by W. J. May
“The greater good?!” Beth coughed in the thick air. “A woman shows up here claiming to have your love-child and you say it’s for the greater—”
Before she could finish, there was a mighty crash as the beams in the ceiling above them suddenly gave way. Beth screamed as what looked like a wave of fire poured down from the upstairs, instantly covering the floor and snaking up the walls of the kitchen. Molten pieces of drywall and wood covered the ground, and Beth ran automatically forward, pulling pieces of rubble off the heap.
“Simon!” she shrieked, throwing aside huge chunks of the ceiling as she looked for him. She didn’t seem to realize that she was on fire. “Simon, can you hear me?!”
Smoky tears stung Rae’s eyes and she actually got to her feet, watching in horror as her mother desperately tried to dig her dead husband out of the burning rubble. Beth screamed and screamed until her voice grew hoarse, crying hysterically as the flames began to spread across her skin. Despite every red warning light flashing in her head, Rae was on the verge of running forward and helping her, when she suddenly realized they weren’t alone.
A deathly chill ran up her spine and she had the good sense to drop back behind the counter before the intruder spotted her.
Jennifer! Jennifer? What the hell?
“Jennifer?” Beth shrieked, confirming Rae’s fright. “What’re you doing here?”
Jennifer stared at the flames consuming her friend’s body and her mouth fell open in slow shock. But then another chunk of the second story fell into the first and she looked at the pile of burning debris in horror.
“Simon!” she screeched. “NO!”
She began digging furiously through the wreckage, not stopping until she pulled a bloody torso from the heap. With soot and tears streaking her face, Jennifer kissed Simon Kerrigan’s lifeless lips as the house burned down around them.
Beth watched them, pale as a sheet, before she finally forced herself to speak.
“What’re you doing?”
Jennifer snarled up at her like the leopard she was. “What are you doing alive?!” she screamed. “All of this was meant for you!”
The rest of the color drained from Beth’s face. “It was you. You’re the one that’s been leaking secrets from the Privy Council. This whole time…it’s been you.”
Oblivious to the fact that she now had flames snaking up one side of her body, Jennifer leaned down for a final kiss before lying Simon gently on the floor. Then she stood up and patted out the flames on her leg with a dangerous calm.
“Yes, it’s been me.” She looked up at Beth with sheer murder in her eyes. “And you, Bethany Kerrigan, are never going to leave this house alive.”
Unable to watch any more, Rae ripped open her eyes and stared back at her mother in the hotel room. Mirrored tears ran down both of their faces as they stood there, clutching each other’s hands. It was as if the world around them was still burning. How could it be true?
Before Rae had a chance to say anything, there was a sudden thud. She watched in frozen confusion as her mother’s eyes closed and she fell noiselessly to the floor. When Rae looked back up, Jennifer was standing in her place.
“So…” Her old mentor dropped the bloody telephone she’d used to bash against Beth’s head. “I guess I have a lot of explaining to do.”
Chapter 15
Rae couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t believe this was happening all over again.
Lanford…Kraigan…Jennifer?
What had she been thinking, opening herself up to such vulnerability again?! It was starting to be like clockwork. She would get close to a person, just to be betrayed. Close enough to see them smile as they pulled out the knife and stabbed it into her back. Or hit her over the head.
She dropped to her knees in terror and knelt beside her mom’s crumpled form. “Mom? Mom!”
Her heart seized as she watched a small trickle of blood run through Beth’s curls and pool on the floor. This couldn’t be happening—not again! She could not have resurrected her mother only to watch her die…again!
A feral scream ripped through her teeth as she glared up at her ex-Botcher, standing calmly above them. “What did you do?!”
Jennifer was about to respond when Rae hit her with a bolt of electricity, sending her flying back into the far wall.
“You son of a bitch!” It didn’t matter. Whatever Jenn was going to say didn’t matter. Rae was going to lose her mom all over again because she’d opened them both up to someone she was stupid enough to trust.
