True Born (7 page)

Chapter Eight

I don
’t know what time it is when I wake, shivering and confused. I’d been in my sister’s skin, living through her memories: rounds of testing, the long, snake-like syringe invading me, pulling from my body sticky, microscopic lumps. Then I was watching in dull-eyed horror from the bed as Jared ripped the room apart, his face a feral mask. From Margot’s perspective, he is a beautiful angel of death. All she can think is how peaceful it will be once he finally turns and rips into her.

That isn’t even the part that has me crying.

The dream transports me. I am in Margot’s skin. Her hands rest on her bedroom window as she watches a riot mushroom outside our gate. Bodies smash into the fence. Limbs sever from torsos in the panic and press of the crowd.
This is it,
a voice says. Through Margot’s eyes I stare at three figures standing just inside the gate, like they’re holding back the crush of humanity. It’s me, flanked on one side by Jared and on the other by Nolan Storm, a set of antlers rising from his head like a massive crown. Suddenly I’m bodiless, a massive tidal wave ripping through the city street, a tsunami that will swallow everything and everyone in its path.

Wetness tracks down my cheeks. My eyes tiptoe through the darkness until they bump into a strangely familiar sight.

“What are you doing here?”
I don
’t mean to sound so scared as I bolt upright.

Then again, Jared sits not more than three feet away from me, in the armchair near the small glowing fireplace. In my room. Alone.

Arms crossed, he cocks his head and stares like he’s heard an insect whine. “Boss was worried about you,” he finally says. His eyes are bright green pennies in the dark, pupil all but disappeared.

“He sent you to watch me sleep?” I say it with as much contempt as I can muster. Jared doesn’t even bother to reply. He continues to stare at me.

“You were having a nightmare,” he tells me, as if I didn’t know.

I sigh and curl up my knees. “I’ve been having them all night.” He nods as though he understands. Since he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, I lean over and switch on the lamp to make conversation. “What time is it?”

“A little after one, I think.”

“When are we going home?”

“Soon.” Jared clasps his hands between his legs, clearly warming to this topic. “Couple days, I guess. Boss wants to make sure Margot is okay.”

I somehow resist the urge to tell him Margot will never be okay again, and neither will I. “Will our parents be back by then?”

“
Not sure.
” Jared scratches his chin. “If they aren’t, I think the plan is to be a little less remote than we signed up for.”

Whatever that means. I take him in then, really look at him. He’s changed his clothes but that’s about it. The blood-soaked shirt and pants have been replaced by a pair of dark trousers. He’s in a powder blue, long-sleeve shirt. I’m shocked it doesn’t have a cartoon scrawled across the front. His blond locks are tousled. But more than the blond, ashy stubble on his cheeks and the deep rings of exhaustion around his mouth and eyes, I notice the strange expression. Like a lost little boy.

He gets a good gander at me, too. I must look silly in the oversize white shirt Storm lent me, my hair a nest of dark curls.

Jared clenches the arms of the chair as though he’s physically holding himself back. “You are such an unbelievable pain in the ass, Princess. You know that?”

“What’d I do now?”

“Are you really that naive?”

I blink in confusion, wondering what has set him off this time. “What?”

“You haven’t so much as asked about it. You haven’t said a word.”

Oh.
The penny drops. I draw my legs up tighter against my chest. Jared jumps out of his chair and leans over me menacingly. “What, you’ve been raised to be
so polite
,” he mocks, “you’re just going to sit there and pretend you didn’t see it?”

I peer up into his livid, beautiful face.
He’s worried
, I suddenly realize. Not angry—terrified. I marvel at the thought. I’d never have imagined that a man who rips people apart with his bare hands would worry much about what others thought, let alone someone he seems to dislike as much as me.

“Wasn’t much to say about it, I reckon.” Jared peers back at me as though I’m an alien species. Which, if I follow Storm’s logic, I just might be. So who am I to sling arrows? I sigh. “You saved Margot. You saved me. As far as I’m concerned, you could be a ten-foot fire-breathing lizard and I wouldn’
t give a damn.
”

Jared steps back with a deep intake of breath, looking halfway between trapped and wild. He turns and paces for a moment. Then he sits back down in the chair across from me, hands clenched in his lap. He glances down at his feet, which I see now are bare. His toes are long and white, like the rest of his massive feet. Those bare toes make him seem absurdly vulnerable.

“I’ve never changed in front of someone before,” he confesses. “I mean, a Laster. I mean—someone I was going to let keep breathing.”

“Thanks,” I toss back. I don’t think he hears the sarcasm.

