Snap, Crackle ... Read online

  She started at that. “I never said that.”

  “You might as well have, and, by the way, with that runaway attempt of yours, were you planning on leaving without the cat?”

  She looked at him. “Nocturne is special,” she said. “I would never leave him.”

  But something was in her tone. He studied her for a long moment, then shook his head and said, “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

  “That’s your problem,” she said. Just then her stomach growled loudly.

  He stared at her. “Have you even eaten anything?”

  “I bought a sandwich, before I took the other guy’s vehicle, but I couldn’t drive a stick that fast and eat too. Then I got too sleepy. You still planning on having steak?”

  He hopped to his feet and said, “I will as long as you stay here.”

  “I’ll stay,” she said immediately.

  As he walked past her, he checked out her energy. It had this smoothness to it, almost as if she had put a reflective surface on it, so he couldn’t read it. If she could do that, he wondered just what the hell else she could do. Did she even know? He had to wonder at Stefan’s comment about her being used for testing because that didn’t sound very good.

  He opted to grill the steak outside, where he could keep an eye on her, adding a fresh green salad and the green beans that they had picked up. He had dinner on the table in a few minutes. He motioned at the table for her to come join him. She got up and walked over, and he checked out her energy again. That same smooth surface, almost like a bubble of soap, with colors merging and shifting all over it, but with this glassy coating. He wondered about it as he sat down.

  “Problems?” she asked.

  “I hope not,” he said quietly. “Only so many I can handle at once.”

  She gave a shout of laughter at that. “No, I think you’re one of those guys who think you can handle everything.”

  “Everybody can think that,” he said ever-so-quietly, “until they get something they can’t handle.” She studied him with a frown on her face, until he gave a quick nod and said, “Eat.”

  And, with that, she dug in. He watched in amazement as she plowed through the salad, the green beans, and then turned her attention to the steak. He knew several people who ate one food at a time, instead of mixing them up. But he wasn’t sure what she would attack after the steak.

  On that note, he got up and brought out a loaf of French bread and cut several slices. She took a bite of steak, then sliced up the rest of it, grabbed a slab of French bread, buttered it, and laid the steak on top, pouring a little au jus from her plate all over it. He had to admit. It looked damn good.

  “Now that,” he said, “is a hell of a dessert.”

  She stared, then shrugged and said, “It’s a little more filling this way.”

  “I’ve also got jam, peanut butter, honey,” he said, “if you want more bread.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment and kept eating.

  He enjoyed his meal but always kept an eye on her.

  “You’re worried I’ll take off, aren’t you?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Stefan trusts me to keep an eye on you. I’d hate to let him down.”

  At that, she glared at him. “That’s blackmail.”

  “Whatever works,” he said, with a wave of his fork. “I don’t know why you think that you would be safer alone than you would be around somebody else.”

  “Because other people betray you,” she snapped immediately.

  At that, he slowly sagged back and stared at her. “That’s a pretty momentous statement.”

  “Not really,” she said, “just stating the truth.”

  “So, you found that safety in numbers meant that it only allowed others to betray you?”

  “I was in a unique position in my group,” she said in a mocking tone. “Others were sent in to befriend me, only to find out that they were stabbing me in the back, which meant that I kept everybody else out.”

  “Of course you did,” he said, “but did you ever consider they may not have had a choice?”

  She stopped and stared at him, her eyes liquid pools of pain.

  He nodded slowly. “If they were as much of a captive as you were,” he said, “think about all the things that they might have agreed to for a chance at freedom.”

  “They would never get their freedom, not from the people holding them,” she exclaimed. “They knew that.”

  “Hope is a hard thing to diminish and an easy thing to take advantage of,” he said.

  She nodded ever-so-slowly and continued eating but no longer with the same frenzied pace.

  He finished his plateful, then shoved it back and relaxed a little bit. He wasn’t sure how he would keep her in through the night, but he needed to. She needed several days to heal, while they formulated a plan. “We’ll need more information about the location of this compound,” he said, “so we can gather a group of warriors and go take it down.”

  She stared at him, shrugging. “Except I have no idea.”

  “What do you mean? You escaped from there.”

  “No, we were moving to a new location. That’s when I got the opportunity to escape. The old place had more defensive measures than I could possibly break through.”

  “And the new place?”

  “I would imagine it probably had even more,” she said, “which is why I took advantage of the transit time, being on the road. Lots of Mother Nature with more energy to utilize,” she said, “and I managed it.”

  “Did you have to kill anybody?”

  Her face twisted. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I didn’t stop and check. But I hope not.”

  “Good.” He nodded in approval. “As much as it would be nice to know that they couldn’t come after you anymore, I understand that those vital seconds made the difference between getting away and not.”

  “I thought you’d called the cops on me earlier,” she said, and once again he heard that thread of bitterness.

