True Born (23 page)

“He was right, you know. You both excelled every expectation,” she tells me quietly. “I’m sorry this party wasn’t more in your taste. You both deserve a nice party.”

“Mother, please.”
I grab at her hand.
“You’re not making sense.”

“May I have this dance?” Resnikov’s smooth, low tones startle me. I jump, as does our mother, who drops her hand as though it’s on fire. “Am I interrupting a mother-daughter moment?” He throws a charming smile at us, white teeth flashing, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. An air of menace wafts from him despite the tuxedo and carefully slicked back hair threatening to tumble down over his eyes.

He extends a hand. Our mother pushes me forward. I get the message. My hand is small in his, which is thick and calloused, as though he’s used to hard labor. I swallow and look up at him. Resnikov gazes down at me dispassionately as he wheels me into the fray.

“You look lovely tonight,” he opens. I nod my head and murmur my thanks. He smells of cigars, but underneath that I can smell
him
, dark and strange. I try to listen to the music. The orchestra is playing something light and impersonal. Resnikov tightens his grip on my hand. “You’re also very quiet tonight.”

“Not much to say, I guess.”

“Tell me, Lucinda.” His accent always thickens around my name.
Lyoo-cinda
. “Do you think we can be friends?”

It’s not a move I expect. I glance up. His frank appraisal unbalances me.

“I-I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

Resnikov whirls me around before answering. “Because we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, you have just been informed your sister is coming back to Russia with me. Correct?”

So much for subterfuge
. I swallow hard before asking, “And what would be the easy way?”

His whole chest vibrates as he chuckles. “I like you,” he tells me. “You are a smart young woman. The easy way would be if you come, as well. Of your own free will, of course.”

I surprise myself by asking, “And what happens to me if I don’t want to come?”

Resnikov shrugs, his dark eyes boring into mine. “You come anyway. Only you’re not so comfortable.”

We dance a moment longer before I decide to take a wild stab in the dark. “Do our parents know that?”

His smile is genuinely amused as he answers. “You are far brighter than your father gives you credit for, I think.” He whirls me to the side of the room and bows low over my hand. “I’ll let you consider my offer. You can give me your answer in the morning.” He melts into the crowd.

And how can he think I’ll just sit here and wait for him to kidnap my sister and me? Because they can make sure no one takes me in. Because they know there’s nowhere for me to go but the streets.
Because the room is filled with mercs strapped with guns. And who do they answer to?
Not me.

A second later I’m swept into a waltz with Storm. He towers over me even without the antlers, but he’s so gentle and light on his feet I feel like I’m dancing on a cloud.

“You’re not supposed to dance with us without asking Resnikov.” I frown. But then, because the tears threaten to spill I add, “We’re going to Russia.”

Storm nods tersely. “Get a few things together in a bag. Essentials for just a day or two. Nothing else. Be at the foot of the staircase in ten minutes.”

“
I don
’t know what to do,” I murmur. But Storm either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to. The song ends and he slips into the crowd and I quickly lose sight of him.

I wheel around, hoping to find my sister. But the ballroom is a giant crush. I reckon I couldn’t find my way to the door unless I’d lived here all my life. I rush into the room dedicated as the ladies’ withdrawing room. Margot is not there. Running out onto the balcony I catch our father standing with a few of his cronies. Thick blue smoke curls from their hands, which hold gleaming glasses of dark golden liquor and fat, lit cigars. I retreat, hoping to run upstairs before our mother notices me. And back up with a thump into a hard body.

I turn, an apology on my lips. Only to be met with the dark, menacing face of Richardson.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You’re a hard lady to catch.”
Richardson
’s lips twist with sarcasm as he grabs my arm and pulls.

“Ow,” I say as loudly as I dare. Sadly, he won’t be taken for a bad guy, I think, noting the tuxedo, the black silk eye patch and more importantly, the fact that no one is around to help me. “I don’t recall seeing your name on the guest list.”

“
I don
’t recall giving my name at the door.” He smirks and marches me down the dimly lit demi-corridor that separates the ballroom from the balconies.

