When it was done, I had a fleeting wish I was home and had access to some nice paint that would go over metal—metallic blue or candy apple red. But it was functional and that would have to do the trick. I peeled off the necessary cash to pay for the vending machine and started back outside. I paused at Stefan’s bed where he lay flat on his stomach, buried in the deep sleep he needed more than I needed a bodyguard. I touched the back of his calf with the lightest graze of a fingertip. It would keep him sleeping through the noise of my opening the door. Looking over my shoulder, I whistled lightly and Godzilla bounded off my bed, climbed my leg, and curled up in the pocket of my jacket. Stefan wouldn’t be happy when he did wake up if he had ferret urine soaking his sweatpants.
I opened the door, stepped outside, and walked the fifteen feet down to the vending machine. I was considering more sugar—candy bars this time. I reached a hand into the guts of the machine and then . . . nothing.
The night gobbled me up and took me away.
All those monster movies had been right. You shouldn’t go into the dark alone.
I woke up instantly, not in fits and stages. Once I healed, I returned to fighting form immediately. Jericho would’ve been proud of how I’d managed to accelerate the process and how I’d perfected what he’d begun. The thought left a bad taste in my mouth and when I opened my eyes, that bad taste went straight into an extremely bad mood as my pupils adjusted to the low light.
“Raynor,” I said flatly. He was the government’s dog panting at the end of the Institute’s leash. He’d tortured and murdered Anatoly, ruined Cascade—our home—and yet, after we assumed we were free of him after Saul had killed him in the mall parking lot, he was back for more. “Even death doesn’t want your malevolent ass.”
I recognized him from the sliver of profile I could see from where I was slumped against the door behind the passenger seat of a car humming smoothly over concrete. The pictures I’d taken of him off the Internet had been crystal clear and his threatening to shoot me in the mall parking lot even more so. He turned enough to reveal the short dark hair brushed forward, a faint pallor under his skin, and his impeccable suit’s collar open to show a half- inch tracheostomy tube in his throat. The tube was covered with a small, clear Passy-Muir valve that let people with trachs talk. Raynor tapped it. “Thanks to your friend, I’ll be needing this bugger for a while.” His voice was perfectly understandable, if hoarse. “My bad luck. Your bad luck happened to be an eager-beaver doctor with a penknife in that parking lot. Your extremely bad luck indeed.” He shifted his attention back to the road. “Did I mention that an impromptu tracheotomy whilst not under anesthesia isn’t particularly pleasant? No? Perhaps we’ll discuss it more later.”
I looked down to see handcuffs around my wrists and a chain securing them to the metal bracing under the passenger seat in front of me. I had four to five inches’ slack at the most. I was strong, but not strong enough to shatter metal. And Raynor, more careful now than before, had also shackled my ankles. I could dislocate both of my thumbs and slip the cuffs, but there was nothing I could do about the restraints holding down my feet. I looked back up to see the car clock reading 4:23 a.m. Stefan would still be asleep. He wouldn’t know I was gone. If Raynor had used a silencer, and I knew he had, neither would Saul.
“Speaking of pain, how’s your head? I was a good ways down the parking lot when I made that shot, but a rubber bullet would fracture the skull of anyone normal—anyone human. Kill them outright most likely. But I know how you chimeras heal and I crossed my fingers for you, although you were out for a few hours. When I dragged you into the car, I gave it a feel. And there it was—a nice fracture down the back of your skull. Not a hairline one either. A definite kill shot, again, for anyone normal. Yet here you are. You didn’t disappoint, Michael. I have to give you that.”
If I’d been out for two hours, he had come close to killing me. It was a hard thing to do, but not impossible and the brain was a delicate organ in a human or a chimera. I didn’t have enough reach to lift my hands and feet, so I bent my head low and ran fingers through my hair. It was spiky with dried blood. He wasn’t lying. He’d shot me while I’d been contemplating Milky Ways over Three Musketeers, damn it. He’d shot me right in front of the vending machine. . . .
God.
He’d shot me while I stood fifteen feet from our room where I’d left Stefan asleep—where I’d made sure he would
“Ah, Stefan Korsak, your brother.” The way he said “brother” told me he knew something.
Knew too much.
“I killed him,” he went on matter-of-factly. “Real bullets this time. I’d say it was painless, but I don’t think it was. I shot him five times in the gut. You’ve not seen true pain until you see someone die of that. The trauma. The shredding of the intestines. The acid pouring from the stomach and eating away at everything it touches. But unfortunately my time was short. I let him suffer in excruciating agony for a moment or two, then finished him with one to the head. Like putting a lame horse out of its misery. I do occasionally have my kinder moments. You may thank me at your convenience.” I turned away from him, away from it all, and rested my forehead against the window glass.
Stefan.
Thank God.
Thank fucking God.
Raynor was lying. Unless he’d rolled Stefan over in his sleep to shoot him, that whole story was, as Saul would say, bullshit with a side order of day-old crap for flavor. The story didn’t matter, though. I would’ve known he was lying without it. He’d taken psychology classes with the best and the brightest of the CIA, but he was just a human. Institute training trumped CIA training and chimera trumped human. The most minute of facial expressions, pupil dilation, the heart rate I could sense speeding up slightly . . . I didn’t care. I didn’t care how I knew, only that I did know. My brother was alive. Through sheer luck or Raynor’s need to make his escape with me quickly, Stefan was alive.
No thanks to me.
I’d thought I’d known best. I’d thought I was doing him a favor by helping him rest. I should’ve thought I was a dangerous idiot with the skills and a lifetime of training but not the experience, because that was what I was. The glass was cool under my forehead and I closed my eyes. But now Stefan would wake up and I would be gone. He’d search for me, but Raynor had proved, for a human, he was a formidable and cunning opponent. I had no idea how Stefan could hope to find me now. That might kill him the same as Raynor’s imaginary bullets. And it would be my fault the same as if there had been a gun and I’d been the one pulling the trigger. I had done this to my brother. Raynor didn’t matter. It had been me.
If I lived at all, how was I going to live with that?
There was a stirring in my jacket pocket and I slivered my eyes to see Godzilla poke his nose out. He knew danger when he smelled it and had obviously stayed hidden while Raynor wrestled me into his car. I gave a low hiss of warning, inaudible except to ferret ears, and he instantly disappeared back into my pocket. If Raynor found him . . . I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about my failures, my screwups, my fuckups. I didn’t want to think about anything right then.
I didn’t get my wish. Big surprise.
“Ah, don’t be like that. It’ll make for a boring trip. We’ve had the Institute, which can be rebuilt as we have the day care to supply it. But you—you and the others are a problem we haven’t faced before. Therefore, a new place shall be created for you and them—what should we call it? Probation? Detention?—where naughty little assassins are taught their rightful place.” Raynor’s gravelly voice was far too cheerful for me.
“But you look down in the mouth at that news.” He
“No, thanks,” I said without any emotion he’d be able to detect. “I’m not deficient. I’m not weak.”
“Like me, you mean?” The car had pulled over into what had once been a rest stop. It was now a deserted,
