Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3)

by Washington, Jane

  I balked, my face rapidly turning red, but Weston held up his hand to cut off my spluttering protest, shaking his head again.

  “I’m not testifying as to the truth of the rumours, but they’re rumours we can ill-afford. You aren’t the only one receiving constant threats, Miss Black.” Oh, really? “I have my people to protect, and you are my means to protect them, so you must now present yourself in a way that they find trustworthy. Every day I receive an anonymous threat from some human or another. Maybe tomorrow it will be a wannabe military hero with nothing better to do than chase after a race of people that some conspiracy blog on the Internet has deemed impure, or maybe it will be a teenage hacker, who wishes to be rid of us because we won’t respond to their constant, childish blackmailing. Maybe it’ll be a former Zev, who was expelled from our society and resents that the benefits of our society are no longer accessible to them. Whoever it is, I need to be able to burn that threat knowing that our bluff is as great as theirs.

  “You probably haven’t thought of our situation in these terms yet, but over the centuries, the humans have only grown stronger while the Atmá power in each passing Zevghéri generation grows more diluted. They tried to wipe our people out completely in the middle ages, and now they’re gearing up for another genocide. Dominic knew it, I know it… they haven’t conceived of us growing stronger, so they think that it will a simple, clean operation. It won’t be. And once we train you and the other test subjects up, you will stand at the forefront of our race for all the humans to see: pillars of strength and power.”

  “I get it,” I croaked, wanting Weston to stop talking more than anything. I retreated in silence, pushing upon the door that Weston had indicated earlier and disappearing into the room.

  Weston was insane.

  His plan would never work, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to prevent it… but I would. I wasn’t an instrument of persuasion, or a symbol to rally around. I was… I was just Seraph Black, and what that meant was something that only I could decide. I wasn’t a test subject without parents, searching for purpose, desperate to protect the underdog—the way Weston apparently saw me. I had family, I had purpose, and I was well aware that I couldn’t protect every person out there needing protection. Weston had invested too much in a desperate plan to change the world, and now it was too late for him to admit that the plan was a failure, so he was going to force it into being, and the rest of us would suffer.

  I would have to be the one to stop him.

  Cabe’s ‘residence’ began with a formal sitting room to greet you as soon as you left the hallway. It looked entirely unused, and even though everything had been kept spotless, I still felt as if there was a layer of forgotten dust that blanketed the space. I was quick to pass through the room and into the bedroom beyond. The bed had a headboard that stretched almost three times the size of a normal headboard, and between the dancing patterns carved into the wood were panels of golden suede padding. I shook my head a little, running my fingers over the pale gold bedding, briefly enjoying the slide of silk beneath my touch before I moved on to the windows. They were set high and wide, tempered glass held between the careful fingers of dark-toned wood, forming doors that I suspected led out to a balcony of some kind. I could see the winding, cobblestoned road below lit by lampposts and disappearing gradually into darkness. Beyond that, the moonlight barely hinted at a long stretch of flat, empty terrain.

  There were no personal effects left inside the room, though the wardrobe was half-filled with clothes, and several pairs of shoes lined a special shoe cabinet. There were no photo frames, no paintings on the wall, and no books lying around. I shrugged off an uneasy shiver, moving to explore the attached bathroom. There were no toiletries inside the marble shower, but a full bottle of shampoo and conditioner had been stacked under the cabinet, waiting for someone to use them. I frowned, opening the cap and smelling the shampoo. A light spring scent hit me, causing something suspiciously like a sob to catch in the back of my throat. Cabe still used the same kind of shampoo.

  I moved the shampoo and conditioner into the shower and then turned back to consult the mirror, notching my hands against the marble sink. My hair was a mess, my bandages were beginning to unravel, and my eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. If I was honest with myself, I looked like a crazed person. The collar glared at me from the mirror, looking annoyingly perfect and unmarred in contrast to my general appearance. I wanted to rip it off and shove it down the messenger’s throat, and now that my valcrick was back… I almost wished that he would hunt me down and try to end it once and for all. I would make both of us go boom, and if I was lucky, the valcrick would put me back together again afterwards.

  Oh god… it suddenly hit me then, the real reason that Weston saw such value in me.

  If the valcrick could bring me back from the brink of death, I could fool people into thinking that I couldn’t die. Weston could use to me scare off any interest the humans might have in victimizing us, because who really wanted to fight a person that couldn’t die? Groaning, I pushed away from the sink, disgusted that I was thinking along the same lines as Weston. I closed the bathroom door and pulled off my clothes and the bandages, kicking them to a corner of the bathroom before standing in front of the mirror again.

  It felt strange to see my body unmarked, unbruised, and healthy. I had grown used to avoiding my own reflection at all costs, not wanting to be confronted with the inevitable signs of Gerald’s abuse. Now Gerald was dead, again, and there wasn’t a single mark on my body exempting the damage to my hands that I had done myself. Maybe I was staring at myself in an attempt to ignore the fact of Gerald’s second death, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away, whatever the reason. I wasn’t as skinny as I used to be. Where my ribs had previously poked out, they now blended into my skin. There was a slight strain of muscle where previously there had been nothing; my hips had become more rounded and my breasts fuller. Maybe it was puberty, or maybe it was something else. Everything was somehow both stronger and softer at the same time. It was as though my very soul had been crowding into the corner of my frame, scared to take up any space, but now it had settled into my skin, completing my appearance.

