True Storm

by L. E. Sterling

  He straightens and pushes his friend away, still holding his face. “I deserve that.” He spits a tiny round of blood onto the ground in front of me and raises a placating hand. “But you need to listen, Lucy. The coin is not just a marriage promise, and that wasn’t my primary motive for giving it to you. It’s a very powerful talisman of protection. For my people there is nothing so sacred as a coin of Cernunnos.”

  “What do I care? I’m not one of your people.”

  “But you are. Both you and Margot.” He takes us both in. “You know you’re different.”

  I blink, trying to understand what he’s saying. “We aren’t True Born.”

  “You’re not like the other True Borns, true,” he says.

  “We’re not,” I insist. “We’ve been through this. Through rounds and rounds of Protocols. We don’t have the Talismans.”

  “But you wear this Talisman around your neck.” The way he says it, with reverence in his voice, makes me wary. He reaches out, tapping the coin before I can pull back and swipe his fingers away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Alastair is undeterred. “They’ve seen it. The Red Wing Clan. They’ve seen how it comes alive around your neck.”

  A shiver snakes up my spine, raising the hair on my arms and neck. “What are you talking about?”

  “The coin. It’s part of what was seen. Cernunnos’s coins would come to life when worn next to the skin by the twins meant to usher His time back into the world. The Seer said it will be something in their blood. Something that will sing to the coin, activate its magic.”

  It’s in the blood.

  “It’s not magic, Ali,” Margot says patiently. “It’s just an old coin.”

  At this, Alastair graces Margot with an apologetic look. “I’m just sorry I had but one coin, Margot. Most leaders only have one in their safekeeping.”

  Margot’s voice is raspy. “That’s just fine, Ali. I’m too young to get married.”

  I shoot my sister a dirty look and make an effort to unclench my fists before continuing. “Stuff and nonsense,” I chide. “There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for whatever it is you think is happening—if it’s even happening at all. I can’t see or feel anything.” But then I’m full of doubt as I recall Serena’s blank eyes, drawn to whatever strange material lies buried in the coin.

  “You can’t hide from the truth forever, Lucy. It’s in your blood. Yours and Margot’s.”

  “Forever?” I scoff. Still, his words are enough to send a bolt of dread into my belly as I recall the vivid dreams I’ve had since wearing the coin—even more vivid than my usual dreams where I see what’s to come.

  In this dream I float high above Dominion, filled with a grief so terrible it doesn’t have a name or shape. And as my tears fall down over the city, it becomes rain. Rain, washing the streets clean.

  Blood drains from my face. Panic gallops through my veins. I take deep, even breaths to calm myself. Is Alastair just like all the rest—after the secrets of our blood?

  “What are you going to do, Ali? Are you going to try to take us, like all the others?”

  “No, I would never.” He steps forward, hands outstretched beseechingly.

  I slap his hands down as they come to wrap around my upper arms. “I said don’t touch me!” He keeps coming forward. I back into Margot, stepping on her toes as I close my eyes and flail my arms. I’m fighting Ali’s grasp but also the ghosts who would steal our lives away: Resnikov, our parents. Father Wes and his Watchers.

  Must I also fight some ancient band of druidic loons?

  I scratch and claw and push and shove while Ali tries to grab my arms. Someone approaches me from the side—I assume it’s Ali’s friend, who tries to hug me around the torso. I lunge forward and snap back, kicking one of them as hard as I can. Margot’s screeching drowns out a groan and muffled curse.

  “Stop it! Don’t touch her! Someone help!”

  And just as sudden as a Flux storm, it’s over. Alastair and his friend are both on the ground. Shane stands before Margot and me, barely even breaking a sweat.

  “S’a good thing Mr. Storm let me come and pick you up today.”

  His knotted tattoos shine like black snakes under the white light of the sky as he swipes at a lock of his greasy hair and snarls at the boys. “So much as look at these young ladies again,” he says, anger transforming us to “leddies,” “I’ll skin yas alive. How does that sound, lads? Fun? Or maybe we won’t wait. Maybe I can do it here and now in the schoolyard, save us all a lot of years of misery.” Shane’s smile is ugly, tight. As if to punctuate his words, he pulls out a knife, serrated on one side. At least five inches from scabbard to tip. He juggles the thing expertly between his hands. Judging from the feral gleam in his eye, I’d assume he’s not fooling.

