the bench. “And Reason Two?” “Reason Two is us,” Marshall said simply. “I don’t want to go off to college and leave you here. I know couples do it all the time, and I know we’d survive it. We can survive anything. I just don’t want to. You know what it feels like to lose me, and in that cathedral, when you looked at me and had no idea who I was, when you were ready to stab me on Connor Burke’s say-so, I knew what it felt like to lose you, too.” Marshall picked up Seth’s hand. Seth liked how their fingers matched up, Marshall’s slender and elegant, his thin and callused. “Seth, I want to spend every second of my life with you. No regrets. If that means putting off med school, letting my basketball glory days end in high school, I can live with that.” “Okay,” Seth said. Marshall looked up. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?” “Indiana, if you wanted to go to Duke, or Tokyo, or the moon or wherever to follow your dreams, I would be in your corner cheering you on the whole way,” Seth said. “But if what you want is to work with the Alliance and live next door to me, then that’s what I want to.” “Wow.” Marshall sat back. “And here I was prepared for this huge fight. I even had a list of points I was going to make. Leigh helped me outline them.” “We can still fight,” Seth offered. “As long as we get to make up later.” Marshall laughed. *** Dawn was streaking the sky when Seth and Leigh tiptoed in the back door of the red brick house at 706 Kings Lane. Seth’s tie was undone, jacket slung over his shoulder. Leigh was carrying her shoes. She followed Seth up to the third floor, trailed by Captain Hook. Seth didn’t ask why she wasn’t going to her own room; they had drunk nothing stronger than punch, yet they were both buzzed, on happiness. It seemed like the kind of night that could go on forever, if you had someone to lie on top of the covers reliving it with – but when Seth opened his door, his bed was already occupied. 294 “Hola, party animals,” J.J. said, putting down the book he had been reading. Poe was curled up beside him on the pillow. She stretched when she saw Captain Hook and jumped down to join him on the windowsill. J.J.’s ivory jacket was draped over Seth’s footboard. He had the wild, rumpled look of a run through the woods about him, but also, for the first time in a month, a smile on his face. “Forget which room is yours again?” Leigh teased, crawling up on the bed next to him. J.J. rolled his eyes, but opened his arm for Leigh to snuggle in against his side. “Why did you wear your tux if you weren’t coming to the dance, doofus?” “I was there,” J.J. said. His eyes were tracking Seth as he stripped to his undershirt and boxers, then stretched out on the other side of Leigh. “I saw Seth get crowned queen.” “He did not get crowned queen,” Leigh started, hotly. “Actually,” Seth said, “I think Marshall and I both got crowned queens.” J.J. snorted. Leigh smacked him. “Seth, don’t be gross. Besides, technically you weren’t ‘crowned’ anything. You were given a royal scepter.” She pointed at the ebony cane propped against Seth’s dresser. The handle was a white star. Marshall had one as well, only his was white with a black star. “I thought it was very romantic,” Leigh said. “I didn’t see Cam among the revelers,” J.J. remarked. “I heard they’re moving,” said Leigh, “him and his dad.” That might have been true, but Cam’s had not been the only absent face tonight. Some of the Castle Estates parents – Chimera’s surviving Partners – had pulled their kids from Fairfax High. Where they had gone was anyone’s guess. Leigh yawned, curling closer into J.J. He ran a hand over her curls, which had long since slipped out of her up-do, and turned his head to look at Seth across her. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said, quietly, as Leigh’s breathing began to even out. “But it can wait. I don’t want to spoil your night.” “Tell me,” Seth said. “It’s about Connor.” J.J.’s tone was warning, like he was still giving Seth an out. “What about him?” Seth asked, too curious not to. “I…I have this dream.” J.J.’s hands had stilled in Leigh’s hair. Only J.J. could become so instantly still, Seth thought. “I lure you into a cell, and I – ” “Collar me,” Seth supplied quietly. “I have it, too.” “But you still trust me.” J.J. shook his head like he couldn’t understand this. “When you thought you were me, Connor made you the 295 way I’ve always been afraid to see myself. The way I was always afraid you saw me.” “You’re not about to tell me you have a crush on Emery, are you?” A quick grin caught at J.J.’s lips. “That part was all you, little brother. Some things even magic can’t change.” It’s like your skin. You can’t