The Complete Lost Children Series

by Krista Street

  He smiled and tenderly brushed a strand of hair from my face. “You’re fearless and brave. I love that about you.”

  I snorted. “Fearless, not really, and brave . . . well, I’m still scared but I know we can do this.”

  “Hmm.” He sighed heavily again.

  “Have faith in us,” I said quietly. “Have faith in me. I can take care of myself. I finally know that. And while I may still lose things all of the time and want to do impulsive acts, I’m getting better. I don’t rush quite so headfirst into things, and I still know exactly where my birth control is. I think.”

  He chuckled. “Are you saying that you didn’t leave it under your jeans on the bed this morning?”

  “Is that where it is? I thought I left it on the bathroom sink by my toothbrush?”

  “Just kidding. It’s still there.”

  I smiled and playfully pinched his shoulder. “But in all seriousness, babe. We’re going to be okay. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but if we work together and function as a family—we can do this. And then . . . we’ll finally have what we’ve always wanted. A life, a real life, in the world where we act and live like everyone else.”

  “I’d love to have that with you.”

  “We will. Now, we just have to find a way to beat Marcus so that dream can come true.”

  “Come here.” He pulled me back to his side. Some of the anxiety left his cloud. Love and hope now filled it too.

  I settled against him as an eagle scream filled the air. Susannah soared above, her outline flashing across the moon. So many changes had happened within our family and so many challenges waited ahead, yet if there was one thing I learned—it was that as a family we were strong, and together we could do anything.

  REBORN

  The Lost Children Trilogy

  Book Three

  THE LOST CHILDREN SERIES—BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The bald eagle soared above. Her wings spanned twelve feet, almost double the size of a normal female. The eagle swooped to the ground in the surrounding desert, her magnificent wings cupping to slow her descent. Piercing, razor sharp talons opened. The rabbit didn’t see her coming. Her approach was silent. Deadly.

  Cold winter wind whipped my dark red hair around my shoulders. Di and I stood on the deck of our remote Northern Arizona home. Susannah continued to claw the rabbit in the desert, beyond the walled backyard.

  Di crossed her arms. “Do you know how long it’s been since she’s transformed, Lena?”

  “Over three days.”

  A brooding expression grew on Di’s face. “That’s the longest she’s gone yet.”

  The air rustled her black locks. She’d cut it the other day, complaining that her hair was getting too long. Those midnight locks now sat perfectly shaped at chin length. The cut framed her oval face, complimenting her olive skin and dark eyes. The bob suited her personality. Sharp, severe and straight.

  A shiver struck me. I wrapped my arms around myself. I hadn’t grabbed a jacket when Di and I raced outside to watch Susannah fly overhead. “She’s becoming more animal than human.”

  Di sighed heavily. “I know.”

  “That could be a problem. If we knew she’d never be spotted by the DNR or an astute bird watcher, we wouldn’t have to worry. But she’s too big. Someone’s bound to notice, and if they choose to investigate, we could have trouble. No other eagle comes close to her size.”

  “You’re right.” Di’s gaze didn’t leave our newest family member.

  In the distance, Susannah, in her eagle form, tore apart the now-dead rabbit. Her giant beak opened and ripped a chunk out of the animal. I imagined congealing blood dripping from the puncture wounds as she pierced the hide, crimson drops falling into the Arizona desert sand. Susannah let out a sharp cry. With a few flaps, she climbed high into the sky. The rabbit dangled listlessly from her talons. Susannah grew smaller until she disappeared from view.

  I didn’t know where Susannah went when she fled to the mountains. Probably some place close to open water, since most eagles preferred dwellings by large lakes or rivers. The dry, open terrain around the house wasn’t exactly eagle friendly. The desert also didn’t give her many good places to perch. And while she’d sometimes return and perch on the home’s deck railing, she was doing it less and less.

  The impressive backyard, with its fifteen foot tall perimeter walls and expertly landscaped rock gardens, stretched in front of us. The grounds were huge. We had plenty of space to roam even though twelve of us lived in the house. However, Susannah frequented it less and less. A lot of times, it was just eleven of us.

