“Shut up. Just shut the hell up.”
All the old wounds, the impossibly deep ones Tina had cauterized and covered and kept inside herself, swelled with grief. Eighteen years older and infinitely wiser and steadier, Tomaseo had been like a father to her, teaching her the ways, listening to her confessions and forgiving her so many trespasses.
She’d trespassed all over the countryside, with every dark-eyed, hard-bodied peasant boy she could tempt into meeting her in a hayloft or an olive orchard. Sex had been a drug then, her most delicious, secret vice, and she had refused to be responsible because she was supposed to get pregnant—it was her duty, her calling … until she had begun puking in the mornings and realized she wasn’t ready to be a mother at seventeen.
Even after Tina had done the worst—the unthinkable—by getting an illegal, back-alley abortion, she had not been sorry. Her only regret was the idiot who had botched the job, causing her to nearly bleed to death afterward. Tomaseo had found her in a pool of her own blood on the floor of her room, and had rushed her to the hospital. There, when he’d learned the reason why she had hemorrhaged, he had not condemned her. He had done nothing to save her when she had been released from the hospital, either, but that didn’t matter. He had been her god, and she had never really stopped worshipping him.
And now he was dead, the last living relative she had, at the ridiculously young age of forty-seven. And they had sent Valori, the no-name nothing taken from the streets, her replacement, her doppelgänger, to bring her back.
That was why they wanted her to return to the fold. The conclamatio, an idiotic custom that required the dead man’s family to announce his death before the collegia by shouting his name while horns blew. If they were so desperate to bring her back, it meant—
“Toma never had any kids?” Tina demanded.
“Unfortunately, no. His wife was unable to conceive.”
“Such a tragedy,” Tina sneered, suddenly feeling a little safer now that she knew she was the last Segreta. “Didn’t he ever try to fuck you?”
“I was Tomaseo’s friend.” She said it as if she meant it. “You know that.”
“No, Valori,” Tina snarled. “I was his friend. His sister. His only family. You’re nothing. Less than nothing. A stray bitch brought in from the streets to lap at his heels and do their dirty work.”
“As you say.” Her voice went flat. “The situation remains unchanged. The collegia are expecting you to return. You may take a few days to settle your affairs—”
“Do you think I’ve forgotten everything?” Tina snapped. “Nine days. I have nine days before the novendiale sacrificium.”
“Seven,” Valori corrected. “Toma passed yesterday, and it will take you another day to make the return flight.”
She gritted her teeth. “Are you deaf as well as stupid? I’m not going back. I am never going back. You tell them that.”
“It is not my place. I must carry out my orders.”
“Fine.” The final gauntlet had been thrown. “If you try to take me, Valori, I’ll tell Jonah Genaro exactly who and what I am. I’ll tell him everything. Right after I shoot you in the head.”
“You misunderstand me, Teresina,” she said, her voice gentle again. “I will not be taking you back to them. I was not sent here for you.”
As Lilah hid the padlock at the bottom of the duffel bag, she could feel Walker watching her. She’d already discovered how intense he could be, but now he seemed fully focused on her, as if nothing else interested him.
Of course he was probably trying to sort out what had happened when he’d nearly lost control. She didn’t blame him for whatever was going through his mind; her own thoughts were probably just as jumbled.
This is what happened: nothing. I calmed him down and he stopped before anything serious happened. He didn’t mean to bruise me. He didn’t want to hurt me.
Walker’s reaction had been violent, Lilah knew, but even that didn’t repulse her. They were alone, naked, and bound together under the worst possible circumstances. He had been in the war, and God only knew what sort of emotional toll that had taken. Now he had to cope with this ordeal; it was almost a miracle that he had hung on to his sanity.
As for Lilah, being treated like nothing more than a blow-up doll by that little creep Joey was the worst humiliation she’d ever experienced, but the shame was his, not hers. To him she wasn’t a person, and neither was Walker. Anyone who would think it was funny to put two helpless captives in such a position wasn’t worth giving another thought to—although if Walker got the opportunity to keep his promise and rip off Joey’s head, Lilah felt almost certain that she wouldn’t try to stop him.
