True North

by L. E. Sterling

  Red gathers behind my eyes. “Don’t you dare call me stupid, Jared.” I poke the hard chest before me. “You’re supposed to be in charge of making sure I’m safe. So instead of blaming others, do it yourself.” I turn on my heel and stomp toward Nolan Storm’s waiting van, just catching a quick pang of hurt flashing across Jared’s face. I’ve hit home and I know it.

  “You forgot your little thing of dirt, Princess,” he calls after me. But I won’t turn around, won’t dignify his behavior with a reply.

  Doc Raines and Torch fall in behind me as I climb into the car.

  “Brat,” Jared mumbles under his breath, clearly intending for me to hear. The engine rumbles to life.

  “Bully,” I mumble back, just as loud. It’s surely not my most mature moment, but it feels as satisfying as a kick to the shins.

  Jared slows his walk as we approach Nolan Storm’s meeting quarters, tucked away in one wing of his enormous penthouse suite. Here, the dimly lit hallway curves and branches off into either the game room or the meeting quarters. Still, it’s narrow enough that in order to squeeze by Jared’s massive frame, I’ll need to get close to him. My prickling nerves don’t think they’re up to the task.

  He places his hand on my arm, where it burns my cool skin like a coal. “Hold up a moment. We need to finish our conversation.”

  I pointedly look down at his hand before giving him a hard stare. To Jared’s credit, he’s never been cowed by my ice-princess routine, though lately this has become a bit of a problem for me. “Fine,” I tell him in the crispest of tones, crossing my arms. “I’m willing to hear your apology.”

  Jared’s indigo-blue eyes widen under his shag of curls before he tips his head back and laughs, as though I’ve just told him the funniest joke in Dominion. He actually scrapes a tear from the side of his face. “Ah, Princess. You sure are hilarious.”

  I glare back. “That’s not funny.”

  “Ha-ha-ha! You just keep doing it!” He slaps at his thigh. “Seriously, though, did your parents ever tell you how hysterical you are? If this whole Plague thing dies down, you could bring stand-up comedy back to the masses.”

  I ignore the sharp jab of pain—it’s a low blow to bring up my parents, and he knows it—in favor of studying the True Born who stands just inches away from me. His mouth is smiling but his eyes have gone cold and flat. The eyes of a predator. I’d do well to remember that this man isn’t just a man. He is trained in the art of war, instincts sharpened to points as fine and deadly as his claws when he draws them. And like the massive hunting cat he shares his genetic code with, this man likes to play with his food.

  My hands go to my hips and I open my mouth to give him a blast of wintry hell when Nolan Storm sails past us and into his meeting quarters. A handful of his True Borns are in tow, notably a tall, striking woman with red hair that curls over one shoulder. She flicks her fingers at Jared, who immediately straightens up and walks into the room without so much as sparing me another look.

  “Sorry, kid. This meeting’s for the grown-ups,” Kira tells me with a mocking trace of regret. I hide a pang of hurt as the rest of Storm’s cabinet of True Borns file inside. The young man who calls himself Torch shrugs unhappily as he scoots by Kira and me.

  “I’m the same age as Torch!”

  “Well, now,” Kira purrs. I instinctively step back as she sidles closer. Kira looks like a runner-up in the Miss Dominion pageant. Should she ever partake in that particular competition, her talent would surely be “killing.” As one of Storm’s most accomplished assassins, Kira isn’t someone I’d like to cross, let alone cross paths with. I’ve seen this slender woman drive a spiked heel through a man’s throat without mussing a hair. “I can see your point,” she tells me calmly as she flips back a glossy red lock. And then she drives the dagger home. “But you’re not a True Born.”

  Ouch. I feel the sting of her words, though there’s no denying it. I still don’t know what I am, but I know I’m not True Born. Not even by half measures. Even if I am helping them. In the Upper Circle, “True Born” is bandied about as an insult of the harshest proportions, making my hurt over Kira pointing out that I’m not one all the more ironic. I do not truly belong here in this world. I am the outsider, the freak.

