“That’s for the best. Like I said, he’s unpredictable. You’re better off without him.”
Harper considered Mischa without comment. It was unlike her to be so adamant and so vague all at the same time. “So, what do you have against him? What’s his story?”
Mischa bit her bottom lip. “I don’t guess you’ll let this go anytime soon?”
Harper merely raised a brow.
Mischa sighed. “All right. I’ll tell you. But you have to keep this to yourself. This is classified.”
Harper fought the urge to roll her eyes. Sentry didn’t even exist anymore. How could any of their info be classified?
“You’re not going to like this, but just hear me out, all right?”
Harper only nodded, too curious to heed her little inner voice, which was telling her she didn’t really want to hear what her friend was about to say.
“Slayers aren’t the same as seers. You seers are all born with your abilities. Sentry just seeks you out and…hones your skills, makes you more accurate.”
She paused, and Harper felt her heartbeat kick up. If Mischa was having trouble choosing her words, the conversation couldn’t possibly be going anywhere good.
“There are actually two kinds of slayers,” Mischa went on. “There’s chosen slayers, and then there are natural-born slayers.
Chosen slayers are hand-picked by Sentry. They’re pretty much the lowest common denominator of society. Criminals with violent histories, the jobless, the friendless, those with no families or loved ones…pretty much anyone who wouldn’t be missed if he was killed.”
If she didn’t know Mischa, Harper would have been shocked at the callousness of her words. But Harper knew her well enough to realize that Mischa cared very much about her charges. Maybe even too much.
Mischa cleared her throat. “Chosens agree to enter the program for a few reasons: it gives them a chance to kill and maim, they’re thrill-seeking, or it gets them out of prison.” She shook her head sadly. “But basically, once a chosen agreed to enter training, we pumped him full of testosterone and performance-enhancing drugs so he could hold his own against vamps. They were walking science experiments.” She paused. “Then there are the naturals.”
Mischa raised her eyes to Harper’s, and the gravity Harper saw in their brown depths almost made her flinch. “Go on,” she whispered.
Mischa nodded. “Naturals are born with a need to hunt and kill. They never need drugs. They’re just naturally as strong as, maybe stronger than, vampires.”
Harper’s brow furrowed. “But I thought all slayers were born with that need to hunt.”
“No. For the chosens, that need came with the drugs. Only the naturals were born with it.”
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?”
She pursed her lips for a moment. “It’s hard to explain.”
Harper thought it was probably going to be just as hard to hear, but that wasn’t going to stop her. “Try.”
Chapter Thirteen
1991…
The man sitting on the dirty cot in the even dirtier prison cell didn’t look like a natural-born killer. He looked like a scared kid.
Mischa felt a tug at her heart that was so foreign to her she was momentarily caught off guard. She hadn't been with Sentry long, but she knew better than to feel sorry for the slayers. Especially the naturals.
She hated normal recruitment, but checking out naturals was the worst part of her job. She’d rather scrub toilets at Sentry headquarters with her toothbrush than be the judge, jury and executioner for a complete stranger.
Giving her head a shake, she approached the cell, ignoring the hoots and hollers of the other prisoners. “You Noah Riddick?”
The kid didn’t even glance up. “Who wants to know?”
She sighed. The old tough guy routine. She’d seen it so many times she was no longer impressed by it—if she ever had been. “Look, I haven’t got all day. Are you Noah Riddick or not?”
He stood and moved to the bars, cocking one knee through them. A shiver skated down her spine. Any doubt she’d had about him being a natural was obliterated.
He moved like a predator.
“I’m Riddick,” he answered, his voice low and calm, uninterested.
She knew better than to shake his hand. Gail Weaver, a fellow watcher, had every one of her fingers crushed by a natural when she was dumb enough to take his hand in hers.
“I’m Mischa Bartone. I’m with an organization called Sentry.”
He snorted. “Save your breath. I’m not interested in fighting vampires.”
She cocked her head to one side, not at all surprised that he knew about Sentry. Sentry recruitment was probably the talk of the prison. And her superiors never really tried to quell it. After all, even if word got out of the prison, who was going to believe a bunch of murderers and rapists on death row?
“What makes you think I’m here to recruit you? What makes you think Sentry would even have you?”
He gestured to his surroundings. “I doubt you came here for the ambiance.”
True. Cell Block C was where all the monsters resided. The criminals who were too violent to be put in Gen Pop. She was surprised to find a pretty boy like Riddick still in one piece. More proof that he wasn’t an average criminal.
“Still,” she said, “that doesn’t mean I’m here to recruit you. Sentry only retains the services of…special individuals.”
“Yeah, like Vinnie Caprizzio over in Cell Block D. He was real special.”
The emphasis he put on special let her know he realized what kind of people Sentry recruited to be slayers. “But you’re nothing like Vinnie, right?”
He shrugged. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
She nodded. “True. But Vinnie killed for kicks. Why did you do it?”
A veil seemed to fall before his eyes, his expression going completely blank. “You people are supposed to know everything. Why don’t you tell me?”
