7

I push my hair back with a shaky hand. “What do they want?”

Beside me, Storm is silent. He glances out the window into the deepening night. The typically gray skies over Dominion are subtly tinted with purple, a sure sign that within a few days’ time we’ll be experiencing one of the devastating Flux storms that can lay ruin to whole sections of the city.

“Jared,” Storm calls softly. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. A moment later the van door opens, and Jared slides into the driver’s seat. He turns, and I feel his eyes on me, burning coals, as he takes in Storm’s closeness.

“Boss,” he drawls.

“Get Lucy home. Check in with me when the twins are secure.”

Jared nods as Storm removes his arm from me and moves toward the door. Even knowing Jared will misinterpret it—and what do I care if he does? I think rebelliously—I reach out and touch Storm’s arm. “Where are you going?” It’s out of line. I know it is. He’s my guardian, and I’m not his keeper. I shouldn’t be asking questions like this. But tumbling through the world of strange is the knowledge that he knows something. Much more than he’s letting on.

Storm turns back, his lips arranged in that generous smile I know so well. He caresses my cheek. “Don’t worry, Lucinda. It will all be well.”

“What does that even mean?” I call into the empty space he leaves behind.

The door locks. Jared continues to stare at me stonily. I take in his attire. For Jared, he’s dressed formally. In his collared button-up shirt and a formal pair of slacks I’d seen earlier, topped with a leather jacket, he could almost pass for someone who cares about his appearance. I want to smile at the thought. “Okay, Princess, Boss Man has spoken,” he drawls. His expression grows pensive as he adds under his breath, “And then some,” before turning around as though we’re perfect strangers and gunning the gas.

Still, it takes me longer than it should to realize that Jared is not driving me back to Storm’s.

“Where are you going?” I ask Jared from the back seat where I have been huddling, frozen to the core. He doesn’t answer, just keeps driving with a stubborn look stamped on his face. Whatever he is planning, it can’t be good. “Jared.” I stretch my hand out to the driver’s seat to force him to answer me. “Jared! I don’t appreciate being kidnapped.”

“Just sit back and relax, Princess. Everything’s okay.”

Sullenly I cross my arms and slide back in my seat, where I am left to study the slight upturn to his full lips, the strange glint in his eyes. I snort in reply and turn my head to look out the window as we wind our way into the northern fringes of Dominion.

Here the city is hills and winding streets, crumbling mansions falling to pieces over their high-necked fences. Most windows are dark now. Dominion has been losing its rich and mighty, those who have been building their empires in this section of town for hundreds of years. I shiver as we pass the ruins of Senator Kain’s palatial home and run my fingers across the cool glass of the car window. It’s still a mess from the attack all those months ago, when we first learned about the “magic” nanotech bombs.

The van swerves onto a street I don’t know. Jared steps on the gas and the car shakes up a steep, winding incline. The headlights fall across a rusting white barricade. Jared stops the van, gets out, and removes it, then shuffles the van across before getting out again to close it behind us. I prick with unease. This is Jared, I remind myself. He’s told me again and again he’d never harm me. Still, it’s not like him to disobey Storm’s requests.

I shift in my seat, overcome by a sense of panic that I’m not sure I even understand as Jared drives us through a winding copse of trees. The headlights bounce off the bark, turning the barren, stunted trees into the skeletal Lasters bit by Plague.

With a final heave, the van shudders to a stop in what appears to be midair. I freeze, my fingers death-gripped around the door handle. Outside the air is a murky brown with splotches of hazy gray that I assume are city lights.

Jared sits there for a long moment, hands resting loosely on the steering wheel. He stares out into the abyss with a thoughtfulness he usually hides behind a cocky smile before meeting my eyes in the rearview.

“Okay, Princess, we’re here.”

“Here, where?”

He rests his hands on the steering wheel and sighs. “Just here.”

I don’t move as Jared gets out and comes around the side of the van. He opens the door and bows with a mocking flourish. I pull myself out of the vehicle carefully, trying to see my booted feet in the inky darkness.

“Where is this place?” I ask, worrying at my lips. I don’t understand what’s going on between us, but I am somehow not sure of this version of Jared. He stares down at me impassively, his shadowy features like craggy, cut granite.

