by Angel Payne
But the bitch will never know that.
Must not ever know that.
Ever.
No matter how many times she takes my mother on joyrides “beyond the stars”—whatever the hell that eventually means—employing the superpower wine-and-dine as an angle for information…
And God knows what else.
Recruitment?
Financial aid?
Cult-level worship?
All of the above?
But how the hell do I make Mother aware of that when she won’t even look at me anymore? When she won’t give me the one second I need to show her, with the anguish on my face and the plea in my eyes, what kind of a demon her “angel” really is?
Or will even that be enough?
What the hell kind of mind trip has Faline worked on my mother? And more crucially, is it all permanent? And if it is, what’s Fa-Fa’s ultimate end game? And why does even thinking of that answer make me drip with sweat and struggle to control the flames of fear and fury that hit with the intensity of the sun?
But why?
Why control it?
The whole world knows now. The leaked videos have probably been replayed to both arctic ice caps and back. If Mother really sees what all of Faline’s treachery looks like, on her own daughter…
The heated flare comes faster than I anticipate, making me sway like I’ve guzzled a bottle of Patrón. Mui bueno on the parallel, since that’s exactly how I feel. Reece rushes to steady me, wrapping a strong and protective grip around me. “Velvet,” he growls at the same moment I whimper, remembering there’s a damn good reason why I try to avoid cranking on the sunshine spigot all at once. It hurts. Oh God, it seriously hurts. “What the fuck are you—”
“Showing her,” I spit, swinging my sights toward the couch again. “Showing you, Mother—what Faline Garand is responsible for causing in your own d-d-daughter.” I can’t help the tormented stammer. Every inch of my skin feels like a third-degree sunburn. My nerve endings are a pack of a million ignited matches. Even my eye sockets are scalding, though I don’t surrender my furious scrutiny toward the couch.
At once, I wonder if the gamble paid off. Dad’s clearly enthralled and appalled at once. I’m like a walking ooze of golden lava. Hypnotizing to watch but horrifying to think of even touching. It’s evident across every inch of his face, and it makes me attempt a remorseful wince his way.
But when I look back at Mother…
Still nothing but the I’ve-chugged-the-Kool-Aid smile.
“Oh, darling.” She breaks the searing silence with a rasp I can’t interpret. “Look at you.” And still no clarity, except for a husk of emotion that could be anything. “Emmalina. You’re beautiful.”
Well, there’s something to clarify—despite how it tears at my fibers to drum up the strength and feels like summoning fire more than words to my throat. “And I’m also in agony, damn it!” Still, I chalk up the win for keeping every syllable halfway civilized. How I haven’t given voice to the vicious screams in my spirit is reason enough to ask for the entire bottle of that tequila—except that I recognize, deep down, there’s really no victory here.
Faline hasn’t just wooed my mother. It’s been a complete brainwash. The truth glares even stronger as Mom bounces to her feet again, whipping around the coffee table before striding to me with an ebullient smile.
“Oh, my sweet and incredible girl.” She jerks me away from Reece, stroking a hand over the back of my head. I want to fight her off, but I’m too muddled for anything but silent surrender. Eight hours ago, she was the woman who could barely embrace me before I walked down the aisle to Reece, citing how one wrong swipe of her makeup would ruin Corinne’s cosmetic handiwork. Now she’s grasping me like a freaking life ring and cooing in my ear, “You can do this, daughter. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Evolution cannot happen without a crucible.”
Okay, screw muddled. I grit my teeth and shove away from her. “What the hell?”
By the time I’m done, Mother’s all Snow White bright and happy ga-ga once more. She even clasps her hands together like Prince Charming delivered the glass slipper, the enchanted rose, and the sparkling locket at once, presented on a leaf made of fairy tears. “You are breathtaking, Emmalina. One of the most beautiful beings I’ve ever seen. You’re enhanced now. Enlightened. Evolved. A magnificent miracle.”