Mischa opened her file folder and pretended to read from it, even though she knew it by heart. “Noah Riddick, age sixteen. Mother, Eileen Willis, died of breast cancer at age twenty-five when you were five years old. You went to live with your father, Ken Riddick, an out-of-work roofer. Ken turned you over to child protective services and terminated his parental rights when you were seven. By all accounts, he was a drunk and a real bastard.”
She glanced up at him, but his face was still set in stone. “You went through six foster homes after that, finally ending up with Daniel and Colleen Hendricks last year. You’d been there awhile when you had an altercation with Mr. Hendricks, who ended up with a severed spinal cord.”
She flipped her file shut. “Want to explain how a sixteen-year-old boy breaks the spine of a two-hundred-sixty-pound man?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he remained silent. She moved a little closer to the cell, close enough to get a better look at his eyes, but not close enough for him to reach her.
“I said everything I had to say in court,” he said after a long silence.
Which hadn’t been a single word, she knew from reading the court transcript. He’d refused to say a single word in his own defense or even explain what had started the confrontation with Mr. Hendricks. His silence read like guilt and lack of remorse to the jury and judge, who sentenced him as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Okay, then, if you don’t have anything to say, let me take a stab at it. You’ve always been different. Stronger, faster, smarter. You never really fit in anywhere, in any of the foster homes or at school. If I was to ask anyone what they thought of you, most of them wouldn’t have an answer because they didn’t know anything about you. Those who did know enough about you to form an opinion were scared of you or intimidated by you.”
She stopped and looked him dead in the eye. “How am I doing so far?”
His expression flickered just long enough for Mischa to glimpse something in his eyes that she’d never seen before
in a natural.
Humanity.
He looked…sad. Embarrassed. If Sentry was right and Noah Riddick was a natural, he shouldn’t even be capable of sadness or any other normal human emotion. He should be a cold-blooded killing machine.
This time she did move close to the bars, close enough to wrap her fingers around them. If he wanted to, he could reach through and snap her neck. He just looked at her and blinked, too stubborn, proud or ashamed to speak.
“It was self-defense, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly. “Your foster father…you were defending yourself and things got out of hand, didn’t they?”
His jaw came up. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, lady. I said I wasn’t going to fight vampires. You can go now.”
Oh, boy. How to explain this one. “I’m afraid your case is a little different than Vinnie’s, Riddick. You don’t have the luxury of saying no.”
He smiled, and Mischa blinked, momentarily dazzled. That straight, white smile instantly transformed him from a sullen-looking teen to a handsome young man. If Sentry didn’t execute him, he was going to turn into one helluva hot adult.
“What’s so funny?” she prompted when he said nothing.
“You’re all of five-foot tall and maybe a hundred pounds. Are you telling me you’re going to drag me by force back to Sentry?”
“I’m five-foot-two, and my weight is certainly none of your business,” she said primly. “And no, I’m not suffering from the delusion that I could make you do anything against your will. What I’m saying is that you’re…different from other slayers I’ve recruited. You most likely won’t be given the opportunity to walk away.”
“Like James Beckett.”
Mischa was a woman without fear, and Beckett had scared the living shit out of her. He’d been a serial killer who made Ted Bundy look like a teddy bear. He’d been housed two cells down from Riddick. She’d come, spoken to him and made the determination that he was a natural a month before. Sentry had put him down like a rabid dog.
She nodded, searching his eyes for some sign that he was sickly complimented by being compared to Beckett. She found none. “Yes, Noah. I do think you’re like Beckett. In some ways. In others…not so much.”
His eyes lowered, but not before she saw the sadness in his eyes. A deep sadness that someone his age shouldn’t even be able to experience.
“So, if I’m like Beckett, why are you still talking to me? Shouldn’t you be half way back to Sentry by now with a recommendation to kill me already written in that little notebook of yours?”
She searched his eyes again. Such young eyes. “I’d rather take you back to have you evaluated by our team at headquarters before I make any determinations.”
He nodded, looking solemn. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Oh, God, he was breaking her heart. He thought she should have him killed. She could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes.
Those sad blue eyes of his would haunt her until the end of time if she signed his death warrant without giving him a chance.
“Of course I’m sure it’s a good idea,” she said with a conviction she didn’t feel at all. “I never make mistakes.”
Chapter Fourteen
“It was a mistake,” Mischa said, shaking her head. “He was always…too good at what he did. Too efficient. It was scary. Every day I wondered if he was going to snap and kill innocents.”
Harper nodded, trying to take in everything. “If he was so scary, why did they keep him around?”
“Are you kidding? Sentry adored him. They spent years studying him. I mean, if they could study him and find ways to harness the power of naturals without having to deal with their psychosis, vampires didn’t stand a chance. He was their idea of the perfect assassin: ruthless, pitiless, cold.”
“Well, Riddick is anything but cold.”
Mischa’s skin flushed and Harper hastened to add, “I’m not talking about that. I mean he’s…detached, sure, but not cold. He wouldn’t have helped me find Dylan otherwise.”
