Serpentine

by J. Kearston

  As the officers head across the street into the building to confront Blake, Bane and I climb out to wait with the guys when they don’t make any move to come back to the truck. They simply stand on the sidewalk, glaring at the building like they’re trying to melt the brick with their minds. Watching their strained faces, it’s clear they’ve dropped their mental shields, eavesdropping as best as they can. It’d be damn near impossible for me to focus on something that far away, especially with the heavy crowd on the sidewalk and cars flying by between us and the building.

  Bane ends up following their lead, leaving me the odd man out, because I have no interest in hearing lie after lie, if I can even zero in on the distant conversation. It’s not like I expect the cops to actually do anything, but I didn’t want the guys walking right into a trap; and there’s no fucking way that Blake didn’t have something up his sleeve after tossing the gauntlet down like that. It’s the same reason I never bothered to go to the police for help before. All it would have been is a series of ‘there’s nothing we can do,’ or ‘all of that evidence is circumstantial at best.’

  There’s no winning, even when you follow all of the rules. Everyone just acts shocked when people turn up dead and tell themselves that they would have prevented it if they’d only known, like they didn’t sabotage or gaslight you every goddamn step of the way to your grave.

  The guys shout, hands clamped over their ears as they double over with a litany of curses a split second before a section of the apartment building explodes, like a bomb went off. My ears are ringing as I clutch my head, but by the blood trickling down the sides of their faces, keeping my sensory block up saved me from the worst of it.

  Half of the building is smoking, brick and debris strewn across the surrounding area and street, sending cars careening into oncoming traffic to get out of the way. I watch in frozen horror at the ensuing head on collision, but the sickening crash that I should hear at the impact is only a high-pitched ring. Not ten seconds pass by before another car slams into that one, beginning a pileup. Faces wail with silent screams and cries from those that were within the blast zone, clutching bloody limbs as they lie on the sidewalk or were knocked into the street.

  People start stampeding around us, both trying to get a closer look, and others getting the hell out of dodge. Shoulders slam into mine, knocking me back a step as absolute chaos erupts around us, yet I can’t hear so much as a footstep. The only thing that I can pick up is the pounding of my thundering heartbeat, and even that’s muffled as if I were plunged underwater. Smoke and chemicals assault my nose, even from this distance, and no matter how much I cough, I can’t clear the acrid taste from my lungs.

  An elbow slams into my ribs, shoving me to the side as someone pushes past me, fighting with the rapidly thickening crowd. I stumble back, crashing into something hard. A sharp pain lances through the back of my thigh, and despite my attempts at shouting, I know it’s pointless. If my hearing is this destroyed, theirs will be in far worse shape.

  Lurching forward, I almost fall flat on my face as an intense wave of exhaustion slams into me. Only an arm banded around my stomach keeps me from collapsing and getting trampled by the crowd. As I’m hefted up, the guys are nowhere in sight, my vision swimming as nausea hits me hard, sending my stomach on as wild of a ride as my head.

  Still, I continue to shout, praying that someone around me will give a damn. Yet no one even turns my way, focused on the explosion and the emergency vehicles starting to pull up to the scene.

  Shoving at the arm hauling me back, the attempt is pitiful, my movements growing more sluggish by the second. When I’m dragged into the backseat of a car, I get a brief look at him, only his grey eyes visible above the black, fabric mask that he’s wearing over the lower half of his face.

  Shifter. Blocking out the smell. My thoughts are sluggish, whatever he injected me with swiftly moving through my system.

  He smacks the center console, the other guy pulling away from the curb and out into the heavy flow of traffic. Struggling to fight through it, I fumble the door handle, pushing it open a crack before the guy that grabbed me reaches past me to yank it shut again. The lock engages automatically, the driver smacking the button as the man forces me into the middle seat. I can’t hear a word he’s saying, but he straps the seatbelt over my waist, and when my head starts slumping as I start to pass out, he yanks me against him.

