Betrayed by Blood: The Shelton Family Legacy : 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  Once I was out, I would kick Gabriel’s ass. His and Dawson’s and maybe even Henry’s. This whole thing had been a stupid idea, and I’d be lucky to get out of here alive.

  Just like the beat cops from the city, two guards drew even with me, signaling me to stop. Except instead of being young and nervous, these guys were old and assholes. “Don’t move.” One of them ordered roughly while the other ran a handheld scanner over me. My skin protested mightily, but I kept it together long enough for him to turn the device off and look at the readings.

  “Huh,” he told his partner. “Not a trace of magic. Maybe control is right about this one.”

  You bet your fucking ass they’re right about me. Now let me out of here.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jessica Edwards,” I promptly answered. “I’m from…”

  “Yeah, I don’t give a shit.” Short and sweet worked for me as well, and I clamped my mouth shut while guard number two did another scan, apparently appreciating thoroughness. My skin was toasted when he finished, but the numbers must have held steady, going from the sour expression on his face.

  “You’re coming with us,” Guard number one said, his tone a bit more genial. “Never known control to make a mistake before, but there’s always a first time.” After that it was simply a matter of reversing the intake process, except I never got my clothes back. I’d left my phone with Gabriel, so at least I’d have that when this was over.

  Henry was waiting when they brought me into holding and patted my hand encouragingly when we were told to wait. “Stop fidgeting,” he murmured. “Think about something else.”

  “Fine. Do you believe that report is true?” I murmured, going back to the Shelton memo we’d discovered. “Because if it is…” My voice trailed off suggestively. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted Henry to tell me it was a mistake.

  “No way of telling until we hack into the Department of Space and whatever it is. I haven’t heard so much as a whisper of this while I was inside. But the mere fact the doctor had a copy of an official Shelton report…” He pulled out a small tablet, then mimed surprise, frowning at the screen.

  “My guess is that report and the harvesting schedule are connected,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough when Gabriel sees everything.”

  Twenty minute later, Henry and I were packed into a cab, and I could finally unclench my hands. “I’m never doing that again,” I muttered.

  “Never again,” Henry agreed.

  The only thing that cheered me up on the ride back to the city was the car that passed us going the other way. Bennett the Bastard was in the backseat, his phone up to his ear, yelling at the driver, probably bitching because he wasn’t going fast enough.

  “See you later, alligator,” I murmured softly, thinking I’d used up my ration of luck today.

  25

  I didn’t speak until we arrived at the Flatiron Building. We’d changed cars three times and walked a couple miles in between to lose any tail the government may have put on us. For the last leg of our journey, Henry changed into a woman—not as flashy as Dawson, thank God—to throw them further off the scent.

  “That always feels so weird,” Henry confessed in the elevator as he changed back into himself, the suit hanging on him like a garbage bag. “I feel like I’m padded in all the wrong places.”

  “Yeah, you and me both, buddy.”

  Henry watched me carefully before he spoke again. “This isn’t over, Andy. These next few days will be an uphill battle just to get the truth out to the public. With Lincoln gone…” We both avoided eye contact while we mulled his death over. “Anyhow, we could really use your help.”

  I knew what he was asking, and while part of me wanted to stay, I couldn’t. There were too many tangled feelings here. Feelings I was sure—a week ago—I’d left behind me. No, they’d get on without me just fine.

  “It is for me. This was a one-time deal, which I only agreed to because Gabriel threatened to sell me out to the ESC, for chrissakes. Dawson lied to me to get me to New York City, where Gabriel did said blackmailing. That kind of shit does not a good working relationship make. I am done. I am so done, I plan on taking my new identification and disappearing off the face of the Earth.”

  “I’m sure Gabriel deeply regrets putting you in that position,” he apologized. “He’s a good man, but he was desperate. Try to see it from his point of view.” When I didn’t reply, he switched gears to my biggest worry. “Do you really think you can outrun the Sheltons?”

