Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

And when that hadn’t worked, Mommy and I had started playing games at home.

  “She quit her job to stay home with you full-time. I should have known, Kali, but I didn’t. We were … happy. You adored her. And then one day, I came home, and you were holding a gun. You were playing with it, and she was just staring at you.” His voice started catching in his throat. “We’d been told that alt-humans—that’s what they were calling them then—that alt-humans had an affinity for weapons. But you didn’t. You were just a three-year-old kid, and that gun was loaded.”

  I thought of the gun safe at Bethany’s house, of the zombies mobbing me and the way the weapons sung in my hand.

  “I’m not three years old anymore,” I said. “And I’m not human.”

  After all these years of keeping secrets, of dancing around even the simplest truths in our relationship, it was suddenly very easy to say.

  “It started when I was twelve—right after my first period. I woke up really early one morning, and everything was different. I needed to get out of the house. To hunt.” I looked back at the knife on the counter. “That’s what we do, you know. People like me. We hunt the things that go bump in the night. We feel them like bugs crawling beneath our skin, and we hunt them down, and we keep them from killing anyone else.”

  My father didn’t say a word—not a single word.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder?” I asked. “Didn’t you ever see the clothes in the trash, the blood? Did you even notice when I wasn’t in my bed at night? And in the papers, they were always talking about vigilantes and poachers and whatever else they call people who hunt the monsters instead of calling Preternatural Control. God, Dad, I broke into your lab.”

  “The zombies,” he said dully. “My work. That was you?”

  “It was always me,” I said roughly. “Because that’s what I am. That’s what you made me—only I didn’t know that. I never knew why. I didn’t even know what.”

  “But that’s impossible,” my father said, shaking his head, as if that could make what I was saying any less true. “I tested you, every year, just to be sure. You took physicals. And your blood work always came up clean.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes I’m human. Sometimes I’m not. It’s not all that difficult to miss an appointment and reschedule it for a time when I’m just a girl.”

  Just an ordinary girl.

  Yeah, right.

  “Does your mother know?” His voice was honey-smooth and clear, like he’d recovered his composure, but his eyes were as dead as any zombie’s. “If she does, we have to leave. Now. Tonight. It won’t be easy, but I have some money set aside. We’ll be fine for a while.…”

  “I have no idea what that woman knows,” I said, “but I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

  It shocked me that he wanted to, that he would pick up and leave everything behind—his career, our house, his friends.…

  He’s done it before, I thought, and the reminder almost broke me all over again. The two of us had never been more than ships passing in the night. He had his life, and I had mine, and the only time the two coincided was when he needed a plus one.

  “What Rena and I did was wrong, Kali. I know that. I’ve known it for a very long time, and when I look at you, when I think about what we did to you …”

  I’d spent all of these years thinking he didn’t care. And maybe he didn’t, not the way fathers were supposed to, but there was something between us—something so powerful and awful and overwhelming that it hurt him to look at me.

  “I was never good at this. She was, your mother. She knew how to play with you and how to talk to you, and God, you adored her. You asked for her every night, every single night.…” He trailed off. “She loved you, in her own way, but this—her being here, you being different … it’s too much, Kali. It’s a risk.”

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  “It’s my risk to take,” I said finally. “One way or another, it’ll be over soon.”

  I waited for him to ask what I meant. If he asks, I’ll tell him.…

  This time, he didn’t.

  There comes a moment in every kid’s life when they look at their parents and realize that they’re people—stupid and fallible and as breakable as the rest of us. Standing there, an ocean of space between me and my father, I realized that maybe he had tried. That maybe it hadn’t been easy for him. That I’d never made it any easier.

  I realized that maybe he did love me, just a little.

  I hated him—for what he’d done to me and what he’d never done for me. I hated him because for years, I’d been going through this alone, and if he’d told me, given me even a single hint about the way I’d come into this world, I wouldn’t have had to.

  I hated him, but I loved him, too. And when it came to family, I didn’t have anyone else—I wouldn’t ever have anyone else.

  For better or worse, this was it.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I told him, walking toward the door and pausing just long enough to press my lips to his temple. “I promise, Daddy—I can take care of myself.”

  So now I knew—what I was, how I’d gotten that way, why my father had never been able to look me straight in the eyes.

  I collapsed on the end of my bed and set the cell phone he’d bought me to the side.

  My mother was a psychopath.

  My father was the good parent.

  And I was an experiment they’d whipped up in some test tube.

  Kali?

  Until I heard Zev’s voice, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Missed him. But right now, I didn’t want someone else in my head. I didn’t want anyone or anything. I wanted to be left alone.

  Close your eyes.

  What was the point in convincing myself that I didn’t care if he could tell that I did? I wasn’t okay. I might never be okay again.

  Just close your eyes, Kali. It wasn’t an order—just a request—and I let my eyelids get very heavy, let them close all on their own.

  And just like that, I wasn’t sitting on the edge of the bed. I was standing in a forest, and Zev was standing next to me. He lifted one hand and trailed it over my cheek.

  “Hello.”

