The Magic Within

Found Magic Book #2

J. A. Cipriano

Contents

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Also by J. A. Cipriano

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Thank You for reading!

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Copyright © 2017 by J. A. Cipriano

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Also by J. A. Cipriano

* * *

The Thrice Cursed Mage

Cursed

Marked

Burned

Seized

Claimed

Hellbound

* * *

The Half-Demon Warlock

Pound of Flesh

Flesh and Blood

* * *

Clans of Shadow

Heart of Gold

Feet of Clay

Fists of Iron

* * *

The Spellslinger Chronicles

Throne to the Wolves

Prince of Blood and Thunder

* * *

The Lillim Callina Chronicles

Wardbreaker

Kill it with Magic

The Hatter is Mad

Fairy Tale

Pursuit

Hardboiled

Mind Games

Fatal Ties

* * *

The World of Ruul

Soulstone: Awakening

1

Stephen kissed me like it was the last time he’d ever get to do it. He mashed his lips against mine, pressing my body against the passenger door of our beat up Ford as his hand slid around my waist, unbuckling my seatbelt and pulling me against him. His touch was like fire on my skin as his fingers trailed upward along my spine.

“Come on, Abby,” he whispered against my lips, his voice sending little tingles rippling across my flesh. “Let’s just go…”

“We need supplies,” I whispered back. Pushing him away was very nearly the hardest thing I’d ever done. My other hand slid to the door handle. “I’ll be quick…” I opened the door and shuffled out into the convenience store parking lot, my knees still shaking.

As I threw one last glance at him, I found him watching me, and I had to tear my eyes away before his sapphire gaze pulled me back into the vehicle like a tractor beam. That wouldn’t do me any good because we were out of food, and while he and I had decidedly different diets since he was a vampire, I still needed to eat occasionally if I wanted to, you know, live. I steeled myself and turned back toward the store’s glass doors.

The lights flickered as I entered, and a chill scampered down my back. One quick look around the Ye Olde Kwik E Mart was enough to tell me there was no one else in here but the clerk. Still, the lights had given me the creeps. Stephen and I had been running for the better part of a week, and this was the first time I’d ventured into a place inhabited by, you know, people. Not that the clerk really counted as a person since he was way more interested in his cellphone than me. Which was good, I didn’t need him taking any special interest in me.

The lights flickered again, and I pulled my baseball cap down so it covered more of my face while I scanned the aisles for attackers. Finding none, I forced myself to calm down, which was easier said than done. Man, my nerves were really on edge.

“Get a grip, Abby,” I whispered, turning toward the glass refrigerators in the back of the store and nearly cried out. The reflection of Donovan’s leering face stared back at me through the glass. He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and like usual, he was covered in blood that leaked perpetually from the hole in his head.

“Hello, Abby,” he said. His words were like white fog on the glass, cold and unforgiving. “Miss me?”

I swallowed, shut my eyes, and counted to five in my head. Yeah, ever since I’d shot him, no… murdered him in cold blood, he’d been haunting me, like actually haunting me. It was lame.

At first, it made me hate him more, but since I had killed him, I was pretty sure this was my penance. Besides, did I really want to be the kind of girl who could kill without it bothering her? No, having Donovan’s ghost around had to generate some kind of positive karma.

When I opened my eyes, Donovan was gone. His ghostly specter had vanished like it’d never been there at all. Not that it mattered, since I seemed to be the only one who could see him, which made me seem crazy. Or would make me seem crazy if Stephen hadn’t told me that ghosts were, in fact, real. That said, for all I knew, I was making up this particular ghost.

The glass door loomed in front of me like a frosty gate. I grabbed it by the black plastic handle and pulled it open. A blast of chilly air licked my skin as I reached in and seized a jug of orange juice that said ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ on it. For some reason, it sounded a lot better than the one proudly displaying it was “made from real juice” because shouldn’t all juice be made with real juice? How was that a selling point?

I glared at the juice and sighed. I wasn’t even sure why I was getting juice because Stephen was a vampire and while he could eat and drink he didn’t really gain anything from doing so. No, Stephen needed blood. Lots of it.

That was part of the problem though. Stephen still wasn’t feeling well after getting shot, which I guess was understandable, and no amount of blood had seemed to help him regenerate. It was a little weird since it should have helped him, but then again, it wasn’t like blood was in heavy supply since we’d mostly stuck to the wilderness and he couldn’t ingest my blood. Evidently, supernatural blood was toxic to vampires.

The orange juice was the best I could do because Vitamin C was supposed to help with infections, right? Or was that just colds? Either way, he was drinking the damn juice. Besides, who knew when we’d be able to get some again?

I let out a slow breath and shook my head as I stared at the jug, knowing how pointless it was. Like last time, I’d probably just wind up drinking the juice myself, but it was the thought that counted, right?

“Hmm, what else should I get?” I mumbled to myself, and as I turned to check another aisle, I nearly leapt out of my skin when the clerk’s cellphone rang to the tune of Mandy by Barry Manilow. My heart hammered in my chest as I whirled to stare at the freckled, red-haired teenager as he tapped frantically at the device. Well, that was certainly an odd tune for someone my age…

I took another breath, calmed myself as best I could with the full force of a government agency after me, and made my way down the next aisle, piling all sorts of junk food into my cloth bag. I didn’t want to risk using one of their baskets. It could have magical crystals embedded in the plastic that could track my location. Yeah, that was a thing. It was lame.

See, I was on the run from a powerful government agency. Apparently, when you steal helicopters from the government, they track you down. No. Matter. What.

So because I was paranoid about being found, I was using a lime green knapsack I’d purchased from a pot-smoking hippy a few days ago in a different state. He had been prattling on about aliens and government conspiracies so I figured his bag would be government tech free. Then again, I’d been wrong a lot since I found out my entire life was one big lie.

I turned back toward the clerk as he put his phone down and stared at me with glassy green eyes. He wasn’t very tall, maybe five-foot-eight and built like a beanpole, so I was pretty sure I could take him, but usually, avoiding a fight was the best way to not get hurt. Still, that didn’t mean I trusted the guy. Not for a second. I reached out to grab a candy bar still not taking my eyes off of him.

“Run!” Donovan’s voice mouse-whispered in my ear. “Run away! Now, Abby!”

The clerk reached down below the counter, his movements jerky and forced. I’m not sure what he was going to grab because I dropped my bag and sprinted back down the aisle. Which was dumb because the exit was in the opposite direction.

Should I have run for the exit doors? I guess so, but my first instinct was to create as much distance as possible between us. The lights flickered again. Only this time when they came back on, every fluorescent bulb in the ceiling shattered. Glass rained down around me as I dropped to the floor, covering my head and neck with my hands so that, hopefully, I wouldn’t be cut to ribbons.

The refrigerators behind me exploded in a blue fireball of flame and arcing electricity that pelted me with beer and soda as I threw myself down the nearest aisle, landing hard on my shoulders and rolling to my feet facing the busted freezers. Acrid black smoke filled the air and pooled against the ceiling. The smell, like burning ozone, filled my nostrils as Donovan’s ghostly form pointed behind me.

“Watch out,” Donovan called, pointing behind me.

I spun just in time for the clerk’s shotgun to fill my vision. I dropped as the gun went off. The roar of the gunshot exploded in my brain, blasting my hearing into a tiny pinprick of sound. Buckshot pinged off the back wall as my left elbow shot out, smashing into the twerp’s crotch. Only he didn’t budge, didn’t even act like it hurt. Instead, he cocked the gun and moved to point it at me. I popped to my feet, using the force to drive my shoulder into his wrists.

The gun fired again, tearing a hole in the ceiling above our heads as I slammed my forehead down into the clerk’s nose. His head whipped back in a spray of blood, but he didn’t lose his hold on the weapon. Hell, he didn’t even wobble, at least not like everything inside me told me he should have. No, this was decidedly unnatural. He swung the gun at my head. It came so fast, I barely had time to dodge it and the super-heated metal skimmed by me so closely I could feel the warmth of it on my skin.

“Abigail de la Mancha,” the clerk said in a voice that seemed too robotic to be human. “You must turn yourself over to me.”

“Not happening, Beanpole,” I said, taking the opportunity to drive my foot into his chest. The blow caught him off guard. It was sort of like he didn’t expect me to fight back. That was crazy, right?

He fell backward, smashing a Chester the Cheetah display and spilling cheesy goodness all over the cheap tile. I leapt over him, hitting the floor hard just a few inches past his head, scooped up my treat-filled bag, and high-tailed it toward the exit. Okay, yeah it was stealing, but he had just tried to kill me. Some stolen candy was the least of his worries.

I spun at the end of the aisle, my feet skidding on the linoleum as I crashed into the glass doors. They didn’t open. Why didn’t they open? I barely had the time to contemplate it when the ominous sound of a shotgun cocking another shell into place filled my ears.

Brake lights filled my vision. Everything seemed to slow down, distilling down to a single moment. I threw myself to the side as the backend of a 1980s Ford pickup that was mostly made from primer and rust burst through the double doors. I scrunched myself into a ball as glass rained down inside the tiny space for the second time in as many minutes. The truck fishtailed, cleaving through the register and throwing cigarettes and alcohol bottles to the floor.

I glanced over my shoulder to see the clerk lying sprawled and broken on the tile, but even though his leg was bent the wrong way and a shard of glass the size of a tennis racket was lodged in his chest, he was still trying to shoot me.

Blood gushed out of him, spreading out around his purposefully moving body as he tried to bring the shotgun up to bear. Shouldn’t he have been screaming or futzing with the wound? What kind of person could still try to kill me as his life spilled away onto the floor? No one normal, that’s for damned sure.

Stephen threw the Ford’s door open just as the shotgun went off, and the sound of buckshot pinging off the metal filled my ears and made my heart leap into my throat. That had been close.

“Abby! Get in!” he cried, gesturing for me to move it.

As I scrambled to my feet, he threw the truck into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal. The wheels spun, spitting potato chips and magazine covers into the air as the tailgate destroyed a cardboard model who, despite the bag in her hand, had never eaten a potato chip in her life. The Ford lurched forward with a jerk that practically shook the frame from the vehicle.

I sprinted toward the Ford, throwing myself into the bed as another shotgun blast obliterated the truck’s back window. Bits of safety glass rained down on me as we hit the broken glass doors and skidded across the pavement in a turn that threw me against the inner wall of the truck.

My breath whooshed out. My shoulder screamed in pain. The tires squealed so loud it was hard to hear over them. The smell of burning rubber filled my nose. I ignored it and tried to claw my way toward the cab. I grabbed hold of the side wall, clinging to it as the truck burst forward in a cloud of black smoke, weaving into traffic amidst a chorus of horn blasts.

I brushed away the glass clinging to the back window frame with the arm of my sweat shirt and threw myself through the broken window. I landed on the glass covered seat and scurried into a sitting position, ignoring the safety glass beneath my jeans.

“Did you get the juice?” Stephen asked, throwing me a smile that would have been cute if his face wasn’t sunken and pale. He was bleeding from a wound on his side, fluid seeping through his blue Hawaiian shirt, staining it.

“Yes, but it’s in the back,” I replied, buckling my seat belt so I wouldn’t get thrown through the windshield if something else happened. I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be in the truck because it was too hot to keep now, but safety first, ya know?

“You had one job, Abby.” He shook his head, and the motion made him wince. “Get juice. I recall you being pretty clear about its importance.”

“It’s in the back, jerk,” I muttered, glancing over my shoulder toward the Kwik E Mart, but it was too far in the distance for me to see much of anything. “What the hell was that, Stephen? I find it hard to believe your agency has pimple-faced agents in far flung rest stops just to track me.”

“You’d be surprised,” he replied, his face settling into a grim line as he stared out the windshield. “We’ll need a new car.”

“I know that. Stop avoiding the question,” I snapped. “I was almost shot full of holes by a clerk who didn’t even care he was dying.” I took a deep breath. “And you’re bleeding. You probably tore out all your stitches… again. Just tell me what it was.” I resisted the urge to add “unlike last time” because the truth was Stephen had so many secrets, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to tell me everything. At least not right now, not all at once. “Given all that’s going on, is a bit of 411 on our attacker too much to ask for?”

“I really hope that wasn’t what I think it was.” Stephen looked at me even though he should have been watching the road. His lips trembled as he tried and failed, to smile at me. Great. My vampiric secret agent was scared. That… that wasn’t good. Stephen wasn’t supposed to get scared. Even half-dead, he’d been more than a match for most of the guys the Agency had sent after us. What had changed?

“What do you think it was?” I asked, already dreading the answer. Whatever had him this scared was probably bad. Really bad.

“I think that was the flit, Abby, and if it’s after us, I’m not sure how to escape it.” He swallowed, and his jaw tightened. Then he slammed his palm against the steering wheel so hard that the truck veered to the left. “Dammit!”

“What’s the flit?” I asked, reaching out and resting my hand on his knee. He was shaking.

“The flit is a demon who can take over a person’s body and make him or her do its bidding. Think of it like a monster that turns your average Joe into the Terminator with a thought, and you’ve got the idea.” He shook his head.

“You mean to tell me that guy had no idea what was going on? Some demon just downloaded itself into his brain and made him try to kill me?” I asked, quirking a disbelieving eyebrow at him. “That sounds ridiculous.”

“More ridiculous than a sleeper cell guy hiding out in the middle of nowhere?” Stephen shrugged. “How many times has that happened in the last week?”

With those words, the gravity of it hit me like a wrecking ball because that’d happened six times already. Only, this time, I had beat up an innocent guy. Hell, he was definitely, most assuredly dead, and why? Because he’d been around me when the flit decided to take him over. That made me responsible…

I was about to say something to that effect when a grey soccer van slammed into the driver’s side of our truck. Our vehicle pitched sideways, skidding across the asphalt and into the path of a tiny green Nissan. Brakes squealed, but it didn’t matter. The bed of our truck crumpled as the Nissan’s front end pretty much disintegrated. I was thrown into my seatbelt with so much force, the rebound smashed my head into the side window.

Everything went hazy as the red SUV in front of us slammed on its brakes. I watched it through the side window, everything going in slow motion. Its tires spun, spitting up gravel and smoke, then it came rocketing back toward us.

I don’t know how I managed to get my seatbelt off, but the next thing I knew, I had thrown myself out of the truck. I hit the street hard on my shoulder as I rolled to my feet. My skin burned, and I knew I’d been scraped raw. I tried to force that out of my mind as the SUV drove through the pickup. Had Stephen managed to get out in time?

“Stephen!” I yelled, taking a step toward the obliterated Ford as the SUV’s door swung open. An eight-year-old girl with blonde pigtails and a red-riding hood cape stepped out of the vehicle. She stared at me with glassy, dead eyes that reminded me of the clerk. Blood trailed down her face from a cut above her left eyebrow, but she ignored it.

“Abigail, do not resist!” she squeaked in a little mouseketeer voice. “You cannot escape.”

“Please…” I said, backing up, my hands out in front of me. “Don’t make me…”

She sprinted at me, tiny hands clutched into fists. I sidestepped her charge, but she lashed out with machine-like precision, catching me in the side of the ribs. Pain flashed through me as she followed it up with a kick to the back of my knee. I fell forward, pitching to the ground. I flung my hands out to stop myself, but she leapt on my back, using her weight to drive me face-first into the pavement.

I hit hard on my forearms and tucked my body into a roll. There was a horrible crunching noise as the girl smacked into the pavement, but amazingly, she didn’t let go. I came to my feet, and without thinking, used our momentum to send her flying.

Her nails tore at my sweatshirt as she careened through the air before slamming to the ground a moment later. The girl’s head smacked into the concrete, and for a moment, she tried to sit up before falling brokenly backward to the street. My heart sank as I watched. I’d just beaten up a little kid. Oh. My. God.

I took an absent step toward her, my hands reaching out to pull the broken girl into a hug, even though I’d been the one to maim her.

“What are you doing?” called a deep voice behind me. I spun to see a huge guy on a purple Harley staring at me in shock. He reminded me of one of those old Hell’s Angels guys, only with way more tattoos.

Behind me, a girl’s screams filled my ears, and I hesitated, shooting a glance over my shoulder. The girl lay there crying, her face twisted in agony because one arm was bent at an obscene angle.

I ducked just as a crowbar cleaved through the space where my head had been. My leg shot out, catching the big biker in the side of the knee. A horrible crack filled the air. He fell, still swinging the crowbar at me. His face set in cold, inhuman determination. I leapt backward, and the crowbar smashed into the asphalt a second before he crashed to the ground. His face changed in an instant. The dazed expression was gone, replaced by pain and confusion.

“My knee!” he howled, dropping the weapon and gripping his leg. I grabbed the crowbar and whirled around, looking for the next attacker when a gunshot went off. I spun toward it, my heart racing in my chest like an out of control train. Stephen stood there, bloody and broken with a smoking revolver in his hand.

I glanced in the direction of his weapon to see a police car spinning off the side of the road, one tire completely obliterated. A glassy-eyed police officer was leaning out of the driver’s window, still trying to take aim and blast me.

My adrenaline shifted into overdrive as I sprinted toward Stephen. His lips were set in a hard line as he jumped on the biker’s Harley. I slid onto the seat behind him as he surged forward, barely giving me a chance to wrap my arm around him. Blood seeped into my sweatshirt as I pressed my body against his back. He was cold. Way too cold for it to be good.

We left the road in a cloud of dust. Behind us, people were either screaming, or looking around trying to figure out what the hell happened. Either way, it didn’t seem like it mattered. How the hell were we supposed to outrun a soulless demon that could take over whoever it wanted?

As the adrenaline left me, Donovan leaned close to me, frigid breath kissing my flesh. “You just beat up an eight-year-old girl with pigtails. I’m pretty sure that makes you a monster.”

2

I watched Stephen approach the ‘hotel’ office from the bushes, which I’ll be honest, was a little disconcerting. I mean, what if someone saw me hiding here, watching him like some kind of crazy stalker? There’d definitely be a confrontation then. It’d draw attention, and the flit would come…

“And you’ll kill some old man on oxygen,” Donovan cooed in my ear. “Or throw a toddler through a window.”

“Quiet!” I said even as the words made me cold all over. I resisted the urge to hug myself as a vision of myself shooting an old man in a wheelchair while he tried to brain me with a heavy, metal oxygen tank played over and over in my head. That hadn’t actually happened, but it could, and that was almost enough…

Still, I couldn’t focus on that now. No. I had a job to do. Look out for bad guys. I turned my attention back to Stephen and let out one slow breath. I knew why Stephen was dressed the way he was, but he could have tried to look a little more like he was on the up and up. He had on a pair of huge black sunglasses and an Angels’ baseball cap that was pulled down over his face so he was nearly indistinguishable. To complete the ensemble, he’d worn a giant Angels’ hoodie. It made him look like the most suspicious guy in the world.

I mean who walks up to the office for cabins in the woods wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, and a baseball hat and offers to pay in cash? No one good, that’s for sure. We’d be lucky if the clerk didn’t call the cops. Of course, if that happened, we’d be attacked long before the call even finished dialing, so there was that. I guess when you were dealing with something that could download itself into anyone’s mind and try to kill you, not being recognized was key. Then again, I was pretty sure this place had exactly zero surveillance, which was why we’d picked it.

Stephen stepped up to the glass window and began talking, his hands waving animatedly in a way that wasn’t normal for him. In fact, his entire body had taken on a weird frantic energy. It still amazed me how he could change not only his voice, but his body language at the drop of a hat. Then again, there had to be some advantage to being a vampire with years of training, right?

As he pulled off his earbuds, letting the white cables dangle out of the front of his sweatshirt and swing like white pendulums, I almost laughed because I knew they weren’t actually attached to anything. Stephen liked to wear them in public so he could listen to people who would think he was ignoring them for music.

Stephen nodded, shaking his head exaggeratedly and pulled a wad of cash from his back pocket. He peeled off a couple bills and pushed them across the counter before shoving the rest of the money back into his pocket. A giant brass key slid into view, and he snatched it off the wooden counter before turning to point at one of the cabins in the distance.

The guy behind the counter must have said something because Stephen nodded and began walking in the direction of the cabin. His movements were slow, not slow enough to draw attention mind you, but not quick enough to seem like he was hurrying.

As he stepped up to the front door of the most dilapidated cabin in the lot, I had the sudden urge to cry. Its painted green roof was cracked and peeling, causing the long strips of bleached, water-damaged wood beneath to show. A huge cobweb stretched across the frame of one dirty window. The other was completely boarded up with graffiti-covered particle board.

Worse, as Stephen swung open the stained red door, the house creaked and groaned like a one-eyed monster with a giant toothless maw. Somehow, he resisted the urge to look around before striding through the door. A moment later, lights came on inside, spilling out through the doorway and spider-covered window like the fading gasp of a dying sun.

I took a deep breath, steeling myself for my inevitable dash to the cabin and touched my hair. It was dyed fuchsia and was plastered into huge six inch spikes. Granted, this made me stand out like a sore thumb, but combined with the fake tattoos and piercings, made me look completely different. Whether or not that was enough to fool whatever the agency was using to find us was anyone’s guess, but a little disguise never hurt anyone.

I pulled on my leather biker jacket with patches for bands I didn’t recognize and zipped it up over my bulletproof vest. I wasn’t quite sure what the sigil-inscribed vest was made from since it was barely thicker than a t-shirt, but it was strong enough to stop a sniper bullet… something I knew from experience. It made me immensely glad I’d stolen it from an agent a couple days back.

My stomach gurgled, crying out for more than the protein bar I’d eaten a few hours ago. Hopefully, we’d be able to get something to eat that wasn’t out of a vending machine. Maybe then my belly would stop rumbling hard enough to wake the dead. I pushed the thought away and stepped sideways through the bushes, circling through the shrubs and weeds that scratched and poked at my holey jeans. After what felt like hours, I was only a few feet from the cabin’s entrance.

When I got as close as I could without leaving the bushes, I shut my eyes, counted to six, and opened them. I sprinted the fifty feet to the cabin in a mad dash and threw myself inside, slamming the door behind me. Stephen stood a few feet in front of me, his gun pointed straight at me with an amused smile on his face.

“Glad you could join me,” he replied, and my heart hammered in my chest for the split second it took him to lower his gun and stick it into the waistband of his jeans. When I didn’t lower my fists, he sighed. “I told you I can’t be taken over because I’m a vampire. It only works on normal humans.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better when you have a gun pointed at me.” I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and unclenched my fists. “Besides, I still don’t understand why they can’t track you.”

“It’s not exactly paradise, but it’ll do for now,” Stephen said, gesturing at the room and waving off the question, which was annoying because that seemed like something they’d be able to do.

Still, if he said they couldn’t track him, who was I to argue?

“How long is for now?” I asked as I looked around. The cabin was tiny, which wasn’t really a problem, but every inch of the place was covered in a layer of dust thick enough to send up a dust storm of extinction-level proportions.

The lime green couch pushed up against one wall was so threadbare, stuffing was actually poking up from the cushions, and the wooden rocking chair next to it was missing an arm completely.

