“Why were you following me in the first place? And how the hell did you even know I was going to be in Central?” I paused, looking over my shoulder, meeting his wary, angry gaze. “Nuri?”
He nodded. “She said you’d appear on the corner of Victory and Twelfth sometime after noon. She’s rarely wrong.”
Which made her far more than just a mind seeker. It meant she was a witch—a proper witch. One of the earth witches, who could not only read the future in the play of the world’s natural forces and energy, but control the magic within it as well. And that made her, as I’d guessed, far more dangerous than any of the shifters she seemed to command.
“And why would she order me followed when I made it perfectly clear I wanted nothing to do with either of you or your mission?”
I grabbed a body on top of the pile and dragged it down into the light, where it immediately erupted into flame. As the smell of burning flesh began to stain the air, a shadow lashed out from the space created, forming claws that slashed at my face. I jerked back, watching as the vamp’s arm exploded into fire the minute the light touched it, the ash of his skin swirling as he snatched the disintegrating limb back into the darkness. Grimly, I raised my weapons, aimed them through the small gap I’d created, and shot the hell out of the remaining vampires—or, at least, those who were too stupid to immediately run.
When both weapons clicked over to empty, I turned to find Jonas watching me, his usual angry expression touched by a hint of curiosity. It disappeared almost immediately, but it was, perhaps, a glimpse that there was more than anger to this man.
“You didn’t answer my question, ranger.”
I glanced up as Cat brought me fresh ammo unasked. I silently thanked her and reloaded the weapon before clipping it back onto its loop and heading for the exit. Jonas was here now, and short of throwing his ass back out into the night, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. Nor was it practical to pretend I only lived in this small section of the base. Penny would have no doubt mentioned the medical center and kitchen facilities. I might be able to get away with saying she’d been mistaken when it came to a museum entrance—they could search all they wanted, but they’d never find the tunnel I used; it was all but invisible when closed, and Penny had gone through it only when it was open—but there was no way they were going to believe everything she’d described had been little more than shock and imagination. Better to reveal the safer truths, while keeping others secret.
“She ordered you followed simply because she didn’t believe you’d let the matter lie.” Though I heard no sound of movement, his closeness pressed against my spine, an energy that was both unsettling and enticing. “That because of Penny, and because there were other children involved, you couldn’t let the matter lie.”
Nuri had understood altogether too much about me in the brief time I’d been in her presence.
The sensor light flashed as we approached the door, but it took several seconds for it to actually respond. With night upon us, all three generators would have now kicked in to fuel the main defense systems, lights, and air, but the secondary systems, like these doors, had power diverted to them only as required.
“How are you powering this place?” Jonas asked, as the door finally opened.
I shrugged. “I managed to get the old generators going. Finding parts was the hard bit.”
“Considering how old the technology here is, it must have taken quite a while.” There wasn’t suspicion in his voice, not exactly, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t buying all that I was saying.
I met his gaze, seeing in the green depths the distrust I could feel. Seeing the awareness, however much he might be attempting to contain it. “It did.”
“And the medical scanners Penny mentioned? Did you get them up and running also?”
I smiled, though it contained very little in the way of humor. “No need. Once I got the power going, most of the remaining systems came online, although the kitchen and food facilities were pretty foul. It took a hell of a lot of scrubbing before I could even contemplate using them.”
His smile was an echo of my own, but, after a moment, he pulled his gaze from mine and looked around. A slight frown creased his weatherworn but handsome features as he studied the dusty old metal beds lining either side of the long room. “What was this place? Some kind of bunkhouse?”
An innocent enough question but one that could prove my downfall if I didn’t watch how I answered it. “According to the ghosts, this was the nursery.”
His gaze shot back to mine. “Nursery?”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised by his response. “Who did you think my little ones were? They’re all the ghosts of the children who were murdered in this place.”
“No one was murdered,” he refuted. “Least of all children.”
“And you were here to witness that, were you?” I snapped back. “Because these ghosts were, and they tell a very different story from the rewritten history currently presented as truth in today’s schools.”
“My, my,” he said, voice mild but that dark anger of his sharper. “You’re awfully vehement about a situation that supposedly happened long before you were born.”
I flexed my fingers, trying to keep calm. He was trying to force a slip on my part, trying to uncover the truth, no matter what Nuri herself might wish or order. I had to be careful. Had to watch what I said.
And I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, let emotion get the better of me.
“You’d be pretty worked up if you could listen to their story and could experience the pain and the horror they went through.” I tore my gaze away, my eyes stinging. “Their death wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fast. No one who had been quartered in this place at the end of the war died easily. Believe that, if nothing else, ranger.”
We walked through another doorway and I led the way left, into another of the main tunnels that allowed access to the next two floors. I avoided the sixth floor—which contained not only my sleeping quarters, but the bunk rooms, main medical facilities, and the crèche and training areas for young déchet—simply because they required ID and blood work to access them. And doing that would only confirm his suspicions. Instead, we continued on to the fourth floor, which was the area Penny had seen.