“That’s what scares me. I think he helped you not because of Dylan, but because he likes you. He really seems to care about you. As far as I know, he’s never cared about anyone. I worry about what he’d be willing to do for you.”
“You think he’d kill for me?”
“Yes. He might.”
Harper scowled. “Well don’t answer right away. Give it some thought,” she intoned dryly.
Mischa threw up her hands. “I don’t know what he’s capable of, Harper. That’s my point.”
Harper knew what he was capable of. She’d seen it with Benny. For a short time, he’d completely lost control, of himself, of his strength.
“I tried to tell you he’s dangerous and you wouldn’t listen,” Mischa added.
Dangerous? Sure. But dangerous to her? Harper wasn’t so sure. Hell, he’d threatened to throw her in her trunk to protect her, then couldn’t do it because she was afraid of small spaces. That didn’t strike her as the act of a man who would hurt her.
She couldn’t explain why, but she trusted Riddick. He was…like her in a lot of ways. A freak who’d been born with a gift that was painful and scary.
She shook her head. “Misch, I appreciate what you’re saying, but I’ve got to go with my gut on this one. I think Riddick’s one of the good guys.”
Mischa smirked at her. “If you’re so sure of your gut, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
The only thing Harper was sure of at the moment was that she wasn’t going to like what Mischa had to say. “What are you talking about?”
But Mischa didn’t say a word. Only raised a brow expectantly.
Harper groaned as she picked up her friend’s train of thought. “No way. No way am I taking Riddick there.”
Mischa merely smiled, completely innocent.
What Mischa was suggesting would be awkward and uncomfortable. Painful even. But damn her, it was a brilliant idea. It was quite possibly the only way to really prove that working with Riddick wouldn’t be a colossally bad idea. “You’re a real bitch, you know that?”
Mischa’s only response was a harsh laugh. “So I’ve heard.”
1993…
There was nothing Tina Petrocelli despised more than a shrink, and nothing she loved more in the world than her children. These were two well-established facts.
Most times, this wasn’t a problem. Michael and Marina Petrocelli were average in every way, never having any reason to see a shrink.
But Harper was...different.
Every teacher and most of the parents at PS 279 had suffered the wrath of Tina Petrocelli at some point since Harper entered school. The girl was forever in trouble, and her mother was always there to defend her.
No one wanted to tangle with the woman. Some of the teachers swore she could read minds, because she was always three steps ahead of them in every conversation, as if she’d known exactly what they’d planned to say before they said it. And her tongue was sharp enough to flay a person alive. More than one teacher had been reduced to tears by Ms. Petrocelli’s words.
But today, Harper’s mother couldn’t help her. Today, what Harper needed more than anything was a good shrink. Everyone said so.
Somehow Harper doubted this guy was the one who could fix her.
He wore glasses so thick Harper wondered if he’d even notice if she slipped out of the office. And his tie was polyester. No way would a shrink who was good enough to fix her wear a polyester tie. A guy good enough to fix her would wear Armani and drive a Mercedes. This guy probably drove a Chevy Malibu.
She glanced over and saw skepticism clearly etched on her mother’s features, read it in the look she leveled on the little man sitting across from them. Dr. Giles was his name. He’d been recommended to them by Mr. Watkins, the school guidance counselor, who’d conveniently decided to take an early retirement the same day Harper told him about her most recent dream.
Dr. Giles must have felt the
disapproval rolling off her mother as well, because he kept clearing his throat and nervously adjusting his collar.
Harper crossed her arms over her chest and turned to stare out the window. Somewhere, kids her age were playing on a playground. What she wouldn’t give to be with them. What she wouldn’t give to be like them.
And if wishes were horses, we’d all ride, her grandfather had always said.
The little man kept blathering on about his credentials. Harper didn’t bother to listen. She’d been down this road before. She’d tell him about her dreams and he’d diagnose her with some kind of disease with a long, complicated-sounding name. He’d prescribe some pills that sucked the life right out of her, and she’d still be stuck with her dreams. Head-splitting, terrifyingly real dreams that happened any time, day or night.
Two family physicians, three neurologists, four internists and Mr. Watkins. All came up with a different theory that explained her headaches and dreams. None of them helped her in the least. All of them decided in the end she was hopeless. Crazy. Maybe even dangerous.
“So,” her mother interrupted, mimicking Harper’s closed-off posture. “Are you going to tell me what you think is wrong with my little girl, or are you going to sit there and give me your resume all day?”
He cleared his throat again, and Harper almost felt sorry for him.
“Well, um, Ms. Petrocelli, you see…”
Harper shook her head. “Dude, just spit it out or you'll piss her off more.”
Her mom pinched her arm.
“Ow, Ma, what the hell was that for?”
“Show some respect to your elders.”
“You’re treating him like crap, how come I have to show him respect?”
“This little turd is not my elder.” She waved a hand dismissively in the guy’s direction. “No offense.”
He quit clearing his throat, his cheeks flushing a dull red. “None taken,” he said dryly. “What I was going to say is I don’t think there is anything wrong with your little girl, Ms. Petrocelli.”
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 8