“It confuses me. Part of me thinks I ought to kill you,” he tells me slowly. Catching the look in my eye he stumbles on irritably. “Now, cut it out. Storm would snap my neck like a twig if I laid a hand on you.”

I gulp past a short burst of panic, unsettled that that seems to be his only reason. “Can you control it?”

“Not always. I’m safe here with my own kind—which you most definitely are not.”

But the way he says it, I’m suddenly not sure we’re talking about his ability to become cat man.

I flash back to the monster and the albino. “Are all True Borns like you?”

Jared shakes his head. “If you mean do we all have the ability to turn into a jungle cat on two legs, then no.”

Can his whole body turn? Curiosity itches at me. But I know how impolite it would be to ask. And besides, he’ll just shut down. So instead I ask, “I
mean
, are they all shifters?”

The corners of his mouth turn down but his eyes soften. “I haven’t met ‘them all,’” he mocks with air quotes, “but of those I have met, all I’ve got to say is there are no rules. You saw Penny tonight. She doesn’t turn into a zebra or whatever the hell she shares her gen-code with. But you can be damned sure not all her genes are certifiably human.”

“Oh.” I look at my hands. My cheeks flame. With a start I realize I don’t want Jared to talk about Mohawk.

“And those two guys at the Clinic who were trying to grab you two. Just one whiff of those guys was enough to tell. Splicers smell all kinds of wrong, but those guys
reeked
.” There’s a pause before he continues. “And then there’s you.” I look up to catch him frowning furiously at me. He leans back, like it can help him get me in perspective.

“What about me?”

Frown deepening, Jared bounces a hand off the chair arm. “You know you’re different, Princess. And it’s not just because you’re some fancy, spoiled rich girl. Hell, you don’t smell like anyone else. Money can’t buy that smell.” I assume he wasn’t talking about my expensive perfume, which money did in fact buy. I watch his chest rise with another inhale, like scenting me is an instinct. He seems to mean it as a compliment, but I am irritated. Of all of the aspects of myself that I have been trained to control, my scent is not one of them.

“
I don
’t know what you’re talking about. And I’m not spoiled.”

“Me either. Lie down and go back to sleep, Princess,” he grouches, though suddenly I’m not sure which statement he’s agreeing with.

I do as he says, if only to get away from those eyes of his, eyes that want to solve me and put me into a neat little box. I turn off the lamp and squeeze my eyes shut, but if anything, my head whirls even more. He hasn’t said the words, but they hang between us in invisible parentheses:
True Born
.

My mind chases down the same old arguments. Wouldn’t we know? Wouldn’t there have been some clue before now…like one of us turning into a tiger or something? Wouldn’t we feel it, deep down in our bones?

But then, there’s always been something about us.

An image floats behind my eyes. Margot lies in the darkness across the narrow bed, eyes unseeing. Alone. The shot the doctor gave her must be wearing off because the pain is starting to return, pulling through my abdomen in long, aching threads. But it’s the pain in her heart that undoes me. I sit up again, blinking back the tears.

Jared lets out an exasperated, “Lucy, go to sleep. You’re going to need it.”

“I can’t,” I confess. “Every time I close my eyes…”

His exasperated sigh hisses through the dim room. As he makes his way over to the bed, his hair picks up on the little light there is, turning him into a dim angel. He settles his weight on the edge of the groaning bed and awkwardly rubs my back.

“There. Better?”

I snort dismissively but lie down. His hands slow, the awkwardness evaporating as something else takes its place. Everywhere his hands touch my skin feels like it lights up parts of my body I didn’t know were connected.

Like a languid cat, Jared props his back against the wall and pillows my head on his lap. “There, that’s more comfortable,” he says as with one hand he trails a finger over the sensitive skin on my neck. I shiver as the sensation burns through me. Ever so light, his fingers wind a trail down my back. I arch against his fingers, lost in the exquisite sensations.

“You’re like a little kitty cat,” Jared purrs. “All cuteness and claws.” His breath stirs the little hairs on the back of my neck. I shiver again, rocking back, and meet the hot brand of his flesh. I’m instantly electrified, even more so as I hear his sharp inhale. I move away as fast as fire, though I can still feel the burning imprint of his flesh against my head.

“Better than a pain in the ass, I reckon,” I murmur.

I expect him to get mad, but he barks a soft laugh, stirring my hair. “Very true.”

“Jared,” I croak.

“What?”

“Do you think we could be
different
, different? Like, maybe, True Born different?”

For a moment he pauses his slow, languid touches. I feel like I’ve lost something precious and wiggle my back a bit.

