Luc had been right.
Everything had changed.
And now there was a guy out there—a superpowerful Origin who had a major problem with Luc and had used me to get to him.
I almost couldn’t believe any of it happened, that it was happening. Some creepy guy had come after me, had killed because—
I sucked in a sharp breath as I closed my eyes, lowering my head to my hands. Was this guy going to come back? A chill curled down my spine as a terrible sense of foreboding washed over me. He’d been in my house, in this room while I slept—while my mother slept down the hall.
He’d … touched me and I’d had no idea. He’d choked me, and I’d thought it was a dream. What was stopping him from getting in here again? I knew that if he wanted to kill me, he could. I’d seen what Luc was capable of, and if this Origin was half as powerful, I didn’t stand a chance.
Icy terror pooled in my stomach. And what about Luc? Would he be safe? He was strong and fast, but …
Dropping my hands, I opened my eyes again and exhaled raggedly. I could sit here all night and worry about the Origin, but it wasn’t the only concern. My throat constricted. I knew so much now, things I had to keep secret. Staying quiet wasn’t going to be easy, but who would believe me? No one.
My gaze drifted to my bedroom door.
Did my mom know about the Arum and healing?
The moment that question entered my thoughts, I squirmed with unease, because of course she did. I knew she did. She worked for the Daedalus, but she conveniently left out the whole part about healing humans and a whole other alien race when she’d told me about it.
What else was she keeping secret?
I snatched a thick bobby pin off my nightstand and gathered up my hair, twisting it into a bun and then shoving the bobby pin in. I went to grab my laptop again when a text came through.
Are you awake?
It was that unknown number again, and my lips parted on a soft inhale. It was Luc. One of these days I just might add him as a contact. I sent a quick yes back to him.
Incoming.
I jolted. Incoming? What the hell did that mean? I lifted my head, clutching my phone—
A rapping came from my bedroom window.
“No way,” I whispered, eyes wide.
The sound came again.
I scurried off the bed, then briefly glanced at my closed door before I rushed around the bed. No way was Luc outside. It was impossible to get up to my window. No trees and only a small roof over the bay window. The only thing that could’ve gotten up there was a pterodactyl … or someone who wasn’t exactly human.
Which would be Luc.
Or the psycho Origin.
I drew back the curtain and gasped.
Crouched on the small roof was most definitely not a pterodactyl.
Luc grinned like he wasn’t perched outside my bedroom window, and when he spoke, his voice was muffled by the thick glass. “Knock, knock.”
23
I gaped at him through my window in a state of suspended disbelief. This had to be a weird dream, one induced by psychotic Luxen and weird internet searches.
Luc lifted a hand. “I brought you a Coke. A nice, fresh Coke.” And he had. He was holding a red-and-white can in his hand. “Not a Pepsi.”
My heart sped up. What in the world?
Luc waited, his face lit only by the moonlight. Mom was going to flip out if she came home and caught him here. Wait. Was I seriously considering letting him in?
I was.
Which meant I’d officially taken a left turn into Baddecisionville, population: Evie. Cursing under my breath, I unlatched the window and shoved it open since I hadn’t set the house alarm yet. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I like to think I was never in my mind,” he replied. “Can I come in?”
I stepped back and extended an arm. “You’re already up here.”
A wide smile broke out across his face and then he came through the window, landing gracefully and silently. I, on the other hand, would’ve fallen right through, likely face-first. He straightened, offering the Coke. “I’m a very special delivery boy.”
I took the can of soda, careful that our hands didn’t touch. “Yeah…”
Standing as close as we were, it was hard not to acknowledge how tall he was, how he seemed to take over. My room wasn’t small, but with Luc in it, the space didn’t feel big enough. His presence overwhelmed the room as he turned in a slow circle.
Thank the Lord I was wearing a pair of leggings and a super-baggy shirt, because I was amazingly braless at the moment.
He plucked up my left hand and lifted my arm. “How is it feeling?”
“Almost perfect.” I slipped my hand free and stepped back. “I know you said not to thank you, but thank you for … fixing my arm.”
Luc didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It could’ve been worse.”
Knowing that was true, I folded my arms across my stomach.
“He hurt you because of your … association with me,” he continued, his eyes churning restlessly. “He will pay dearly for that.”
I was chilled by his words; I knew that was a promise.
Luc turned and walked away.
“What are you doing?” I whispered as he headed to his left, running his fingers over the spines of books haphazardly stacked on the built-in shelves next to my dresser and TV. “If my mom catches you here, she will shoot you. Like legit whip a gun out of a pillowcase and shoot you.”
He grinned. “She would.”
My mouth dropped open as I threw up my hands. “And that doesn’t concern you?”
“Not really.” He pulled an old, tattered book off the shelf. His brows rose as he read the title. “Claimed by the Viking?”
“Shut up.” I stalked over to him and snatched the book out of his hand. I put it back on the shelf. “My mom is—”
“If you were so worried about your mom, you probably shouldn’t have let me inside.” Luc picked up another book, this time a thin hardcover on photography. He quickly grew bored with that, and placed it back. “But alas, your mom isn’t home.”
