Exiled (TalentBorn Book 2)

by C. S. Churton

  Not that anyone’s round here – this place is as deserted as the pastry stand at a health convention. It looks like all of the businesses down this road have closed. There’s another smashed street lamp ahead. I guess the council don’t bother sending people to repair them if they’ve got no paying customers down here – which just goes to prove how short-sighted most councils are.

  I slow the car further and squint into the darkness that’s gathering around the edge of my headlights. That looks like a car parked up ahead. That’s weird. I flick the lights onto full beam and illuminate the entire road. My heart starts pounding all over again. That’s an Ishmaelian vehicle. That’s Scott’s vehicle. He was here. He might still be here.

  I come back to my senses and kill the lights. If he’s in trouble, I don’t need to announce my presence to the whole world. And he’s got to be in trouble – why else would he still be here, why wouldn’t he have called me? And why are all the street lights out? I’m starting to think it’s more than coincidence.

  I switch off the engine and sit in the darkness for a moment, listening to the sound of my own breathing and the thousand thoughts running through my head. Rushing in isn’t going to help anyone. I pull out my phone, and dial his number again. Still nothing. And I have full signal here. Either he’s not here, in which case why is the car, or something’s happened to his phone, in which case why hasn’t he grabbed the spare all the Ishmaelian vehicles have in the glove compartment? There isn’t an explanation either way. At least, not one I like.

  I get out of the car, shivering as the cold assaults me, and lock the vehicle, because it would be nice if it’s still here when I get back. Back from what, I don’t allow myself to wonder. My breath hangs around me in a cloud, and I thrust my hands deep into my pockets. The cans of coke are still there, and I open one and drain it. I’m starting to get a bad feeling, and I don’t want to be running on an empty tank, just in case. I ditch the empty can and leave the spare in my other pocket – I might need it later.

  An echo sounds ahead, or at least… I thought it did. I glance around but I’m on my own out here. Another shiver runs through me, not from the cold this time. I freeze in place – this is a really bad idea – but shake it off. Scott is here somewhere. I need to find him. I put a confidence in my stride that I don’t feel – but it vanishes by the time I’ve taken three steps. I’d look out of place being too confident around here anyway. I draw my hood up over my face, and creep towards the car, listening to the echo of each step I take, and trying to decide if there’s a second echo that isn’t mine. Something brushes past me. I gasp, and spin around – and see the carrier bag blowing away in the breeze. I swallow, and force myself to take a deep breath. The car’s only a few steps away. I cover them quickly, and peer in through the window. It’s empty.

  “I figured you’d come looking for him.”

  A scream slips from my lips and I spin around, searching the shadows frantically. A figure detaches from them and steps towards me. I step back and bump into the car. The figure keeps coming, and I can make out some of his features. They don’t reassure. It’s him. It’s the guy who was following us. At the funeral. Near the Ishmaelian base. It’s him.

  “You know who I am?” And suddenly I do. It’s his voice, I think. The last time I heard it, I was outside my flat, with Scott’s hand on my arm. And he was wearing a policeman’s uniform. PC… PC Drake, he called himself. And before that, in the shopping centre when I stole the ring, right before I shifted for the very first time – while he was chasing me. Does that mean he’s really a cop? I can’t stick around to find out. If he’s here, Scott’s not. I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve need to get away from him, I’ve got to–

  “No, wait! Don’t do your disappearing thing – I can help.”

  I stop, quivering on the spot from my scattered energies. I take a steadying breath and regard him warily.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Talk.” I keep it short because otherwise he’ll hear how much my voice is shaking, from fear or from the aborted shift, I don’t know which. I don’t have time to think about it right now. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to shift now if I need to, either.

  “Alright. Just don’t go anywhere until you’ve heard me out, okay?”

  I nod. Better he thinks it’s my choice to stay. I don’t want him to know how vulnerable I am.

  “I’ve been following you both–”

  “Yeah, I know,” I cut in bitingly.

  “–but not for the reason you think.”

  “You think you know what I’m thinking?” I’m not even sure that made sense. I shake my head, but bite my tongue.

  “Okay, maybe not. But if you think I’m here to hurt you, you’re wrong.” He claps his gloved hands together and bounces on his toes.

  “It’s cold out here. How about we get back into one of the vehicles?” He nods to my car and the alleyway he appeared from, which presumably leads to wherever he’s stashed his.

  “Nice try.” I cross my arms. “Here’s fine.”

  “Fair enough. Look, when you disappeared right in front of my eyes a few months back, I thought I was losing it. One second you were running right at me, and the next, you were gone.”

  “That’s why it never made your report?” I say, intrigued despite myself. I’d wondered at the time why it hadn’t drawn more attention, but Scott had promised me it wouldn’t get that far, and I’d had other things on my mind. I hadn’t given it much thought since.

  “That’s one of the reasons,” he agrees. “I came to your flat, remember?”

  As if I’m likely to forget. I walked straight past him, got into a car and drove off to meet someone a thousand times worse.

  “You came with a different cop.”

  “Yeah. My partner took a little sick leave.”

