The Blood In the Beginning (19 page)

He laced his hands together, thoughtful for some time. ‘Fair enough, but if you really don't know, I can't say much until I contact Teern.'

‘Here we go with the Teern thing again.' I crossed my arms. ‘What is it, really?'

He looked exasperated. ‘Ava, check around. No one can see us. No one can hear us. You're safe to speak openly. We don't have to pretend any more.'

Maybe it was the enclosed space. Or the rhythmic undulation reminding me I wasn't on solid land. Or this man and his riddles. Whatever. I made ready to bolt. ‘Listen, Rossi!' Heat rushed to my face. ‘I want answers and I want them now. What is this Teern company? Why did you send me Jones?' I cleared my throat. ‘Thanks for that, by the way, but she said for me to take my questions to you. Here I am. I want answers, or I want the hell off this boat!'

He held out his hands, like calming a wild animal, or maybe fending one off. The look on his face was not what I'd expected. It was so perplexed it took the aggression right out of me, or most of it anyway. I slid back down to the couch. ‘Please. I've been on edge ever since the first attack.'
And the underwater hallucinations in the hospital, along with the voices in my head, aren't giving me much peace of mind, either.

He ran his hand through his unruly hair and started to pace. Was he muttering to himself? That couldn't be good.

‘I don't know what's going on, Ava. You seem to have no memory, and I need Teern's advice. I can't speak freely without seeing him first, but he's in the Atlantic.'

‘Teern's a person? Daniel Bane said it was a sister company.'

Rossi flinched. ‘You can't believe what he tells you.'

‘Says the guy who can't tell me jackshit?'

He started ranting. Mid-sentence, Rossi turned to me. ‘Who are your guardians?'

Perfect. The question I hated the most. No. Not true. I hated the answer, so I didn't say anything. I guess he could read it in my body language, because he started filling in the blanks.

‘Maybe you lost them in the Big One? Is that what happened?'

Great. My second most-hated question. I spoke just to shut him up. ‘Ironic, isn't it? Thirty million lives were lost that day, and two of them had to be the only decent foster parents I'd ever known.'

‘Foster?' He cut me off before I could say more. ‘You can't have been fostered.'

That was it. I snapped. ‘Stop right there.' My voice cut like a filleting knife, and there was no space for him to answer. ‘I have news for you, boy wonder!' I sucked in my breath as I stood to deliver a rapid-fire account of my hell-born childhood. ‘Abandoned as an infant, passed around foster care, buried alive in the system. Finally landed a decent family and they died in the Aftermath. Then CHI Tech had me. That's right. I was one of their lab rats for over a year, until I escaped. Lived on the street. You don't want to know how. Rourke, a beat cop at the time, introduced me to MMA, and a school that would have me. It's been better since, but don't you ever, ever fucking tell me I couldn't have been fostered. Are we clear, Dr Rossi?' When I was done, my chest was heaving and my eyes stung.

He sank to his seat. ‘You don't know where you came from?'

New tag. Stupid as hell smart person. ‘That's your takeaway? Pay attention! My mother gave me up. No record of a father. Raised in the system. Foster parents died. It was no party beforehand, but it all went to hell after that.'

He shook his head, disbelief in his eyes. ‘It's not right.'

‘No shit, it ain't right.'

‘That's not what I meant.'

I was beginning to wonder if I would ever understand this man.

‘Ava, I have no idea why you don't know this, but you're Mar, for the deep blue's sake.' He blew out his breath. ‘Ring any bells?'

Mar?

Yes. Mar.

Maybe I was marred, or marginalised? ‘Not hearing any ding-a-lings.'

He paled. ‘Mar. Of the sea?'

I stood there, waiting. ‘Speak English.'

He scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘For a start, you know you're different, right? You have more strength and perception, far more, than you are using.'

‘Are you kidding? I have to hide my abilities as it is. Damned hyperbolic phase of my …'

No, Ava, you're holding back.

His voice rang between my ears. ‘Get the hell out of my head!'

‘Alright. Settle down.' He was back to placating me. ‘I'll speak aloud, but that's another natural ability.' He stared past me. ‘Maybe I know what happened.'

