Deviate

by Tracy Clark

  I looked from her to Mari, whose dark eyes—very much the large, almond shape of Cora’s—pierced me with incredulity and fear.

  “You unbelievable prick,” Mari said. Mari wouldn’t die without a fight. I didn’t know her well, but I knew enough. I was reeling. I needed to ask her where Cora was, if she was safe, get her out of here somehow. But everyone’s eyes were on me, waiting. “Not here—I need to do this alone—” I started, but Lorcan cut me off.

  “He says he knows her,” he said with a shake to Mari’s shoulders. “Says he won’t kill her.”

  The hope that passed over Mari’s expressive face killed me. I had no idea how I was going to get her out of there.

  Ultana strode over, pulling her glove off her one hand with her teeth as she approached. “All the more reason to finish her. We can’t simply let her walk out of this house, now can we? If Finn is”—she tossed a withering look at me that was all condescension and spite—“too obtuse to see that obvious fact, then I will kill her myself.” She grabbed Mari’s chin and yanked her face toward hers. “We clean up our messes.”

  Forty-Four

  Cora

  “Tell me what was the meaning of that charade back there,” Giovanni lit into me as soon as we entered my room. “You wanted to look around, obviously. Why not trust me with that information before you stuck your mad dog on me?”

  I fought a grin at his improper use of Dun’s words. “I do want to talk about trust.”

  He put his hands on his slender hips and cocked his head sideways. “Yes?”

  “Can I trust you? Really trust you?”

  Giovanni took me in his arms and looked down into my face with concern. “I’d do anything for you. You must know this by now, Cora.”

  I watched his face, unwilling to completely abandon the old ways of reading people. But I also watched his aura. I was getting better at analyzing silver, as my mom had said I would. I needed to read him clearly. I wanted to trust, but after Finn, it was so hard. “Pure honesty. I’m asking for that, okay?”

  He fingered a curl near my temple, but his eyes never wavered or betrayed any nervousness. I, on the other hand, wished he’d stop touching me so tenderly. Intimately. He was making me flutter with his electric touch and starlit attention.

  “What do you know about Claire?”

  His gaze went from starry and open to perplexed. “I know what you do. That she’s adorable, but with a mystifying aura. She is clearly very bright and—”

  “She’s yours.”

  Giovanni’s hands dropped to his sides like lead weights were attached to his wrists. He stepped back, clearly stunned. “Ex-explain.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Cora! Jesus! Explain!” He paced back and forth. “I can’t comprehend what you are telling me,” he said in a freaked way, so desperate that I suddenly believed he had no idea about Claire. I stepped to him and wrapped him in a hug. I wasn’t prepared for his desperately clutching hug in return. His arms encircled me; his hands splayed out over my back as he pressed me to him. His chin rested atop my head; his heart hammered in his chest. “Please tell me what you’re talking about,” he whispered. “I don’t believe what you are saying.”

  “I read it in her medical file,” I said, infusing my words with calmness, though my insides were quaking. “It said you’re the father.”

  Holding on to me like a life preserver, he stumbled back and sat on the edge of the bed, his hands sliding a streak of sparks over my hips.

  “Look at her, G. It’s obvious.”

  Giovanni’s eyes were a palette of bewilderment, anger, hopefulness… “I want to go see her. I want to see Claire now.”

  “You don’t want to confront Dr. M? He created a child from your…um…genetic material.” I didn’t even want to think about how that was obtained. “Without your permission or knowledge.”

  “Yes, yes…but Cora, don’t you understand?” He grabbed my shoulders, his voice desperate and urgent. “If what you’re saying is true, she’s part of me. Family. My blood.”

  I understood. Giovanni had lost everyone he loved in one swoop. “But—but we need to talk to him right now. If he’s capable of doing something so underhanded and morally wrong, who knows what else he’s capable of?” I pulled his hand and he followed, bewildered but willing.

  No sooner did we step to the door and open it than we faced my mom and Abraham standing on the other side. Abraham looked demolished and his emotional state was obviously affecting my mom. “We’re leaving to talk to Dr. M about something,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Abraham is worried,” my mother said. “It’s getting late and Teruko and Mari have not returned.”