“All right, all right, pussy cat.” He rumbles a laugh and continues the slow drag of his fingers. I can feel him breathing in the scent of my hair. “My mom used to do this when I was a little kid,” he murmurs. Then, “
I don
’t know how to classify you,” he admits.

My heart knocks loudly against my ribs. He seems to be talking about more than my genetic code.

“Do you think—do you think that’s…why?”

I don
’t need to spell it out. What happened to Margot has changed everything, possibly forever. The only question that really remains—other than the obvious “why” and “who”—is
by how much
? For a moment Jared splays his hand flat against the skin of my back, almost as though he’s measuring his flesh against mine. I tilt my head up, catching the bright green of his eyes. Jared’s lips purse slightly.

“Maybe. Probably,” he admits.

A ribbon of relief flows through me. I didn’t realize how much I needed to know he’d be honest with me.

Jared’s fingers inch up and tangle with my curls, pulling them away from my face in long, unhurried strokes. Slowly I relax, my body growing heavy. “You have beautiful hair.”

I wonder if he realizes he’s said it out loud. I cock open one eye to glare at him. “This doesn’t change anything,” I tell him. My voice thickens with sleep as the darkness comes to claim me. “I still don’t like you.” I glimpse the wink of his teeth, the deep dimple beside his very generous mouth. Something tightens in my chest.

“That’s as it should be, Princess,” he tells me with conviction.

And I slide off into the dark, safe at last.

Chapter Nine

I wake tangled in Jared’s legs, heavy warm logs under my head. His arm curls around me, twists in my shirt. I peek up at him. His perfect lips pull up in sleep, making him look like a little boy with a secret. One blond lock hangs down and cradles one eye. As I stare at him, he stirs and stretches, cat-like, before cocking one eye open.

“You make a terrible guard,” I grumble, frozen to the spot.

Jared just looks at me, curiously peaceful. “You say that now, but you actually slept through the night.”

“And so did you,”
I accuse.

“
I don
’t sleep. Not on duty.” He rubs his eyes.

I snort and roll over, sitting up. “What am I, if not a duty?” He doesn’t answer, but lets his hands fall onto his legs as we contemplate each other. This morning they are a miraculous blue. Up close they aren’t blue exactly but ocean blue shot with green and gold, and I wonder how they look indigo sometimes. My fingers reach up as if to stroke his face. “
Your eyes change,
”
I murmur, unsure I
’ve said it out loud until he answers.

“A lot of me changes,” he says after a long beat but doesn’t spin snark into his words. We’re still close, close enough for me to study a faint freckle near his left eye. He’s so warm and alive as I breathe him in, out. For a moment I close my eyes, dizzy with sensations.

A ghost of regret maybe, maybe even a hint of panic, passes over his handsome features. He swallows and suddenly I’m nervous as a cat as he leans back and slowly, like he expects me to jump him, pulls himself off the bed. He looks around the dim room like he’s never seen it before and announces, “Let’s get breakfast.”

...

It’s barely seven when I slip into my sister’s room. The room is bright, the drapes wrenched open at awkward angles like someone’s clawed at them. Margot’s curled up in one corner, snail-like. Her sleepy blood surges through my veins.

“Margot,” I whisper. I take her hand. It’s clammy and hot with sleep. For a brief moment I panic over fever, but then remember the doctor telling us that Margot’s system might react to some of the shots she was given.

I run my fingers through her silky hair, feel it catch between my fingers. The troubled lines of her face, what little I can see, at any rate, smooth out at my touch. After a few minutes I kiss her cheek, cold under my lips like china, and creep out the door.

Jared is leaning against the wall, waiting for me, as I come out of the room.

The hallway is wide and well lit, but closed in with Jared, it feels small. He hides a small smile and claps a hand on my shoulder and points down another hallway. “Kitchen is that way, Princess.”

“You’re taking this stalking thing to whole new heights,” I tell him.

“How is she?”

I shrug. “She’s asleep.”

“Trust me, that’s a good thing.”

“And what about when she wakes up?”

His eyes glitter. “Then you get on with the rest.”

We arrive in the spacious dining room just as the dark-haired woman comes in carrying a tray of French toast. She barely glances at me, so I am able to catch the fine web of lines that pulls across her eyes as she smiles at Storm, sitting at the head of the table. I peg her at our mother’s age, maybe a bit older. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with the Lasters. Then again, I think, recalling where I am, she may not be a Laster.

“Thank you, Alma,” Storm says, setting down his NewsFeed to look me over. He seems larger today, if that’s possible. His black turtleneck sets off the wintry steel of his eyes. The crackling, interlocked energy framing his head is becoming flesh and bone. “Good morning, Lucy. I hope you slept well.”

