Retribution

by Shana Figueroa

  Hot, cool, excited, dreamy, and dizzy, Val exhaled. So many sensations at once made her light-headed. She reached for him and played with the fine hair at the nape of his neck. “Sounds like a hallucination.”

  “I thought so, too, but when I was trying to escape, I heard him say into a tape recorder, ‘Serum B triggered a euphoric response accompanied by the subject’s ejaculation while he maintained a nontrivial level of consciousness.’ I’m paraphrasing.” The ice cube moved up, slow and lazy across her rib cage, then up the mountain of her soft breast and over the hard outcrop of her nipple. “He offered to turn your ability off.”

  “He was lying.”

  “What if he wasn’t?” Water tricked down Val’s breast, and Max licked it off. She let out a soft moan as her dizziness increased. “Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. We saw him do stranger things.”

  “I don’t know what we saw.”

  “What do you think the police did with all his notes?”

  “In a just world, gave them to the National Institutes of Health. In our world, Sten probably gave them to Northwalk.”

  Max stood and gently lowered himself on top of her. His skin slick with a fine sheen of sweat, his hardness pressed against her middle, he ran a thumb over her lower lip. “But wouldn’t you like to know what other people feel? What normal people feel? Be normal?”

  She threaded her hands through his hair. His chest rose and fell with hers, in time with the waves that lapped their boat. “Where would that leave us?”

  His head fell and he kissed her neck, his full weight settled atop her. She closed her eyes and imagined a world where they’d been normal, awkward kids, grown into normal, boring adults, never knowing great pain, and never knowing each other. It was duller, gray, incomplete. Val’s eyelids drifted open, the dim orange of their cabin a warm blur, air thick with musk and sex. A pocket of pure love floating across the ocean. He pushed into her, and as the flare grew in slow steady strokes, his breath hot against her lips, chest sliding against hers, she knew whatever he’d felt would never be as good as this.

  * * *

  Val shot up from bed. Overcome with nausea, she ran to the toilet and threw up. After a couple of heaves her stomach calmed, but she stayed hunched over the bowl, clutching her belly, until she was sure the worst of it had passed.

  “You okay?” Max asked behind her, his voice still sleepy. She heard him get up, then felt his hand on her back.

  Val wiped her mouth and tried to recall what she’d eaten the night before, now amorphous chunks floating in the toilet. Noodles, canned peaches…unlikely to cause food poisoning. Maybe the motion of the boat…

  “I’m—”

  Faint light through a porthole told her it was early morning. Morning sickness. When was the last time she had her period? Over a month ago. She felt the blood leave her face.

  “I’m p—pregnant.”

  “What?” His voice didn’t sound sleepy anymore.

  She tried to think as nausea still roiled through her. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Max sat on the floor with her and leaned back against the wall. His eyes wandered to his feet. “Whose is it?”

  Val laughed. “It’s yours, Max.”

  His gaze cut back to hers, eyebrows raised. “How?”

  Whatever really happened during her rape, Lucien had ensured she stayed STD and pregnancy-free. Since then, she’d only been with Sten and Max. She’d always used protection with Sten, whenever they’d done anything capable of making a baby anyway; never with Max. It hadn’t been necessary, since he couldn’t have children. Or so they thought.

  “When you were shot in the stomach last year and went into surgery, they could have reversed your vasectomy at the same time.”

  “That’s…that’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, but our world is fucking crazy.”

  He chewed his thumb. “Abby never got pregnant.”

  Val shrugged. “Maybe she’s infertile for some other random reason, I don’t know.” She took a swig from a bottle of water on the sink, then sat across from him. “Of course it’s yours. There’s no way Northwalk would go to all this trouble if it wasn’t yours.”

  “But they dispatched Lucien to steal your eggs and my sperm. Why would they do that if they’d already ensured I could get you pregnant the old-fashioned way?”

