[Phoebe Pope 01.0] The Year of Four

by Nya Jade

  “Dude’s chasing you with a knife and you head for the basement?” Hayley screamed. “Go outside!”

  Phoebe sat on Hayley’s bed with her arms around her shins, her head resting on her knees. At her request, they were not discussing Scott’s disappearance and Hayley had put on a movie instead. But Phoebe wasn’t watching. She couldn’t bear the thought of what she was about to do. It involved manipulating her friend, and the very thought was filling her up with guilt. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Hayley’s roommate would be returning soon, so if Phoebe was going to go through with it, it would have to be now. Closing her eyes, Phoebe pushed.

  Phoebe had only once pushed the feeling of fatigue. It had been on a night her father had fallen into a sadness so deep that sleep could not reach its fingers down to him. And now, watching Hayley rub her chest uncomfortably before reaching for a pillow, Phoebe saw that it was something she could still do. She was careful not to push too much, fearing that the lingering effect on herself would be a detriment to her plan.

  The moment Phoebe saw Hayley curl into herself and succumb to the push, she shot to her feet. She grabbed her backpack, crossed over to the window and released the locks. It swung open, and for once Phoebe didn’t pause to reconsider. She climbed through the window, pulled herself into the tree that hugged the building, paused a moment to catch her breath and then jumped.

  There were two ways to get to the boys’ dorms: one path would take Phoebe through lighted walkways heavy with the traffic of students. The second would lead her through the dark and tangled tree line. Upon hearing the distant voices of students heading home from their various Friday night social events, Phoebe made her choice. Mind racing, she ran through a thicket, feeling the sting of the cold air that raised goosebumps on her skin. It distracted her momentarily from the fright edging into her mind: she was about to confront a Vigo without a plan, and she could think of nothing more dangerous. All Phoebe knew was that, no matter what happened next, one way or the other, she needed to know what part Colten played in her nightmare.

  When Phoebe broke through the trees into the clearing in front of the boys’ dorms, warning drops of rain dripped from the black sky. By the time she arrived at Clay House, a wind had picked up, whipping the ice-cold water into her eyes. She stopped at the back of Colten’s dorm and her eyes instantly found his corner room, windows up, lights on. Something like relief moved through her at the sight of his form in the room. He was still on campus. Perhaps Scott’s disappearance had nothing to do with him.

  Suddenly, Colten appeared at his window. He poked his head out and scanned the courtyard before moving to another window. Phoebe wondered if he was somehow aware of her presence; she stepped into the shadow of a pine tree and crouched. After a number of calming breaths she looked up again and shot to her feet. Colten’s windows had been pulled shut. The lights were off.

  In Phoebe’s mind, thoughts began to whirl. Colten was leaving. An impulsive anger swept over her. Was he running? The very notion put Phoebe into action. She rounded a corner to the front of the dorm and saw Colten push through the doors. As she took in his outline, whatever hope she’d been holding onto dissolved. He was moving in the direction of the parking lot, baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and an oversized duffel bag in his arms—the kind of bag large enough to transport a body—a bag he carried as if it were heavy.

  Phoebe swallowed hard and made a split decision. Shoving all of her misgivings aside, she began to follow him at a distance. If Colten was taking Scott somewhere, she would be the one to stop him. Phoebe passed a knot of students who were smoking and talking outside the dorm.

  “Hey, where’s the emergency?” a girl in the group called out to Phoebe as she flew past them while the others laughed.

  Phoebe knew she was radiating the tension she felt. In the back of her mind, a voice yelled at her to stop and think for a minute. She knew that she was acting on emotion, and that this was probably the time to turn things over to the Blackcoats. Ignoring that voice, Phoebe gritted her teeth and kept racing after Colten.

  She could not believe the speed at which he moved. By the time she arrived at the parking lot, he had already jumped into his car and was driving away. Phoebe was determined not to lose him that easily. She glanced about the lot, looking for a car she wouldn’t feel too badly about hot wiring. The trouble was, Green Lane students drove high-end vehicles, and finding one she could hot wire among them would be difficult. Then Phoebe spotted one that would do just fine. Four minutes later, Phoebe peeled out of the campus in Karli’s vintage VW Beetle.