The wooden table gleams, nearly as big as ours back home. Jared comes around behind me as I sit down. I color. “Eventually.”

“Good. We have a few things to discuss after breakfast.”

I reckon my father might be one of them, Margot too. Jared graces Alma with an all-but blinding smile. She
tutts
and fusses over him before coming around to me.

“Come on, eat up,” she says warmly. “You’ll need your strength.”

I eye a heaped plate of French toast, another beside it stacked with bacon and sausage. I wasn’t hungry before, but suddenly I’m ravenous.

I’m halfway through my plate when my hunger leaks away. I feel the familiar pull, now laced with pain and something so dark I don’t have a name for it. Wild, maybe. My fork clatters to the plate, and I stare into space for a moment, adjusting to Margot’s weight inside me.

Storm scans my face. “Lucy.”

“Margot’s up.” The words are filled with the false optimism of a Protocols nurse. I don’t know if they believe me or care. I only care that they don’t see it when, scrambling to get to my sister, disoriented by her chaotic state, I stumble against the wall. I should know better by now.

A hand clamps over my arm and pulls me upright. “How did you manage to survive so long without me, Princess?”
a familiar voice grouches.

There must be something in my face. Jared stops cold, swears under his breath. His fingers prod me softly until I’m leaning against the wall. “Dammit, Lucy.” His eyes bore into mine, taking on that faint green sheen I now realize means he’s getting upset. I bat at the arms he’s clamped over my shoulders, but I’m distracted by the closeness of his mouth, the look of total concentration stamped over his handsome features.

He doesn’t say anything more. Not what I expect. “What?”

“
You can
’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“Do what?”

“This. You’re letting her torture you.”

“Don’t say that,” I yell, genuinely shocked. “Don’t you ever say that.” Jared doesn’t understand. Even if Margot weren’t my twin, my other half, it’s my responsibility to make sure she’s okay.

Tears burn behind my eyes, leak onto my face. And maybe I’m as surprised as Jared when he pulls my head onto his shoulder and just holds me. He pulls me tight against his body until the tight knot in my throat starts to dissolve and all I’m left with is the hard lines of his muscles beneath my hands. The smell of him. The tingling heat that seems to fill my body whenever he’s around.

His hands trace down through my hair, capturing my full attention. Time slows to a crawl. Margot’s tug inside me, I realize blankly, has subsided to a small ball of ache, something I can manage. My hands run down his back. I hear a small hiss in my ear. I pull back an inch and instantly regret it. Some part of me feels untethered without his heat pressing into me.

“Why are you doing this?” I croak. He tilts his head in confusion, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve left my hands on his chest.

“Doing what?”

“Being nice to me.”

His hands frame my face. He studies my hair, my earlobes, my lips like he’s reading something fascinating before answering. “I like pains in the ass,” he says with a hint of a smile. “They remind me of me.”

I grab his wrist. “I mean it. Why are you all being so nice? Saving us?”

When Jared sighs and steps back, eyes shuttered, I shiver. “That’s something you need to talk to Storm about.”

My stomach drops.
Of course, I remind myself cynically, even the most basic kindnesses being extended to the Fox sisters must have a price tag. I tear myself from Jared’s embrace and straighten the fabric of my blouse and skirt.

“Right. Thank you. For a moment there I had almost forgotten. All we are to you is a job.”

Jared’s eyes green as they narrow and his back turns ramrod straight. “Forget I said anything, all right? Go ahead, let your sister eat you alive. I must have lost my mind thinking that you might be different from all the other self-entitled, grabby Uppers, but seems I was wrong. You’re worse.”

As he spits the words out he inches closer and closer, and I keep moving back until I’m splayed flat against the wall and his face, his angry, beautiful face is just a hair’s breadth from mine. I suck in a deep breath as Jared blinks and shudders. I bite my lip so as not to cry and push hard at his chest. He moves easily enough now, and I stumble down the hall to Margot’s room—but now I stumble for another reason. I feel his eyes on me as I retreat, the heat of his simmering anger.

Just another bodyguard
, my head tells me. A mean one, at that. The sharp ache in my chest says differently.

...

I spend the day fussing over my sister, avoiding the rankling in my heart. It has never bothered me before, what other people have thought of us, the Fox family. Me. But Jared
’
s words haunt me. And each time they circle round, I feel them sinking in and deepening like a bruise.

By nightfall Margot is feeling well enough to sit up in bed and chat. Doc Raines visits her again and says she
’
ll do. Once the doctor leaves, Margot all but drags me out of the room. “Come on, Lucy,” she says, “I want to catch up with some kids from school and go to sleep.”