  “I know I can,” I answered, not a shred of doubt in me. “You three can carry on without me.”

  “At least stay long enough to help me convince Gabriel of what we uncovered.”

  “Nope, you can do the ‘splaining yourself. Gabriel can take a giant fucking leap.” When we’d boarded the elevator, I’d been relieved, grateful even, that I was safe. I wasn’t sure when I’d become so angry, but I was. Maybe being betrayed and almost cut up as a science experiment had that effect, who knows?

  The elevator stopped, and the guard waved his ham sandwich in greeting as we exited, his expression changing as he saw me. “What happened to her?” he asked, his face going from horrified to concerned. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, and when the guard only looked at Henry, I got annoyed. “Tell him I’m fine.”

  “She’s had a rough day, but she’s home now, and we’re going to take good care of her,” he said instead, obviously not an order taker. “I assume Gabriel is inside, waiting for our arrival?”

  The guy nodded, absently chewing while his gaze never left my face.

  “Keep a close eye on the street. There’s a slim chance we’ve been followed.” The guard popped to his feet and tossed the sandwich to the side as he lifted what I’d assumed was a metal divider to reveal a compartment of impressive weaponry. I gave ham-sandwich guy a little more credit once he was outfitted with possibly the biggest automatic rifle I’d ever seen.

  I had to admit, I felt relieved once I was sealed inside Gabriel’s office and the walls were covered with the glowing red grid. As my desperation-fueled adrenaline faded, the evils of Devilton churned up to the surface.

  I didn’t look at Gabriel. I couldn’t look at him. I’d killed Max, and I didn’t even feel bad about it. The doctor too. I should feel bad, I should be ashamed, at least, but I was just numb. Good thing I was putting five hundred miles between me and this shitshow. I couldn’t see myself leaving behind a trail of bodies in Cleveland.

  Gabriel hadn’t looked at me, either. He’d been hunched over his computer since we’d arrived, shirtsleeves rolled up, while around him multiple holograms revolved at a slow but steady pace. I recognized a replica of one of the devices in the hospital, another seemed to be a handheld device, possibly the scanner the guard had used on me.

  “Gabriel,” Henry said softly. Then, “Gabriel?” A little bit louder.

  When he turned, it was as if he didn’t recognize us. At least, not until he shot up out of his chair and strode to me, cupped my chin in his hand and turned my face one way, then the other, as his face darkened in anger. “Who the fuck did this to you?”

  “I…” In fact, I was struggling to remember as the warmth from his hand sank into me. Was it from fighting with Max, or during the mock-fight with Amber, or one of the times I’d been electrocuted and went down hard? So hard to say. “It could have been a lot of things,” I finally said as Henry met Gabriel’s angry gaze with an apologetic expression.

  “I never would have sent you in there if I knew you’d get hurt.”

  “Well, I did, so I guess you miscalculated,” I shot back. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in days and from the look on Gabriel’s face, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “You knew exactly what sort of hellhole Devilton was. You just wanted Henry out of there, and you didn’t care how it happened. Well, he’s out. And you owe me.”

  His hand dropped away
with a soft curse. “You’re right. I didn’t take all of the risks into account. I’m sorry.” His words might have warmed my cold, dead heart, but they would have had to penetrate my anger, first.

  “Just give me my ID and let me leave,” I told him, my voice devoid of emotion. I felt emptied out right now, and in truth, I just wanted to be alone. No questions. No please-Andy-will-you-help-us-save-the-world pleas to get me to stay.

  Gabriel’s face didn’t clear up. In fact, it turned even darker as I became acutely aware of the heat rolling off of him. “One thing’s for sure. You won’t get far, looking like that.” A half smile quirked up the side of his mouth until a dimple formed. “Truthfully, you don’t have a choice. You look like a dirty canary. Couldn’t they find a brighter color?”

  “Haha.”

  The teasing smile slid off his face. “Dawson dropped off a change of clothes for you this morning. She’s out running some errands but should be back soon. And I ordered food.”