hide it, and you can’t change it. “J.J., I know you would never betray me,” Seth said. “I wouldn’t,” J.J. said, firmly. “But you have to understand. For seventeen years I survived by being as feral as LeRoi wanted me to be. You wear a mask long enough, it can become your true face. I’ve always been afraid some part of me really was just an animal, and that was the part of me that would betray you.” “You’re not an animal, J.J.” Reaching across their little sister, Seth laid a hand over his brother’s. J.J.’s scars felt like embossing on paper. He looked down at Seth’s hand, and his smile took a slightly firmer hold. “We balance each other out, you and me,” he said. “It’s more than just light and dark, flipsides of a coin. It’s like – what’s you is me, and what’s me is you. Like the White Swan and the Black Swan. We’re more powerful when we’re together. On some level I think Regent knew that, and it’s why he made you that sword.” “Is that why he saved you, do you think?” “I think he saved me because he knew LeRoi had lost,” J.J. said, and Seth had a feeling they were getting back around to whatever J.J. had wanted to talk to him about. “Lemuria was gone. He was dying. He wouldn’t have survived that wound you gave him. He could have let LeRoi kill me, but I think he saved me because he loved you, in his own way, and saving me was the only way he could prove that to you.” He rolled over then, staring up at Seth’s ceiling. They stayed that way as the sun came up, wiping out the stars over Fairfax that shone like beacons to other worlds. J.J. knew those worlds were out there. Part of him was from another world – the world of the Totems. But what made any world home were your connections to the people in it. Ties that ran under the skin, deeper than blood, as much a part of you as your bones. J.J. was all at once struck by the strangest idea, that if he came back to this exact place a million years from now, he would not find it ashes and dust, burned away as the sun, like any star, built to its inevitable, ultimate explosion; he would find it just as it was now, with the sunrise filling up the window, slowly flooding his mother’s house with golden light that crept up the walls, onto the bed, over him and his brother and his sister, like a blessing. It seemed clear to him, suddenly, that no 296 moment ever really ended, it just melted into the next; that nothing ever really stopped, and no one was ever really lost. What seemed like the end was just another beginning. J.J. closed his eyes then and slept, for the first time in his life without dreams. 297 Author’s Note The seed of The Ark Trilogy was planted at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. My deepest gratitude to my instructors there; the lessons you passed on about writing have since taken root, and flourished. As I write this, arguments are being heard before the U.S. Supreme Court about the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender couples to marry. LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) individuals are still subjected to bullying, ridicule, and hate – to the extent that some take their own lives, and others have their lives taken from them. I hope, by the time you read this, this will no longer be the case. I hope our society will have accepted the real and simple truth: that love is love. For those individuals, gay, straight, or trans – pansexual, bisexual, asexual, whichever – who fight for a more accepting and equal society for us all, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. If you have been with the werekin this long, I owe you thanks for diving into my stories, and staying under with me. Thanks to my family – to Mom for giving me that first typewriter when I was eight years old; to Dad, for being Poor Old Dad; and most of all to my big sister, for not minding my queerness overly much. To my friends and colleagues, who make my real world as rich a place to inhabit as my imaginary ones – thank you; to Isabella, for being patient while I drafted, revised, and edited, which meant putting some of our long walks on hold; and most especially, thank you to my students, for allowing me the privilege of being your teacher. Daniel, Abby, Curt, Patti, Janon, Ambreena, Megan, Lauren, R.C., Crystal, and so many others I cannot name here: Your courage, your brilliance, and your passion for life and learning inspire me every day. You have taught me more than I could ever teach you. 298 About the Author Jesse Daro spends most of her time writing. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror are her favorite genres. She has a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature and writing in the Midwest. 299