I go, though unwillingly. Half of me is impressed. I can feel what my sister feels, but I still can
’
t understand what it
’
s like to be her: able to slip off whatever responsibility or duty or danger crosses her path as easily as changing a dress.

I can
’
t rid myself of the feeling that if I leave Margot for even a second she
’
ll disappear. And somehow it will be my fault. But as I close the door behind me and thread my way through the elaborate hallways of Storm
’
s tower in the direction of his office, I can already hear her giggling at some silly thing Deirdre Phalon is saying.

It will be up to me to fix things.
As usual
, I think with a sigh.

...

“Why are they like that?” I point.

Storm stands framed by floor-to-ceiling windows and crowned with a thorny, mature set of antlers that twinkle darkly in the glass. One ankle slightly crosses the other, like an elegant buck. He focuses on something below, lost in thought. Sad, too, as though he’d be alone even surrounded by people.

Storm cracks the tiniest of smiles as he beckons me over. “It would be pretty difficult to fit through the door if they were more substantial, don’t you think?”

I laugh and come over to where Storm is standing. He smells different than Jared, more like spice and cloves and something dark. “Look out there,” he says. I follow his outstretched finger. Red drips from on the top of a building, far below. But even from here the letters are huge.
EVOLVE OR DYE
.

“They can’t spell,” I observe.

“True”—Storm nods—“but hardly the point.”

“What is the point?”

Storm leads me to the couch. “Evolution, Lucy. Evolution is the point.”

It’s not the answer I want. I want to actually know what’s happening, why the rabble are after us, why those test-tubers or whatever they were in the Clinic wanted to grab us. I want to know how and when we will be safe. I want to know when my parents will be home.

More than anything else: I want to know what we are.

Storm leans over his thighs. “Shane called your father,” he confesses apologetically. “I wasn’t able to prevent him. With both of you gone yesterday…”

“Oh. What did he—what did they say?”

“They’ll be back as soon as they can. They have some business to wrap up first.”

I whisper, “Of course,” and try to shrug off a dose of disappointment. But what did I expect? I picture our mother fiddling with her pearls in a hotel room in Paris or Russia or wherever they are. Our father beating his gloves bloody against his palm. Cold, so cold. “Do they know…?” Storm shakes his head. “Are we going home then?”

He regards me carefully. “Do you want to go home, Lucy?”

We’d be in familiar surroundings. Shane and the others would be there. And it’s what our parents would want. Above all, there’s duty to the family to consider. But would Margot feel safe? I can’t imagine so. Something in me digs in its heels and rebels at the thought of leaving Storm’s sanctuary.

And there is the other reason for staying, that small voice whispers inside of me. Shoving back the memory of cozying up on Jared’s lap, I remind myself that Storm knows things. He has resources at his fingertips—not a given, even in our exalted world—and while his job is to protect us, he tells us the truth.

A glimmer of a plan takes root inside me and begins to grow.

“Do you want to speak to Margot before making a decision?” Storm asks while the cogs and wheels in my head turn. I nod, grateful to have more time to mull it over.

But I know the first question Margot will ask. The same one I need answered. “Thank you. But first I need to…may I ask why you’re doing this?”

He studies me for a long moment before answering. “I’m not sure now is the time or place to get into all the details, but suffice it to say, I have a vested interest in your well-being. Yours and your sister’s.”

“Why?”

He rubs wryly at the spot above his head where the antlers swirl and coalesce in a pale electric blue. “You see these? Did you know not everyone can? You’re one of only a handful that I know of. I don’t think your sister sees them. At least, I haven’t caught her looking at me funny.”

Another secret part of me that is not like my sister? Intrigued, I sink down on the couch.

“They’re a gift from my father who, come to think of it, was a lot like your father.” Storm winks. “A very strong man. A man who arranged destinies.” Storm points to his crown. “These don’t do much in this form, but they carry a certain significance, like a…family crest, I guess you could say. They signify that I’m one of those people who has…well, I guess you could call it an overwhelming compulsion to make things right for people.
My
people.” An uncomfortable silence slips in between us. “You know who my people are, Lucy.”

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. Like I’m about to hurl myself into an abyss.

“True Born,” I whisper.

He nods slowly. “True Borns are in hiding. All over this city and elsewhere. Did you know that Dominion is trying to pass a law to have all True Borns licensed?” My hands shake as I mouth the word “
no
.” The mention of my father hangs between Storm and me like a blade. Who else could be behind such barbaric legislation? “We can help, you know. We can keep the city running as long as it can. And we can turn it into a new city once the Lasters are done.” His eyes are like lightning as he speaks, incandescent and full of power. But it’s what his words imply that raises a lump in my throat.