I dig in my heels and give an outraged screech. “Where do you think you’re taking me?”

“Time’s up,” he snarls. “Consider your decision made. I’m taking you to your room to pack. You’re too much of a flight risk.”

My brain trips over his words.
Flight risk
. “What decision?” I ask. But inwardly I’m wondering how he knows—
unless he really is Resnikov?
But his accent, his face—he’s not even in the same tux as Resnikov, I realize, noting the cheaper cut to Richardson’s suit. But how does he know? And what happened to giving me time to consider?

I dig my heels in hard enough that he’s forced to stop. “Who are you—his brother?”

Richardson
’s smile finally reaches his remaining eye and crinkles the corner, just as it does on Resnikov. “Good guess,” he says, studying me. “No.”

“What, then? Cousins?”

“Think of us as cousins if it makes it easier. Let’s go. I do not want to have to damage you.”

Damage me?
“Why would you bother with me? You have Margot. You only need one of us, right?” It’s only a guess but it seems I’ve hit the mark.

His mouth curls up into an oddly disarming smile. “Insurance.”

I may have no choice in the matter, but I sure as hell won’t give him the honor of going quietly. Not in the middle of my own Reveal. Not wanting to miss a chance, I slam my hand against his nose with a sharp, upward jab. He winces, and when he lets me go, I grab at his face, pulling his black eye patch down and revealing pitted sunken scar tissue. He’s distracted only for seconds, long enough for me to bring my knee to his crotch. Shockwaves run through his body as I pluck up the bell of my skirt and run like hell.

As I run for the main staircase of the house, I realize what a dilemma I’m in. Storm is nowhere to be seen, but there are guards with guns everywhere. Guards Resnikov had a hand in hiring.
Is he even Russian?
I wonder hysterically as I force myself into a fast walk. I glance over my shoulder, expecting to see an enraged Richardson appear with a gun, but he’s not there. Not yet.

Neither is Storm—or my parents—and I’m desperate. I toss a smile at the guards at the staircase. Would they prevent me from going upstairs? Trap me? They don’t so much as raise a finger as I reach for the door handle and rush outside into the night air.

The exterior of the house is flooded with light. The same designer that helped our mother with the lanterns and pools convinced her to continue the theme on the exterior. Our house looks like a gigantic block of light. I blink at the ostentatious waste of electricity, and reckon that if they didn’t before, every last one of the rabble in town now knows where we live. But that hardly matters, I think to myself as I look past the gate.

Because they’ve found us. All of them.

There must be three hundred—maybe four. Guards line the fence, guns pointing at the massive sea of bodies. The street is deadly quiet—the kind of quiet that makes you think someone has died. The Lasters stand still as stone, blinking, calm faces lit by the garish glow of the building.

“Lucy?”
A voice
laced with a hint of fear breaks through the panic racing through my blood. “Lucy, for once in your life do what I say and don’t move.”

I almost sag with relief and a strange, bubbling joy. I’d know that voice anywhere. But why does he sound scared? I turn. Framed against the shiny black and gray cars lining the grass along the driveway is Jared, who holds the arm of a breathtakingly beautiful woman. She’s not dressed for the party, but then again, she wouldn’t have to be. She’s the kind of woman who would be stunning in a sack. Tall, slim as a pencil but still curved, she shakes a mane of white-blond hair that ripples down her back from two decorative side combs. It’s her eyes that catch me: beautiful, almond-shaped eyes, and I’m stabbed through with jealousy. But then I see why Jared holds her arm that way. Those eyes of hers are covered in the bluish-white sheen of cataracts.

My stomach sinks with recognition.
Her
.

I glance over my shoulder at our bedroom windows, Margot’s and mine. And yes, there is my sister, framed in the window. Her lovely hair curls around her face in wisps as she puts her hands on the glass. As though we can reach each other through the glass and a two-story drop.

No. No. No. No nonono.
“Margot,” I whisper, whipping my head around. “Jared?” is all the warning I get to mutter before all hell breaks loose.

