by Angel Payne
A flick of a side-eye. “I did what now?”
Followed by even less of her snark and even more of her fear. And yes, I wish I could write off the vibe as something else, but I know my sister as well as I know myself. It’s fear. “You don’t remember?” she asks quietly. “Not anything about what you were thinking or feeling…right before you went down?”
“I remember plenty,” I return. “But nothing different from what I’ve been feeling in the last three weeks, if that’s what you mean.”
“Which is what?” The question comes from Angie this time, as she kneels next to ’Dia and sends out more of that Helter Skelter meets Madame Morrible vibe with her gaze—and the emotional probes that now feel like she’s taking a melon scoop to my guts.
“Well, what do you think?” I sound a lot like Morrible myself, but damn it, I’m allowed. “I feel like crap, if you really need to know. Every morning, I want to throw up. Every night, I’m in bed by eight but can’t fall asleep for another two hours. In between, I swing between feeling like I can conquer the world and feeling like it’s already conquered me.”
Whomped by a wave of the latter, I turn and sag back into Lydia’s lap, using one hand to swipe down my face. It does nothing to fade the stupid sting from behind my eyes and everything to emphasize how my equilibrium is still pretty damn shot. “All in all, like a woman who’s missing the crap out of her husband right now,” I wearily snap. “So how’s all that sound?” But I force myself to sling a diplomatic glance at Angie. “Pretty much right on the money?”
Lydia tucks me close in a comforting hold. “That sounds like you broke the whole bank, baby girl.” But her soothing tone is contradicted by her trenchant glare, speared straight up at Sawyer. “And an even better reason for you guys to quit while you’re ahead today.”
“Oh, hell to the no.” I rush it all out before Sawyer’s done with even half his nod of agreement. “Are you even kidding me?” I erupt at him while scrambling away from her. “Whose side are you freaking on, Foley?”
He jerks his jaw fast and violently, knocking some of his hair loose. The stuff’s gotten longer and darker in the last few months, a visual representation of how much time he’s spent away from the waves—mostly to help Reece with my training. A lot of those sessions have meant pushing me far beyond my physical and mental limits, even when I’ve pleaded to quit and stop. But he picks today of all days to flip those tables?
“You damn well know that’s a rhetorical question, missie,” he replies in a calm but growly murmur.
“No,” I retort. “It’s a legitimate one. You’ve been the Grand Poobah of Tough Love for eight damn weeks. You’ve done everything from three a.m. call times to calisthenics in the walk-in cooler to memory games using ground squirrels on the hill.” I would still swear in a court of law that all the ground squirrels in this canyon are genetically matched clones, but that’s beside the point at the moment. “But now, I take one tiny stumble, and you want to pull the damn pl—”
I stop at the first pierce from the guy’s glass-sharp glare. “You fainted, Emma. In nobody’s book is that a ‘tiny stumble.’ As a matter of fact, I think we should have Fersh run a blood panel on you just to make sure everything’s still playing nicely in your hemoglobin.”
I grit my teeth—well aware of the I-just-saw-a-UFO look that Angie’s still giving along with the OMG-my-sister’s-going-to-become-an-alien-too gawk from Lydia. Emotions rush in again, accompanied by that urge to punch out and break something—but I wonder if that’s just natural when one is plunked inside a figurative fish bowl. Just damn it, I wish that fish bowls weren’t so dizzying either, as I learn all too quickly when pushing completely from Lydia and attempting to stand.
Operative word here: attempting.
“Ohhh kay there, Twilight Sparkle.” Lydia’s face is wobbly underneath her stab at humor while she helps me land safely back on the floor, directly on my backside. “That’s enough of trying to go gallop off to the Delta Quadrant.”
I nail her with a glower. “I’m going to forget you just mixed two universes that should never be even close to each other.” And tell myself that the scrutiny is about setting her straight on that, not fighting for a focal point to stop the room from spinning.
“Same way we’ll forget you tried to buck my call about the blood work.” Sawyer has the nerve to tack a chummy smile on to that.
