My head had stopped swimming about ten minutes earlier, and I still hadn’t let anyone know I felt better. Why? Well, because it felt really nice, really normal to be carried in Chad’s arms. He was a clone, alive only because I’d bargained for his existence with my soul, but he smelled like the Chad Lyons I had loved: my best friend, my champion, and the greatest person I’d ever known.
While he’d been dead, I fallen in and out of love with Jason and begun a fascination with Deacon. The world spun better for me with Chad in it, and for just a moment, I could pretend everything hadn’t been destroyed; I still could be the girl I’d been before Chad had been killed.
“Are you feeling any better, miss?”
I hadn’t told them my name. Chad’s beautiful manners made him speak to me politely.
“Why are you treating her like she’s some sort of honored guest?” Deacon grumbled from behind me.
I could have turned to look at him, but doing so would have given away the fact I felt better. Injured kept me safer. For now.
“Why did you whack a girl over the head?” Chad countered.
In the tone he used, I could practically hear his eyes rolling.
“She kicked me in the knee.” Deacon’s voice sounded more like a growl I’d have expected from Jason.
The thought made me shudder inside. Did he still lay unconscious on the forest floor? I’d expected to be back to retrieve him by now. I’d wanted him dead by dinnertime. The longer he remained there, the more likely he’d wake up and escape me.
Of course, one word to these guys and I could probably make his death happen…except they’d never let me do the slaughtering myself. \
“You threatened her with a machete.” Micah, who had always loved to point out the obvious, added to the conversation.
“She’s an unknown threat. She threw a rock at my head. She led us on a chase most Werewolves wouldn’t be able to accomplish. Excuse me for trying to protect us.” Deacon stormed up to where Micah walked next to me. I could see the outline of his arm, the brown of his shirtsleeve swooshing as he moved.
“Miss?” I’d not answered Chad earlier and he hadn’t, apparently, given up on talking to me. “Why did you throw a rock at Deacon?”
What should I say? I couldn’t very well reply it was to make them move away from my ex-boyfriend and his Wolf pack.
“Thanks for telling her my name,” Deacon shouted.
“Chill out, dude.” Micah sighed loudly. “Why don’t you just wake the whole forest with your temper?”
“I could hear you for miles.” Glen ran up, finally joining the group. He’d always been a step behind. Talented, but late. “Who is this?”
“We have no idea, but Chad is carrying her around like she’s some kind of princess.”
“We’re taking her back to Genesis so Icahn and the Council can decide what to do with her. I’m carrying her because Deacon knocked her in the head and made it impossible for her to walk.”
Princess, huh? All right, I’d go with it. “I threw the rock at your head because I was afraid of you.”
“You are awful scary to look at it.” Glen snickered like he’d made the best joke ever.
This trip proved to be the worst kind of torture. Everything about them seemed exactly the same, except I no longer existed in their lives. Didn’t they somewhere, somehow in each of their psyches, feel the ache for me I felt for them? I didn’t even mean the way Chad and Deacon had felt for me romantically? I’d never understood why they did anyway. They were so much better than me, superior human beings who didn’t exist in this middle ground of moral ambiguity. I couldn’t help but wish that even beyond romance, Micah and Glen would feel the lack of my friendship from their lives.
Or maybe I’d just become the worst kind of narcissist.
“You were afraid. Didn’t you eliminate an entire Wolf pack who killed the people in your—what—tribe? You took me down like you’d been doing it your whole life. You were afraid? So you threw a rock at my head?”
Deacon wasn’t going to let this go. I couldn’t be surprised. It had never been in his nature to give up on anything. Luckily for me, we had arrived at the entrance to Genesis.
“Now, miss, we’ve arrived at our location.”
Chad still hadn’t asked me my name. I knew how smart the Lyons family was—I knew it not only from my time with them at Genesis but also from my run-ins with them in our past life, not that they would remember. There was no way Chad would let me get away without telling him my name. Right now, this entire act, down to the manners his mother had instilled in him since birth, had to be a calculated move on the part of a very talented fighter to get on my good side.
Deacon took the role of “bad cop” very easily. He stepped into it without even knowing what he did, leaving Chad to play the nice guy, the charmer, the one I could count on.
Just because I understood his plan didn’t mean I could ward myself against its effectiveness. In fact, if Deacon yelled at me much longer I’d end up giving in to him, too. All of my resolve, all of the hardness I had spent six months developing around my heart, melted away, inch by inch, minute by minute, while I remained in their presence. This feeling, this softness—was why I’d left them to begin with. How could I be hard-core Rachel in a world where so much warmth closed in on me, boxed me in, engulfed me from all sides?
“Are you taking me down there?” I hated this game of pretend.
Chad nodded. “Yes, we are.”
“Against my better judgment.” Deacon followed Chad into the elevator.
It groaned as we made our way below ground to Isaac Icahn’s empire. Above the earth’s surface, he only could moderately control the goings-on around him. His sons did their best to maintain his supremacy and even they often lost track of things.