  “What kind of food?”

  “Pizza,” he said lightly as I tensed up. “Half cheese and half deluxe.” Exactly how we used to get it when we were kids. Deluxe for him, plain for me, though I usually ate the pepperoni off his side. Every muscle in my body tightened as I watched his face closely, but there was no hint of recognition. Not so much as a flicker. My shoulders relaxed again.

  “Sounds delicious.” I looked around for a pile of garish clothing. Seeing none, I turned back to Gabriel. “Where are these clothes she brought?”

  “Over there.” He pointed to the sweater and jeans neatly folded up. There were even matching boots that looked expensive. He pointed me to the last door on the other side of the room. “The bathroom is outfitted with a shower… You should really use it.” Without a word I scooped them up, and when I was shut inside, collapsed against the door, letting the blessed silence wash over me. For the first time in days, I was finally alone.

  And I was in Gabriel’s bathroom. A preposterous thought, just days ago.

  Shower was too mild a word for what I walked into. His entire bathroom was tiled in black marble, and the shower took up half the room, as it turned out. One side was wide open, the other was all window, opening up to a phenomenal view of Fifth Ave and Manhattan. I set the clothes down carefully and crossed to the window, drinking in the view.

  God, I’d missed this place. Part of me would always love it. Part of me would always hate it. There were so many conflicting memories twisted up inside of me, I couldn’t sort them out, but one thing was true. As far as the good memories, Gabriel factored into every single one of them.

  True, I’d known him when we were kids, but there was so much more to it.

  We’d been best friends.

  When we were young, we’d had arranged playdates, where his nanny and mine sat together and amiably chatted. We sized each other up, deciding whether we could stand each other longer than a minute. I didn’t know what to make of this myopic boy with pop-bottle glasses, and he whined about being stuck with a baby. Eventually, though, we’d decided that being together was far better than being alone.

  Before long, it was midnight texts and deep dark secrets, and in all my life, nobody had ever understood me as well as Gabriel had. Not even Lincoln, though he tried.

  Gabriel had been the Merlin to my Rogue, the Hans to my Luke, and pretty soon we were inseparable. We spent years playing Dungeons and Dragons, trying to outwit each other during our complex games. I’d been calling Gabriel the day my magic appeared and my life went to shit. The sad truth was, even on opposite sides of the country, it had always been Gabriel for me. Seeing him like this—confident, powerful, and gorgeous—well, even all my teenage daydreaming had never dreamt up someone so perfect.

  Except he never knew what happened to me.

  And I wasn’t about to tell him.

  I turned on the water—ten showerheads in the walls, ya’ll—and stripped down. I had no real desire to see myself. I knew from how badly I ached there was plenty of damage. Plus, I bruised easy, so God only knows what my skin looked like. Then the water, deliciously hot water, hit my face, and I didn’t even care about the window exposing me to the world. I was just happy to be cleaning the last of the Devilton’s dust off me.

  Toweling off my hair, I finally saw what the security guard—and Gabriel, with his insanely gentle hands—had seen.

  “Good Lord.” I leaned in, inspecting the spiderwebbing bruises traveling halfway across my face. “Maybe from when I hit the floor that first night,” I commented to myself, as if it mattered where the damage was from. “I don’t think Amber had that good of a right.”

  My back wasn’t any better. I could see every spot where Max—burn in hell, motherfucker—had rammed me with his baton, and my shoulder felt pretty jacked up, now that I wasn’t running on pure adrenaline and fear. “Still, it could have been worse,” I gently reasoned. “I could be dead.”

  I pulled on the surprisingly tasteful clothes Dawson brought me and slid my feet into calfskin leather boots. Hardly anything was real these days, since natural products were heavily regulated, which meant fabrics were mostly synthetic, but the boots felt weirdly divine. As if my feet were being embraced by soft… cow. I curled up my toes.

  “Okay, maybe I don’t like real leather after all.”