  Forced to use his shoulder as a pillow, I try to punch him in the crotch, planning to throw myself out of the car while traffic is keeping them from flooring it out of here. Instead, my finger barely twitches, my muscles all but useless.

  Vision blurring, I glance in the rearview mirror; familiar, soulless eyes looking back at me before I pass out.

  Chapter 22

  Stryker

  Ears ringing, I pull my hand away, fingers wet with blood that I can’t even smell over the noxious scent. Whatever caused that explosion, it was mixed with something so potent that it overrides everything el-

  Risa.

  The crowd is buffeting each other out of the way, either rushing toward the scene or away from it. What should be a dull, thundering roar as they stampede around us, is only a high pitched ring that won’t stop. She was standing right behind me with Bane, but all I see is him in a similar state as me, recovering enough to realize that she was completely right.

  We walked right into a trap that we never saw coming, so focused on our hatred of Blake, assuming the trap was in his apartment. Which means the photos weren’t from him, they were from someone that wanted to drive us to his apartment and blow us all to hell in one fell swoop.

  I shout at Bane, but I can’t hear the words to know if I’m even making sense. By his confusion, he can’t hear them either, but there’s really only one thing any of us would worry about in this situation, and that’s getting our mate the hell out of here. He reaches for her, disoriented and realizing that she’s not beside him anymore. Horror and grief war for dominance on his face, the two of us scanning the surrounding area, trying to catch sight of her.

  Tapping into the bond, I don’t even get a blip of fear from her. With as strong as the emotional connection has grown between us, that should be impossible unless she’s asleep.

  Or unconscious.

  Reaching behind me, I snag Mason’s wrist hard enough the bones might crack, dragging him with me as I latch on to what remains of the sire bond. It’s faint enough that I’m panicking; far less intense than during her transition when she was asleep, before it had even fully formed.

  There are only two reasons that should happen. Either it’s getting close to the decade mark where it naturally dissolves, shifters acclimated enough they don’t need a sire to protect them anymore. Or, she’s pushing the range we can sense. Even if the two are separated, we’re drawn together; it’s how Mason tracked his down. But once you get a good hundred miles between you, it’s a hell of a lot harder, if not impossible. The tug in your gut is simply a faint nagging in the back of your head, knowing you’re missing something, and maybe pulled in a general direction if you’re lucky.

  But there should be no way that anyone could have taken her that far in a matter of minutes, and I don’t see her body on the ground anywhere.

  “Gods damn it!”

  I slam my fist into the side of the truck hard enough that it dents, not bothering to climb into the driver’s seat, already knowing that we’re fucked. The traffic is backed up to high hell between the people fleeing and the emergency responders trying to prevent it, not letting whoever set the bomb off escape until they can investigate.

  All the while, she’s somehow getting farther away by the second. In the last few minutes alone, the tug that draws me to her has faded to barely more than a pinprick on my radar. Despite the way we shove through the crowd on foot, by the time we’ve made it a couple of blocks, everything that connects her to us disappears like it was never there in the first place, like we imagined the entire thing. That small pinprick blinks out
of existence, taking all of the light with it. For such a small thing, it leaves a gaping chasm in its wake.

  A darkness so absolute that I can barely breathe without suffocating, and there’s nothing left to show me the way out.

  Chapter 23

  Risa

  Head pounding, I groggily blink my bleary eyes open. Everything’s blurred, my vision swimming and wavering, so I clamp them back shut for another few minutes before trying again. With a steadying breath to keep me from puking, I give it another shot, finding my bearings enough to realize I’m stretched out across the back seat alone.

  My head is behind the driver’s seat, giving me a clear view of the man on the passenger’s side. They must’ve traded off at some point, the one that grabbed me at the wheel so I can see Dr. Bennet, no longer masked. He was the main doctor during my last extended stint in the hospital before I ran away, and it’s another stab of betrayal, knowing all of the sympathetic looks he used to give me were as fake as his platitudes that things would get better.