  I shivered again. It was the beginning of December. Each day the high mountain desert sent promises of snow in her chilly breeze and crisp mornings.

  “Maybe being exposed is what we need.” My teeth chattered. “If everyone knows about us, what harm can Marcus do?”

  Di’s eyes grew hard. “I won’t be studied again. Doctors will want to study us.”

  Her tone was so vehement, I took a step back. “I don’t want to be studied either, but in a way, I feel Marcus’ threats are similar to blackmail. He doesn’t want anyone to know what he and Albert Darlington did to us and the other lost children. They’ll go to prison if they’re discovered. But, if we expose ourselves, we take away that leverage and perhaps the repercussions won’t be that bad. We’re exposed, maybe studied, and Marcus is left with no reason to come after us. Everything would be out in the open. What could he do to us then?”

  “Revenge.”

  I clenched my jaw, stopping my chattering teeth. She was right. A sane person would probably give up if he knew he’d lost the battle.

  An image of Marcus confronting me in the warehouse only a week ago swirled in my mind. Those cold eyes. That baleful stare. From what I’d seen, Marcus wasn’t sane. More like Insane, with a capital I. He didn’t seem to find anything wrong with entrapping people and mercilessly studying them.

  “But we’re strong together. We can beat him. I know we can.” Somehow my tone wasn’t quite as convincing as it had been the other night. At that time, I’d tried to reassure Flint that we could handle Marcus, but suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

  Di’s lips pursed. She rubbed her arms. “Let’s go back in. It’s getting cold.”

  We found everyone else, except for Mica, Jasper and Flint, in the home theater. Scents of popcorn filled the air. I guessed someone had watched a movie not too long ago. However, Father was currently replaying the news clip featuring Marcus. It had aired on TV the other day. He watched it with a frown, his arms crossed. As usual, he wore an expensive sweater and pressed slacks. Outside of the Forbidden Hills, Father never wore hiking gear. And despite looking like an aging grandfather, his mind was sharp.

  The sound of Marcus’ voice filled the movie theater room. Goosebumps rose on my arms.

  In the news clip, Marcus essentially promised to find us and enact revenge for what we’d done to O’Brien’s research facility. That facility had housed Project Renatus—the project under which we were experimented on as young children. That project gave us our extrasensory abilities.

  Father had abandoned the project fifteen years ago in hopes of keeping us safe. He whisked the eight of us to the wilds of Colorado to live in hiding in hopes of avoiding Marcus’ wrath and O’Brien’s sadistic practices. And while most of us weren’t blood related, we considered each other family. It didn’t matter that Father wasn’t actually our biological parent. He was like a father to me.

  For the past fifteen years, Father had done everything in his power to keep us safe. Now, our safety was in jeopardy. Choosing to rescue the new three—Susannah, Luke and Edgar—from O’Brien’s subterranean lab in Chicago had opened a door to a long dead world that Father thought we had escaped. Since returning from Chicago, we’d holed up in this house, trying to figure out what to do from here.

  “Turn it off, Father,” Jacinda pleaded. “There’s nothing more we can learn.”

&
nbsp; My half-sister, my only blood relation in our strange family, sat on the plush couch beside Luke. Jacinda’s long blond hair, supermodel looks and coltish legs would draw anyone’s eye. As always, she was breathtaking. However, she looked tenser than normal. Her eyes weren’t as bright, and worry lined her lips. The stress of everything finally seemed to be catching up with everyone.

  Father didn’t seem to hear her, though. He pressed a button on the remote and watched the clip again from the beginning. Marcus’ words and gaze chilled me as he stared at the news camera. He promised to find the perpetrators and hold them accountable for blowing up O’Brien’s warehouse. His eyes were cold and dead looking. They were the eyes of a soulless man.