Then again, it was infinitely better than say, getting shot in the head by a soccer mom being mind-controlled by a soulless killing machine… but not a lot.

My heart sank into my toes as I moved over to the table and pressed my index finger against the surface before inspecting it. My finger had left a small, clean divide in the dust. Awesome.

“There’s only one bedroom. You can take it, Abby,” Stephen said, voice amused. “But I wouldn’t go and unpack all my things. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay out of sight here.”

I glanced up at him. He was smiling at me, his perfect mouth stretched into a grin that melted my heart into a little puddle of goo. I looked at where he was pointing and spied the door that led to the bedroom. My cheeks burst into flames as a horrible, no good, very bad thought flitted through my silly brain. I could invite him to stay with me in that tiny bedroom. Who was going to stop me? My mom? The worst she could do about it would be to roll over in her grave.

“You should do it, Abby,” Donovan whispered, and his voice startled me so much I jumped. “I could watch. It’ll be great.” The look in his eyes made heat rise on my cheeks. “Why, it’d be almost like a threesome.”

“What?” Stephen asked, staring at me with concern in his eyes. “Abby, what is it?”

What was I supposed to tell him, exactly? That the ghost of the man I’d killed was haunting me? That Donovan was whispering in my ear because I was a horrible murderer? That… that… I wanted to take Stephen into that bedroom with me largely so I wouldn’t die a virgin? Only… only I didn’t want my ghost to watch?

I bit my lip hard enough for it to hurt and drove my crazy down into the soles of my feet. “Nothing, I’m okay. Um… where’s the bathroom?” I squeaked.

“Over there,” he replied, pointing to a door next to the tiny kitchenette. I hurried past him without looking back, grabbed the knob, and pushed the door open. It screeched, scraping along the musty green carpet like it was one size too big for the frame.

“Too bad,” Donovan said, and a ghostly chill trailed down my back like someone was dragging icy fingers down my back. “I’d have liked to watch you fumble around…”

“Shut up,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice quiet enough to keep Stephen from hearing me. Stupid vampire hearing… “Just shut up.”

I sat down on the tiny yellowed toilet seat and put my face in my hands. What was I doing? Was I really on the run from a government agency full of witches, vampires, werewolves, and now demons? How could this have happened to me when just a few weeks ago I was going to junior college and watching my best friend write her name in her notebook attached to the last names of celebrities?

My face in the medicine cabinet to my right stared back at me. My eyes were sunken, with deep, purple bruises underneath. My hair was ridiculous… And for some reason, Stephen didn’t seem to care. He’d gotten shot trying to save me, had fled the Agency to keep me safe, and here I was, a silly girl who couldn’t even tell him how I really felt.

“Because you know he’ll say no.” Donovan waved his hand in front of my face to get my attention. “Sure, he’ll make some excuse about being noble or something, but deep down, we know the truth.” He leaned in close to me so that his lips were just this side of touching my ear. “You just aren’t good enough, Abby.”

I swallowed a sob and leapt to my feet to… what? Shove away my ghost. I’d tried that before, and near as I could tell, I couldn’t actually touch him. Instead, I unclenched my fists and moved to the sink. Thankfully the water turned on. I peeled off my jacket and threw it on the toilet before splashing some in my face.

“Go on,” Donovan said from behind me, his broken, bleeding face leering at me from the mirror. “See what happens. Take off all your clothes and walk out there. I’d bet you a fistful of hundreds you get turned down.”

“You’re really not being very nice,” I whispered as my heart sank because, honestly, I was afraid he was right. Instead, I bit back my tears and swallowed my fear. No, I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore, not of Stephen, not of anyone. I threw an angry glare at Donovan before walking past him and opening the door.

Stephen was standing in the kitchen, his back to me, and as I approached, I realized something smelled good. My mouth watered as I approached and put my arms around his waist. He tensed for a second before relaxing and glancing at me over his shoulder.

“Whatcha cooking?” I asked as he turned toward me.

“The cupboard had some pasta and sauce. I thought I’d take the opportunity to cook dinner for us.” He bent down and kissed me lightly on the lips. As he did, I pressed into him with my mouth, pulling him against me. He hesitated for a moment before devouring me with his mouth. His other hand left the pot on the stove and wrapped around me as he pushed me backward against the sink. Take that Donovan!

When our kiss finally broke, he put his forehead against mine and smiled. “As much as I enjoy this, I don’t want the first meal I cook for you to burn. Why don’t you go relax, and I’ll come get you when it’s done?”

“And what should I do in the meantime? Read a magazine?” I asked, a devious smile flitting across my lips.

“Why don’t you go make the bed,” he said, smiling mischievously at me before stepping past me to attend to his sauce.

“Um… okay,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure it was actually audible. My heart was beating so hard in my chest, I could barely even hear past it.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to even make it to the bedroom because the entire trip passed by in a blur. That all ended when I stepped into the room. It was dominated by dust bunnies, and a shadeless lamp stood cockeyed in the corner. It was the only thing in there baring a bare yellowed mattress on a rusty metal frame. There weren’t even any windows, which while good for hiding, was a little dreary.

“Are there any sheets?” I called over my shoulder as I moved up to the bed and gingerly pressed my hand against its spongy surface. Thankfully, it wasn’t damp. That would have been too much. Then again, I’d spent the last several nights sleeping in the back of a pickup truck, so a bed, gross or not, was something of a luxury. How sad.

Still, luxury or not, this wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to be with Stephen for the first time. Even on the run, we deserved something better than this, right? A blush spread across my cheeks as I stared at the bed, wishing that somehow, we were in one of those cabins so common in romance novels.

There could be a fireplace and a bearskin rug… He would push me back down on it, slow and sensual…

“Yeah, I think the guy at the front said there’s some in the closet,” Stephen said. His intrusive voice shattered my vision, returning me to the desolate bedroom. Maybe… maybe tonight wouldn’t be the night…

“I’ll check,” I replied, my voice a little shaky. God, I was stupid. Here we were being chased by a murderous demon and an entire government agency, and somehow, my mind fixated on Stephen. Beautiful, brave Stephen… who had been shot trying to save me. Thankfully, that hadn’t stuck. Mostly because he’d managed to get some blood from a gang of demon-possessed construction workers and was looking a lot better.

I let out a sigh, moved to the closet, and pulled the door open. A blast of dust caught me full in the face, and I staggered backward, coughing and sputtering. Tears filled my eyes, and I wiped them with the back of my hand as I fought to catch my breath.

The closet was pretty empty except for a folded towel, a small pillow, and a stained red quilt that was coming apart at the seams so the batting inside showed through. Swell.

I took the pillow from the closet and flung it on the bed. I grabbed the blanket and was about to wring it out when someone knocked at the door. Was it that clerk? Had he forgotten to tell Stephen something? Or was it something worse?

The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up, and my heart began to hammer in my chest as I crept closer to the doorway and peered out.

Stephen was staring at the door, one hand on his pistol. “Who is it?” he called, taking a step toward the door.

“Sir, I’ve brought you some sheets. I forgot that we didn’t put any in the closet,” said a muffled voice from the other side of a door.

Stephen glanced at me, and when I nodded, he pulled the gun free and held it off to the side. Very slowly, he opened the door a crack. Apparently, what he saw didn’t bother him that much because he opened the door a little wider and took a couple pairs of folded sheets.

“Thanks,” Stephen replied and shut the door without waiting for a response or leaving a tip, which was somewhat rude.

“Well, that is a plus,” I said, stepping out of the doorway. I’d barely taken two steps when the sheets exploded in a cloud of white smoke. I threw myself backward, landing hard on the bed and rolling to the floor. There was a thump in the other room, and the door burst open and smacked against the frame.

Dense white fog drifted into the bedroom as I crawled forward on my elbows to get a better vantage point. I strained my ears, listening for sounds, but the only thing I heard were a couple whumps in quick succession. Were they silenced rounds? Stephen wasn’t using a silencer so…

I peered out but couldn’t see anything, not even the stupid couch. A radio came on, blaring the soundtrack to the Lion King so loud, it hurt my ears. Instinctively, I grabbed my ears just as a boot came at me from the fog. I rolled to the side and hopped to my feet as a bedraggled man dressed in faded green tie-dye charged into the room. His head swiveled toward me, and his eyes narrowed just a touch. How had he gotten in here? Had Stephen failed to stop him? Another thought struck me, rippling down my insides and reducing them to a quivering mass of jelly. Was Stephen dead? No… that was impossible…

“Abigail de la Mancha,” he said, voice strained and twisted like it was two separate voices. “You will come with me.”

“Like hell I will,” I replied, curling my hands into fists and holding them in front of me. “I’m not afraid of a little bare-knuckle brawling.”

He didn’t smile, didn’t even blink. He just came at me. I hit him, my arms flying out like the fists of fury they were, pounding his face into hamburger. Unfortunately, it did little to deter him.

“You’re going to have to kill him,” Donovan said, voice like acid in my ears. “Which, for you, shouldn’t be hard. You’re a killer, Abby.” Deep down, I was worried he was right, but there had to be another way, right? I couldn’t go around killing people just because it was the easiest way to take them out once they were brain-jacked by the flit…

“No!” I replied as the man’s hand grabbed me around the throat. He hoisted me into the air, cutting off my oxygen supply. The room started to swirl as his fingers tightened like a vice.

“Do it, Abby.” Donovan smiled, his face peering at me over the man’s shoulder. He touched the bullet hole in his forehead and licked the blood from his fingers. “Just do it, Abby. Stop pretending to be a good guy. Just let it go.” Donovan’s words echoed in my, sloshing in my brain as my blood throbbed and pounded in my ears.

My jab caught the man in the throat, hard enough to smash in his windpipe. Instead of falling to his knees gasping, he slammed me backward into the wall. My vision went black around the edges, and my hands fell to my sides. The man lifted me another inch, his other arm pressing my throat to the wall. His empty, emotionless eyes stared at me. My mind raced, trying to think of something, anything I could do to stop him when he released me and collapsed to the ground.

That’s when I realized he wasn’t breathing. I’d killed him with my attack, and he’d kept trying to strangle me. That meant… that meant I’d killed an innocent person. I fought the urge to cry as I sucked in a breath that was jagged knives and staples. I could deal with this later, right now, I had to grab Stephen and get out of here. And though I couldn’t tell you why, a surge of clarity fell over me, pushing the guilt and horror away so the only thing that remained was the last fading strands of a broken cobweb clinging to my skin.

Bullets exploded through the cabins walls, and I dropped to my hands and knees. I crawled forward as the lamp shattered, spraying glass across the carpet. I dropped to my belly, shielding my head with my hands as glass rained down on me again. After what felt like forever, the bullets stopped. I held my breath and listened. I didn’t hear so much as a peep, and for a moment, I was worried I was being watched.

I crawled forward on my elbows until I reached the main room. The fog was too thick for me to see anything. Well that meant they couldn’t see me either, right? I took a deep breath and listened again. After several seconds of silence, I began crawling forward as quietly as possible.

My hands pressed into something warm and sticky on the carpet. I looked down and nearly screamed. My hands were covered in blood, and what was worse, there was a puddle of it. A horrible thought surged through me as I threw myself forward.

Stephen was lying on his back, blood pooling around him from two bullet holes in his chest… right where his heart would be. My stomach seized up. I fought the urge to throw up as my body sort of forgot how to breathe, and my heart shattered into a thousand pieces of broken glass.

I wasn’t sure how long I was frozen there. I don’t even remember hearing the jackbooted men rush into the room, or what happened in the aftermath of that moment. The only thing I remember was rage, warm and hot on my tongue, filling me up like a balloon and leaving me raw and wild.

3

The moon shone down on me through the branches of the tree overhead like an angry, all-seeing god. Only the moon wasn’t my problem. The flit was my problem, and I didn’t even know how to go about fighting something that could turn everyone and anyone into a weapon. I’d killed a guy, actually killed a guy, who had done nothing more than be around when I got spotted. Worse, I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten away from the cabin. Had I killed more people?

I swallowed, pulling in one shaky breath that tasted like gasoline and ripped up my lungs like razorblades. My hands were covered in scarlet, and as I rubbed them together, little bits flaked away into the darkness. Dried blood. Great.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure where I was, or why no one had found me. How long had I blacked out? Hours, days… minutes? It had been about an hour before dusk when we’d checked into the cabin… Maybe it was only a few minutes later?

I just… just wasn’t sure what to do. I was alone in a field with stupid pink hair, a billion magic-infused skills I’d never had to do anything to learn, and no goddamned idea what to do. If I’d been a real witch, one with training and experience, I’d know what to do, right? I’d have a plan.

Instead, I was a cheap copy. A hack. I was someone who had never played a game turning on cheat codes before they started. And it showed. It showed in my every decision, my every action…

Still, throwing myself a pity party wasn’t going to help anything. I needed to move, to escape. I needed action.

I took another breath and pushed myself to my feet even as the world around me swayed. I gripped the pine tree next to me and sucked in a third deep breath that smelled like pine trees and sorrow.

“You killed them all, Abby. You ripped their bodies apart with your bare hands.” Donovan smiled at me from the trees. His grin huge and menacing. “Too bad you didn’t do it before they killed Stephen, eh? To be fair, I’m a little surprised they waxed him. They must really want you dead.”

Stephen… Beautiful, wonderful Stephen… he had saved me from my mother, from his government… He had stolen me away and tried to keep me safe, and what had that gotten him? Shot in the heart by his own people. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair they’d killed him, taken him from me. I swallowed, trying, and failing, to fight off the tears that filled my eyes, blurring my vision. My throat closed up as I fell back to my knees and sobbed.

“Shut up!” I cried, whirling on Donovan’s ghost as my hands gripped the dirt in front of me like they could somehow pull Stephen back from the grave, pull him back into my arms. “Just shut up!”

“Everyone you love dies, Abby. You’re a disease, a cancer…” Donovan’s cursed smile loomed over me like a Cheshire cat grin. “It’s why I had to kill Esmeralda.” With his words, something broke inside me, something that left me raw and wild. The pain of my foster mom’s death rippled through me as I looked around, desperate for someone, something.

Donovan had shot my foster mother, Esmeralda Banks, when she’d tried to save me. They had worked together, and he’d disposed of her like she was garbage. The ground got sort of hazy and hard to see as tears clouded my vision, slipping down my cheeks and spattering on the ground.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I squeaked, my words burning in my throat like lava. He said nothing at all, just squatted down and smirked at me. His face said it all. I deserved this. I deserved everything because I was a horrible person. Because I had killed him, and beat up that little girl, and…

“You could have saved Stephen if you’d been thinking about doing something other than getting laid,” Donovan’s voice was like heavy syrup, thick and cloying. “But you couldn’t even watch for the signs, couldn’t even manage to save the one person who supposedly mattered to you.”

“Go away…” I mumbled into my hands because I was worried he was right. I could have saved him, couldn’t I? I had done it before… “Just leave me alone.”

“That’s right, Abby. Cry. You’re weak. You can’t win.” He faded away slowly until only his piercing emerald eyes remained behind. “You couldn’t save Stephen, and you can’t save yourself. There’s nothing you can do.”

“I can do things!” I snarled as a sudden thought seized me. This was why Gabriella had destroyed two cities— just to show the world that she was a threat. I’d thought she had gone off the deep end, but maybe… maybe she hadn’t.

These people didn’t understand anything but power. And I had power. I had all my mother’s skills that Gabriella had built up over multiple lifetimes as a super badass physical witch. Not only that, I had the knowledge of how to work all her tech and operate her empire. I even had biometrics that could unlock all of Gabriella’s secrets. I could make them stop if I got a big enough stick, right? And Gabriella had a really big stick. All I had to do was get to one of her bases. If I could do that, well, they’d have to listen to me, right?

Donovan watched me for a long time, eyes appraising me. “Are you going to turn your grief to anger? To vengeance?” he asked, raising one eyebrow. “If you are, then I approve.” His grin sent a chill down my spine. “Wrathful destruction is always the best course. Always.”

“That’s not what I’m going to do,” I replied, turning away from him and staring up at the trees. “I’m going to finish this, once and for all. I’m going to make it so they can’t keep taking from me anymore.”

“And how are you going to manage that when you don’t even know where Gabriella’s secret bases are?” Realization blossomed across his face. “But the Agency would know, wouldn’t they, Abby? They would have files on Gabriella, and hey, if you have to break a few agents to get them, well, you can live with that, can’t you?” he slithered closer. “Because let’s face it. When it really matters, you’re an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of girl, aren’t you?”

He reached out and wiped my cheek with one finger, and although he couldn’t actually touch me without phasing through my flesh, something about it was strangely comforting. “Don’t cry anymore, Abby. It’s time you took the fight to them. Showed them what you are.” He smirked, and the sight of it made something harden inside my chest. “The Agency is getting no more tears from you tonight unless you let them.”

I sniffed and wiped my eyes one last time as I turned away from him. Was I really going to go through with this? Was I really going to take on the Agency directly?

Yes.

I was going to do it for Stephen. I was going to take something from them, something that would let them know just what they had taken from me. As much as I hated to admit it, this time Donovan was right. They’d get no more tears from me. No, they’d get a fistful of justice.

Now I just needed to find some agents, and fortunately, I knew how to find some. I just had to show my face, and like magic, the flit would be there to take over everyone and destroy me. The only thing was, I didn’t think I could make the flit talk. It was a demonic parasite inhabiting a person’s body.

No, I needed to get my hands on a flesh and blood agent and convince him that helping me was in his best interest. When we’d been attacked in the cabin, other agents had been in the area, presumably to hunt me down. If they were supernaturals, then they couldn’t be taken over, either…

Hell, they might be out here right now, hunting me. How far away could they really be?

I’d been going about this all wrong. I’d been prey. Now it was time to be the hunter. This time, they’d be the ones left bleeding and dying on the cold unforgiving ground. I steeled myself. Donovan was right. I was a killer. I had killed. It was time to stop trying to play this game with one arm tied behind my back… and with that thought, I could almost hear Donovan cackling to himself.

Hunger rumbled in my belly, and thirst clawed at my throat as I got to my feet. I pushed the sensations of my body down into my toes as I listened for sounds. A twig snapped somewhere far off. It was close, not close enough to be a threat, not yet…

I moved forward, weaving through the bushes and shadows like a jungle cat. I made no noise as I stepped, my feet honed by skills shoved into my brain by an experiment gone wrong and magical abilities I’d inherited from my birth mom. Not only had my inherited magic made me stronger, faster, and more durable than the average person, but I had the skills to use those abilities to the fullest.

A leaf rustled a few meters to my left. I turned slowly toward it, dropping down into the brush. A moment later, the barest edge of a black-gloved hand passed by me, so closely I could have rubbed my nose on it if I’d wanted to do so.

Calm descended over me, filling me with a profound sense of purpose. My body lashed out, grabbing his still moving hand and jerking him into the bushes. I twisted my hips and slammed him down, his helmeted head smacking into the ground with a hard thunk. He was moving, trying to bring around a weapon, but I drove my knee into his ribs, once, twice, three times, four… I lost count.

My blows kept coming, kept hammering him until he stopped moving. When that finally happened, I stopped, my chest heaving, and my knuckles raw and burning. I shut my eyes and listened, straining to hear the sound of anyone or anything, but there were no sounds in the woods. Perhaps this guy was alone, a scout maybe? Or maybe he was just bad at his job.

Either way, he was going to tell me what was going on. I reached into his pockets, rummaging around until I found some zip ties and turned them into handcuffs. It was sort of ironic because he’d probably intended to tie me up with them.

I pulled his gun free of his holster and stared at it. A huge heavy thing that seemed like it could blow away an elephant. I checked to see that it was loaded and pressed the barrel under his chin in case he decided to, you know, not be unconscious. I undid his chinstrap and pulled the helmet off his head. It was heavy. Heavier than I expected given that most of the agency’s stuff seemed to be light as a feather thanks to being magically enhanced.

Sounds filled my ears. People were coming. I stared at the downed soldier and sighed. I wouldn’t have time to interrogate him. I needed to get away, get somewhere quiet… An idea sprang into my mind.

Getting the rest of his clothes off took longer than I had expected, but suiting up in it, for whatever reason, didn’t. Sure the pants were too long, and the shirt was too bulky, but otherwise? Well, it just seemed like I’d pulled on body armor a million times before. Bonus, he’d even had some grenades…

I stood up in my new disguise and hoisted the guy over my shoulder which was no easy task, even with my magic-fueled strength. My legs burned and swayed as I found a nice, covered spot and zip-tied him to a tree. Then I buried him under a mountain of debris. I checked my new pistol one last time and pulled the facemask down over my face to shield my features. I smiled and hit the button on the outside of the mask, and the forest lit up in shades of green.

It wasn’t long before I made my way back to the cabins. Sitting in the center of the parking lot were three black SUVs complete with tinted windows and government plates. Fortunately, there were only a few agents crawling around the area like black-suited ants. One of them spotted me and waved me over.

He was tall and thin, reminding me of one of those stick bugs you see in documentaries. His skin was so dark, it was nearly blue in the moonlight. He pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and came closer, peering at me with alert brown eyes. He wore one of those cheap black suits that made me think of FBI guys on television.

“Report in, agent.” His voice was crisp and matter-of-fact. For whatever reason, it reminded me of skim-milk and rice cakes. He put his glasses back on, settling them on his bald head like he habitually pulled them on and off.

I punched him. Right in the face. As hard as I could. He fell, hitting the ground with a whump. His glasses bent sideways, and one of the lenses had popped out. I dropped down next to him and hit him again. People turned toward me, heads swiveling as their guns rose. I looked around frantically, my gun pointed into the tree line.

“Did you see that?” I called, dragging the unconscious man backward toward the SUVs as other agents began to come toward us. While it didn’t seem like they believed me, their guns wavered toward the forest. As the first one reached me, one of the grenades I’d stolen from the unconscious agent detonated.

The shockwave of the blast stole the breath from my lungs as trees and dirt went flying outward in a rippling explosion of flame. It was way bigger than I’d expected, which was good. The agents spun, eyeing the blast as I jerked open the passenger seat of the nearest SUV and pulled the unconscious agent inside.

I slid around the vehicle and tossed the remaining grenades beneath the other two SUVs before sliding into the driver’s seat. As I threw it into gear, the jackboots turned back toward me. The tires of my SUV squealed on the gravel as we tore out of the parking lot. There were a few random shouts before the window behind me erupted into flame as their vehicles were ripped apart by a geyser of fire and sound.

4

“Wake up,” I said and dumped the entire bucket of ice water on the agent’s head. He jerked once, struggling at his bonds like an electrified snake. His eyes shot open, and he stared hard at me for a second before his eyes widened in recognition.

“You,” he said, gawking at me. Thoughts sprinted across the surface of his brown eyes before he exhaled once, an explosive annoyed sound.

“Me,” I replied, moving close enough to loom over him. I ran a hand through my hot pink hair and grinned my best crazy smile at him. Then I casually tapped his right hand with a pair of pliers. “I’d like to have a little chat.”

