Taken at Dusk (38 page)

Not that she didn’t enjoy his sweet side. He’d even brought her more roses last night. If Mrs. Parker didn’t have reason enough to dislike her, Kylie figured the she-wolf’s decimated rose garden would seal the deal.

Even Kylie’s ghost was calmer. Jane Doe still made regular visits, but the ghost was back to giving Kylie the silent treatment. Which was fine for now.

Kylie ducked under a low-hanging branch on the trail and picked up speed.

“No! And I can’t believe you’d even suggest it!”

Holiday’s voice rang in Kylie’s ear a good three hundred feet from the office. Kylie stopped and looked around to make sure the camp leader wasn’t standing nearby.

She wasn’t.

It must be the gifted hearing again. It had come and gone several times since her mom and Holiday’s little discussion during Parents Day. Curious, Kylie looked at Jonathon to see if he’d heard it, too.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I thought I heard something. Did you hear it?”

“Hear what?” He started looking around. “That damn blue jay isn’t back, is it? I’m telling you, it’s a sick bird.”

The bird had returned three more times. Jonathon had been present for two of them. “No. I thought I heard Holiday.”

Jonathon tilted his head to the side as if putting his own sensitive hearing to the test. “I don’t hear her.”

So, was her hearing stronger than a vampire’s? What did that mean? Especially when she still had the brain pattern of a human.

“It’s not like I have a choice,”
Burnett said.

Great. They were fighting again. About what this time? Kylie wondered, and continued on to the dining hall. If she had to guess, Holiday was just finding another excuse to try to put some distance between her and Burnett. Since Kylie had walked in and found them kissing, she hadn’t seen the two within fifty feet of each other.

“You have a choice,”
Holiday said.
“You go back and tell them that I said hell, no.”

“It’s a couple of tests. They wouldn’t take long and they could clear up everything.”

“I said, no!”

“Now I’m hearing Holiday,” Jonathon said. “She doesn’t sound too happy.”

“Don’t you think this should be Kylie’s decision?”

“What should be my decision?” Kylie muttered, and changed direction and started walking toward the office.

“No!”
Holiday said.

“She wants answers. And this could give them to her.”

Kylie moved faster.
What answers?
It didn’t matter, she realized. She’d take any answers she could get.

“I won’t allow it!”

“Won’t allow what?” Kylie stormed into the office, leaving Jonathon behind.

Holiday and Burnett swung around. Holiday pointed to the door. “Get out!” she told Burnett.

“No!” Kylie stepped in front of him. “He stays. This is about me, and I need to know.”

Holiday looked at Burnett with anger, then she looked at Kylie. “You wouldn’t understand this.”

“Why don’t you try me?” She looked at Burnett. “Start talking.”

He cut his gaze to Holiday.

“The FRU wants to run some tests on you,” Holiday said. “To see if they can figure out what you are.”

Hope rose in Kylie’s chest. “I thought there weren’t any tests that could tell me this?” She remembered asking Holiday that question before.

“There aren’t!” Holiday said. “They just want to play around in your brain to—”

“I’ll do it,” Kylie said.

“No!” Holiday looked horrified. “I refuse to let them use you as some kind of lab rat. There are no guarantees that these tests are safe, and they may not even work.”

Kylie looked at Burnett. “Are they safe?”

Burnett stared at Holiday, his eyes getting a pissed-off amber color. “I wouldn’t let them do anything to her that’s not safe,” he growled. “Do you have that little faith in me?”

“I have that little faith in the FRU. History repeats itself.”

“What kind of tests would they be?” Kylie asked.

“Just some CT scans,” Burnett said.

“No!” Holiday turned back to Kylie. “They’ll use you as a guinea pig.”

“They’re not going to hurt her,” Burnett said.

“I know, because she’s not agreeing to it.”

The cold came into the room so fast that Kylie’s breath sent tiny flakes of ice falling from her lips. Jane materialized, and at the same time, the three light bulbs in the fixture overhead burst. Shards of glass rained through the air.

“What the hell?” Burnett looked up and took a step closer to Kylie.

Holiday’s crystals hanging throughout the room started swaying, sending rainbow colors spiraling around them.