The pool of blood grew steadily wider and Beth stirred with a faint moan. Feeling electrified herself, Rae reached around on the floor to snatch up her bloody phone, only to find out it had shattered upon impact with her mother’s skull. Already sensing the outcome, Rae reached anyways for the hotel phone. The cord had been cut and the line was disconnected.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
Rae straightened and rotated slowly around. In the last few years, she’d stared down her own death, the death of her friends, and the resurgence of her homicidal father’s crazy cult. But she had never, in all that time, been as angry as she was right now. She stared at Beth, bleeding on the ground in between them, before she raised her eyes slowly to Jennifer. “I really don’t think you want to be trapped in a room with me right now.”
Jennifer threw back her head and laughed. “Oh! The kitty wants to play! All grown up now, are you, Rae? You forget—I know exactly how much training you have. I know all of your tatùs and I know exactly what each one can do.” She smiled with mock sympathy. “I’m afraid you just don’t have any tricks left up your sleeve.”
Rae sent another bolt of electricity flying her way, but Jennifer dodged it with ease.
“In a way, you have no one to blame here but yourself,” Jennifer said quietly and authoritatively as she took a step towards Rae and Bethany. “What was the first lesson I ever taught you? Above all the others?”
Rae stayed defiantly silent, and in the next second, she was flying through the air—cracking her head against the wall and sliding to the floor with a muffled groan. Something warm sprayed down the side of her face, and when she pulled back her hand, it was red with blood.
“You need to always be ready.” Jennifer’s voice cut through the air. “Get up.” She snorted. “I taught you better than that.”
Rae pulled herself to her feet and glared with all her might, ignoring the steady drip of blood running down her arm. “Why did you even bother?” she hissed. “If all this time, all you wanted to do was kill me.”
That same peculiar look shadowed across Jennifer’s face, before she shook her head with sudden determination. “It wasn’t the plan to kill you.” She gestured to Beth’s motionless form. “Or her, for that matter. As long as she was out of the way, she didn’t matter. But you had to go and find the bitch and now that you’ve brought her back there’s a chance we could be exposed.” She shrugged. “Well, the rules change.”
We? Who was we?
Rae sucked in a breath and struggled to rein in her anger. Jennifer was right, this was no different from any other mission. Only in this case, she needed to get information that wasn’t part of protocol. The only way to do that was to touch Jennifer’s skin.
With a roar of rage, she launched herself with blinding speed across the hotel room, only to be immediately diverted by Jennifer’s ready hands. She flew into the other wall this time and fell to the floor with a sickening crunch. The sound of Jennifer’s laughter brought her back to her senses.
“Come on! My own tatù?! Show a little respect, would you?” She shook her head as she yanked Rae up to her feet, holding her by the hair as she dragged her to the center of the room. “It’s like all this time I’ve been talking to a brick wall.”
But beneath Jennifer’s death grip, Rae smiled as she quickly healed herself with Charles’ tatù. This sort of close proximity was exactly what she’d had in mind. Using Julian’s tatù to pre
dict Jennifer’s next few movements, Rae rocketed up above their heads and brought Jennifer down to the floor, landing squarely on her chest. Jennifer gazed up at her in shock, but before she could fully recover, Rae ripped off her leather jacket and tossed it away.
She barely had time to marvel at the torn, burned skin beneath. The fire, she recalled. The flames had spread up one entire side of Jennifer’s body. No wonder she always hid in this leather suit—the body below was ravaged beyond repair. It wasn’t like she could tell anyone how she got the burns.
Without stopping to think, Rae seized Jennifer’s shoulder in an iron grip, closing her eyes as her body automatically switched tatùs. The next second, she was back in the living room in Heath Hall, watching as Jennifer crept up behind Luke and bashed him over the head.
There was a scream of rage as Jennifer tried to throw her off. However, Rae wasn’t finished.
She picked up the same phone Jennifer had used to strike her mother, and smashed her across the face with it. Then she grabbed her by the neck and closed her eyes once more.