  Luckily, there weren’t that many Smart Cars on the road, and although Colten had a head start, Phoebe soon spotted him waiting at a red light just outside the campus. The light changed. Careful to keep another car between them, Phoebe followed Colten past the outskirts of town and onto the freeway.

  After what seemed like an hour of driving, Colten made a sharp exit that Phoebe almost missed. The longer they drove, the scarcer the streetlights and the buildings became. At every traffic light, Phoebe expected Colten to notice her and stop, but he continued on. Phoebe gripped the steering wheel with sweaty palms, her eyes wide. No longer having any idea where she was or where Colten was going, Phoebe began to feel the weight of her impulse to follow him. As the darkness pressed in on her, she reached for the car’s high beam controls, catching herself just before she turned them on—she smacked her own forehead. Could I give myself away any easier? she scolded herself. Phoebe hadn’t taken her eyes away from Colten for more than a second, but when she looked up again, he was gone.

  Phoebe eased on the brake and brought the car to a stop. Then she leaned against the steering wheel, her eyes flashing about nervously; she was in a dark, long, and narrow alleyway between two rows of concrete commercial buildings. Broken beer bottles, newspaper pages, plastic shopping bags, and empty take-out boxes lay scattered over dark, wet stones. Phoebe stared ahead for a moment, hoping Colten’s car would reappear. But it only took a minute of sitting in that isolation before instinct spurred her to get out of there.

  A small shower of pebbles from above made Phoebe look up at the rooftops. The next thing she knew, something dropped down and hit the hood of the car with enough weight to make it shudder. Phoebe shrieked, staring through the windshield at a woman who had landed in a crouch and stared back at her without flinching a muscle. Dressed from head to foot in black, her shiny gold locks spilled from underneath a beret. A dull heat began to spread all over Phoebe’s body as the woman’s fuchsia-colored lips twisted into a nasty sneer.

  Phoebe threw the shifter into reverse, slammed the accelerator and shot the car backward. Seconds later, the VW Beetle came to a complete abrupt stop. Phoebe spun around in her seat to see a man with both palms of his large pale hands planted into deep dents in the back of the car. He too was dressed in black, a baseball cap on his head, his lips set in a thin line below icy blue eyes.

  “Looks like you’re having some car trouble,” Phoebe heard the woman say from the front.

  “Yeah, let’s have a look,” the man said. He ripped off the Beetle’s back engine hood and let it drop hard onto the ground. Then, smiling, he pulled out several wires. The engine sputtered and then died.

  The woman laughed. And when Phoebe sat stunned, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, the woman studied her with more interest. Excitement flashed in her crazed eyes.

  “Do you know how long we’ve been waiting for one of you Hyphas to wander off without protection?” the woman said frostily, rubbing a crease in her pants in mock exasperation. She thrust a manicured hand into the pocket of the blazer she’d buttoned at the waist and produced a cell phone.

  “Guess it’s true what folks say ’bout patience.” She looked over at the man. “You see who we got?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a syrupy voice that dripped with distaste. “Stop your yapping and call it in already.” The man slid around the car, carrying a large stone. Phoebe’s stomach lurched. Wh
at more did he plan to do? The fingers she’d clenched around the steering wheel shook as she watched the man leap onto the hood of the car and crouch next to the woman who was yelling into her phone, “Yes, I’m sure it’s her! Just tell the Padrone! Uh huh . . . okay . . .”

  The man raised his hands and Phoebe watched him, her eyes on his eyes as he looked from the stone to the windshield, his intention plain on his smooth, angular face.

  “No more games,” the woman said, knocking the stone out of his hands. “Our orders are to—”

  Phoebe didn’t wait for the end of that sentence. She flung open the car door and bolted. She sprinted as hard as she had ever run straight down the littered alleyway, stumbling and tripping on her shaky feet. Phoebe could hear the car groan as the weight of the two Vigos came off of it. She snuck an anxious peek behind her and saw the woman a short distance away, her legs pumping as hard as Phoebe’s hearts. Phoebe couldn’t believe anyone could run that fast in stiletto-heeled boots. The man, on the other hand, seemed to be taking a more leisurely approach. Phoebe didn’t even want to know what he had up his sleeve.

