Reese fired. Garrett jerked and fell, his gun skittering across the dirt. A head shot. No coming back from that.
Reese fired again, but a familiar heaviness overcame her body, and the bullet dug into the dirt. The woman enforcer turned toward her. She’s the woman from the factory, Reese thought.
Reese struggled to shoot again, but the woman laughed. “You’re no match for me. None of you are.”
“I know you,” Reese said. The face came to her now, even if she didn’t remember the name. The child this woman had been was in one of her sketchbooks from Colony 6. “You’re from the Coop.”
“Your father used to beat up my father,” the woman said, her lip curling. “He hated him. And I hate you.”
The pressure grew until Reese was choking. The woman’s face was triumphant as darkness filled Reese’s vision.
“Please Esme!” Lyssa shouted. “Leave her alone.”
The pain at Reese’s throat grew worse.
Across the clearing, Jaxon was pushing toward Esme, moving slowly but steadily, his face red with effort. His left shoulder and chest glistened with blood. Her Jaxon, always fighting to save her. I’m sorry, Reese wanted to tell him.
Behind Jaxon, Dani arose from the lake, pulling one of the enforcers behind her. She dropped the unconscious man at the edge of the water with a thud. “Stop!” Dani shouted.
Esme rotated slowly, but she didn’t release Reese. “So you’ve joined the party, have you?” She pointed at Dani, but Dani didn’t stop moving. The pressure on Reese’s throat eased momentarily, giving her a chance to gasp in one precious breath.
“Hello Esme,” Dani said casually, as if they were having lunch together at an upscale restaurant. “You might want to give up now. I have the endurance of more than ten men. I need only a tiny bit of oxygen to fuel my muscles, and I’m using all of it. You can’t control me and keep holding back the others, can you?”
Fear filled Esme’s face. She drew her gun, but Dani fired first. Esme dropped to the earth in an ungraceful heap. Immediately, the pressure vanished and Reese fell to her knees, hands in the dirt as she dragged in oxygen.
“Everybody okay?” Jaxon asked from the ground, where his force had propelled him when Esme’s backward pressure had ceased.
Nodding, Reese pulled her hands from the dirt but didn’t try to get up. Not yet. Every breath she took stung her tortured throat.
Dani was moving to free her soldiers from the enforcer cuffs, cutting through them with a laser. “Looks like we got them all,” she said. “Well, that guy”—she pointed to the enforcer she’d dragged from the lake—“is alive. He showed bravery by going to help his friend. I’ll take him with us, see if he can be useful in Newcali.”
“There’s a couple more I left cuffed in the ruins,” Reese said. Her voice sounded hoarse, and her throat ached with the effort of speech.
“I can take them too,” Dani offered. “No use in having any of this getting back to whoever sent them.”
“Not yet. We’ll want them for questioning.” Jaxon picked up Garrett’s gun and struggled to his feet, his sorrowful gaze going to his former partner. Reese didn’t need any ability to know that he was seeing his premonition come true. Would he hate her now for killing Garrett?
“Lyssa!”
They turned to see Lyra and Eagle hurrying into the clearing. Lyssa met her sister halfway, and they nearly fell over with the force of their embrace. “I’m so sorry,” Lyssa said. “I thought I was helping you. I didn’t know Garrett would—”
“It was stupid!” Lyra said. “You have to think of Tamsin. What would she do if she lost you? You can never replace a mother. You know that. We both know that.”
Silence fell over the clearing as everyone stared at them. “Mother?” Reese asked.
Lyra looked at her fiercely. “You should all know anyway, because I won’t let Lyssa risk herself again. Tamsin is Lyssa’s daughter, not mine. For ten years we’ve hidden the secret so they don’t get sent to a colony. This has to stop.”
“And it will.” This from Brogan, who was making his way slowly into the clearing. Hammer was with him, moving just as deliberately. “We’ll make it stop,” Brogan added, settling on a large rock next to where Reese still rested on the ground.