“Tried?” I volley. “Who says I’ve given up?”
“Emma.” Lydia’s full-throttle growl has gotten daunting in the months she’s been with Sawyer. “For the love of fuck.”
Angelique, who’s been verbally silent but communicating a lot with the UFO spotter stare, leans forward again. She works her hand beneath mine, fitting our palms together. “I think the bloodwork is a wise idea, Emmalina.” She closes her grip in a little more. “As well as giving some thought to your training plan.”
I turn more fully to her. Regard her carefully. “My training plan?” I get out a brief chuff. “We’re just taking the rest of today off, Angie. There’s no need to restructure the entire plan.”
The woman compresses her lips tighter than I’ve ever seen. She maintains the vibe while tossing her gaze toward the far wall. Her evasion is so deliberate and weird, even Lydia finally notices.
“But you think there is a reason,” my sister declares. “Don’t you?” She twists, grabbing the ball of Angie’s shoulder before urging, “What are you feeling, Angie?”
“No.” I yank on ’Dia’s elbow, making her relent the hold. “It’s not what she feels. It’s what she hears.”
“Then what the hell are you hearing?” Lydia revises. “Because it’s not just nothing.” She zips her gaze from Angie down to me and back again. “Is it?”
I wish I could tether back her interrogation again, but I can’t. Angie’s entire mien gives away her knowledge of something…a ping on her extrasensory radar that’s new and obvious but startling—and definitely perplexing.
“Angie.” My prompt is more stressed than strict, but nobody’s going to blame me for it. The woman’s gaze alone, buzzing the room like a police searchlight trying to follow a bumblebee, is clearly amping everyone’s skittishness by the second. “What’s going on?” I urge. “What do you hear?”
She gives the bumblebee tracker one more try before clamping her stare back down on me.
She stiffens her posture. Resets her jaw.
But for all the mess of the prelude, her final reply is completely certain. Utterly unhesitant. “Heartbeats.”
“Huh?” Lydia’s faster about the rebuttal than I am.
“That is what I hear,” Angie explains.
“Heartbeats?”
“Heartbeats.”
I have to consciously tell my answering laughter to stand down. “Well, I guess we’re all good, then.” And to refrain from any comments about the most underwhelming moment since teeth nails and their three seconds of fame. “Let’s hear it for beating hearts. Hey, I’m alive, everyone! Celebratory margaritas by the pool after I go for the mandated bloodwork?”
“No!” For the first time since she walked in, Angelique isn’t one shade hesitant about her reaction. Practically shoving Lydia aside to do so, she reaches and snatches one of my hands. “Not…margaritas.”
“Why not?” But as I blurt it, not hiding my bafflement, a lightbulb seems to click on for Lydia. It’s either that or she has a sudden leg cramp, but I’ve seen plenty of the latter to know when those overtakes her. What’s she getting that I’m not? That has her mouth falling into a full O and her eyes bugging as if both her legs have cramped up now? “’Dia?” I demand. “What the hell is—”
“Heartbeats.” Her interruption is so hoarse, it almost turns the word into “harpy.” Or “Arby’s.” I can’t figure out which—though I suddenly crave a roast beef sandwich more than my next breath. “Holy crap. Heartbeats.”
“Okay, we’ve established that part.” I eke out a smile. “Remember?”
“No.” She
leans over, wrapping her hand around mine and Angie’s at the same time and then squeezing in. Hard. Her ferocity only starts there. As soon as I look back up to her face, it’s to stare in a new state of stunned as pools of royal-blue tears thicken in her eyes. “No, Emmalina.”
“No…what?” Though now, I wonder if I really want to know. Holy shit. Lydia didn’t look this simpery and smushy even during the wedding—and as she continues gazing at me like a gold-plated roast beef sandwich, I vacillate between wanting to dig in my heels and scramble away or really parking my backside and hauling her in for a closer hug.
“Heartbeats.” Her echo is raspier than before—tempting me to go for the escape option, despite the smile that wiggles along her lips—until she pulls in a lot of breath in preparation for what she levels next. “Heartbeats, Emma,” she emphasizes. “Not as in multiple beats.” She darts a glimpse toward Angie, who dips an encouraging nod. “As in…multiple organs.”