  “Well, I haven’t been known to betray anybody in my life,” he murmured, “and I’m not about to start now. Besides, with the crimes that we see, the cops are usually more confused than anything. My call to Stefan was just updating him.”

  “You said, you would expect him. But I didn’t know who him was.”

  “So you bolted, without giving me the chance to explain? I’m expecting a delivery guy with electronics. Sometimes we have to trust a little.”

  She snorted at that. “It’s safer not to trust. And we had cops called in at the compound, and it’s true that they have no clue what to do with our kind. One kid died during some of the testing. His body would have shown some pretty odd symptoms at the time of his death,” she said. “I have no idea what the police thought about it.”

  “Who was that?”

  “They called him Mitch,” she said, “but I don’t know what his real name was.”

  “Male?”

  “Yeah, and young,” she said. “I think he was about eight, maybe nine.”

  “What were they testing then?”

  “Ability,” she said. “Nobody would listen when I said he had none.”

  He stopped and stared in shock at what he heard and at the image of some poor innocent boy, with absolutely zero energetic abilities, being tested, then failing something he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “Did that happen often?”

  “Depends,” she murmured. “That’s when they changed from commission-based bounty hunters to whatever they did afterward.”

  He got up, poured himself a whiskey, and offered her one. When she shook her head, he came and sat back down and said, “I think I need this.” He tossed half of it back in one swoop. He looked at her. “Commission based?” he asked, his voice strangling at the words.

  Her lips twisted. “They were struggling to find more people like me, like you, like Stefan.”

  “So they sent people out to look?”

  “Every rumor, every bit of gossip, ev
ery newspaper article, every person called a psychic was investigated. Then whenever they had somebody they thought was viable and real, the hunters brought them back and were paid.”

  “And did they have quotas?”

  “Not at first,” she said, her eyes huge, “but, soon enough, when the boss wasn’t getting in as many as he wanted, he put down quotas or else.”

  “And that’s when somebody like Mitch would have been plucked up,” he murmured.

  She nodded. “Apparently one of the guys put a shroud around the kid to make his energy look possible, but, when they realized what had happened, I think they probably killed that bounty hunter too.”

  “Did you ever see him, the boss?”

  “He had a lot of scars on one side of his face,” she murmured, her gaze lost in on itself.

  Hunter couldn’t imagine the nightmares every time she closed her eyes. If she ever slept, that would be a miracle. “Would you recognize him?”

  “Of course,” she said immediately, “but I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”

  “But then you’ve been free for, like, five years, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So maybe in five years things have changed.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure everybody is in their new compound, and the hunters are still out there hunting.” And she used the term with a heavy emphasis.

  “Listen. I might be a hunter,” he said quietly, “but I’m not that kind of a hunter. Did they check out the mental institutes?”

  “They did that for a while, but some of those people were too difficult to handle. One was shot right in front of me.”

  He swallowed hard, wondering at a world where people had so little value that they were either shot or killed in other ways because nobody cared or because they didn’t possess that one quality that was sought. “Another child?”

  “Nope, an older man. I think he probably did have a lot of abilities. But,” she said, with half a smile, “he was pretty crazy. No way he could control anything, and he had a fascination with fire.”

  “So, a pyromaniac?”

  “Whatever labels you might want to use don’t apply to somebody who uses it to burn themselves. Particularly when using energetic fire.”

  Hunter stared. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

  “Well, you haven’t been where I’ve been,” she murmured.

  “Well, that’s a damn good thing,” he said, and, with that, he tossed off the rest of his whiskey, grabbed the dishes, and went into the kitchen.

  Only so much of this conversation he could handle.

  Chapter 9

  Beth lay in bed, knowing Hunter was only a thin paneled wall away and no doubt listening for her movements. Tonight neither of them would get any sleep, which was too bad because he needed it. Well, she did too, but she was used to not getting it. She would feed some energy to her system to stay awake as long as she could, and then she’d catnap. Hopefully it would be enough. Nocturne had curled up alongside her, giving her both comfort and a sense of peace. As long as he was here with her, she knew that she was safe because he’d give an advance warning. Only because of him could she catnap at all.

  She snuggled in close and murmured, “Thanks, buddy.”

  A tiny meow followed her sigh. She closed her eyes and let herself drift. She wouldn’t drift far or deep, but just the presence of drifting allowed her soul to expand and to relax. She doubted anybody even understood what that meant, although Hunter and Stefan might. She’d love to have the chance to talk to them about it, but what was she supposed to do? Bring more danger upon Stefan and his wife and his friend?

  Even thinking that Stefan had found a partner in the midst of this craziness blew her away. She had always imagined him to be this strong commander, leading an army, and he was, in a way, but she’d also imagined him to be as broken as she was, incapable of forming permanent attachments and easily breaking, like her.