  I remembered Marcus’ cloud, not only from when I was four years old and imprisoned within O’Brien’s cells but also from my encounter with him only a week ago. His aura, or cloud as I called them, was pitch black and scary looking. Marcus’ cloud was as evil as they got. I still shuddered thinking about it.

  A subtle wave of air drifted across my cheeks when the theater’s door opened. Flint strode in, his broad shoulders and strong pectorals defined in his fitted T-shirt. His gaze warmed when he saw me. “Lena, there you are.”

  He slipped his arms around my waist. Spice, wood and tangerines fluttered to my senses. I’d know that scent anywhere. The anxiety that had been strumming through me abated. The safe feeling that Flint evoked folded over me, enveloping me in its warmth, like a soft cocoon welcoming me home.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” He leaned down and kissed my neck.

  The intimate affection got an envious look from Amber and an amused one from Jet. The blue eyed, dark haired twin loved to tease me about Flint. Amber however, the youngest in our group, always watched us with longing.

  Amber stole a glance at Edgar, her eyes darting toward him from under her pixie haircut.

  Edgar sat beside her, his coffee brown skin as dark as chocolate, but he appeared oblivious to her questioning gaze.

  “Where were you?” Flint asked.

  I curled my fingers around his strong forearms. “Di and I saw Susannah flying overhead. We stepped outside to watch.”

  “She’s still an eagle then.” Flint let go after one last kiss on my neck. “Di?” he called. “Can I speak to you?”

  Di left Father’s side and followed her brother out of the room.

  I watched them go. I couldn’t believe I ever thought they were together. When I’d first re-met everyone in August, four months ago, I thought Di and Flint were dating from the way they secretly spoke and sought the other out.

  Now, it was so obvious they were siblings—true blood relations. Both had naturally tanned skin from their Hispanic or Mediterranean heritage, dark eyes, tall builds and steely demeanors. The only real difference between the two was hair color. Di’s hair was midnight black whereas Flint’s was a beautiful chestnut brown. His thick hair curled around the edges. The soft feel of it made me ache to thread my fingers through it.

  Of course, if Father hadn’t taken our memories away eight months ago, and sent all of us on a wild chase around the country searching for one another, I would have known Flint only ever wanted one person.

  Me.

  Flint and I had been close for as long as I could remember. He’d always been my best friend, but in the past three years, that friendship had evolved into a relationship that went deeper than anything I could have imagined.

  I liked to think of myself as a woman who could stand on her own two feet. I think I proved I was more than capable of that, not only during my four months of homeless life, but also by dealing with Marcus single handedly at the warehouse last week. Still, if something happened to Flint, if for some reason he was taken from me . . .

  “We have a problem.”

  Father’s statement snapped me out of my thoughts. Father sat in front of his laptop at the bar behind the couch. Thankfully, he had turned the TV off while I’d been lost in my daydreams.

  “What’s wrong?” Jacinda tensed.

  “Marcus,” Father replied. “It seems he’s found my bank accounts.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Bank accounts?” Edgar cocked his head.

  “What does that mean?” Luke growled. The new and biggest member in our family eyed my sister every now and then. Luke was huge, over six foot four and built like a two-ton truck. He could also transform into a wolf, and although he wasn’t a werewolf, for simplicity’s sake that’s what we had taken to calling him. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind.

  Father’s brow furrowed. “It means I don’t have access to any money in these accounts, at the moment at least.”

  Fear grew in Amber’s gaze. “But why would he do that?”

  Jet cocked a dark eyebrow. “Well . . . I may be completely off here but I’m guessing it has something to do with that little explosion we caused. Nothing like blowing up one’s building to cause a little feud. Or perhaps it’s because we freed his research subjects. Maybe that didn’t sit well with him either.” Jet raised his muscled arms, as if in surrender. “Like I said, only guessing on this one.”

  Amber rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Comedian.”

  The rest of us ignored Jet’s sarcastic jabs. This wasn’t a laughing matter.

  As a former biomedical researcher for O’Brien Pharmaceuticals, Father had made millions from his chemical creations. However, he’d also been born wealthy. Money was something he’d always had.