  “Probably as a fail-safe. Maybe”—Val drank more water as she thought—“maybe their ability to manipulate the future has limits. Maybe they’re not all-powerful, even with their Alpha.”

  Maybe they can be hurt. Maybe Sten and I can kill them all.

  His eyes found the floor again, and she could see the gears of his mind working furiously. After a moment he looked up. “What are you going to do?”

  Val hugged her legs to her chest and shook her head. She didn’t know. She’d envisioned a future where they grew old together, just the two of them. Even though she’d never seen it, she still thought it was possible. She thought she’d changed their future. She hadn’t.

  “Keep it,” Max said.

  Keep it? “I thought you didn’t want children.”

  “That was before I had a family—a real one. You’re my family now. Josephine’s my family. And Michael. And Toby, I guess. Turns out it’s not so bad. In fact, I think I like it. Kids round it out. Hell, at that point we’d almost be normal.” His eyes lit up at the possibility. He’d always dreamed of being a regular person with a regular life, and this was his chance.

  Val pulled at her hair. “But not only will we be constantly looking over our own shoulders, we’ll have to watch out for our child as well. I don’t think I can live like that.”

  “We can.” He held his hand out to her.

  This was why they’d broken up before. He’d wanted to fight for their future; she couldn’t. Now he wanted to fight again, and her first instinct was to run, to end it. But she’d been wrong before, and the result had been an agony for them both.

  Val took his hand and gripped it tight. His eyes filled with a warm glow that spread across his face, and he smiled. She imagined the warmth traveling through his hand, into her, fusing them together as two bonfires meeting to become one blaze.

  “Okay,” she said. This time, they would fight together.

  Epilogue

  Val stood in front of the Northwalk conspiracy diagram on the wall of her office—or crazy wall, as Sten called it. Hopefully Max wouldn’t mind her transporting it to his study. He could even help her with it, maybe tease out connections she hadn’t seen before, if he was willing—which he probably wouldn’t be. Despite returning to reality and making plans for their future with gusto, he didn’t want to talk about the evil organization stalking them and planning to one day steal their children, changing the subject whenever she brought it up. He preferred to revel in their newfound happiness while ignoring the coming danger, and she obliged him for the time being. He’d been miserable almost his entire life; eventually he’d have to face the threat with her, but for now he had every right to enjoy being a husband and expectant father.

  With her finger, she traced the string that went from the top of the wall—Northwalk—to the single pin below her and Max—their child. She picked another pin from her desk drawer and stuck it next to the original pin. Twins. The corners of her lips ticked up. My babies. Not only was she having a kid she hadn’t expected, she was having two of them at once. And already she loved them. She hadn’t expected that feeling so soon, either. By her obstetrician’s guess, her pregnancy wasn’t more than four months along, but already she felt tired and distended all the time. She had to put up with this for five more months? And it would only get worse? At least now, with her future children already claiming a massive spot in her heart, she was sure it would be worth it.

  Eyeing the dozens of strings, pictures, newspaper clippings, article printouts, and handwritten notes, her gaze kept coming back to those two pins. Though Northwalk was all the way on the opposite side of the me
ss, they were still too close for comfort. She couldn’t take on the organization in her current state, but she could still follow them, plan her next move, and be ready to strike when the opportunity came. She could certainly work on bringing down Delilah, starting with whatever info Zach gleaned from the pieces of Lucien’s hard drive.

  Walking to the kitchen, Val plopped down in a chair at her kitchen table. She flipped through the nearly two months of mail stacked on the table. Stacey hadn’t kept up with it since Val had been gone, because her friend had taken off to travel the world—so said Stacey’s note anyway. Val had followed up with a phone call to make sure Stacey was really alive and somewhere she wanted to be. Stacey confirmed she was fine, though she refused to entertain the idea of coming home anytime soon, or talking through the rift between them. She needed time, and there was nothing Val could do about it. If Val had been a better friend, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Hopefully, she’d have an opportunity to make things right.