  Funny how perceptions change.

  2

  A swift, insistent hammering sounds at the bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I finally grouch to the insistent knocker. It isn’t my bedroom—not really. But while Nolan Storm has it in his head to play my guardian, I’ll not argue. I have nowhere else to run.

  I’ve made it cozier since officially moving in after my home was destroyed. Now freshly cut grasses sit in a vase on the little table near the window, and I’ve placed a bright-red throw cushion on the chair across from the bed. Still, I’m not just sitting around on my once-rich thumbs, redecorating.

  Coming from the elite Upper Circle, I have access to networks of power that Nolan Storm needs. And, despite the fact that my parents haven’t been seen since the night our home was destroyed by magic bombs, the Fox name still carries a certain cachet. My father is chief diplomat of Dominion City and a beacon of influence across Nor-Am, though perhaps no longer serving his city. I use his reputation to help the True Borns’ leader. I know how to sashay across a room and dip into the perfect curtsy before foreign dignitaries, after all. I’ve stood before kings and titans of industry. I’ve smiled and danced my way into the good graces of many. It was my duty and I did it well. My parents had drilled into me the importance of working on the behalf of the family’s interests.

  I’m no longer sure I believe in those interests—especially now that my family is gone. But I believe in Nolan Storm. Nolan serves the interests of the True Borns, and that’s good enough for me. So now I attend these parties for him. Like a spider, I weave my web, listening for vibrations of power among Dominion’s elite. I crawl through their ranks, preying on those members of high society who still feel so entitled, so safe to share their secrets with one of their own. I am small but deadly. I am relentless. I’ll not stop until my questions have answers.

  Where are my parents? Where is my sister?

  In the hush of night, Nolan Storm squires me—or rather, I squire him—around Dominion’s Upper Circle supper clubs, its dances, its balls. Together we attend gallery openings, recitals, operas, and ballets, always accompanied by the charismatic Jared Price. As I play my part, Storm plays his: always officious and kind. Gentle, too—yet I’ve seen him rip a body in two.

  One day Dominion will bow to this leader of True Borns, though for now they try to ignore him. They can’t yet ignore me. I take great delight in pushing him forward into a society that would like to shun him, despite his influence in their lives. I introduce him to the nebulous power brokers of Dominion, though to me they are as familiar as the toys of childhood. I bring him into the inner sanctum of the Upper Circle, where until now no True Born has tread.

  And during the day, though tired from the night’s adventures, I hunt my own mysteries. Where are you, Margot?

  And yet, in all these months working on behalf of the True Borns, I have made no progress. No one seems to know where my parents, who I am convinced will lead me straight to Margot, have gone. And we’re no closer to figuring out why Father Wes and his followers, the Watchers, are so keen to get their hands on Margot and me. In four months, I have learned nothing, I realize with disgust. I am growing restless. While I would have jumped on a boat or into a plane and hared off to Russia anyway, the homeland of Leo Resnikov, Storm manages to convince me to stay a little longer, to give our intel system time to work. You’ll find her more quickly if you know where she is, Lucy, he’s told me again and again.

  He might even be right, but my patience hit its limit some time ago. I’ve decided to cultivate my own sources of information—which is why I now volunteer to work with Doc Raines at the Prayer Tree.

  I tug at that extra sense I was born with, the thin, invisible string that teth
ers me to my twin. The bond I share with my sister, my lifelong companion, has remained inert since the night she left.

  Wherever they’ve taken Margot, I reckon she’s far, far away.

  Storm ducks his head as he enters. He carries out his usual trick—the one where he seems to fill up all the space in the room. Around him the air crackles and blurs, especially around his head where the faint blue outline of an impressive set of antlers rises and tangles like a crown.

  He’s a handsome man. Handsome in a way that Jared Price could never be. Jared is a bum to this man’s prince. And he’s been good to me. In fact, Nolan Storm has been a better parent to me than my own, taking me in and becoming my guardian when I had nowhere to turn. Yet when I am in a room with Nolan Storm, when he looks at me with those eyes that shine like liquid metal, some part of me shivers and cowers in dread.