The laptop computer on Holiday’s desk started beeping, making serious malfunctioning noises.

“You stay away from her!”
Jane shot across the room to stand between her and Burnett.

“Run, Kylie!”
Jane yelled in the same tone she’d used to warn Kylie about the sinkhole.

“What’s wrong?” Kylie demanded.

“He’s wrong!”
Jane yelled.

Holiday looked around the room. “What’s happening, Kylie?”

“I think she thinks Burnett is trying to hurt me.”

“Tell her to leave,” Holiday insisted.

“Jane, you’re going to have to go.”

But Jane wasn’t listening.

Burnett took another step closer to Kylie. Jane screamed and then jammed her hand inside his chest. Not only could Kylie see Jane’s hand, she saw the inside of Burnett’s chest. And she watched in horror as Jane’s hand closed around Burnett’s heart.

“No!” Kylie screamed.

Burnett’s gaze shot to Holiday. He reached for his chest.

“Stop it!” Kylie said.

Burnett dropped to the floor in a dead thud.

Chapter Thirty-four

Thirty minutes later, with Jonathon sitting under a tree a few feet away, Kylie sat on Holiday’s porch, swatting away bugs and listening to Holiday, the doctor, and Burnett from inside the office.

“He asked you to take your shirt off,”
Holiday said.

“I don’t need to take my shirt off,”
Burnett snapped.
“I’m fine.”

His voice was loud and clear, and he did indeed sound fine.

Not that it made Kylie feel any better.

“Maybe. Maybe not,”
Holiday said.
“We’ll know as soon as you disrobe and let the doctor examine you.”

In a few minutes, Holiday came out and plopped on the porch beside Kylie. She had tears in her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m worried about him. He’s too pigheaded and stubborn to die.”

Kylie laced her hands together. “I’m so sorry.”

Holiday shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You told me to get rid of her when I first told you about her. I refused, and she could have killed Burnett.”

“She didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted to get him away from you.”

“Maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Maybe she is evil.”

Holiday put her arm around Kylie’s shoulder. “She wasn’t evil. I felt her presence and her emotions. She was concerned about you. She did this to protect you, Kylie.”

“Yeah, but, protect me from what? Did she really think Burnett was going hurt me?”

Holiday sighed. “She probably picked up on what I was feeling. I overreacted.” She tightened her arm. “I mean, I refuse to let you be tested by the FRU. But I shouldn’t have wigged out like that.”

“You don’t trust Burnett?” Kylie asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t trust the FRU.”

“Why? And if you don’t trust them, then why are they involved with the camp? Besides, if they can really do some simple tests and tell me what I am, I want to do it.”

Holiday closed her eyes for a second. “Don’t take this wrong, Kylie. I’m not against the FRU. God knows we need them to keep things right. But they have no business testing people.”

“But if they can really—”

“I can’t let you do it. If they want to tell me the name of the test they want done, I’ll ask our doctor if he can order it. But it will be under his care and his care only.”

Kylie heard so much in the camp leader’s voice. So much she wasn’t saying. “Okay, what is it you’re not telling me?”

It took a minute before Holiday finally sighed and started talking. “It was over forty years ago. It involved only one small branch of the FRU that has been shut down, and charges were brought against a lot of people. They were doing scientific tests on supernaturals. Something about figuring out genetics. The subjects were forced into doing it, and some people never completely recovered from the tests. It’s not as if I think they’re doing it again, but I refuse to have you go there so they can poke and prod you to find answers.”

Kylie looked at Holiday. Bits and pieces of Jane’s vision started replaying in her mind like an old movie. And everything suddenly made sense. “The FRU killed Jane Doe. They killed her and then they buried her with Berta Littlemon in the Fallen Cemetery.”

Holiday’s eyes widened. “You can’t know this for sure.”

“I do,” Kylie said. “In the vision, Jane was called a subject. Her husband was one, too. And the doctor was a vampire. They mentioned her not having a pattern.”

Kylie pulled her knees up and hugged them, trying to wrap her head around everything as it all came together. She didn’t understand how Jane’s baby fit in, but on some things she was clear.

