The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children (26 page)

Dan stifled a laugh behind his fist. I glared at him.

“I lost. Not humiliatingly, but the loss wasn’t the humiliating part. Since then, I swore I’d never let myself lose again. That feeling of humiliation…of judgment…is the worst. I hate it.”

Dan seemed pensive.

His fist dropped and revealed a smile. “Pretty epic. What you did for someone who wasn’t even your friend.”

My brow furrowed and I looked away, my voice shaky. “W…Well it’s not like it helped.”

“You became friends, though, right? I’m sure that helped.”

I couldn’t stop blinking for some stupid reason. I wished he’d look away, but I had to do the honors. “I guess.” My head then shot back toward him with a poker face. “Your turn.”

Dan smiled and said, “Dare.”

CHAPTER SIXTY—Beautiful

I
thought about it carefully. My one chance to really find out what kind of person Dan truly was. If he’d consider killing me or not.

“Tell me…,” my voice began, yet I didn’t think it was my voice. It couldn’t be, because my throat felt like some other force controlled it. I’ve never said this to a guy before. Except maybe to Dad. Only I’d usually ask him to tell me a story. So either I was desperate…or I really liked Dan. I gulped. Neither probability was good. “Tell me something beautiful.”

His features softened, and he stared at me like at a child.

His scoff broke the silence. “I don’t do that sappy crap.”

“Dan,”
I said his voice in the same warning manner he said mine when I tried to back out of revealing the truth. 

Dan reddened for a moment and covered his mouth with his hand. Then the embarrassment evaporated as he stared at me. I needed this just as much as he needed it, to be reminded that amid all this horrible truth, there was still something worth fighting for. Justice did exist.

He had to think for a few minutes. He blushed again briefly when a thought crossed his mind and cleared his throat. “I’m not really good at this, but…” He looked at my smile and breathed in through his teeth.

I said, “‘But’ is good enough.”

Dan cleared his throat. “We had a bloodhound at our old house.” He sat with his legs spread out, his hands intertwined between them, slightly hunched over. He had that expression again, stolen by time. “Mom’s. He liked to sit on the porch and watch the birds, especially during winter. I thought he was a bit envious of them, their ability to fly. I was, what, seven?”

Liar. He was older than that. I smirked but wouldn’t spoil the story.

“Anyway, one day he called me out to the base of a tree. Turns out a little bird had fallen out and broken its wing, lying there in the snow. We took it in, Lenora and I. She did most of the pampering. Imagine that. Eddy, the hound, got pretty attached to it. But when the wing had healed and we let the bird go, I expected him to be sad. Instead, I could have sworn I saw him smile. He looked…happy. And I thought that was beautiful.” He cleared his throat again. “Cheesy crap, right?”

I watched him with a gaze I couldn’t describe myself. But I knew one thing for sure. Somewhere inside that controlling and challenge-minded body of his beat a very raw heart. A heart that wouldn’t kill if he could help it.

“Seems you have to take a dare now,” he said with a smirk and I snapped back to reality. That’s right…I set up those rules. Damn. I did that so he wouldn’t weasel his way out of the truth, but they had trapped me instead. What kind of idiot stepped into their own trap?

“Show me how you really feel about me.” His gaze was firm, straight into my eyes. My stomach floored.

I bit my lip, hard, and then pushed up from the bed and walked over to him.

His brow folded, as if he wanted to ask what I was doing. What did it look like? He’s the one who asked.

I put my knee between his legs, laced my hands around his neck, and wrestled him onto the bed. We fell in a tangle of limbs, our bodies at a distance, yet our hearts raced with our ears pressed against the sheets.

I wasn’t scared of Dan anymore, I wanted to show him that much. Even if he was Thorton’s son. Even if he could control me. Or if the only choices he had were to hurt me in one way or another.

“Donna…”

“Shh.” I placed a finger on his lips. “Not today, remember? It’s game over, for now.”

He nodded. We lay there for at least an hour, just staring at each other and listening to the rain. His hand suddenly reached out and grazed my face. His thumb stroked my bottom lip. His touch left traces of fire across my skin. He leaned in within an inch of my face, my lips parting slightly, and then pulled away to lie on his back.