  I jumped into the shower and washed with Cabe’s hair products, trying to keep my mind from travelling back to the kiss we had shared to seal the bond, though it was difficult with his scent suddenly surrounding me. I had thought about what it would be like to kiss Cabe and Noah, especially in the times that the strain had taken a hold of me, but none of my thoughts could have prepared me for the reality. Forming the bond had broken down my final wall of resistance, and now I was captive to the memory of a strong pair of hands gripping me while a firm mouth pulled the past from my lips and changed my future forever. Briefly, I wondered what it would be like to kiss one of the guys out of simple want rather than a need to accomplish something.

  Somehow, it didn’t seem like the sort of life that I was destined to live, but I allowed the fantasy to take roots anyway, curling something inside my belly that settled heavily and refused to budge. I opened the glass shower door after rinsing myself and a scream immediately hit the back of my throat.

  The woman sitting on the sink laughed, jumping off and handing me a towel.

  “Easy,” Sophia said, dark eyebrows raised, “they only sent me in here to see if I could spot your mark.”

  She did a cursory sweep of my body as I hastily pulled the towel up to cover my breasts, pretending that modesty had me covering that part of my body first.

  “You’re crazy,” I muttered, unable to really pull up any feelings of dislike for the woman.

  Maybe it was because she reminded me a little of Poison; they both had an inherent sexuality that showed in their walks, in the husky notes of their voices, and the knowing glint to their eyes. The similarities ended there, however. Poison was an original; nobody could ever be like her. She was a package of insecurity and confidence wrapped around an inflated heart, too big to be healthy. Sophia carrie
d herself like a goddess; I could almost believe that she rested on a marble pedestal—a bed sheet draped around her curvy form—when she wasn’t interacting with other people. Her eyes were deep and dark and knowledgeable; a perfect match for the heightened intelligence that I had also glimpsed in her Atmá’s eyes. Jack had been an effortless Atmá: a simple center of gravity, with the Sophies orbiting him seamlessly.

  Sophia laughed again, pushing out of the bathroom and leaving the heavy wooden door swinging wide so that Sophie and Jack—who were currently lounging on my bed—got an elongated glimpse of me standing there clutching my towel. Since I didn’t have any fresh clothes to wear anyway, I squared my shoulders. Fixing the towel around my body, I pushed out of the bathroom after Sophia, sitting primly in an armchair facing the bed.

  “I did try to stop them,” an amused voice said from the other side of the room, drawing my attention to Jayden, who was leaning with his back against the closed door to the bedroom.

  I was glad that he hadn’t also managed to see into the bathroom. It didn’t seem inappropriate to sit as I was in front of Jack and the Sophies, but they were much older than Jayden. It was hard to tell their exact ages, especially with the very youthful and energetic impression that I had gleaned from Jack and Sophie, the Australians. Either way, Jayden was only a decade or so older than me. It wasn’t enough of a gap for me to be comfortable exposing myself. I folded my arms a little tighter over my towel-covered chest and pinched my mouth into a frown, looking back to a smiling Jack.

  “You can do something about this?” I asked, touching the collar.

  I knew that the word mine had lit up again, because Jayden made a disgusted scoffing sound from where he stood, and the Sophies shot each other a quick, surprised look.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about it earlier?” Jack asked, getting off the bed to kneel in front of me, touching the collar hesitantly.

  “The Klovoda never did anything about my stalker before. I didn’t expect them to suddenly start helping now.”

  “The Klovoda isn’t under the direction of Dominic Kingsling anymore,” Jack said sharply, before his face softened and he sat back on his heels, sucking in a deep breath. “Sorry. But you should have said something. This is very serious.”

  “You can’t do anything?”

  “Oh, I can fix the bomb. It’ll only take a second. I meant your stalker. Something needs to be done about him.”

  I glanced over at Jayden, but he seemed completely nonchalant, his arms folded loosely, looking on with a surface layer of curiosity. Sinking my teeth into my lip, I consulted my lap, trying to figure out what to do.

  “Please,” I ended up saying. “Please, can you take it off now?”

  Jack nodded and reached out for the collar again, closing his eyes and crinkling his forehead up. “Disintegrate,” he ordered.

  I watched in fascination as little grey flecks of matter rained down around my arms, settling in my lap and brushing down my back. The weight from my neck disappeared, and after a moment Jack fell back. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to consult the mirror, gasping at my bare neck.

  “How did you do that?” I demanded excitedly, spilling back into the room.

  Sophie was now beside her Atmá, supporting him with an arm around his shoulders as he slumped back, still sitting on the ground. He looked exhausted.

  “He’s a Materialist,” Jayden answered from the door. “These days, a Materialist would be lucky to have mastered one single component or fabric, but Jack has a small amount of power over all of them. Alice, the Japanese woman if you remember, is a mason; she has the power to manipulate anything with a component of stone, and she can create stone out of nothing at all. I’ll admit, the Materialist powers are the most visually impressive.”