Dani left her soldiers and joined the others gathering around Brogan. “Hello, Vic Brogan,” she said. “Or should I say El Cerebro?”
Brogan inclined his head. “Dani Balak. We meet again.”
Reese remembered vividly the sketch she’d received of El Cerebro from Dani in the Coop. “So you two know each other?”
“I approached Dani as El Cerebro four years ago, when she was still listed in the citizen database,” Brogan said. “I’d heard rumors of her helping people escape Special Forces, but I didn’t know she was working with the fringers. Until today. Back then, I offered her a job.”
Dani folded her arms, her black face impassive. “Which I refused. Since then, I’ve been waiting to see what he’d do, to determine which side he was really on.”
“You can’t refuse to work with us anymore,” Brogan said. “Today you’ve seen what the CORE is willing to do. If you want to save people, we have to work together. All of us. The colonies, fringers, and especially you six. After this, I’m going to need all the help I can get to keep them from taking over Amarillo City.”
Dani tilted her head. Her gaze swung over them, resting on each in turn. “Okay,” she said. “I’m in. On one condition.”
Brogan’s face was pained, though whether from his wound or the ultimatum, Reese couldn’t tell.
“It’s my brother,” she said. “He’s being held in Estlantic by the CORE. I need your help to free him.”
After a long moment of expectant silence, Brogan said, “All right, you have a deal.”
Jaxon walked over to Reese. “Let’s go home,” he said, offering a hand to help her up. Blood still flowed from his left shoulder. They needed to patch him up.
As she came to her feet, emotions Reese was incapable of naming thrummed inside her. Perhaps the feelings came from relief that they were alive and that Summers was dead and could no longer haunt them. Regardless, Jaxon’s touch at that moment meant everything.
There was nothing more she wanted. The crew was finally back together. With Brogan’s help, they would begin now to free the colonies and cut out the rotten part of the CORE.
NOTE FROM TEYLA BRANTON: Thank you for reading Sketches (Colony Six, Book 1)! I hope you have enjoyed it. Please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated. Be sure to check out my other titles in the About the Author section. For your enjoyment, I have included in the next section the first chapter of The Change, the first novel in my contemporary urban fantasy series. You can receive The Change and a bonus novella Ava’s Revenge for FREE by signing up to hear about new releases on my website. Thanks again!
THE END
Preview
ON THE DAY I SET foot on the path to immortality, I was with Justine in her car driving down 95th on our way to pick out her new sofa. Ordinary. That’s what the day was. The plain kind of ordinary that obscures the secrets lurking in the shadows—or behind the faces of those you love.
Justine was the sister I’d never had, and our relationship was close to official since her brother had asked me twice to marry him. Tom was sexy, persuasive, and best of all, dependable. The next time he asked, I was considering saying yes.
A van came from nowhere, slamming into Justine’s side of the car.
Just like that. No warning.
Justine jerked toward me but was ultimately held in her seat by the safety belt. My head bounced hard off the right side window. A low screeching grated in my ears, followed by several long seconds of utter silence.
An explosion shattered the world.
When the smoke began to clear, I saw Justine’s head swing in my direction, though not of her own volition. Her blue eyes were open but
vacant, her face still. Fire licked up the front of her shirt. Her blond hair melted and her skin blackened.
“No!” The word ripped from my throat.
I tried to reach out to Justine, but my arms wouldn’t move. Heat. All around me. Terror. Pain. The stench of burning flesh.
Fire and smoke obscured my vision, but not before I saw something drip from the mess that had been Justine’s face. We were dying. This was it. The point of no return. I thought of my parents, my grandmother, my brothers, and how they would mourn me. I couldn’t even think about Tom.
A premonition of things to come?
I lost consciousness, and when I came to I was lying flat on my back. A sheet covered my face. I was suffocating.
“Witnesses say . . . in flames almost on impact,” a man’s voice was saying. “A fluke . . . not for the fire . . . might have survived.”