  “You’ll need some more new dresses. I’ll send you out shopping with Kira.” I try not to flinch as I mentally tally what I will owe Nolan Storm. I reckon I don’t hide it well enough.

  “We had a deal, Lucy.” He says the words gently enough, though I don’t miss the note of impatience.

  It’s not quite a Faustian bargain that I made, but it’s close. I live in Storm’s fortress at the top of the massive sky rise in the lap of luxury. Here I am surrounded by True Borns who will—no, have—protected me with their very lives. And without his patronage, as he’s reminded me a time or two, I could no longer afford to breathe the rarified air of the social circle I was born to inhabit.

  But that’s just it—I don’t like to be beholden to anybody. Certainly not for dresses. Nor for patronage. The Upper Circle can fall to the Plague for all I care.

  I came here with my own agenda. And that agenda isn’t being met.

  I pull my features into the indifferent mask of the diplomat’s daughter, the role I play so well, and square my shoulders at him. “I have not once complained about it.”

  Storm’s lips curl in amusement. “Well, that would be out of character anyway.”

  “And what kind of character am I, exactly?”

  I can tell he doesn’t expect the question. His eyelashes flutter down over those exquisite, molten silver eyes. He folds his arms across his chest as he leans against the wall, regarding me for a long moment.

  “I have no desire to make you do something against your will,” he finally says.

  “You have the wrong sister, you know,” I throw back after a beat.

  In the shallow light of the room, Storm’s face has turned all lines and dark planes. “Do I?”

  “You know you do. Margot is the one who enjoys the new dresses. I’m happier in my old school uniform.”

  “Funny, I didn’t get that impression from her.”

  “Well she wasn’t quite herself, was she?”

  It’s true. When Margot first met Storm, we’d been rescuing her from the Splicer Clinic where she was being held captive. I still don’t know who was behind her capture, nor everything they did to her while she was there—save for what they stole.

  Potentials. That’s what the Splicer docs call the eggs they harvest for in-vitro births. And maybe that is what they stole from my sister—her potential—since she struggled so hard afterward to imagine living her life again. And then she was stolen once more.

  Only this time it was a kidnapping sanctioned and abetted by our parents.

  “Lucy—” Storm begins.

  I cut him off. “You misunderstand me.” I fold my hands in my lap and stare at the well-groomed, overlapping fingernails. “I don’t mind what we’re doing. In fact, I’m enjoying it.”

  “Then what’s troubling you?” Storm waits for my answer patiently.

  But what can I tell him that he’ll understand?

  They say the Upper Circle live by another set of rules altogether from regular folk—and they’re right. While the rabble survive on scraps and tear their houses down to cook them, Margot and I have always dined on fine china dipped in gold.

  That doesn’t tell the real story, of course. No one will admit it, but the Upper Circle is its own hell, a prison where everyone is watched from all sides. We Fox sisters may not have starved or watched our family sicken and die in the streets, crazed from pain as the Plague quickly ate its way through their insides, but the Upper Circle has its own brand of ugly. Children of the Upper Circle are pawns in a game much vaster than I can fathom—not even from the great height of Nolan Storm’s sky-rise tower.

  Splicer. Laster. True Born. They say when you know, when at your Reveal they finally tell you how your genetic code will unravel your fate, there’s a vast sense of relief. Margot and I are now four months past our Reveal. There’s been no relief.

  We’re still waiting.

  We were connected as we entered this world, Margot and me. One flesh, one blood. All that’s left of that time are the dark maps drawn across our toes where we once joined. Mine is brown in the shape of a blotchy lock. Margot’s is long and thin with little teeth that make it look like a key. As kids we used to joke that the day before they cut us apart was the happiest day of our lives. Today, I’d mean it.

  There is a great deal I still don’t understand about us, my sister and me—such as why all through our childhood, our parents looked at us as though we were strangers visiting from another planet. But Margot and I have other secrets we’ve spent a lifetime pondering: like how whatever sensation she experiences seeps into my skin as though it is happening to me. And how is it I can practically write into a book the names of those about to be stricken by the Plague?

