“You just want to see my undies again.”
Noah rolls his eyes. “Duh.”
I move toward the edge of the walkway and look out over the river. A fish jumps out of the water and birds swoop at him. He barely dips back under the water before a seagull snags him and flies off, wings pumping while the idiot fish flails uselessly. No control over his own destiny.
I know the feeling.
When I turn back toward Noah, he’s watching me. I cross my arms and wonder what he sees.
“You look so sad.” He takes two steps toward me, his heart beating faster than usual. “Almost like you’re trying to figure out how to say goodbye to me. Which is crazy because you just moved here, right?”
He’s far too perceptive for a human kid, maybe because he doesn’t have an agenda. When you’re trying to work an angle, it’s harder to truly see into another person’s motivations. Your desires get in the way. I want to tell him the whole truth about who I am and what happened. I want to tell him about Judica, and the ring and Mom’s death. I want to get perspective from someone with nothing to gain and nothing to lose. But I can’t, because... I can’t really think why I can’t. His best friend in school is half-evian, and if I want to use him later as a contact, he’ll need to know.
“Actually,” I say, feeling him out, “I’m thinking of going back home.”
“This summer?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, sooner.”
He steps closer, his head hovering a few inches away, his stormy blue eyes locked on mine. “You can’t do that,” he whispers.
“I can’t?”
He shakes his head slowly, his dark hair falling in his face. He brushes it back with one hand. “My life would sink back into utter boredom. I hate to make this all about me, but that’s just how it’s going to have to be.” He grins at me. “You have to stay.”
My stomach flip flops. Noah isn’t as muscular as Edam, and he’s not as commanding or impressive, but I know his intentions. I know what he wants without a doubt, even if he likes my looks most of all. And I want him, too.
“I don’t have a reason to stay in New York,” I say softly. “And I have a lot of things pulling me back home.”
“You don’t have any reason to stay here?” Noah’s hand brushes against mine, his fingers rougher than I remembered.
“No reason at all.”
His head dips lower. “Are you sure?”
I swallow and his eyes drop to my lips.
In the space of one blink, he closes the space between us and presses his mouth to mine. It’s just like our first kiss, and it’s completely different. It’s the cry of seagulls, and the wind in our hair. It’s the freedom of his arms, and the uncertainty of leave-taking. It’s longing and resignation and desire, tangled like our hands, mussed like our hair, and urgent like his lips against mine.
“Don’t go,” he whispers.
I can’t promise to stay, so I kiss him back instead. His arms wrap around my waist again, pulling me closer without demanding things, sheltering me without dictating my future. And somehow, in the midst of my crazy, tumultuous world, I’m safe in the circle of his human hands. Nothing can hurt me with Noah by my side.
But of course none of this is real, because I’m reinforced steel to his tissue paper. Noah can’t keep me safe. His world is a sandbox compared to my lion’s den.
When I pull back, Noah lets me, but the longing in his eyes tugs at my heart. I wish I’d been born into another life, another family. Then maybe Noah could be the one for me.
Noah lets me slide out and away, but his warm breath shifts my hair when he says, “Why are you really leaving?”
His murmured words distract me from a sound I should have recognized. If I hadn’t been wishing quite so hard, I might have been paying better attention. I might have evaded the bullet that punches through my right shoulder.
27
The shot takes out a chunk of my arm and spins me all the way around until I’m facing the strike team. They’re wearing plain clothes, but they’re packing 1911s. That .45 would have stopped me cold if it had been hollow point and a little to the left. How did the idiot shooter miss my body, or even better, my head? They’re wearing masks and gloves and they’re dressed in black gear, but that can’t disguise their frames. There are four of them, and I flog my fuzzy brain to process the data in front of my eyes.
The first is tall, even for an evian. He’s got to be close to seven feet. A small blond curl pokes out from under his black mask. The second is tall but not as tall, and he’s broad. I can’t see any hair, but the bump in the back of his masked head tells me his hair is long, probably pulled back in a ponytail. The third is a woman whose footwear I recognize. Valentino Rockstud Boots, customized for her. I already know the soles of the boots are crossed with spider webs.
