Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “Zev.” Colette said his name in a way that sounded intimate and familiar. Too familiar. “Go check on Rena. Make sure she’s got the A-level subjects evacuated. Anything else can stay here—we might as well give the Feds something to sink their teeth into.”

  The irony of hearing a vampire say those particular words did not escape me, but right now, I had bigger things to worry about—like Zev walking silently away.

  She doesn’t know you’re awake. She doesn’t know what Rena gave you. That much, I can keep from her. That much, little Kali, I can do.

  I pushed down the desire to open my eyes as I digested that statement. Zev knew I was holding a syringe. Colette did not.

  Seven minutes.

  This was it. Whatever drug they’d used to knock me out, I prayed that it would work on someone as old and powerful as Colette—because, if not, I didn’t stand a chance.

  Closer. Prey getting closer. Kill it dead.

  I told myself that this was just like any other hunt. My heartbeat didn’t accelerate. I didn’t hold my breath. My muscles were loose and relaxed. Colette bent down to grab me, lifting me like I weighed nothing.

  I let my body hang limp like a rag doll. She threw me over one shoulder and turned.

  Six minutes.

  With every ounce of strength and speed I had, I drove the tip of the needle into Colette’s neck. Her grip on my body tightened—I heard bones pop and knew I’d be feeling it soon, but that didn’t stop me from pressing down on the syringe.

  Like a horse bucking its rider, she threw me across the room. I hit the concrete wall, hard. The back of my head warmed with blood. I could taste it in my mouth.

  But somehow, I stood up.

  I met her eyes.

  She took a step forward, then stopped. “What have you done?” she asked, frowning, like I was just a naughty child, and she wasn’t about to kill me dead.

  “Triple dose,” I said, wishing I had a knife, a sword, a gun—anything other than my fists.

  She wobbled on her feet, but didn’t fall. “Oh, I am going to kill that—”

  She never got to finish that sentence, because a second later, she went down.

  It took me a moment to process the sound of gunfire echoing in the chamber and to see the tiny hole in the back of her head, the blood dying her light hair red.

  Someone shot her, I thought dully. I drugged Colette, and someone shot her.

  I lifted my eyes to the open doorway—toward Rena and her smoking gun. All business, she walked forward and knelt next to Colette’s prone body.

  She put the gun to the vampire’s temple and pulled the trigger.

  Again. And again. And again.

  “She won’t stay down long,” she said finally. “An hour or two at most. We have to get you out of here. Now.”

  “You shot her. In the head. Five times.” I processed those facts. “I couldn’t heal from that.”

  Rena dropped the gun onto the floor, her creamy brown skin tinged gray and pale. “She can.”

  I heard a scream—human, this time—and took a step toward the door.

  “Anything we couldn’t transport, Colette ordered let loose,” Rena said. “The paperwork shows this facility as belonging to one of Chimera’s competitors. They’ll be faced with the fallout, and if the Feds get anyone from Chimera, it will be Paul or me.”

  Poor you, I thought, but after everything that had happened, I still wasn’t the kind of person who could say something like that out loud. It must have shown on my face, though, because Rena responded like I’d slapped her.

  “You have no idea what I just risked for you, Kali.”

  “I do know,” I said, my voice soft. What I didn’t say was that it wasn’t enough, might not ever be enough.

  “We have to get out of here.” Rena reached to steady me, and she frowned. “You’re bleeding.”

  Out of habit, I surveyed the damage. “Two broken ribs. A concussion. And I’m pretty sure she snapped my wrist.”

  Three minutes.

  Not enough time to heal.

  Rena latched her hand over my good arm and tugged gently. “There’s a back way,” she said. “We’ll leave and seal it off. The Feds could be here any minute.”

  Realizing the implication of her words, I pulled back away from her grasp. “Where’s Zev?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”

  I considered her question. I saw Zev in my mind’s eye. I felt his fingers closing around my neck, felt him cutting off the flow of air. I saw him, wild-eyed and fighting vainly against Colette’s hold.

  He’d betrayed me, but he hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t wanted to. And Rena was just going to leave him here—with the place in chaos and Colette a ticking time bomb, waiting to wake up on the floor. And once Colette woke up, she’d be able to control Zev again. She’d stick him in another cage—if the FBI didn’t beat her to it first.

  He’d still be in my head. I’d still be in his. Eventually, someone would use him to find me, and the whole thing would start all over again.

  “No.”

  “No, what?” Rena’s voice was tinged with desperation, and the din in the background rose to new heights; a man’s screams melding in with inhuman ones, as an alarm—jarring and violent—pierced the air.

  “The Feds are here. This place is coming down, Kali. As your mother, I am telling you to move.”

  I looked at her, and my stomach lurched. She’d saved my life. That didn’t make her my mother.

  Without a word, I sat down next to Colette’s body. Almost on cue, a bullet fell from her skull. She was already healing, faster than I ever had before.

  It’s the Nibbler. You feed it. It heals you.

  The words Zev had once spoken came back to me with a vengeance, and I did the math. Colette probably kept her parasite very well fed.

  “Kali, I have to go. Please don’t make me leave you here.” Rena’s voice broke. “Please.”