I stumble back by two more steps. Take no measures to hide my open repulsion. “But not for that bitch’s glory,” I spit. “Never for her.”
Mother slowly shakes her head. Her face, so innocent now that Corinne’s airbrush mastery has faded off, is painted with different pigments. The darkness of pure derangement.
Which, disgustingly, makes her the perfect candidate to hurl the most disturbing iceberg into the chilling journey our wedding night has become.
“We are all evolving creatures, daughter. So why is it so hard to believe that someone has discovered the key for accelerating the process?”
The person I formerly knew as my mother is rocking with the words she nearly sings out—but despite all the affectation, one look tells me that she’s not being remotely fed the words or controlled in any way. Angie confirms the supposition with a tight nod; Faline still hasn’t come back to lurk or manipulate—making all of this shit from Mom even more unsettling to watch.
“Emmalina Paisley,” she croons. “Just look at you! Both of you!” She gestures toward Reece, as well. “You are living, stunning proof of the new and rising world. Of our brave and beautiful future!” She lifts that hand, higher and then higher, and joins the other arm to the movement in a bid to be a rising phoenix—
Or a demon-possessed lunatic.
“It’s perfect! It’s wonderful, my daughter! Now, we all must answer the purpose by heeding the call.”
Reece steps forward—at the ready with one hand fisted in front of him, blue escaping out both sides as if he’s wrestled down a whole lightning bolt. I’ve never been more relieved to see him sparking up this early. “The call…for what?” he charges in a low growl.
Mother just sends back the serene cult-girl smile. “Oh, you know that already, my son.” And her gaze gleams like ice cubes tossed into bright-blue Kool-Aid. “Who is next?”
Chapter Four
Reece
The night the Consortium changed my life, I’d thought about taking a cruise. Two quarts of Spanish brandy were sloshing in my veins and Angelique La Salle was eyeing my crotch like I’d stuffed Aladdin’s Lamp and its wishes there, but the limo in which we traveled had suddenly become a glaring symbol for the “cage” of my life. I’d yearned for the serenity of the sea, a place to get truly lost.
I couldn’t have been more messed up.
I was about to find out what a cage really was. And what “getting lost” really felt like. In all the worst senses of the phrases.
In those months, I felt a lot like I do right now.
I’m not locked in an eight-by-eight cell. Or strapped down on a gurney, being told that no one in the world even knows I’m missing. Or being shot up with raw electricity, my screams absorbed by padded walls.
But one element is still the same.
Maybe the most vital one.
That voice. Her voice. The accented purr that belonged only to the darkness of my memories, until that night nearly a year ago in the hangar at Teterboro, where the soundtrack of my hell was no longer nameless or faceless.
Faline Garand.
Her satiny murmur is the same it’s ever been, buckling me down no matter how physically free I am on this beach. Trapping my mind despite the whoosh and release of the Pacific, sloshing over my ankles and foaming between my toes. The feral intensity of her black gaze is nearly all I see, a shadow beneath the dark-blue and green eddies along the sand and the pale moon setting on the horizon.
Faline fucking Garand.
Even taunting me throughout every moment of my mental replay from a few hours ago, when she wasn’t anywhere near that room at the ranc
h—but might as well have been. She was there in every keen gleam of Laurel Crist’s gaze, slashing out at me with possessive glee. She was alive in every demented word the woman spoke, a message I’ve heard since the first night of my captivity…a cabal of crazy backed by the Scorpio cartel’s riches.
We are making history, and you are now a part of it, ma chere. One of the most important parts…
I enhanced you, Reece Richards. I improved you…
Evolution cannot happen without a crucible. You are a part of the new and rising world…
“Fuck!” I punctuate it with a sharp kick at the water, watching my electric fury flow out and then back up, spreading across the approaching waves. It’s too early in the day for any surfers or fishing boats, thank God, but I grit my teeth harder, wishing more than anything for a good, obstinate granite cliff—or five—to spar with.
I need to destroy something. No. More than that. I need to see the evidence of what I’d rather be doing to myself.