“Children aren’t always the most reliable of narrators,” Jonas said softly. “And it has been a very long time since the war.”
“I agree, children aren’t always the most reliable of narrators. And yet here you are, believing every word that comes out of Penny’s mouth despite the fact Nuri herself said the child had changed.”
“Touché.” The hint of amusement in his voice was both surprising and oddly warm. Or maybe it just seemed that way simply because of the brief absence of suspicion and anger. “But that still doesn’t negate the fact—”
“There’s more than children haunting this place,” I cut in. “There’s the ghosts of all the adult déchet who were here at the time, and their story matches those of the younger ghosts.”
He blinked. “There’s déchet here?”
I smiled, though again it held little humor. “And ghosts of scientists, doctors, nurses, clerical staff, and probably a whole lot more that I’ve never even talked to. When your people cleansed this place, they cleansed it of everybody involved, be they human or déchet.”
“Perhaps,” Jonas bit back, no doubt reacting to the trace of anger that had ebbed into my voice despite my best efforts, “they figured it was the only sure way to rid this world of the perversion that was the déchet.”
Perversion. Travesty. A foul corruption of nature. We’d been called all those things and more, both during the war and the years immediately after it, before the shifters had begun altering history. It still had the power to sting, even now. Just because my creation had happened in a tube rather than as a result of intercourse between two people didn’t make me any less of a being. It didn’t make me a monster.
Granted, there were déchet who had been mo
nsters, especially in the ranks of those who had been first assault soldiers and either designed or medicated to feel nothing. But could the same not be said of humans and shifters?
Somehow, I kept my voice even as I noted, “There’s an awful lot of hate in your voice for a race that disappeared over one hundred years ago, ranger.”
“I lost a lot of family in that war.” The dark anger in his voice was even stronger. But I guessed that was no surprise, given a shifter’s life span was far longer than a human’s. While Jonas himself didn’t look old enough to have lived through the war, his parents surely would have. “It’s not something time can erase, no matter what some might have you believe.”
Given I’d echoed those sentiments not so long ago, I could hardly disagree.
We finally reached the fourth level, and I led the way toward the same small dispensing kitchen I’d taken Penny to. I was aware of Jonas looking around, silently taking everything in, just as I was aware of his every move. His every intake of breath.
It was damn annoying, that awareness.
“Coffee?” I said, increasing the length of my stride to pull away from him. “Or perhaps something to eat?”
“Coffee, one sugar if you have it.”
Thankfully, he stopped in the middle of the room rather than following me over to the machine, and looked around. “What was this place?”
I shrugged as I ordered two coffees. The machine, like the doors, was extremely slow to respond. “From what the ghosts have said, this floor contained secondary medical facilities, kitchens, and training for pubescent déchet.”
His gaze came to mine, green eyes giving little away, but his energy watchful. Full of distrust. “How many areas can you access?”
The first coffee appeared. There was a hint of sweetness entwined through its bitter scent, so I handed it to Jonas. His fingers brushed mine as he took the cup, the brief caress electric.
“There’s six floors that aren’t filled with concrete,” I said, resisting the urge to clench my fingers and keep hold of that electricity for a little bit longer. “But not all six are accessible. Some areas require eye scans and blood-work tests to enter. I haven’t figured a way around them yet.”
“You seem awfully proficient at working with old machines,” he commented.
I shrugged and collected my coffee. “Mom was something of an electronics wizard. She used to find and repair old machines, and then sell them. That’s how we survived.”
Once again the lies slipped easily from my tongue. But it wasn’t as if I could tell the truth—that with eternity stretching before me and little else to do, I’d read not only every scrap of material left behind in the bunker, but whatever I could find and steal from Central.
“So where did you live?”
“Everywhere. Nowhere. We moved around a lot, and most of it is a blur, to be honest.” I gave him a thin smile. “Thanks to me, we weren’t made that welcome in most places.”
His gaze slipped down my length, a brief, judgmental caress. “You do not have the scent of a human, so even if you are what you say you are, that should not have been a problem.”
“‘Shouldn’t’ doesn’t equate to ‘didn’t,’ ranger.” I walked across to one of the padded benches lining the wall and sat down.
He considered me for a moment, then moved across to the bench along the wall opposite mine. Wanting to keep not only an eye on me, but distance also. It perhaps suggested he was well aware of the attraction flaring between us, even if he seemed to be controlling his reactions far better than I.
He took a sip of the bitter black liquid I called coffee and grimaced at its taste. But he didn’t put it down, as Penny had with her water. “What were you doing in Central?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Nuri didn’t tell you?”
His smile held little humor. “She cannot control what she sees. In this case, she saw where you would be, not what you were investigating.”
Which was something, I guessed, and hopefully meant she would not “see” through my veil of lies and uncover what I was.