  “Hardly!” Sophie objected, still stroking Jack’s shoulders. “The Elementalists have the most visually impressive powers. Imagine someone calling on a storm with a flick of their fingers!”

  “That hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years,” Jack said quietly, a laugh hidden in his soft words. “All of the originals were just as impressive as each other: the original Materialist could have spun a castle out of pure gold in a matter of hours; the original Elementalist could have drowned an entire city in a fit of rage; the original Seer would have foreseen the fit of rage and prevented it; the Reader would have read the intentions of the Seer and intervened to let the fit go right on ahead as planned; and the Dead Man… well he probably orchestrated it all.”

  Sophia scoffed, moving to sit on the bed that the other two had vacated. “Sounds about right. The ability to see everything makes for a tender-hearted person, always cautious of future suffering; while the ability to know everything makes for a mischief-maker, always trying to control the future. And as for the others, well… possession lends itself to greed, and power is an insatiable beast that will demand to be free of its tether sooner or later.”

  “Did you just call me a tethered beast?” Jack asked, standing and turning on the Brazilian beauty.

  “Only if you’ll growl at me,” Sophia quipped with a wink.

  “Later,” he promised, pointing a finger at her.

  On the other side of the room, Jayden rolled his eyes. I almost laughed, but there was a lingering yearning that wouldn’t allow the joy to surface. I wondered how Jayden felt; he was an Atmá without a pair, without even the need for a pair. It was… strangely devastating. I shook my head quickly, walking to the wardrobe and pulling it open, hunting through the clothes that Cabe had left behind for a pair of sweats and a shirt.

  “Why did you come as well?” I asked Jayden, since the wardrobe was close to where he was standing.

  He shrugged. “I was curious. Why did he put a bomb on you? That doesn’t seem like him.”

  “He loves bombs.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t want you dead.”

  “He took a picture. It looked like Cabe was about to kiss me.”

  “Did Cabe kiss you?” He launched off the door, grabbing my biceps and narrowing his eyes on my face.

  “Whoa dude, leave the poor girl alone,” Sophie interjected, pulling me gently out of Jayden’s grasp. “She’s been through enough today. Save your interrogation for next week, we all think it’s best if we give her a bit of space before calling her back to the Komnata. She needs to be eased into this, and she needs time to adjust to being… well… anywhere near Weston, to be frank.”

  “Thank you,” I muttered quietly to Sophie, escaping Jayden’s scrutiny to disappear into the bathroom.

  I pushed the door closed and splashed my face a few times, trying to clear my mind before I pulled off the towel and stepped into Cabe’s clothes. When I emerged from the bathroom again, Jack and his pair were gone, leaving only Jayden standing by the door.

  “Sorry,” he said, managing to look like he meant it. “I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, the Klovoda has assigned two people to be on your person at all times. They don’t want to chance anything like this happening again. They’ll be waiting for you by the car tomorrow morning. Text me if you need anything, okay?”

  “Okay. Jayden?”

  “Hm?”

  I sat down on the same chair again, pulling my legs up and winding my arms around myself. Jayden was potentially the only member of the Klovoda who I could talk to about my pairs, and he was certainly more involved in my pairing to them than anyone else. Maybe he could answer a question that had been on my mind ever since Cabe and Noah had walked into my life.

  “Before the Komnata incident last year with Silas, I used to have this weird reaction to the others: to Miro, Cabe and Noah. It was like… I don’t know… a kind of scratchy feeling that irritated me when they touched me. It only ever disappeared when I was straining.”

  “And it never happened with Silas?” he asked, abandoning his post by the door to walk closer. I don’t think he even realised that he was doing it, he just seemed to be genuinely interested in what I had to say.

 
“No.”

  “Well, that’s not too surprising. It’s a bond that you created, after all. A bond that you created through Silas. If I was to hazard a guess, I’d say that the feeling settled down while Silas was captive here because he was weakened to the point that you weren’t able to funnel the bond through him anymore. Now it’s probably a more natural bond.”

  “Oh…” I managed. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Anything else?” he asked, a twitch to his lips.

  “Can I borrow your phone?”

  He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, handing it over, and I quickly dialled Tariq’s number.

  “This better be a call to tell me that you’re safe,” he answered after only one ring.

  “How’d you know it was me?” I managed, pulling the phone back to stare at it for a moment in shock.

  “Please,” Tariq scoffed, but there was an undercurrent of fear in his tone. “You disappear, leaving your phone behind in Miro’s car, and then one of Jayden’s people turns up at home to let us know that Silas is in the hospital, and then a few hours later I get a call from an unknown number?”

  “Right,” I managed. “I’m sorry, Tariq. I hope Poison explained everything to you.”

  “She did, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve been expecting this, it was only a matter of time. I’m not angry at you, but your boyfriends are furious, and apparently they don’t hate you anymore, so somehow that makes them extra furious.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t in Maple Falls right now.”

  “I’m coming back tomorrow, but I have to live at Weston’s for a while.”

  “Does that mean you got the collar off?”