Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My tongue. My lips. My hand holding the knife.
I clung to that thought, and somehow, my mind overpowered Zev’s and shoved him out.
The ouroboros on my stomach burned like dry ice, like fire.
“I don’t think he likes it when you call me a bitch,” I told Eddie dryly, trying not to sound as thrown as I felt.
“He?” Eddie’s Adam’s apple bobbed upward, and my eyes lit on a series of tiny cuts in the surface of his skin.
Blood.
People like me didn’t get hungry. We didn’t even need to eat. But for a moment, a split second that rocked me to the core, I was very, very thirsty.
“I should go,” I said, forcing myself to pull the knife from Eddie’s throat, trying not to look at the blood beading up on its surface.
“I’m calling the cops!” Eddie seemed intent on proving that he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. I gave him a look.
“And telling them what? That you picked up a girl covered in blood, and when you tried to put the moves on her, the demon inside of her threatened your life?” I snorted. “Good luck with that one.”
I am not a demon. Zev sounded extremely put out. Demon is a very offensive word.
I rolled my eyes. You would have killed him, Zev.
Yes.
And you don’t see anything wrong with that?
He would have hurt you, came the reply. He may well hurt someone else.
One hand on the hilt of my knife and the other on the door handle, I turned my gaze back to Eddie. The last thing I wanted was him doing this to someone else—someone who might not have a knife strapped to one leg and a would-be murderer inside her brain.
“We have your scent now,” I said, sounding less than human myself. “I wouldn’t recommend picking up any more teenage girls.”
To hit home the point, I brought the bloodstained knife to my nose and breathed in deeply. My tongue flickered out between my lips, but I pulled the blade back before the two could touch.
“Good-bye, Eddie.”
I opened the car door, hopped to the ground, and without ever turning back to look over my shoulder, walked back toward the highway and started to jog.
With my endurance, I could have run all the way home, but I was still covered in my own blood and didn’t want to risk being seen any more than I had to.
I needed a shower and a change of clothing. I needed to blend, and growing up in academia, I knew college campuses the way other girls knew the layout of the local mall. The university was close enough, and it wasn’t hard to find a block of dorms. Sticking to the shadows as much as possible, I found a door that had been propped open and headed to the second-floor communal bathroom.
As I’d suspected, there weren’t many people up this early in the morning. I took my hair down from its ponytail and let it hang in my face, masking the blood there and praying that my dark T-shirt—or at least, what was left of it—would hide the rest.
I made it to the bathroom without being spotted and surveyed my surroundings. One shower was already in use, and the occupant had hung her clothes on a hook outside the curtain: jeans, a tank top, a sizeable bra. Deciding the third item wouldn’t fit, I gently slipped the first two off the hook and walked back out the door, up another flight of stairs, and into the third-floor bathroom. I tossed the clothes over the shower rod, pulled the curtain, and started stripping off my own.
Hot water should have felt good on my ravaged body, but it didn’t. I could feel the warmth, but my muscles weren’t sore and they weren’t looking for relief. Mechanically, I ran my hands over my limbs, checking for injuries that hadn’t yet healed. A few areas were raw and red, but as I washed the blood and dirt from my pores, decorating the drain in shades of black and red, even those areas began to fade, leaving my light brown skin creamy and smooth.
Untouched.
As I turned my attention to my hair, it occurred to me that if Zev was there, in my mind, he might be getting quite the show. I paused, searching for him, but for the first time, I felt nothing. I dug deeper, pushed harder, and the image I’d seen while I was lying on the side of the road pulsed like a strobe light in front of my eyes.
Cement walls, scorch marks on the floor, and a figure swathed in shadow, lying on one side.
As quick as a camera flash, the image was gone. The steam from the shower settled on my skin, and I could feel my mind loosening up, until an idea took shape.
Zev had said that chupacabra bites were fatal in humans, but that some people could handle being bitten. Some people benefited from it. People like me.
And when I’d asked Zev what he was, he’d thrown the question back to me, like we were the same.
I’d spent my entire life looking for answers, and now, against all odds, they were there, in my head.
I wrung the last of the bloodied water from my hair and wrenched the shower knob into the OFF position. Quickly, silently, I put on the jeans I’d stolen and slipped the tank top over my head. My boots had survived the crash mostly intact, and without even thinking, I sheathed my knife, securing it in place beneath the leg of the pilfered Sevens. My body hummed where it came in contact with the blade, and a familiar urge began to beckon to me in rhythm with my own heartbeat.
I wanted to hunt. I needed to kill. And when a human girl brushed past me and hopped into the shower stall next to mine, I caught the scent of her blood in the air.
Wet. Coppery. Honey.
Easy, Kali. The thirst isn’t yours. It’s the Nibbler’s.
I tried to process what he was saying. Wasn’t the chupacabra supposed to be draining my blood?
It’s a part of you now. It makes you stronger. It connects us. And sooner or later, you’ll have to feed it.