“No wonder she went after Burnett,” Kylie said. “She thought he was trying to do to me what the FRU had done to her.”

*   *   *

Kylie was disappointed that Jane Doe was a no-show the next morning. Kylie had hoped now that she knew about the FRU, she could help Jane remember other things, like her name. That together they could figure out what it was Jane needed in order to cross over.

But dead people, just like the living, rarely did what Kylie wanted them to do.

A knock sounded at her door. “Come in.”

The door opened and Miranda and Della both squeezed through the opening and shut the door extra quickly behind them.

“What is it?” Kylie asked.

“There’s three guys here working on putting in the heating unit,” Della said.

“And they’re yummy,” Miranda said. The contractors who worked around Shadow Falls had become a popular subject for all the female campers. Especially when they took their shirts off in the afternoons.

“As yummy as Perry?” Kylie teased. Lately, Miranda had been spending almost every free moment with the shape-shifter.

“Not quite as yummy,” Miranda said, and then grinned. “But close.”

“Well, thanks for the warning. I’ll get ready to be awed.”

“Just don’t come out wearing nothing but a towel,” Della said, also grinning. “Unless you’re into that.”

A few minutes later, Kylie walked out fully dressed, hair combed, and the only thing she’d added in honor of their company was a touch of lip gloss.

Miranda sat at the table, sipping a glass of orange juice, Della had a glass of blood, and two of the guys were down on the floor on their knees, saws at their sides and some kind of heating vent beside them.

As much as Kylie hated to admit it, Miranda was right. They were yummy. Both were in their early twenties, had dark hair, and wore tight T-shirts that showed off their dark tans and lots of muscles.

They looked up and met Kylie’s eyes. Kylie tensed when they pinched their eyebrows at her, but she did the same thing. They were both werewolves. She saw the shocked look in their eyes when they saw her brain pattern.

“I’m the token human,” she said.

Della and Miranda snickered. The two guys smiled and went back to work. No doubt they had orders from Burnett not to flirt with the female campers.

Kylie went to the fridge to get her own glass of juice. She heard Miranda’s door open, and the third contractor joined them. Kylie turned around and peered at him under her lashes. This one was equally hot. Black hair. Wide shoulders. Thin waist.

His gaze met Kylie’s and her juice slipped from her fingers and shattered at her feet.

His hair had changed. His name, Red, probably a nickname, no longer fit, but his eyes hadn’t changed. The image of him appearing in her dreams, and of him staring at her in the mirror with blood dripping down his chin, filled her head. Then the image flashed, and she saw him plastered on her windshield and ramming his hand through her car window. As if that weren’t enough, she saw the image of him staring at her while she was chained to the chair when he and his grandfather abducted her.

“Della?” Kylie said in an even voice, hoping she could warn her before the shit hit the fan.

But Della didn’t answer. Kylie turned. The vamp still sat at the table, her glass at her lips. A few drops of blood hung in the air between her lips and the edge of the glass. Della didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. She looked frozen.

The shit had already hit the fan.

Kylie’s gaze shot to Miranda, who was also frozen, a finger at her ear as if to brush back a strand of hair.

Ditto for the two guys on the floor.

“It’s just you and me, Kylie,” the rogue said.

She refocused on Miranda and Della. “Whatever you’ve done to my friends, you’d better undo it,” she growled, and her blood fizzed with fury.

“Don’t get worked up. They are fine. As soon as I release them, they will go back to normal and not remember a thing.” He looked back to the table and then to her.

“So do it!” Kylie said.

He sighed. “I’ve never seen anyone who cared so much about others.”

Though she wasn’t sure why, Kylie checked his brain pattern. He was a werewolf. But how was that possible? He was a vampire. She tried not to show her surprise, but he saw it.

“What are you?” Kylie went ahead and asked.

“I’m the same thing you are. Just born a few minutes later than midnight.” He took a step closer. “That’s why we belong together. We’re soul mates, Kylie. That’s what we are.”

She tightened her brows again, and this time he was human. Her heart thudded in her chest. “I’m not your soul mate. I’ll die first.”

“That’s why I’m here.” He took another step toward her.

She backed up. “You’re here to kill me?”