by Tosca Lee
“Yeah,” I say, as though I regularly see guns sitting on coffee tables. My heart is thudding in my ears, and for a crazy moment I wonder what it feels like to be shot—if I will know for myself within minutes. “I mean, no. Nothing is all right. I’ve got a guy trying to kill me, and find out I’m this thing from some ancient history. So, no. Everything is not all right.” I rub my forehead as though I’m seriously on the brink of a breakdown, which I might be.
“I’m sorry,” he says, elbows resting on his knees.
“I keep thinking, what if Marko’s brother doesn’t know anything? What if I can’t find anything to help—my parents, my siblings, friends . . . whoever they are?”
His brow wrinkles slightly. “Then we wait. You said he’d call.”
I drop my hands to my sides. “I appreciate you doing this for me. I know it’s not your prime directive, or whatever. So thank you.”
He shrugs a shoulder, his black, long-sleeved shirt clinging to muscles that make me certain he’s some kind of ex-military. I studied him covertly all the way here, but now I’m looking at him anew. Is this the face of a man who wants to kill me? Because apparently I’m a bad judge of that.
“It’s the only way I know you’ll let it be and keep from doing something dangerous.”
I nod and then fold my arms around myself. They feel heavy. “Too bad this place doesn’t have one of those minibars.” I smile slightly. But I’m thinking very, very hard about how much he should offer to go down to the little shop near reception and pick up one of those miniature bottles of wine. If what he says about me is true, I can compel—persuade, whatever—him to do this. “I could use a drink.”
“Yeah.” He rubs his face. “Though alcohol doesn’t sit well with your kind. There’s coffee.”
“I hate that stuff,” I say, glancing at the Keurig. “Though I’d go for a latte. You didn’t see a coffee shop nearby, did you?” Starbucks. Go get it, Rolan. I know for a fact we passed one less than a mile away.
“Better to stay out of sight,” he says. “There’s creamer, if that helps. Or more soda.”
So much for Jedi mind tricks. I glance around, as though looking for options. But I’m thinking as hard as I can that he needs to get up, walk out the door, and drive down the street. When I look back at him, he’s reaching toward the table, where the gun is. My heart trips, but then he picks up my neglected sandwich. “Get something in your stomach,” he says, holding it out. “You’ll feel better.”
I move toward him and take it, my spine prickling as I return to the bedroom. He’s just picking up the remote as I close the door behind me.
So now I know that I have no idea how these supposed powers of mind suggestion work, that Rolan made it up completely . . . or that he’s immune.
Which makes him a hunter. And means Ivan was right.
I force myself to sit on the edge of the bed facing the door, sandwich on the floral bedspread beside me. I glance at the clock: 8:45 P.M.
I sigh and lie back to stare up at the ceiling in the dark. I’m exhausted, my limbs heavy as though the earth just doubled in mass.
I mean to wait in silence for the better part of three hours. To give the impression that I have finally given in to exhaustion.
Which means, of course, that I do the one thing I have no intention of doing.
I fall asleep.
I rouse just enough with the first violent twitch, the kind your body does when it refuses to go gently. I shove up from the bed in a panic, limbs like tar, and grab the edge of the bedspread to keep from falling in slow motion onto the floor.
What’s wrong with me? My legs are stupid, and I end up dragging the bedspread halfway off the bed. Something soft topples to the carpet with a crinkle of plastic. The sandwich.
I stagger back against the desk and almost knock over the glass of soda.
The one Rolan poured when I wasn’t looking.
My tongue feels too thick to even curse. I didn’t drink it all—on that count, the proverbial glass is half full. But the fact that Rolan wants me out is enough for me to realize it’s time to go.
I glance at the clock: 9:13.
I force my eyes to widen, myself to straighten. Shake my arms as though they’re wet. Take inventory. One door, leading to the sitting room, where Rolan is no doubt still awake. One window, looking down from the second story onto the bushes below.
One option.
I unlock the latches at the top of the window with clumsy fingers. With one last glance at the door, I push the inside pane up a tentative inch. It squeals against the sill. With a quick breath, I shove it loudly all the way up at once.
Commotion in the front room, pounding on my door. Time’s up.
I climb awkwardly over, fighting for purchase, and dangle just long enough to see a pair of headlights illuminate the bushes—and a length of concealed pipe—before I drop.
11
* * *
When I open my eyes to intermittent darkness, I know I have failed. Gone, the ugly floral bedspread. The leather beneath my cheek is clammy. I’m staring at a partial wall—no, the back of a seat in a moving vehicle I do not recognize. My wrists are tied with what looks like part of a torn-up T-shirt.
My name is Audra Ellison. I am twenty-one, and I am in deep trouble.
The acceleration of the engine sounds like a freight train, the occasional bump in what I assume to be highway jars my throbbing head to the base of my skull.
At least I’m alive. I might not have escaped Rolan, but I’m not done working on that part. I tug on the ties around my wrists with my teeth. They’re knotted tight.
I slide my feet off the edge of the seat in the darkness until my knee finds the hump in the middle of the floor.