“Come here, Lu. I’ve got something I want to show you.” The way he says this—softly, gently—melts my resistance. I place my hand in his and am instantly engulfed in the electric warmth emanating from his body. He tugs me toward the front of the van, where within a few steps the earth drops away into nothingness.

The van’s headlights illuminate the few steps between the edge of the cliff and us. A thin railing separates us from the drop. It seems to go on forever, miles and miles of blackness. Here and there red or gold lights twinkle in the distance, like fireflies lighting up a summer’s night. From here the city looks like bare bones, bleached of color and freed from flesh. I’ve never been here before, though I’ve often seen this place from down below.

“The Bluffs?”

Jared nods, lacing his fingers further into mine. We stand there for a long moment, admiring the view.

He’s first to break the silence. “My parents used to come up here when they were teenagers.” He tilts his head at me, one eyebrow cocked to suggest that maybe he can’t quite believe his parents were ever teenagers.

“My dad would bring me here before…before.” He doesn’t have to say more. I know what he means: before his family fell sick. Before he turned out to be True Born. Before he was disowned. Jared points to a small copse of trees to the right. “He said they used to line up, all the cars, and the couples would make out like bandits.” He laughs. I’m glad the night hides the hot flush of my cheeks, but Jared doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. He turns to me, a youthful look filling his features until suddenly I can imagine a younger Jared, a happy-boy version of this young man who has become a killer. My heart breaks for that boy.

Jared’s dimples flash as he shoots me a wicked grin. “My dad once told me I was conceived in this very spot.”

“What, right here on the ground?” I tease.

“Dad had a muscle car. He was pretty cool.” His voice becomes trailing, wistful.

I squeeze his hand. “You must miss him a lot.”

“Yeah.” He rakes a hand through his hair until it stands up, a riot of loose blond curls that I want to tamp down with my fingers. “My brother, Andrew, was pretty cool, too. I think you would have liked him. Both of them.”

The world unexpectedly tilts beneath me until I’m no longer sure I haven’t fallen headlong into space. Jared cares what I’d think about his family? He’s thought about me meeting his lost family? I shake my head, certain I’ve misunderstood. Because surely Jared can’t have meant…

I’m distracted enough that I don’t move away when he turns to me, a slight, happy smile on his lips. His free hand snakes out and caresses my cheeks, sending sparks skittering down my neck and back as he pushes my hair aside. I inhale, then forget to breathe as the pad of his thumb traces my bottom lip. Sparks shoot through me.

His eyes are obsidian fires. “Lu,” he says, softly, so softly.

“What?” I croak.

It’s another long moment before he answers. “I can’t stand it when we fight.”

I sputter a laugh. His hands still on my face. “I’m sorry,” I manage to say, trying to control a nervous need to giggle like a hyena. “Are we fighting? Maybe I didn’t notice because it’s all we ever seem to do.”

A wicked grin lights his features. “That’s not all we seem to do,” he whispers, seconds before he replaces his thumb with his lips.

It’s a soft kiss at first, tentative. Like someone asking your name. But it lights me up, sending fire shooting through my body, heat curling through my belly. I must sigh because Jared pulls back for just a moment, a question in his eyes and hunger written all over him. Then he claims my lips again, holding my face in his hands as the earth spins away from me.

I’m lost. I wind my fingers through his riot of curls, wanting, needing to get closer. Nip at his ear, his lips, the way I have imagined doing time and again. He utters a catlike purr against my lips. I splay my hands across his powerful chest, run them down his stomach. One hand slips through the space between the buttons of his dress shirt, glowing an eerie white against the headlights. Jared’s breath hitches as though I’ve burned him, and something warm and sweet floods through me. Can I really affect him like this?

As my brain hazes over, I realize that I want him to not just want me but to want me so badly it overcomes his reason. I want him to forget himself. I want him to push me into forgetting myself.

He turns his head to nibble at my lower lip, tracing a hail of kisses down the side of my neck. Dizzy, I hold on to him for dear life. His fingers snake against my back, pull me closer. One moment he’s kissing me and the next he’s pulling back to regard me through hooded cat eyes. “Lu,” he says, his voice gone ragged and deep. He lifts me up, our bodies pressing against each other, but it’s still not close enough. We devour each other’s mouths. I revel in the taste of him, the feel of his tongue, hot and heady in my mouth. He pulls up the skirt of my formal calf-length dress, wrapping my legs around him. Jared sways, whispers kisses into the flesh of my neck. I arch like a cat against him, digging my fingers into his arms, wanting to touch every inch of his shoulders, his chest.