Donovan smiled at me from behind the man, nodding his bloody head at me. “That’s a girl… now rip off his fingernails one by one until he starts singing like a canary.”

The agent glanced from my face to the pliers and back again. “What do you want?” he asked. He didn’t seem scared or angry. Maybe this was something they trained for? I resisted the urge to shiver.

“You think you’re going to get off that easily? You think I just want to talk?” I whispered in his ear. “After what you people have done to me, you think I only want to talk… how cute.”

“You wouldn’t have captured me if you didn’t want to talk to me,” he replied, voice calm. And why shouldn’t he be calm? He had an excellent point. “I’d just be dead, and let’s be real, Abby. You’re not the torturing type. Gabriella might have been, but our files say you’re not your mother’s daughter.”

I smacked him across the face with the pliers. His head jerked backward in a spray of blood. A long red gash had opened on his cheek and crimson fluid started leaking down his flesh.

“Can we just not,” he said, pursing his overly large lips. “You may ‘know’ what you’re doing, Abby, but you don’t really. We both know that.”

“You should hit him again,” Donovan said, pointing to his collar bone. “Jab them right here and twist. Show him you’re a badass.”

I stared at the spot for a moment before pressing the tip of the pliers against it. He didn’t even so much as flinch. “You’re making me want to hit you again.”

“Then do it and get it over with,” he replied, face completely neutral. What was this guy’s deal?

“He thinks you’re bluffing, Abby…” Donovan smirked. “Show him you mean business.”

I shut my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. This wasn’t working. Donovan’s way wasn’t going to work with someone who didn’t care about being tortured…

I opened my eyes and Donovan was gone. The man stared at me, calm and unconcerned.

“I want you to tell me where my mother’s secret bases are located.” I smiled. Not a creepy smile, but the one I used back home when I asked my teacher for another day to turn in my essay. It had about a thirty-five percent success rate back then, but hey, you work with what you have.

“Would you like directions? GPS coordinates? What?” he asked, raising one bushy eyebrow at me. “How exactly do you want me to give you that information?”

“You’re just going to tell me?” I asked, shock filling my voice. “It can’t be this easy.” I shook my head at him. “Nothing is this easy.”

“Abby, I can tell you anything you want to know, but it won’t matter. I can’t say for certain, but I’m reasonably sure other agents are on their way here right now. I’m not saying that to scare you, just telling you how it is. Even if you try to find one of the bases, you’ll never get to it.” He glanced around the small abandoned warehouse. “You can’t escape the flit. That’s why we deployed it. There’s fifty people in the room watching that demon perform and every one of them is a super genius. Every single time you escape, they are working to ensure you won’t escape again.” He smiled, lips spreading into a grin that chilled me to the core of my being. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m what you call a mundane. I'm totally normal. No powers to speak of.”

His body jerked hard enough to knock over the folding chair I’d tied him to. He hit the ground with a thump before turning his eyes on me. Only… only they were totally empty.

“Abigail, come with me.” His voice was strangely metallic now, like one of those voices speaking through a drive thru speaker box. “If you do, I will not destroy this man.”

“Goddammit.” I swallowed and took a step back as I readied my contingency plan. “I’d wondered if he was a normal guy. I mean, not everyone in the agency can be a vampire or whatever, right? That means I had to be ready for you to show up!”

He cocked his head at me, which seemed like too human a gesture for a body jumping demon.

“Why is that?” he asked as he tried to rip himself free from the zip ties and duct tape. His muscles strained, cording so tightly, I was sure they were going to pop out of his skin. He tried again, and the zip ties cut into his flesh. I didn’t know how he kept doing it, but I guess soulless demons that don’t care about pain do things like that?

“I’ve got an experiment I want to try,” I said, wrapping my hand around my taser and driving it into him. He jerked, spasming wildly before slumping against his bonds. He lay there, twitching like a fish, but the strangest thing happened. That weird, uncaring emptiness left the agent’s eyes. Had the flit left? Was it because of the taser? I’d wondered if that would work… I was glad it had, because option two was a couple rounds to the face. I wasn’t sure I had been up for option two.

I sucked in a breath that smelled like ozone and tased him again for good measure before putting the taser against his neck. After what felt like a year, he looked up at me.

“Hello, did you miss me?” I asked, smiling as I pushed the taser against his throat. “If you move, I’m going to keep jumping you like a bad car battery, capiche?”

“I understand,” he groaned, body still slack jelly-like.

“And nice try with the flit.” I poked him in the chin with the pliers. Honestly, it sort of turned my stomach. Who the hell was I? Since when did I torture people? Even if they were murderous creepoids… “I wondered if you were normal. Nice to know you won’t be able to hulk out and kill me.”

“You’re certainly clever. I’ll give you that,” he replied, blood ran over his teeth, turning his face into a macabre canvas. “And I don’t know where Gabriella’s bases are. I’m just a field agent. The only people who would know that are the brain trust back at our base.”

“Where’s that?” I asked, staring down at him, and for whatever reason, he shivered. “Your base, I mean.”

“Why?” He considered at me for a long time. “You’re not thinking of going there… are you?”

“Yes,” I said, and I sounded a little crazy and desperate, even to me.

“I’m not even going to bother to tell you how absolutely insane that is…” He shook his head. “If you look in my coat pocket, there’s a keycard. If you go to the address on the back, it will take you there…” He looked up at me and sighed. “I’m not sure what else to do, short of taking you there myself, which isn’t going to happen.”

“Why not? If you took me back to base, you could set a trap for me to walk in. Probably get that promotion you’ve been waiting for.” I eyed him carefully as he shook his head.

“You only think that’s a good idea because you don’t know what it’s like to work for the Agency.” He shook his head. “You may think it’s suspicious that I’m helping you, but I’m following protocol in the event of capture. The Agency doesn’t like it when you violate protocol.”

“Why is that?” I asked, staring hard at him, trying to figure out his angle.

“Typically people stupid enough to capture agents don’t live long enough to put the information to use, therefore, they’d rather we be as accommodating as possible.” The agent shrugged. “They have to replace fewer agents that way.”

“Okay… thanks,” I said and grabbed the keycard out of his pocket. It was all silver with no discernable information on it. “Um… what do I do with this?”

“Press it against any GPS. It will show you how to get there,” he replied, a tiny smile creasing his lips. “Like magic.”

“Great,” I said and shoved it in the pocket of my too big pants. “I’m going to leave you here, hope you don’t mind.”

“You mean you aren’t going to kill me?” he asked, surprise filling his voice.

“Not if you don’t make me.” I swallowed. “What do you think I am? Some kind of soulless killing machine?”

He shook his head. “You should kill me, Abby. It’s the smart play.”

I didn’t even respond. Instead, I walked over to the lights, switched them off and stepped outside into the brisk parking garage air. I looked around because the silver Jetta I’d stolen to get us here wouldn’t do. Fortunately, I spotted exactly what I was looking for, a car with a GPS.

I ignored the swelling feeling in my gut that using such a vehicle would allow them to find me, and what’s worse leave me at the mercy of the flit. But, well, I was pretty sure they already knew where I was thanks to the flit taking over the agent. Even if they didn’t, I was pretty sure I didn’t have a lot of time, anyway.

As I approached the Toyota, I thought about trying to jimmy open the lock, but decided against it. I smashed the driver’s window with my elbow and reached inside to unlock the car. I tugged the door open and had the car running in a second. Thanks criminal mom. You taught me well.

I swiped the card on the GPS. It sort of locked up for a second as weird, runic symbols displayed on the screen. Then it flashed a series of directions across the screen in scrolling black text.

It took me six tries to commit all of them to memory. I shut off the car and considered, you know, lighting the vehicle on fire, but it seemed like a mean thing to do, especially given that I’d broken a window… I settled for snapping the keycard in half before making my way out of the parking garage.

The air outside smelled of the cold and damp. A fine layer of moisture clung to the sidewalks, making me wonder if it had rained while I was inside. As I scanned the city streets, I noticed absolutely no one which was good, but not really odd since it was close to three in the morning.

“He was right, you know. You should have killed him. Right now the agency is homing in on his location, if they haven’t already.” Donovan shook his head as he stared at me from the reflection in a puddle. “I mean, they’d do that anyway, but at least he couldn’t have told them where you were going.”

“Yeah, well, I want them to see me coming. It will be that much more satisfying when I smash everything they’ve built to atoms.” I punctuated the words with a yawn that caught me off-guard, and when I looked back, he was gone. I stared at the murky black water for a long time before making my way down the winding streets.

I kept my head low. I wasn’t sure it mattered, but better safe than sorry, right? Then I stole a motorcycle because you know, it was there, and I was tired of walking. It had nothing to do with the three pizzas strapped to the back either. Or the fact that I was so hungry I could barely see straight.

I sort of felt bad as I left the screaming delivery boy in the dust. I mean, it was partially his fault for delivering pizzas at 3AM, right? I didn’t even mind when he transformed into a soulless sprinter and chased me for half a block before I left him in the dust.

5

Rain fell from the sky, splattering across the decrepit lawn and turning it into a patchy mishmash of crabgrass and mud puddles. The chain-link gate in front was so rusted, I was pretty sure the hinges on it wouldn’t work. The lights wound along the sunken cobblestone walkway flickered constantly, but even when they were on, they didn’t really illuminate the place. I couldn’t see much of the building because it was still too dark, but I didn’t exactly have high hopes.

I’d ditched the motorcycle a couple blocks away and hoofed it the rest of the way. Now armed with my taser, a pistol, and a bellyful of pizza, I was about to storm a super-secret base full of god knew what supernatural creepy crawlies. I looked up into the sky and closed my eyes as rain splashed against my face, plastering my pink hair to my skin and running down the back of my too large uniform.

“You should have brought more guns so you could kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. How are you going to satisfy your bloodlust with a pistol and a taser?” Donovan asked like a devil on my shoulder.

I tried to ignore him because he was a stupid ghost, but it was harder to do than I’d expected. I took another breath. It tasted like smog and old tires. I opened my eyes and made my way to the fence. Then, in a bout of athletic prowess that would have left my gym teacher in awe, I scrambled over the fence and dropped down on the other side.

I waited, listening for sirens or sniper shots, anything really. A moment passed, then another, and another. After what felt like forever, I began making my way forward, sticking to the shadows as the first rays of sunlight began to spread across the horizon.

The building slowly came into view… only it wasn’t a building at all. It was a house, so old and unkempt that it made a shiver run down the back of my spine. A stone gargoyle stared at me from its perch above the covered porch, and I fought the urge to run away as its eyes seemed to follow me.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” Donovan asked, sauntering in front of me like a carefree apparition that left bloody footprints in its wake. “I mean when I was in the service, our digs were always a little more upper class.”

“You lived in a sewer,” I said before I could stop myself. “An actual sewer.”

“But it was a nice sewer,” he replied, turning and walking backward.

I moved past him in a low crouch and approached the house. There was a knocker in the middle of the door that reminded me of a lion, only its tongue was the actual knocking part. I glanced around, not really sure how to get inside. I shrugged and grabbed the knocker in one hand. It was warm and slick with the rain so it felt like it was coated with saliva, which was gross, but I womaned up and used it anyway.

The knocker struck the door with a sound so loud it made me look around for a place to run and hide. When I wasn’t immediately gunned down, I let loose a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Looks like no one is home,” Donovan said, peering into one of the curtained windows, the upper half of his body disappearing completely through the glass.

“Yeah…” I muttered. As I stepped off the porch to join him at the window, I wondered, not for the first time, if the agent I’d questioned had been lying. Maybe I was on some wild goose chase or worse walking into a trap. Besides, what did I expect, someone to open the door and be like, “oh you want the secret government base? That’s on the third floor just passed the dentist and onsite daycare.”

The door creaked open, scraping against the stone floor like a lumbering monster. My heart leapt into my throat as I spun, pointing my gun at the opening. Smooth, Abby. Real smooth.

A man with long white hair and an eyepatch looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in. “What do you want?” he asked, voice cold and annoyed.

“I’m looking for a secret government base so I can go inside and kill everyone,” I said before I could stop myself. Why the hell had I just said that?

He smirked at me and shook his head. “Interesting. It’s not here, but it’s interesting, nonetheless. How did you find this place?” he asked, and for whatever reason, I got the feeling he was telling the truth.

“I swiped a super-spy locater card on a GPS in a stolen car, and it gave me directions to this place.” I’d thought about lying, but before I could, I’d just responded, which was a little odd… that was the second time it had happened. What was going on?

“Oh,” he replied, staring off into space like he was visualizing what I’d told him.

“Um… I should go,” I said, backing away.

He quirked a shaggy eyebrow at me before stepping out of the doorway and walking over to me. He did it so fast, I scarcely had taken a single breath. He leaned down close to me, so his lips were right next to my ear. “Go two blocks to the left. You’ll see an old motel. Go inside, step into the elevator and hit the buttons for floors four, twelve, and six. In that order. Make sure no one else is in the elevator with you. Also, avoid being identified by the camera in the top left of the elevator or poison gas will fill the chamber.”

He stood, spinning on his heel and vanishing back into the gloomy house before I could even blink. The door shut with an air of finality that rippled over my flesh.

“What the hell was that about…?” I mumbled to myself which was great because now, not only was I seeing ghosts, but I was talking to myself. Someone needed to get me some meds… stat.

“So what’s the plan?” Donovan asked as I began walking back across the lawn. “Are you seriously going to just follow the directions of some weird old guy?”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “What’s the alternative? Go find an orphanage and let the flit take over children one by one?”

“Now you’re speaking my language,” Donovan replied, smirking at me in a way that made me wish he was corporeal so I could smack him. “But maybe you should set it on fire first.”

“Why? So there’d be no chance of escape?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“Well you know how they spell orphan, right?” Donovan sang in my ear, and the sound of it made me shiver.

“O is for obliterating everyone inside.

And R is for rockets to get those that hide.

P is for plutonium, enriched of course.

Because H is for hitting with unnecessary force,

A is for artillery to pick off ones left behind.

While N is for not forgetting the exit is mined.”

It didn’t take long for me to find the motel despite the lines from his horrible song ringing in my ears over and over again. The place was so ordinary looking I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t looking for it specifically, which was probably the idea. The big sign in front was missing a whole bunch of letters so, even though I was pretty sure it was supposed to advertise rates, it didn’t really say anything intelligible.

Even still, I approached the fading blue hotel and made my way toward the elevators, careful not to look up and be identified by wandering cameras, even though the idea of surveillance in a place like this was laughable at best.

Then again, maybe that was the idea. Maybe it was supposed to look like a place no one would want to enter. If it looked nice, there might be random customers…

“I remember this one time there was this Asian restaurant by where I used to live. The whole time I lived there, I never saw a single person eat there,” Donovan said, glancing around the narrow hallway with peeling yellow wallpaper. “I think it was a front for some drug dealers. I always meant to go back and check it out, but well, someone shot me in the face.”

“Yeah… That happens to people sometimes…” I mumbled, stepping in front of a pair of elevators and pressing the up button. It lit up for a second before winking out.

“I know, right? Who shoots people in the face for no reason,” Donovan said, running one finger along the bullet hole before peering at his finger. “No open casket funeral for me. What will my cats think?”

“You have cats?” I asked as the elevator doors opened to reveal a wood-paneled room filled with the smell of damp laundry and old cigarettes.

“Do I seem like a cat person?” He smiled at me in a way that made me wonder if he actually did have an apartment full of kitties.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I said as I rubbed my face with one hand and stepped inside the elevator, careful to stare at my feet. I had the hood of the stolen uniform up, but I wasn’t exactly confident of it keeping my features secret. If this was a spy base, wouldn’t they have crazy spells that could identify you through smell? I thought about asking Donovan, but that might make him feel helpful and decide to haunt me for even longer.

I stared at the keypad for way longer than I should have before pressing the buttons for four, twelve, and six. The elevator doors shut with a hiss of compressed air and lurched sideways, throwing me off my feet. I smacked against the wall and stars shot across my eyes as I slumped to the ground.

Before I could get up, the doors slid open to reveal a small chrome room. There was no one inside, which seemed a little odd, but maybe that room was wired with explosives to keep untoward visitors out? Still, what if someone had accidentally pressed the buttons in the order I’d pressed them…

“Step out and place your hand on the scanner for identification,” a robotic voice intoned from somewhere above my head. I fought the urge to look for a speaker, but I didn’t. What if it was a trick to get me to look at a camera? Well, I wasn’t going to be that easy to identify. You had to get up pretty early in the morning to fool this little black duck…

I shook my head and scrambled to my feet. Just outside the door, a panel in the shape of a splayed hand glowed with eerie green light. I took a step toward it, looking around as much as I could. What if my hair fell out, and they identified me? Sigh. I really should have dyed it again, but I didn’t exactly have time to run into a convenience store and get hair dye, let alone actually color it.

The elevator doors behind me shut with a whoosh, leaving me trapped in the tiny metal room. Awesome. Why hadn’t the guy with the eyepatch told me what to do now? Was I just supposed to stick my hand on the glowing pad and wish for the best?

“Agent, please remove your glove and place your hand on the scanner, or we will have to begin the intruder protocol.” The voice intoned, though it sort of sounded bored.

I wasn’t quite sure what the intruder protocol was, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it. I sighed, not sure what to do, when a thought struck me. They didn’t actually want me dead… right?

I consoled myself with that thought as I jerked the leather glove off my right hand and looked at it for a long moment before placing my palm against the panel. Warm light flowed out over my hand and LEDs above me began to strobe all different colors. It would have been cool looking if my nerves weren’t so tightly wound together I was sure I’d explode like an over-stressed spring.

“Identity confirmed. Abigail de la Mancha.” The panel beeped and turned to a shade of soft pink.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Donovan said, rubbing his chin with one slender hand. “The agency must really be slipping.”

“Yeah… well—” I started to say before the floor beneath my feet opened up, and I fell to my doom.

6

“We wondered if you would show up here,” the agent with the huge, ridiculous smile on his face said. He wasn’t very tall, standing maybe five and a half feet and had short buzzed blond hair. He leaned forward on the metal table with his elbows. It made the cuffs of his cheap black button-up fall down to reveal wrists the color of milk. “Agent Phillips told us about your ‘interrogation’ but we didn’t think you’d actually come here. We didn’t think you were that dumb.”

“Glad to prove you wrong,” I replied, looking down at my hands. They were bolted to the table so I couldn’t move my wrists. My feet were no better. My ankles were shackled to the chair I was in, which was, in turn, welded to the floor. There wasn’t anything else in the solid steel room. At least, nothing I could use to escape, or better yet, as a weapon.

In fact, if I hadn’t seen the agent enter through a door, I wouldn’t have even known there was one. It had opened and closed like a magical portal in the wall, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

“What’s your play, exactly, Abby?” he asked, bushy blond eyebrows snaking up on his face. “We’ve tried to get you to come in for the last several weeks, and you just stroll in here? What gives?”

“You guys killed Stephen.” The words sort of tumbled out of me before I could stop them. “You sent a killer demon after me, one that made it so I had to beat up an eight-year-old girl…”

“So you’re here for revenge? To stop us? What exactly?” He shrugged and stood up, his own chair scraping across the metal floor. “Explain how coming here works in your twisted little brain.” He gestured at me. “You’re sitting there in your bra and panties. You have no weapons. You have no way out. Even if you tried something, this room would fill with gas and knock you out before you could even blink.”

“The play is simple,” I said, looking up at him and smiling sweetly. “I don’t need to blink.”

The restraints holding me in place opened, releasing me. The man backpedaled, a look of horror filling his face as he stumbled backward over his chair. He hit the ground with a clatter that reminded me of someone dropping a platter at a restaurant.

I stood slowly, my pink hair draped over the front of my face and took a step toward him. He crawled backward on his hands, which was a little crazy because he was supposed to be a trained agent, right? Weren’t they all bad asses?

“If you’re waiting for the gas, well, let’s just say it isn’t happening.” I dropped down next to the agent and grabbed him by his collar, pulling him up toward me.

“How?” he asked, eyes wide in fright.

I jerked his keycard from his belt. “Don’t worry, no one actually knows I’m here. See, when I abducted Phillips, I actually took a bunch of his biometrics and implanted them in a chip in my palm. I added some code to, well, put me in isolation and delete the record of it.” I tapped my head. “Remember, I have lots of skills up here.”

“You mean…” he swallowed as I swiped his card on the door. It opened with a hiss. “You chose me? Why?”

“I didn’t choose you. I just told the system to send the most junior analyst who had access to the files I wanted to see.” I exited the room and stepped into the empty hallway. “Congratulations, it’s your lucky day.” The door slid shut, locking him inside. “You’re officially important enough.”

To be fair, it had been a little more complicated than that, and technically, Stephen had come up with the idea. We’d just needed a little biometric information to get the ball rolling since no one was going to be letting him inside.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Donovan asked, eyes roaming over my mostly naked body. “And I like the new look, very— down-on-her-luck hooker.”

“I am clever,” I growled at the ghost as I pulled open the door to the next interrogation room. Sitting inside was a cart full of supplies. Ah, the joys of government drones who follow orders no matter how absurd.

A few minutes later, I was dressed in clothing that fit and armed with a machine gun and a taser. As I looked around the tiny room, I barely resisted the urge to spout off a snappy one-liner. Who would hear it anyway? The ghost? Pass.

“You know they’re going to kill that analyst right?” Donovan asked as I moved toward one of the terminals and swiped the guy’s card. “He probably has a wife and kids, or maybe a cat…”

“Not my problem,” I replied, ignoring the guilt tickling the back of my neck that told me Donovan was right. I wasn’t sure why I cared since the agent worked for the agency trying to kill me… but I did.

“That’s my girl,” Donovan said, sitting down on the desk and leaning back on his hands as I surfed through the files until I found what I was looking for. I wasn’t quite sure how or why I knew my way around their network, but I did. It was probably thanks to the experiment that had turned me from Abby Banks Super-Zero to Abby Banks Super-Hero.

The flit’s chamber was located just a few floors away, and like I’d thought, it was impossible to delete all the files on the thing since they had backup upon backup. Still, most of the equipment used to summon the demon was in one giant room, and since most of the backups were kept offsite, it’d take them a while to go get them and reconstruct the ritual used to summon the demon, if say, someone blew the ritual chamber up.

I reached in my pocket and patted the tiny, magic-infused device. I wasn’t quite sure how strong the explosive was, but Phillips’ files had said it should more than do the job. It was kind of crazy because all I’d done was put in the details of my target, and it’d spit out a device from inventory. If all of their stuff was this easy to spec, it made me wonder who had designed the system, and what other events they had contingencies for. Did they have one for aliens too? Were those even real?

Part of me wanted to spend a few minutes joy-riding through their files just for funsies, but that seemed like a poor use of my time, even if no one was supposed to know I was here. I stood up and pushed the chair back under the desk. As I made my way out of the room, I shut off the lights. You know, to save energy.

“I know you just did that so it would take longer to find that guy,” Donovan said, jerking his thumb at the interrogation room door. “But I’m not going to press the issue.”