  “You’re awake,” he says with a frown, turning in his seat. “You should’ve been out another couple of hours.” He turns to the driver with a glare. “You said you hit her with the full syringe.”

  What I wouldn’t give for something to wash the cottonmouth taste off of my tongue, but as it is, I can’t manage to form any words or sit up, everything still spinning. A semi flies by on one side, rocking the car from the wind, and my heart starts sprinting. Fumbling a numb hand that I can barely feel, I breathe a bit easier as I feel the dull pressure of the seat belt around my waist, even if I’m in a position that might make it useless. But after the wreck and being thrown around the trunk, I can delude myself with a false sense of security as we fly down the highway.

  “Pretty sure I did,” the driver counters, not sounding all that concerned. “It was anarchy though, to be fair. Just give her another dose; no need for a bitchfit.” He tilts the rearview mirror to look at me, intense, grey eyes locking on mine. “Sorry for the rough introduction, but I was short on time. It’s nice to finally meet you, Risa.”

  Dr. Bennet scoffs. “You don’t need to suck up to the blood whore, Zane. We’ve spent years doing things the nice way, just for her to spit on our efforts. After eight years of hell trying to keep everything from crumbling while tracking her down?” All traces of the former kindness he used to look at me with are long gone as he spits, “She lost that privilege. From here on out, she’ll be kept under lock and key.”

  Before his words can fully sink in through my foggy mind, Zane pulls a gun from his side and puts a bullet through Bennet’s skull. The sound is obnoxiously loud in the car, my ears ringing as I startle, shrinking back into the seat. Blood sprays over the window and my feet before his body slumps against the door.

  Seemingly unfazed to the blood spatter coating his face, Zane continues driving, changing lanes and taking an exit ramp off of the highway. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Risa,” he declares, my heart lodging in my throat.

  Several minutes later, he pulls over and parks, reaching into the glove box and withdrawing a syringe filled with a clear liquid. Turning in his seat, he gives me an apologetic look before there’s a sharp pinch in my thigh as he injects it. Chucking the empty syringe onto the floor at Bennet’s feet, he exits the car. Opening my door, he undoes my seat belt and gently slides me out, hefting me up since I’m all but useless in helping move.

  Adjusting his grip so that I’m cradled against him, I’m forced to rest my head against his chest as another wave of exhaustion pulls at my consciousness. “Get some rest. Depending on how long it takes me to find a new car, we should either be at the safe house or pretty close by the time you wake up.”

  He starts walking, abandoning the vehicle and Bennet’s corpse. I only get a brief glimpse of the rundown city around us, nothing memorable beyond the fact that the people hanging out on the sidewalks pointedly pretend they don’t see us, minding their own business. Zane starts humming to himself, like this is nothing more than a simple walk through the park instead of marching me towards a new personal Hell. But added to the drugs pumping through my system, it quickly serves to lull me to sleep, and I find myself silently praying that I won’t wake up, not wanting to face whatever will be waiting for me when I next open my eyes.

  Chapter 24

  Risa

  Mouth drier than the Sahara, I cough as I sit up, rubbing circles over my temple. The room isn’t spinning this time, so I must’ve been out of it for a hell of a long time. Besides being insanely thirsty, I feel relatively normal now, all of my muscles responding as I get to my feet.

  Glancing around to get my bearings, I frown. The room looks like an eight-year-old girl’s, everything rainbows and unicorns. The twin bed I just crawled out of is covered in a pink, glittery bedspread, the desk across the room white and covered in stickers, matching the dresser next to it. Drawings are taped to the lavender painted walls, stuffed animals on every available surface. There’s a television on top of the dresser, and Legos strewn across a corner of the room, surrounding a half-finished castle.

  When the door creaks to my left I take a nervous step back, but I’m completely caged in. “I thought I heard you get up.” Zane smiles. “Perfect timing, too; lunch is ready.”