  It takes me a moment to process the prone form of Ali on the ground. Flowers, blue and gold and white, are strewn around his body like lost buttons. He’s up on one elbow, the stuffing apparently knocked out of him, I notice with some small glee.

  “No,” I tell Shane, putting my hand carefully on his arm. It takes a moment to steer his attention away from spilling blood. “Take us home, Shane. Just take us home.”

  I barely spare a glance for Ali and Tomas as Shane leads us away from the curious glances of some of the mercs and their young charges. Some of these Personals, House mercs, greet Shane by name, slapping him on the back as we pass and uttering the phrases common among the mercs for a save on the job.

  …

  The council chamber smells of mildew and wax, dust and the sweat of nervous men. Dominion is gloomier than usual today; the sky remains wrapped in a shawl of gray shadows. Power was cut from the main generator station, Storm tells us. Watchers, he suspects, judging by the red eyes and writing left behind, dripping from every surface.

  I study the gaunt faces of the Lasters at the table in the flickering, candled half gloom. The old man isn’t here today. But the younger one is, flushed in his overalls, almost handsome as he roves a nervous eye around the room. Beside him sits a skeletal man in a long-sleeve shirt rolled up from the wrists, exposing white-white arms that jut from his body as though they’ve lost their skin. This man wears a cynical smile like a mask.

  And he’s bold for a Laster.

  “Well?” The Laster arches up a thick black eyebrow and burns a look at Storm and me. “Are we going to sit here and die of boredom?” His anger chops the air.

  Storm inclines his head politely, a slim finger of an antler catching the light. “If you don’t mind, we’ll wait a few more minutes for the representatives from the Upper Circle.”

  “Don’t we have a representative of the Upper Circle sitting right here?” The man motions to me with the back of his hand.

  “Tonight Miss Fox is a representative of the True Borns.” Storm smiles, but I’d as soon not be on the receiving end of a smile like that.

  “Isn’t that convenient?” throws back the man. “A rich True Born and a rich brat from the Upper Circle teaming up? Sounds as stacked as the deck they’d offer us.” The Laster nods toward the door to indicate the absent senators. My breath catches. It’s not the worst insult I’ve ever been thrown. Still, it hurts, knowing as I do just how untrue his impressions really are.

  “If you really thought that,” says a sober Storm, his skin crackling with power so strong I want to push away from the table, “why are you here?”

  The man laughs, bitter and ugly. “And miss all this? This is better entertainment than the dross they put on the Feed, expecting us to eat it all up like hungry babies.” The word stretches and rolls. Bae-baes.

  Storm’s body shimmers with unearthly power, the air suddenly evaporating from the room. The young Laster pulls back in his seat like he’s been shot. Even the skeletal man blanches, though he’s too arrogant to show much else.

  “You’ll be civil to this young woman.”

  “Or you’ll what?” the skeletal man crows.

  I suck in a br
eath and bite my lip. What will he do? But apparently Storm doesn’t feel the need to make threats. He simply stares at the Laster man, his eyes glowing hot metal in a face absurdly beautiful, utterly alien. It seems to finally make an impression, though. The man sits back with a thoughtful expression.

  And then the real problem sails through the door.

  “Don’t bother to get up; we won’t be here long,” chirps Theodore Nash. None of us was making to stand anyhow, so it’s just as well.

  Nash wears an ascot today, the official red of his office, and the kind of well-cut gray suit that only the finest tailors could produce. Healthy color stains his cheeks. I take in the white linen handkerchief folded neatly in his breast pocket.

  Perfectly folded. Senator Theodore Nash doesn’t mop away sweat any longer. Either the man’s Splice took hold, or he’s a lucky man.

  No one survives. That’s what they say. When it finally sinks its teeth into you, there is no coming back. So what happened to Nash? I look over Nash’s shoulder as he takes a seat at the table and folds his hands together, but no Gillis appears. Nash pulls his lips into a thin, bloodless line. “Well, how nice that we’re all here.”