I had to get out of there—away from the smell of the girl in the shower, away from the suggestion that the chupacabra inside of me wanted blood. An uncomfortable idea—not to mention impossible—was taking form in my mind, and I didn’t want to give life to it.
I didn’t want to think about the kind of creature that could heal from any wound and thirsted for human blood.
You should burn the clothing.
I almost thanked Zev for changing the subject, but caught myself just in time. It was disturbing how natural having someone else in my head seemed, and I couldn’t push down that little whisper inside of me, the one that said that people like me were meant to come in pairs.
Lonely Ones. I remembered the phrase from the ice rink, and Zev echoed it, the timbre of his voice setting his words off from my own.
You never knew, he said, half questioning, half tender. What you are, what was missing.
I walked out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and out the door.
Talk to me, Kali. I tried to explain things to you yesterday, but you couldn’t hear me. The connection’s so much clearer now.…
I ignored him and set to work scrounging up a bottle of nail polish remover and a lighter. Ducking back behind one of the dorms, I zeroed in on an empty trash can, dumped my clothes, and followed Zev’s suggestion to a T.
I burned my clothes.
For a few seconds, I watched the flames. And then, unsure that it would work, I tried reaching for Zev’s mind. He’d taken over my body twice now—first with the dragon, then with Eddie. Turnaround was only fair play. Tit for tat.
My breathing slowed, and I felt it—the thing inside my body. And then, my skin tingling with unnatural charge, I felt the thing inside of Zev’s.
My body. My Nibbler. His Nibbler. Him.
For a second—a split second—I saw the world through Zev’s eyes, wore his body as my own.
Concrete walls. Concrete floor. A woman with ruby-red lips. Blood.
I came out of it without warning. My bloodied clothes were ashes, and the fire had burned itself out.
Where are you? I asked Zev silently. What was that?
The voice in my head was silent.
You wanted me to talk. I’m talking.
Still nothing
Even thinking about that last one sent a whisper of discontent through my arteries and veins—I wasn’t built for running away from the monsters. I wanted desperately to run toward them—track them down, kill them. Luckily, I was used to restraining myself, used to acting human even when I wasn’t, and the human part of my brain reminded me that right now, preternatural beasties weren’t exactly my primary concern.
Someone had made a strong attempt at killing me this morning. With any luck, between my transition from human to not and my trip through the windshield, I might have managed to knock out their tracking system, but whoever was calling the shots probably wouldn’t be thrilled if and when they found out I was still alive. Worse, I was pretty sure that Bethany had seen me fly through the windshield, and now she was missing. Had our pursuers taken her captive? Had they hurt her? What had she told them?
Was she dead?
Easy, Kali. Zev was back. My fingers curled slightly, like someone was stroking my palm. It’s not your fault.
“It is my fault,” I said softly, resisting the impulse to speak the words straight from my mind to his. “People like me don’t have friends. We don’t have enemies. We don’t carpool, we don’t argue, we don’t let other people care.”
But I had. I’d let Bethany help me, just because I’d helped her. Somehow, she’d crept under my skin. She’d seen a glimmer of the real me.
And now she was gone, possibly missing, possibly dead.
I’m going to find her, I said silently, daring Zev to argue, to try to tell me what to do when he couldn’t even answer a simple question himself. I’m going to find her, and I’m going to find out what they did to her—even if it means going straight to the belly of the beast.
The house looked more like a coliseum than an actual home. Enormous columns lined the front door on either side; the lawn was pristine. At the moment, however, I was more concerned with the ten-foot-tall security gate that marked the property’s borders on all sides.
The gate was a problem.
I could have climbed it. If there’d been a pack of hellhounds on the other side, I doubtlessly would have, but this was recon, not a confrontation. I needed to be invisible, and that meant that if I was going to scale the gate, I at the very least needed to identify the least conspicuous location from which to do so.
I moved with the absolute silence of a panther stalking its prey, light on my feet, drawn to the shadows. The tank top I’d pilfered from the dormitories was black. The jeans had a dark wash. I could do this. I could blend. I could disappear into my surroundings.…
About a quarter of the way around the house, I made my move, sidling up to the wall. It was made of brick and topped with wrought iron. I braced my foot against the base of the wall and curled the tips of my fingers downward, poised to dig my nails into the mortar.
“I bet you were a cat in a former life.”
I didn’t jump. I didn’t curse. My heart didn’t beat any faster at the interruption, but my breath caught in my throat.
“Skylar?”
“Hiya, Kali.”
For someone who gave every appearance of being Human with a capital H—physically, at least—Skylar Hayden was surprisingly stealthy.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, relaxing my hands and mimicking her posture, like I hadn’t been on the verge of beginning my career in breaking and entering a few seconds before.
“No idea.” Skylar grinned. “The universe works in mysterious ways.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Likely story.”
“Also, when you and Bethany didn’t show up for school this morning, Elliot kind of freaked. He called Bethany, and her dad answered the phone. I tried calling you, but apparently, you don’t have a cell phone.”