With a quick breath, I shove up from the seat and throw my arms around Rolan’s head. The car swerves, sending us skidding onto the shoulder and almost into the ditch. Even better. If I’m going to die without answers—or a seat belt—I am not going alone.
I throw my weight back, bonds cutting into my wrists. He brakes, and my cheek crashes into the headrest. He’s gotten his fingers within the circle of my arms, and I’m positive one of my hands is about to pop off.
“Audra!”
I falter, hearing my real name. In that split second, he grabs me by the right elbow, hits the brakes again, and hauls me to the front, my body twisting onto the console. My left arm, caught on the headrest, feels like it’s ripping from its socket.
I look up then, and see him.
Luka.
With no more leverage against his throat, I drive my head forward. He’s buckled in and jerks away just in time. I catch his shoulder instead, lip splitting over my teeth.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” he shouts.
I spit blood. Behind the headrest, I can no longer feel my hands.
“Right, because that’s why you have me tied up!”
I struggle to pull my arms over the top of the seat, but he yanks them back down. A car whizzes by, horn blaring.
“I tied you up because I knew this would happen when you came to! You took a hard fall from that window.”
“Let me go!” I shout. But I am freaked out. There’s no way he could have followed us this far without our noticing, which means that he knew about the Center from the start.
I shove up, trying to free my hands, and he grabs me by the shoulders. “Audra, whatever that guy told you, none of it’s true.”
“He told me what you are,” I hiss. “Showed me pictures of you following me last year!”
Luka presses his lips together.
“You should’ve done it then. You should’ve killed me. Because guess what? I don’t remember anything. Whatever I had is gone! So when this is all over and you trot back to your Historian master with nothing to show for—what? A year’s worth of work? Two?—what’s he going to do to you? What’s the punishment, Luka, for returning empty-handed? Because I may be new at this, but even I know that you suck as a hunter.”
During all this time, he hasn’t moved. And just as I’m contemplating whether I can get one good jab in before he stabs or shoots me or whatever he plans to do—because I’m sure I’ve got it coming now—I realize he’s staring at me. Two and then three seconds tick by, but there is no rage, no hint of homicide in his expression.
And then he lets go of my arms.
I exhale a short laugh. “You won’t even deny that you’re supposed to kill me.”
“No,” he says quietly, and I wonder what he’s waiting for. “Now ask me if I’m going to.” A car whisks by, and then a rumbling truck, air shuddering around the car.
“Don’t you think we’re past that?”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, I’m not going to kill you.”
For a moment, neither one of us moves. His gaze is stony, and I wonder if I’m looking into the eyes of a murderer.
“The Audra before knew that. She also knew I was going to follow her to Maine. That I would be waiting. To protect her.”
I laugh in his face, but I’m trying to keep my arms from shaking. Adrenaline has long since obliterated whatever Rolan put in my glass, and now it’s all I can do to keep my teeth from chattering with it.
“I knew your address before you even got there. Little island two hundred feet from shore.”
“I get it. You’re creepy.”
“You gave it to me so I could find you!”
He reaches up and lifts my arms over the rest. My wrists scream, my shoulders have all but seized up.
For the first time I actually take in our situation: cockeyed on the shoulder of some two-lane highway surrounded by cornfields. “Just let me go. Let me out here.”
“No way. He’ll kill you.”
“Well, that’s really interesting. Because that’s the same thing Rolan told me about you!”
Luka grabs me by the wrists, sending a shock of pain through them. “He’ll find you within an hour. Think, Audra! The fact that you erased your memory means you knew something extremely valuable to the Historian. That guy—Rolan?—he will not stop. He’ll take you back to the Center. He’ll force his way in. Possibly kill someone—maybe even you. And you’ll both die for nothing, because you have no records there.”
In the near distance, the tread of tires speeds toward us, slows.
I stare at him, about to ask how he knows that, but his eyes have gone to the mirror.
“Get down!”
My head hits the steering wheel as the back window shatters. Luka’s bent low over my neck one second, and the next he’s shoving me headfirst into the passenger seat as tires squeal against pavement beneath us.
“What was that?” I roll hard against the car door as we veer into traffic.
I can’t see a thing, head dangling into the footwell, nor can I get turned around. And all I can think is that I’m going to die after all, neck broken against the glove compartment, an ignominious bullet in my butt.
“Rolan,” he growls over the engine accelerating in my ear.
He swerves into the next lane, and I brace myself against the dash before being thrown back into the passenger door. I’ve just climbed up enough to get my back against the dash when I see Rolan’s Pathfinder through the driver’s side window—too close. I scream on impact. The car careens toward the shoulder and then jerks violently back.
“Stay down!” Luka shouts. The passenger side window splinters. I turn my head toward the console, eyes squeezed shut, fists over my face.
Luka brakes suddenly, jamming me into the floor mat. My feet fly toward the ceiling. He grabs me by the waist of my jeans and hits the gas. We accelerate hard for a weightless instant—and then smash into a vehicle. Rolan’s.
I hear the impact as we speed away, the collision of the Pathfinder with the ditch—and then the embankment.
“Are you all right?” Luka shouts. “Are you hurt?”
He slows to what feels like a crawl, glancing back in the rearview mirror.