  On to the future. While Max and a contingent of hired help cleaned up his condo, she was supposed to begin cataloging which items in her house she wanted to toss and which she’d move into her new husband’s place. Before reviewing the conspiracy diagram, she’d gotten as far as picking up her undelivered mail from the post office and dumping it on the kitchen table. Now she needed to rest.

  From the stack of mostly junk mail, she pulled out a manila envelope with an odd bulge in the middle. No return address. A slow drip of dread began in the back of her mind. Max had warned her they might start getting mail from crazy people, now that they were a local celebrity “power couple.” He’d received it sporadically all his adult life, courtesy of his high-profile millionaire bachelor status. Now that he was officially off the market, all those spurned, delusional men and women could begin directing their wrath at her. Maybe this piece of mail was just the first.

  She’d dealt with worse. Bring it on, loonies. Val ripped the top of the envelope open and jiggled the bulge out. A big, silver ring shaped like a skull and crossbones clinked onto the tabletop. The slow drip of dread turned into a deluge. It was Zach’s ring.

  Val yanked her phone from her pocket and called Zach’s number. She’d talked to him only a couple of weeks ago, reminding him to keep everything he found on Lucien’s computer to himself, while quietly getting her hopes up that maybe, finally, she’d have something to nail Delilah with. She was so close…

  A woman answered his cell.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Zach?” No one besides the teenage hacker had ever answered before. Maybe he’d changed his number, or got a girlfriend.

  “He’s not here anymore,” the woman said, a deep sadness in her voice.

  “Where did he go?” It couldn’t be. “Who is this?”

  “I’m his mother, and he’s not here because he’s passed on.”

  Oh God no. “But…but I talked to him just recently.”

  “He”—Zach’s mom paused to take a ragged breath—“he took his own life eleven days ago. He’s always been troubled, and…I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

  Val’s mouth went dry. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she choked out, not knowing what else to say.

  “Thank you. Good-bye.” Zach’s mom hung up.

  Val sat frozen, the phone still pressed against her ear. There was absolutely no way Zach would kill himself, no matter what his mother said about his state of mind. Dropping her cell, she stared at the ring as if it were the bony finger of death pointing at her. You did this, it whispered.

  There was something else inside the envelope. Swallowing hard, she pulled it out with trembling fingers. It was a plain white piece of paper with two words written on it: Nice try.

  Val slapped a hand over her mouth. She knew Delilah was capable of manipulating people into killing for her, but to murder a kid? Poor Zach. She shouldn’t have gotten him into this. Now his blood was on her hands.

  She wrapped her arms around her belly. She’d be damned if that evil woman, or Northwalk, or anyone else got anywhere near her babies. Protecting her family had to be her number one priority now—which meant staying away from Delilah and Northwalk.

  With tears in her eyes, she crumpled up the letter, walked back to her conspiracy wall, and started pulling pieces of it off and throwing them in the trash. “You win,” she said. “For now.”

  Also by Shana Figueroa

  Spice of Love

  Vengeance

  Please see the next page for a preview of Reckoning, the next book in the

  Valentine Shepherd series!

  Chapter One

  Five years later

  Valentine Shepherd sat cross-legged on her son’s bed, gritting her teeth as she watched Simon dig through a pile of brightly colored books. The kids’ room sported an abundance of short bookcases, but still they had too many books to fit, the excess strewn across the floor as miniature mountains of knowledge. Like father, like son.

  “Just pick one, Simon.”

  He kept rooting. Val took a deep breath and tried to control her annoyance. It was already an hour past the twins’ usual bedtime, as they’d insisted on “helping” her bake a batch of gingersnaps for the holiday cookie exchange between her group of playdate moms the following day. As she juggled cookie trays, they had decided to have a raw egg fight in the living room. She’d ordered them upstairs, then cleaned up the slimy mess. Toby, their Jack Russell terrier, helped by licking egg yolks off the walls. Then he puked them up on the carpet. At that point, she’d smelled the cookies burning.