Her real name is Rivera, but she’s goes by Recluse. Rivera hasn’t trusted anyone since her brother died in the field. Her anger needed an outlet, and she naturally gravitated toward the angriest person I know, my twin. I don’t recognize the fourth man, but if Rivera’s leading the team, Judica sent them. The tall one is Deitrich, the broad man is Lorn, and the fourth could be any of her other guards. Somehow, Judica found out I’m naming Edam as Consort. The odds may have shifted in my favor finally, but only if I survive this assassination attempt.
By the time I shove Noah to the ground, I’ve already healed from the ill-aimed shot.
“Stay down,” I say.
“Wait, did someone shoot you?” Noah tries to stand, but I kick his legs out from under him, slamming him face down onto the pavement. A broken nose is better than a hole in the head.
They fire three more shots, one slamming into my left leg, one whizzing past my head and one lodging in my left clavicle.
“Noah, stay down.” I dig the fingers of my right hand into the hole in my shoulder and yank on it until I dislodge the bullet. When I toss it into the river, I glance at Noah, who promptly rubs his eyes. I shouldn’t have yanked the bullet out like that, but it might have been an exploding round. Besides, I can’t heal with a bullet lodged in my bone.
“Did we stumble in to some kind of gang fight?” Noah tries to stand again.
I shove him down again. “Noah, stay down and close your eyes. Trust me.” Maybe we can take care of this fast and he’ll think he hallucinated it.
I look back at my four shooters, clustered together against a building for cover. Hiding together is their biggest mistake. They should be coming at me from several different locations. When I glance back, I realize why they’re huddling. Donovan and Renni have taken out two other assailants on the north side, but Renni is down too. A glance to the south shows Mathias and Simeon with a man face down on the pavement, but Simeon’s limping.
It’s good my guards are doing their job, but there’s no one to take out these four.
I crouch down next to Noah, who is finally listening to me and staying near the ground.
Rivera and her crew are picking their way toward me, operating under the assumption that I’m unarmed and help isn’t coming. FDR runs directly below us. I might be able to drop down and escape, but I don’t want to abandon Noah. He’d break his leg at the very least from a fall like that, but if I ditch him after they saw us kissing, they might use him as a hostage. I unclasp my necklace with nervous, fumbling fingers. I’ve practiced for this scenario, but never encountered it before today.
“Do you think they’re going to rob us?” Noah asks, eyeing my disassembly efforts.
“Hush, and close your eyes.”
“You know that ostriches are widely considered the dumbest animals?” Noah says. “Closing my eyes won’t keep us safe.” He starts casting around for rubble and grabs a handful of rocks.
Heaven help me.
I carefully remove several of the purple gemstones and activate each one. I set the faux purple gems on the ground, slide the straps off my necklace and hook them on the edges of the pendant. Now they’ve been act
ivated, each bead will take out anything in a one-foot blast radius. “Flat on the ground, Noah.”
My first shot takes off Lorn’s left leg. Pink mist, bomb squads call it, and that’s just how it looks. The rounds are made to be almost entirely silent, but they deal maximum damage. It’s going to be tremendously painful to regrow that limb, and it’ll take days and days. Serves him right for attacking wherever Judica points, including his rightful Empress.
Rivera and Dietrich each break in opposite directions, but the fourth attacker heads straight for me. He gets one shot off, which grazes my side, before I explode his head. I didn’t want to kill him, but he got too close. I might have survived a few more rounds, but Noah can’t, and I won’t risk his life.
“Oh my gosh, what just happened?” Noah asks. “Is that guy dead?”
“No, this is a dream,” I say.
Noah rubs his eyes. Repeatedly.
I aim for Rivera next, but just before I release the shot, Noah grabs my arm. “Dream or not, look.”