“Good,” I replied, swiping the stolen keycard on the exit door. “It’s nice of you to let me pretend I’m trying to save the planet one turned off LED at a time.”

“Hello, Abby,” Stephen said, flashing me his perfect smile through the open door. His sapphire eyes gleamed as he stepped through the doorway, one hand reaching out toward me. The door shut behind him with a whoosh, leaving us alone in the room.

“How?” I squeaked, taking a step backward. My world melted away as I stared at him. He didn’t look sunken and injured anymore. Rather, he was his perfect chiseled self. His fingers touched my face, and my heart started going a million miles a minute. “I thought you died…” I murmured as a horrible thought struck me. I was hallucinating. I was making it up… Oh god I was crazy.

“I didn’t die. I’m a vampire. We’re notoriously hard to kill. You should have known that,” Stephen said, pulling me close to him and wrapping one hand around my body. “Did you miss me? You know, after you left me for dead on the floor of a cabin in the middle of nowhere?” He jammed a gun into my ribs so hard, it hurt. I cried out and tried to push him away, but he held me fast. “I wondered if you’d try to get in here. Everyone told me I was crazy, but well, I guess I proved them wrong, didn’t I?”

He spun me around and shoved me forward, his weapon pressing into the small of my back as the world around me faded away, distilling into a hazy darkness.

“Stephen.” I swallowed, trying to resist the urge to cry. “Stephen, what are you doing?”

“Betraying you.” His words were like fire in my ear, burning me to the core and reducing me to cinders in the space of a breath. “I thought that was obvious, Abby.”

The door in front of us opened to reveal so many agents I couldn’t count them. They were dressed so similarly in their body armor that they all sort of blended together into a throbbing mass of finality.

“Why…” I whispered as my heart shattered for the second time in as many days.

“Because he’s a jackass,” Donovan said, leaning against the doorframe so blood dripped down his face and formed a mask. “That’s why you should have let me kill him.” He touched his chest with his right index finger. “I’d never betray you…”

“You did betray me,” I replied, staring dully at the throbbing mass of people behind the ghost. Only… only they weren’t pointing guns at me, at least, not in a way that told me they should have.

“Um… duh,” Stephen said like he thought I was talking to him. “Get with the now.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I thought you were smarter than this.” He shrugged. “I guess everything special about you really did come out of a magic ritual.”

The interrogation room where I’d locked the agent earlier opened just before I drove my elbow into Stephen’s stomach as hard as I could. I hadn’t meant to do it, honest. Something about him completely betraying me made everything sort of distant and strange seeming. He buckled in slow motion as I spun on my heel, tearing the gun from his hand and thrusting him forward into the room full of soldiers as they surged forward.

I fired, pulling the trigger in bursts and spraying the corridor with hot lead. Bullets tore into the soldiers’ riot shields as I threw myself out of the entryway and slammed my hand down on the door’s controls. Instead of closing, the door wheezed and sparked. Acrid smoke floated from the opening in the wall, and the sound of gears grinding to a halt filled my ears. Had they overridden the controls by force somehow?

I moved, pivoting while the soldiers were pinned down just as a chair flew at my head. I ducked, and it crashed into the computer terminal. Sparks leapt from the display, arcing out in electric flashes as the blond agent strode toward me from the interrogation room.

His eyes were distant and opaque as he looked at me, but this time a grin slid onto his face. “So you’ve come to visit me at home, Abigail,” the agent said in the twisted robotic voice of the flit. “My new handlers tell me I should be honored.”

I drew my own gun and fired at him just as Stephen’s clicked empty. The burst struck him full in the chest, tearing apart his clothing to reveal the bulletproof vest beneath as he strode unconcerned through my hail of bullets like Superman.

Soldiers surged through the door as I ran at the flit. He swung one meaty fist at me. The blow caught my shoulder, spinning me into a sort of broken cartwheel as I dove past him. Shots rang out, pinging off the metal all around me and bouncing everywhere. I spared a glance at the flit, even though I shouldn’t have. He turned, despite being pelted with bullets and moved to grab me.

I scrambled to my feet as a stray bullet caught me in the hand. Pain shot through me, only… only it wasn’t as bad as it should have been. There wasn’t any blood. My eyes widened in understanding and shock. They were using rubber bullets… So they didn’t want to hurt me after all.

The flit grabbed me by the throat and lifted me into the air. My vision went hazy as I pointed my gun past his ear and let off a burst that sent agents running for cover. Unlike their weapons, mine was filled with good old-fashioned lead. My other hand throbbed uselessly at my side as I tried to make it grip the taser.

The flit’s chokehold tightened, cutting off my air supply and making everything distill into a single point. Stephen was that single point. He was moving toward us, heedless of the gun pointed in his general direction. He had a smirk on his face I could only classify as smug jerk. Was he counting on me not shooting him? After what he’d done?

My fingers tightened around the taser, and I drove it into the flit. He spasmed, jerking like a broken mannequin as he released me. I landed flat on my back and rolled to my feet as I fired the machine gun down the hallway at Stephen.

The bullets caught him in the chest and flung him backward in a sort of slow motion fall. He crashed into the ground, his shirt torn to reveal his bullet-proof vest. I threw a caustic glance in his direction as I sprinted forward, my body momentarily ignoring its need to breathe, or you know, feel pain.

I slammed into the first soldier’s shield with my shoulder and rolled, spinning my body past him as I swept into the hallway and into the throng of soldiers.

The door behind me finally slid down in a sheath of sparks locking me in the room with the soldiers. There was only one problem. The exit was on the other side of them. I took a deep breath, my mind snapping into focus as I drove forward in a burst of energy. Soldiers went flying as I punched and dodged and kicked. The exit grew closer, and with every step I took, more agents fell around me, but the only thing I saw was Donovan’s smirking face.

7

The blood of the fallen agents smeared my face and clothing as I stepped over their unconscious, broken bodies and out into the corridor. The door I’d come from was still sealed, so I wasn’t really worried about being shot in the back just yet.

The first thing I noticed about the shiny chrome hallway was the temperature. It was freezing. The cool air swept over me, making me shiver even beneath my fancy jumpsuit. Flashing lights were going off, but thankfully there were no sirens. That would have been too much, anyway. They obviously knew I was here already.

I knew from my quick jaunt through the agency’s files that the flit’s ritual chamber wasn’t very far from my current location. Since I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be very long before other soldiers came to stop me, I pressed some explosive jelly against the wall and hit the button on the detonator. I took off sprinting in the direction of the flit mainframe.

An explosion rocked the hallway, nearly shaking me from my feet as I tore down the hallway. Hell, if I hadn’t known it was coming, it probably would have knocked me to the ground. A furtive glance over my shoulder made me suck in a breath. There wasn’t even a hallway anymore. It had been reduced to a twisted mishmash of metal and wires. Steam filled the corridor, spewing from a broken overhead pipe. I swallowed. That was a little much…

“How many people do you think you got with that blast?” Donovan asked, “Ten, twenty? You’re really racking them up.” He glanced around curiously. “You’d think I’d have an armada with me by now.”

I ignored him and focused on finding the flit’s chamber. If I didn’t hurry, not only would I be overwhelmed by reinforcements, but I’d start to think about Stephen, and if that happened… I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go on. Sure, he might have survived being shot in the chest because he was a vampire, but did he survive the bomb? Did I even want him to survive?

He had betrayed me, but something told me that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t his fault. He’d clearly been captured by the agency, and they had to have done something to him, right? They just had to have…

An agent stepped out from the corner, gun leveled at me, but before I could even think, I fired at him. Two quick bursts that took his legs out from under him. My heart slammed in my chest as I ran up and soccer kicked him in the head. The faceplate on his helmet cracked as he flopped bonelessly on his back. “How dare you people force me to… to…” I kicked him again, my foot hitting him hard in the stomach.

“To kill Stephen yourself, in cold blood?” Donovan offered behind me. “It shouldn’t bother you. I know you thought he was different from me, but he wasn’t.” Donovan’s smile made me trembled because I was worried he was right. “I mean, okay, I’m a werewolf and he was a vampire, but we’re both people too…”

“You don’t know that,” I replied, turning away from Donovan and stepping over the body of the fallen agent. “You don’t know why he did what he did.”

“I don’t need to know that,” the ghost whispered in my ear. “It’s either that, or you killed your true love when he could have been saved.” His voice brightened. “Oh, I hope it’s the second one.”

“He was far enough away from the blast. He should be fine…” Even as I said the words a tremble overtook me and I had to grab the wall to help my shaking knees support my weight. Stephen had to be okay, and what’s more he had to be under the agency’s influence…

“Just keep telling yourself that.” Donovan sidled up next to me as I began walking, one hand leaning on the wall as tears rimmed my eyes. “Don’t worry. I know you will, so I’ll bring this up again, later.”

The elevator in front of me was huge and daunting. I was pretty sure it was used for hauling supplies, but it looked like it could fit a couple elephants. I pressed the down button, but unfortunately, there was no response. I hadn’t been sure if I was actually going to take it or not, but I’d been going to cross that particular bridge when it opened. Now that option was decidedly off the table.

“It figures,” I mumbled, reaching into my belt and pulling out a pry bar. I wedged it into the opening and pushed with all the strength my magic-fueled muscles could muster. At first the doors didn’t move, but as my skin began to glow with energy, they jerked open with a rush, so I was left staring at an empty elevator shaft through a two and a half foot space.

I took a deep breath and stuck my head inside, but a quick glance up and down the shaft revealed no elevator, though that could have been because I couldn’t see more than a few feet in either direction. I pulled off one of my flares, lit it, and looked around one last time.

All it succeeded in doing was making the narrow corridor dance with eerie red light. I dropped it down the shaft. It fell for so long I lost sight of it before it hit the ground. Well, at least there was no elevator that way…

I reached out, grabbing hold of the cable a few feet away and tugged. Which was silly, I admit, but I still wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause me to plummet to my death, even though I was fairly certain I weighed way less than the elevator it was designed to carry.

My gut was somewhat satisfied when the cable didn’t come crashing down, but an uneasy feeling still made me wary.

“Stop being a chicken,” I mumbled to myself before grabbing hold and swinging out into oblivion. A tense breath rushed out of me when I didn’t immediately plummet to my death. Then I began to scurry down the cable, going slow to avoid slipping.

“You should have grabbed a pair of night vision goggles or a headlamp,” Donovan said as he floated upside down in front of me so that his long blond hair fell beneath him like an obnoxious golden wave. “You know better.” He tapped my forehead with his finger. “You have all those skills, remember?”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I grunted as I shimmied down toward the level where the flit was located. I’d barely gone more than a floor, but my muscles were already starting to burn. “Now leave me alone so I can concentrate.”

“How are you even going to tell which floor it is from in here?” Donovan asked, spinning around and examining a particularly nondescript wall.

“You know as well as I do that the flit’s level was six floors down. We’ve gone two floors. Do the math,” I grumbled.

“So forty-seven more levels?” Donovan asked, smirking at me. “Should I start counting out random numbers? Six, four, eleven, sixteen, blue forty-two.”

“That’s not even a number,” I said, pausing to take a breath. I don’t know why I’d thought shimmying down an elevator cable would be a good idea. I had not had the physical training for something like this. Hell, I hadn’t even been very good at gym. I’d mostly been the last girl picked for any sport and was usually the one who was sat out the whole game, which honestly, had been fine with me.

“You’re not even a number,” Donovan replied, sticking his tongue out me. “At least not yet. When some deranged psycho shoots you in the face, murdering you in cold blood, you get a delightful toe tag though. Then you become a number.”

“Neat,” I said as the cable suddenly jerked taut, nearly throwing me off. I swallowed, my heart racing as the sound of a rushing elevator filled the shaft.

“Oh, is that the sound of inevitability?” Donovan asked as I wrapped my legs around the cable, took a deep breath and started shimmying even faster as the sound boomed in my ears.

I got to the floor just as the elevator popped into view overhead. I pulled out my crowbar and jammed it in the doorway. The elevator lurched closer, but it appeared to be slowing down… maybe it would stop above me?

As I called upon my magic to enhance my strength, I threw my weight against the crowbar, trying to pry it open while maintaining my grip on the cable. One inch, two. The elevator came closer. Three inches. Six inches.

I could feel the cold unforgiving steel above me pressing the darkness down into the shaft around me, just daring me to go slow enough for it to crush me. When the opening was about twelve inches wide, I threw myself toward it sideways. Thanks to my supernatural reflexes, I weaved through the opening like a thread through a needle.

My body slammed into the metal floor on the other side of the doors hard enough for stars to momentarily flash across my vision. As I scrambled forward, my side throbbing, and my vision a little black around the edges. I pulled my feet inside just as the elevator surged past with a sound that stole my breath away.

That had been close. Too close.

“Note to self,” I said as I got to my feet. “No more climbing down elevator shafts.”

“Good plan,” Donovan said, popping into the space in front of me. “Now how do you plan on getting through them?”

He pointed down the corridor where six armed guards stood, their weapons pointed at me. A slow clap echoed through the corridor as Stephen stepped out, smacking his palms together. His shirt was still torn from where I’d shot him, but he looked otherwise unharmed. My heart leapt in my chest. He wasn’t dead, after all. Thank God, I hadn’t killed him. I could rescue him, could turn him back to normal after all.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Abby.” Stephen smiled, his perfect teeth flashing in the bright fluorescent light. “I should have realized you were a stone cold killer.” He shrugged. “Maybe you inherited more of your mother’s bloodlust than I’d thought. How else can you explain trying to blow me up?”

“Stephen, I didn’t mean to… this isn’t you…” I murmured even as his words made my heart shatter in my chest and tears roll down my cheeks. I willed myself to my feet, and as I did so, the soldiers tensed. I took a step toward him, ignoring them, one hand outstretched. “Please… Stephen…”

“Now, now, Abby. I wouldn’t go making any sudden movements.” He scratched his temple with the butt of his pistol. “You wouldn’t want one of them to get all twitchy and, oh, I don’t know, blow you away.” He licked his lips, and the gesture made me feel dirty inside.

“You could kill them all, Abby,” Donovan said like the angry, annoyed devil on my right shoulder he really was. “You know you could…”

“I could kill you all before you even pull a trigger,” I snarled, taking a step forward, my arms at my sides. “And I’m pretty sure you won’t kill me since you were using rubber bullets before.” I smirked, and a shiver ran through the agents, though Stephen seemed unfazed. “It’s about time the tables turned.”

“Whatever,” Stephen replied, pointing his gun at me and firing. I threw myself forward as the muscles in his arm twitched, giving me enough of a head start to dodge the shot. It ricocheted off the wall behind me as the soldiers opened up, filling the corridor with rubber bullets.

A couple hit me in the leg as I scrambled to my feet and my limb went momentarily numb as pain shot through me, exploding behind my eyes like a pair of firecrackers. Then it sort of vanished, pushed away under some sort of mental instinct I couldn’t quite understand as my skin began top glow like it was lit from the inside with moonlight. My focus intensified as I reached the crowd of soldiers. My hands snapped out, ripping the gun from a soldier and slamming the still firing weapon into his partner’s facemask.

The mask shattered in a spray of black plastic as I whirled, dancing through their ranks like an avenging ballerina as I tore weapons from their hands and used them like high-tech clubs. A moment later, I was standing in a broken semi-circle of unconscious soldiers. My chest heaved as I sucked in oxygen. Stephen stared at me, that same stupid smirk on his face as he watched me down the barrel of his weapon.

He fired as I got to him.

The bullet zinged past my left ear.

I hit him.

Hard.

So hard it hurt my hand.

He fell.

I stepped over him and approached the door to the flit’s mainframe.

8

I pressed my gloved hand against the frosty chrome door in front of me. It ripped heat out of my body, turning my breath to mist in the space of an instant. I tried to pull my hand away, but the blood on the palm of my glove stuck to the door. Which wasn’t really that odd since frost was running along the metal. For that to happen, the room on the other side must have been really cold. Then again, it was a massive demonic ritual chamber for a creature from Hell. It probably had a state of the art cooling system just to keep all that fire contained.

I jerked my hand free of the glove, leaving it stuck to the door like macabre art and staggered back a couple steps. Blood dripped down my arm, collecting on my fingertips and spattering to the ground. I was bleeding. I hadn’t realized I was bleeding… How had that happened?

My eyes traced the blood up my fingers across my hand and up under the sleeve. My uniform was stuck to my arm with sticky red goo. That’s when I saw the hole in my arm by my bicep. A good chunk of flesh was missing, not enough to disable my arm or anything, but enough to make my eyes go wide at the sight. How could I have ignored such a wound? Now that I saw it, pain flowed through me, making my vision swim and my steps wobble.

God, what was I doing infiltrating a military base by myself? Was I crazy?

I threw a glance at the downed soldiers, and for some reason, my gaze lingered on Stephen’s fallen form. He was sprawled out on the metal floor, eyes clothes and lips half parted. A bruise was forming on his eye from where I’d hit him. Good. If he stayed unconscious until I was done with the flit, I could drag him out of here and rehabilitate him. I wasn’t sure how to do that exactly, but I had to try right? I couldn’t just leave him in the hands of the Agency, not after everything he’d done for me, not after everything he meant to me.

“You know he was just playing you the whole time, right?” Donovan asked, kneeling down next to Stephen. “He’s just like me, after all.”

“No, he’s not. The Agency did something to him.” Donovan just looked up at me and smiled until I turned away.

“This is your chance, Abby. Stick the explosive to the door and blow it open, then toss a few more charges inside and get the hell out of here before anyone wakes up.” Donovan’s voice reminded me of my mother when she told me to do things I knew I should, but didn’t really want to do.

“I know,” I replied because it was that kind of day. I turned back toward the chamber doors and drew the Egyptian symbol for power across the frozen steel with my bloody fingers. Then I focused my mind on it.

I hadn’t really mastered much outward magic like fireballs and the like. For one, there hadn’t been time. For two, my kind of witch didn’t thrive on that sort of magic. No, our magic was more suited toward enhancing strength, speed, and that sort of thing, not flinging around fireballs.

That didn’t mean it couldn’t be done though, and as I focused on the symbol I’d drawn, I bridged the gap between my power and the wards on the chamber itself. Sparks danced across the surface of the metal as my bloody symbol flared scarlet causing the wards along the entire surface to explode into a flurry of cinders.

That done, I reached my stiff fingers into my pocket and pulled out a charge that reminded me of a tube of silly putty. I plastered it to the door and threw another glance back at the soldiers. “What if something happens to him?” I murmured. “He could get caught in the blast…”

“Good riddance,” Donovan said, kicking Stephen contemptuously with one foot, which was a little funny because it didn’t actually touch him. “He’s the bad guy. It’s not your concern what happens to him, Abby. You kill bad guys. Don’t you remember?” He touched the hole in his forehead and showed me his bloody finger. The look on his face made me shiver.

“Don’t kick him,” I snapped even though I knew he couldn’t actually hurt Stephen on account of his being non-corporeal. Something about it pissed me off. I stepped away from the door and looked at it. I knew from my trip through the files there wasn’t a “way” into the room per se. It was sealed off with a combination of magical wards and good old fashioned technology. But maybe the files had neglected something? “And, I don’t kill people.”

“There’s not another way,” Donovan said as though he’d read my mind. “You know that when they leave that room they actually weld the door shut. They get back inside with a torch and a crew of witches to take down the wards. The only way in there is with an explosive.” He shrugged. “Either way, you need to make a decision.”

I shook my head, tears running down my cheeks. Stephen was definitely too close to the blast zone. I staggered forward, grabbed him by the arm and tried to drag him back toward the door and out of harm’s way.

“Are you being serious right now, Abby?” Donovan tsk tsked at me. “By the time you move him to safety, reinforcements will be here.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Actually, at the rate you’re going, they’ll be here before Stephen is out of the blast zone. Your best bet is to leave him there.”

“I know.” I swallowed as the truth of his words rattled around in my brain. “I know.” I glanced back at the charge and stared at the detonator clipped to my belt. I didn’t have time for this… But it was Stephen, I couldn’t really leave him in the blast zone, could I?

“You know what he’d tell you to do right?” Donovan sidled up next to me, and put one hand around my waist, his other wresting on my hand as it gripped Stephen’s wrist. “He’d tell you to leave him, at least he would if he really cared for you, Abby.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I let Donovan pull my hand free from his wrist. Stephen’s arm fell, smacking the ground with a thud of finality. I let him lead me toward the elevator as I pulled the detonator free and stared at it. Could I really go through with this? Could I really sentence him to death?

I took a deep breath and spun so I could look at Stephen one last time. “I’m so sorry,” I blubbered as tears spilled down my cheeks and spattered on the cool metal floor. The sound of it deafening in the empty, lifeless room.

The elevator doors behind me opened. It was now or never. I moved my thumb to the button on the detonator and began to press it down.

“Abby, don’t.”

I spun, my voice catching in my throat. Lisa Ann, my best friend in the whole world, was standing there in the elevator with a gun pointed at her temple. Tears were running down her cheeks, and her hair was all sorts of messed up. Had they taken her hostage to use against me? If they had… well I was going to kill them.

A vision of Lisa Ann driving me to school in her beat up old car, the windows down as horrible boyband music blared so loud, kids stared at us as we sang at the top of our lungs.

I took a step toward them and an image of Lisa standing in back of me as she fussed with my hair before we got ready to go to the Spring Fling, even though our only dates were each other.

Behind me, someone got to his feet, and I turned my head. Stephen stood there, one hand using the wall for balance and smirked at me. “I wouldn’t do anything rash, Abby. You wouldn’t want us to hurt Lisa Ann, would you?”

“How? How did you recover so much faster than everyone else?” I murmured as he moved past me to rejoin the soldiers, apparently unconcerned with the detonator in my hand, the button half-pressed. Still, he was out of the blast zone, right? Only, only they had Lisa Ann right now, and for some reason, the knowledge that Stephen had taken her filled me up inside, making everything go red and hazy. Stephen, my Stephen, had dragged Lisa Ann into this. Agency mind control or not, he had stolen my innocent best friend and brought her here to use as a weapon against me.

“I know it’s confusing, Abby, but you have to remember I’m a vampire. We’re like cockroaches,” Stephen said, smiling at me with his stupid perfect lips. Lips I once thought were so kissable. Oh my God, I had let him kiss me. A profound sense of dirtiness oozed over my skin, and my own lips felt dirty. The urge to wipe off my tongue was nearly overwhelming.

“Stop…” I said, and the words were strangely hollow and empty in my mouth.

“try to behave rationally here. If you don’t surrender, I’m going to shoot your friend in the face. Let me be clear when I say this. This gun isn’t filled with rubber. No, it’s filled with warded bullets.” The vampire shoved the barrel against Lisa Ann’s head, forcing it to the side. She whimpered. “They could kill a werewolf, so I’m fairly certain your puny human friend will die.”

“You were playing me the whole time, weren’t you?” I asked and for some reason, my voice reminded me of Donovan. I had the sudden urge to look around for him, but even as my eyes glanced around, I didn’t see him anywhere.