“How do you know that?” I followed him as he moseyed on past my dresser and to my cluttered desk.
“I’m omniscient.” Luc touched—touched everything. The pens and highlighters, the heavy five-subject notebooks stacked on top of one another. He picked up the hot-pink miniature stapler, clicked it once, and then put it back. His long fingers drifted over loose papers.
“Oh, come on.”
“She’s been working really late, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah, it’s not at all creepy that you know that.”
He chuckled as he looked over his shoulder at me. “Maybe your momma isn’t working late. Maybe she’s hooking up with someone.”
“Ew. No way is she—” I stopped myself, not wanting to even think about my mom hooking up with someone.
“She has needs too, you know.” He refocused on my desk, picking up my world history textbook.
I shot him a death glare. “Please stop talking about her like that. It really weirds me out.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He leaned in, squinting at the photos.
My heart sped up for no good reason. I stayed where I was, plastered against the wall, near the window. “How did you even get up here?”
“I ran and then jumped.” He touched a Halloween photo from last year. It was Heidi and Zoe at James’s house. They were dressed as Jokers—green hair and purple suit. I’d gone as Harley—old-school Harley Quinn. Finding the perfect jester suit had not been easy. It also hadn’t been that flattering, which was why all pictures of me from that night had been burned. “I’m skilled like that.”
I rolled my eyes.
He chuckled, and the sound was … annoyingly nice. “All these photos and none of you as a kid. None of your mommy and daddy?”
“That’s not strange. We didn’t get a chance to grab the photo albums after the invasion. All that stuff
was left behind.”
“Every single picture?” He turned to me. A moment passed. “Where were you when the invasion happened and what were you doing?”
I thought that was kind of a weird question, but I answered it anyway. “I was at home. It was early in the morning and I was asleep. Mom woke me up and told me we had to leave.”
“And?”
“It’s all … kind of a blur. We left when it was still dark outside.” The details from that day had faded over time, and I thought a lot of it had to do with the fear and panic that had crowded the events. “We moved to a location in Pennsylvania and stayed there until it was safe.”
After a long moment, Luc looked away.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I was in Idaho.”
“Idaho? That’s … unexpected.”
“Do you know there’s actually a theory where people believe that Idaho doesn’t exist?”
“For real?”
“For reals. It’s a conspiracy theory. Something like government mind control. Not that the government doesn’t have the power and methods to pull something like that off, but I can one hundred percent confirm that Idaho is a state.”
“All righty then.” Curiosity was getting the best of me even though I should have been demanding that he leave. “Were you alone when it happened?”
He shook his head. “I was with people I knew.”
“Friends?”
A strange, wistful smile appeared. “Depends on the day.”
Oookay.
“You actually met two of them briefly.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Daemon and Archer?”
He nodded. “They got back tonight. I’m sure you’ll be seeing them again.” He glanced over at me. “Is there a reason why you’ve attached yourself to the wall?” he asked, those striking eyes shooting to mine. “I don’t bite.”
A warm flush splashed across my cheeks. “Why are you here, Luc?”
“Because I wanted to see you.” He backed up and then sat on my bed, his gaze never leaving me.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said dryly.
“Already did.”
My eyes narrowed. “You … you shouldn’t be here.”
His lashes lowered. “You’re right. More so than you even know.” Before I could question what the heck that meant, he said, “I wanted to talk to you about what happened today.”
I peeled myself off the wall and inched my way to the bed. “Talk.”
A wry grin appeared as he rubbed a hand along his chest, above his heart. “Connor didn’t find the Origin who attacked you, but he did give the same description that you gave me, and even though it’s impossible, what that Origin said to you reminded me of one I once knew.”
I sat on the bed, keeping a healthy distance between us. “Once knew?”
He nodded as he dropped his hand. “There’s something I feel like I need to tell you.” He bit down on his lower lip. “I probably shouldn’t, but I think you need to know this. It’s not something Grayson or Kent knows. Or Emery, who you’ve figured out by now is a Luxen.”
“Yeah, I’ve figured that out.” I picked up the Coke he brought and popped the tab. “What do you have to tell me?”
His shoulders stiffened. “When I said there weren’t many Origins left, I know this because … I’m the reason.”
“What? How?”
Luc’s gaze slowly lifted to mine. “Because I … I killed most of them.”
My lips parted on a sharp inhale. “I…”
“You don’t know what to say? Most wouldn’t.” He rose from the bed. “When I told you that I was created in a lab, that all Origins were, it wasn’t an exaggeration. We were engineered from embryo to adulthood. It took the Daedalus countless batches to perfect what they were designing, and even then, they weren’t satisfied. They continued doing experiments, changing the serums and injections. Most of us don’t even know what was given to us.”
The horror from when he first told me about the Origin resurfaced. I watched him walk to the window he’d climbed through.