  Storm tilts his head as though he’s hearing something from a whole other frequency. “Where’s Gillis?”

  “He won’t be coming back to these meetings. For that matter, neither will I. The Upper Circle is officially denying your request to start a council. There’s a curfew on, eh? Better scurry back to your hidey-holes.” He smiles then, a hate-filled, arrogant smile. Even I want to punch him. But as the two Laster men turn to give each other knowing looks and start to stand, I can’t help myself.

  I’ve seen my father do it often enough, I reckon. I clear my throat loudly, my own hands coming together on the tabletop. “Excuse me, Senator Nash. I guess I’m a little confused as to how you have the authority to speak for the rest of Dominion. I thought Senator Gillis outranked you?” I say it in as polite of tones as I can muster, which isn’t much, I’ll grant. It’s enough to mottle Nash’s face as he stands and walks over to me.

  “That’s right, Lucy, that’s right. Gillis outranks me,” he all but spits in my face. “But he’s not here, is he?”

  “What happened to him?” I ask. Innocent enough question. But something has happened; something is wrong. Because Nash lunges for me, his hands heading for my neck as though to pick a nasty weed.

  Just as suddenly, Storm grabs Nash. The senator’s red ascot dangles as his feet leave the floor. The lines of Storm’s face could be carved of marble as he stands there, the words slow and careful.

  “Come near Miss Fox again and I’ll feed you your own hands and light you on fire,” he says in a conversational tone. But I believe every word. And apparently, so does Nash. “Apologize.”

  Nash is lowered to the floor, face beet red. “Suh-suh-sorry,” he gasps, but he can’t bear to look at me. I’ve been frozen to my seat, not just through the threat of violence that lingers in the air like fine perfume but something else that niggles at me, like a dream where I see things.

  Nash. Something is very wrong with Nash.

  …

  Doc Raines calls out to us from somewhere in the bowels of Storm’s lab. “I’m back here, girls.” The room’s cold metal, as familiar as a nursery rhyme to Margot and me, glares at us under the harsh lights.

  Margot grasps my pinkie with her own. “Whatever happens,” she says. Our oldest bargain. Me and her, no matter what.

  “Whatever happens.” I nod.

  Doc Raines appears in a puff of frizzy hair. “I’ve discovered something significant. I thought you should know right away.”

  We’ve heard this before. It’s always something new, something we don’t fully understand. And no matter how hard I try, the answers to the real questions seem to elude us.

  What are we? That’s the most insistent question, the one that drives all the others. Why are people after us? Why did our parents disappear?

  Margot tenses, pulling my pinkie. I focus on Doc Raines, whose sharp blue eyes blink, huge and owlish, behind her lab loops. She pulls them up so they sit on top of her hair. Only this time, rather than jumping in and bombarding us with information, this time she just stands there, hands on hips, and takes us in.

  She wipes at something on her forehead. “I don’t know how to prepare you for this.”

  14

  Alarm courses through my body. “What?”

  Doc Raines rakes her eyes over us. “You do realize, don’t you, that your DNA is breaking all the rules of science as we know it? Remember I told you I was going to try to match whatever DNA expression your twinned blood created with our central database? Well, I got a hit almost immediately.”

  “What is it, Doc Raines?” Margot gives my hand a death grip.

  “You’re not going to believe this. Once combined, your blood starts creating True Born Talismans. I didn’t recognize it at first, because it’s an expression of the Talismans I’d never seen before.”

  My mind whirls noisily while Doc Raines continues. But I can’t hear her anymore. The True Born Talismans are what make the True Borns unique, separate from their human counterparts. When the Talismans are present in a person, all sorts of physical anomalies appear, like Carl’s cat fur or Jared’s shifter abilities. The Talismans are why True Borns don’t catch sick with the Plague.

  Lock and key. Splicer and True Born. But how can we be both?

  It’s Margot who speaks first. Clearing her throat, she asks, “Not Plague Cure?”