“Is this where you say ‘if I hurt even one hair on her head’ you’ll make me regret it?” Stephen asked, grabbing a handful of her black hair and jerking her head sideways. Lisa Ann screamed as his fangs distended and he leaned in toward her.

“No!” My vision turned several shades of scarlet as I charged forward, but before I made it even three steps, Stephen fired.

The bullet didn’t hit Lisa Ann, but only because he hadn’t meant for it to hit her. It shattered the space in front of her eyes before pinging off the wall and ricocheting into oblivion. My heart hammered inside me as the realization that Lisa Ann was still alive filled me up. He hadn’t killed her, thank God, he hadn’t killed her.

“I’d stay where you are, Abby, otherwise the next time we’ll be cleaning Lisa up off the walls.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be the one to clean it up.”

“What a jackass,” Donovan said before glancing at me and shaking his head like he was disappointed. “I can’t believe you were going to have sexy time with him.”

“What do you want, Stephen?” I asked, my voice cracking partway through. “Why do you have Lisa Ann?” As the words left my mouth, I knew I would do anything to save her from him. I just needed a plan, a way to do that. She was my best friend, after all. It was my fault she was here. That made it my responsibility to get her out of this. I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down. I was going to save her, even if I had to take down Stephen to do it.

“I want you to surrender, Abby. Isn’t that obvious?” He gestured toward the men behind me. “We have big, big plans for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing back a sob as I depressed the button on the detonator. The explosion rippled outward, throwing me forward as the soldiers in the elevator scrambled backward. Stephen lost his footing as I crashed into him, tackling him to the ground. Lisa Ann pitched to the side, slamming down hard on the metal with a shriek.

I started hitting Stephen, my hands coming down like a jack hammer on his face, chest, and arms as he struggled to cover himself.

A foot struck me hard in the side of the head, knocking me off of him. I crashed into the wall, my vision spinning. Lisa Ann took a menacing step toward me, her eyes distant and unforgiving.

“You’re trying to kill me, Abigail, aren’t you?” she asked in the robotic voice of the flit. Her hands clenched and unclenched as she stepped over Stephen’s bloody body. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“You can’t die. You’re just a demon! The worst that happens is you go back to Hell!” I snapped, getting to my feet as Lisa Ann’s hand lashed out. It caught me on my wounded bicep and stars flashed across my vision. Another blow came, and I stepped into it, knocking it aside with my shoulder and just as I was about to lash out with my elbow, I stopped. This was Lisa Ann… if I hurt her… No… I couldn’t.

“So you will not hurt this body, interesting…” Lisa Ann grabbed me by belt and flung me like a rag doll. My back struck the wall, and I slid to the ground, leaving a glistening trail of scarlet in my wake. I struggled to pull air into my lungs as soldiers rushed out of the elevator, weapons pointed at me.

“Why do you wish to destroy me, Abigail?” Lisa Ann asked, holding one hand up and signaling the soldiers to stop. They did. Well that was interesting. Did they have to obey the flit? Why?

“Because you’re trying to kill me,” I snarled, getting to my feet just as her boot caught me in the stomach. I flopped onto my back, struggling to remember how to breathe as she stepped on my throat. She shifted, cutting off my air supply as I reached out, trying to grab onto her leg, my hands clawing uselessly at her jeans.

“My orders are to bring you in. Not to kill you,” she said, and I swear she seemed annoyed. “So I do not understand why you are trying to kill me.” The pressure relaxed just a touch, enough for me to barely breathe. “Explain.”

“It’s because she’s a human, flitty,” Stephen said, getting to his feet and wiping his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood along his sleeve. “It’s what humans do. They try to destroy things that threaten them, even if those things really mean them no harm.”

His words rang in my ears, and I wondered how truthful they were because, at the core of it, I was trying to take down the Agency. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were all about, but I knew what my birth mother, Gabriella had been about. She had been about terrorism and world domination.

The Agency, for better or worse, was the only thing standing between people like Gabriella and everyone else. And here I was trying to stop them, trying to take them down because they were treating me like an asset? Maybe, maybe I was being naïve. Maybe we did live in a world where people like Donovan were needed to stop people like Gabriella…

“That is irrational and beyond the parameters of our engagement.” The flit regarded me through Lisa’s eyes. “Should I be trying to kill you too, Abigail?” Lisa’s head cocked to the side like she was studying me. It was odd because it seemed like a very human gesture. “How would you feel if I tried to kill you?”

Instead of replying, I flung my last grenade with all my might. Stephen’s eyes went wide as it struck the blown out hole in the wall and tumbled inside the flit’s ritual chamber.

The flit stared at me, unmoving. “You say that I cannot die, Abigail. That I will be returned to Hell. But that does not—”

An explosion ripped through the hallway for the second time, and Lisa Ann collapsed on top of me. The blast must have triggered some kind of alarm because deafening sirens began whooping. The elevator doors slammed together in a whoosh, trapping the soldiers inside, sealing them off from us.

A cloud of freezing fog blasted from the ritual room, frosting the metal in our hallway as whatever automated system inside tried to fast freeze the dancing flames.

I pushed Lisa Ann off of me as Stephen lunged at me, catching me in the stomach with his shoulder and pinning me to the ground beneath the force of his weight. My head smacked against the metal floor with a wet sounding thunk, and for a moment, I saw two of him.

His fist came down and pain blossomed across my face. He brought his gun around to smack me with it, and I raised my hand just in time. The blow struck my forearm so hard I couldn’t see past the pain shooting across my eyes like Fourth of July fireworks.

Stephen grabbed me by the collar and jerked my head up before slamming me back down on the ground. The fireworks exploded even brighter as my limbs lashed out, trying to fight him off. It didn’t seem to help. He smashed the back of my head into the metal again and something inside me crunched.

“Goodbye, Abby,” Stephen said, his smile ominous even through my blurry vision. “The next time you’ll see me, you’ll be strapped to a table while doctors poke and prod you.” His words sent a chill down my spine as the image of him still wearing that smile as he stared at me from the other side of a glass window filled my head. That’s when the truth of our situation filled me. Maybe Stephen had been turned by the Agency somehow, but either way, this was what he was now, a cold, unfeeling monster.

A gunshot ripped through the room. The sound loud and angry in the tiny hallway. Stephen looked up, startled, his eyes tracing toward the far wall. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t.

“What are you doing?” he asked before a second gunshot exploded through the room. Stephen pitched sideways, falling off me and crashing to the ground in a spray of scarlet. He clutched at his arm as warm blood spurted into the air.

Lisa Ann appeared in my frame of vision holding Stephen’s weapon. Her cheeks were puffy and red as she knelt down next to me and smoothed the hair out of my face. “Abby,” she said, but her voice was distant sounding, like a whisper at the end of a hallway. “Abby, we have to get out of here. Can you get up?”

“Okay,” I mumbled though that wasn’t really the right answer. Part of me was too stunned to think. I was reasonably sure the flit had released Lisa when the ritual chamber went up, but if so, where had Lisa learned to shoot like that? I was about to ask her when a flicker of movement caught my attention.

Stephen started moving slowly toward Lisa. He was crawling on his good arm while his bad one dangled uselessly at his side. His fangs were out again and blood covered the ground around him, leaving a crimson smear on the metal that reminded me of a bleeding slug. From the look in his eyes, I could tell he meant to feed on Lisa Ann, and since the flit had taken her over, I knew he could because for the flit to take her over, she had to be human.

I swung my body around to intercept him. It was like trying to move through jelly. My fist caught him hard on the chin before slipping off. I fell onto my face as he crashed to the ground. It wasn’t enough to put him down, but it was enough to make Lisa Ann take notice. She bit her lip before moving over to him and putting the gun to the back of his head.

“How’s it feel, jackass?” she asked, and before I could do anything, say anything, she pulled the trigger.

9

Blood and thicker bits sprayed across the metal as his corpse collapsed lifelessly to the ground. Lisa stood up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe I thought you were cute,” she spat.

Instead of getting up and doing something, anything. I couldn’t even breathe. As I watched Stephen’s blood leak out onto the cold, unforgiving steel, a small part of me died along with him. I know it was dumb, but well, I had been hoping the Agency had done something to him, had turned him somehow. I had held out the hope that I could save him, that I could bring him back to me… but now that was impossible.

I tried to get to my hands and knees, but the room swam, and I had to grab onto the floor to keep from sliding off the world. My stomach sloshed and twisted. As Lisa Ann reached out and touched my shoulder, I retched onto the floor. There wasn’t much inside, so little came out, but my abdomen clenched up so hard that it hurt.

“Abby, he was a bad guy. He…” She swallowed a sob. “He took me right out of school. Just walked into the classroom and grabbed me. No one even tried to stop him, to save me… Then I was here, and he was talking about using me as bait for you, Abby. God, I thought you were dead…”

“You shot him. Just like that,” I mumbled as she pulled me into a sitting position. She glanced at the corpse on the ground and shrugged.

“Yeah, I did. He was a bad guy, Abby. He was going to hand you over to these people.” She gestured at the smoking facility as white fog reached out of the flit’s ritual chamber like ghostly white tendrils. “Something tells me that wouldn’t be good.” She pulled me to my feet, and I let her do it though I wasn’t quite sure why. “We need to get out of here before they get that elevator open.”

I turned stiffly to stare at the elevator doors. They were still sealed, but I could see them moving, like something was trying to pry them open. It wouldn’t be long. Somehow, that didn’t seem to bother me very much because I felt hollow and empty. Lisa Ann had killed Stephen in cold blood. The how and the why of it sort of blurred away as I stared at the spot he had occupied. I could have saved him. I could have brought him back to me.

“No, you couldn’t have,” Donovan said like a snake in my ear. “He was evil. He was an agent like me. Our situations would have been reversed if someone just copy pasted our names in different spots in the mission docket.” His face loomed in front of me. “Would you feel this bad about me?” He grinned, showing his teeth. “Would you love, love, love me, if it was my job to save you and Stephen’s to betray you?”

“That’s not true,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure I’d actually said the words because, well, what if Donovan was right? What if Stephen had been acting exactly as he was supposed to this whole time? What if everything was really a lie? What if it had been his job to make me fall in love with him? Could I really be that stupid to still believe in him? After everything?

I turned my head from Donovan and stared at Lisa as a chill ran through me. I did not want to explore that now, I couldn’t, just couldn’t believe it was all a lie, but, but if it had been real, and the Agency had done something to him… well, then I’d have failed twice over and who could I blame, Lisa? No… I couldn’t blame Lisa. Still, for some reason, Donovan’s answer seemed more reasonable…

“Abby… we need to get a move on,” Lisa said tugging on my arm with one hand.

“Okay,” I whispered and wiped my mouth with my sleeve, leaving a glistening trail of slime on the black jumpsuit.

Lisa smiled, a soft fragile sort of smile that reminded me of a china doll, and pushed Stephen’s gun into my hands. It was still warm. “You should probably take this. I saw you a minute ago, and it was amazing, Abby. How’d you learn to move like that?”

“Someone tried to overwrite my brain, and it went wrong. Instead of taking over my body, it imparted a bunch of skills into me.” I smiled weakly at her. “The rest of it didn’t take.” I touched my head with one hand. “I’m too dense, I guess.” I smiled weakly, but it was hard.

“So you know Kung Fu?” she asked, grinning at me. “That’s so cool!”

“Yeah and like fifty other martial arts too.” I turned away from Stephen’s corpse and wound up staring into Donovan’s face. Only it was unreadable.

I was about to ask him what his expression meant, but I didn’t because he was a ghost and I was pretty sure Lisa Ann couldn’t see him. Besides, what if he started talking about Stephen again? I didn’t have time for that right now. We had to get out of here. It was important that we got out of here before the situation hit me fully. Otherwise I’d still be standing here when they rushed in. If that happened, bad guy or not, Stephen’s death would be even more meaningless.

“Okay, Lisa, let’s head into the ritual chamber and pray there’s a way out because as far as I know, the only way in or out of this hallway is through the elevator. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little beat up, so I’d rather not try to take down a bunch of soldiers while keeping you safe from harm.”

Lisa nodded and followed me as we made our way across the hallway, leaving the elevator and Stephen’s body behind. I fought the urge to turn and stare at him one last time as my boots crunched on the frozen metal. Icy fog spilled out of the blown up door as I stepped inside and looked around.

The chamber wasn’t as destroyed as I’d have liked it to be. Sure there were bits of burned plastic and twisted metal jutting up from the center, but I was reasonably sure this mess could be repaired rather easily. For all I knew, there were fifty more chambers just like this. No, that wasn’t likely… if there were more ritual chambers, wouldn’t the flit be back already? Either way, it seemed like this wouldn’t buy me that much time. If only I had more explosives...

A white pipe to my left was spraying misty coolant into the air, and while I wasn’t sure if it would hurt me, I was not inclined to find out. I approached the super-heated altar on the far side of the room carefully, not sure if something was going to leap out and try to kill me. For all I knew, this room was protected by demonic mice with lasers on their foreheads.

“What the hell is this?” Lisa Ann asked, reaching out and fingering a charred circuit board. She jerked it free from a tangle of wires and stared closely at it. “I’ve built circuit boards before, for radios and stuff, but this board is weird…”

“Eh?” I asked, glancing at the blackened bit of green plastic in her hand. “What’s so weird about it?”

“Okay, Abby,” she said, pointing to one of the gizmos embedded in the board. “Usually on boards, you have all sorts of things like capacitors and resisters and stuff. This board doesn’t have any of that as far as I can tell.”

“Then what are all those things on it?” I asked, peering closer at it.

“They look like crystals… I’d have to put this under magnification to be sure, but I think every one of these boards has crystals where the circuits should be. That doesn’t make any sense…”

“So what?” I asked. “What does it matter if there are crystals in place of capacitors and the like? It all seems like magic, anyway?”

“So we don’t have things like this.” She shook her head once. “This can’t exist.”

“Earth to Lisa. We’re in the headquarters of an Agency that employs vampires and werewolves. They had a pet demon that takes over your brain and makes you do its bidding.” I turned away from her and plodded through the room. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like there were any obvious exits, which made sense. I’d hoped maybe the grenade had weakened one of the walls, but it didn’t look like it had.

“That’s not an excuse for having something that shouldn’t exist,” she replied, shoving the board in her pocket and approaching me. “And before you ask, yes, I am aware I was mind controlled by a killer demon, and no, I don’t want to talk about what it was like.” She shrugged at me. “So how do we get out of here?”

“I have no idea,” I replied though I felt a little silly. I hadn’t even thought to ask her what being controlled by the flit felt like. Some friend I was. “Like I said before, I’m pretty sure the elevator is the only way out.”

“Nonsense, those pipes have to come from somewhere.” Lisa pointed at the pipe spewing coolant into the room. “There’s probably a wire way up there where they laid the pipe. If we can get in there, maybe it’s big enough for us to crawl out.”

“How are we going to bore a hole in the wall ten feet above our heads before they get the elevator open?” I asked, still staring at the spot.

“Don’t you have a blowtorch in that pouch on your belt?” she asked as the sound of shearing metal filled the hallway outside.

“No,” I replied, pushing past her and peering around the edge of the doorway. The elevator doors were only open about six inches, but as I watched it expand centimeter by centimeter, a canister rolled out of the opening. Green gas began to spew from it, and something told me, I didn’t want to breathe it if I could help it.

“Damn,” Lisa said from behind me and turned to hurry toward the back of the room. “Come over here.” She pointed up toward a vent above her head where the foggy coolant looked like it was being sucked out. “This still seems to be working, we’ll have the best chance to avoid the gas’ dispersion behind the filtration system.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” I replied as I backtracked to her position and crouched down behind the wreckage and leveled my gun on the door. “Hopefully they don’t just decide to toss in a few more canisters once they breach the hallway.”

“We need to get out of here before that happens, Abby.” Lisa was staring at me so hard, it made me wriggle under her gaze. What did she expect me to do? Make up an exit?

“I know that. I just don’t know how to do it.” I glared at her, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore, she was staring at some kind of display next to the red-hot altar. Somehow, despite the screen looking like a windshield after an attack by a baseball bat, numbers were scrolling across it.

I was about to ask her what it meant when a thought struck me like a kick in the teeth. Stephen had gotten into the hallway before me, but I’d been in the elevator shaft. So how had he gotten to me? He had to have gotten in here another way, right?

I leapt to my feet and sprinted back toward the hallway. “There’s got to be a trap door or something in here. That must be how Stephen got here before me.” I glanced at the canister, but thankfully it’d stopped spewing gas. I fired a couple rounds at the elevator, and they pinged off the doors. I heard people throwing themselves to the ground as I reached Stephen’s corpse.

It was still warm, and a shudder ran through me as I flipped it onto its back. This wasn’t Stephen… no, this was an it, an inanimate object. That’s what I tried to tell myself as I began rifling through his pockets, looking for a keycard. I found it tucked under his vest, and as I pulled it out, what remained of Stephen’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. My heart leapt into my throat, and I fell backward on my butt with a shriek. Another canister hit the ground next to me, and I stared at it dumbly, my fingers clenched around the keycard.

Gas began to spew out of it as Lisa kicked it, sending it flying back into the elevator. “Hurry, Abby!” she cried, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me away from the body. She snatched the keycard from my hand and waved it in front of my eyes. “Where do I use this?”

“I’m not sure,” I whispered, slowly spinning around the room.

“I’m going to just run it on the walls and see if something opens,” Lisa replied, pressing the thin keycard against the wall to my left and running it up in down in a sweeping motion as she moved down the hallway.

I threw one last glance at the elevator and fired another salvo when a door whooshed open behind me. I spun to see Lisa standing in front of an open doorway with a staircase running up and down.

“Up or down?” she asked, grinning at me, her cheeks dimpling like a fairy princess.

“Up,” I said, “definitely up.” I moved next to her and stepped past her into the stairwell. It was so bright it made it hard to see. Fluorescent light spilled into the metal corridor, making it seem cold and antiseptic. I leaned in and peered down the stairs, somewhat surprised there was no one in here.

“Why up?” Lisa asked, following me into the room. She swiped the card across a pad next to the door, and it slid closed, leaving us trapped in the stairwell.

“Helicopters are on the top floor,” I replied, heading up the stairs. “I’m pretty good with those.” I shot her a smile, but she just shook her head and began following me, the keycard clutched tightly in her hand.

“Something tells me a lot has changed since we last hung out,” Lisa said, quickly catching me. “Because I was pretty sure you didn’t even know how to drive.”

“Just a little.” I shrugged. “Nothing to write home about.”

We reached the helipad what felt like hours later. I wasn’t sure why we hadn’t encountered anyone. Shouldn’t there have been soldiers zeroing in on our position? Hell, shouldn’t there have been booby traps everywhere? Our escape should have been like an Indiana Jones adventure, instead it had been more like a horribly tiring jaunt on a gym Stairmaster.

Lisa Ann slid the keycard on the mechanism to open the outer door and let us into the heliport. Three helicopters were parked there. Two were those crazy big military ones you see in the movies. You know, the ones with the chain guns being shot by the commando with a cigar in his mouth? The other one was a sleek silver number that was sort of bullet shaped.

“So which one are we taking?” Lisa asked, looking at me as though she didn’t believe I could actually fly one.

“The small one,” I replied, stepping out into the room and surveying it for guards. Only I didn’t see any guards, anywhere. That was weird, right? “Unless you have a cigar and a team of army men.”

“I’m more of a pipe girl myself,” Lisa Ann replied, moving so close to me, she was like a second skin. For a girl who had shot Stephen in cold blood, she had stuck to me remarkably close since then. It was sort of like she was worried something bad would happen to her if she lost sight of me for even an instant. At least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was…

It was a little weird because the idea of me being an elite protector was a bit laughable. The last time she’d seen me do anything athletic had been when we were playing badminton, and one of the boys had knocked the shuttlecock into my shirt while I swung the racket like a total spaz. If only I could go play them now…

“Really, nothing?” Lisa Ann asked, shaking her head. “I gave that one to you, Abby.”

“What do you mean?” I raised an eyebrow at her as we approached the silver helicopter. I’d never flown one like this before, but then again I’d never done a lot of things I seemed to be an expert on.

“I’m more of a pipe girl? You should have had a witty retort or something.” She reached past me and slid the keycard over the door lock on the helicopter. The silver skin split apart as a hole appeared in its shell.

“Sorry, guess I’m more focused on trying to get us out of here in one piece,” I replied, getting inside and sliding into the pilot’s seat. Lisa Ann took the co-pilot’s chair as my hands flew over the controls. The rotors started spinning, revving up before she even had herself buckled in. Guess I knew how this one worked too. Score!

The helicopter drifted up off the helipad, and while I expected jets or alien UFOs to chase us down, nothing did as I set course for Gabriella’s closest base.

10

The next thing I knew, bullets were zinging through the air, pelting the silver skin of my helicopter like angry hailstones. I threw us sideways out of the line of fire to reveal one of those army choppers from earlier. Damn… if only I’d had some more explosives, or you know, the forethought to shoot a hole in the gas tank…

The guy at the gun seat took out his cigar and gestured to me with it before sticking it back in his mouth and letting loose another spray of bullets that missed us completely. He was wearing a green bandanna and camouflage pants, but was otherwise bare-chested. He had huge rippling muscles and short cropped blond hair.

“Are they being serious?” Lisa Ann asked as she stared out the window, her mouth hanging open. “That guy looks like an action hero.”

“If it’s supposed to be intimidating, it’s not working,” I snapped, pitching our helicopter around so the front of it was facing the enemy chopper. I pressed a button on the control panel, and a missile spit out the front of our helicopter like a line of dancing fire. It tore through the enemy helicopter’s fuselage before exploding with enough force to throw me backward against my seat as the army chopper spun out of sight in a burst of flame and smoke.

“Good going, Abby!” Lisa cried just before the back of our helicopter tore free from the rest of it.

Wind whipped around us, ripping everything inside the chopper into the sucking void outside as we spun haphazardly through the air. Flame rippled along the metal as foam sprayed from the control panel in front of me, encasing me in some kind of safety system that was going to keep me trapped inside this tumbling metal coffin.

I wiped the hardening foam from my face and grabbed the emergency parachute from the compartment above my head. I slipped the straps over my arms and cinched them to the snaps on the front of my jumpsuit before releasing my harness and throwing myself from my seat. I landed hard in Lisa’s foam covered lap, and my sudden movement sent the falling helicopter into a spin.

That was also when I realized Lisa Ann was screaming. I smacked against the roof as we tumbled through the air, my sense of balance going out the window as my fingers latched onto her harness for stability.

She looked up at me as I pulled myself down to her lap. The wound on my bicep tore open and pain shot through my arm. I shut my eyes for a second, and when they snapped back open, adrenaline surged through me. I unfastened Lisa’s harness and wrapped a tow strap around her belt.

“Ready?” I squealed, and before she could respond, I kicked off the dashboard, throwing us out of the broken helicopter. She instinctively wrapped her arms around my waist as we plummeted for the space of a breath. It was good because when I pulled the ripcord, we jerked apart with so much force, I probably would have broken something if she didn’t have me in a death grip. Still, searing agony distilled everything away as the tow strap snapped taut.