I turned my face, struggling to move my mouth from the sheet. Searching for air. Agony rippled up my neck and all over my head and down my body, the pain so decimating that it sapped all strength from me. I couldn’t move again, but that little bit had been enough.
“What the freak!” the voice said. I could barely hear the words, but they gave me something to focus on through the pain. I clung to them. “Gunnar . . . the oxygen . . . thought you said she was dead.”
The sheet lifted and air rushed into my tortured lungs. I could sense people all around me, though I couldn’t see anything except a hazy light. My throat was tight and burning, reminding me of the time I’d had both strep-throat and tonsillitis as a child. Only far worse. Blinding pain so intense that I couldn’t even moan.
More snatches of conversation filtered to my brain. “Black as a crisp . . . try an IV . . . have to be amputated . . . University of Kansas . . . Burn Center.”
Motion. The blare of a siren. Then blessed nothing.
When I awoke the next time, my throat still hurt, and so did every single inch of my body, though not with the all-consuming pain that made me wish I were dead. Probably they’d given me drugs. Or maybe too many nerves were damaged. I could feel an oxygen tube in my nose and cold seeping into a vein in my right shoulder. How could that be? I’d had IVs before and I’d never felt the liquid. It was so good, so necessary, that for a moment I concentrated all my attention on that small, steady flow. Life seeping into my body. But far too slowly. I wanted more.
Abruptly the sensation was gone. The pain cranked up a notch.
I tried to open my eyes, but only the right one was uncovered. From what I could tell, I seemed to be completely swathed in bandages and unable to move. My single eye rested on Tom, who was standing near the window, staring out with the unfocused expression of a man who saw nothing.
Tom shifted his weight, his muscles flexing under his T-shirt and jeans. In the past months I’d learned his body almost as well as my own, and even now I felt a sense of wonder at the miracle of our relationship. He didn’t push me for commitment, didn’t question why I was so hesitant to take the next step, and I loved him for that perhaps more than anything. It was also why I didn’t know if things would work out between us.
A tiny rush of air escaped the hole they’d left in the bandages near my mouth. He turned toward me, his face stricken, looking older than his thirty-five years. “Erin? Are you awake?”
I tried to nod, but found I couldn’t. I lay mute and helpless. Finally, I thought to close and open my single eye.
He was at my side instantly. “Oh, honey. Thank God! I thought I’d lost—” He broke off, struggling for control. “Erin, can you understand me?”
I blinked again.
“Okay, good. That’s really good. Do you remember what happened?” He took a shaky breath and hesitated before adding, “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
I remembered the accident. I remembered the fire and how Justine had burned, but I wanted the rest explained. I wanted to hear if Justine was in a bed like I was. I wanted to hear if we’d be okay.
I blinked twice.
He leaned closer, not touching me, his eyes rimmed in red. His eyes had a tendency to change color with what he wore, and today they were the inviting shade of a lake on a hot summer day. My favorite color.
“This morning you and Justine were in a car accident. There was a fire. You were burned.”
Over seventy percent of my body. The thought came from nowhere, and I wondered if I’d unconsciously heard someone talking about my condition. If that was true, my chances weren’t good. I’d heard of a formula at the insurance company where I worked: take your age, add the percentage of your body burned, and the sum was your chance of fatality. I’d be over a hundred percent.
I’m still alive. I’m the exception.
“Your parents just stepped out for a while. Your grandmother was here, too, almost all day, but they finally convinced her to go home. Chris is on his way.”
Had that much time passed? My older brother, Chris, had left that morning to pilot a charter flight from Kansas City to Tulsa. I’d been planning to go over tonight when he returned so I could spend time with him and Lorrie and their kids.
“They called Jace. He’ll be here soon.”
Jace was on his way from Texas? My younger brother had barely arrived at his new unit, and the army would never allow him to come home.