He rears back. The planes of his face have narrowed, his cheeks flushed. I’m drawn to his lips, slightly swollen and infinitely kissable. His fingers tickle beneath the hem of my dress, sliding up my thighs, around, until they tease at the line where body meets thigh. I inhale sharply, shock and surprise and liquid heat stealing my thoughts. He stares at me with an expression I can’t read, and then kisses me again like a dying man searching for oxygen. Jared walks me backward, pulling me up against the side of Storm’s van. He pulls me tight against his hard, lean body, the still air around us filling with the ragged and labored sounds of our breathing, as sharp electric pulses course through my veins. I want. I want. Shudders run through him as his mouth holds me and stills, and we both pant as though we’ve been running full out.

Jared presses his forehead tightly against mine. Looks at me with eyes still clouded over. I can’t figure out what has just happened. We don’t say anything, though Jared slowly pulls his hands from my flesh, holds me tighter against his body. I revel at the thought that I can feel him throbbing, his pulse pounding through me as though we two have become one.

I lick my own swollen lips. Close my eyes against Jared’s heated stare, which follows my actions like a hunting cat. When I can finally speak, I don’t recognize my voice, which spills out like gravelly pebbles. “I thought you said you didn’t want to do this sort of thing with me.”

His harsh laugh disquiets me. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to, Lu.” Jared shakes his head, pressing his forehead against mine. “I said it wasn’t a good idea. It still isn’t,” he confesses quietly, his words nearly swallowed by the stillness all around us. “I’m so close to just…claiming you for my own.”

That particular feminine pride I had been feeling evaporates in an instant. “Why did you, then?”

Another laugh, this one not at all pleasant. “God, Lu, do you think I’m actually in control here? You,” he says, his lips coming so close to mine I can almost feel them on my flesh. He brushes them lightly, and the already swollen flesh lights up again. “You,” he says again, his voice dropping into a purr as with one hand, he strokes my hair, “you’re like a drug. I can’t get enough of you, can’t break away no matter how hard I try.”

I push at his chest and force him to let me down. “You make it sound terrible,” I grumble.

His voice and eyes are ragged, wild, as he tells me with conviction, “It is terrible.”

“Jared,” I warn.

Blond curls fall over his handsome face as he takes my cheeks lightly in his hands. I reach up and curl my own fingers over his, remembering what those hands can do. How could such brilliant, clever hands be capable of such violence? Like his hands, this man has the ability to make me feel as though I’m flying through the air one minute, bruised and sinking the next.

I try to look away, sick of the hurt, but he won’t let me. Staring intently into my eyes, he whispers my name like a prayer. “Don’t you get it? It’s ripping my guts out because I have never felt this way before. I need to be near you like I need oxygen. And I know full well I can’t have you.”

The look on his face says it all. Haunted, broken. As though I really have ripped the heart right out of him, exactly as I’ve seen him do to others. I can’t help myself. Tears begin to fall, getting caught in my lashes as I blink again and again, to hold them back.

“You’re here with me now,” I whisper. “Jared, I’m right here. Why does this have to hurt so much?”

For just a second, a look of pure desperation floats over Jared’s features. When he finally speaks it’s in a voice I’ve never heard before. Flat, harsh, terrible. “Because, Lu, you’re destined for bigger and better things than a lowly True Born merc.”

I suck in a breath. “How can you say that? How can you even think that about yourself? What does any of that matter?”

Jared’s answer is to thread gentle fingers through my hair. “God, you’re beautiful. Do you know that?” he murmurs, taking a deep breath.

“Don’t distract me, Jared True Born,” I scold. “This is the bloody end of the world,” I choke out with a laugh. “I have nothing any longer. I’m no one. I rely on your boss’s goodwill for my survival. And whatever is left of Dominion is being torn apart by Westfall and the Watchers. There isn’t going to be an Upper Circle left for me to return to, even if I were so inclined. So tell me. Tell me why. The real reason.”