  “Just pick one, Simon.”

  After a minute he snatched up a book he liked, sprinted back to Val, and dropped it into her lap.

  Val read the cover. “The Night Before Christmas. Appropriate enough.”

  Simon launched himself onto the bed and snuggled up to his mother. He beamed at her, beautiful hazel eyes with starbursts of emerald green at their centers radiating the pure love of a devoted four-year-old. Val’s irritation ebbed, her love for her children an aloe that always soothed her most frayed nerves. She ruffled his blond hair and kissed his head.

  “Lydia, come on,” Val called out.

  A moment later her daughter wandered into the room, head down and eyes glued to a tablet computer.

  “Turn that off. It’s time for a story, then bed.”

  Lydia looked up and pushed black hair out of her big gray eyes. “But Mommy,” she whined. She turned the tablet toward Val. Flashing stars danced across the screen; some kind of numbers game. “I almost have the high score.”

  “That’s great, honey. Turn it off.”

  Lydia’s delicate pink lips curled into a pout, then she pressed the power button until the screen went black. She dropped it on top of a book pile and curled up next to Val, opposite her brother.

  “Okay.” God, finally. “The Night Before Christmas, here we go…” Val flipped to the first page. “’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house—”

  “How does Santa get down the chimney?” Simon asked.

  “It’s a trade secret.”

  “Santa’s not real,” Lydia told Simon in her usual serious tone.

  “Lydia!” Val frowned at her daughter.

  Simon’s lips trembled and he looked at his mother with big doe eyes.

  “Of course Santa’s real,” she said to Simon. “In a way. He lives in our hearts.” She smiled at her son, and his wounded innocence turned to confusion. It was good enough. “Okay, so where were we…” She cleared her throat and tried to read with the practiced animation Max was so good at when he did this. Her exhaustion made it a hard sell. “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even—”

  “When’s Daddy coming home?” Lydia asked.

  “In two days.”

  Simon: “Where is he?”

  “Fort Lauderdale. That’s in Florida, America’s flaccid wang.” Val cracked a smile. They wouldn’t know what that meant for several years. There
was no shame in enjoying a dirty inside joke with herself. Reminded her she technically still belonged to the adult world, despite being consumed by the daily grind of four-year-old affairs. She took her small pleasures wherever she could get them.

  Lydia and Simon peered around their mother and at each other. Their eyes widened and misted over with a glaze Val recognized, the one that sent a cold chill racing up her spine.

  Simon said, “Daddy was in Florida—”

  “But he’s not there now,” Lydia finished.

  Val swallowed hard. She wished they wouldn’t do this. More than wished—she prayed to God they wouldn’t do this. She’d hoped the twins had escaped the curse that afflicted her and Max, but since their verbal skills had exploded over the last six months it was becoming clearer by the day they hadn’t. They knew things they shouldn’t, and they didn’t need to be in a trance to see it, like Max and Val—they were Alphas, like Cassandra, the woman in white she’d only seen in her visions. Other parents expressed amazement at how advanced Lydia and Simon were, sometimes through teeth clenched together in jealousy at their own child’s implied inferiority. But what made them special made them vulnerable. They would be coming for her children. Maybe someday soon. Sten Ander, her sometimes-enemy/sometimes-ally, had told her they called themselves Northwalk. They owned Cassandra, and they wanted Simon and Lydia as well. She would burn down the world before she let her children be stolen from her.

  Val began again, her throat suddenly dry and sapped of the meager enthusiasm she’d worked to channel a minute ago. “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house—”

  “Daddy reads it better,” Simon said.

  “Well, Daddy’s not here, so do you want me to read the story or not?”

  Simon nodded, resigned to his fate of a subpar book reading. A long sigh escaped Val’s chest. She flipped through the book and cringed at the walls of text. Ten pages of this? She didn’t remember the poem being so long.