I follow his finger to the movement behind Rivera. A little girl wearing a red backpack is walking behind her. There’s a sign on the faded brick building behind them that reads: Brearley School. The huddling makes even more sense. They had a plan all along. Who would attack them in front of a primary school?
If my blasts hadn’t been so quiet, the kids would probably be hiding. Why didn’t the gunshots in my direction scare them off? What is wrong with New Yorkers? While I hesitate, three more children round the corner. I can’t risk another blast.
A tiny flash above and to the left alerts me and I glance up, right at the crosshairs of a sniper trained on my head. I cannot catch a break. I hate that Frederick was right, but this run was a terrible idea. With my back up against the rail, my options have dwindled to one: the river. Frederick is going to kill me, but this is my best bet. I just need to decide whether to bring Noah along.
It’s a big drop over the rail, and Noah already looks freaked out. They haven’t aimed at him once. Hostage risk aside, he’s probably safer if I just disappear.
I stand up to leap over the rail, because if I’m on the move, they’ll probably stay on me. Dietrich fires off another shot while I deliberate. Noah jumps in front of me like a moron, and I yank us both backward into the river, Noah’s shoulder in one hand, my necklace in the other.
The frigid water slaps against my face, flooding my mouth with salt, and sending even more adrenaline into my bloodstream. I release Noah long enough to re-clasp my necklace. Then I spin him around.
“Were you hit?” I ask.
Noah should not have tried to save me. Clearly Noah is an idiot. I just hope he’s not about to be a dead idiot.
“I’m not sure they were firing real bullets.” Noah mouth trembles from the cold as he treads water next to me. “You seem fine, too. Is it possible we walked into someone filming a movie?”
I wonder when he’ll remember that I exploded someone’s leg and another man’s head. Maybe he didn’t notice.
“It wasn’t a movie, Noah. And if we don’t put some space between us and them, they’ll keep coming,” I say.
He bobs his head and starts swimming. I look over my shoulder repeatedly, but don’t see them. After I ignore his questions for a while, he stops asking them. Probably because he’s either exhausted, freezing to death, or both.
When we finally crawl out on the edge of some soccer field, parents and coaches rush over to check on us. I guess even in NYC, two teenagers climbing out of the East River is noteworthy. According to signs, we’re on Roosevelt Island.
“Whoa,” a lady holding a bright pink bag and wearing a green Adidas jacket says, “Did you two fall in? Are you okay? I’ll call 911.”
“No,” I say, “it’s fine. Our parents will ground us for life if they find out. Please don’t.”
She frowns. “We have to do something.”
Noah steps in. “It was a dare. You know how goofy high school kids can be. But don’t worry, we’ll head straight home.”
It takes him a few more minutes, but Noah calms the parents down admirably. By the time he’s done, he walks back toward me wearing one donated jacket and holding another in his hand. I slide it on with a grateful smile, even though it smells like Cheetos. At least it blocks the wind.
“Your name isn’t Rebecca, is it?”
I shake my head. “Chancery Alamecha.”
“And Laura isn’t actually your sister?”
Another shake.
“I should have realized that. You look nothing alike.”
“Why aren’t you freaking out right now?” I ask.
He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re the one who got shot, but remarkably, unbelievably even, you seem fine. Maybe I should be the one asking the vaguely aggressive questions.”
“Fair enough.” I wanted to tell him before, and now I have an excuse. But we can’t stand around here in the open, waiting for Judica’s hit squad to catch up. I start walking toward the north end of the island and he follows, pelting me with questions.
“Who are you?” he asks. “And why don’t you appear to be injured? Are we on the set of some movie? Were they firing blanks? Because I thought I saw real blood. And what kind of name is Chancery?”
I switch to Mandarin, which I assume he speaks. “You keep asking who I am, but it’s less about who I am, and more about what I am.”
His eyes widen, and he responds in Mandarin. “You speak Mandarin, and you’re super duper hot.” He swallows. “Are you—” He blinks repeatedly. “You’re an alien, aren’t you?” He bites his lower lip, the lip I was just kissing.
