The moment he reaches the basement floor, meets my eyes, I see it in his dark, green gaze, in the set of his narrow shoulders, in the way he doesn’t try to push his long, pale hair out of his face, using it instead to shield his expression, a shroud of waves over tanned cheeks.
I drink in his silence. Absorb it. Hate it.
He already knows.
“It’s a lie, Abs.” He gestures at my mother—she’s my mother, but she’s not—and shrugs. “She’s not in there.”
“But she might be.” Trembling, no, nothing so delicate. I’m shaking, violently, so hard it’s difficult to stay upright. How did I never see this before? How was I blind to it?
Jake shrugs, blond hair swinging back, now long over one shoulder, eyes dark. “She’s not.”
Swallow. Breathe. Pull yourself together. The spike is in my hand, Mom still watching me. Silent now, lips a slack line. But she’s in there. She is. Jake can say what he wants, but doubt lives in me now. About the Misery and the souls of those who I once thought long gone. How can I kill my own mother, knowing what I think I know?
Bo growls, low and soft, his heavy shoulders rippling as his fur stands on end. The mastiff is an excellent guardian and I’ve never doubted him, not in the five years Jake and I have hunted with him, from puppy to full-grown beast.
“I thought I was ready for this.” I hate to be weak, especially now. In front of him. He’d never judge me. But seeing the emptiness in his face makes me judge myself.
“So did I, when my turn came.” Jake nods finally, like that’s all he has to give, should be enough. “When I faced this.” He could have warned me. But no, I wouldn’t have believed. I had to see it for myself.
What do I do now?
Jake falls still before sighing. “One question, Abs. Then you decide if you walk or not.” He stares like she does, intense, devouring. “You think she’d thank you for leaving her like this?”
It’s the hit I need, the face slap with words that settles my stomach, firms my grip, steadies my hand. That, and the plea behind her eyes. The one I remember, eight years old, in her arms as she whispered to me just before Uncle Ray dragged me away.
“Abby,” she’d said. “When the time comes, when you finally come home. Kill me.”
Jake turns and leaves as I weep, fingers touching her cheek, spike in her brain. I’d like to think she’d be grateful.
Like what you read? Find more (and two free books!) atwww.pattilarsen.com
—ABOUT THE AUTHOR—
My official bio reads like this: Patti Larsen is an award-winning middle grade and young adult author with a passion for the paranormal. But that sounds so freaking formal, doesn't it? I'm a storyteller who hears teenager's voices so loud I have to write them down. I love sports even though they don't love me. I've dabbled in everything from improv theater to film making and writing TV shows, singing in an all girl band to running my own hair salon. But always, always, writing books calls me home.
TRANSLUCENTS
Kelly St. Clare
Chapter One
The footprints in the snow stopped.
Harper knelt by the last of the tracks, deep in thought. The man they pursued had, to all appearances, disappeared into thin air. And with him went his whispers that her twin brother was alive.
“Where did he go?” puffed her apprentice, West, crouching beside her to catch his breath.
She kept her eyes on the huge indentations in the snow. “He’s behind you,” she said, listening to West’s answering squeal with half an ear.
The prisoner they’d tracked from the blockhouse cells was shoeless; his clothing was inadequate for the blistering winter.
“Did he go into the trees and cover his tracks?” the apprentice blurted.
She eyed the thick, dark forest with narrowed eyes, marred underneath by purple smudges from her sleepless night. “You might be right, West.” He wasn’t. “Go scout the immediate area and report back.”
“Alone?”
God save her from apprentices. “Yes, West.” She spoke with forced calm. “Alone.”
The crunch of his boots on the snow became softer as he moved away.
It gave her time to think.
To decide.
West was wrong, she knew. The prisoner hadn’t hidden in the trees, meticulously sweeping his tracks away. No—there were no more footprints because the fugitive had taken to the air. The rogue must be exceptionally powerful to fly after a month of brutal interrogation. But then, you’d have to be exceptionally powerful to escape from the blockhouse cells in the first place. No one had ever escaped.
She stared at the prints. Oliver couldn’t be alive. It was a lie. Her brother was three years dead, murdered during what was supposed to be a simple capture mission. There was a body.
Which I never saw. She’d wanted to preserve her last memories of Oliver, and the sergeant told her his body was mangled beyond repair.
The prisoner was playing on her emotions—on that small doubt she harbored that the mutilated body had been Oliver. The doubt came from nothing more than a feeling of discontent only a twin could understand. At the age of seven, she’d broken her arm and Oliver came sprinting from a mile away. Harper always thought the link connecting them would be severed with death. That she would know in an instant if her twin brother were hurt, or killed.
When he was murdered and the link remained, she’d put the lingering discontent down to grief and her inability to let Oliver go.
But what if that feeling meant something? What if the prisoner spoke the truth?
Now she was in a predicament. Harper could give up the search and return to the cold blockhouse, to her job as an enforcer, to her loneliness, and her regrets.
Except there would be a fresh regret. . . .
Reaching out a gloved hand, she grabbed a handful of snow from the footprint and watched it sprinkle back to the ground as she tipped her palm. Going might break her heart all over again; staying would fester in her soul.