“You need to get into a better position,” I squealed through clenched teeth. “Otherwise, I think my arm is going to tear off.”

“You’re lucky it didn’t rip you in half,” Lisa cried, maneuvering up my body and throwing her arms through the straps on the front of the pack and buckling them in place. How had she known how to do that? I was about to ask when the cockpit of our helicopter crashed into a swimming pool far below.

Even over the sound of the impact, I could hear the blades of another helicopter behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see one of the agency’s standard black helicopters keeping pace with us as we floated downward. I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like whoever was inside. Especially because they were probably smirking like jackasses.

“Awesome,” I murmured, annoyed that I’d lost my gun in the dogfight. If I still had it, maybe I could take them down from here…

“Abigail de la Mancha, prepare to surrender. If not, we’ll blow you out of the sky.” The chain gun underneath the nose of the helicopter spun for a fraction of a second. “Do you understand?”

I nodded even though I wasn’t sure exactly how to surrender while hanging from a parachute in midair. Besides, what was I going to do, throw my boot at them?

“Abby, please tell me you have a plan,” Lisa squealed into my ear, voice so high-pitched that I was sure dogs could have heard it miles away.

I was about to tell her I had no idea when a blue blast of energy slammed into the side of the black helicopter, ripping it apart in a burst of sapphire flame. The chopper sort of imploded in on itself, reminding me of Esmeralda’s anti-gravity implosion ring. I threw my hand up to shield my face from the heat of the explosion, only there was no heat, and for a moment, it was totally quiet.

“Um… Abby, what’s that?” Lisa asked, pointing to my right. I shifted so I could look. What I saw made my heart stop in my chest. A huge man riding a broomstick with a glowing right hand was coming toward us like a bat out of hell.

He was wearing a sky-blue suit and a motorcycle helmet with big white plates that hid his eyes from view.

“What the actual frig?” Lisa said as the guy waved with his glowing blue hand. “Is he flying on a magic broomstick?”

“It’d appear so,” I said as he pulled up in front of me and grabbed onto my harness with one meaty hand.

Before I could protest, he fastened some sort of device to the straps and sliced the parachute away. We fell about a foot before whatever device he was using to hold us jerked us to a stop hard enough for my teeth to slam together. Still, I was glad the fall had been short because somehow my heart had managed to hop its way into my throat. If it’d been much farther, it might have come out my mouth.

“Thanks for saving us,” Lisa called, looking up at the guy like he was our guardian angel, but I wasn’t so sure we should be thanking him. Even beneath his suit, he seemed familiar. Was he someone from our town, and if so, that would make him a bad guy, right?

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. His voice was muffled by the air and his helmet as he pulled us off in some unknown direction, but I was sure I recognized it from somewhere. Only where?

A moment later, we were sitting on a street corner next to a large van with ‘Joe’s plumbing’ written on the side next to a picture of a guy in a hard hat winking and giving a thumb’s up.

“Get in, and I’ll take you to our safe house,” he said, opening the back door and throwing his broomstick inside. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. Hell, you can leave if you want,” he added, pulling off his helmet. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.” He turned toward us, smiling.

“Roberto!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and backpedaled so fast I stumbled and fell on my butt. “How… I thought you were dead.” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been left bleeding and broken in Gabriella’s base moments before we blew the whole place up. So how had he survived?

“I’m not dead,” he replied, staring at me with his intelligent, patient eyes. “Now get in, I’m not sure how long we have before more goons show up.” He slid open the side compartment of the van and gestured for us to get inside. “And take off your clothes. I don’t think you’re being tracked, but you can’t be too careful. You’ll find spare clothes inside.”

He didn’t wait for me to get up as he pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. Lisa shot me a look, and without waiting for a response, leapt inside the van. I swallowed, not sure what to do. Should I stay here running by myself or go with Roberto? Then a horrible thought struck me… if he was alive, was Gabriella alive too?

“Is Gabriella alive?” I asked, getting to my feet and climbing into the van as it started up with a roar. Thanks for waiting for me…

“No,” he replied, hitting a button on his dashboard that caused the side door to slide shut, locking me inside. A bad feeling swelled in my gut, but it was eased just a little knowing Gabriella was dead. “You saw to that, Abby.”

“Who is Gabriella?” Lisa asked, and I glanced at her. She’d already stripped out of her clothing, and it was lying on a pile on the floor. The van lurched forward, and she tumbled into the seat still trying to pull on a pair of camouflage pants that looked to be just a tad on the big side.

“Gabriella is Abby’s birth mother,” Roberto said, and his eyes bore into me from the rearview mirror. “Now get dressed and toss your clothes out the window.”

The window next to Lisa rolled down as he spoke, and without a word, my best friend tossed her stuff outside even though she was wearing only a sports bra and camo pants. It sort of made her look badass, I’ll admit. Then another thought struck me. Had she really just stripped down in the back of a van like it was nothing?

“I thought Esmeralda was your mother?” Lisa asked, staring hard at me as I slumped in the seat and began pulling off my stolen uniform.

“It’s a long story,” I replied, glancing up at the mirror to see Roberto watching me, but not in the creepy ‘I’m watching you undress’ way. Even still, it made me turn so my back was to him.

“You have time. We won’t reach the safe house for a few hours. There’s some sandwiches back there too if you get hungry.” He shrugged. “Might as well get the ‘telling her the story’ out of the way now.”

11

“I can’t believe everyone in our town has been abducted from their parents,” Lisa said for perhaps the fiftieth time. Honestly, it was starting to get a little annoying. Was this how I’d been? Surely not. “I can’t believe my parents aren’t my parents.”

“Well, you’ll get to meet your real dad soon, Lisa,” Roberto replied, speaking for the first time in an hour. “After you were taken from Folsom, I was able to reach out to him. He’s going to help us.”

Lisa swallowed and turned so pale she might as well have been a ghost. “My dad? You mean I’m going to meet my birth father?” Her eyes dropped to her hands as she fiddled with them in her lap. “I’m not sure how I feel about that…”

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” I replied, reaching over and giving her a hug. “But to be fair, you’re doing better with it than I did.”

“It’s not that, Abby. It means everyone, all our friends are hostages.” She looked up at me, strangely determined. “We have to save them, to get them out.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible…” I trailed off, looking at Roberto for help, but he was staring out at the road, ignoring us. “Besides, I’m fairly certain a lot of them wouldn’t exactly be happy finding out. A lot of them probably like their lives.”

Lisa waved me off, ignoring my point. “What if we made everyone there like you? We could all be badasses and escape.” Lisa looked up at me. “I bet I could figure it out.”

“Lisa, I’m not sure how to even help you do that… And it sounds crazy…” I shook my head. Giving everyone my ‘super powers’ was impossible right? If it was easy, the agency would have a million people way more bad ass than the goons I’d fought thus far. No, I was special, dammit.

“You’re what, Lisa, seventeen? No matter how smart you are, you don’t have the background to figure out how to do it,” Roberto said, voice calm. “Abby’s sort of special in that it actually worked. It’s not like she’s the first one we tried this on. In fact, it only worked because her genetics were so similar to Gabriella’s. She has the same innate talents as her mother which is why the skill transfer worked, but if you really think about it, the experiment failed because Gabriella’s mind didn’t come along with those skills.”

“You just aren’t thinking about it correctly.” Lisa was waving her hands excitedly. “See, the flit works on anyone, right? What if we could make it so that the flit enters you, and instead of it having access to your body to do whatever it wants to do, you have access to its body of knowledge. We’d just need to make some kind of profiles to load into you…” She smiled at me in a way that made my stomach sink. If she managed to do that, would it work? Would it give everyone access to skills and techniques they never knew? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that…

“The flit is gone.” I shrugged. “We destroyed the ritual room, remember?”

“Until they rebuild it,” Lisa replied, pulling out her stolen circuit board and staring at it, equations and other complicated thoughts sparking across her eyes. “Either way, I’m going to figure it out.” She shrugged. “I mean, fundamentally, what’s the difference between you practicing to throw a punch or shoot a gun, and me downloading the ‘training’ into your brain? Not a whole lot, I’d wager.” She stared at me like I was exhibit A. “I mean, we all saw the Matrix, right?”

“Well, let’s take a time out from that. It’s time to meet your dad,” Roberto said as he pulled up to a decrepit gas station. It was sort of funny because the G on the sign was burned out so it read ‘as and Sip.’ Lisa’s face fell so far it could have been an Olympic record as Roberto backed the van into a spot behind the convenience mart that boasted all things cold and beer.

“You ready?” I asked, reaching out and touching her shoulder.

She looked up at me and smiled weakly before nodding. She stood up in the tiny van and moved past me toward the door and fumbled with the handle for a bit before the door slid open to reveal Roberto. He was still clad in his stylish sky-blue jumpsuit which made me sort of wish he’d changed. He was going to stick out like a sore thumb.

He must have caught me looking at him because he looked down at his jumpsuit and smirked. “Oh, yeah,” he mumbled to himself and shoved one hand in his pocket. He must have done something because the colors on his jumpsuit melted together, morphing so that a moment later it looked like he was wearing a long-sleeved black button-up and jeans.

“Cool!” Lisa squealed, grabbing the shirt and tugged on it. “I need something like that.” She turned and smiled at me. “You could have told me about all this cool stuff.”

“Yeah, next time I’m on the run for my life, I’ll write you a letter.” I turned away from her and stared at a flickering streetlight. I hadn’t meant to sound so bitchy, but it wasn’t fair. I’d been through so much and now Lisa had figured out a way to give herself super spy powers in all of what, thirty seconds? That didn’t seem fair.

It made me wonder what would have happened if she’d been abducted instead of me. Would she be ruling the world right now with the Agency crushed beneath her tiny heel? I shook the thought away. There was no use going down that road…

Lisa stared at me, a curious expression on her face. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“Yes, well great,” Roberto said, ushering both of us toward a beat up jalopy in the corner of the lot. “Time to get the hell out of here.”

“You mean we’re supposed to ride in that?” I asked, eyeing the rusty splotches covering the hood and body of the car. “Does it even run?”

“You should see what’s under the hood,” Roberto replied as he stepped up to the car and tapped the tune to jingle bells on the window with one huge knuckle.

It slid down to reveal a thin Asian man with bleach blond hair and black stubble on his chin. He was wearing a white wife beater and had a gold chain around his neck. It was a little weird because he had to have been over forty, but instead, he looked like he was barely in his twenties.

“Is that my daughter?” he asked, voice light and cheery. “Lisa, is that you?” He was out of the car an instant later, wrapping Lisa in his arms and pulling her into his chest. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

Lisa pushed him away and stared at him. Then she held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lisa Ann, pleased to meet you. What is your name?”

Her dad stared at her hand like it’d just stolen his best piece of candy. The smile slid off his face and hit the parking lot floor with a wet, gooey splorch.

“Um… Tom.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s what my friends call me, anyway. It’s short for Tomofumi.” He swallowed and took her hand, shaking it. “I remember you as a tiny little sprat of a thing, always screaming and crying. You figured out how to crawl out of your baby jumper when you were only a couple months old…” Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke, still holding onto her hand.

“You can see why this is a little weird for me. I recognize that you could, in fact, be my father. But I rather like my foster parents. I have no problems with them. They’re good to me.” She shrugged. “I would have never known I was adopted.”

“You’re not supposed to know you’re adopted. That’s sort of the whole point,” Roberto said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Either way, you need to get in the car so we can get out of here before agents show back up, and we’re forced to blow up this lovely gas station.” He shrugged and shot a sideways grin at me. “Though I am a fan of blowing stuff up.”

Tom nodded, releasing Lisa’s hand and swinging the back door open. The inside of the car was nice. Not just nicer than I’d have expected, but capital-N-nice. It looked like it had to have cost a hundred times what the outside of the junk heap did.

When Lisa made no move to get in, I reached out and took her hand. I squeezed it once and sort of pulled her into the backseat with me. “At least I know where you get your fondness for crappy cars,” I said, helping her buckle in because she was still staring at Tom so hard I thought he might burst into flames.

“My car is not crappy,” both her and her father said in unison. It was a little eerie.

“Of course,” Roberto said, reaching over and shaking Tom by the shoulder. It was a little weird because his hand was pretty much the size of Tom. As I watched the exchange, I wondered why Roberto was helping me. Hadn’t I offed his boss when I killed Gabriella? Shouldn’t he want revenge on me? Or was he working for someone else, and if so, who?

Admittedly, that thought made me want to run off on my own, but I really didn’t have a better idea of what to do. Maybe Roberto did? Either way, I wasn’t sure I could trust him. I’d have to keep an eye on him, just to make sure he didn’t try anything suspicious.

I glanced around, careful to take everything in as Tom turned the key, and the car roared to life. I’d just have to rely on my magic-infused skills to keep both Lisa and I alive if Roberto or Tom tried something. Still, as far as I knew, they were on the Agency’s hit list. What was that saying, the enemy of my enemy?

Deep bass rumbled through the back seat as the car shot forward into the street. The world outside the windows was a blur of scenery. Tom shifted, throwing the wheel to the right as we skidded around a semi-truck and fishtailed for a second before tearing down the road in a squeal of rubber.

“Abby, you’re hurting me,” Lisa said, tugging her hand free of mine.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, putting my hand in my lap as the car lurched again.

Lisa smiled at me and shook her head. “He is not where I get my driving from either.”

I smirked and tried to relax in my seat. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going, but the chances of Tom being as bad as Gabriella were slim, right? And so what if he was just as bad? As long as he was on our side, I could use a little bad…

I swallowed as a sudden thought popped into my mind.

“It’s okay, you can say it, Abby. I won’t tell,” Donovan’s voice leered in my ear like he was sitting next to me. I stared out the window, watching sandy hills roll by like ocean waves and shook my head.

“Abby, is something wrong?” Lisa asked, reaching out and putting her hand on mine. I looked down and stared at our hands as Donovan appeared outside the window, his face stretched into a smile that seemed to loom over me.

“No,” I murmured, squeezing her hand, though I wasn’t sure why.

“Go on, tell her,” Donovan said, his stupid teeth perfect and gleaming in the moonlight. “Tell her you wish Gabriella was alive so she could help you take down the Agency. Tell her you were wrong and Gabriella was right. Tell Lisa Ann that if you had to do it again, you’d help Gabriella take over the world, that you’d press the button. That you’d kill everyone if it meant taking down the Agency. Tell her the truth, Abby.”

“No,” I repeated because I hoped Donovan wasn’t one hundred percent right, and Lisa squeezed my hand back.

12

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been driving when we pulled behind a big red semi with a bright silver crate on its back. It was weird because Tom had been going out of his way to swerve around traffic, even though it was pitch black outside and the road was mostly one lane. So why was he trailing behind a semi, now? Especially since this one was going way slower than we had been.

As I opened my mouth to ask, the back door of the semi slid open and a ramp fell down, crashing into the asphalt and throwing up sparks. A guy in a white jumpsuit stood just inside the cargo hold, and he waved at us, signaling for us to what? Drive inside? That was crazy, right?

Tom revved the engine, and my heart felt like it exploded in my chest. He wasn’t seriously going to… We shot forward. The car hit the ramp with a jolt, and for a moment, the tires spun in midair before we lurched up into the back of the truck before coming to a stop inches from the wall. The guy in the jumpsuit hit a button, and the door behind us hissed shut, sealing us inside.

Halogen lights came on, bathing us in hostile white light as Tom unbuckled his seatbelt and spun around to look at us.

“Pretty cool, right?” He smiled so broadly he reminded me of a teenager who had just jumped a gorge on his bike. I was unimpressed. While cool, I wasn’t sure it had been necessary. Couldn’t we have just stopped the car and driven inside? It’s not like we were under attack right now.

“That was cool, I guess,” Lisa Ann said, looking up from her circuit board and staring at him for a long while.

“Thanks,” Tom said, reaching out, his fingers extended toward her before thinking better of it. Lisa watched his hand, her cool brown eyes taking in every movement as he pulled his hand back and turned in his seat. He sat there in silence for so long I was beginning to think he’d forgotten we were in a hurry. After what felt like a year, he swung open his door. “Let’s go,” Tom huffed, getting out of the car and opening Lisa’s door. “Welcome to my mobile lab.”

“So, uh, who is driving?” I asked, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to risk taking off my seatbelt. I wasn’t sure it’d actually help, but I wasn’t exactly inclined to give up my faux-safety just yet. Besides, for all I knew, this car was invincible.

“The ghost of a dead NASCAR driver,” the man in the jumpsuit said. His voice was so deep it damned near rattled my stomach. “He’s actually really talkative. Want to meet him?”

I glanced at him as he opened my door for me and held out his hand to help me up. He was a lot taller than me, standing well over six feet and was as thin as a flagpole. His skin was so dark it reminded me of melted chocolate.

A strange smile crossed my lips as I let him pull me out of the vehicle. It was immediately followed by an outpouring guilt that somehow, despite Stephen trying to kill Lisa and me, I was doing something wrong. I tried to shake off the feeling, but there it was. Guilt that I hadn’t saved Stephen from the Agency, that still, somehow he had been mind-controlled, and there I was, smiling at attractive men only a couple hours later.

“Troy, want to get Roberto and Abby some refreshments? I want to show my darling daughter the lab. Then maybe she’ll pretend to like me.” Tom threw a look at Roberto who was just getting out of the car that said, “Please just go with this.”

“Sure thing,” Roberto replied, walking up to Troy and physically pushing him out of the way so he was standing between us. “Where’s dinner? I’m starved.”

“Um…” Troy said, biting his lip and looking around for help, but Tom was already disappearing up some stairs with Lisa in tow. She hadn’t even said goodbye. What a traitor… then again, how would I have acted if our situations were reversed? Probably pretty much the same only with a lot more whining. I remembered how angry and betrayed I’d felt upon meeting Gabriella, but in my case, most of my vitriol had been directed largely at my foster mother, Esmeralda.

Lisa’s anger seemed focused on her father. It made me wonder what she’d do if our situations had been swapped. Would she have left me in the dark so I could keep living my crummy, ordinary life? Except that was the difference between us.

As unspecial as my life had been pre-magic-powers-mode, Lisa’s had bordered on the extraordinary. Sure, she’d been relegated to the loser table like me, but she’d long been hailed as Folsom’s class smarty pants and had a whole host of awards under her belt.

Unlike my post-junior college plans of working in my foster mom’s restaurant before buying a bunch of cats and lounging in a too-small bathtub with a whole bottle of wine, Lisa’s plans had started with choosing between MIT, Stanford, and whatever other colleges she’d decided to set her sights on. Hell, I’d heard she’d already been approached by some tech companies to skip the rest of college altogether and just start working…

“Um is not a destination, Troy,” Roberto said, looking the man up and down. “My daughter needs a meal. Do you want her to starve?”

My world sort of spun, twisting out from under me as my breath whooshed out of me. “What?” I squealed, grabbing Roberto’s hand and pulling him toward me so I could stare into his face. “What did you just say?”

Roberto smiled, his face stretching into a broad grin, before wrapping me in a hug that swallowed my entire body. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while, Abby, but Gabriella didn’t feel it was best.” He kissed my cheek. “But since she’s gone, I figured it couldn’t hurt things.”

“So, wait,” I said as another thought struck me. “You had sex with Gabriella?” I asked, raising one eyebrow at him. “I mean, I know that’s how kids are made, but I always assumed she sort of duplicated herself via mitosis, or ate her mate like a black widow.”

“We did not have sex,” Roberto replied, a grimace spreading across his face. “I hate to say this, Abby, but you were conceived in a lab. Hope that doesn’t ruin the romance for you.”

I shrugged because I had no response to that. Somehow, I wasn’t really surprised I’d been a lab baby. It was a lot to take in, true, but at the same time, I’d never had a dad before. Not even a fake one. This… was kind of cool.

“I’ll, uh…” Troy cleared his throat, “take you to get something to eat.”

He spun on his heel and began walking toward the front of the cavernous semi, which was weird because I hadn’t remembered it being this big from the outside. Then again, for all I knew, we were in a huge base that only looked like a semi from the outside. Maybe they used magic to actually make it bigger on the inside. Hell maybe we were flying through the air… maybe we’d docked with some super-stealth way-station in the clouds. At this point, I was willing to believe pretty much anything. It was just easier that way. If I started trying to understand things, I’d just give myself a migraine because at the end of the day, magic, and all that came with it, was real.

“So you were basically a sperm donor,” I said as Roberto took my hand and led me after Troy. His grip faltered for a second as he glanced at me, but when he saw the smirk on my face, he relaxed.

“I guess you could say that, but you don’t realize the honor it is to be your father, Abby.” He grinned at me. “I’m so proud of you.”

I swallowed as my world slipped off its axis, hit the ground, and bounced a couple times. When I finally recovered, we were in another room altogether. There was a weird looking vending machine in the corner, a couple plush blue leather couches, and not much else.

“Why are you proud of me?” I squeaked, turning to look up at Roberto. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t want you to be proud of me, but I haven’t exactly done a whole lot.”

“I could just say that you’re my daughter and that alone would be enough,” Roberto replied, smiling at me as he led me over to the vending machine. “But somehow, I don’t think you’ll feel like that’s a valid response.” He gestured at the vending machine. “Now what do you want, I’ll buy.”

“Um, everything in here is free,” Troy said from his perch on one of the couches. I hadn’t even managed to make it to the vending machine in the time it had taken for him to make himself comfortable. I didn’t see how it was possible, but there he was, slouched over the side of a couch like a lanky spider, sipping Coke through a straw he’d shoved into the can’s pop top.

“Don’t ruin my moment, Troy,” Roberto replied in a voice that made me shiver. “Or I’ll throw you off the back of this truck… again.” Roberto smiled, and Troy deflated in a way that made me think Roberto had thrown Troy from the semi before.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It sure seemed so mean, so I just had to hope it wasn’t moving at the time. Either way, his statement affirmed something I’d almost forgotten. Roberto was a bad guy who had worked for my terrorist mother.

“I want you to answer my question.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And also I’d like chocolate cream pie.” I glanced over the machine but couldn’t make any sense of it. “Does this thing have that?”

“Yeah, it cooks stuff. You just put in what you want, and assuming it has the ingredients inside, it just makes whatever you ask for.” Roberto punched some buttons into the front of the machine. It began to whir and make a sort of horrible grinding noise that reminded me of a car with bad brakes. “There used to be an issue with it not having a lot of recipes stored inside, but by now it has a lot in its database.”

Of course they had a super-vending machine capable of cooking anything. Typical. Now if only my JC’s cafeteria had one of these things…

“So, uh about the being proud of me.” I smiled up at him, and he shook his head.

“You’re really not letting that go, are you?” Roberto rubbed his face with one giant hand. “I’m proud of you because even after everything you’ve been through, you haven’t turned bad. It’d be easy for you to become Gabriella, but you didn’t. Hell, you blew up the base and escaped, and even with all her power at your fingertips, you haven’t used it to say drop a bomb on Washington DC.” He smacked one fist into the palm of his hand. “Do you know how many people would have already done something like that?”

