Changeling (31 page)

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans, wanting to hug him and somehow provide some warmth. His stance practically screamed
Back Off,
so I kept my distance. “Putting a contract out on me because of professional jealousy and a
sense of vengeance, that I could handle,” I said. “I understand it, even if it scares me to death. Bates I get. I don’t get Queen or what she wants.”

“I don’t, either.” Noah dropped his hands and opened his arms. I fell against his chest, grateful for the simple physical contact—I thought at any moment I might collapse under the weight of my fear and grief. Noah’s skin was so cool, almost clammy. I had done that to him.

“Deuce said you don’t know what I am,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

“She was just trying to get to me.”

“Are you sure?”

He pressed one finger beneath my chin, urging me to raise my head. I met his stern gaze. At least one of us was confident about something. “I know what you are, Dal.”

She’s mine.
I shivered, as scared by those two words as I was tempted by them.

The ambulance tore past our courtyard, sirens wailing and lights flashing. We watched it drive through the open gates of the old HQ and disappear inside. One nugget of fear began to dissolve. Renee would be taken care of, but a dozen more fears remained.

“Guys?” King said.

He stood over Deuce’s body, hands on his hips, dressed up again as Ortega. We had no real way of keeping Deuce under control, so on a hunch that she needed her hands to throw more dirt at us, we’d tied her arms behind her back. And her ankles together. For good measure we’d also rolled her up in a section of old carpeting, partly inspired by my
own imprisonment in a wrestling mat back in January. She looked like a brown sausage and was probably hot as hell, but her comfort was of no consequence to me.

It had been strange, watching the tender way King and Noah trussed her up and wiped blood from the cuts on her face and throat. Very gentle, almost caring. They identified her as their sister, their blood, while treating her like the enemy she was. An odd dichotomy. Even though I’d have rejoiced in her immediate and painful death, part of me wanted her alive. Somewhere inside her, Marco still survived. If what Kinsey said was true, then the experiences and memories of the host lived on inside of the Changeling, becoming part of their personality. An amalgamation.

Noah had chosen that life. But would Marco want it, too?

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think she’s waking up,” King replied.

I waved at Ethan to stay put on his shady bench. Noah followed me. Deuce blinked against the glaring sunlight, her face flushed. Pain pulled her mouth into a straight line. Her eyes flickered back and forth between our backlit silhouettes. I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her.

“How does it feel to be bait?” I asked.

“I told her this was a stupid idea,” Deuce said in her half-formed voice. “But Queen wanted to play, and I went along like the obedient girl I am. The Overseer teaches us to obey.”

“You mentioned this Overseer before,” Noah said. “Who is he?”

“There is so much you don’t know, dear brother. So much about the Recombinants and our long history. So much that
even your beloved father does not know. Weatherfield is only a small cog in a much larger wheel. All you need be aware of is that the Overseer turns the gears of the wheel, and if you fail him, you are crushed.”

“He sent you here to kill Dahlia.”

“Yes.”

I shuddered. Noah put his hand on the back of my neck—a centering touch. “Why?” he asked.

“You ask why,” Deuce said. “We do not. This is why we were taken from Weatherfield, and you three were not.”

“Do you have to speak in riddles?” I asked, growing frustrated with the circular conversation. This was impossible. I wanted to reach into her brain and yank out every single bit of pertinent information she was so reluctant to share.

“Did you know we were alive this whole time?” Noah asked, redirecting the conversation.

She blinked. “Of course.”

“We were told you were dead.”

“And we were told you were weak.”

I snorted. “Yeah? Who’s the one tied up in a rug?”

Deuce’s dark, unfocused eyes latched onto mine, shimmered, then turned a brilliant, luminescent green. The same shade as Marco’s eyes. Was he in there? Fighting against the Changeling’s control? Fighting to be free of her? Kinsey told us the Changeling always overpowered the host. Dominated. Was that true even if the host was a Meta?

Her eyes changed back to flat brown. It broke the spell, making that momentary glimpse of a friend seem like nothing more than a heat-induced hallucination.

“How long?” I asked.

She arched an eyebrow. “How long what?”