“Only a very small percentage of Origins were considered stable.” He pulled the curtain back, and moonlight peeked in, slicing across his cheekbones. “Some didn’t make it to their first year. Others lasted longer before whatever was given to them went bad. And there were some who were extremely violent, dangerous to everyone and everything around them, and they were … they were put down in the labs, usually through lethal injection.”
“Dear God.” I set my soda aside and pulled my legs up onto the bed. “Luc, I’m—”
“That’s not the worst part.” There was a quick twist of his lips as he let the curtain go. “There was a new batch of Origins, ones who the Daedalus were particularly excited about. I learned of them right before the invasion. There were being kept in a facility in New Mexico, and after the Daedalus collapsed, I freed them. I freed them, because I knew if I didn’t, they would either be terminated or shipped off to someplace else.”
Luc turned to me. “You see, I thought I was doing the right thing. I brought them all to a place where I believed they would be safe. They were young, Peaches. No more than five years old.”
My heart squeezed. I had a feeling this was going somewhere very bad.
“I left them with people I trusted, people I knew would take care of them because I couldn’t stay. I had other things I had to do, and those people did take care of them. They tried.” Luc walked back toward the bed. “Except those kids … I should’ve left them in the lab.”
“What happened, Luc?”
A muscle flexed along his jaw. “It started with small things—things that would be normal dealing with any child. They’d want something and when they couldn’t have it, they’d throw tantrums. Except their tantrums resulted in houses catching on fire and people getting thrown into walls.”
My eyes widened.
“I don’t know why I thought of them as normal kids. Origins are highly intelligent, and I am not saying that to pat myself on the back. Even at five years old, they could outsmart any adult. They could plot and work together to get what they wanted, whether it was a bowl of ice cream or to stay up late. The people I left them with realized quickly that socializing them was going to be issue, especially when their intelligence became manipulation and their manipulation became violence.”
Luc sat down, closer than before. Close enough that I caught the outdoorsy scent, the mix of pine and burning leaves. “Two of them attacked someone—someone who cared for them all—because she wouldn’t let them have an extra cookie. A cookie, Peaches. They threw her through a third-story window over a cookie.”
Stunned, I stayed quiet and listened.
“She was okay in the end, but only because she’s a hybrid—you know, a human who has been mutated. If she hadn’t been, they would’ve killed her. That was when I went back.” He paused. “I thought I could, I don’t know, change them, because there was one of them who was … stable. I thought he was a good sign, and that since they were like me, I could instill patience in them, and empathy and, you know, basic humanity. I didn’t want to accept that it was hopeless. I couldn’t.” A harsh laugh parted his lips. “If anything, my presence made it worse. It was like putting two betta fishes in front of each other. Nothing I did worked. Separating them. Punishing them. Rewarding them. I couldn’t lock them up. They were way too smart and powerful for that.”
I remembered what he’d said about being a realist before. That some people were lost causes, and I was thinking I was about to find out why he believed that.
Luc’s features sharpened like a blade. “Then they attacked again, and this time, they killed someone. A Luxen, and they couldn’t be with the people I left them with. Then they came at me, all of them except one. They sure as hell couldn’t be out in society, running amok. As much as I hated it, I realized that freeing them had been a big mistake.”
He put his hand on the bed beside my bare feet and lean
ed in. “I had to take care of them, Peaches.” Slowly, he lifted his gaze to mine, and I sucked in an unsteady breath. “Do you understand what that means?”
Stomach churning, I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. “I think I do. You had to … terminate them?”
Pain filled those beautiful eyes. “I did, and it was possibly the worst thing I’d ever had to do. I had no choice, Peaches. They were hurting people. They were killing, and they were only children. I couldn’t fathom what they would become as they grew older.”
I slowly shook my head. “That’s … Luc, I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.”
He held my gaze for a long moment and then looked away. “Daemon and Archer were two of the people I left them with.” His jaw worked as his gaze trekked over the corkboard of pictures. “It was Daemon’s wife who had been thrown through the window. It was one of their friends who was killed. They knew what I’d done. It’s … it’s one of the reasons why I haven’t gone back to see them since then. I don’t like being reminded of all that.”
I remembered Daemon asking about why Luc hadn’t visited, and of course, Luc had given some vague-as-hell answer. Now I understood why. How could he have explained that to me before?
How was he able to do it now?
“The one who I thought was okay? He … he got away. His name was Micah.” A wry twist pulled at his lip. “That kid was like a brother to me. No idea where he is now. It’s probably a good thing, but what that Origin said to you today reminded me of Micah. He was always trying to get people to play with him. He was just in desperate need for attention or something.”
My brows knitted. “The Origin I saw today was a teen.”
“I know. It can’t be Micah. He’d only be about ten now, but it’s obviously an Origin who knows what I did. Perhaps one who has come across Micah or something, but I … I’m not surprised. When Chas was attacked, I knew it had to be an Origin to get the upper hand on him. I think that’s why he tried to warn you away.”
Holy crap …
“And I began to suspect that one was around. We can sense one another, but that isn’t always perfect, especially when other Origins are around.”
The Darkest Star Page 26