  But those are our secrets, Margot’s and mine.

  Then there are the other, bigger secrets hidden away in our blood. As Doc Raines has so eloquently put it, how is it that two creatures who shared the same blood for nine months have different DNA markers in their bloodstreams?

  These children will be our salvation, the preacher man, Father Wes, had told us as he captured my blood in vials and his mercs tried to murder us. We can draw a path to the future with their blood. For blood is the answer, blood is the divine holy river, the Flood that shall deliver us.

  They say we’re different. But now that she’s been stolen from me, all I feel is lost.

  What does a lock do without its key?

  Keep its secrets.

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Storm, I miss my sister, when there’s another sharp rap. Kira’s preternaturally beautiful face appears in the doorway.

  “Serena and Carl are in the elevator,” Kira says.

  Storm lets out a breath and ponders me for a long moment. “We’ll continue this conversation later. Come and meet us when you’re ready.”

  “Fine,” I reply with a casual flip of my shoulders. Truth be told, I’d love to avoid this conversation as long as possible. It would be hard, if not impossible, to explain to Storm that I have simply replaced one prison for another.

  By the time I’ve pulled myself together and found my way back to Storm’s meeting room, it’s near dark. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, small fires ring the city like twinkling beacons lighting the way to hell. The Lasters have begun their nightly ritual of setting the garbage bins on fire. All around those fires, the rabble will shove their sleepy babies into car apartments—cars stacked on parked cars—and lay down to sleep with one eye open and a prayer on their lips that they last through the night.

  Serena appears like a ghost in the reflection of the glass. Her long ash-blond hair hangs down her back, a lazy river against her slender form. When I enter, she turns sightless eyes on me. Serena may be blind, but she sees me just fine.

  She can clock me in a room of thousands, she says. Each one of my veins stands out to her, liquid silver to her dark sight. To her I’m as unique as a snowflake, something she’s never seen before. Different even from my sister, whose faint webs of silver flow in a different direction.

  “Lucy.” Her face lights with a smile as I walk over to hug her. “You look well,” she says.

&
nbsp; I may want to yell and scream, but my impeccable breeding can’t be ignored. “I am,” I say faintly. “And you?”

  Serena turns impish. “Carl and I just can’t stay away.”

  “To be fair,” says the large, marmalade-furred man perched on Storm’s sofa, “the vittles here are very good.” The cat man takes a sip of something that smells like gasoline and pauses, a purr lifting his bowed lips. A messy mop of cream hair sticks up from his head like an ill-wish doll. Bullet belts crisscross over his shoulder and run down his furred chest. He looks content enough now, but he can pull a gun faster than any lifer merc I’ve ever seen.

  Carl isn’t your average True Born. The Upper Circle has been hard at work making it impossible for most of them. But while True Borns with less flamboyant genetically expressed anomalies—a small fin or some gills, say—might be able to hide their differences and get by well enough, Carl is all cat. And he isn’t afraid to show it.

  Splicers hire Carl and Serena to find things. Sometimes objects, sometimes people. They’ve lived so long in the Black Market they’ve forgotten how to let go of their wildness. But while Serena’s elegant beauty lends her more to being an Upper Circle queen, Carl is an alley cat. I’ve overheard Storm’s people joke that they work well together because Serena can’t see him.

  Salvagers like Serena don’t mix with other True Borns, either. The salvager mutation represents the rarest form of True Born—so unique I’d thought they were just a bedtime story. Even Serena has never come across another. Like a genetically enhanced bloodhound, a salvager can sniff out True Born mutations. It’s the kind of gift that makes other True Borns nervous, knowing they can be exposed. I’d as soon have her on my side, though, if it meant she and Carl could sniff out where my sister has been taken. I’ve wished, more than once these past few weeks, that those mutations left trails like scents.

  But these days, we are all after a different quarry.

  “Any luck?” I nod to Carl, whose smile fades at my words.