  Yet she also knew that, as the child who had been there, she had always desperately formed attachments with anybody to keep herself alive, very much a survive-or-die system. She’d mentioned Mitch to Hunter, still a memory that hurt because she’d recognized immediately that the boy didn’t have any abilities. Mostly because she recognized the energy around him as that of the hunter who’d delivered him. She wanted to think the hunter had some humanity left inside him, but the day he brought in Mitch, that was no longer possible.

  She’d learned a lot about betrayal, the fight for survival, and what people would do to each other. She’d also learned a lot about greed. She was a long-timer, only one of a couple, like Lizzy, and they’d been there in the compound since forever. For all she knew, Lizzy hated Beth for having escaped, when Lizzy hadn’t. Beth tried to talk to Lizzy about it every once in a while, and finally, when management realized the facility was becoming too visible, the bodies racking up so much that people were noticing, plans were made to shift the operation to a new location, and that was it. That would be Beth’s one shot. She knew it, and she was willing to die to take it. Anything to get free.

  Nocturne shifted uneasily in her arms, and she relaxed again, realizing that, as the tensions in her mind mounted, the tension in her arm had squeezed him too hard. “Sorry, buddy,” she whispered, gently stroking his chest and furry body. She closed her eyes and this time slipped under.

  Almost immediately she felt the enemy, the unseen enemy reaching for her. Those eyes all around, looking for her. The hunters would always be on watch, and she knew a bounty would be on her head. She also knew it would not be a case of bringing her back alive. Everybody related to the compound would want her dead because they all believed she knew too much, could do too much, and held way too many secrets. So she couldn’t be allowed to live.

  Yet her memories were gone, as were her abilities.

  She awoke with a start, bolting upright, still fully dressed because undressing was giving trust to a situation that she couldn’t allow herself to give.

  Something was so very wrong about this place, yet something so wonderfully right. She heard the storm outside, the waves from the lake lapping against the beach, the creaking of the dock, and the trees whispering in the winds. But through it all she could also feel the fingers, probing, reaching for her.

  And then she recognized one.

  Surely not possible. The boss wasn’t here himself, was he? But that voice? … Please let that not be so. She sat on the side of the bed, pulling herself inward, yet that was the only way for her to look outward. She tapped the bits and pieces of her energy out in the world, looking for any sign of him. He was strong, so very strong, but more so because he utilized many people in his network; then he tapped into that network. Besides the boss, she also recognized Lizzy and her energy—that weird push-and-pull-back motion that she used.

  The boss hated that tracking system and had tried since forever to make Lizzy change it because it was so recognizable, something so obvious that nearly anybody would know who was out there. And Lizzy had tried, but she was broken, just like Beth was broken, so Lizzy’s abilities were all about power and what she could do with it, but controlling that power was a whole different story.

  Even as Beth sat here on the edge of the bed, she felt Lizzy lock on to her, that energy flying toward the cabin. Gusts of wind slammed into the cabin, defying its ability to stand upright, and she was certain Lizzy was out there, shaking it hard. Beth knew she had to get out, and she didn’t dare let Lizzy find her or know that she was here. So far, she’d managed to keep her energy low, mostly because of Nocturne, who would suck it up and use his energy as a cloak, but she needed more right now. Nocturne couldn’t do this forever.

  Knowing it was wrong, but not really having any choice, she reached out to Hunter. Seeing that he wasn’t asleep, but in a very light doze, she gently sucked off a portion of his aura and slid it toward her, stretched it around her body, and tucked it around Nocturne as well, shielding herself be
tween the two energies. It should hide her own easily enough, but, as long as she stayed, there was that taint, that smell that said she was here.

  Suddenly she slipped out of bed, down the hallway, and into the garage, where she hopped onto the bike. The keys were still in the ignition, and, pushing it, she moved it through the side door and let it drift slowly down the driveway. As soon as she hit the highway, she turned on the engine and ripped off into the night.

  *

  What was Beth planning on doing? Hunter wondered, as he sat in his car in the driveway—returned from the grocery store by his local friend—slightly rolling down behind her with his lights off. He’d followed her immediately, after letting her go, figuring out just what she thought she was doing. The storm was uncannily fierce outside, and something was odd about it. He couldn’t detect too much, except that it was a strange conglomeration of weird lightning flashes and yet almost colorful.

  He studied it, sensing the otherworldliness about it, something that had spooked her badly. Now he was already at the highway but, in the dead of night, maybe 2:00 a.m. If she found the main drag, she would need the headlight on his motorcycle, but he would drive his car in the dark without lights, following behind her in order to get as close as he could, without letting her know he was there. It was easy to follow her once he caught up.

  He saw her headlight on now and knew she was booking it, though nothing in his research on her indicated that she could ride a motorcycle. It’s not that hard, but pretty-damn easy to kill yourself once you got them going, especially if you didn’t know how to control them. She whipped down the road, almost reveling in the speed, and it was all his old car could do to keep up.