His forearm covered his face.

“What’s wrong?” I said, my tone mellow. I already knew what was wrong, but I wanted him to say it. It would help to say it.

“I can’t do anything with you,” he said. “Not after…after I hurt Hailie.”

Just as I thought. He still punished himself for that. The same as with his mother’s memories. He believed in balance. His own sense of justice.

“She wasn’t pregnant, Dan. You know she faked it. And she fell by accident,” I tried to reassure him, but that’s not what pained him, and being aware of that yet trying to say the opposite was like trying to force a screw into my chest.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “
I
didn’t know. She just as well could have been. And what I did…what I did still happened. It’s not the truth or the outcome that matters. It’s our actions. What we feel inside. And I was mad enough…to let her fall.”

I ran my tongue over the edge of my teeth. How could I console him? He wouldn’t get past that in less than three days. And I simply couldn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t kill. So that only left one alternative. If Dan didn’t kill me, our fate was out of our hands.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE—Day Two

T
he scent of pancakes filled my nose, but that couldn’t be right, could it? My eyes unlocked, drool on the side of my mouth, my face pressed against dark sheets. I had spent the night on Dan’s bed. Well, technically not
his
bed. Nothing here really belonged to us.

He hadn’t so much as touched me again. I felt my heart twinge a bit. I kind of wish he had. It was the easy way out, the coward’s way, but I simply didn’t know what else to do. Remnants of night tears cracked at the corners of my eyes. I didn’t want to die.

I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes. No kidding. Dan was actually cooking, a towel tossed over his shoulder.

“Morning,” he said with a grin.

I smiled back. “Morning.”

Today, we couldn’t refuse to talk about it anymore. We had to make a decision. And if we couldn’t…then we had to prepare to fight. I just didn’t know how.

I dragged myself to the mini-bar and swung my legs over a seat. My cheek plopped into my hand, my eyes still droopy from sleep as I watched Dan prepare two plates. “I would have never taken you for a cook.”

He glanced at me. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, compadre.”

“True. And there’s a lot you don’t know about me.” No matter how much we’d shared last night.

“Good point.”

Yet, somehow, not completely knowing each other, we had made things work this far.

He handed me the plate and I arched an eyebrow. No way this could taste as good as it looked. The melting of butter and mix of raspberry sauce when I took the first bite proved me wrong. But, then, I already knew that. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to compliment him.

“Damn,” I said as I chewed the rapturous mixture in my mouth. If this was considered a last meal, maybe dying wasn’t half bad. Just kidding.

Dan sat next to me with his own plate. “So how’d you learn to swim like that? You know, back at the event?”

I looked at him with a mouthful and forced myself to swallow, dreading to let the taste leave my mouth. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I was on the swim team for a while. The early hours killed me so I quit easy.”

“A quitter, are you?” he said with a pinch in his cheek.

“I don’t see
you
getting up at five in the morning!” I snapped back and froze when he grabbed the hand I had used to wipe my mouth. An earthquake-magnitude shiver zipped through my body as he licked off the raspberry sauce and I wrung my hand out of his, my face the same shade as the sauce.

“Don’t
do
that!” I rubbed my hand with a napkin furiously and couldn’t look him in the eye. What the hell?! Who did he think he was?

“S’long as I’m cooking, I say I should get what I want,” he said. I peered at his wolf-grin and pouted, my eyes as thin as they could be.

“Fine! I’m cooking next time,” I said.

He twirled his fork in his plate and his back shook from laughter. “Oh, I’d like to see that.”

I slapped his shoulder. “Jerk!”

Somehow I had completely forgotten about the need for our decision, or that we might be hours away from sudden death. I wondered if it had anything to do with how this reminded me of my parents cooking together. Not that I’d cooked, but the thought still warmed me on the inside.

We were doing dishes when the door to the suite opened and I dropped the plate. Lenora walked in.

Dan and I stood like zombies. No way. It was too soon! It was still day two, right? They promised…

“Ms. Wright, I need to speak with you alone,” said Lenora, her face flat. Dan stepped in front of me. “Only Ms. Wright. Come with me.”