  I was trying to figure out what to do with my prison garb. I finally balled it up and threw it in the trash. The Egyptian cotton towel I hung back up, very carefully, as I surveyed the areas that needed covered. I’d wear an old ball cap of Gabriel’s to hide my cheek, and the sweater had long sleeves, so nobody would ever know about the rest of my injuries.

  I smelled pizza through the door, and my stomach growled, but it took me over half an hour to walk out of there. I was an achy, emotional wreck, and I didn’t trust myself to be around Gabriel just yet, not without slipping up, somehow. I had plenty of questions for Henry, too, but couldn’t bear to be here one second longer, so it looked like I’d be letting go of Lincoln’s family secrets.

  It was definitely time to put New York to my back and move the fuck on. Maybe to that beach house I’d dreamed about.

  “My new ID had better come with cash, that’s all I have to say, Mr. Vanguard, king of the freaking world.”

  26

  By the time I was out of the shower, Dawson was back, already shoveling pizza into her crimson maw, her all-emerald green getup blinding as she chatted animatedly with Henry. “So… it looks like things went well?” she quipped as I passed by, eyeing her ridiculous getup.

  “Where do you shop anyway, House of One Freaking Color at a Time?”

  “You’re just jealous you can’t pull off this fabulous look, Miss Drab and Dingy.”

  “Yeah… no, not really.” I left her and Henry to their catching up and drifted a bit closer to one of the rotating holograms, the nanotech suppressor, curious about something. “How long have the Sheltons been trying to steal your secrets? I mean, they’ve been at this longer than you, right? What do you bring to the table that they want?” Leaning my butt, the only part of me not bruised, against a workstation, I inspected the complicated engineering highlighted in the 3-D diagram. It meant absolutely nothing to me. But I’d bet my life Gabriel knew every last detail.

  “Why so curious about the Sheltons?” he countered, that flicker of suspicion returning to his face. “And how do you know I bring… something else to the table?”

  I gave Gabriel our—well, duh—look before I caught myself. “Because they want what you have, and they’re working hard to get it,” I said hastily. “Which means you’ve come up with something new.” For a second, I watched him struggle. He still didn’t entirely trust me, but he wanted to.

  “Come on, Gabriel,” I said, his name rolling easily off my tongue, feeling so familiar. “I’m just trying to understand. I mean, you said they’ve tried everything to get to you. My question is, what are they after?”

  “My nanotech has a biological element fused into it, which is more compat
ible with the raw magic most Elementals control,” Gabriel finally admitted, settling himself beside me to watch the holo spin. I didn’t pull away, but I did take a small breath of his cologne. “If they could find a way to duplicate it, they would.

  “But that is no longer a concern. What’s your take on the report you and Henry uncovered?” He didn’t—couldn’t—take his eyes from my face, and I self-consciously brushed my hair down to hide some of the bruising. I didn’t know what my take was because the report was too horrible to consider.

  “The end of the world is a hell of a thing to uncover, Andy,” he said gently, the suspicion finally fading away, replaced by a tender expression that made my heart hurt just a little.

  I must have been exhausted—or lost my mind completely—because the overwhelming desire to curl my face into his muscular, sturdy shoulder hit me out of nowhere.

  “Well, that’s up to you guys to figure out.” I pushed off the desk, leaving Gabriel behind, but taking a swirl of his cologne with me. “If you can point me to my fabulous, brand-new-life paperwork and my phone, I’m out of here.”

  “What about this second solar event?” Gabriel asked quietly. “What about the report and what will happen in six months?” His face looked exactly like how I felt when I’d seen that report.

  “Six months, give or take,” I corrected him. “No guarantees on the timeline, remember?”

  “You can’t just pick up and leave, Andy. This is going to happen, no matter where you are.”

  “Look, I was barely up to the task of breaking Henry out of prison. If you think I can save the world, then more power to you.” When all he did was stare at me with those impossibly blue eyes, I began my verbal floundering in earnest.