Harper’s decision was made.
West returned as she was undoing the buttons of her heavy winter coat.
“Uh, what are you doing, Corporal Harper?”
“What does it look like?” She threw the thick wool garment to the forest floor and sucked in a breath as cold stabbed into the sensitive skin of her torso.
“Like you’re taking off clothes,” West answered.
Next were her long johns, then her bra. Shivers wracked her lean, muscled frame.
West cleared his throat. “And . . . I guess I was wondering . . . why that is.”
Harper cast an amused glance at the apprentice. His eyes were averted to the tops of the surrounding trees. Surely he was used to naked bodies. Their kind weren’t renowned for modesty. And the blockhouse didn’t cater to those who were.
Her answer was cheerful. “I would’ve thought it obvious. I’m going translucent.”
By his horrified gasp, she gathered this hadn’t occurred to him. Had she been this dense when first recruited?
“You c-can’t go translucent unsanctioned!”
It was the understatement of the century. More like, ‘probably be labeled AWOL and put on the execution list.’ “No,” she agreed.
The boy was a fart’s breath away from losing it. An unwelcome pang of sympathy stirred her. Poor kid hadn’t learned that some things were more important than rules.
Harper slid the rest of her clothing off, eyeing the blue tinge of her hands. She needed to move. “Apprentice!” she barked.
West’s spine snapped into line, though his eyes remained fixated on the sky. If not for his averted eyes and the cold, she would have forgotten she stood in the nude.
“You will return to the blockhouse immediately,” she ordered.
He worried at his lips.
The blue tinge was spreading up her arms.
“S-should I try to stop you? Is this . . . a test?”
Harper groaned aloud. Screw this for a joke. She tilted her head
and turned her senses inward, locating the cool emerald gem at her center. Mentally cupping the gem in both hands, she warmed the emerald. It answered in seconds and began to release its power; a liquid feeling, relaxing and natural, coursed out from below her ribs.
It spread to her toes, to her fingers, extinguishing the blistering cold as it ran over her freezing muscles. It rolled over her clavicle, up her neck, and sealed her inside its meditative calm at the crown of her head.
Translucent.
She smiled and opened her almond eyes. Too long had passed since last time—the restrictions on turning translucent were tighter than the sergeant’s bowels.
“A-are you still there?” West whispered. His eyes searched the space where she had been visible seconds before.
She snorted and he leaped back, going down in an arm-waving mess, and landing on his butt in the snow
Harper bent her knees slightly. “Tell Sergeant Decker I’ll be back with our fugitive.”
She burst into the air, flinging the snow at her feet outward in a swirling circle. She raced higher and higher, confident in her power, toward the place any rogue of sense would flee to.
A place where she had more enemies than strands of hair.
Chapter Two
The tracker in her arm would have sounded an alarm the moment she went translucent. She didn’t have much time. Harper was one of the best, and by no means simple. She knew a shit storm was headed her way. The fact that her colleagues led the storm might give her time. Harper had ten years of experience and a clean slate. They’d know something was up.
Harper cut through the sky like a hot knife in butter, the night sliding along her arms. She was a bolt of lightning and power pulsed through her, finally released and eager to stretch its legs. She sped over the countryside, watching as the ground changed from snow-covered forest to warm and windy coastal cliffs.
Harper forced the elation to the side and focused on what was ahead.
The Down—closest known refuge for rogues, criminals and anyone in-between. Full of hiding spots, nooks and crannies, which made it impossible for the organization to successfully infiltrate and take over.
The rogue prisoner would go there. Harper had no doubt.
That’s why the sharp whistle took her by surprise.
Even more surprising was the presence of the prisoner on the flat clifftop expanse, arms folded, wearing grey sweatpants from the cells, an impassive expression in place. Wind whipped at his dusty blond hair. His green eyes swirled, mesmerizing, just like sand and sea spray circling in the coastal gales around them.
The green eyes were set on what she knew would be the pearly sheen of her outline. Rogues were able to sense a translucent in their midst, but the shimmering frame was all they got.
Harper pulled to a halt and remained suspended far above, staring at the rogue.
The funny thing was, translucents were half rogue and half human. The first question any apprentice asked her was invariably, ‘Why are the rogues hunted, but we’re not?’
There was one key difference: A rogue could control the human mind. A translucent, though more physically powerful than any rogue, could not.
Immune to mind-control, the translucents were the only species on Earth able to control the rogues’ unrelenting terrorism on humankind. The square-jawed man on the cliff was the scum Harper’s kind were trained to capture and kill.
Her mind lingered on the power the rogue had displayed so far. It was disconcerting. As far as the organization were aware, rogues of this skill no longer existed. She knew he’d been held in the cells for a month. One month of slow, sustained torture intended to weaken the strongest of beings. Yet he’d broken his bonds, blown the holding area apart, run for hours through harsh conditions, and then flown away.
Two things in this list made her uneasy.
The timing was one. Harper had returned from a mission two days ago. She’d transported the prisoner between the questioning room and his cell yesterday; during this time he’d whispered the lies about her brother. The prisoner’s escape the day after this was too coincidental for Harper’s liking.
