“You’re acting weird,” I say with a dismissive flick of my hand.
Nope. No chance in hell I’d let her help me with meditation. She might be IgNiTe, but I don’t fully trust her. One, I met her as an enemy and first impressions are hard to erase. Two, she openly threatened me, said that if I’m part of Hailstone’s grand plan to get rid of the need for human hosts, she would be against me—a nice way to say she’d put a bullet in my brain. Three, I’m not sure I want to make anyone aware of my monstrous potential. This feels private, like a reason to slick my hair back, don horned-rim glasses, change my name and pretend to be harmless and adorably clueless.
“I’m acting weird?” she asks. “This from someone who channels a creature like Azrael and sneaks through the ventilation system doing who knows what.”
“Someone who channels Azrael?! That’s not fair. I do what I have to do.”
I rub circles into my temples and sit on the desk chair, wondering how she knows about the ventilation system. I haven’t even used it since I planted a bug in Elliot’s PC, the day I discovered I could switch off my buzz-o-meter in both directions when he almost caught me spying. Why is she bringing that up anyway?
“The ventilation system is a thing of the past,” I say, figuring there’s no point in denying it. “I can go in and out as I please, now.” I pat the access card that hangs from my belt loop.
“So you didn’t put poison in Elliot’s food or through the vents in his office?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. This is what she thinks I did? It’s kind of sordid. My kind of idea, really, but so far off the mark. “I don’t know the first thing about poisoning. Though, maybe I should set my mind to learning the task.”
Lyra’s beautiful emerald eyes regard me for a moment longer. Finally, she seems to believe me and sits on her bed, looking puzzled. She scratches her head with a sharp feline claw, then preens her fully-grown whiskers. “He says he’s in top health. There should be nothing wrong avec son cœur.”
His what?
“His heart,” Lyra says when she sees my confused frown.
“I’m all for learning French, Lyra, but it’s at the bottom of my priorities at the moment. Surviving sort of puts a cramp in my personal improvement goals. Capisce?”
She rolls her eyes. “Americans.”
“Hey, you’d better watch it. You’re starting to sound like Elliot.”
Lyra shudders as if I just compared her to a street dog.
“I don’t get it.” I sit on my own bed across from her. “The old fart might be, um, sick, and you’re upset? Wouldn’t that be a good thing if he croaks?”
“It’d be a good thing if they all croaked.” She makes air quotes. “But if he dies, someone else will take his spot, someone less sophistiqué et more hungry for carnage.”
“Hungrier,” I correct.
She gives me the finger.
“Hey, just trying to help.” I put my palms up, recline on my pillow and look at the false ceiling. “I guess you’re right. James says the same thing.”
“Elliot cares about keeping the status quo and infrastructure. He doesn’t want to inherit a world in tatters.”
“Well, you’re his first in command, now.” I prop myself on one elbow and face her. “Wouldn’t you take his place if he’s gone?” I’ve many times asked myself why Lyra, who, early on, infiltrated the faction and managed to earn trust, didn’t just kill him at the first opportunity, but instead, continues to work alongside him.
She scoffs and gives me a contemptuous look that lets me know how naïve, stupid—or both—she thinks I am. “Haven’t you been paying attention? No one is happy Elliot is leaving Lamia and me in charge. Do you doubt challengers would present themselves if Elliot dies? It would most likely cleave the faction into smaller groups.”
“Well, that should make it easier to bring them down, right?”
“It is hard to predict exactly what would happen, but I fear—and my superiors and yours agree—smaller factions would be much harder to control. We would have guerrilla warfare on our hands. Eklyptors going into hiding never to be rooted out. Non, we can’t allow that. Our focus is elsewhere—on a cure.” She adds the last words in a hushed tone, even though there’s no one in the room with us. “Capisce?”
“Yeah. I get it.” It seems to me Lyra’s more worried about getting to Hailstone than the cure, but whatever.
We lie quietly for a moment, both lost in our own thoughts, staring at the ceiling as if a magical solution will flutter down on us. Finally, Lyra sits, picks up her satchel from the floor, and tosses it onto my lap.
I startle, instinctively, curling my body away from the bag. “What’s this?”