Of what I can’t do to myself. Not willingly, at least.
Like it or not, I need every ability this body is capable of. Every power I can wring from it. Every volt in its bloodstream, electron in its muscles, energy in its pores…
But most of all, every ounce of conviction in its soul.
The soul that’s telling me this decision is right. So fucking right, I can’t talk myself out of it even after two hours of pacing up and down this beach. But no matter how tight my heart has clenched, literally forcing my hand atop it in a pounding protest for the pain to stop, my conscience has wielded a bigger megaphone.
But also a softer one.
The one I’ve been paying more and more attention to. Not that I’ve wanted to, damn it—especially after recognizing exactly who belongs to that provoking murmur. A voice I thought I’d banished from my mind. Permanently.
The asshole who donated his sperm to my creation.
I can’t even call him Father anymore. And forget the fuck about Dad.
Fathers don’t sell their sons to an international crime cartel that funds a band of insane fringe scientists. Dads don’t sleep with bitches on high who run cartels, even in the name of saving the family empire.
Screw the family empire.
“And screw you too,” I spew at the memories of the man, unceasing and unrelenting, that have been like persistent ghosts in my senses since I came out here to mull all this shit over.
Which has been feeling a lot less like mulling and a lot more like internal skirmishes. Which have weakened my mental armor all the way around…
Weaknesses the memories have been more than happy to take advantage of.
“But damn it, I don’t want to go to Tyce’s stupid lacrosse game!”
“I understand your frustration, Reece Andrew. But you do know this is the semifinal game and that he’d really like you there…yes?”
“Tyce doesn’t care what I do.”
“I think Tyce might disagree with you about that.”
“If I disappeared off the face of the earth, he’d never notice.”
“Again, I think Tyce might disagree with you about that.”
“Which means you’re going to make me go to the game.”
“You’re thirteen years old now. I’m going to let you make your own choice about it. But just remember that doing the right thing often doesn’t mean doing the easy thing.”
The replay accompanies me up the ladder of the lifeguard station, a dark refuge in the middle of the Redondo Beach sand. By the time I get to the platform at the top, I’ve replayed all of the lacrosse match I finally did attend—and the fact that Tyce truly couldn’t have cared less if I’d sent a cardboard cutout in my place.
Or so my memory first tells me.
As I park my ass down on the landing, different details of that day start to come back to me. Minutiae I’ve never clearly recalled before…but now, perhaps enhanced by electronic insight, I do. As if I’m moping through that entire afternoon again, I see different things. New things.
I see Tyce scoring the first goal of the game and pumping his stick in Dad’s direction—except he’s actually looking at me.
I see him taking a break at halftime and sneaking me a chocolate chip protein bar from the team’s nutrition wagon.
I also see me, answering his offer with the biggest eat-shit-and-die glower probably ever stabbed at a big brother in the history of brothers.
Despite that, I also see him after the game, telling his buddies he won’t go for this celebratory trip to Power Pizza unless I’m invited too.
I see him doing the right thing.
Not the easy thing.
“Christ.” I mutter it to nobody or nothing but the sun-faded boards under my upright knees. “Why didn’t I see it all sooner, you asshole?” Hiding your loyalty behind all that sarcasm. Giving me all that shit, all that time…
“Because you loved me.” I shift the weight of my elbows on my knees, lifting my hands to jam their heels against my eyes. It helps the stupid sting there, but not enough. “Ah, damn it.” I’m going to lose it. Right here. Right now. Well, at least I’m alone out here, and that means—
“Hey.”
Shit.
I force the tears back with a rough cough before rolling to my feet and holding out my hand to Emma, helping her up the last few rungs of the ladder. As soon as she’s all the way up, I draw her in close and tight. Fuuuuck, yes. Best melancholy killer on the planet. Probably the best-smelling one too. Her hair is a mixture of sea spray and coconuts. When I curl my head down, going at once for her upturned lips with mine, a hint of something sugary joins the mix. After a second, I recognize it as maple syrup.