  “Maybe they’re just enjoying themselves, enjoying being out,” Giovanni said, but Mom shook her head violently and began pacing in circles. I didn’t like to see the shadows of her locked-up self. “No, no, no. He’s a seer. A clairvoyant. He saw a vision of something terrible happening to Teruko,” she said.

  Dread hit me like a cold wind. “And Mari?” I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else. “What did you see, Abraham?”

  Stooped and frail, his firm grip surprised me when his shaky hand grasped my shoulder. His answer came out in one cracked rasp. “Death.”

  Forty-Five

  Finn

  “Kill me, you foul Arrazi hag. But if you do, I won’t be able to tell you where the Scintilla are hiding.”

  Ultana’s grip instantly released from Mari’s chin. But then, quick as a whip, she slapped her. Hard. Mari’s head snapped back, equally fast, and even though tears glossed her brown eyes, she stared hard at Ultana, daring her to do it again. I had to hand it to Mari. She was tough and fast on her feet, but I badly wanted to believe she wouldn’t tell them. She was a scrapper and she was buying time.

  “How do you know of the Scintilla or the Arrazi?” Ultana asked in a measured tone, though her breathing pitched with anger. I liked to see her taken so off guard.

  Mari’s trembling chin lifted. “You’d love to think the world is ignorant about people like you. But you’d be shocked,” Mari said, rubbing her cheek. “Soon, the world will know all about you and the Scintilla. I bet they lock every last one of you up when that happens.”

  Something deadly but fearful passed in Ultana’s eyes. “Locked up,” she said, her face an inch from Mari’s, “is something I will never be.” Mari’s chest heaved forward. She screamed.

  “No!” I yelled. “She comes from a Scintilla family!”

  I shouldn’t have said it, but it was the only thing that would stop Ultana from killing her right then and there. Mari gasped and bent forward with her hand over her heart, struggling for breath.

  “Get up, boy!” Ultana barked at me. I was having trouble focusing. Adrenaline had gassed me up only so much.

  “He can’t get up,” Saoirse said to her mother. I’d nearly forgotten she was there. She stood, completely restored, with a dead girl lying at her feet.

  Mari bit her trembling lip when she looked down at the open but lifeless eyes of the girl. “Teruko…” she whimpered.

  “Lorcan put some kind of spell on Finn. He can’t move his legs. That’s why Lorcan had to find someone and bring them to us.”

  Ultana’s head jerked to look at her son.

  “Finn was talking to a girl at the party,” he stammered. “A silver one, but how was I supposed to know? I’d never felt it before. I wanted her spirit, Mum,” he said like a boy who’d wanted candy. “I attacked her but stopped when I saw her Xepa ring.”

  Ultana looked at me after a lengthy pause, where I’m sure she was wondering how in the hell a Scintilla got a ring to pass herself off as a member of the Society. “You have secrets, Mr. Doyle.”

  My energy flagging, I swallowed hard and tried to take in a full breath. “Don’t we all?”

  She chuckled. “Indeed. Kill soon or you’ll die with yours. Lorcan dear, where did you find these young women?”

  “In a van, by the side of the
road.”

  Mari struggled to stand. Her eyes were on me when she said, “I want to talk to Finn alone. I will only talk to him.” Mention of the van clearly scared her.

  Ultana ignored her. “Return to the van, son,” she said. “Surely it’s registered to someone with an address. We can start there.”

  “Want me to bring another warm body?” he asked.

  “No need. Finn will make his choice. We will either have two dead bodies on our hands”—she looked at me—“or three.”

  Lastly, she addressed Mari. “We may not need you for information after all. And clearly, though he needs you in order to live, Finn’s pesky conscience won’t allow him to do with you what is necessary. You’ve bought yourself hours, at most.” She patted her own cheek. “I’m feeling a bit peaky myself, and I have no compunction about using you.”

  Mari’s nostrils flared as she glared at Ultana with no effort to disguise her contempt. “This world would be so much better without people like you. How do you live with yourself?”