“Some things that might be useful. We got a new shipment of weapons today. Surveillance equipment came with it. Spy stuff. Trackers, tiny cameras, microphones. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” I start to open the bag.
Lyra shakes her head. “Better not be too obvious with those. Remember, everyone still thinks tu es folle.” She winds a finger around her temple. “And I wouldn’t give a crazy person those kinds of things.”
A heavy sigh pushes past my lips. I’m so sick of this place, of hiding and pretending to be someone I’m not.
With my desire for revenge against Elliot stifled at every turn, my presence here feels more useless every day. Add to that the fact that most communications have gone low-tech, making my hacking skills about as useful as roller skates at a nursing home.
Grumbling, I stash the satchel under my bed and lie back down. As soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind races away from this place, a common occurrence, lately.
As is most often the case, my thoughts drift to a small neighborhood north of here. There, I find a two bedroom/one bathroom house with a small porch and green siding. Across the street, a one-story rambler sits quiet and empty. A boy with red, fireman boots used to live there years ago. I don’t know why I revisit these places so often. There’s nothing left there for me, just old things and fraying memories. Yet, so much more than what I find here every day.
I long to go back.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_ffbad85c-49ae-5b68-acdf-27640d48a70f)
I stand in the middle of the street, eyes shut. The silence is overwhelming, unnatural, so unlike all the memories I have of this place. Evenings like this one used to be noisy with kids chasing balls or riding their bikes, neighbors playing their stereos too loudly, and noisy mufflers announcing the passage of the tough kids from down the street.
Now, there’s just the wind rustling the trees and crickets chirping louder than they ever have, two sounds that will never make me think of home.
Turning right, I face my house and open my eyes. At the sight of it, a hook embeds itself in my heart and tugs so fiercely that my knees tremble. Xave’s house is at my back, and I fear that laying eyes on it might hit me with an emotional blow that will knock me to the ground. I don’t look. Not yet, at least.
There are bad memories in my old house too. Last time I was here, Luke was inside, waiting for me. I had come home, reeling from Xave’s death, still believing I could count on my family. Instead, dear Luke tore my already-broken world into smaller pieces, stealing my mother in the worst imaginable way. An Eklyptor. They turned her into an Eklyptor. Bastards!
And even though some time later DNA evidence proved that Luke and Karen were nothing to me, that day, I lost my family and was left utterly alone and confused.
I lace my fingers behind my neck and squeeze my head between my arms, wishing I could evict those ugly memories and leave only the good ones. Karen brought me home from the hospital, thinking I was hers. She used to smile and feel proud of me. I was safe under this roof. I was happy, at least until Dad died when I was five.
Dad.
He’s a big reason I risked coming here. Traveling alone through the streets of Seattle is risky even for a Symbiot who can pass as an Eklyptor. Running into a member of a different faction—Hailstone in my case—would be a death sentence. They blame Whitehouse for the death of their leader, Zara Hailstone. I wonder what they would do if they knew it was an Igniter who shot her point blank.
I take one slow step at a time until I reach the white-painted door I remember so well. I’m aware of just how heavy it will feel when I push it open and how much force I’d need to slam it shut. God knows I did that enough.
I think of the narrow table in the foyer and the shoebox I placed on top of it. I wasn’t strong enough to open it then. But today, I’m ready to see the things Xave left at The Tank, things Oso gathered for me because the kind man thought I’d like to have them. I swallow and fight back the tears brought on by their memories.
My hand shakes as it moves toward the door knob. The key is in my pocket, but I’m certain Luke and Karen didn’t bother to lock last time they were here. A sinkhole could devour my home, and they wouldn’t bat an eye.
The metal is cold in my hand as the knob gives without opposition, just as I thought it would. Slowly and reluctantly, I turn it all the way, fearing what I may find inside. Human squatters? Eklyptor beasts? A ransacked mess? My heart picks up its pace.
As the door swings open one inch at a time, my right hand moves automatically to the gun at my hip. I hold my breath. Trapped air burns my lungs and throat as I wait. A gloomy interior reveals itself in stages. The house seems totally empty. I step inside. A musty smell greets me, making me feel I’ve walked into a foreign place, not the only home I’ve ever known.