I leaned back against the wall and took a sip of coffee. “I didn’t start off in Central. I actually started in Carleen.”
He frowned. “What were you doing in Carleen?”
“Talking to the ghosts there.”
“I didn’t even know there were ghosts there.”
“There are ghosts everywhere, ranger. You just have to be open to seeing them.” I hesitated but couldn’t help adding, “There’s several déchet sitting with you right now.”
He reached for his weapon with one hand, coffee splashing across the other, the action instinctive, automatic. Fast. As would be my death if he ever confirmed his suspicions about what I was. Then his gaze met mine and realization dawned. “That wasn’t nice.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “No. But it was amusing all the same. Ghosts generally won’t hurt you, ranger. Not unless you do something to hurt them, or someone they trust orders them to.”
“Someone like you,” he said, voice flat.
“Yes.” It couldn’t hurt to remind him I wasn’t alone in this place.
He switched his coffee cup to his right hand and shook the remaining droplets of coffee from his left. “So what did the Carleen ghosts tell you?”
“That they left you alone only because you were tracking the wraith.”
“Nice of them.”
“Trust me, it was. There is a lot of hate in that place for your kind. I wouldn’t advise going there without a damn good reason, because next time they might not be so generous.”
“I will go where the investigation takes me, ghosts or not.”
Then he was either very foolish, very brave, or had absolutely no experience dealing with the wrath of ghosts. “They said the wraiths were using what they called false rifts—rifts that are stationary and covered by that ill-feeling darkness that hovers over most of Carleen.”
Jonas frowned. “What did they mean by ‘false rifts’?”
“I’m not really sure, but their energy felt different from the energy I feel when I’m near the other rifts. Darker, dirtier, if that makes sense.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I asked the ghosts to take me to the one the wraith and Penny last used.”
Surprise flitted across his features. “That was a very courageous step, given there are few who survive an encounter with a rift.”
“Penny did, and more than once if the slashes on her arms are anything to go by.” I frowned, suddenly remembering how quickly mine had healed. “Is Penny full shifter?”
“Yes,” he said. “Why?”
“Because as I went through that rift, energy lashed at me. It left me with cuts similar to the scars Penny bears.”
His gaze slid down. The small hairs on my arms rose, as if touched by electricity. Everything about this man, even his damn gaze, seemed to cause a reaction in me. “You don’t have scars.”
“No, because I heal quickly thanks to my shifter half. Penny should have the same healing abilities, and yet she bears scars.”
He hesitated. “We suspect the drug program she and her family underwent might have made changes to her physiology.”
Perhaps, but there was more than that going on with Penny. But I guessed I could understand his not wanting to tell a stranger, even if that stranger was someone he wanted to use. Or, at least, his boss wanted to use.
“The rift is the reason I was in Central. It spat me out into the basement of a brothel called Deseo on Twelfth Street.”
“A brothel?”
“Yes. And you have to admit it’s the perfect place to hide something you don’t want anyone to find. It’s not as if Deseo’s customers would be too interested in exploring the premises when they’re paying good money for other services.”
“Yes, but surely the owners—”
“The owners,” I cut in, “were scared to death of going into the basement. But they were being paid to ignore it, anyhow.”
“And you know all this how?” He
studied me critically. “Via your seeker skills?”
I shook my head. “I had to smash the scanner to get out. The owner and a guard came to investigate. Apparently several people are renting the basement. You and Nuri need to uncover who those people are.”
“As a seeker, you might be better placed to—”
“Sorry,” I cut in, “but my skills lie in fixing old electronics and talking to ghosts, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”
For now, at least. What happened if Sal managed the impossible and got me a job was another matter entirely.
“Even if,” Jonas said, “it might make the difference between saving those other kids or not?”
“Even if,” I snapped back. “And that is a dirty card to play, ranger.”
His smile held little in the way of mirth. “But it is nevertheless the truth.”
“You and Nuri have resources I can only guess at. You’re far better placed than a nobody living in an old military bunker to trace who Deseo’s owners might be in contact with, or to place electronic surveillance on the brothel.”
“Not electronic,” he murmured, expression thoughtful as he drank some coffee. “Most businesses in Central do regular sweeps, even those on Twelfth. Information is a valuable commodity and can be bought and sold for vast sums.”
And a brothel would be a perfect place to garner such information—especially for someone with seeker or reader skills. Was that how Sal had come to own a brothel on First? “Then how?”
He raised an eyebrow. “By placing someone inside, of course.”
Of course. There was no better way than to garner secrets during the sexual act—it was what we lures had been designed for, after all. “Would that be Ela? The brown-haired shifter in the bar?”
He raised his eyebrows. “For someone who was only in that bar a few minutes, you seem to have done a very thorough sweep of its occupants.”
“I’m a seeker,” I said bluntly, “but in that particular case, anyone with half a brain would have sensed the tension in the air and taken note of who was where in case a fight broke out.”