  “Knife,” I said.

  Apparently, that wasn’t what she’d expected as a response.

  “You have my knife,” I said, lifting my eyes to hers, falling back on my senses while I still had them. “I’d like it back.”

  “Kali, the FBI is going to find you here. Eventually, Colette is going to wake up. You can’t—”

  “Give me the knife,” I said. “And then go.”

  There was a long moment, an elongated silence, and then she nodded, her face going as blank and calm as mine. She reached down to her boot and pulled out my knife, the motion eerily similar to one I’d made myself a million times.

  She handed it to me, hilt first. She brushed one hand over my cheek. And then she turned and walked—no, ran— away.

  One minute.

  I had sixty seconds—no time to heal, no time to think, no time to process the sounds of animal screams and gunshots in the distance.

  All I had time to do was act.

  Kneeling next to Colette’s body, I cut open her shirt. The swirling pattern laid into her skin was complicated, and my eyes traced the interweaving circles and lines back to a central point, just over her collarbone.

  An ouroboros.

  “You don’t want her,” I said, my voice shaking as I brought the tip of my knife to my left arm.

  Cut. Cut. Cut.

  “You want me,” I said. “I’m smarter. I’m younger. And I’m one of a kind.”

  Now that was the truth.

  “You don’t want her.” I painted Colette’s body with my blood, flashing back to that moment in the hallway with Bethany. “You want me.”

  I willed it to be true.

  Ten seconds.

  Nine.

  Nine seconds, and I would be human.

  I couldn’t do this.

  Darkness lapped at the edges of my mind. My temples pounded. My breath came fast and short—and then there was a sound like a gun going off, and a smell like rotten eggs.

  I stumbled backward, hit the wall, and sank to the floor.


  Four seconds.

  Three seconds.

  Colette’s body twitched, the lines on her skin disappearing like sidewalk chalk under the force of a hose. For one horrifying moment, I thought she might wake up.

  But she didn’t. Her limbs stopped twitching. Her mouth went slack. And that feeling in my stomach, the one that told me that something preternatural was close, flickered like a lightbulb and died.

  One.

  The second I shifted, the pain was blinding, overwhelming, everywhere. I was little and human and bleeding.

  I hurt.

  “Kali.” Suddenly, Zev was beside me, holding my head in his hands. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, checking me for injuries, staring into my pupils. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  In his words, I heard an echo of Skylar’s. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?

  I gave myself over to the pain. Searing, blinding pain. I could get through this. I could.

  The warmth of my skin built to an incredible, cleansing heat. I felt like I was wearing my body for the first time, like it was wearing me.

  Here we go again, I thought.

  I tried to smile, but it came out a sob. “Look,” I said, tears dripping down my cheeks, my breath catching raggedly in burning lungs. “Now we both have two.”

  Zev followed my gaze to the ouroboros on my shoulder. His eyes went to Colette, lying still on the floor.

  “You …”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. I laid my head back against the cement, insane laughter bubbling up inside of me.

  There were two chupacabras inside my body. My very human body.

  “Guess I do have a savior complex,” I said.

  And then I laughed. It was a crazy, pitiful sound, like the mewling of kittens, but I couldn’t make myself stop.

  It hurt.

  Everything hurt.

  “The Feds are here,” Zev said. “Colette moved some of her pet projects out, but the ones she left are … unpleasant. They’ll keep our friends occupied while we duck out, but if the Feds are lucky, they’ll survive.” He ran his hand lightly over my hair. “We should go.”

  Before, when Rena had asked me to go, I’d said no because I didn’t want to leave Zev, didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for the woman who’d been pulling his strings. But now …

  “Come with me,” Zev said. “We’ll leave, Kali. You and me. There’s nothing here for you. We’ll slip out of here, and we’ll leave town, and we’ll disappear.”

  I could see it—the two of us, spending our days in this world and our nights together in dreams. We’d hunt together, and we’d live together, and it would be so easy.

  So right.

  “I—” It was there, on the tip of my tongue, to say yes, but a volley of images flashed through my brain.

  Faces.

  One after another after another.

  Bethany and Elliot.

  Skylar.

  My father.

  If I left, he’d never know what happened to me. Even if I managed to say good-bye, he’d be alone.

  Bethany and Elliot would never know what really happened to Skylar.

  I’d never get to make this—any of this—right.

  That was the second I realized that I had a choice. I could run and run, farther and farther away. I could make myself forget. I could be what Zev was, do what he did.

  Or I could stop running.

  Stop trying to be something I wasn’t.

  Because at the end of the day, I wasn’t like Zev. I wasn’t like anyone. I was one of a kind. That wasn’t going to change—it wasn’t ever going to change.

  “Go,” I told Zev as the sound of footsteps echoed through the hallway and orders, shouted by men, reached my ears. “I can’t.”

  Why—not? He spoke the words silently, and they came to me in pieces, like a radio signal interrupted by static, a reminder that I wasn’t what I’d been an hour before.

  Two chupacabras. Human body.

  Twenty-three hours and fifty-four minutes.