  “I’ve had many years to adjust, and I find it quite easy to live with myself. You learn over time to keep what you must and to discard what is not useful. So you see, I have discarded my chafing conscience. It’s a trifling thing meant to keep us marching in line. I am Arrazi. I do not live by other people’s rules.”

  Forty-Six

  Cora

  “Death?”

  I fought for each demanding breath. I couldn’t face death. Not again. I used to associate black with death. Dark oblivion. White was the color of death now. But Abraham didn’t say anything about the Arrazi in his vision.

  “How? Can you see how it happens? When?”

  Abraham lifted my free hand and traced a spiral in my palm. “I only hear a song of death,” he said in his Japanese accent, his finger circling over and over. “It is louder now.”

  Adrenaline flooded my body and sent my silver aura spiking around me. The four of us stood in the hall, our Scintilla auras flaring. Seriously, what had I done in another life to deserve this fresh, hot hell?

  Giovanni grabbed my hand and held it. “We’ll go look for them.”

  “Thank you,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. After the inconceivable news he’d received, it was incredibly sweet for him to suspend that, for now, and see if we could find Mari and Teruko before her grandfather’s vision of death could come true.

  If it hadn’t already.

  We all ran down the hall toward the elevators. A white-clothed attendant asked if we needed assistance.

  “Yes,” I said. “We need to see Dr. M right away. It’s an emergency.”

  “I’m afraid Dr. M is not currently present in the facility,” the man said, his curious gaze falling on each of us in turn. The tuft of black that flew into his aura from his mouth sent me into a rage.

  “Not pres—where is he? I know you’re lying. Call him! It’s an emergency! We need to know if there’s a way to reach Teruko. She and my cousin may be in danger and every second that we stand here wasting time is time that could be spent helping them!”

  “Hey,” said Dun, poking his head out from his room with pillow creases in his cheek. “What’s with the rowdiness?”

  A ripple of concern passed over the attendant’s placid face and then faded. “I’m sorry. The doctor cannot be disturbed.”

  Giovanni clutched the man by his shirt, lifting him to his toes. “Disturb him.”

  Dun ran over as I pushed the elevator button. “If you can’t contact him, then tell him we had to go. We need a car so we can go look for the girls. Who is in charge of the cars around here?” I jabbed my finger on the button again. Unresponsive.

  Dun touched my shoulder. “Cora? Look for what girls? Is it Mari?” he asked with a stricken look. I nodded.

  The man held up his hand to me, blocking me from the elevator control panel. “You cannot leave the facility, miss. It is prohibited.”

  A few awful beats of silence followed before at least three of us shouted for an explanation.

  I kicked the elevator doors and very nearly kicked the man. “‘Prohibited’ is not a word I’ll accept right now! I’ll be damned if you’re going to tell me I’m not free to walk out of this facility!” I turned to Giovanni. “I’d never have agreed to come here if someone was going to make me a prisoner again!” The same despairing panic that had overtaken me in Clancy’s keep arose in me.

  Giovanni’s response was to give the guy another hearty shake by his shirt like a cloth doll. “You punch in the elevator code and help us get out of here or be responsible for the lives that are lost.”

  I reached for the buttons with the intention of doing what I’d done with the computer earlier, but before I reached it, I felt stinging hot voltage nick me in the side of my neck. Screams rang around me like broken glass bells. My muscles folded in half. The hallway rotated in distorted angles as I fell to the floor. Clouds of silver drifted down like stars.

  My body jerked as if I’d been falling. My eyes sprang open. A flat, firm bed was underneath me, harsh fluorescent lights above. In my groggy state, I tried to move but couldn’t. Every limb was pinned to the table. Even my head was strapped down. I struggled to loose myself, but it did nothing but exhaust me. Despair was a tempest raging from my chest outward, a mix of disbelief and hopelessness. A hot tear trickled down my temple. I hadn’t realized I was crying. But of course I was. How could I not?