“I lost it,” I said. If by “lost,” you mean “used it to dismember some zombies a few nights ago.” I went through cell phones almost as quickly as I went through clothes.
“In any case, I told Elliot you guys were fine, he went to class, and I came here. Speaking of, why are you here? I sense that the chocolate chips have hit the fan.”
“What else do you sense?”
Skylar shrugged. “Little bit psychic,” she reminded me. “I have my limitations.”
She seems … enthusiastic.
I almost responded to Zev’s words out loud, but stopped myself just in time. That’s one word for it.
“So why are we climbing the Davises’ wall?” Skylar clearly wasn’t put out by the idea—just curious.
“We are not climbing anything,” I told her. “I need to get inside Bethany’s house. The two of us were in an accident this morning, and I think the people we saw yesterday might have taken her.”
“Taken her where?”
“I don’t know, Skylar. All I know is that someone ran our car off the road, I got knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, Bethany and the car were both gone.” I hadn’t meant to tell her that much. At this rate, I’d be confessing my deepest, darkest secrets by noon.
You seem to be somewhat attached to this human.
I ignored the running commentary in my head—and the scent of strawberries and blood, which I belatedly realized was the way Skylar smelled to the parasite inside of me. The one that connected me to Zev. The one that, according to Zev, I would eventually have to feed.
If I concentrated, I could hear Skylar’s heart beating, could see the pulse of her carotid artery in her neck.
I focused on not concentrating.
“If you think someone took Bethany, why are we at her house? Shouldn’t we be looking for evidence at the scene of the crime? Talking to people who might have seen where she went? Or, ohhh, we could check out local hospitals, and I could borrow Genevieve’s police scanner, and maybe Darryl could hack the DMV.”
I wasn’t sure which part of that run-on statement to respond to first. “Genevieve has a police scanner?”
Skylar shrugged. “We all have hobbies.”
Given what I spent my spare time doing, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be throwing stones.
“This isn’t a game, Skylar.” My voice was serious, but when Skylar responded, her tone made mine seem like child’s play.
“I know, Kali.” Her blue eyes were shadowed, her mouth set into a firm line. “Trust me, I know.”
Somehow, it was easy to believe that she knew the stakes, maybe even better than I did. “We shouldn’t be talking here,” I told her. “Someone might see us, and let’s just say that the people who ran Bethany’s car off the road might have reason to be looking for me.”
Like the fact that I was still in possession of their “specimen.”
And the fact that my body had disappeared from the side of the road.
The fact that I wasn’t dead …
On the off chance that Skylar was psychic, I stopped that line of thinking in its tracks and started talking, careful to keep the details to a bare minimum. I needed to tell Skylar enough to convince her this was dangerous, but not so much that I’d put her in more danger. Hitting a few key points, I ended with, “Whatever’s going on, Bethany’s dad is involved. She mentioned something about her dad keeping some of his equipment at home. He might have records here, too.…”
I trailed off.
All I needed was a name. Once we knew who Bethany’s father was working for, Skylar could go Nancy Drew them to her heart’s content.
Know thy enemy.
Drain them dry.
“Kali?” Skylar’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I realized that I’d been staring—at her throat.
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t get rid of the chupacabra, did you?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned back to the wall. “I need to get inside.”
Skylar nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll work on Plan B.”
&
I scaled the wall.
The mortar cracked under the force of my fingernails, and I flashed back to the feel of thick, leathery flesh giving way under my razor-sharp nails.
They’re out there. They’re waiting. They’re yours.
Find them. Find them now.
It was only nine thirty in the morning, and already, I wanted to hunt so badly I could taste it on the tip of my tongue, bittersweet.
Dropping to the ground and landing in a crouch, I couldn’t help turning my inner ear to the world around me. There was something close. Something old.
Something deadly.
Ignoring the hum of the preternatural at the edge of my senses, I made my way to the side of Bethany’s house. The windows were closed. A camera stared down at me from overhead. I dodged its view and considered my options.
“For what it’s worth, I’m going in the front door.”
This time, Skylar didn’t appear right next to me. Instead, she yelled the words across the lawn, from the gargantuan front porch.
How had she gotten past the gate?
“I had the guard buzz me in,” Skylar called. “He’s really very nice.”
Even from a distance, I could tell that the expression on Skylar’s face was anything but innocent. She wanted in—not just the house, but the situation. If the woman in heels was keeping track of the Davises’ visitors, Skylar had just thrown herself onto her radar, and from the way she was standing there, I got the feeling that it was intentional, that she would keep doing it, again and again, until her life was on the line as much as mine.
Until she’d destroyed every reason I had for wanting to keep her out.
As I watched, horrified, Skylar stepped forward and rang the doorbell. I pressed my back against the side of the house, slipping as far into the shadows as I could. The front door opened, and Skylar grinned.
“Hey, Bethany,” she said, her voice carrying. “What’s up?”
Bethany looked like a shadow of her former self. She was wearing a light yellow sundress, faded and out of season. Her pale skin was marred by bruises, and her left arm was in a sling.