  “There’s nowhere to run, cousin,” he said with a laugh, his voice echoing off the building walls.

  Frantic, Phoebe moved from steel door to steel door, jerking cold handles ineffectively as she did. To her intense relief, she found one that opened. Phoebe entered the building and locked the deadbolts. Pausing to catch her breath, she inhaled deeply and choked on a lungful of sawdust that hung like river mist in the cold air. It clung to her hair.

  Lungs burning, eyes watering, Phoebe squinted around at her surroundings: a long, open space under renovation. Light from streetlamps slivered through the fanlights and illuminated another door. Phoebe sped toward it, avoiding the metal tools and stacks of empty paint cans that littered the cracked tile floor. Phoebe felt her hearts trying to hammer through her chest as she almost tripped on a thickly cobwebbed chair. She was halfway across the room when the door banged open and the blond woman walked in.

  “You really need to stop wasting our time,” she said, standing in the doorway, boredom legible in her eyes. Her lips stretched to form a cruel line in a smug face.

  Phoebe began moving backward, her mind racing. She was stuck between the Vigo in front of her and the one she could hear whistling out in the alleyway. There were no alternate exits other than the windows on either side of the woman. Getting to either one of them would be impossible. Then, from the corner of her eye, Phoebe spotted the next best thing: construction rebar tucked beneath an unfinished west-facing wall with exposed insulation. She shot toward them.

  The woman leaped agilely after Phoebe, but not before Phoebe had snatched a rod in each hand. Charged with improved reflexes and dexterity gained from hours of stick fighting practice, Phoebe deftly connected a blow to the woman’s chest. Her strike was powerful enough to pitch the woman across the room, where she landed in a noiseless crouch, looking both surprised and vaguely amused.

  “Impressive,” she said, standing and beginning to clap condescendingly. “And here I thought you were a dumb girl—too cute for the red carpet—I was wrong to underestimate you. That Armani gown was wasted on you, though. I would have rocked it way better.” The woman’s voice oozed sarcasm and she grinned wickedly.

  A sudden surge of irritation shot through Phoebe then, and she failed to react fast enough to block the swift kick the woman delivered to her right knee. Frivolous emotions can give your opponent an advantage over you. . . . Phoebe could hear Afua’s words echoing in her ears as she teetered off balance and dropped the rods with a ringing crash.

  Phoebe made a mad scramble for her lost weapons, managing to curl her fingers around one just as the woman barreled down on her. She raised the rod and struck the woman across the head with all her might. For a moment, Phoebe stared at the woman, who had crumpled to the ground from the impact. She was motionless. Then, realizing she’d only rendered the woman unconscious, Phoebe snapped out of her torpor. She staggered to her feet and flinched as the syrupy male voice bellowed behind her.

  “What’s the hold up? Thought we had to get her to the crèche before—” Phoebe spun around. From the door, the man stood stock still looking between the woman and Phoebe. He removed his ball cap and tossed it. Then he scrubbed claw-like fingers through his sweaty shock of blond hair. The crazed fury boiling in his eyes made Phoebe’s stomach jolt with fear. Her rod was halfway in the air already when the man morphed into a Tiger and charged.

  Phoebe’s scream wouldn’t have been audible even if she had expelled it. An explosion of glass from a breaking window came right before she could get it out, and a bone-chilling growl seemed to fill the entire warehouse. The Vigo charging Phoebe swung his head to the side in confusion just as a streak of black crashed headlong into him. Phoebe stood paralyzed as the blur of struggling forms rolled toward the back of the room in a vicious battle of tangled fur and teeth. A horrendous crunching of breaking bones pierced the air with a sharp intake of breath and was followed by a gut-ripping wail of pain. And then silence spread over them like quilted feathers, smothering Phoebe’s senses.