  Laughter burst out of my mouth. We were having some kind of psychic rendezvous, and that was what he had to say for himself?

  “Hello, Kali.” His breath was warm on my skin, his presence coating my body, beckoning me forward as he repeated the first words he’d ever spoken to me, back when I was human and half afraid I was losing my mind. “I’m Zev.”

  “Hello, Zev,” I said, leaning into his touch. “Have you been enjoying the show?” My voice was sharp, bordering on bitter. “Drama, revelations, betrayal … just another day in the D’Angelo household.”

  “You’re hurting,” he said.

  “I’m an experiment,” I countered. “What did you call that thing at the ice rink? ‘Unnatural’? And what does that make me?”

  Cooked up in a test tube. Manufactured so my parents could run tests on my blood. A thing.

  “That makes you special,” Zev said, bringing his free hand to the other side of my cheek and cupping my face. “It makes you unique.”

  He meant the words. I knew he did, but that didn’t make me believe them. It didn’t make them true.

  “You’re my other self,” Zev said, sensing my refusal, pushing harder. “We’re two halves of the same whole.”

  His hand trailed down my face, my neck. He lifted it off my skin, and my back arched, longing for the contact. His palm landed on my stomach, and I felt a burst of warmth under his touch. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of the parasite inside of me: I could feel it, like a tiny ball of light, and for the first time, I felt something from it other than thirst.

  On instinct, I reached out my own hand, rested my palm on Zev’s chest, just over his heart. Another burst of warmth, a realignment of the world, a yes overtook my body, my mind.

  “Nibblers come in pairs,” Zev said. “The one inside of yo
u, the one inside of me—they’re matched.”

  I thought through what Zev was saying and realized that it was his bad luck that the chupacabra matched to his had chosen someone like me. Not natural. Not normal. Not real.

  “If given a choice,” Zev said, “believe me, I’d choose you.”

  I closed my eyes, laid my head on his chest, listened to his beating heart.

  “This isn’t real,” I murmured.

  “No,” he agreed. “It’s all in my head. It’s all in yours.”

  It didn’t feel imaginary. It didn’t feel fake. It felt safe and warm and like here, in our minds, we could make the world anything we wanted it to be.

  “Now you know,” Zev said, “why two years is nothing.”

  Two years. That was the amount of time he’d spent in Chimera’s possession. I wondered if he came here, to this place in his mind, whenever they took their pound of flesh.

  People like us couldn’t feel pain.

  We couldn’t feel fear.

  And once we’d been bitten, we were connected.

  Brrrriiiinnggggg!

  I came out of the trance suddenly, and it took me a moment to pinpoint the sound that had brought me back—the ringing of a phone. I spent one second wondering who could possibly be calling a number I didn’t even know myself, but the answer became readily apparent the second I answered the phone.

  “I have an address,” Skylar said. “According to Reid, it’s an old military base that hasn’t belonged to the government since the fifties. It’s supposed to be abandoned—something about radiation—but satellite scans suggest there’s geothermal activity.” She paused. “This is Kali, right?”

  I made a face at the phone. “Did you just dial a number at random?”

  I could practically hear her smiling. “Maybe?”

  I glanced down at my watch. Twelve hours and two minutes.

  I wanted to see Zev—see him for real. I wanted to save him, and I didn’t have much time.

  “Hey, Skylar?” I said. “Can you send me that address?”

  If I can’t break out of here, what makes you think that you can break in?

  Zev’s question may have been rhetorical, but I did him the favor of answering, anyway.

  Easy, I replied, slipping my cell into my pocket. The bad guys want me in.

  For the first time since I’d recognized my mother, I smiled without feeling nauseous. I could do this.

  I would do this.

  I had to.

  Shutting my mind against Zev’s voice—velvet and smooth inside my head—I set to work. The moment I turned my mind to what needed to be done, I felt a slight vibration in the air, a song singing me closer, luring me in. The palms of my hands itched as I scanned the house for weapons.

  I could do this.

  I would do this.

  I had to.

  I started in my bedroom and worked my way quickly through the rest of the second floor. I didn’t have as many weapons as another person might have had in my position, but I’d been hunting for five years, and during that time, the weapons I did have had been stashed all over the house. A knife here, a dagger there, the occasional sword.

  My dad had a gun.

  One by one, I tracked each of them down and tucked them into my clothing, heightened awareness of each blade bringing what I was about to do fully into focus. I saved the gun for last and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans, nestled against the small of my back.

  Ready.

  Armed to the teeth, I slipped out of the house, the way I had a thousand times before. This time, there was a chance my dad might actually miss me before I returned.

  If I returned.

  The thought gave me pause—but not nearly enough. I took one step away from the house, and then another. A moment later, I was walking, and a second after that, I broke into a run.

  The address Skylar had given me was outside of town. Driving would have been easier and faster, but if things went well, I deeply suspected I wouldn’t want to leave even a trace of evidence behind.

  Getting Zev out of there wouldn’t be enough. To end this, really end this, we’d have to make sure that there wasn’t anyone left to chase us.

  We’d have to crush Chimera—and everyone who worked there—to dust.