  “Because of me?” Guilt gnaws at me – I was destroying people’s lives without even realising. I toss the emotion in the heap. I’ll deal with it later.

  “We were told to bring you in, but I just wanted to know what you were – to know I wasn’t going mad.”

  “And I’d never have admitted it. I didn’t even know what I was doing myself back then. I’d have thought you were madder than you did.”

  He looks taken aback by that.

  “What, you think I’d have been stealing if I had other options? I was just a waitress, trying to keep a roof over my head. I didn’t know.”

  “Then your tame cop, DS Yates, shut us down.”

  “He’s not a cop. And that’s not his name.”

  “Yeah, I figured that one out when I called Ryebridge station. They were quick to shut me down, too. Meanwhile you disappeared. I called in some favours, tried to find you. It wasn’t easy. It was like you’d vanished off the face of the earth – wait, you can’t do that, right?”

  He looks vaguely queasy, so I cut him some slack and shake my head. This isn’t his world, any more than it was mine when we first crossed paths.

  “I just wanted to know what you were.”

  “I’m just a person,” I snap. “I’m human.”

  “I can see that,” he nods. “I don’t know, I got obsessed. I was told to take some time from work. I had nothing else to focus on. Then that local girl was murdered–”

  “Janey.”

  “–and I remembered she worked at the same place you used to.” He glances round over his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this out here?”

  “Keep. Talking.”

  “I went to the funeral, on the off chance, and saw you both there.”

  “And you decided to turn stalker?”

  “I just wanted answers.” His jaw sets. “It’s lucky for you I did. I saw that car–” he nods to the vehicle I’m leaning on, “–on the road out of Highbridge, so I followed it. It wasn’t until it pulled up here that I realised Yates was on his own.”

  “Scott,” I correct quietly.

  He nods, absorbing the information, and I wish I hadn
’t interrupted him. He knows something about Scott, and I exert all my self-control to keep from demanding he tell me right now. I need him on side if I’m going to get him to tell me anything, and that means going along with him.

  “So, you saw Scott get out,” I prompt him. “What happened next?”

  “There was a woman here – is she one of you?” He breaks off and shoots me a questioning look.

  “We think so,” I say. I don’t want to go into more detail than necessary. He takes a breath and lets it out again. I can see the question burning in his eyes, the same question I’d asked when I joined AbGen: how many absas are there? He doesn’t ask it.

  “I don’t know how he knew how to find her, but he came straight here. Is that… is that something he can do?”

  “Questions later,” I tell him. “I need to find Scott.”

  The cop nods.

  “Sorry. It’s just… it’s a lot to take in. He started talking to her, and a van pulled up behind him. Four of them jumped out, masked and armed. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they said, but he went with them. They tied his hands and put him in the back of the van.”

  My heart sinks, and suddenly there’s this burning in my throat. I turn quickly and retch. Scott. They’ve got Scott. He’s gone. Cold air is burning along my throat and my stomach keeps churning. Pearce has him. A hand touches my shoulder lightly and I shove the cop away with all my strength. He raises his hands and takes a step back.

  “You let them take him,” I accuse.

  “They had guns, and there were four of them.”

  I lean back against the car and close my eyes. He’s gone. I should have come sooner. I should have insisted on coming with him in the first place. I open my eyes sharply.

  “They just took him? Not the absa?”

  “Absa?”

  “The girl,” I say impatiently. “Did they take her?”

  “She got in the front of the van. It didn’t look like they made her.”

  The full implication of that takes a moment to sink in.

  “It was a trap.” And only AbGen have the resources – and access to absas – to pull something like that off. “Pearce thought I’d be with him. He wanted me, but he’s got Scott. Shit.”

  I don’t want Scott anywhere near an angry Pearce– there’s no telling what he’ll do when he realises his trap didn’t work. At least, not in the way he wanted. But he’s still got one of us. One he can afford to make an example of. Shit.

  I focus my eyes back on Drake.

  “You said you could help.”

  “I can. I don’t know where they went, I couldn’t follow without being seen, but I’ve got the van’s plates, and I’m guessing I’ve got more experience at this sort of thing than you do. What about the others – the ones you took up with?”

  I shake my head.

  “We can’t count on them.” And I think we are ‘we’ now, because he’s right – I’ve got no experience at tracking people down, and Scott doesn’t have time for me to learn. We need to get him out of there. Now.

  “Okay, so what’s the plan? How do we find him?”

  “The old-fashioned way. We find out if the locals saw anything.” He lifts his arm and glances at his watch. “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was the worst night of my life, and it has some pretty stiff competition. There’s no B&B in the country that would have taken us in at that time in the morning, so we slept in our cars. Drake parked his car up behind mine, either for safety in numbers or because he was worried I’d take off in the night – as if I’d need a car to do it. It turns out sleeping in your car isn’t as glamorous as they make out on TV, especially when that car is an ancient Fiat.