The wind howls through the streets like a hungry animal even as a weird chanting fills in the air behind them. The Lasters move forward like a well-trained army. The gates buckle as they press into the thin metal bars.

Behind a raft of people a figure pulls up to the gates on something like a makeshift stage. It’s an awkward wooden thing—salvaged wood from the look of it—on two large wheels, like a wheelbarrow. As the awkward contraption sidles forward I see Father Wes astride the cart like the demented preacher man he is. With one hand he holds on to a post driven up the center of the cart, and with the other, he shouts into a megaphone. “Salvation is at hand,” he hisses, “salvation is ours for the taking.”

Jared and the blond woman step around a shiny black car. “Get back, Lucy. Get the hell out of here,” he growls.

I ignore him. “You’re the witch.”

Shaking her head, the woman regards me sadly with her sightless eyes. “No.”

“But you have to be.” I reckon I’m whining because she looks at me piteously.

“I think you mean my mother. She’s missing…has been for years now.”

“But your eyes.” I trail off. I know I’m being rude, but I can’t seem to help myself, and we’re running out of time. Hands reach through the bars of the gate and are battered down by the butt of a gun. Blood arches in a delicate spray across the pavement. Some of it lands on the woman’s hair and face. She doesn’t blink, her unseeing eyes trained on me like she’s seeing under my skin. She traces a finger around my body in the air, following the tracks of my veins.

“Get back, Serena!” Jared yells as he tries to pull the mysterious woman back.

But she ignores him, too. “
Your blood,
” she says, clearly fascinated by something. “I’ve never seen it before… Like his, only different.” Already pale, her eyes turn the dead white of winter.

“His?” I say, but I don’t need to ask. I know who. Nolan Storm. “It’s my blood, isn’t it? And my sister’s.”

“Yes”—she nods quickly, and the words are a whisper as she points at me—“special blood.”

In a flash of recognition, I blurt out, “You’re a Salvager, aren’t you? I thought those were just stories.”

Salvagers. The kids at school snicker over the comic book versions of them, the Allan Quartermains of our new world order. Salvagers aren’t respectable types of True Borns. No fins or tails or gills. A Salvager has only one gift: the ability to sniff out True Borns like a tracker dog. Lowest of the low.

“This storm isn’t normal,” she breaks the train of my thoughts. “It’s been hatched. We need to find shelter before it does.” I blink in confusion. Clouds, thick as blankets, roil around in shades of dark bilious green and black. Lightning cracks through, singeing the tip of a distant building as the clouds begin to knit themselves into a funnel the length of several city blocks. “It’s coming,” she warns again.

A ferocious crack sounds as the wind picks up into a gale. Dust and debris whip us in the face, blinding us. The Lasters don’t seem to mind as they press the gate, dirty, desperate faces reaching for us as though their lives depend on it.

I need to know for sure. I’ve got to hear what these men and women and children would die for.

I need to know what we are.

I grab the woman’s forearm. “What’s our blood for? What kind of True Born are we?”

Her head tilts back as she gazes at me, sad and troubled. Her thin hand comes over my hand but she doesn’t move. “What binds the people?”

What desire binds together the people of Dominion? Not money. Not love. Nor family or power. Not anymore. Not since the Plague came riding through town and ate through everything, everyone. No—the one thing people want is something they have no control over. Their bodies. Their lives. The ticking time bombs built into their genetic design.

Life and death
.

“The Plague,” I breathe.

I used to dream of someone who’d swoop in like the heroes of the OldenTime books and halt the Plague in its ravenous feeding frenzy. Never in a million years could I imagine that an answer lay hidden in our blood, the blueprint stamped in our nearly identical genes. I think back to what happened to Margot at the Clinic. Those men who lured Margot, trapped Margot. Stole from her.

And if they knew, how many others?

The woman says nothing more, but glides her unseeing eyes over the crowd. “Wrong people are behind that door.” She nods toward the house.

Wrong people?

I don
’t have a chance to ask. Guards I don’t recognize stand sentinel on the upper balcony of the house. They point their guns at the crowd at the gate, and the air fills with the sound of gunshot, screaming, instant death.