Ironically—or maybe not—my pulmonary system shuts down for a long second. At once, I sense the reason. It already senses the deeper truth of what my sister is trying to say. Senses it…knows it…
But still battles the full acknowledgment of it.
Which is why, when my heart finally starts the biological service once more, I whoosh out a breath of skeptical resistance. And then blurt, “I still have no damn idea what you’re talking about.”
Because officially, I really don’t.
Because technically, this isn’t supposed to be happening.
I’m not supposed to be…
We’re not supposed to be…
It’s not physically possible for Reece and me to have…
But all of that was before.
Before Faline turned my DNA into electronic soup. Before I let Wade and Alex finish the job by wiring me up to the voltage of the sun. Before every molecule in my body was changed…
As well as how it could receive the life from Reece’s body.
Holy shit.
My sensitive body. My swinging moods.
Holy shit.
My missed period, which I wrote off to wedding and fresh superhero stress.
Holy shit.
A cavalcade of so many thoughts and feelings and realizations and stupefactions, all affirmed by my sister’s declaration, delivered with a wider split of her joyous grin and thicker tears in her shining sapphire eyes.
“Emma…baby girl…you’re pregnant.”
Chapter Six
Reece
“Reece. Reece. You can’t do this, man. Listen to me! You can’t—”
“The hell I can’t.”
My growl, cutting into Alex’s caution, doesn’t feel like me. It comes from a separate animal, so violent I don’t recognize the fucker, burning with such hot fury even the electric connections in my blood are trying to strike but hitting major misfires. I snarl at the pathetic blue light fizzling from my fingertips instead of the slicing blue lightning I’m looking for. I’m fighting for. But nothing is working, meaning my fungus of a DNA donor remains a writhing, worthless waste of air sprawled across the desk, beneath my knee in his lower abdomen and my hands in the center of his neck.
Seriously, man? Superpower ED, at a fucking time like this?
At least my growing frustration means my hold won’t wane on the bastard—though I’m damn sure if he were dangling off the side of the desk by sewing thread, I’d find a way to hold on to him.
And then haul back an arm, coil my hand into a fist, and drive it down into his face.
Like this.
Then again.
And again.
“Goddamnit.” Alex’s snarl comes with something new. His grip. For a lanky theater geek, the dude’s got some impressive torque behind his build. It requires him to put both arms into the effort, but he’s able to keep me in check long enough to get in, “You can’t do this to him, Richards! Not right here and not right now!”
“I paid fifty thousand dollars to walk into this room.” The reminder brings a worthy benefit, shooting enough force up my arm to break free from his hold. “You bet your ass I can do this here and now.” And likely a hell of a lot more if I want to. And oh fuck, do I want to. Need to. In the name of my brother. And Mitch. And God only fucking knows how many others have suffered, and are still suffering, because of what Lawson Richards has done.
Because of what my father has done.
My father.
Part of me still doesn’t believe it. Can’t believe he’s still alive and right here, in my grip. Of course, now he’s a shade of red going on purple, but if my wrath has anything to say about that, the purple will soon be a perfect shade of blue. Yeah, the cool new one in the Crayola box, called “Revenge Blue.” Fuck, yes. So much better than “Bolt Blue.”
Which has me reconsidering the whole superpower shutdown catastrophe.
Maybe, as Emmalina has said—and proved—to me so many times before, the shit twist has become an epic twist.
And maybe this is going down exactly as it should be.
Because strangling this asshole with my raw human strength is a hell of a lot more satisfying than just letting some baby lightning bolts do the job for me. It’s grittier. Cruder. More raw and real and savage than I ever imagined—and yeah, I’ve imagined this a lot. Wondered what I’d do if I was ever given just one more chance to be face-to-face with this fucker.
I’ve always prayed I’d do exactly this.
I’ve always wondered whether I could.
I’ve always been curious whether it would be as easy and as fulfilling as the details in my fantasies.