This time, she was back in her burning childhood home. The memory had picked up right where Beth’s had left off. As Beth sprinted to grab Rae from the yard, Jennifer knocked her unconscious, using her tatù to bring her to the ground. Rae watched in horror as Jennifer knelt over her mother’s unconscious body, ready to finish the job, but a deep, male voice floated down from nowhere and stopped her.
“Now, now, Miss Jones. That’s not what we discussed.”
Rae whirled around in surprise as a tall man with dark, trimmed curls walked slowly into the burning building. He didn’t seem to notice the walls crumbling down around him—he only had eyes for Beth.
“She was never allowed to die, not when she could still be useful.”
As screams from the neighbors and the faint sounds of sirens began welling up outside, Jennifer cast a panicked look to the backyard. “Her child, Simon’s child is still out there.”
The man shook his head. “The child is going to be collected by the authorities and sent to live with her uncle. She’ll come to Guilder in time, and Guilder will open its doors to let her in.”
Jennifer’s teeth locked together in rage. “Then why do we need her?” She glared down at Beth with unmistakable hatred. “She did her part, she’s had a purebred baby. Her job here is done.”
For the first time, the strange man chuckled. “Such rage in you.” He glanced down at Jennifer’s flat stomach with a faint smile. “You’d think you were taking this personally.”
Jennifer cried out in anguish and raised her hand up over Beth’s head, but the man stopped her with a single word.
“Enough.” He adjusted the cuffs on his jacket, suddenly bored with the conversation.
“We’ll use her to test the limits of Simon’s device. Stash her away and check on her throughout the years to make sure nothing ever comes back.”
Jennifer was panting with silent tears, but she nodded her head and lifted Beth slowly from the ashes. “What if her daughter comes looking for her?”
“It’s funny you should ask…”
Rae’s heart froze in her chest as the man turned deliberately towards the counter. She didn’t have time to run, she didn’t have time to hide. She just stared up in horror as the man looked her right in the eye.
“I’m counting on it.”
The characters blurred out as the room around them dimmed to black. Rae tried to pull out of the memory as Jennifer struggled and kicked beneath her, breaking her focus as she clawed Rae’s bloody arm. Rae cried out in pain, but before she could pull out of Jennifer’s mind entirely, a power beyond both their control took her to one more scene.
This one couldn’t have been more different from the last. Rae blinked in confusion and tried to get her bearings in the bright, fluorescent light. They were in an office building of some kind, a doctor’s office by the looks of it. Just her, Jennifer, Simon…and the baby in Jennifer’s belly.
Rae’s mouth fell open in silent shock, and she backed quickly into the changing room in the corner, relieved beyond belief that Jennifer was already wearing a hospital gown.
“I don’t want to do this,” a quiet voice almost whispered. There was such pain in the words, such unspeakable sadness, that Rae had to double check to make sure it was Jennifer who’d said it.
Sure enough, Jennifer was perched on the exam table, cradling her swollen abdomen with a thousand tears in her eyes. Rae had never seen her Botcher look so vulnerable, so small.
She looked up at Simon, pleading as the tears started to fall. “I can’t—please. Don’t ask me to do this…”
Simon stroked back her hair. It was an automatic gesture, brought about by habit and necessity, not feeling. “I’m afraid we have no choice,” he said without inflection. “You heard the doctor, it’s a girl. I have no need for another girl. I need a son.”
Jennifer stifled a sob. “But why do we have to get rid of her? Why couldn’t I just keep her in secret? No one would have to know—”
“Because we can’t take the risk.” Simon stroked her hair again, but his eyes were cold. “We can’t have anyone figuring out what we’re doing. I can’t risk the ability getting passed on.” She sobbed again and he made an impatient shushing sound. “Please, enough. We’ll try again. We’ll keep trying until I get what we need…”
The scene blurred and Rae came to in the hotel room. The front of her own shirt was wet with tears, and when she looked down, Jennifer was frozen beneath her, staring up with wide eyes.