I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. ‘This ought to be rich.' My patience was rice paper thin.

‘You were somehow abandoned …'

I started to walk out the door but he held up his hand. ‘Wait. Let me finish.'

Authority rang in his voice. It made me think he'd been holding back as well. I stood, arms crossed. ‘You have thirty seconds to make sense.' I glanced at an imaginary wristwatch.

‘Without guidance, you grew up believing you were like the others, limited in so many ways. Social and cultural conditioning has defined you. Tricked you into thinking you were just like them. Maybe a little stronger, but that's all. It's left you …' He stopped to search for the right word.

Impeded? Arrested? Retarded?

‘I was going to say, underdeveloped.'

I didn't know where to begin. ‘What “others” are you talking about?'

‘Landers, of course.'

‘Make sense!' I shouted.

‘Humans. You can pass, but you're not one of them.'

That tipped the scale from bizarre to ‘get the hell out of here' instantly, but he sensed it and moved to block the door. Did I have to fight this guy?

‘You have to know that what you think, the thoughts that you hold in your mind, define what you're capable of. You're thinking too small, your perceptions are too narrow. It's held you back in so many ways.'

What psycho-new-age-hippy school did you graduate from?
I moved back a few steps, opening my peripheral vision. There was no other way out.

A ‘hippy' school called Stanford University where I did my first undergrad degree, but that was long before your time.

He was in my head again, making with the telepathy. It was the last straw. I bolted to the right, feinted left and headed straight for the exit. I didn't run two steps before he was on me, wrestling me down to the couch. ‘Let go!' I hit him hard with a left hook.

Rossi cut loose a string of curses in some foreign language. At least, they sounded like curses.

I stopped struggling. He was surprisingly stronger than I'd expected. I had to think my way out of this, use brains, not brawn. ‘Let go, please,' I said softly.

He let go immediately, seeming surprised. ‘Ava, I'm not going to hurt you.' He took off his sunglasses and looked me in the eye, holding my gaze while I sat up. For a moment, I was lost in the intensity of him. Neither of us spoke until he shook his head, breaking the spell. ‘We have to find where your guardians are entombed. And give you back the memories.'

I didn't like the sound of any of it. ‘So they are definitely dead? And you want me to awaken more memories? On top of the night terror upbringing I already have stored in my head? No, thanks.' I made to stand. ‘I can find my way home.'

‘Wait, please.'

We had a staring contest that ended in a draw, both of us settling down at the same time. Rossi folded his hands together. Something flashed across his face and I could tell he'd made a decision. He spoke slowly, deliberately, like I was a kid, and not a very bright one. ‘Ava, what has happened to you is terrible, and I promise to make it right. All your people will help you, and we'll find your mother.'

‘You just said she was dead.'

He let out his breath in a rush. ‘This is worse than I thought.'

‘How?'

‘I doubt your mother is dead. That would be virtually impossible, unless …'

I held up my hand. ‘Let me stop you right there. Can you find my birth mother or not?' The thought of having answers to my hereditary blood disorder seemed more important than any of the lunatic ideas tabled so far.

‘Birth mother?' His brow wrinkled. ‘We can find your guardian, of course, but first, you need the memories. It might make you more comfortable with your hearing.'

I eyed him sideways. ‘I told you before, I hear just fine.'

‘You won't say that when you start using it.'

Bat. Shit. Crazy.

He laughed. ‘I can hear you, at least. It's your reception that's blocked.' He rubbed his hands together, like warming them in front of a fire. ‘The blood I gave you in the hospital should have triggered any suppressed memories, but maybe you've been too traumatised. We can try something else, a little more direct.'

Too traumatised was an understatement. ‘You still haven't explained to me who Teern is.'

‘He'll have to approve any more disclosure.' Rossi sounded like he was trying to convince himself. ‘It's unprecedented.'

‘Not instilling confidence with the mutterings.' It was like we were having two completely different conversations. Times like these made me wish I was religious, or had some meaningful ideology at least; then I could call on a higher power to intervene, or at least protect me. Lacking any such thing, I decided to play along, just in case his rants were based on some fragment of truth. Summa cum laude, after all. The potential of finding my birth mother trumped everything. Could Teern know? Deep down, I didn't feel Rossi would really hurt me. His intentions felt genuine. I decided to trust that, at least.