  “I’m tired of running,” I told Zev, forcing the words across my lips, rather than speaking them mind to mind. “I have to do this. You have to let me.”

  Whatever Skylar had seen of my future, whatever had convinced her I was worth saving—I had a feeling I wouldn’t find it on the road.

  I owed it to her to stay and fight—no matter how broken I was, no matter how lonely.

  “I will come back for you,” Zev said.

  I nodded, smiling and sobbing and hurting so badly, I could have screamed.

  “What if they hurt you?” Zev whispered.

  I met his eyes, then pushed him away. “They won’t do anything to me,” I said, remembering Skylar’s words about Reid. “Why would they? I’m just a kid.”

  Just a girl.

  A battered, broken human girl.

  Zev pressed his lips to mine. He kissed me. And then he was gone.

  I hugged my knees to my chest, folding myself into a tiny ball, and that was how Skylar’s oldest brother found me.

  Just a girl—for now.

  “Kali.” Reid crouched to my level, and in his eyes, I saw the Haydens’ house. The handprints on the driveway. The pictures on the walls.

  “Skylar.” That was all I was able to say—just her name, nothing else.

  He closed his eyes, head bowed. “I know.”

  Another person might have looked at Reid and seen a complete lack of emotion. He might have looked like the consummate warrior, a blank slate. But I saw deeper, saw more.

  I saw Skylar.

  Gone.

  I may have been the one bleeding, but the man in front of me was gutted.

  “We have to get you out of here,” Reid said, opening his eyes to fix me with a familiar stare. “This place is going down.”

  On some level, I was aware of the cacophony echoing all around us. Men fighting monsters. Monsters killing men. And even though I’d stayed for a reason, even though that had been my choice, I couldn’t help the whisper in the back of my mind that asked why it mattered.

  What did any of it matter, when Skylar was dead?

  “It matters,” Reid said, his voice cutting through the air like a knife, “because you’re not.”

  I wondered if he was like Skylar—if he saw things, knew things—but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Gingerly, he lifted me off the ground, and I drew in a sharp breath.

  “First we get out of here. Then we get you to the hospital.”

  I wanted to tell Reid that I could walk out on my own two feet, that I hated hospitals, that I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d left me there to die. But I didn’t say any of that.

  I said, “They killed her.”

  And Reid said, “I know.”

  He pulled a gun from his side and shouted something down the hallway. A shout came back, and a second later, the hallway was filled with men in bulletproof vests.

  It figured the government would send the FBI into a facility filled with genetically enhanced monsters and expect bulletproof vests to do the trick.

  A man who might have been Reid’s boss spared a glance for me. “Preternatural Control has the first level secured. We’ve planted the explosives. Get her out of here. We detonate in three.”

  Three minutes, I thought, and the insane urge to laugh bubbled up in me again. I’d intended to burn this place to ash, and in three minutes, that was exactly what it would be. But as Reid carried me to safety, and I left the closest thing I’d ever seen to a war zone behind, all I could think about was the bodies we passed.

  A miniature griffin with broken wings and a blood-smeared mouth.

  A reptile whose eyes looked all too human.

  The Alan.

  All dead.

  “They’re going to want to ask you some questions,” Reid said quietly, once we’d made it out and to the road.

  I watched the building go up in flames. Watched the windows explode ou
tward and the structure collapse. I thought of the will-o’-the-wisps, of Skylar, of Colette’s body in the basement cell.

  “I know.”

  The doctors patched me up. The FBI asked their questions, and I did my best to answer them quickly and efficiently—and most important, before the sun came up the next morning.

  No, I didn’t know the details of Chimera’s operations.

  No, I couldn’t tell them what—if anything—had escaped before the facility had gone down.

  No, I hadn’t been in on this plan from the beginning.

  Yes, I was just a kid.

  No, I shouldn’t have been there.

  Yes, they’d killed my friend.

  It was only after I’d told the agents that the woman whose remains they had found in the basement was the one calling the shots that they left me alone for a few blessed hours. When they came back, they had more questions.

  No, those weren’t real ouroboroi on my stomach.

  No, I had no idea what the woman in question was, or why her remains weren’t testing positive for human DNA.

  Sure, they could take a sample of my blood.

  Everyone but Reid must have been scratching their heads when the results came back human.

  Three hours and fourteen minutes.

  I could feel dawn coming, more strongly now than ever before. Soon, the doctors would come in and sign my release papers. Like the Feds, they must have suspected I was holding something back, but since—as far as modern science was concerned—it was impossible to play host to multiple chupacabras at the same time, they didn’t have any reason to believe that I needed to be quarantined.

  They just thought I had really tacky taste in tattoos.

  Three hours and twelve minutes.

  The stitches in my scalp itched. My wrist throbbed inside its cast. Each breath I took sent a sharp and jarring pain straight to my rib cage, and I was starving.

  “That is a truly unfortunate haircut.”

  They’d had to shave a patch of hair to treat my head wounds. It figured that Bethany would comment on it. What didn’t figure was that she was here. Pale, with her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, she stood in the doorway of my hospital room. Her hands were clasped together, and the thumb of her right hand worried at the palm on her left.