I knew then what Tom wasn’t saying: I was dying. Was that why there wasn’t as much pain? Or had my limbs been amputated? I tried to move my legs, but they felt heavy, and I wondered if that was the sensation the nerves sent to the brain after amputation. I concentrated on moving my arms, and though they were sheathed in bandages, I managed to move my right one slightly.
Tom’s eyes followed the movement, swallowing so hard I could see the lump in his throat go up and down. He wet his lips, started to speak, stopped, and then tried again. “It’s going to be okay, Erin. You’ll see.” The lie was so bad I felt sorry for him. I knew it was killing him not to do something useful for me, to somehow alleviate my suffering, but there was nothing he could do now, nothing either of us could do. This was one of those moments you endured and survived. Or you didn’t.
A nurse entered, and Tom eased away from the bed. “She’s awake,” he said. A pleading kind of hope had come into his face, and it was painful to see. More painful than the lie. “She understands what I’m saying.”
The nurse leaned in front of my good eye, doubt etched on her round face. Two bright spots of red stood out on her plump cheeks like awkwardly applied blush. “Well, that’s a good sign,” she said, but hesitantly, as though I was somehow breaking the rules by regaining consciousness.
Her eyes lifted toward something behind me. “What happened to the IV? It shouldn’t need changing already. That’s the third time we’ve run out in the last hour.” She shook her head. “Must be something wrong with the valve. I’ll check it and get another bag.”
After she left, Tom said more encouraging words, which only made me feel worse because I’d seen the truth in the nurse’s face. Talk about something real, I wanted to scream. Talk about the things we didn’t do. Talk about Justine. Tell me she’s okay.
He didn’t, and I guessed what that meant. A tear slipped from my eye into the bandage. She was gone. Justine was gone.
Meeting the siblings at the Red Night Club six months earlier had been a changing point in my life. Tom hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from me that night, or since, and over the past months Justine had loved and bullied me into thinking seriously about my future, something I’d lacked the confidence to do since leaving law school in disgrace. So what if I was thirty-one and living in the basement apartment at my parents’ house in Kansas City? Or that I worked a boring job as an insurance claims clerk when I’d always longed to do something more adventurous? I could change all that. I bought new clothes, took up biking, and began looking for a new apartment.
Tom couldn’t see my tear, but it really didn’t matter. I was dying. I’d lost my best friend, my almost sister. I’d lost any future
I might have had with Tom. I couldn’t wrap my understanding around either loss.
The nurse returned, and shortly I felt cool liquid seeping into my veins again. Purely imaginary but sweet all the same. I closed my right eye and concentrated on that lifeline, as though I could suck it into me and repair the damage to my body from the inside out.
“Don’t worry.” Tom’s voice came from far away. “I’m here for you. We’re going to make you well again. No matter how long it takes.” I couldn’t hear the lie in his voice anymore. Maybe it made him feel better to believe.
I wished I could.
The next time I woke, it was dark except for a dim light over the sink that stood against the wall. I sensed someone in the room but couldn’t move my head to see who it was. Tom? My brother Chris? More likely my mother or father.
The door opened and light sliced into the room. In walked a short, broad man with longish dark brown hair, intense brown eyes, and a trim mustache. Not good-looking, exactly, but so sure of himself that he exuded an animal attractiveness. A stethoscope hung from his neck and down his white lab coat. If anyone could accomplish a miracle, this man could; his presence was almost palpable.
Behind him came a similarly dressed blonde, and my single eye riveted on her in surprise. She carried her head and lean body with the same regal confidence of the man, but her face was familiar, though I had no idea where I might have seen her before. The fierce, possessive way her eyes fixed on my unmoving body gave me the unnerving feeling that she’d been looking for something for a long time.
And had found it.
The woman turned on the light, and I shut my eye momentarily at the brightness. “We need to take her for a few tests,” she said to the person at my bedside.
“More tests?” The voice was my mother’s, exhausted but not quite devoid of hope. I opened my eye, straining to see her, but she was out of my line of sight. “She woke up earlier. Isn’t that a good sign? Could the doctors be wrong?”
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