Child services had tried to trace my birth mother for me years ago, but inquiries had dead-ended fast, or so they'd said. If I heard yet again,
All records were lost in the Big One
, I would scream. Tom had offered to lend me money for a PI. I hadn't taken him up on it. Too scared of owing Tom that much, or maybe too scared I'd actually find her. It wasn't like she was busting a gut trying to find me. But, hey, after the things I'd been through lately, ‘finding mother' was suddenly the least confronting possibility in my life. I returned my focus to Rossi. ‘Let's do it. Show me this memory thing. I want to find my mother.'

It was the first time he fully relaxed his features. ‘Good. You won't regret it.' He went to the kitchen and took something out of the shiny silver fridge, then opened a high cupboard. His back was to me, so I couldn't see exactly what was going on. In a few moments, he was offering me a shot glass of pale, amber liquid, while chanting in some crazy foreign language that sounded like the one he'd cursed in earlier. The drink looked bathed in sunlight. Very pretty, which made me apprehensive.

Seriously? Chanting?
‘No, thanks. I don't drink.'

‘It's not alcohol.' He kept his hand out, and repeated his last line of chant. His deep voice reverberated in my chest. ‘This will help. Trust me.'

He was well respected, an ER doctor, I reminded myself, a senior lecturer at UCLA. His job was to save people. Rourke said he was clean. He'd taken an oath: do no harm. I did the math, and took the drink, lifting the glass to my nose. ‘Water, salt, copper and something … sweet.' I salivated. My senses screamed
Yum!

‘Don't analyse it, Ava. Toss it back.'

What the hell.
I did as he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The liquid warmed my throat, growing into a slow, pervasive burn. I flushed, fingers to toes, but that wasn't the half of it. The walls cracked and burst into tiny shrapnel and I was flung out to sea. Deep blue-green currents closed over me. My mouth opened, water filling my lungs. As I drowned, everything snapped into a crystal-clear view. There was a distant light. It must have been the sun, high above the pale, rippling surface. I panicked, flapping my limbs, trying to rise.

Stop struggling!

It was Rossi's voice inside my head, again. That tripled my fear as I spun in circles, trying to spot him.

Relax. This can't hurt you.

Like hell it can't!
The sea replaced everything I'd ever known. It was cold, the touch of death.
Help me!

I was swept up in a current and deposited back in that coral-encrusted graveyard, the naked woman rising again from her tomb. I threw my arms about, trying to swim away. The next thing I knew, I was pinned down on Rossi's couch. ‘Let me go!' I screamed, finally able to fill my lungs with air.

He released my arms. ‘Ava, what's wrong? What did you see?'

I struggled to sit up. ‘You drugged me, you bastard! Same damn hallucination as in the hospital …' I didn't finish the thought.

‘Ava, I gave you the memories, that's all. Like I would a first risen Mar, transformed by the Ma'atta —'

I clocked him in the face with my fist and scrambled to my feet. ‘You roofied me!'

‘Nothing like that!' He had his hands up, as if I'd pulled a gun on him. Now there was an idea. Unfortunately, I didn't have mine on me. Rossi's nose was bleeding and he actually looked, not afraid, but mightily confused. I got my bearings and bolted for the door. Before I could reach it, lights flashed in my head.
No!
The sea swept over me again.
Sykes, calm down,
I coached myself.
This has happened before. I'm hallucinating. Try to relax through it.

The soothing self-talk lasted seconds before I was gliding along under the surface.
Gliding?
Yeah, it wasn't so panicky, for the moment. Ahead, waves rolled over themselves as they broke toward a cliff-lined shore. I spotted pilings and made for them. They were at the end of an old wooden wharf. The rock bottom turned to white sand and the shallow water was brilliant aquamarine. From below, I could see a boy on the wharf, standing with his legs apart, holding a pole in his hands. It was twice his height, and attached was a line. No reel. He wore a simple, belted tunic that hung past his knees. That was it.