“Well, hey yourself,” I greet softly, raining a few more kisses up the bridge of her nose. “How are you?”
“Hey. That’s my line, buddy.” She takes a few affectionate pecks at my chin. “And I have more validation for it too. You’ve been out here for hours.”
I give in to a small smirk as soon as she concludes that by running a hand down my bare chest. She’s on the brink of asking why I’m not cold, since she’s in sweats and a thick Henley along with a borrowed sweatshirt from Lydia, but she knows better. After the last twenty-four hours, with my stress running high and getting to screw her like the newlywed husband that, yes, I am, my core body temperature has been simmering steadily at what most would consider a lethal fever.
Regrettably, as we’ve learned over the last ten weeks, my poor woman runs the exact opposite: while her powers are as intense as concentrated solar panels, they “go down” like the sun too. I think there might be a commemorative Emmalina plaque on the wall of Fuzzball Socks’ corporate offices, since the woman bought out their entire inventory in the middle of August.
I’m not a damn bit surprised when my adoring perusal of her form turns up a peek at her favorite Fuzzballs, scrunched between her thickest polar boots and her bunched-up sweats. The pattern, called “Bolt-a-licious,” has little blue bolts and wine bottles against a neon-blue background. Emma’s often joked that someone finally gathered enough booze in one place for the occasions when she is tempted to drink.
Which might just be around the corner.
Who the hell am I kidding?
I’m so sorry about this, baby. You’d better start popping those corks now.
“Sawyer and ’Dia are making French toast.” She rests her head against my shoulder, filling my nostrils again with her warm, fresh smell. That explains the maple syrup. I turn my head and close my eyes, working to commit the scent to memory, as she offers with that same gentle coaxing, “And there’s strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. And the most decadent organic coffee I’ve ever had.” She turns, huddling into me as daybreak brings a stronger wind across the empty beach. “Hmmm, I think I like sleepovers at Sawyer and ’Dia’s—even if it’s just because they’re closer to Mom and Dad.”
I chuff. “And even if we didn’t exactly sleep?”
“We can rectify that betwe
en breakfast and leaving for Newport. I just got off the line with Dad, and he says Mom is finally sleeping peacefully, so he wants to give her a few hours before we check on her. So that gives us some time to do the same.”
As she talks, there’s another chilly gust. I drape an arm around her, bringing her closer. Not close enough. Will it ever fucking be? And yet here I am, getting ready to say…
The shitty thing I’m about to say.
“I’ll probably sleep…on the plane.”
Yep. Shitty. To the crappy degree that I thought it would be. But that’s where my expectations and the reality part ways. I’d narrowed down Emma’s reaction to just a pair of viable choices: seething fury or heartbroken tears. But for one long moment, then the second and third after that, she erupts with neither.
And when she doesn’t erupt at all…
My unease switches into straight-up unnerved.
At last, thank fuck, she breaks her stillness with a pronounced inhalation. That breath tells me everything and nothing. Rage and bereavement are off the table, but I have a feeling the words she’s preparing will cut just as deep.
“On the plane,” she echoes, her murmur almost as invisible as the wind. “Because you’re going to Spain.” She swallows hard. “To try to find Faline.”
I clutch her in a little closer. “I have to, Velvet.”
“I know.”
“I mean, what if your mom wasn’t her first ‘recruit’ for this stunt? What if she’s been beta testing it on others, ironing out the kinks in the process? Or worse, what if it’s been successful from the start and this is how she’s been spending the last two months? What if she’s been busy building a whole army of goddamned minions?” Every query that’s been swooping through my mind for the last two hours turns into a tumbling rush that won’t stop, an avalanche finally set free. “And what if she doesn’t stop at just an army? The woman is insane—”
“Reece.” She emphasizes it by swinging over and straddling me, her hands on my cheeks and her hair whipping down, encasing us both in its curtain of white-gold brilliance. “I said I know, husband—and I meant it.”