I scream, too, and cover my ears. “What are you doing?”

Someone tugs at my arms and all but drags me toward the house. My eyes are shut tight against the horror so it takes me a moment to realize that it’s Jared.

He grabs my face between his hands. “Lucy.” He’s not yelling so I know it’s serious. “Get into the house. Grab your stuff, and we’ll get out of here, just like Storm said.”

I shake my head and try to pull away. “I can’t just leave, Jared. I can’t leave Margot. My family.” My hands twist against Jared’
s chest.

Jared’s eyes narrow. He swallows hard and blinks at the sky. A long, ragged sigh drags from his lungs. I am nothing if not a pain in the ass for Jared True Born Price.

But when he finally sweeps his eyes over me again his face is a mask of anguish. Splotches of red run up the skin of his neck, the bones of his nose pinched, as though he’s about to change. “
You can
’t stay here, Lucy.” The words are low, soft. “
You can
’t stay here with them.”

My heart rips. I know what it means if I let them take us: the end of our world as we know it. And a very uncertain life of duty. But this is what we were born to. This life of privilege and wealth—it was always just on loan to us. This was the price we were always meant to pay for being Lukas and Antonia Fox’s daughters.

I curl my fingers around Jared’s hands, which still gently cup my cheeks. “Jared,” my voice cracks as I plead for him to understand. Out of everyone, I need him to understand. “Jared, they’
re our parents. I don
’t know what he has on them but I can help.” I may not have had a messy childhood, or a silly one, or even a particularly fun one, but I was safe, I had always been safe. In their own way, my parents did all they could to protect me. I can’t now turn my back on helping them, can I? I may be angry, but in the end, there is only family.

“Listen to yourself.” Jared’s words become urgent as he brings my face in close to his, inhaling me. “Lu, they want to take you and Margot away, and you’ll never come back. Never have a life of your own.” Resting his forehead against mine, Jared breathes me in. His lips are so close to mine. So close. “You deserve a life of your own,” he murmurs. And then, so silently it is almost lost in the storm, he adds, “With me.”

Closing my eyes, I tremble against his hands. It hurts to want something so badly yet know I can’t allow myself to have it. Reminding myself of everyone that I’m protecting, I pull myself from his arms. “I—I have to go now.”

Jared curses, loudly and with color. I open my eyes just in time to see Richardson stride out from the wide double doors of our home. With a snarl, Richardson bounds down the front stairs and kicks Jared in the face, sending Jared sprawling back. I fall to my knees as someone grabs my arms from behind. I can’t see my attacker but I can tell they are strong. The wind howls and pulls at my dress and hair as my arms are stretched back. I’m forced to my feet and dragged up the front stairs backward.

From this position I can see the carnage at the gate. Horror twists through my guts, leaving me sick and empty. Lasters are mowed down by gunmen. More take their place, the dead and injured bodies pulled back behind the crowd.
How will our father paper over this?
I’m shoved roughly once again and almost tumble off the steps. I stumble down two or three, hands splayed out to catch me, and turn back to see Storm grappling with one of the unknown merc guards at the door. It’s not a fair contest. The guard swings the butt of his semi at Storm, who ducks and punches, just one blow, to the gut. The guard heaves, reaching for the ground with one hand. With his other, he reaches for the trigger of his weapon. Storm gets there first. A vicious kick to the hand and the gun flies over the guard’s shoulder, his body crumpling around broken, flayed fingers.

Storm snarls and the earth trembles. His antlers burn bright blue-white, eyes misty pools. He paws the ground with one foot, tossing his antlers angrily. The howling wind breaks into lightning. It flashes down, connecting with the branches of Storm’s antlers. His eyes blaze as he stomps and holds the storm within him.

This is what a True Born god looks like,
I muse. Distracted, I’m caught up and swung over a thick shoulder. I kick and scream until a pushed-past-annoyance Jared grunts and yells, “Cut it out, Princess. I’m not above spanking you.”