by Jade Kerrion
Danyael shrugged. “It was just an idea. If you can’t find what you want, you might have to make it yourself.”
That idea of a foundation was crazy. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Everyone who has ever started a foundation was once in the same position.” He limped to the door and opened it.
Dee pushed to her feet, but lingered at the doorway. She stared into his face, familiar to her now but no less breathtaking than the first time she had seen it. She had imagined him an angel once, bright and terrible in beauty. He was human though. She had seen him drained and exhausted after twelve hours of work, too tired to speak or even care that he came across as distant and unsociable, yet he continued to train Dum. He cared enough to ensure that her brother did not screw up. “Why are you helping us?” she asked and immediately regretted the abrupt tenor of her question.
Danyael did not seem to take offense. “A friend once told me that you should never have to go through life alone. You shouldn’t have to be the only one watching out for you.”
“Zara said that?” She winced at the incredulity in her own voice.
He chuckled. “No, of course not. Zara doesn’t say stuff like that. I didn’t have a family growing up, but I had a good friend who more than made up for it.”
“Lucien Winter.”
Danyael nodded. “I’m not going to hover over you, Dee. I don’t have the time or energy for it, but I hope you don’t mind if I keep an eye on you and your brother.”
Her chest ached as if it would burst. Her grin wobbled. “That’s fine,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “As long as you promise not to nag.”
“I don’t have the time or energy for that either. Now, off you go. I have patients to see.”
As she left the free clinic and headed back home, the thoughtful frown on her face eased into a reflective arch of the brow. A foundation that offered scholarships to orphans had interesting possibilities, but how would she even begin?
The question nagged at Dee for days and distracted her as she worked. Instead of flipping through college catalogs in between jobs, she researched all she could on foundations and ran into a wall of incomprehensible legalese. Grimacing, she tossed her tablet down on the futon and grunted in frustration.
Her brother peeked into her bedroom, his ever-present ear pods in his ears. His expression was quizzical.
Dee looked up at him. “Danyael had an idea about starting a foundation that gives college scholarships to orphans.” She shook her head, finally admitting to herself that she was stymied by its challenges. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”
Dum’s gaze flashed to the pile of glossy college brochures. He sat down on the futon beside her and picked up a college catalog that had seen more wear than others. He flipped through the pages, his expression growing more skeptical by the moment. Obviously, he was not considering college one of his future options.
Dee flushed and snatched the brochure out of his hand. “College was a stupid idea, too. I mean, come on, even the name sounds snotty.”
Dum took the brochure back, grabbed a pen off her bedside table, and started scribbling on her precious Princeton brochure. We could hold a dance party to raise money.
A dance party? Her eyes widened. That idea was not too far removed from what Dum did every night. He had a following; people came from all around Anacostia to dance at the club. In fact, just the prior night, Dee had served drinks to several people from other parts of Washington D.C. and Virginia who had risked life and limb by venturing into Anacostia to listen to Dum deejay at the club. Dum did not just have a following. His fame was spreading.
She threw her arms around Dum’s neck and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You are brilliant.”
His grin was sheepish.
“Let’s get to the clinic. It’s almost time for your training, and I want to talk to Danyael about your idea.”
They ran the two blocks to the clinic, arriving just as the last patient was leaving. The frowning receptionist glared at Dee and Dum, but scurried out the door with the patient, apparently abandoning the task of cleaning the clinic to Danyael. Dee waited until the door closed behind the receptionist and then looked at Danyael. “Why don’t you do something about her sour puss attitude?”
From the door of his office, Danyael managed a weary smile. “It’s too deep set. I’d have to absorb her emotions to change her, and I’m not sure I want to become like her, even if it’s just for a day or two. I have enough issues to wrestle with. Come on, Dum. Let’s get started.”
Dee fetched mop and pail from the bathroom and had just begun mopping down the floors when the doorbell chimed softly. She twisted around, her eyes flaring wide with alarm when Zara walked into the clinic with her sleeping daughter nestled in her arms. Dee gaped at the assassin. “I locked the door.”
Zara held up a key.
Dee sagged with relief. “Thank God. I don’t think I could have handled knowing that you’re a closet telekinetic, on top of everything else.”
Zara arched a perfectly tweezed brow and made Dee feel like the gauche teenager she was. “Everything else?”
Dee waved her hand. “You know…”
“Mercenary? Assassin? Professional working woman?”
Dee chuckled, a nervous sound.
“Is Danyael still working with your brother?” Zara asked. Her voice was brisk and did not match the sultry image she projected in her black leather pants and revealing top.
“They just started. Do you want me to get him?”
Zara shook her head.
Dee surreptitiously wiped the sweaty palms of her hands against her denim jeans.
Zara smiled. “You have nothing to fear from me, Dee, though I wouldn’t mind knowing more about you.”
“Me?”
“Danyael has apparently decided to go to bat for you and your brother. I’d like to know what he’s going up against.”
Dee’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Close the door of Danyael’s office so we can talk in private.”
Danyael stopped talking to Dum long enough to cast Dee a quick glance when she eased the door of his office shut, but he said nothing. Edgy and nervous, Dee then returned to the narrow reception area and took a seat across from Zara.