I’m damn ecstatic to learn that it is.
Except for the fact that I’m still getting interrupted. That damn Alex is like a dog with a bone, and it’s not fun to be the bone. But he’s not letting go, no matter how many times I try telling him the bone isn’t worth it. More importantly that the bone is committed to a much higher purpose right now.
Red to purple.
Purple to blue.
Die, motherfucker.
I push my thumbs in tighter against his windpipe. Feel him struggling to take in air around the compressed tunnel. I think about all the times I felt stripped of the air in my body too. The first time I was strapped down to a Consortium lab gurney. My first night locked in that cell in the hive, alone and shivering and terrified. The first few hours after I got out, stumbling down empty streets and through a warren of alleys, lost and disoriented and ashamed—not knowing I had been turned into a full freak to be feared.
A freak.
A freak.
I say it one more time, out loud this time, spitting it right into my father’s face. “That’s what I am now, you know. Right, you bastard? That’s what I am to this world, because of you!”
Dad croaks and rasps, battling for every molecule of new air. Despite that struggle, he manages to grit, “I…I know.”
It’s the strangest olive branch I’ve ever encountered—meaning despite my instincts, it’s probably not real. I grind my knee in harder. Close my fingers around his extended trachea.
Which is why the asshole’s gaze continues to freak me the hell out.
No matter how valiantly he squirms from the neck down, the man is still staring at me with a warmth I haven’t witnessed from him in well over fifteen years—and, from deeper in his eyes, with a light I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. Something admiring. Affirming.
What the living hell?
I’m damn near kneeing the man in the groin and clearly intent on beating or strangling him to death—perhaps both—and he’s lying there giving me a visual atta boy?
The anomaly is so jarring, I relent my pressure. Just for a second. Only to scrutinize him under better conditions.
To be completely jarred by what I see.
More accurately, by what I don’t see.
That his weird attention doesn’t seem to be electrically enhanced in any way.
“Fuck,” I mutter—before pulling my knee back in and shif
ting my hands from his neck to his shoulders. But I don’t surrender my overall angle, making sure the bastard can still see the rage across my face and feel the fury beneath my grip. He’s poked my curiosity; that doesn’t mean he’s escaped my wrath.
All right, maybe he’s more than poked at things.
If the Consortium hasn’t fucked with him, then how is he even here? Why is he even here?
They’re the gateway questions to a shit ton more, but somehow, Dad—Lawson—seems to sense that too. My mind wraps less around the idea of calling him Dad again than him surviving the insane incidents that went down in Paris. Literally, down.
Dad jerks my attention back from a thousand miles away with his new chokes, courtesy of my new pressure on the middle of his lungs. Despite the satisfaction of watching him struggle, I let up enough for him to drag in new air.
At last, he gurgles out, “S-S-Son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He nods with calm understanding. Too much goddamned understanding. My blood seethes even hotter. Fuck this. The bastard can’t swoop back in from the dead and think we’re going to suddenly do the father-son kumbaya. It doesn’t work like that, even in the altered version of reality in which I constantly live.
“I-I know this is a lot to take in…”
“To take in?” I bark out a laugh. “I’m not taking in a goddamned thing here, Mr. Richards—least of all, whatever you’re pulling with this bullshit.” My grimace pulls at the edges of my fake chrome dome, and I’m tempted to scratch at it like a dog with a stubborn flea, until I realize I don’t have to. Off comes the dreaded thing with my furious tear, and I admit that hurling it against the wall helps take my tension down by a notch. “Pulling a Jesus doesn’t make you my savior. Bring Tyce and Mitch and Kane back, and then maybe we’ll talk.”
During the long seconds consumed by my raging locomotive chuffs, the man has the decency to add a remorseful scowl to his performance—or whatever the hell this is. “I can’t change what happened to either of your friends.” He drops his head, stabbing his thumb and forefinger into his watering eye sockets. “Or Tyce.” He coughs hard, and his shoulders shake from his heavy inhalation. “My boy. Oh, God. Tyce.”