“How long ago did you take Marco? How long have you been spying on us?”

The irritating woman took the time to yawn. I fisted my hands, restraining myself from kicking her in the head.

“The parking garage this morning,” she finally said.

My temper cooled a few degrees. The apology in my room had been Marco. We’d forgiven each other, been friends again. It hadn’t been a trick.

“Why does the Overseer want me dead?” It felt strange asking about a person I’d never met and didn’t know from Adam. This mysterious Overseer seemed to be the one who handed out death warrants to whacked-out female Changelings.

“You were a mistake,” Deuce said. “He doesn’t allow mistakes.”

Mistake. There was that word again. She said it as though it explained everything, when it explained nothing. Not to me. Not about me.

She blew out hard through her nose, sending a cloud of dust flying across my sneakers. “You truly have no comprehension of any of this, do you?” she said. “Not a single doubt about your past. Your origin. We could have left you alone, and you never would have known differently.” Her eyes widened, filling with something akin to amazement. Shock. “The Overseer was wrong.”

A gong of doom hung in those four words. She could have been speaking heresy in front of the Pope from the
dread in her voice. In the downturn of her mouth and arched eyebrows. Her chin quivered.

“I take it this Overseer isn’t wrong very often,” I said.

“I have never known him to be wrong.”

“So I’m not a mistake?”

“Yes, you are.”

My head spun, dizzy from Deuce’s flurry of double-talking. “You said—”

“I said the Overseer was wrong, but not about what,” Deuce said. She twisted her neck to look at me. “You are still a mistake, but you did not require termination.”

That should have made me happy, overjoyed even, but it didn’t. It was her opinion of the facts, and she was just a lackey. Maybe she didn’t think the mysterious Overseer required my termination, but His Highness did, and she was trained to follow his orders. I wanted to trust that Deuce no longer believed I should be killed. However, doubt niggled in the corner of my mind. Doubt about how much her conscious mind was affected by Marco and his memories of me. How much of him colored her judgment and influenced her rationalization?

“How does the Overseer even know about her?” Noah asked. “What gives him the right to police Metas and decide their fates? What could she possibly have done?”

Deuce rolled her eyes, bored with our questions or maybe our inability to grasp some simple concept. I didn’t know which and I didn’t care. My patience was stretched thin and about to snap. Whether I lashed out or lashed inward remained to be seen. I was hoping for out.

“The Overseer cares nothing for Metas or their squabbling,” she said, eyes drilling through mine, right into my skull. “Are you truly this naïve, girl? So wrapped up in your existence you cannot see the ocean for the waves? Haven’t you ever wondered about those earliest childhood years where the memories are fuzzy? Why you’re obsessed with Weatherfield? Why you feel so comfortable around Ace and King and Joker?”

My insides clenched, squeezed flat by a frozen fist of fear. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears, hum
lalalalala,
and pretend she wasn’t there. Anything to prevent her from saying it. “No,” I said, taking a single step backward. “I’m a Meta.”

“You’re not,” Deuce said, smiling as though we were about to share a private joke. “You’re like us, Dahlia Perkins. You’re a Recombinant.”

Blood rushed through
my head, roaring like a freight train and blocking out all other sounds. Even after hot cement scraped my elbows raw and sharp stones dug into my shoulder blades, I didn’t stop struggling. Someone was holding me down, saying something I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear much of anything over the thundering in my head and shattering of my heart.

Lies, all lies. She would tell me the truth. I’d make her tell me. That’s what I’d been doing when Noah knocked me down. Noah.

I stilled, no longer fighting my captor. I closed my eyes
and inhaled deeply. Exhaled. The roaring ceased, allowing words to filter in and make sense again. Noah loomed above me, backlit by the bright sun. My hands were pinned by my sides, and the entire weight of his body pressed down on mine.

“Calm down, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

I twisted my head around, past the length of our bodies. Deuce was unconscious again, her head lolling to one side. Blood dripped from her nose and from a gash on her forehead. The toes of my right foot ached. I’d kicked her. I’d hurt her just like she wanted me to hurt her. If I had killed her, we would have lost our bargaining chip. We’d have lost his brothers.