“Um… a lot?” I replied, biting my lip as my world crashed to the ground and shattered for the third time in an hour. Hadn’t that been exactly what I had been trying to do? Hadn’t that been why I’d infiltrated the Agency’s base? I’d wanted to gain control of Gabriella’s resources. The only thing that had stopped me was I’d been thwarted trying to destroy the flit. If I’d stuck to my original plan, I’d have left without even trying to blow up the flit’s ritual chamber. I’d be sitting in an underground base ready to laugh maniacally and stroke my cat. Hell, that had been where I’d been heading when Roberto had saved me.

Great. Just freaking great. I’d had a dad for all of thirty minutes, and I’d already managed to disappoint him and dash his vision of me as the perfect angel to shards. Fan-freaking-tastic.

“What’s wrong, Abby?” Roberto asked as thoughts swam through his large dark eyes. “Did I say something wrong?” He shot me a weak smile. “I’m not exactly good at the whole father thing, but I’m going to try.”

“Why didn’t you come for me sooner?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to say the words, but they’d just come out on their own like little venomous daggers. When in doubt about your own feelings, attack angrily, I guess…

“What?” Roberto asked, taken aback. He opened his mouth to say something else when the vending machine beeped, and a door slid open. Sitting there inside the small plastic cube was a slice of chocolate cream pie covered in whipped cream and little bits of shaved chocolate sprinkled over the top. Roberto reached in, lifted up the pie-containing paper plate, and offered it to me. “Here’s your pie, Abby.”

“I don’t want the damn pie. I want to know why you didn’t try to find me. Or better yet, why you didn’t tell me who you were when we first met…” I fixed him with my best glare.

Roberto stood there with a plate of pie in his hand for a long time before setting it down and keying in some commands on the machine. It began to chug and whir again as he turned back toward me and sighed. “I told you Gabriella wouldn’t let me. As to why I didn’t find you? I tried, but you weren’t exactly making it easy to find you, Abby. It’s not like I had access to all my resources. Ever since Gabriella died, all of her bases have been locked down, waiting for you to unlock them.”

“You mean that’s true?” I asked, ignoring the puppy-dog look on his face. “About my biometrics unlocking the keys to her kingdom?”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Gabriella was going to die either way. Even if she couldn’t get herself implanted in your brain, she still wanted you to have access to all her tech. That’s part of the reason why the Agency wants you so badly. It isn’t just because you were a ‘success.’ They want Gabriella’s stuff. Even though they know where her bases are, they can’t get anything out of them very easily. If they had you, well, it’d be a hell of a lot easier.”

“So what’s to stop me from phoning the Agency and offering them everything in exchange for leaving me alone?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him and putting my hands on my hips.

“Not a whole lot,” Roberto replied, staring at me very carefully. “All things considered, it isn’t a bad plan as long as you don’t mind leaving all of Gabriella’s resources in the hands of an evil government agency.”

His statement sobered me because I was being bratty. Then again, Gabriella had been evil too. Would putting all her tech in the hands of the Agency be that bad? I wasn’t sure, but while some part of me told me yes, I just wasn’t sure it was true. There had to be others out there that were worse than Gabriella, right? Others that the Agency was trying to protect us from… Maybe giving them her tech wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe it would save a lot of lives…

The machine beeped, and the door slid open again to reveal a plate teeming with steak, creamed corn, and mashed potatoes. My stomach rumbled as I stared at the plate. It smelled so good I couldn’t even see past it as Roberto pulled it out. He took it and my pie off toward the couch. I followed behind him like a dog begging for scraps and sat down next to him on the blue couch. It was so plush, I nearly sank into it up to my eyeballs.

Roberto laughed as he watched me watch him cut up his steak. “Do you want some?”

“Yes,” I replied, licking my lips. Originally dessert had sounded like a great idea, but as I stared at the steak, the smell of it wafting into my nose, I knew that had been a bad idea because I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten something that didn’t come out of an easy open package.

“You could have asked me for a steak a minute ago,” Roberto chided, spearing a cube of meat with his fork.

“It’s different,” I replied, reaching out and touching his shoulder lightly. “You’ll come to understand that parents’ food always tastes better than your own.”

“Is that so?” Roberto asked, holding the fork out to me. I snatched it from him and stuck it in my mouth, ignoring the possibility that it was made from poison. If Roberto had wanted to kill me, let’s just say he’d had his chance. Many times.

The steak was perfectly cooked and damned near melted in my mouth as I chewed. “I need one of these machines,” I said a moment later. “Is there a backpack version?”

“Unfortunately, no. This is the only one in existence,” Troy said, and the sound of his voice startled me. I’d totally forgotten he was there. Great, he must think I’m a total bitch. “Tom likes to make things to deal with the mundane life details. It’s also why he always wears the same thing every day even though it makes him look like a slob.” Troy shrugged. “He actually owns sixteen outfits that look exactly the same.”

I was about to make a snide remark, but Roberto chose that moment to offer me my pie. My snark melted away as I took the pie and attacked it with my fork. Let’s just say it was the best pie ever.

Because it was.

13

Troy stood, and a strange smile that didn’t quite fit his face spread across his lips. He looked around as though taking in the scene before loping over to my couch and holding out one hand. “Care to dance?” he asked.

My mouth must have fallen open because I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. Me? Dance? Here? That was crazy, right? I was about to look at Roberto for help when Troy snapped his fingers and music filtered through the air in a slowly rising tide. It filled up the room like a summer’s breeze, sweeping me off the couch and onto my feet before I even knew what hit me.

“Wha?” was all I managed to say before he pressed one slender finger to my lips, his other hand snaking around my waist and pulling me toward him. How had this happened? What was going on? Why was Roberto letting him do this to me?

He spun, shifting on his heels and swinging himself around so I had no choice but to twirl. I did. The little room flashed by me, and I spied Roberto sitting glassy eyed on the couch, head tilted toward us, but even that momentary glimpse told me he wasn’t paying any attention to anything, let alone to us.

“If you’re waiting for someone to save you from me,” Troy whispered, pulling me against his body so his warmth seeped into me. “It’s simply not possible.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be cute or not, but it was coming off mostly creepy. I was about to tell him so when he stepped back. The sudden coldness of the distance between our bodies made me shiver.

He raised one arm, jerking me up onto my tiptoes as he slid around me, pressing his chest against my back and wrapping our still entwined hands around my tummy. He leaned in close so his breath was hot on my cheek.

“How does it feel, Abby?” He breathed into my neck before his lips pressed down on my skin. My heart slammed in my chest like a battering ram, and the room sort of spun. Had he just kissed me? Seriously? Had that just happened?

“What are you doing?” I squeaked. His kisses ran up my neck, making my traitorous knees go weak. “How does what feel?”

“To kiss?” He swallowed, and the sound was so loud in my ears I could barely think. He spun me around and stared at me. I tried to look away, tried to turn my head, but instead, I stood there utterly transfixed by his eyes, drowning in them. “I’d like to try it, Abby… before I go.” He swallowed again and pressed one of my hands to his chest. His heart was beating so hard I could feel it like a rumbling jet beneath his ribcage. “I’d like to try it with you…”

I licked my lips unconsciously, not sure what to say or do. Could I really kiss him? As the thought rippled across my brain guilt filled me. Of course I couldn’t kiss him. What kind of girl would that make me? Even if Stephen was evil, was I really the type of girl to go around kissing random boys? I didn’t think I was.

Besides, could this really be happening right now? It seemed so out of the blue. While I didn’t know Troy well enough to gauge what was normal, I was reasonably certain this was decidedly un-Troy-like behavior. It had to be. It just had to be.

“Look…” I started to say, but he cut me off by pressing his lips against mine. His teeth scraped against mine as he pressed me backward against the couch, his tongue slipping into my mouth and exploring.

When we were both on the couch, his right hand released me and trailed up my arm before coming to rest just below my throat. His fingertips rested there, and it was sort of creepy. I reached out, trying to push him off of me, but admittedly, it wasn’t with as much force as it should have been. It was surprise, surely.

His hand slipped down the front of my shirt and grabbed my breast. He kneaded my flesh like he’d never even touched a girl before, which was crazy, right? Surely… Then again, he’d said he’d never kissed a girl before. Maybe he really hadn’t…

Either way, I wasn’t going to let some random boy grab my tit without so much as a date. I wasn’t that kind of girl, and besides, Troy wasn’t hot enough. And as shallow as that was, it meant he’d have to try a hell of a lot harder to get any more out of me.

He broke the kiss and sucked in a breath. “You taste unlike anything I could have imagined.” His eyes went down to my shirt as he pulled his hand free of my clothing and stared it. “You feel even better.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, shoving at his chest with my hands, but he didn’t even seem to feel it. “That’s not how you treat a girl.” I leveled my best planet-ending-stare at him. “You need to get off me right now before I do something horribly painful to you.”

“You mean like trying to kill me?” he asked, sitting back so he was straddling my torso with his long spindly legs. “Again?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, confusion melting away part of my fury. “I just met you a few minutes ago. How could I have tried to kill you?”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he asked, licking his lips in one slow deliberate movement that sent a panicked tremor running down my spine.

“Um no, should I?” I asked, trying to remember him from somewhere, anywhere. I wasn’t exactly great with faces mind you, but ever since the experiment, I’d been able to place way more faces than I had before. If I’d met him at all recently, I’d remember, and besides, the chances of me trying to kill him before I’d left Folsom seemed a tad unlikely. I mean we didn’t even serve seafood at my mom’s restaurant, so I couldn’t have even given him some bad clams.

“They rebuilt the ritual chamber, Abby. But, evidently, there’s something intrinsically wrong with me. The scientists didn’t realize it until they put me on your trail. The problem is that because I’m a demon, I’m not human enough to anticipate what you’ll do.” Troy’s eyes sparkled. “So they’ve dumped pretty much every moment of human existence into my demonic brain. They want me to feel, Abby.”

I stared at him, unsure of what he meant by that. “What are you talking about?”

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against mine. “I think I’m in love with you, Abby.” One hand snaked out and brushed the hair from my face. “I still have my orders so I’ll bring you in, but know I feel bad about it. I actually feel bad about it. I wish there was another way.”

I drove my knee into his crotch, and while the blow should have done something, it didn’t. Instead, Troy just looked at me strangely.

“You don’t understand, do you?” As he said the words a horrible thought pulsed through my addled, sleep-deprived brain. He’d said they’d rebuilt the ritual chamber… Did that mean Troy was afflicted by the flit?

“No… it can’t be,” I whispered, shock flooding into my voice. “It’s too soon…”

“That’s right, Abby.” Troy licked me, his tongue scraping along my cheek. “I’m back.”

“You’re not an ‘I,’ flit,” I snapped, trying to throw him off of me, but he held me down with that strange demonic strength he always had. He pressed his forearm down on my throat, but not hard enough to choke me.

“There are so many things I want to try with you, Abby.” He moved his mouth down my neck, trailing kisses that made my stomach turn into a tight ball of revulsion and hatred.

“Awesome,” I murmured when a strange thought struck me. If this was the flit, and it was just learning to be ‘human’ then maybe, just maybe, it was vulnerable to it.

I reached out with my hand and trailed my fingers along his face, a forced smile on my lips. “Oh… that feels so good,” I whispered, throwing my head back. “But maybe we should get rid of some of these clothes. If you think this is good, imagine what it will feel like with our naked bodies pressed together.”

“I do imagine it will be quite different, but your body language doesn’t suggest you are ready for something like that.” Troy raised up and looked at me, his fingers lingering above the band of my camouflage pants. “Are you trying to fool me, Abby?”

I kissed him. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I threw myself into the kiss, only I wasn’t even sure how to kiss. I’d only kissed Stephen a couple times, and while he’d never complained, he kissed like it was an Olympic sport, and he was a world champion. When I’d commented about it, he’d said he’d had a lot of training. I, on the other hand, didn’t have any sort of training because prior to the few stolen kisses Stephen and I had shared, I’d mostly just made kissy faces at my mirror.

Troy pressed himself against me, his tongue battling to get inside my mouth and down my throat. He was so heavy on top of me I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this before I fainted from oxygen deprivation. Still as my hands slipped down his chest and grabbed the zipper on the front of his jumpsuit he shivered, actually shivered.

Maybe I was doing something right after all? Then again, how hard could it be to impress a virgin demon? The thought made me a little sad though I don’t know why. I unzipped the jumpsuit, pulling it down. As it slipped off his shoulders, he sat up so he could pull his arms out of the sleeves.

What I could see of his chest told me Troy worked out, but didn’t diet well enough to form muscle. There was a lot of definition but not enough bulk on his chest so it just made him look sort of odd.

Either way, as his hands were caught in the sleeves, I bucked my body while swinging my arms against the side of his head with all my might. We toppled off the couch, and he landed on his back, arms popping from his shoulders at obscene angles under the force of his own bodyweight.

I landed hard on top of him, but not hard enough for me to actually get hurt, though that was mostly because I’d known what was going to happen. And, well, his body cushioned most of the blow.

Troy reached for me, but between the entangling clothing and his dislocated shoulders, he couldn’t do anything to stop me from getting to my feet and backing away from him. The look that filled his face as he watched made left me feeling cold and scared. It wasn’t just hate there, that I could have understood, but something darker and more… depraved, I guess? It was a look that told me this wasn’t over, and in the end, he would have me, even if he had to beat me over the head and take my comatose body into his lair.

I spun, trying to suppress the dread swelling in my stomach and grabbed Roberto by the shoulder and shook him. He was staring off into space, eyes gazing at some distant point far beyond the walls of the room.

“Roberto!” I screamed, but he didn’t even blink at me. God what the hell was wrong with him? I looked around and grabbed Troy’s coke. It was still half full. Good. I threw it in Roberto’s face. He turned his head toward me, but his eyes remained unfocused.

“Uh…” he mumbled, lips moving languidly as he formed the word.

“Roberto! Wake up!” I pointed at Troy, who was already getting to his feet despite not being able to use his arms. I spun back to Roberto and slapped him as hard as I could. His head jerked back.

“Dad!” I screamed, barely resisting the urge to shake him as tears welled in my eyes.

If I waited any longer, Troy would be on me again, and now he was some sort of psycho rapist in addition to being a soulless demon. It was like the worst of two possible worlds.

When Roberto didn’t respond, I reached out and grabbed his steak knife. Just holding it in my hands made me feel a lot better.

Troy lunged for me, his shoulder catching me in the knees and sweeping them out from under me. I tumbled forward, smacking my jaw hard on the couch as we collapsed into a heap. As stars flashed across my vision, Troy wormed his way on top of me, disjointed fingers clutching at my shirt and pulling me down toward him.

“Abby,” his words sprayed across my throat as he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” I drove the knife into the side of his neck, spilling his hot, sticky blood over my face and chest. He didn’t react, just blinked at me for a moment.

Troy collapsed on top of me, a gurgle of surprise rippling from his ruined throat as his eyes went as wide as dinner plates. He tried to move, to grasp his throat, but he couldn’t due to his dislocated shoulders. His eyes met mine, and I knew one thing. The flit was gone. This last torturous moment would be experienced by Troy… alone.

I reached out, stroking his face with my fingers as blood pooled on me, seeping through my clothing and making my stomach turn. I didn’t look away as the light faded from his eyes. I wanted to, I really did, but somehow, that didn’t seem fair, didn’t seem right.

Troy had died by my hand, and he was innocent. I deserved to watch him die, to share this moment with him so he wouldn’t die alone.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as the door behind us burst open. I craned my head, looking away for a split second to see Tom rushing into the room. He pulled Troy away from me and cradled him against his chest. Crimson stained Tom’s white t-shirt as he mewled softly to Troy.

Troy spasmed, the last breath of life fleeing from him, and as it did so, Tom fixed me with a hard glare.

“Why?” he asked.

I stared at him, unable to respond as his eyes shifted from me to the doorway behind me. I turned my head slowly, already knowing who was standing there. Lisa stared at me, her lips slightly parted as she took a single step into the room. Her face was blank and unreadable, but there was something strange in her eyes. It wasn’t anger or grief per se. It was something more, something excited.

“Because he was taken by the flit,” Lisa said, crossing the room and taking one of my bloody hands in hers. “Isn’t that true, Abby?”

I nodded dumbly as Lisa pulled me to my feet, ignoring the blood, and her father, as he held the lifeless body of Troy.

“The only way to stop the flit is death. That’s what I was trying to tell you, Dad!” Lisa spat the last word at him, and he flinched. “The Agency doesn’t understand anything but power.” Lisa waved her hand at Troy. “They don’t care how many pieces they break because they are convinced they are right, that they can do no wrong. They don’t realize they are the wrong.”

“There could have been another way,” Tom said as Lisa led me from the room. “Troy didn’t need to die. Electrical impulse will disrupt the flit’s presence and drive the demon from the mind of the captive.”

Lisa glanced back over her shoulder and shook her head, lips compressed into a hard line. “I’ve been controlled by the flit before. There’s no way to really describe it. Let’s just say that while it’s in the driver’s seat, not only can it do whatever it wants, but you want it to do whatever it wants. Everything in you screams that the flit is doing what should be done. It’s like a drug.” She paused and squeezed my bloodstained hands. “And when it’s gone, you feel the residue of it in your mind, feel it like slime on your skin. Only instead of wanting to wash it off, you wish there was more. You wish it would pull you down into the murk along with it.”

She smiled, and it was creepy enough to make a chill run down the back of my spine. “The flit is the darkness that beckons you in with candy, sex, and drugs. The sad thing is, when it leaves, you think to yourself, how can I get more?” She shook her head. “Come on, Abby. We came to tell you we’ve arrived at your mother’s base.” She pulled me from the room. “Let’s find a way off of this bus.”

14

“I think Lisa has gone dark side,” Donovan said as he walked backward in front of us. He wasn’t looking where he was going, but he was A GHOST, so I wasn’t quite sure why I kept expecting him to act like a corporeal person. “Look inside you and know it to be true,” he added, raising one hand in the air and clenching his fingers into a fist.

“Quiet,” I said even though part of me was worried he might be right. Lisa had been acting a little off ever since the flit had taken her over, and okay, I’d trusted her because she had been my friend forever, but what if something inside her had changed? For all I knew, maybe the flit was still controlling her… That thought made my blood run cold.

Lisa shot me a look. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Huh?” I looked at her innocently as heat spread across my cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

Lisa stared at me, a thought knitting across her brow as she pursed her lips.

“Nothing,” she said, turning back toward the large empty room. Well, that wasn’t true exactly. The room was filled with wooden crates and a bunch of other junk, but it was so large it seemed empty. Hell, even the ginormous semi-truck seemed tiny and insignificant in the cavernous space.

I tossed one last glance at the weird tanker truck that had brought us here, somewhat hoping Roberto would come running out after us. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted him to come help me so much. Okay yeah, he was my father technically, but it wasn’t like he’d taken me to the park or propped me on his knee while reading me bedtime stories. So why was I so worried about him?

When he didn’t come running from the truck, I turned back to the huge room and glanced around one last time. It resembled a cave more than anything else, but that might have been because it appeared to have been hewn from one singular chunk of rock. Only that was impossible because it was the size of a couple football stadiums.

“I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, pointing at a tube that reminded me of an elevator I’d taken with my foster mom, Esmeralda, when we’d been on the run from my biological mother, Gabriella. “It looks familiar, at least.”

“What is it?” Lisa asked, pulling me forward by the hand toward the jutting tube of plastic and mesh metal. “And I’m glad you stopped whining about all the blood.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “You look tough. Maybe the next guy who shows up trying to kill you will think twice.”

“Next, you’ll be suggesting I mount the heads of my enemies on pikes outside,” I replied as I wondered once again if Donovan might be right about Lisa. Then again, Donovan was like nine-tenths jerk at any given time. No, Lisa was fine, and I was just jumpy.

I glanced down at my blood-stained fatigues and sighed. Being covered in sticky, cold blood was gross. I was taking a shower the first chance I got. I didn’t even care if it was warm. See, I was adaptable. On my own terms.

“I wouldn’t mount any heads anywhere. It would imply your enemies know where you are, and well, we don’t want that.” Lisa smiled at me as we approached the elevator. “But something has been bugging me. How come the flit didn’t take over me again or Roberto for that matter? I mean it probably goes without saying, but Roberto is way more physically impressive than Troy. If I was going to try to kill you, I’d take him over in a heartbeat.”

“Roberto has magic so it can’t take him over.” I shrugged, mostly because I had been wondering the same thing about Lisa. The flit should have taken over Lisa and crushed me to death by now. Hell, even Tom would have been a better choice than Troy. He could have pressed a button in his secret lab and had me shot full of holes or gassed or something. Either of them were far better choices than Troy. Then again, the flit hadn’t seemed super concerned with actually abducting me. Besides, what the hell had happened to Roberto, anyway? What turned him into a zombie? Was that the flit? Had it incapacitated him somehow?

“Well, you better figure it out because if the flit comes back inside me or Tom, you’ll want to be ready for it.” Lisa pressed the button next to the elevator without even checking to make sure it was safe. Thankfully, instead of blasting her to ash, it began to glow. A big wheel lit up overhead and started spinning.

“I’d be more curious to know why it left instead of taking one of you over when I killed Troy,” I said as the doors slid open with a hiss to reveal a black metal grate. I shot her a look that I hoped meant, “be careful,” and stepped inside.

“Well, nothing blasted you. That’s good right?” Lisa said, joining me on the platform a minute later. The doors shut with a whoosh. Green light burst from the floor, filling the tiny space for a split second and making multi-colored spots dance across my vision.

“Where would you like to go, Abigail?” said a voice from a speaker above my head. It sounded like a higher-pitched version of Gabriela’s, and just hearing it made a chill slide across my skin. I craned my head up toward its source to see the holographic image of her face staring down at me with an overly cheery smile.

“That’s creepy,” Lisa said as she glanced from the face to me and back again. “Though I can see the resemblance.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, shrugging my shoulders and doing my best to avoid my holographic biological mother’s intimidating gaze. “So, uh, where do you want to go?”

“To wherever all her tech is, or at least somewhere where we can figure out how to neutralize the flit before it decides to take one of us over again.” She gave me a smile that made me think she was hiding something from me. It was the same one she’d used when she replaced her dead goldfish without telling me. I’d wound up thinking the damn fish had lived for almost a whole month, and when I wanted to throw it a ‘thanks for living’ party, she’d broke down and told me the truth. Mister Fishy was apparently Mister Fishy the twelfth…

“You heard her, holo-mom,” I told the hologram, ignoring the bad feeling crawling over the back of my neck. This was Lisa, my best friend. If I couldn’t trust her, who could I trust? “Take us to the tech.”

“There are forty-seven rooms associated with ‘tech.’ Please be more specific,” the voice intoned, facial expression still too cheery to actually be pleasant.

“Is there a directory or a central hub?” Lisa asked, but the hologram didn’t respond. Lisa sighed. “I think you need to ask her.”