But cold fingers of dread slide down my neck and back as Jared continues to stare at me, saying nothing. His throat works as he swallows something down. Then, with a look in his eyes I’d as soon call regret, Jared brushes my lips with a light kiss that leaves me hungry, wanting, and says, “You really don’t know, do you? I suppose that’s one of the things I love about you even though it drives me crazy. Always putting yourself last in line when you should be first.”

My heart stutters to a stop. What he loves about me?

I think I’m going to have to break in again when he silences me with a finger across my lips. “You are important, Lucy Fox. You and your sister are sitting at the center of something so vast it doesn’t yet have a name. And whatever’s circling in that blood of yours… Everyone wants a piece of you.”

He’s right, of course. Everyone does want a piece of us Fox sisters. Scraps of our blood to do God knows what. Pieces of our social connections. No one has ever wanted me for just me. Until now. Until Jared.

“There’s Margot,” I protest, but even as I say the words, I feel a traitorous stab and know that whatever I’m thinking isn’t possible anyhow.

“Yes, there’s Margot. You’re the two most important people in Dominion. Maybe all of Nor-Am. Hell, maybe on the planet.”

“Why—because of whatever it is that’s in our blood? Resnikov’s cure is a fake, I’m sure of it,” I say.

“There’s a reason why Resnikov was doing what he was doing,” he says darkly. “That bastard Nash is up to something. And all those rumors, Lu…” I recall only too well what was whispered among the elite traveling to Russia.

They say there’s a cure there. And we know Resnikov was pedaling it—the snake oil he built on the back of Margot’s DNA.

“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Jared continues.

“And the Watchers,” I throw in, feeling my entire life fragment into pieces before my eyes.

He’s right. I’d known this was true, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear. For a few brief, beautiful moments I’d actually let myself fantasize about a different life. One that wasn’t all about duty. One where I was able to craft my own destiny. Maybe one with this True Born.

But as I stare into Jared’s eyes, reading the naked truth there, I realize how delusional I have been. It’s just that thought that bursts the dam, sends me over the edge. “I’ll never be free, will I?”

A sob escapes me, and I bury my head into the comforting warmth of Jared’s chest. He soothes my hair, whispering sweet words against my head as he covers me in kisses. “Lu, hey, Lucy, please don’t,” he whispers against the soft skin of my face. Then he kisses me again, a deep, powerful kiss that coils in my belly and spreads like a magic bomb’s tendrils. It’s a kiss mingled with tears and white-hot lust and something else, something unexpected. Something has changed between Jared and me, probably forever. It’s this thought that has me pulling back enough to look at him. Shadows veil half his face. He looks troubled, restless.

Hungry.

A red light flashes across Jared, turning one side of his blond locks strawberry. It fills my eyes, making me blink.

“Uh, Jared?” I point. He turns, keeping me firmly behind his back as he searches the vista.

“Some sort of beacon, I think.” He frowns.

I peer out from behind his torso. The red light fades, the afterglow still burning for a moment before it flares out again, filling a small swath of night with a blood-tinged halo.

“That’s Old Town,” I say, pointing down into the gully that separates the bulk of the Upper Circle from the rest of Dominion.

Jared turns and sends me a chilling look as he walks out farther, crouching down at the ledge. Dominion City is a dim and dismal wasteland lit here and there by barrel fires. I catch sight of the tree in Heaven Square, its branches sprouting up like arms reaching for salvation, dwarfing the buildings around it.

If I look to my left I’ll see the vast strip of darkness of the park that stretches across the heart of the city. Nolan Storm’s tower is on the other side of the cliff, not visible from this vantage point.

And this one red light. Just one.

I frown again. “Where’d they get the juice? I thought the northern power plant had been blown up,” I muse out loud. The loud pop of exploding transformers has been indelibly imprinted upon me.

“Great question,” Jared says, turning to give me a piercing look. “You’d make a fine merc.”

“Such compliments, Mr. Price,” I tease. But despite the lightness of my words, I reckon that things have just taken on a whole new level of sinister. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Not because I’m cold but because if there’s a beacon, someone—or something—is being called.

As though he’s lifted the thought from my mind, Jared stands abruptly and strides toward me like the hunter he is. “We’ve got to get you back to the apartment. And then I’ve got to talk to Storm.”