Dan turned to me, startled. My breath caught in my throat when he cupped my face in his hands and said firmly into my eyes, “Be careful, Donna. She’s extremely dangerous. If she sinks her claws into you, you’re done, got that?”

As much as I admired his concern, I couldn’t show it in front of her. I frowned and removed his hands. “I’m not an infant, Dan.” I then offered a small smile. “I’ll be fine.”

He still looked torn when I followed Lenora out of the room, my eyes intensely on her back.

“Don’t worry,” Lenora said to Dan, her voice as flat as her expression, “I won’t harm your precious little bird.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO—Jaded

“S
it.” Lenora issued the command like she addressed some animal. I took a seat in a metal chair across from a desk in a space that could only be called a dark interrogation room. Muddy yellow fluorescent lamps illuminated it. She sat across from me and placed her gloved hands on the table, intertwined.

“You feel something for Dan, don’t you, Donalie?” That’s not what I expected her to start on at all. Out of shock, I didn’t have a chance to get embarrassed. “You care about him. You want him to be happy. Free.”

I nodded slowly. Somehow, Lenora was the last person who I thought might understand.

“I once fell in love with a contaminated man,” she said, and that shocked me even more. “We got married. Had a child. But…as you know, as with all contaminated children, he got taken away from us, at an especially young age. And I never saw him again.”

I gulped. I had never seen this side of Lenora, or even suspected it might exist. How was she able to keep such a still face as she said those things? Yet beyond that stillness there laid an underlying turmoil, just like the poison under her gloves.

In that moment, I recalled my mother’s words:
“…what you have lost…cannot compare to the loss of a child.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She sighed. “If you and Daniel have a child, it will be taken away from you.”

“I’m not having a child with anyone!” I burst out and slammed my hands on the table. “I’m still a kid, dammit! And I’m not some animal you can just breed or slaughter!”

Yet I had almost been ready to give myself to Dan. Because I was afraid. I’d never had to make a decision that big in real life. Now I was just outraged.

“Good. Then you know your only other option.” Lenora leaned back and folded her arms.

I studied her with flared nostrils. I don’t know if it was because she had a younger sibling, but she sure knew how to push the right buttons.

All right, then. Who said I couldn’t bite back? I wracked my brain and then remembered. Lenora didn’t like to be called Jayden, but that’s what her father had called her. My brow furrowed.

“Why did Stanley call you Jayden?” I asked.

Her eyebrows rose in surprise and then settled. “When I was a student at one of the institutes, my name was Lenora Jayden.”

“As in, jaded?” My eyes fell on her gloves.

“Exactly.”

“So…why does he—?”

“To remind me that I’m a weapon,” she said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

I scowled. “That’s not right. He’s your dad!”

“So?”

“So fathers are supposed to love you! They’re supposed to call you…call you endearing names. Kind names.”

“Like what? Compadre?” She smirked at my blush. “That’s what our father used to call us, before he…changed. Dan doesn’t even know where he picked it up from. He was too young. If he did, he’d probably never utter it again.”

“When did he change?”

Lenora’s gaze was smoldering. She had no reason to tell me this.

“When he found out we were contaminated.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE—Charlie

I
didn’t know what to say. I felt undeniably sorry for her, and for Dan. What would I have done if Mom or Dad completely transformed into some beast because of our abilities? Then again, I had no idea how my parents were coping right now. I shivered.

“Listen to me, Donalie,” said Lenora. “I used to be one of the Executioners. Except, unlike you, when I was given the choice to kill the last Executioner, I did. I wasn’t attached to him. He wasn’t a friend. And I didn’t have a choice.”

I shook my head. “You always have a choice.”

Lenora breathed out in exasperation and pressed three fingers to her forehead. “I’m gonna get to the point. If neither of you make a move, Stanley will choose, and he’ll choose Daniel. Not because he’s his son. Because his abilities are more useful to him than yours. They’re too powerful to waste. I realize how difficult this decision is, but no matter what, you need to live.”