  Running toward Zev felt better than anything had in a very long time. It felt like I was doing something.

  Like I was going home.

  I don’t know how long it took me to get there. Time lost all meaning—a dangerous thing for someone like me—but by the time I came to a stop at a dead-end road, more desert than not, the sun was starting to set.

  Prime hunting time, I thought, my body relishing the darkness as it slowly kissed the earth.

  Go. Hunt. Just do it somewhere else.

  The closer I got to Zev, the harder it was to brace myself against the sound of his voice—and the harder his words were to ignore.

  Believe me, Kali, I’d rather be trapped here for another year—or two or three or thirty—than risk something happening to you. And if you come here, something will—

  He broke off, like he couldn’t bear to finish that sentence.

  You can’t ask me to just leave you there, I told him, and then, realizing that he could and had and probably was about to again, I clarified my words. Don’t.

  Why does it matter where my body is? Zev asked. It’s just a body, Kali. They can’t touch anything that matters.

  All I heard was the word body, and all I could think of were the things they were doing to his. It was like living through an autopsy—over and over and over again.

  I don’t want you here, Zev said. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that he was entirely aware how those words would sound to someone who’d never really felt wanted by anyone, until now.

  Just go away.

  That was what Zev said, but I was so close now that I could feel him thinking other things. I remembered the feel of my hand on his stomach, the feel of his on mine. Zev could tell me I wasn’t wanted until my ears rang with the words, and it still wouldn’t matter.

  People like us were meant to come in pairs.

  That thought fresh in my mind, I stopped running. I was close enough now that I could almost smell Zev’s blood, could see the way they’d bled him again and again. The road itself wasn’t abandoned, but the address Skylar had given me didn’t exactly look commercial, either.

  The entire complex was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, rusted and rotting, like it hadn’t been replaced in decades. There was a sign out front that warned would-be trespassers that the land beyond this fence had once been used to test explosives. Like the fence, the sign had seen better days: WARNING, it read, UNDE ONATED INES.

  “Undetonated mines,” I said, feeling like I’d solved the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. “Isn’t that convenient?”

  I scanned the perimeter of the fence—there was only one access road. It led up to a single gate, with an abandoned guard post.

  The gate was open. I took a step toward it, and Zev’s voice echoed with bone-shaking vehemence through my entire body.

  You don’t have to do this.

  I looked at the fence, the gate, the building in the distance. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I do.”

  “Do what?”

  My hand tightened over the handle of one of my knives, but as my eyes adjusted to the newborn darkness, I saw the very last person I’d expected to see gracing a deserted road with her presence.

  Bethany Davis.

  “This is the place, right?” Bethany said. I looked past her—she’d parked her BMW just on the other side of the gate. “This is the address Skylar gave me.”

  “Skylar told you to come here?” I asked dumbly.

  “No,” Bethany said. “Skylar told me not to come here. Same dif.”

  “I knew you’d come if I told you not to.” Skylar rounded the bend in the road a second after I heard her voice. “Reverse psychology. Behold my genius.”

  As Skylar walked
fully into view, I realized she wasn’t alone.

  “Elliot?” Bethany said, sounding as surprised as I felt. “What are you doing here?”

  “My little sister snuck out of the house carrying a circular-saw blade and a can of Mace.” Elliot gave Skylar a look. “I couldn’t exactly let her come alone.”

  A can of Mace? What did Skylar think she was going to do, pepper-spray the big, bad biomedical conglomerate into submission?

  “Look,” I said. “I appreciate the gesture, but whatever Chimera is keeping in there”—I gestured to the land that lay beyond the barbed wire—“I’m betting it’s not pretty, and I can’t do what I need to do if I have to worry about the three of you.”

  “You can’t do it without us,” Skylar corrected. “I’ve seen it, Kali—seen it for as long as I can remember. Most of the psychic stuff, it’s pretty new, but this place, tonight, us—I’ve been dreaming it since I was twelve.”

  Elliot ground his teeth together. “For the last time, Skye, you aren’t psychic.”

  She met his eyes, and I was reminded of the things she’d told me in Bethany’s dad’s lab—It’s going to get better. But first, it’s going to get worse.

  “Yeah, El,” Skylar said softly, “I am psychic. And you can pretend to be a skeptic, but if you hadn’t believed me when I said we should come, you would have duct-taped me to a chair in the kitchen instead of coming with.” Skylar must have seen the question in my eyes, because she clarified for me: “I’ve been duct-taped to chairs a lot.”

  Sensing that she’d gone off topic, Skylar smiled—a sad smile, the kind strangers exchange in cemeteries when they don’t know what to say.

  Sometimes there aren’t any good choices, she’d told me. Sometimes making the right one is hard.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I told her, unsure what it was that she thought she had to do, but feeling the weight of it in the air between us.

  “Yeah,” Skylar replied, responding to my assertion the exact same way I had replied to Zev’s. “I do. If you go in there by yourself, they’ll kill you. You’ll die.”

  There was something about the way she said the words that made me believe her, absolutely and without reserve.