The second was his escape. Several teams went out to track him, and the fugitive took a seemingly random path, but eventually chose a route in front of Harper and West. It wasn’t until the rogue had drawn Harper and West away from the others that he took to the air.
She knew she was a damn good enforcer, and looked fabulous in skinny jeans, but Harper wasn’t vain enough to think herself a high-priority target. The prisoner wanted her alone.
She threw her senses wide as the wind shifted, detecting no presence other than the man waiting below. They’d have company soon, though. . . .
Oliver. She needed to know.
Harper shot to the ground in a blur and landed hard, pressing two dents in the rock underneath her.
“Dramatic.”
Her head shot up at the word, spoken drily in a deep timber.
“Efficient,” she shot back.
“I was not certain you would come.”
She focused in on his gigantic feet. They should be frostbitten, but they were a warm rosy color. He didn’t even have goose bumps on his chest. She threw her senses out once more. Alone. For a few minutes longer.
“You tried so hard I thought I’d humor you,” she sneered.
His eyes gleamed.
Harper wondered how old he was.
He spoke. “It pleases me to know that the month of discomfort wasn’t a fruitless endeavor.”
Yup, this one was old. She ignored the stab of irritation at his blasé recount of his time in the blockhouse. He’d endured more than “discomfort.”
“My brother,” she said. “You said he was alive. I believe you lie to glean information, or in revenge. I don’t really care. But my time is precious. So talk.”
He didn’t move an inch.
She sighed. “We have two minutes before the other teams, and whatever else the organization has deployed, reach us.”
The man tore his eyes from her shimmering outline. “You are right.”
She held back her biting retort.
“Your brother is alive.”
“Proof?”
The rogue blurred to a tree and back again, a small bag clutched in his grip. Harper’s eyes narrowed on the bag.
“You planted that here before your capture,” she guessed.
The man nodded. It irked her that he’d so easily lured her to this location. She didn’t like to be predictable, or manipulated. Her reaction was ripped away, however, as the prisoner took an object from the bag and tossed it to her feet.
A ring.
A jade ring with a mother-of-pearl strip through the middle.
She had an identical one on her right forefinger.
“Where did you get this?” She barely recognized her voice. Harper bent down and curled the ring tightly in her fist.
“From Oliver.”
Hearing her brother’s name on the prisoner’s lips made her see red. Rogues had killed her brother. Before Oliver’s death, she pursued rogues half-heartedly. After his death, she’d pursued them with a vengeance. She hated everything this scum symbolized. Harper blinked her rage away in slow measures.
“I’m sure you did,” she said. The ring burned in her fist. “When you picked it off his dead body.”
The man’s cheek twitched in amusement. “He gave it to me about five weeks ago, actually.”
It felt like ice shards were twisting into her heart. Harper thought she could handle talking about her twin, but she couldn’t. This man didn’t know anything. He was toying with her until his buddies arrived.
The prisoner sensed she was about to leave. He unfolded his arms for the first time and took one giant step forwards.
“Oliver is as alive as you, or I. He never died during the mission. The ambush was planned by him. As a way to free himself from the organization’s clutches. You brother figured out the truth. He was desperate to switch sides. We helped
him leave.”
She scoffed. What was this guy talking about? The rogue continued, oblivious to her disbelief.
“We left a body in his place, maimed beyond immediate identification. Of course, the organization later found the body wasn’t Oliver’s, but he was safely stowed away in the heart of The Down by then. He’s been there ever since. Well,” the fugitive amended, “between a few of our locations.”
Harper stared at the man, waiting for him to crack. When the marble face held its stern lines, she threw her head back and laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed some more.
“You expect me to believe my twin works with you? That he would consider leaving me behind to do so? Your lies are as filthy as your soul.”
For the first time she saw true anger on the prisoner’s face. Power rippled out from him and Harper tensed for attack. He remained still, however, aside from the curling of his lip.
“The fact remains: your brother is alive. He tells me you were reassigned to a different mission at the last second before his planned escape.”
The blood drained from Harper’s face. She was relieved the rogue couldn’t see her clearly through the pearly shimmer. Something told her he knew he’d struck a chord. She hadn’t been reassigned. She’d volunteered. No one would ever know the guilt she’d felt over that decision.
“Sound familiar?” He took another step forwards. “The plan was in motion. Your brother had to make the best of a bad situation. As to why he didn’t organize your retrieval sooner, you will have to ask him. Though if you’re always this recalcitrant, I can understand why he’d wait.”
A foreign hurt pinched deep inside. Was it true? Did Oliver leave her behind?
“I had never seen a man with pastel purple hair before,” the rogue said softly. “Just like yours. I knew you were his sister the moment I laid eyes on you. The same high-boned cheeks; the same almond-shaped eyes. I bet you have a square birthmark on your left shoulder blade, too.”
Her insides were frozen. “You’re rambling.”
“But that’s where the similarities stop,” he finished flatly. “You couldn’t be more opposite in personality.”
That Moment When: An Anthology of Young Adult Fiction Page 33