  Phoebe had no sense of how long she stood there motionless. Her eyes were transfixed on the body emerging from the shadows. Silver spikes glowing down its back, the Vigo inched cautiously toward Phoebe in a submissive posture, holding her gaze all the while. It came closer. Hardly daring to breathe, Phoebe could smell the odor of its coat, blood mingled with a scent of something smoky, something vaguely like cinnamon. . . .

  A wave of disorientation swept over Phoebe, sending sparks of color flashing about her peripheral vision. The room began to spin. And then she felt her feet go from under her as someone cradled her in strong arms and began to run.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Phoebe woke to find her knees throbbing with intense pain and a pair of jewel-green eyes with acute concern in them just inches from her face. She jerked backward in sudden alarm, banging her head against something hard. It was the window of a car.

  “Easy there,” Colten said gently. He reached a hand toward Phoebe who recoiled, hitting her head again.

  “Ouch.”

  Colten’s soft demeanor hardened, his worried expression replaced by a bitter scowl. “What were you doing out there?”

  “Following you,” Phoebe snapped. She rubbed the back of her head.

  “Why?”

  “Scott got taken—”

  “And you thought I took him?” Colten interrupted. He looked at Phoebe, his eyes blazing. Phoebe felt her stomach turn at the sound of Colten’s dark laugh.

  “I saw the body bag,” she said, her tone indignant.

  “What?” Colten laughed again. “That was just my stuff. Clothes, books. I packed up my room. Let me guess,” he said frowning. “Your big plan was to follow me to where I was going to stash Scott with the others.”

  Phoebe said nothing. Her attention had been drawn to something burning on the far end of the parking lot and she heard the distant sound of sirens. It had just dawned on Phoebe that the fire was coming from the building she’d been in, when she turned her head sharply as Colten turned the key in the ignition.

  Startled out of her daze she asked, “Where are we going?”

  Colten’s face hardened. “I’m taking you back to campus.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Phoebe yanked at the door handle.

  “You’re wasting your energy,” Colten said. “It won’t open.”

  Phoebe glared at him. “You’ve locked me in?”

  “It’s for your own good.” Colten stared at her then, his face taking on a sad smile. “How many times do I need to save you Phoebe, before you start to believe that I’m not a threat?”

  Phoebe froze, her eyes widening in disbelief.

  “Who do you think just stopped that—” Colten let his voice trail, bringing the car to a stop at a light and shaking his head dejectedly. He then turned to look at Phoebe with a look both gentle and intense, pleading with his eyes. But Ph
oebe didn’t see him. What she saw was the memory of one Tiger flinging a larger Tiger against a tree in the clearing, and that smaller Tiger holding her gaze. . . .

  Phoebe swallowed hard. “It was you in the woods that night.” Colten’s gaze intensified. “Y—you were—”

  “Trying to keep that Vigo from taking you,” he said simply, lowering his gaze to the faint scars on her arm.

  Just then, the light changed and they were moving again. Phoebe drew her knees to her chest and hugged them.

  “What are you?” she said, keeping her gaze ahead.

  Colten glanced at Phoebe as though she were crazy. A hard edge entered his voice. “You know what I am.”

  “But I don’t understand how you could be . . . when I’ve never felt—never felt—”

  “—the burn?”

  Phoebe nodded confused. “And not just me. An entire campus with Shapers didn’t sense you. I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because I was born this way,” Colten said after a minute, his hand gripping the steering wheel tightly.

  That made Phoebe laugh, even though it wasn’t funny. “Vigos aren’t born.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then how is what you’re saying even possible?” Phoebe couldn’t keep a sliver of animosity out of her voice.

  “I’m one of a kind,” Colten sighed. “My mother was bitten while pregnant and the venom got passed on to me through the umbilical cord,” he said softly. “She went into early labor when the change started happening with her.”

  Phoebe gasped, her head whirling with questions. “How early?”

  “I was born at five months and survived.” He added bitterly, “The ironic thing is that the change killed my mother, but it’s what saved me.” Colten measured Phoebe’s expression and frowned. Phoebe had looked away too late to hide her horror.

  “God . . .” she said, bringing a hand to her chest. “So that’s what happened to your mother.”