  Doc Raines shakes her head. “Very astute of you, Margot. Not exactly. It’s not that simple. But it is more elegant. The structure that we looked at did get rid of the Plague sample, as I showed you. But it did so by first transforming the host DNA into the True Born Talismans. As you know, True Borns don’t fall ill because the Talismans protect against the Plague. But no one has really had the opportunity to study why. Granted, we don’t know whether your blood acts exactly the same as the natural expressions. It essentially looks like an archaic variant of the Talismans, but really we’re just guessing.”

  Doc Raines is so ecstatic you might think she’s won the Dominion lottery. Beside me, Margot frowns.

  But an idea is forming in my head. “Doc Raines, what would happen if a Plague-struck was given our combined blood? Would it cure them?”

  Margot cuts sharp eyes at me. I can feel her heart thumping. She needs to know. We both do.

  “I’m honestly not sure about that, girls. We’d need to run more tests. It’s more likely to proliferate True Born Talismans throughout the genetic matrix. Clearing the body of the Plague’s rogue DNA would simply be an added benefit.”

  “So you think it would turn people into True Borns? What about just Margot’s blood?”

  “Margot’s alone would give a boost to natural immunity. That’s all.”

  “They wouldn’t evolve.” I try out the word self-consciously.

  “No, I doubt it.”

  I look at Margot from the corner of my eye. “But it would help someone survive the Plague.”

  Now it’s Doc Raines’s turn to frown as she puzzles it out. “Yes. Temporarily…it would need the anchor for stability, but like I said, when it’s combined…” Doc Raines cuts off and abruptly shoves to her feet. “You there,” she calls, rounding the corner. Following close behind, Margot and I are just in time to see Shane hold his hands up in mock surrender. “What are you doing here?” Doc Raines orders.

  “No need to get upset, missus,” Shane says dismissively. “I’m just here for the girls.”

  “That’s Doctor to you, thank you very much. And I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry.” A small smile frames Shane’s mouth as he stares down at the thing in Doc Raines’s hand. It takes me another moment to grasp that she’s pulled a gun on Shane.

  “Doc Raines, this is our father’s man, Shane.” I step in front of the gun, forcing the doctor to lower her hand. “He’s been with u
s since we were babies. We’d trust him with our lives.”

  “No one is supposed to enter here without my express consent,” the doctor continues as though I hadn’t spoken.

  “Sorry, I just didn’t know how else to get their attention,” Shane says with an air of abashment. “It’s time for the twins to get off to school. Wouldn’t you know it? Mr. Storm has given me a vote of confidence.” He winks at Doc Raines. “Girls, for the next little while I’ll be your school merc, Just like old times. I’m earning my stripes with your friend.”

  She doesn’t put the gun away. “We’ll take this up again later, ladies,” she tells us while Shane holds open the laboratory door.

  Then we sail off into an ordinary day, Margot and I, knowing that nothing will ever be ordinary again.

  …

  “Ali didn’t come to see you today,” Margot observes.

  We lie on her bed, hands threaded together as they were when we were born, fingers twining like DNA.

  “Do you think Doc Raines is telling the truth?” I whisper. It’s not just that I’m avoiding the subject of Ali. It’s that the bomb Doc Raines dropped on us earlier in the day feels like a much bigger deal than a boy. It’s a life-and-death secret. And we girls, the Fox twins, are its keeper. Lock and key.

  Margot taps at her cheek and lets go a chuff of air. “I reckon she believes it.”

  “What do you believe?”

  My twin is silent. I can feel the storm clouds gathering in her, stretching out over everything she is. When she finally breaks her silence, I can feel the wetness rushing out over her cheeks. I don’t move to comfort her, though I want to. She’d not want me to reach out right now.

  “They thought to sell my DNA as Plague Cure is what I think.” Her voice is bitter, twisted. This version of Margot hurts me somewhere I don’t have a name for.

  I think back to how I found my sister again. Hundreds of people on luxury cruise liners, on trains, seeking a cure. Was this what they were after?

  “We destroyed the lab, so it doesn’t matter,” I soothe.

  “No, Lu. We destroyed one factory. That doesn’t mean they don’t have tiny pieces of me they’re growing someplace else.”