And all they were doing was building better monsters.
“If you’re concerned about the numbers,” I said, my voice remarkably steady, “why am I locked up? Why is Zev?”
Saying his name hurt.
First Skylar. Then Zev. My mother.
Why did I ever bother letting anyone in? People only hurt you in the end.
“Oh, don’t look like that, love,” the vampire said. “It’s not as if the poor boy had a choice. There’s always a dominant partner in any pair—against someone like me, he never stood a chance.”
People like us come in pairs. That was what Zev had said. I’d known it, deep down. It just hadn’t ever occurred to me that Zev might already be part of a pair. That I might not be his other half. That there might be someone else out there who could take control of his body, his will, the way he’d occasionally taken over mine.
“If you and Zev are connected,” I said, forcing myself to say it, forcing it not to matter, “why are you doing this to him?”
Assuming that Zev really was a lab rat—that everything I’d seen and felt from him hadn’t been a lie.
“Not that it’s any of your business, Kali, but I needed to see if it was possible for one of our kind to play host to more than one chupacabra.” She seemed to find the scientific term amusing. “It took some tweaking, and some failures, and more than a little discomfort for poor Zev, but I have evidence now that it is possible. And if it’s possible for our kind to host two, then someday, it might be possible for regular humans to hold one. In the long run, anything that makes humans less human will be better for us.”
I digested what she was saying—the reason for the experiment that had resulted in Bethany being infected, the possibilities she’d discovered experimenting on Zev.
It was possible for Zev to have been bitten twice.
Possible for him to be connected to two others.
One who controlled him, and one he controlled.
No. Zev’s voice was quiet in my mind, but it was still there. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not unless you were in danger—and even then, I didn’t do it on purpose.
I wanted to believe him, but he’d brought me here. He’d strangled me. He hadn’t mentioned, even once, that this was a trap.
I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me. I tried.
I could feel the hatred in his voice, loathing for himself, for her. I felt his emotions as intensely as my own and knew that he was wishing he’d killed himself before he could bring this kind of trouble to me.
I tried.
This was too much. It was just too much.
I’m sorry, Kali.
I wasn’t sure that mattered. I also wasn’t sure he had anything to apologize for—he’d tried to warn me; he’d tried to fight. The only thing I was sure about was that in another four hours, I would be human again. I would be weak, defenseless.
I would hurt.
“You keep looking at your watch. I have to say, that surprised us. We hypothesized that a successful hybrid might have a portion of our skills, perhaps muted. Maybe it has something to do with the exact graft we used on your DNA, but the idea that you shift from form to form according to some circadian rhythm …” She trailed off.
“We?”
On the other side of the door, the woman smiled and turned her head to the side. “Didn’t you tell her, Rena?”
The woman’s use of my mother’s name was like a knife, straight to my heart.
“I didn’t exactly have the chance, Colette.”
Colette. So now the psychotic woman had a name. I tried to concentrate on that—and not on the sound of my mother’s voice.
“How rude of me,” Colette said. “I haven’t even introduced myself. You may call me Colette, if you wish, Kali. Or,” she added, stepping back from the glass so that I could see her lips twisting into a smile, “you could always call me Mama.”
33
Mama. The word rolled off her tongue, ugly and sickly sweet.
I stared, uncomprehending, through the slit in the door at those delicately fringed eyelashes, and something gave way inside of me.
Mommy.
Mama.
Sit still, Kali. Sit so still.
“You remember,” the woman who’d told me to call her “Mama” said approvingly. “I thought you might.”
I didn’t, not really. I was three when my mother left—No, I corrected myself. I was three when my father left her.
“He didn’t know about you.” I thought my way through it out loud, my eyes on the vampire’s.
“Your father?” Colette said. “No, he did not. I was your little secret—and Rena’s.”
We had lots of secrets. Mommy, Mama, and me.
“Colette—” Behind her, Rena started to say something, but Colette waved it away with a delicate swish of her hand.
“She’s as much mine as she is yours, darling.” Even through the slit in the door, I could see Colette’s eyes sparkle. “I donated the, shall we say, extraordinary portion of your DNA, Kali. Imagine my dismay when you were born human.”
As if having my entire life rewritten once in a single day wasn’t bad enough. All of my father’s revelations were half-truths, ones he’d believed.
Guess I’m not the only one who was lied to.
Somehow, that didn’t make me feel much better. In the past twelve hours, I’d gone from having no mother to having two—and if there was anything worse than Rena, it was Colette.
“Well, enough chitchat, I suppose. It’s been lovely, Kali, but there’s much to be done in the next few hours.” Colette wriggled her eyebrows. “I hear the FBI is planning a raid.”
She didn’t seem worried—and that terrified me.
“I’m afraid it would be easier if you weren’t conscious for this next part,” she continued. “Rena, did you remember to double the dose?”
Without thinking, I took a step back from the door, but there was nowhere to go.
I was trapped.
I’m sorry, Kali, Zev said, his sorrow bleeding over into my fear. I am so, so sorry.
He wanted to help me, but couldn’t.
Wanted to fight her. Couldn’t.
The door opened, and I stumbled backward until I hit the concrete wall. I’d expected to see Colette, but to my surprise, it was Rena standing there. She had a pair of syringes in one hand, each filled with an amber-colored liquid.
“A triple dose,” Rena said. She met my eyes, and for a second, a split second, I thought I saw something else there.
A question.
A plea.
“Stay away from me,” I said, and the words left my mouth as a growl. Drowsy or not, drugged or not, I was stronger than this woman who used to be my mother.
Much stronger.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, moving toward me slowly. “I promise, Kali. It’s all going to be okay.”
The words set off an explosion of memory in my mind. Everything is going to work out okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?
Skylar was dead. Rena was coming toward me, needle in hand. Nothing was okay.
Nothing would ever be okay again.
“What Rena means,” Colette said helpfully, “is that if you so much as move a muscle, I’ll dose you myself—and I won’t make it pleasant.”
Now that the door was open, I could see that Collette’s hair was a shade lighter than her eyelashes—a light honey brown. There was a dusting of freckles across her nose and an unadulterated cruelness to the set of her features.
She was a hunter. I was her prey.
“Please, Kali.” Rena took my arm. I flinched, but she met my eyes again.
Let me do this.
That was what her eyes said to me, and I bit back the impulse to hit her again—harder, this time, than before. Hard enough to do some actual damage—but for better or for worse, I couldn’t kill someone I remembered loving as much as I’d once loved her.
“I hate you,” I said instead, feeling little and powerless and like nothing I’d ever said or done had mattered in the least. “I really, really hate you.”
Rena pursed her lips. The needle pierced my skin.