I laugh. “I’m not an alien. But before I explain. . . what do you know about DNA?”
“DNA?” His eyebrows rise. “Like, adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine? That kind of DNA?”
“Yes, exactly that DNA.”
“Uh, I know that it replicates.”
“Good,” I say. “What else?”
“Umm, it tells our cells what to do, like a blueprint so they can reproduce over and over.”
“Also correct, but here’s where we dip into something different.”
Noah watches me more than the road as we jog toward the Roosevelt Island Bridge. “Okay. Are you going to tell me?”
“I’ve never told a human before.”
His eyebrows rise and he stops. “A human? As in, you’re not human?”
“You’ve heard of Adam and Eve?”
He nods. “Yep, they’ve come up. I may not be religious myself, but I have heard of the origin story that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share.”
“Okay, well, they aren’t wrong. Even the Hindus still have quite a few details right. You’ve read the Rig-Veda, I assume?”
Noah shakes his head.
“It doesn’t matter, really, but there’s a quote in there I liked a lot. ‘Whence all creation has its origin, He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, He, who surveys it all from highest heaven, He knows, or maybe even He does not.’ So even some of the Hindus envision a single creator of some sort, whether it’s a combination of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, or something else.”
“Okay, sure. It’s either that, or we came from monkeys, right?” Noah shrugs.
“Actually, evolution posits that we share an ancestor with apes, but not that we came from them. But we’re getting sidetracked. The point is that Adam and Eve did live, and they were the first humans. They also had perfect DNA, handed to them from the creator.”
Noah snorts.
“You think it sounds unlikely, and that’s fine. But for me, Adam and Eve were my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.”
“Let’s assume I believe this, which I don’t, to be clear, but assume I do. Why is it that you’re only a few generations away from good old Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve?”
I sigh. “Their DNA was perfect. With time, the DNA in your body starts to break down, hundreds, thousands, millions of replications later. Then your skin isn’t as elast
ic, your body sags, wrinkles, and so on. You get age spots, and your body doesn’t heal quickly.”
“Sure, we all age.”
I shake my head this time. “No. We don’t all age at the same rate.”
“People are always saying my dad looks amazing for his age. Is that what you mean?”
Could his dad be half-evian? “Maybe. But it’s more than looking good. The average human doesn’t live more than a hundred years.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll live a thousand years, or close to it, before I begin to experience the same aging issues that you’ll face in less than one hundred.”
“Wait, why will you live so long?”
“My DNA is better,” I say simply. “I heal more efficiently, run faster, process data better, and jump higher than you do. It’s not arrogance or superiority that I’m spouting. Those are all facts. We aren’t human, which is a word we developed for those with degraded DNA. Those of us with very few genetic deletions call ourselves evian, from the pure line of Eve.”
Noah starts walking then, not looking in my direction, hands stuffed in his pockets. We turn on Vernon Road, and he still hasn’t said another word.
“Look, the issue is that our DNA hasn’t suffered any decay. But human DNA has been through thousands of tiny genetic deletions.”
He stops and swivels to face me. “Deletions?”
“Yes, the very end of the DNA chain drops off the sequence sometimes when cells split. Maybe once every couple thousand replications. Maybe less, or maybe more. It’s not exact, but that’s why we age, remember?”
“Fine, I’ll play along.”
I don’t scowl at him. It’s natural that he doesn’t believe me. “Eve’s youngest daughter lived as long as Eve, but was born nearly a thousand years after Eve and Adam were created on Earth.”
“Okay, sure. Why not?”
“Her name was Mahalesh, and Alamecha the name of Mahalesh’s youngest daughter. She was technically the heir to all that Mahalesh had, or should have been. Alamecha was also my great great great grandma.”
“So you’re seven generations—”
“Six,” I say, cutting him off. “I’m six generations removed, or seventh generation myself, from the woman the Bible calls Eve.”
Displaced (The Birthright Series Book 1) Page 32