  My cousin was missing, possibly dead, and I was trapped like some kind of rabid animal in this enigma of a research facility. “Hey!” I screamed. “Hey!” An excruciating amount of silence passed before I heard someone moving and the telltale grunts of the same struggle I’d just endured.

  Angry words in Italian wrapped around me like shiny pearls. Giovanni.

  “I’m here with you,” I gasped. The sound of struggling stopped.

  “I’m going to kill someone,” he said, the bloody promise of vengeance dripping from the knife of his words. Giovanni was obsessed with retaliation in a way that I wasn’t, but at times like this, I could see his point. “Is anyone else in here?” he asked.

  “Cora?” my mom’s soft voice called out. I really could kill, thinking of my mother, frightened and trapped. She didn’t deserve another day in captivity. Not. One. More. We thought we were safe.

  “I love you, Mom.” My words, a staccato attempt to calm her and—and what if I never had another chance to say them? What if we never had the opportunity to be a mother and daughter? What if these last couple of weeks, these fleeting moments, were all we’d ever have? There was a stream of things running through my head, but the only thought that rose to the top over and over again was, “I love you.”

  Dun was the last to come to. He yelled out a warrior’s cry after battling the straps with no success. His anguish stoked my own. I wanted to scream with him. The longer we lay here, the worse our chances of saving Mari and Teruko. “Abraham?” I asked, wanting to ask him exactly what he’d seen in his mind’s eye. I’d find a way out of here, but that was one step. How could I find the girls in a city as big as Dublin? Please let him be wrong. “Abraham?” I called again.

  “He’s dead,” Dr. M said from somewhere in the room. The strike of a hammer.

  Mom began to cry.

  Dr. M approached and stood over me, looking down with an expression so sympathetic that I vowed to slap it off him when my hands were free. “His heart failed with the shock from the electrodes. I’m sorry to have to resort to such medieval practices, but you must know it is not acceptable to attack my staff.”

  My back teeth ground together so hard that pain shot through my jaw. “The longer you rob us of our freedom, the longer it will take to find Mari and Teruko. Abraham said that—”

  “I’m well aware of the situation, Ms. Sandoval. We used a tracking device, and the van has already been recovered. Regretfully, the girls were not found.”

  “So you have no idea what happened to them?”

  “I do have some idea. I’m goin
g to release your restraints now. There’s footage from the van I’d like to show you. I trust you won’t be exhibiting any more aggressive behavior.”

  “Don’t trust me,” I growled.

  That seemed to amuse him. “Fair play. You can trust me, however. You can trust that you will severely regret it if you fight.” He shook his head sadly. “All of this is so unnecessary. We’re on the same team.”

  With the metallic click of a latch, one of my arms came free. A quiet, efficient worker helped to undo the rest of my straps. As soon as the last restraint fell away, I bolted upright, swung my legs sideways, and kicked Dr. M in the stomach. He flew backward into a metal cabinet. I leaped off the table. Immediately, a gun was pointed in my face.

  I shoved the barrel away. “Untie everyone, now!” I rubbed my chafed wrist and looked at the man with the gun. “You’re really going to kill one of the most rare and valuable possessions on the planet?”

  “Come with me,” Dr. M said with his hand on his stomach where I’d nailed him. He showed no indication of doing as I’d demanded. I instantly felt five years old. He had colossal audacity to turn his back on me, but I realized his helper was right behind me with the gun pointed at my back, and I didn’t know what his orders were. And there was Dun, the only non-Scintilla among us.

  “Untie my family!”

  Dr. M flinched but did not respond. “Bring Giovanni with us, as well,” he told another man who nodded, soon joining us with a very pissed-off Giovanni. If they could read eye-speak, they’d see that we had nothing on our minds but kicking some ass and getting the hell out of there. Real guns, though? This was new.

  I’d grown so accustomed to being afraid of the silent kill of an Arrazi. I hadn’t thought of real weapons being used to threaten us. If Giovanni used his sortilege with real guns, too much could go wrong. I hoped he had the same thought. Before anything went down, I needed to see what Dr. M could show us of Mari and Teruko’s disappearance.