The assassin broke the silence first, her voice cool. “What is Danyael’s interest in you and your brother?”
“I came to him when the council said it wouldn’t train Dum. I just want Dum to have a chance to be normal.”
Zara smirked, though Dee was not sure what the other woman found humorous about her words. “What happened to your brother?”
Dee shrugged, the ache so familiar that she scarcely felt it anymore. “When we were five, pro-humanists from Purest Humanity broke into our house. They tied up our parents and accused Dad of contaminating the gene pool.” She could still see her mother’s stricken face, scared and pale in the dim light cast by the bedside lamp. Her father’s face was contorted with pain, his nose bloody and lip split. His eye was bruised and swollen. The pro-humanists had beaten him before tying him up.
“They thought he was a mutant,” Dee continued quietly. She kept her eyes locked on some invisible spot on the floor. It was easier than meeting Zara’s penetrating and somehow knowing gaze. “They put the gun in Dum’s hand and made him point the gun at Dad’s face. Dad tried to stop them. He wasn’t begging for his life. He was begging his tormentors to spare Dum. But…”
“They made Dum pull the trigger anyway,” Zara finished when Dee’s voice trailed into silence.
“Yes.” She had never been able to scrub out the memory of her father’s shattered, bloodied face, or of the wretched disbelief and horror etched over Dum’s face. “Dum’s last words were ‘No,’ just before the bullet blew through our father’s brains.” The silence that had rushed in to fill the empty space was dark and vicious, alive and devouring. She hated silence. “Dum hasn’t spoken since.”
“Not onc
e in twelve years?”
Dee shook her head. “I talk twice as much to make up for it,” she said as she laughed, but it was a bitter sound. She talked to keep the silence from consuming her the way it had consumed Dum and her mother after the death of her father.
“And what about your mother?”
“After Dad died, we moved from New Jersey to Kansas. Mom thought we would be safer away from the large cities teeming with frustrated humans who found themselves supplanted by in vitros and clones, but it didn’t matter where we were. When Dum and I were twelve, Mom was killed in the genetic riots that broke out in Wichita.”
“But why?”
Dee bit down on her lower lip. “Because she was the mutant, not Dad. The pro-humanists had their facts wrong. Dad wasn’t a mutant. If they’d known that Mom was the mutant, they might have made me kill her instead.” Dee squeezed her eyes shut and ground her teeth to hold back the whimper of pain. She should have been the killer, not her brother. She should have been the one trapped in a silent world, stunted by shock and guilt, and unlike Dum who had found a way to channel his empathic powers and express himself through his music, she would never have found her way out of her silent hell.
“What happened after your mother passed away?”
Dee did not dare speak until she thought she could keep her voice steady. “Reyes took us in to Elysium. We lived there for five years until the council burned it to the ground. You know the rest of the story.”
“Does Danyael know?”
Dee nodded. “He’s known for a long time. I told him what happened to us when we were at Elysium together; I asked him to help Dum and he said he would. He kept his word, even if it took several months.”
“Danyael’s good at keeping his word.”
“Dum’s doing great. I mean, he’s still not talking, but he’s got a job as a deejay at Legends, and people are coming to hear him every night. He’s even interacting with people without being nudged in the ribs, and just now, he came up with a great idea to raise funds for the foundation.”
“What foundation?”
Dee grinned and sat up straight, grateful to be talking about the future instead of the past. “Dum and I are going to start a foundation to provide orphans with scholarships and other kinds of financial assistance for college. Humans, derivatives, it doesn’t matter, but I think our first focus will be the children whose parents were killed at Elysium or in Sakti’s attack on the city on July Fourth.”
“That’s an interesting idea.”
Dee grinned. “Danyael tossed it out there a few days ago. It’s crazy, I know, but I think we can do it. I could talk to Mario, and we could hold some kind of dance party at the club. We’d charge a bit more for entrance, and the money would go toward the foundation.”
“A couple of hundred dollars a night would still take forever to bestow a scholarship. Think bigger, Dee. Where would you hold the dance party of the decade?”
“Uh…” Her jaw dropped as she contemplated the question. “The Kennedy Center, I guess, or a big stadium.”
“What would it take you to get into those venues?”
“Lots of friends in high places.” Dee’s lip curled in a sardonic half-smile. “I don’t have any of those.”
“Danyael does. He has lots of friends in very high places.” Zara chuckled at the disbelieving expression that must have flashed across Dee’s face. “Oh, don’t let the fact he’s earning less than minimum wage in a dead-end job in a charity clinic fool you. Danyael is one of the most powerful alpha empaths in the world, and people like to cluster close to the heart of power. He has many strings to pull and many debts he can call in.”
“Will he?”
“He’s made a commitment to help your brother, and by extension, you. Danyael doesn’t go half way. Helping you will force him back into society, to reconnect with people he’s been avoiding for months.”
“So you have an ulterior motive.”
Zara smiled, apparently unoffended. “I almost always have an ulterior motive, but in this case, it is Danyael’s well-being. You want your brother to be normal. I want Danyael to be normal. Between the two of us, we can likely get our men where we need them to be.”