  He stands there as if waiting for something, and all the while my heart thunders in my chest. “Wh-“ I break off into a coughing fit and he frowns.

  “That asshole lied through his teeth about everything, didn’t he?” he growls. “Just a nap and good as new, my ass. Come on, let’s get you some water.” Turning on his heel, he strides out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  Staying here won’t serve any purpose beyond trapping myself, so I follow him before he changes his mind. Likely I’ll wind up locked back in the room before long, so any information I can gather while I have the chance, the better. He clearly doesn’t want me dead, but that’s really all I have going for me. My stomach churns as dark thoughts start flitting through my head, images that all of the bleach in the world couldn’t cleanse.

  Death is a mercy; it’s living that’s the real Hell.

  There’s a door directly across this one that’s closed, as well as one to the right. Bare feet on freezing concrete, we head left a few feet. There’s a solitary door at this end, but we follow an opening out of the hall instead, leading to a massive open space. To the right is a living room with the basics; a couple of couches, bookshelves full of board games and books, some DVDs and a television. On my left is a table, a small kitchen beyond that. My breath hitches in my chest as I see two faces looking back at me, pausing mid-bite to focus on me instead of their lunch.

  “Risa,” Zane declares, sounding weirdly smug for the moment, “meet Adelaide and Hunter.” He gestures to the older kids at the table, and though I woke up feeling alright, a sudden wave of nausea threatens to knock me out of commission.

  Clearly listening in on my sprinting heart rate, he quickly raises his hands in surrender before wrapping an arm around my shoulders, guiding me towards a chair. “No, no, no, don’t be afraid! It’s okay, I’ll explain everything while we eat.” He starts muttering “Idiot, you’re fucking this up,” under his breath as he rushes towards the fridge, coming back with a couple bottles of water and setting them in front of me.

  Hurrying around, he quickly slides a bowl of chicken alfredo in front of me, taking the seat to my left. It leaves the boy on my right, and the little girl directly across from me, neither of which have taken another bite since I walked into the room.

  Downing the first bottle in seconds, the ache eases a fraction. Clearing my throat, I croak, “What’s going on? Where am I?”

  Zane takes a bite of his food, gesturing with his fork towards mine and waiting until I take a tentative bite to answer. “Safe house. You don’t need to worry about anyone hunting you down or using you ever again, Risa. You’re safe now.”

  I meet Adelaide’s bright blue eyes, her brunette hair
in twin braids. I’d peg her for about ten, but there’s an innocence about her that makes her seem younger. Her face lights up, an excited glint appearing in her irises. “Uncle Zane’s been trying to find you for almost my whole life. But I knew he’d find a way to rescue you, too.”

  “Addie,” Hunter scolds, eyeing me warily.

  He’s early teens, if even that, and it’s clear as day that they’re siblings. Their features are incredibly similar. Their eyes are the exact same shade of crystalline blue, though his have a harder edge to them, and his hair is a few shades lighter. It doesn’t take a genius for it to click that he’s shouldered the burden of trying to protect his little sister; it’s wondering from what exactly, that has my heart aching.

  She pouts, but stops talking, though she doesn’t stop staring while she returns to her food. Hunter continues to scrutinize me like I’m a threat, his fork clutched tightly in his grip. All three of us jump as Zane claps his hands together sharply, drawing our attention.

  “That’s enough of that now, Hunt. Risa’s family, and she needs us now more than ever,” he declares.

  Hunter nods, his features morphing from defensive to purposeful. “You’re right, sorry.”

  Zane smiles sadly. “Been a hot minute since you’ve seen anyone beyond my ugly mug, I don’t blame you. It’s good to have your guard up, especially around strangers.” He turns to me, beaming. “But Risa’s not a stranger, she’s my cousin.” As his words sink in, things starting to make sense as I fill in the blanks, he turns to the kids. “We’re all that’s left, and all each other has.”