Vampires couldn’t be contained, not forever. Werewolves did what they were going to do regardless of his interference. Even the human beings—and there were some, I had learned, who had managed to escape Vampire captivity and avoid the harness of the habitats—were able to exist in some form of self-determination.
Below ground, where no one knew how controlled they were, Icahn lived as a god. Controlling everything, handling all of us like we were his personal puppets. Sure, he claimed to have the best intentions. He wanted to save humanity, stop the vamps, cure the virus…except he spent his days as demigod underground, leaving his less-qualified children to do research.
Nothing he said or did could be counted on as truth. And now I’d come bursting through his door, something I knew would, to say the least, make him very upset.
Maybe homicidal, considering I’d been responsible for ousting him from his home the last time around.
The elevator doors dinged open and we walked out into Warrior-ville, the part of the habitat designated for those who got to go Upwards and fight, to live. Conversation ceased at the sight we made. I raised myself a fraction of an inch to see them better.
As I scanned the crowd, I looked for some sense of recognition in anyone’s eyes. Only blanket curiosity met my gaze. Not even an inkling from anyone they knew me at all.
Out of the crowd, a person I recognized stalked forward. Keith Endover. His strawberry-blond hair had been combed to the left, meaning he’d actually had the time to think about it when he’d gotten up from his daytime sleep. Most of the time, Keith looked like he’d rolled right out of bed without glancing in a mirror. His gorgeous wife, Tiffani, whose life I had saved six months earlier, liked him a little befuddled-looking.
“What is this?” He pointed to me like I resembled some kind of strange animal.
Deacon raised his hands in the air. “Don’t look at me, boss. The Lyons brought her back home.”
“Why are you carrying her? Who is she?” Keith spoke directly to Chad, ignoring Deacon entirely. I might as well have not existed.
“We’re not sure. She claims to be from a tribe who knows of our existence. Says she killed a Wolf pack. We thought you should decide what to do with her.”
Keith narrowed her eyes. “Really? Well, this is unexpected. But it’s not for me to decide. Dr. Icahn will want to meet her himself.”
Great.
My absolute nightmare. Some more alone time with Isaac Icahn. Or maybe I’d made it worse in my head than it would actually turn out to be. Icahn could decide to let me go, to sneak me out one of his back doors and I’d be on my way again. Perhaps I should be begging to see Dr. Icahn.
“And you’re carrying her because…?” Like Deacon, Keith didn’t easily let questions go unanswered.
“Because Deacon whacked her over the head.”
Keith raised an eyebrow before turning his attention on Deacon. “You beat up a girl?”
“The girl beat me up first. She kicked my knee so hard I fell over.”
“Uh-huh.” Keith grinned. “Perhaps we need to rework your training if a girl from nowhere can give you a knock down.”
“Keith.” Deacon’s gaze held venom, and all of it directed toward the Warrior leader. “I’m not convinced she’s untrained. She moved like one of us.”
Had I? When would he have had the chance to notice?
“Do you think the Vampires are training Warriors now?” Keith shook his head. “This isn’t up to us, anyway. Take her to a holding cell while I go speak with Dr. Icahn.”
Chad nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sir? Chad continued to hold me in his arms as we traveled to the jail area of the compound. I’d been in it more than I wanted to remember. In fact, it had been in the holding cell when Chad had first confessed his feelings to me, totally catching me off guard. I’d been in love with Micah and then Jason, never considering Chad as anything more than Tia’s brother.
Things changed rapidly after his announcement of his love.
Chad took me into the cell, and a musty tinge of mold made me sneeze when he set me down. They needed to fix the air filters in this part of the habitat. The repair squads were probably behind schedule.
Icahn had needed to repair the whole place even before he’d rezapped everyone’s minds six months earlier. A lot of places must need to be fixed up.
Chad closed the barred door, locking me in the cage. If this had been my first experience being locked up, I might have panicked. In fact, I had when I’d been brought to jail a year and a half earlier. Now? It felt familiar.
He drummed his hands on the bars staring at me. “You seem like I know you. I’m not sure why.”
Breath left my lungs. I hadn’t anticipated this from Chad. He’d been dead. As a clone of himself, I expected him to be the one most programmed by Icahn.
“I don’t know you.” A cold sweat broke out on my back. I knew him so well I could remember vividly what his mouth had felt like pressed up against mine, how my body had heated up when he touched me.
“Of course not. How could we know each other?” He shook his head, his eyes focused on something other than me on the back wall. I wondered if he saw anything at all or if his mind’s eye had traveled elsewhere from the room. “Still, I guess it feels like a dream.”
“Weird.” The last time I’d seen him, they’d just woken him from the cryogenic sleep where they’d regrown him from his DNA into the Chad I saw before me.
He’d known. Chad had been one of the few clones who had awoken with the sense he’d been dead. He could even remember when I’d stuck a stake through his Vampire heart.
With a compulsion I couldn’t control, I thrust my hand through the cage bars and placed it on Chad’s chest where his heart beat beneath my fingers. The thump felt steady and strong.
He jerked like I’d struck him and took a step back. “Who are you?”