Dee grinned up at the woman. Zara was not any less intimidating, but there was a softer, gentler light that she had not noticed before in the woman’s striking violet eyes.
The door of Danyael’s office opened and Dum sauntered out, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his brown hair askew under his baseball cap. He dug his ear pods out of his pocket and inserted them into his ears.
Danyael limped out behind Dum and cast Zara a guarded look.
The assassin pushed to her feet, wearing an expression of deliberate nonchalance. “Can you take Laura tonight?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure what time I can come for her.”
“That’s fine. She’ll be at the clinic with me tomorrow if you’re late.”
Dee rolled her eyes at Zara’s back. She had yet to see a more screwed-up relationship or stilted conversations between two people who supposedly loved each other. Zara and Danyael were still treading on eggshells around each other, careful not to offend, but as a result, making no headway either. “Hey, Danyael. Dum came up with an idea to hold a dance party to raise money for the foundation.”
He smiled, a rare grin that caused his dark eyes to sparkle. “So you’ve decided to go ahead with the foundation.”
“Yeah, you twisted my arm,” Dee said, the nonchalance in her tone contrasting with her cheeky grin. “I want to go big, maybe hold it in a stadium, but I don’t know where to start.”
Danyael cast Zara a narrowed-eyed glance. The look she returned was innocent. Danyael returned his attention to Dee. “What do you have in mind?”
What did she want? Everything. She smiled even though she knew she would sound like a dreamy imbecile at best. “I want everyone to be there, humans, in vitros, clones, and mutants. I want everyone dancing and singing. We would all come together and, for once, forget that we’re different.” She clasped her hands together, and her smile widened. “It’ll be on Christmas Eve.” She could see the glittering lights and sparkles on the stage, the spotlights whirling over the dance floor, flashing a dizzying display over gyrating bodies. “Dum will be on the stage, and everyone will be dancing. It’ll be stupendous.”
Danyael and Zara exchanged a glance. “Christmas is two months away,” he said finally. “We’ll have to move quickly if you want to pull this off by Christmas Eve.”
Her eyes widened. “You’ll help me?”
“I know people who can.”
“Really? Like who?”
“If you want everyone to be there, you’ll have to go to their leaders. You already know the Mutant Affairs Council; Seth would be the person to talk to. As for the clones, you can talk to Xin. She’s one of the first historic clones and is more influential than most people believe her to be. She can tap into the community of clones. For the in vitros…” A muscle twitched in his smooth jaw, and he sighed, more motion than sound. “Lucien Winter. More than anyone else, his financial support can make the foundation a success.”
“And what about the humans?”
“Most humans are moderate; they’ll come regardless, but if you want the pro-humanists to attend too, you’ll have to talk to the president of Purest Humanity.”
Dee’s eyes went flat. “He killed my father.”
“Pro-humanists killed your father. Twelve years ago, Jason wasn’t even a member of Purest Humanity.”
“Jason?”
“Jason Rakehell.”
Dee scoffed. “That’s an apt name. Do you know him?”
Danyael nodded. “He’s my brother.”
Her jaw dropped. “He’s what?” She searched Danyael’s face for the joke, but did not find it. “He’s your brother, but then that would mean that his father…”
“Yes, our father, Roland Rakehell, used my genes to design Galahad’s ph
ysical appearance.”
Dee pressed her fingertips against her forehead. All this time, she had thought that her family’s history was screwed up. She knew better now; her crazy family history didn’t have anything on Danyael’s. No wonder he wasn’t normal. If she were Danyael, she wouldn’t be normal either.
“Are you on speaking terms with Jason?” Dee ventured.
“We are now,” Danyael said. “None of this is public knowledge, Dee,” he cautioned. “Don’t spread it around. My father won’t tolerate any hint of negative publicity on his choices and his role in Galahad’s creation.”
Zara snorted. “I’d say the damage’s done. He’s persona non grata in the genetic research community these days.”
“I’m not planning to wreck my fledging relationship with my father,” Danyael said. “But more to the point, if anyone can get the pro-humanists to attend the concert, it would be Jason Rakehell.”
“Will it be safe having pro-humanists in the same place as clones, in vitros, and mutants?” Dee asked.
Zara chuckled, the sound low and amused. “Probably not, but if it were safe, what would be the fun in it?”
9
Dee’s meeting with Xin took place the following evening in Zara’s home, an attractive red-bricked townhouse in an upper middle-class Georgetown neighborhood. The home was surprisingly sedate; Dee had not been sure what to expect from a woman who handled guns and knives as easily as other women handled earrings and necklaces. The living room was messy with toys and books strewn over expensive carpets and designer furniture from Europe. On the surface, the house seemed like a normal home until one took a closer look and found gun catalogs next to alphabet books.
Laura Itani, however, did not appear to mind and cooed with delight over gun catalogs in the same way she cooed over the small teddy bear that Dee brought with her. The little girl was going to grow up into a terror like her mother.
Poor Danyael.
“Spiced apple cider for you?” Zara asked, looking out from the kitchen.
“Yes, sure,” Dee said.