Noah’s liquid eyes burned into mine. “Can I let you up now?”

“Yes.”

He moved. The loss of his still-too-cool body wrapped me in a swirl of humid air. Perspiration broke out across my forehead and throat. I sat up, wincing as my raw elbows twinged and burned. My stomach gurgled, as much from lack of food as from the stroke of sudden, overwhelming terror—and understanding. I wanted Deuce to be wrong, but something deep down, buried below instinct and reason, told me she was right.

Footsteps shuffled. A shadow fell across my lap. Ethan squatted in front of me, groaning at the strain on his battered legs. Blood had dried on his face like garish war paint. He radiated calm, muddled with just a tinge of worry. Worry for me, or
because of
me, I didn’t quite know.

“She’s lying, Dal,” Ethan said. “Trying to keep us off-balance so this doesn’t go down in our favor.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, Ethan, I don’t think she was lying. I don’t think I’d feel this way if she was.”

“Feel what way?” Noah asked.

“Relieved.”

Noah stared. “Relieved?”

I didn’t realize I felt it until I voiced the emotion, and then it hit me full force, like a slap in the face. Total and utter relief that I wasn’t targeted for death because of a stupid grudge; relief that my sense of misplacement among the Rangers stemmed from being completely different from them, and not just new to the group; relief that I finally—finally!—knew the real agenda behind the mayhem of the last few days.

As frightening as Deuce’s announcement had been, I felt liberated for the first time in years. An impossible thing to describe, I could only sit there and feel it, let it wash over me like warm water, caressing away the soil of doubt, leaving only certainty in its wake.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “But it makes sense. I don’t have anything from my life before the age of four. No proof I existed in the outside world.”

“You said a mudslide destroyed everything,” Ethan said. “There was a slide that year, Dal, your mom didn’t make it up.”

“I don’t think she did.”
Mom, oh, Mom, how much did you know about this?
“I’m just saying I think Deuce was telling the truth.”

Ethan shook his head. Hard. “No, it can’t be true. You reactivated at the same time as the rest of us. How is that
possible if you aren’t a Meta? Some very freaky cosmic coincidence?”

“I don’t know, Ethan.” The first time my powers had manifested, it was out of self-preservation and the need to stop a grease fire. I hadn’t experienced the same gut-twisting agony the others described on the night the Metas’ powers were returned; Dr. Seward has attributed it to my being young and new to my powers, but now—“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I never felt the reactivation the same as you guys.”

“You didn’t?”

I met Ethan’s blank stare, surprised and a little confused. “I told you that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I—oh God. I told Dr. Seward during my first exam. I just assumed he mentioned it to the rest of you.”

Ethan snorted. “Probably didn’t cross his mind, being so busy trying to kill us all.” He still seemed wary, but at the same time sympathetic.

Was it possible the timing of the grease fire and discovering my powers really was some sort of cosmic joke, and that I wasn’t a Meta? Yes, it was possible. Was I something completely unnatural? I had no idea.

Unfortunately, Deuce was still unconscious from my hasty response to her announcement. “I guess we’ll have to wait and ask Queen when we see her,” I said.

“Someone’s coming,” King said. Silent up until now, he bolted to the courtyard gates and peered through.

I scrambled to my feet, wobbling a bit on unsteady legs, and latched onto Ethan for support.

The rumble of a car engine fast approached. “You know someone who owns a green sedan?” King asked.

“Agent McNally,” Ethan said.

The third phone call. We both hated involving her in our current problem, but we needed a vehicle. She hadn’t asked for details, for which I was eternally grateful, and had agreed to meet us at our current location. Good timing, too, because our debate on my supposed genetic history was going in circles. Second-guessing Deuce’s motives and her words wouldn’t help us. We needed to find Queen, get the Scott brothers back, and then get the answers I so desperately craved, and not necessarily in that order.

King pulled the gate open wide enough to allow the car entrance. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but most passersby in this neighborhood wouldn’t think twice about such an odd sight. Agent McNally left the engine idling, opened her door, and climbed out with a first aid kit in one hand.