  For one thing, ‘sleeping’ is an exaggeration of what happened last night. It seems like sleeping in a car will be easy, after all, you do it all the time on long journeys when someone else is driving. But what happens when the car stops moving? You wake up. It’s the motion that makes you sleep, not the car. So sleeping isn’t really what happened. More like, snatching a moment’s unconsciousness here and there. It is literally impossible to get comfortable inside such a small car. The back seats look like a safe bet – until you realise they’re slightly sloped, too short to stretch out on, and too narrow to curl up on. Not to mention seatbelt clips sticking in very uncomfortable places. So then you switch to the front seat, which seems like a good idea at the time. Well, the passenger seat actually, because when you get there you realise foot pedals and a whopping great steering wheel are not your friends. So you’re in the passenger seat, reclining it back as far as it will go – which, incidentally, is not far enough – and that’s when you realise how cold the footwell gets overnight in autumn. If you’re wondering, the answer is bloody cold. Cold enough that after an hour you can’t feel your feet. That’s not to imply the rest of the car isn’t pretty damned cold too, because it is. And having snuck out of the barn, I have no blanket, so I slept – or not – with my coat draped over me, my hood up, and my hands shoved inside my top.

  And then, of course, there’s the noises. You’d think given that the area we’re in is more or less abandoned, it’d be quiet. Which make the noises throughout the night all the more alarming. I slept with the doors locked, but that didn’t stop me checking them every time I woke. Sometime during the night I almost shifted right out of the car when I woke to see a pair of eyes staring in at me – and then realised they belonged to a fox. It took me a long time to find unconsciousness after that.

  And it’s about three in the morning when I realise I need to pee. Of course, I can’t get out and pee here, with whatever goes bump in the night lurking, not to mention Drake sleeping in his car next to me, so I try to ignore it, which sorta works. At first.

  None of that is the reason my night is so awful. Because the whole time I’m trying to sleep, enduring minor discomforts, Pearce has Scott, and I have no idea what he might be doing to him. Nothing good. And I can’t even go to the Ishmaelians for back up, because they sent Scott out here, alone, right into AbGen’s trap, and I have no way of knowing if they did it on purpose. Scott has only me, and some rookie cop who knows nothing about our world. When I do manage to drift into a restless sleep here and there, Scott’s face haunts my dreams, alternately twisted in agony and peaceful in death. I don’t know which is worse.

  When morning finally – blissfully – comes, by which I mean when the sun rises high enough to glare in through the windows, it finds me buried under my coat with my feet on the dash, and a neck that feels like it will never be normal again. I rub my eyes, trying to banish the irksome sting that tells me I need more sleep – as if I didn’t know – and my fingers brush against a groove in the side of my face. I flip the sunscreen down and look in the mirror. Chair marks. Great. At least my hair doesn’t look too horrendous, since I left it tied back, but I drop my pony and finger-comb it, covering as much of my creased face as I can. With a sigh, I push the door open and step into the brisk autumn dawn.

  Drake’s beaten me to it, and he’s already perched on the bonnet of his car, talking into his phone and looking annoyingly fresh. He nods to me and ends his call, sliding the phone back into his pocket. I narrow my eyes.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Good morning to you too, Miss Sunshine.”

  “Tell me,” I snap. I’m in no mood for beating around the bush. “Or I’m leaving. Now.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have some serious trust issues?”

  My shoulders deflate.

  “I never used to. It’s been a rough few months.”

  “I’m not the first one to come looking for you?” he guesses.

  I shake my head.

  “You’re not. Or the most dangerous. But I’ve learnt not to underestimate people. The hard way. So I need to know that you weren’t calling in our location to AbGen, or one of their bounty hunters.”

  “AbGen?”

  I realise he’s probably never hear
d them referred to by name before. Yet another reminder that he doesn’t belong in my new world.

  “The Abnormal Genetics Research Department. Answer the question.

  “Well, aside from the fact that I didn’t even know what they were called until right now, if I was going to report your whereabouts to anyone, don’t you think I’d have done it last night?”

  Oh. That makes sense. I’m not good when I don’t get enough sleep. Drake is watching my face closely. I don’t know what he’s seeing, and to be honest I’m too tired to care. He continues.

  “I was talking to a friend who lives nearby. He’s out of town for a while, he said we can stay at his place. I thought you might appreciate a bathroom.”

  I nod, suddenly aware of the uncomfortable pressure in my bladder that’s back with a vengeance, and the fact that my mouth tastes like something crawled in it and died.

  “Yeah, that’d be good.” I can decide whether or not to trust him later – after I’ve used the toilet. “Which way?”

  *

  We get back in the cars despite every muscle in my body complaining, and I follow him to his friend’s house, which it turns out is only about two miles away. Just as well, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it any further. I’m hopping from one foot to the other in a distinctly unladylike fashion as Drake opens the door, and I dash past him in search of the bathroom.

  “Top of the stairs, first on the left,” he calls out from the doorway. I’m glad he didn’t decide to race me for it: I’m self-defence trained. I barge through the door and collapse on the porcelain seat with a sense of bliss that surpasses just about every sensation known to mankind.

  I wash and dry my hands, feeling a hundred times better. I didn’t bring a toothbrush with me – again, planning is not exactly my forte – and I’m not about to put a stranger’s toothbrush anywhere near my mouth, so I make do with jacking some of his mouthwash. At least the taste is gone now. I’ll stop at a shop later. Right now, I have other priorities.