  My insides stilled at the thought of that safety line cut. We counted so much on Father’s immense wealth. It allowed us to do everything. Hide, travel, buy ridiculously expensive, but secure houses on a moment’s notice. Without those funds, then what?

  I joined Father. The computer screen glowed in the dim room. From what I could see, he was right. His accounts were frozen. “Are you sure it’s Marcus behind this? Maybe the bank froze them for another reason.”

  “No, it’s him,” Father said grimly. “I wondered if he would try to find my money first, before finding me. Now that he knows we’re all alive and living in hiding, he’d have figured the only way that’s possible is because of my resources. And since money is easier to find than us, he’s going after that first.” He sighed heavily.

  At times like this, Father truly looked his age. Gray hair, sharp hazel eyes lined with wrinkles, a bulbous nose and a medium build didn’t exactly scream genius researcher. The only advantage Father had? His looks were deceiving. Having taken the first generation drugs of the eight he had administered to us made him stronger than most men his age. His eyesight and hearing were that of a thirty-year-old, and he had an uncanny intuition to people’s intentions, but he wasn’t immortal.

  He was still aging.

  “I need to find Diamond.” Father snapped his laptop closed, the sound magnified in the quiet room. “Do you know where she went, Galena?”

  I shrugged. “With Flint somewhere.”

  Father left.

  Everyone else watched him go, all except Mica and Jasper. I had no idea where those two were, but I guessed in one of their rooms doing something similar to what Flint and I had done that afternoon. Since I’d gone on birth control, Flint and I were once again a true couple in every sense of the word. Most of the time, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

  “What do you think that was all about?” Amber’s large doe eyes grew wider.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I replied.

  Luckily, before Amber became really worked up, Edgar sidled closer to her side.

  “No worries, love,” he said in his peculiar Cockney accent. “Conroy’ll sort i’ out. Now, I ‘fink we should watch an’oer flick. What you say, love?”

  Amber smiled, a dark pink filling her cheeks. “Yeah, that would be fun. Do you want to pick one or should I?”

  Edgar murmured something else. I didn’t catch it, but I did hear the strange lilt in a few words. None of us had commented yet on Edgar’s accent. Not even the twins. Considering Edgar had
been born in Pittsburgh, not east London, his way of talking made no sense. It was even more bizarre since he’d grown up in O’Brien’s research facility and had never traveled abroad.

  However, according to Luke, Edgar had watched Mary Poppins as a child during one particularly brutal drug treatment. Luke explained that Edgar now identified with the British culture, subsequently adopting a hybrid accent. Father believed it was another defense mechanism—a way Edgar distanced himself from the horrors of O’Brien. Mary Poppins was safe and good, and safety and beneficence were something all children craved. Perhaps Edgar had mentally transported himself into the film during that hellacious treatment. A mental transportation he never emerged from.

  Luke, Jet, Jacinda and I exited the room while Amber and Edgar surveyed the impressive DVD collection.

  Once in the hallway, I closed the door behind us.

  Jet crossed his arms, his large biceps bulging. “Is it as bad as it sounds?”

  I took a deep breath and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really know how it works when a bank freezes your accounts.”

  “Don’t you need to go into the bank in person to clear it up?” Jacinda’s brow puckered.

  “I’m sure that’s what Marcus is hoping for,” Luke growled. “Why search the country for us when he can make us come to him?”

  WE FOUND FATHER, Di and Flint in Father’s study. A gas fire glowed in the fireplace, casting an eerie light in the dim room. Father sat at his desk. Di and Flint flanked his sides. Both looked over Father’s shoulders at the computer screen.

  “He’s locked three of my seven accounts.” Father frowned. “Luckily, my overseas banks have not been sabotaged so we’re still all right.”

  I bit my lip. “Do we need to stop spending money?”

  Father scratched his chin. “Not on everyday items, no, but at the moment, I don’t have enough cash flow to purchase a secure home while also maintaining payments to my outside contacts. Acquiring money from my overseas accounts takes time.”