“I didn’t know…” Rae whispered. “I had no idea.” She tasted the hit almost before she felt it. A rush of blood filled her mouth as she flew backwards through the glass window, landing in the broken shards in the parking lot. She spat out the blood and gasped for air as Jennifer jumped out the window after her. A defensive spray of electricity shot into the air between them as Rae tried to get up, but a sliver of glass had wedged itself deep under her shoulder blade and she couldn’t seem to move.
“You bitch,” Jennifer murmured as she stood above her, watching her struggle. She pressed her stilettoed boot down on a gash on Rae’s leg and Rae tried not to scream. “That memory wasn’t for you. That was supposed to be for me.”
She kicked Rae hard in the ribs, and this time, Rae released a horrified, painful scream.
“After all,” Jennifer continued, “since you came around, the only thing I got to keep of my baby was the memory of it. No need for another daughter—not when she might inherit the tatù instead of the son.”
Rae reached behind her and pulled out the glass as she panted in pain. According to Alecia’s tatù, it had missed most of the major arteries, but in the process, it nicked one of her lungs. She switched quickly to Charles’ tatù to heal herself, but before she could, Jennifer crouched on top of her and punched her with impossible force in the face.
Rae felt her nose crunch in, and despite her need to stop the bleeding, her body switched defensively back to Molly’s tatù, sending Jennifer flying back to her feet with a shower of sky blue sparks.
“Pretty weak voltage,” Jennifer commented matter-a-factly, as calm as if they were back in the Oratory, practicing with sticks. “You must be losing quite a bit of blood. As much as your mom is inside.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Jennifer interrupted her. “You’ve done exactly what I thought you would, Rae. You got emotional, got distracted. Couldn’t keep your eyes on the prize. Your mother had the exact same problem—that inescapable need to feel. It’s how I was able to get the drop on her the day of the fire. She was running out to the yard to save you.”
Rae’s face twisted in pain as she tried again to get up, but Jennifer kicked her back down with a triumphant grin.
“I guess I really was the stronger fit, the better partner for Simon. After all, I’m about to finish off his entire family, and I don’t have so much as a scratch.”
There was a flash of blind
ing light, and the next second, Jennifer was on the ground.
“You wanna bet, you two-timing-mommy-snatching-witch?”
“Mom!” Rae gasped and pulled herself up to a sitting position, waiting for Charles’ tatù to take effect. “Mom, be careful, she—”
But Beth smiled. “Don’t worry, sweetie.” She looked down at Jennifer and her face grew cold. “I’ve got this.”
Jennifer staggered to her feet and spat out a mouthful of blood. “So this is how it’s going to end, is it? You or me?” She lowered her head slightly and Rae could practically feel the energy growing in her ready muscles. “You know what?” She grinned wickedly. “I actually prefer it this way.”
Rae looked on in terror, but Beth chuckled softly. “Oh Jenn, you never got it, did you? I was always better. That’s why Simon chose me. That’s why the Privy Council chose me. That’s why I’m coming back to a world full of family, friends. While you’re going to die with nothing.”
Jennifer growled and started to leap forward, but Beth shot her back to the ground with a wave of scorching hot fire. Rae could feel the heat of it travelling through the cement as Beth walked slowly forwards, blue flames flickering from her hands. It looked like her mom had finally gotten her whole tatù back.
“Doesn’t matter if you kill me,” Jennifer murmured, rolling back onto her feet and nursing a huge burn on the side of her face. “I’m not the only bad guy here. I’m only doing what I’m told.”
Beth looked at her carefully, but in the end, she simply shook her head. “You’re bad enough for me.” Then she lifted her hands and Rae and Jennifer watched as white hot flames covered her entire body, shrieking and dancing as they shot up into the sky.
Jennifer’s face paled and she took a step back. Even amidst all her bluster, she seemed to sense that this was the end. And although Rae had never seen her run from a fight, her fearless ex-Botcher took off through the parking lot, sprinting like her life depended on it. She had almost reached the other side when a wall of fire sprang up suddenly in front of her and she jumped back. The wall shifted and moved, driving her forward to where Beth was waiting for her.