by Jeff Sampson
But I had hoped it was just a rough patch. That she would learn to be happy again, and I would learn how to handle a whole new life that could contain her, too.
I’d never get that chance now. And whenever I closed my eyes or was alone, all I saw was her face, and all I remembered was the way her eyes looked as I stood above her.
But, I guess, what’s done was done.
After killing Rebel and Mr. Handler, we Deviants found one another and slipped away in the chaos on the streets as Vesper Company employees and others who worked nearby watched a cloud of concrete dust explode out of the shattered windows on the first floor of the Vesper Company building. Tracie had managed to convince the guards to evacuate, and we got lucky—the building didn’t collapse to hurt anyone else.
We made it home—to our makeshift, freezing-cold, completely impractical model home-home, that is. But after all we’d been through, home was pretty much wherever me and my fellow Deviants were together.
I still couldn’t believe Spencer was alive. When Rebel raised her hands with Mr. Handler’s consent, I was certain he’d fall as dead as Brittany. But either her spell had faltered or Rebel’s spirit trying to merge with Spencer had brought him back. I didn’t know. I guess it didn’t matter.
Spencer was next to me as I wrote the latest details down in my journal, his head resting on my lap with his eyes closed, his breaths shallow. He squirmed every now and again in his sleep, like a puppy chasing a dream rabbit, and I couldn’t help but smile and feel sad all at once. Because I had him back, but everyone else was still gone, and I couldn’t go back to my family again.
No. I wouldn’t dwell on negatives, I decided. I mean, there was no point.
There was no going back. I wasn’t Emily Webb anymore. I was the vesper Deviant alpha wolf girl. And even though I never asked for this, even though I’ll never get over my resentment at those who did this to me, it’s who I am.
It’s who I chose to be.
We were all in the living room of the model home one last time, smelly and tired and alternately giddy at our success and devastated by the loss of Megan and Brittany, not to mention Nikki’s and Amy’s parents.
Evan and Patrick were sitting very close to each other, all shy smiles and furtive looks. There was definitely something happening there, and it was incredibly cute. I couldn’t help but think of all the girls who’d lusted over our hot British exchange student when he’d first moved to town who’d never know he only had eyes for a blond wolf-human hybrid boy who could travel between worlds.
Nikki and Dalton were together too. He was staring into the distance, Nikki holding him and rocking him gently, her gaze similarly distant, her mind elsewhere. Seeing the two of them together, I was confident the fears Dalton had once confessed to me of becoming like his father, Mr. McKinney, wouldn’t ever come true. Dalton was a good guy. I hoped one day he’d be his old self again. As much as any of us could be our old selves.
Amy and Tracie were playing checkers, another of the games we found in the designated child’s bedroom upstairs. Amy was aggressive, Tracie calm and collected. Tracie kept winning by taking the least-expected path. Something told me she was on better terms with the Nighttime part of herself that could see the world in ways the rest of us couldn’t.
Amy was still hiding behind her mask. Maybe one day she would feel comfortable talking about what happened in that cavern of a basement when she lost her family, then took her anger out on Mr. Handler. I hoped she would come to me. I knew how it felt to be a…a killer.
That was us, I guess. Eight little Deviants squatting in a home on the outskirts of a city called Volmond with no clear idea where we were going to go next.
I felt a drive inside me, though. Twenty years before, Michael Handler and Vesper Company started something that put a lot of people in peril and changed the lives of dozens and dozens of unsuspecting children. Mr. Savage hinted about them to me that one time, and we read about them in the files we stole.
The vespers weren’t just the wolves and the psychs. There were others like us. Kids and teens genetically enhanced all for the purpose of aiding an interdimensional invasion.
Maybe I would lead my team to find these kids. Though Mr. Handler was done for, surely other portals still existed, and so did the cult devoted to the shadowmen. Maybe together we could truly stomp out Vesper Company and its branches filled with acolytes of the dangerous, deadly Akhakhu, once and for all.
Big plans. Big danger.
I decided to sleep on it.
Right then, I was content to just rub my hand on Spencer’s back, inhale his comforting scent, and try to forget all the horrible things I’d had to do over the past few months.
It was time to sleep.
One day, two months before, I went to bed as shy, geeky Emily Webb. The next, I woke up as something entirely new, and my life completely changed.
Who knew where life would take me tomorrow?
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About the Author
JEFF SAMPSON is the author of the first two books in the Deviants series, VESPER and HAVOC. He is also a pop-culture fanatic with an abiding love of TV and movies, much like his main character, Emily. Jeff lives in Seattle, Washington. You can visit him online at www.jeffsampsonbooks.com.
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OTHER BOOKS BY JEFF SAMPSON
VESPER
A DEVIANTS NOVEL
HAVOC
A DEVIANTS NOVEL
Credits
Jacket art © 2013 by Ali Smith
Jacket design by Alison Klapthor
Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
RAVAGE: A DEVIANTS NOVEL
Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Sampson
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sampson, Jeff.
Ravage : a Deviants novel / Jeff Sampson. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Deviants)
Summary: “Sick of being at the mercy of adult conspiracies, Emily Webb forms a plan with the Deviants: They will destroy BioZenith.”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-199280-3 (hardcover bdg. : alk. paper)
[1. Werewolves—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Genetic engineering—Fiction. 4. Spirit possession—Fiction. 5. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S164Rav 2013
2012028328
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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12 13 14 15 16 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780062202932
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