What still puzzled her was why the incident had triggered her ability. Instinctively she had reached into him to try to calm him, which made no sense, because Walker was human, not an animal. He’d also somehow blocked her ability and forced her out of his mind—another first for her.
Although her psychic ability worked only on the minds of predatory animals, she wasn’t completely oblivious to human minds. Occasionally Lilah could sense the emotions coming from other people, especially if they were strong feelings like anger or fear. But other than that low-grade emotional empathy, she had no other access to their thoughts. Nor could she exercise any form of telepathic control over them.
She should not have been able to reach into Walker. She certainly shouldn’t have been capable of absorbing his thoughts the way she had.
Unless they had done something to him to make him less human.
Jezebel, one of her Takyn friends, had sent out an encrypted e-mail explaining her sudden disappearance and the new Takyn she had met while evading GenHance. In it she described her encounters with Bradford Lawson, the terrifying killer who had stalked her across several states. He had been immensely strong with frightening abilities; he’d also been completely insane.
Lawson must have been one of the people GenHance experimented on, Jezebel wrote. When I first met him, he was just a man who was in good shape. The next time I saw him, his body was much bigger, faster, and had huge, distorted muscles, as if he’d been taking some kind of super steroids. He almost didn’t look human anymore.
Lilah glanced at Walker’s arms. When she’d first regained consciousness, she had seen every inch of his upper torso, and felt the rest with the lower half of her body. His muscles did seem more pronounced now. He had been paralyzed by the drugs, and perhaps the laxness had caused him to look thinner; but if he had been subjected to the same experiments GenHance had performed on Lawson …
Bastards.
She jerked the strings of the duffel bag to close it, and Walker touched her hand. The unexpected contact made her start, and she looked up into the remoteness of his eyes, but there was no reading his emotions now. He seemed aloof, almost indifferent.
She almost forgot to whisper. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re afraid of me.”
Chapter 9
His words hung in the air between them, like the white puffs of breath he’d used to say them.
“Why would I be afraid of you?” Lilah might have her doubts, but they didn’t translate into fear of him, only of what their abductors might have done to him. Then she understood why he had gone glacial on her. “You didn’t do anything wrong before, Walker. I knew you wouldn’t, uh, hurt me.”
He gave her a long look. “You know what I wanted to do to you.”
“The signs were kind of unmistakable.” Her face grew hot. “I know I probably look like a girl who gets around a lot, but I haven’t. And I don’t.” She glanced down at her curves and back up at him. “Having a body like this is like owning a really hot sports car. Men think all you do is go joyriding in it night and day. But honestly, I’ve only taken it around the block a few times.”
“Never with a stranger,” he guessed.
She shook her head. “I’ve always been careful. With all the diseases out there, it’s stupid not to be.” This was too much information; his eyes were probably going to start glazing over any minute. “Anyway, no harm done. You stopped and now we’re okay.”
“Lilah.” He turned his face so that his mouth brushed across her palm, a tender gesture that seemed at odds with his harsh expression. “You stopped me. I could not.”
“It’s all right. You just needed some help.” Lilah didn’t know how to explain her actions or her own emotions, which shifted abruptly from uncertainty and worry to a calm, cool serenity. They might not know anything about each other, but she felt connected to him now, as if those frightening moments had formed a concord between them. It should have terrified her, but once more she felt herself accepting it without a second thought. “You’re a good man, Walker. A decent man.”
He drew back, his gaze searching her face. “You don’t know me.”
That much was true. “I think I can explain why it happened. It’s because of what they did to you. What they put inside you. Your injuries from the war must have triggered it.” She wished she could spare him the knowledge, but it was better to tell him now than to let him go on in ignorance of his ability. “It changes you and allows you to do things that you couldn’t before now. But you can learn to control it. I’ll help you.”
His expression blanked. “How can you help me?”
“You heard what that guy said. They deliberately gave me an overdose.” She’d only ever told these things to strangers on a computer; it was much harder to tell someone in person. “I shouldn’t be breathing, but here I am, still alive.”
He said nothing, but watched her face closely.
Lilah took a deep breath. “Walker, I’m not exactly normal. When I was a baby, some scientists experimented on me. They altered my genes. I don’t know how or with what, but it changed me. It made me stronger and able to do things ordinary people can’t.”