“My name is Rachel.” I avoided my last name. Presumably, in this new version of Genesis without me, he knew my parents. “What’s your name?”
“Chad Lyons.” He took another step back. “You’re here until our leader decides what to do about you.”
I nodded. “Understandable.”
Chad walked out of the room with a fast gait that told me he couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. I couldn’t blame him. I’d want to run away from a strange girl like me, too.
I sank to the floor, tiredness invading my bones. It must be because I’d come back home. I hadn’t slept well in months. Nighttime proved to be the worst part of the day for the what-ifs I tried to ignore. What if I could have found a way to outsmart Icahn without having to give up my whole life? What if I could have convinced him to give Chad a second shot at life without having to give up Genesis? What if…?
The doors to the room banged open and the man himself entered, holding on to a cane I knew he didn’t actually require to walk. Like everything else he did, the instrument fell into the “let’s pretend to be someone I’m not” category.
I’d give him credit—he could fake-limp like a champ. I stared at his foot, not even trying to hide my line of sight. I’d long since stopped pretending to have manners for the Icahn family.
“What are you going to do for your next act? At some point, they’re going to start to notice you don’t really age.”
“Oh, Rachel.” He shook his head. “They never have before.”
“Right.” I banged on the bars. “What was the point of sending me after Andon and his crew if you knew the Warriors were hunting in daylight?”
Icahn narrowed his gaze at me. He looked like a snake getting ready to eat a small rat. “First of all, we have exactly three minutes until the security cameras turn back on in here and everything we say is recorded.”
I looked around trying to spot the devices. I didn’t see any. “When did you have them put in?”
“Seemed like a good idea after Keith killed my son in here last time around.”
I shrugged. The incident had been horribly traumatic—until I’d seen the man walking around Redemption and learned the Icahns could actually make clones of those they felt like reincarnating. It seemed influence ended death these days. I’d exploited that fact to bring back Chad and my mother.
“I don’t want to keep using up energy to bring back my own family time and again.”
“Your sons are very annoying. It might actually be a blessing if you could, say, let them die.”
“Your mouth gets you into more trouble.” He seemed unaffected by my rudeness, and I intended to stop being horrific to him. If nothing else, I enjoyed it.
“Did you come in here to talk to me about energy resources?”
“No. I came in here to find out why you’d gotten caught. Now, however, I see you were all but sent here on some sort of task.”
“Your son made me think it had been sanctioned by you.”
He fell silent. “Interesting.”
“Trouble on the home front.” I moved around my cell, touching the cold metal of the bars.
“Sometimes the boys need to be reminded who is in charge.” Icahn nodded, his thoughts private.
I preferred his inner dialogue stay in his own head. I had enough trouble with my own.
I continued. “Sometimes, the boys need their father to be doing the research he should be doing to solve the Vampire problem, considering he’s a genius—and yes, I use the term loosely—and they are not.”
“Let me tell you something, Ms. Clancy.” He sighed loudly. “I have been doing this research for a lifetime. I am entitled to take a break now and then.”
“Sure.” I nodded like I cared. Or I hoped it appeared as if I did because I hated him right then as much as I could ever detest anyone. “Or you could admit the so-called Vampire virus you participated in making is never going to get better. All of those people are gone. They’re monsters. It’s time to kill them and move on.”
“Rachel….”
I wouldn’t be interrupted. “You could stop pretending you keep your little group of people alive while everyone else in the world languishes.”
He stared at me, anger glowing in his eyes before it vanished. Wow. This man could really get control of himself. I wondered if he could give lessons.
“We have a problem. Your little story about being part of a tribe…it’s garnered too much interest. They want to go looking for human tribes.”
For this, I actually had a moment of uncomfortable remorse slide down my spine. The few humans wondering the world somehow surviving on their own from Vampire attacks and Werewolf kills didn’t need the Warriors of Genesis hunting them down.
“You’re a very bad liar.”
“I know. I don’t have your decades of practice.”
Icahn leaned over. “I’m going to talk them out of it. And you are going to stay here until I do. Then you will sneak away. In the meantime, I will figure out what to do about my sons and whatever plan they’ve cooked up for Andon.” He took a step back. “Do see if you can control yourself while you’re in here. I’d hate to have to mess with these people’s minds again. I’m not entirely certain how many times I can mess with them before it causes permanent problems.”
I gulped. I didn’t want brain damage for my friends. I already had one brain erase square on my shoulders. I didn’t need permanent damage on my record.
“How are you going to justify letting me out?”
He turned to look at me. “I don’t have to, child. Right now, these people think of me like a god. Or don’t you remember?”
I did. Too well. And it was my own fault these survivors had taken a step back into this horrible direction. “What do I need to know so as to not be surprised about how things have changed?”
Icahns watch dinged. “Uh-oh. Time’s just about up. Not enough seconds left to tell you about the alterations in Genesis. But I might avoid your parents, if I were you. Have no idea what the shock of seeing your mother might do to you.”
With those horrible words, he turned and left the room.
I wanted to throw up.