“I’m okay,” I say shakily.
I clutch his arm, and he hauls me up, my vision prickling. Shards of glass trickle to the floor.
Behind us, the Pathfinder has shrunk in the distance, a shadow against a pale crop of corn in the moonlight. I imagine a waft of steam rising up toward the sky.
“Do you believe me now?” Luka says, his mouth a grim line.
I refuse to answer, then do one better and black out.
12
* * *
Wake up in the backseat, take two: this time there’s a hunter-murderer leaning over me, blocking out the dome light.
“Audra. Audra!” He’s smoothing the hair from my eyes, searching my face with a frantic gaze.
“Get off me.” I plant my foot against his groin. He backs out the door, hands up, and then extends one toward me. After a moment, I take it and slowly sit up. A wave of nausea rolls over me.
“Remind me not to let you drive anymore,” I say.
We’re in the parking lot of some office complex off the highway. The sky to the east is still dark. Cars whiz by in the distance, crickets twitch in nearby fields. And somehow the world seems far too quiet.
“You banged your head pretty hard in that fall,” he says.
“Where are we?”
“Just over an hour from Chicago.” He leans into the front passenger side. With a wary glance at me, he starts to brush glass off the seat with what I recognize as the torn shirt he tied me up with.
I look back the way we came and instantly regret it; my neck is not going to be my friend tomorrow.
“You okay?” he says.
My head is killing me. I’ve been chased, drugged, fallen from a window, almost crashed upside down, passed out, and haven’t slept more than two hours at a time in days.
“Yeah.” Because despite all that, I’m alive.
“Is he dead?” I ask.
“I doubt it,” Luka mutters.
“How’d you get here from Maine?”
“Caught a flight.”
Hence the car I don’t recognize, which I assume to be a rental.
“My records,” I say, feeling the back of my head. “If they aren’t at the Center, where are they?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t tell me.”
“So I didn’t trust you.”
He pauses, not looking at me. He’s wearing the same outfit I last saw him in at the pub on Saturday. But then, so am I, stupid Nirvana T-shirt and all. But neither one of us resembles the people who ate lunch on the lake four days ago.
“We decided it was best neither one of us know.”
“We?” I chuff. “Good try. I saw you talking to Rolan at the Dropfly.”
“I know.”
“So you were trying to get him away,” I say slowly. “How’d you know he was there?”
Luka assesses me through the seats. “Did you forget that I live across the street? I was watching for you and saw him. Same guy I’d seen around town for days. When you showed up and he followed you in, it was pretty obvious.”
“You asked me out . . . so you could see if he followed me there?”
“It worked.”
I’m not sure how I feel about being my own bait.
“Wait a minute. He didn’t tell you I had my memory erased,” I say with realization. “You told him.”
Which means Luka knows—knew then—what Rolan was. Is.
“I had to or you never would’ve made it back up the road alive. I also said I thought you were dead until just a few days before. Which is a lie, so if you want to call me a liar, now’s your chance.”
I don’t, and he starts picking glass off the floor.
“Then it’s true. You’re both . . . hunters.” I wrap an arm around myself, suddenly chilled.
“He is. I . . . was.”
“So he replaced you.”
Luka doesn’t answer as he throws out a piece of glass. It hits the pavement with a musical tink.
“How do I know you’re not
working together?”
“Hunters don’t work together.”
I think of what Rolan said about hunters toying with marks for years. “How do I know you’re not playing me?”
“Seriously?” Luka stops to stare at me. “Did you notice I saved your life back there?”
“He might have been shooting at you.”
Luka leans over the seat and studies me, hair hanging in his eyes. “Believe me, I’ve had many chances to kill you. Many. At close range.” His brows lift meaningfully.
“You’re an ass.”
He goes back to cleaning.
“So now what?”
“I don’t know, Audra!” He slams his hands down on the seat. “This hasn’t gone the way it was supposed to. None of it!”
“How was it supposed to go?”
He sighs and pushes out of the passenger seat, paces several steps away, kicks a piece of glass. “This was supposed to be behind us both! No more Progeny. No more hunters. A normal life. Whatever that is. That’s how it was supposed to go. But of course God, fate, whatever couldn’t let that happen.” He turns back, laces his hands together on top of his head. “So here we are. You can’t go back to Maine. I’m not trying to scare you, but anywhere you start over, they’re going to be looking for you. Now, more than ever. They won’t stop. So where we go from here . . . your guess is as good as mine.”
“Who am I protecting?”
“Audra, are you listening to me? Right now you need to worry about yourself.”
“Tell me who!”
He lifts his hands. “Progeny like you. People who help them. You didn’t tell me names! It wasn’t safe. And trust me, you didn’t want me knowing and I didn’t want to know.”
“I didn’t want you knowing because you were supposed to murder me. Then you decided to protect me? And here you are still following me around. What are you, my personal stalker?”
“Something like that,” he says, lifting his chin. He looks angry. “Yeah. Your personal stalker. That’s great.” He walks away, and for a minute I think he’s going to actually take off.
I watch as he picks up something in the parking lot, chucks it at a light post. A moment later he comes striding back.