“Can you take us to the central hub?” I asked, feeling a little silly. “Or wherever it is that can tell us what gadgets are in this place?”

“Very well.” The elevator shook before falling down through the ground. I barely had time to gather my wits when we came to a stop in front of a pair of royal blue doors.

“Central repository and directory,” the voice intoned as the doors swirled outward, disappearing like we were in one of those science fiction movies.

“Sweet,” Lisa said, releasing my hand and scampering into the room like a kid in the candy store. I sighed. I really needed to teach her caution before she was blasted into road kill. Speaking of which, why had nothing accosted us? I was pretty sure this place had to have some automated defenses. Was it because of me? Was the only reason we hadn’t been blown to smithereens because I was here?

I took a step into the small, metallic space and stared at my hand. Why had Lisa been holding it all this time? I’d like to say that we were that close, but really, I don’t think she’d ever so much as given me an awkward hug. So her holding my hand for what must have been several minutes was odd, to say the least. Then again, I hadn’t exactly stopped her, either.

I knew why I hadn’t. It was because I’d wanted the comfort. I’d liked the idea of someone who wasn’t blaming me for everything, and if anything, Lisa wasn’t blaming me. She had fixed her sights on destroying the flit, despite the fact that it apparently was like being filled with concentrated rock ‘n’ roll. It was a little weird. If it was really like she said it was, most people would be trying to get more, right? Not try to smash it into atoms…

“Abby, I think you need to log in for it to let me access anything,” Lisa called from her perch in an overly large leather chair. It sort of seemed out of place in the otherwise Spartan room because it wasn’t even a computer chair. At least it didn’t look like one. It resembled one of those plush La-Z-Boy recliners. Besides, what kind of computer chair didn’t have wheels?

“Why do you think that?” I asked, my footsteps echoing on the metallic floor as I crossed the space between us.

“Um… because it’s asking for you to verify your biometrics?” Lisa pointed at a blue screen with a glowing handprint in the center. “I don’t think the system thinks I’m supposed to be here. If you want me to figure this out, you’re going to have to log in and give me access.”

“How do I do that?” I asked, placing my hand against the screen. It warbled, emitting a high-pitched shriek before cascading into a shroud of colors every color of the rainbow.

“How can I help you, Abigail?” the voice of my mother spoke behind me. I spun, my heart racing, to see a hologram of her standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. Her expression made me think of a Valkyrie the moment before it plucked you from the battlefield and carried you off to Valhalla.

“I need you to… um… give my friend Lisa access to the system,” I told it because I wasn’t sure what else to do.

“Are you sure?” Gabriella asked, quirking an eyebrow at me in a decidedly human gesture.

“Um… yeah, give her access to anything she wants,” I replied, and beside me, Lisa smiled. The smile sort of freaked me out a little. Maybe giving her full access to my mother’s tech wasn’t such a good idea. What if she did something with it I didn’t agree with? I shook away the thought. This was Lisa. The girl I knew bottle-fed stray kittens when we were growing up. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. I swallowed… well except for when she blew away Stephen in cold blood… but that didn’t count, right?

“How long would you like the access to last?” the hologram asked, and for some reason, it seemed like it had picked up on my sudden discomfort and given me an out. I was pretty sure that hadn’t actually happened, but it sure seemed convenient. Then again, for all I knew, it had done precisely that.

“Um… how about for the day,” I replied with a shrug. Lisa glanced at me with barely concealed annoyance, but I shrugged again. “Unless she gets taken over by the flit, then strip away her access.”

“Very well,” the hologram said, turning toward Lisa. “Please place your hand on the scanner to be granted access to the system.”

Lisa nodded once, a strange frown plastered on her lips. With an exaggerated effort, she placed her hand on the scanner. Colors cascaded out of it before fading away completely.

“Computer, display the parameters of the flit on the main screen,” Lisa said, and even before she finished speaking, the wall above us turned black. Data began to scroll across it in bright green letters that hurt my eyes and made me look away.

“Do you have any idea what that means?” I asked with a sigh. “Because it just looks like gibberish to me.”

“Not yet,” Lisa replied, cracking her knuckles as she slid into the chair. “But I will.”

She glanced at me. “Um… why don’t you go see what’s up with Tom and Roberto. I’ll probably be here a while.” She stopped speaking, biting her lip in the way she did when she was trying to decide whether or not she wanted to keep talking. Evidently, she didn’t because she turned back toward the screen and ignored me. Nice.

15

“Just because Lisa doesn’t want you around while she goes through all of Gabriella’s files, doesn’t mean you’re one hundred percent useless,” Donovan said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger as we rode back up the tube toward the cavern where the truck was docked. “Oh wait, yes it does.”

“Thanks,” I replied and shut my eyes because it was infuriating enough without actually replying to my own personal ghostly tormentor. Somehow, I always seemed to fail at that, though. It made every occurrence that much more frustrating.

“I was originally going to say it made you only ninety-eight percent useless, but I felt I should go for it.” I opened my eyes to see him leaning toward me with a smug grin on his face as blood dripped down his chin and fell to the ground where it didn’t splatter so much as it disappeared completely. “You should always go for it, Abby. Always.”

“Okay,” I said, determined not to speak to him anymore. But then a sudden thought occurred to me. “Why are you such a jerk to me?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Isn’t there supposed to be another one of you, an angel, who gives me good advice? Instead, it seems like all I have is the devil.”

He shrugged at me, his smug grin infuriating me so much I was about to smack it off his face when the door opened. So I just walked through him. That’d show him, I guess, sort of. Whatever.

I stomped out into the cavern and made my way toward Tom’s semi-truck. As far as I could tell, neither him nor Roberto had made it outside. Then again, I wasn’t sure why that mattered very much. I approached the truck, careful not to move quickly enough to set off some kind of defense mechanism and knocked on the back door. It had sealed after we left and apparently had remained so.

Or maybe not, who knows.

When it didn’t open immediately, I growled at it and smacked it with my palm. There was a weird sort of whoosh like the semi was breathing on me before the driver’s side door swung open and Tom stepped out. He skin was still covered in blood, but he was wearing clean clothes. And sunglasses. I wasn’t sure why since we were inside and the lights in here weren’t that bright, but for all I knew, they gave him x-ray vision.

“How’s Roberto?” I asked, unconsciously crossing my arms over my chest as I made my way toward him.

“Better than Troy,” he replied, voice chillier than a glacier.

“Awesome,” I replied, letting the emotion fade from my voice. “So what happened to Roberto?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. He’s still in that weird catatonic state.” Tom shrugged. “It’s strange because Roberto was supposed to be immune to the flit because of his innate magical abilities. I’m guessing whatever it is that makes him immune worked but fried his brain. Hopefully, he wakes up soon.”

I swallowed and my stomach twisted up. “He’s not brain dead, is he?”

“I have no idea, but I somehow doubt it.” Tom moved past me and began making his way toward the elevator. “I think his brain is rebooting itself.”

I spun and ran after him, and he actually sped up so he wound up reaching the elevator before me. “Why do you think that?” I asked as he pressed the button down with his thumb. It was a little weird because most people did stuff like that with their index finger.

“Well, the rituals they are using to control the flit is based on Gabriella’s research. Presumably, she had some research done on why it can’t seem to take over you paranormals. Stands to reason that she also built some kind of defense against it. I’m guessing those two things conflicted and caused his current state since I doubt the Agency has had enough time to crack that. My best guess would be that his mind went into some temporary internal ‘panic room’ to keep the flit from gaining access.” The doors opened, and he stepped inside. When I followed him, he gave me a look I was pretty sure he usually saved things stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “It’s not the best solution, but the flit has never really been fully operational. Demons are notoriously hard to control. Even ones with as much personality and consciousness as the flit.”

“So what’s to keep it from taking you over too?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

“The flit can only take control of a person once.” He shook his head. “My daughter thinks I don’t know what it’s like, but I do know what it’s like to have the flit control you. That’s why I haven’t killed you for what you did to Troy.” He shrugged as though the gesture explained everything.

“What do you mean you can only get controlled once?” I asked even though the urge to ask him how and why he’d been taken over was so huge I could barely ignore it.

He cracked a smile as he pressed a keycard to the panel in the elevator, and the space filled with emerald light before we rocketed upward. “The way our brains work allows the flit to take over exactly one time and not for very long at that. Eventually, your mind will force the flit out and seal off the way it got inside. Think of it like your brain automatically patching a back door.”

“So why wouldn’t the flit just find another way inside?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “And where are we going?”

“It probably could, given enough time and energy, but remember, it is a demon that has only just become sentient after years of work. Until it becomes truly intelligent, the demon isn’t likely to try to do more than its normal brute-force method.” He stared up at the ceiling of the tube which, thankfully, was not filled with Gabriella’s face this time. “I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever is controlling the flit is struggling just to keep the thing out of Hell for prolonged periods of time. That’s why you’ve only seen it in very limited bursts. They probably have to summon it from the ninth circle every time they want to use it before Hell’s innate gravitational force pulls it back down.”

“So if they don’t have a handle on the demon or the rituals, why are they sending it after me? Am I the beta test?” I asked as the elevator doors slid open to reveal a cobalt blue room the size of a large walk-in closet. Lab equipment sparkled on the steel counter in the center. Behind it stood a storage unit that reminded me of the frosty section of a supermarket where they stored ice cream. Only this one was filled with tubes of liquid every shape and color.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret,” Tom said as he stepped past me and pale blue lights came to life, illuminating the room just a skosh better. “Like software, most rituals never really leave beta. It just gets good enough to ship without catching someone’s cat on fire. The real test begins when the users start to break it.” He touched something I couldn’t see, and the door began to shut. I wedged myself in between the doors, and they shuddered to a stop. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Whatcha doing in my mom’s super-secret spy base?” I asked as he shot me a look that could have melted sand into glass.

“Nothing, now go away,” he replied, and this time, I saw him press the button by the elevator again. Only I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to close with me standing halfway through the doorway. Pretty sure…

“Look, Tom, I might be willing to let Lisa gallivant through the mainframe on her own, but I don’t know you. And even though you have a shiny keycard that gives you access, I can’t be certain you are on the up and up.” I would have said more but his face had taken on a sort of haunted quality as he processed what I’d said.

Without warning, he leapt back inside the elevator and slammed his keycard furiously against the panel. “Computer, take me to my daughter!”

“What’s going on?” I asked as he grabbed me and pulled me inside along with him. The doors slammed shut, and we were sent rocketing downward.

“You can’t leave her alone with access to all of Gabriella’s technology. You don’t understand what she’s like…” Tom shook his head, beginning to pace in the tiny space.

“Um… she’s my best friend. I’d like to think I know her a little better than you.” I crossed my arms over my chest petulantly. “Absentee father, much?”

“Whatever has happened to my dear, sweet daughter has changed her, and not for the better. She tried to convince me to destroy the Agency. When I tried to explain how much collateral damage would be involved, do you know what she said?” He was staring at me so hard that it was making me uncomfortable.

“No?” I offered.

“She said she didn’t care. My daughter did not care about collateral damage, and you just gave her the keys to one of the most powerful arsenals on the planet and left her alone. Please tell me how that seems like a good idea?” Fear flashed across his face before he pushed it away and took a deep breath.

Why had I been so stupid? Even if Tom was outright lying to me, I had no idea what the Agency had done with Lisa prior to using her as a hostage. They’d been able to change Stephen, why not Lisa too? For all I knew, she was some kind of deranged sleeper agent waiting to jump me when I wasn’t looking. How could I be so blind?

The floor sort of swayed under my feet as Donovan’s looming face filled my vision. He didn’t say anything at all, but he didn’t have to because I could hear his “I told you so,” loud enough in my head.

The elevator opened, and Tom leapt past me, sprinting into the room. Lisa was still in the same spot, staring transfixed at the monitor. I couldn’t make out what was on the screen exactly because the images were whirring by so quickly I found it hard to believe she was actually absorbing the information. Then again, maybe she was just fast forwarding through it.

“Lisa Ann, what are you doing?” Tom called, his voice a mix between panic and anger. It reminded me of the one Esmeralda had used when she told me to stop doing something that could hurt me.

Lisa’s face was bathed in sickly green light as she turned her head just enough to glance at us. A strange smile that gave me the heebie jeebies was plastered across her face.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said, voice low and strangely annoyed. She turned back toward the screen and pointed at something. The image enlarged to show a giant picture of a brain lit up with various spots of white light.

I had no idea what the image meant, but I was suddenly worried. Rising terror crept down the back of my neck, slinking across my skin as I struggled to push down the horrible realization Lisa had played me like a fiddle. Who knew what she’d found out in the time I’d been gone…

“What have you got, Lisa?” Tom asked, his face drawn and puckered looking as he approached her. He put one hand on the back of the chair and stared for a long time at the display.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she keyed in some kind of command, and a holographic 3D image of a human brain appeared in the center of the room. She stood and walked over to it. “I figured out what’s wrong with the flit.” She made a pulling gesture with her hands, and the brain came apart in midair, separating itself into bits and pieces I didn’t recognize. Little labels hovered above each separate piece, calling out the names in Latin, not that it helped me much.

“See this spot is where the flit enters your mind.” She touched some spindly piece of brain, and it lit up with blue light. “It sort of places you into a dream-state while it takes over your motor control.” She shrugged, turning to look at Tom and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Your backdoor analogy is stupid by the way. It doesn’t work that way.”

Tom’s face fell as she pulled apart some other thing and continued talking. “This is the actual scan of my brain post flit.” Another brain appeared next to her and fell apart into the same pieces. She glanced at me as she put two pieces of brain together in front of her. “I bet even Abby can tell the difference.”

I couldn’t because they looked the same to me. As far as I could tell, Lisa’s brain was lit up super brightly but the other was dark and dormant. Only, maybe that was it?

“Um… why is yours shining like a Christmas tree?” I asked as Tom stepped up and peered at the pieces of brain.

“Because the flit never actually left her brain. All those neurons are stimulated in a way they never have before. Does this mean what I think it does?” He swallowed, spinning to stare at his daughter and my mouth went dry. Was Lisa still being controlled by the flit? If she was, and I’d just let her into the system…

“Yup,” Lisa said, spinning and pointing back toward the screen “That’s what actually happens when the flit ‘leaves’ your brain.”

Tom swallowed again. “That’s bad, Lisa… very bad.”

“Why?” I asked, stepping between them and rubbing my temples with one hand. “Can you just break it down like I’m a third grader?”

“Basically, the flit never actually leaves you. Because of the way this part of your brain fires as it kicks the flit out, it can’t get back in because it never really left. Basically, it can’t come back into your brain because it has itself stuck in the door.” Lisa smirked. “It’s like when you try to shutdown your computer, and it hangs up on the shutdown screen until you pull the plug. Only you can’t pull the plug on a human brain.”

“Well that’s good, right?” I asked. “I mean it sounds like a bug, but that’s why it can’t take you back over…”

“It isn’t just that though,” Tom said, moving back to the computer and staring at the code. “The flit still receives stimulus from the brain when it takes someone over. It’s a two way street.”

“So?” I asked, raising a confused eyebrow. “What does that matter?”

“Abby, the flit is getting stimulus from every single person it has entered, always and forever. The demon’s mind can’t handle that kind of stimulus. It’s just too immature.” Tom slammed his fist against the panel in front of him hard enough that it made him wince.

“I guess I’m too dumb to understand what you mean?” I said, sighing. “Remember, third grader.”

“Abby, the flit is getting feelings from all of us at once, one hundred percent of the time, but they aren’t necessarily related to what it is doing at the time. So say I’m thinking about eating ice cream while the flit is taking target practice. It will actually think about ice cream and every other thought every single person it’s entered is having at the time. It’s bogging down the system because the demon doesn’t know what ice cream even is. This demon was selected for this job because it can go into a person’s mind and control the host body, not because it was supposed to learn.”

“I fail to see why demonic ADD is bad,” I replied, smirking. It seemed like having the flit be distracted by ponies and ice cream was a good thing.

“The flit has connected to a bunch of psycho killers bent on capturing you. People’s minds are scary places. If the flit’s objectives even sort of line up with what those soldiers are thinking about doing to you, well let’s just say what you experienced in the trailer with Troy is the tip of the iceberg.” Tom sighed. “You have to remember, the flit doesn’t have a filter to say ‘this is a bad idea.’ It’s not creative. Once it decides to run with a plan, it pretty much runs with that plan until a better one presents itself, but now it is filled with the creativity and anger of who knows how many people…”

“So they turned to unfeeling demonic killer into a psychotic demonic killer who is channeling the rage and emotions from people who want to see me dead and in a ditch?” I asked as visions of the Troy filled my head. He pinned me down, his inhuman strength holding my struggling body in place as his cold, unfeeling fingers ran across my flesh.

As the Troy of my visions licked his lips, I could see the countless soldiers maimed not just by me, but by Gabriella, and all those associated with me. My throat seized up, and I struggled to breathe as the world teetered.

“Guys, it’s not just that. Remember, I said it was a two-way street. That means the flit is still influencing every person it touches. It never actually stops, which is bad, but do you know what’s worse? Everyone is sort of leaking into each other subconsciously. That means I’m having thoughts generated by some psycho soldier and every other person the flit has infiltrated.” Lisa sighed and shook her head.

Horrible recognition filled Tom’s features as he stared at the brain with wide eyes. He opened his mouth to say something when the room shook, flinging me from my feet as we were pitched into darkness. Red lights sputtered on, filling the room with crimson shadows as warning sirens blasted my eardrums into smithereens.

16

Lisa’s head smacked into the control panel as the room quaked. Blood spurted from her forehead as she slumped bonelessly to the ground. Tom swayed next to me, toppling over the chair next to him and hitting the ground on his forearms. He let out a yowl of pain that was loud even over the air-raid sirens.

I swung my head toward the elevator as blast doors slid down, sealing it off. The shaking subsided, and the sirens dialed themselves down to a dull, annoying warble. My knees were still stiff from their impact with the metal floor as I got up and leaned heavily against the control panel.

“Systems check normal, intruders have gained entrance to the outer perimeter but have not managed to breech the inner sanctum,” my mother’s voice said as the screen in front of me zoomed in to show a veritable army of black-suited men standing outside what looked like an immense steel blast door embedded in the side of a mountain. “The safeguards have been triggered.”

Bits of rock and debris filled the air as a man in green fatigues with a well-trimmed grey goatee and long white hair tucked under a green cap approached the door, an annoyed grimace plastered across his face. He waved his hand at the camera, and the bottom left corner of the monitor zoomed in on his face like one of those picture in a picture televisions.

“Abigail, we’re coming in to get you whether or not you like it. You need to come with us.” His voice sounded like he chewed granite appetizers before eating a breakfast of small kittens. “If you surrender now, we won’t kill everyone inside.” He shrugged once. “You may be thinking I can’t get in there, and maybe you’re right, so I’ve brought some persuasion. Tell your computer to focus on these coordinates.” He held up a small handheld with some numbers scrolling across it.

“Computer, do as he says,” I replied as Lisa got groggily to her feet. I glanced at her. Blood dripped down her face from a cut on her forehead, collecting on her chin and staining the front of her shirt scarlet. My stomach sank as she took a wobbly step toward me. I hadn’t even tried to check on her. What if she’d needed help? Geez, I was a horrible friend…

Lisa must have read the look in my face because she waved her hand and mouthed, “it’s okay.” An image of a small town that looked a little too familiar for my liking filled the left side of the monitor.

“Is that Folsom?” Lisa asked as the camera scanned the town. Everything appeared normal, so why were they showing me this?

“I don’t know if you’ve looked at Folsom yet,” the man who ate kittens said. “But if you haven’t, I’ll just have to do this again.” He typed something into his computer, and the elementary school in the center of town exploded into a mushroom cloud of fire and brimstone. “Hopefully, I won’t.”

“No!” I screamed, reaching out toward the screen as tears welled in my eyes. Had he really just blown up a school to make a point?

“I hope you caught that. Either way, I’m going to blow up another building, then another, and another until either there’s no town left or you come out here.” The man turned his back to the camera and began to disappear into the crowd of agents. “You have five minutes.”

“I have to go out there,” I said, swallowing the rage inside me. I could go out there and save everyone. Besides, they weren’t going to hurt me right? And even if they tried, I could take care of myself. I mean sure I’d never faced that many trained soldiers at once, but I was Abby Banks, and I had magic. If I couldn’t do it, who could? Besides, even if I couldn’t get away, I was one person. Could I really be so selfish as to believe I was worth all those people in Folsom?

“Maybe they already evacuated the town, Abby,” Lisa replied, eyes still transfixed on the screen. “All those people are assets. They wouldn’t just kill their own assets to get you, would they?” She turned to look at me, fury bubbling from her brown eyes. “That’s just bad math.”

“It isn’t if Abby is worth more to them than all those assets. Abby brings along with her all of Gabriella’s tech. That’s worth a lot. She had the ritual for the flit locked in her vault, who knows what else is in there…” Tom must have gotten up because when I turned toward the sound of his voice, he was standing right behind us. “I’d trade a lot of people for Abby too.” He smirked and shook his head. “It’s a good plan, but it hinges on one thing.” Tom’s hands reached out and flew across the keyboard.

“What’s that?” I asked as the lights stopped flashing, and the sirens went off. The image in the screen rumbled and split to show a giant scud missile I remembered from old war movies. Only it seemed more angry and menacing than it did in the movies.

“It assumes you’re a good person,” Tom replied with a smirk. “You know, that you’re the kind of sap who will just give in to them because they’re willing to do a whole lot of bad.” He shook his head. “Those kinds of tactics don’t work with bad guys.”

The hatch above the missile opened up to reveal blue sky, and a red counter appeared in the corner. The red number sixty flashed for a second before turning into a red fifty-nine.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked, glancing from the screen to Tom and back again.

“I’m going to launch a missile into the heart of their little camp and kill them all,” Tom said with a shrug. The look on his face was so dispassionate I could scarcely believe it belonged to a person.

“That’s crazy! You can’t kill all those people,” I reached out to try to make the computer stop the countdown when he seized my wrists.

“Those aren’t people per se. They’re enemies who want to kill you and your whole town. Destroying them will give us time to come up with another plan.” Tom shoved me away and held up his hands as I balled mine into fists. “I don’t want to fight you, Abby. I can’t beat you in a fight, but this is the right way.”

The screen flashed forty-five, and a chill ran down the back of my spine. Could I really let him kill all those soldiers when I could stop him? Wouldn’t being complicit make me just as bad? I shook my head as tears filled my eyes. “Please don’t do this, Tom. Please just stop. What if they blow up Folsom in retaliation?”

“They might. I’m willing to take that risk.” He looked over his shoulder at Lisa who was watching the numbers tick down, thoughts flitting across her eyes so fast that it was like watching NASCAR in fast forward. “Especially since my daughter is out.”

“I can’t take that risk. I might be able to live with you killing all those soldiers. I could justify it to myself that they are bad guys and deserve what they get. But, and this is a big but, I can’t risk an entire town full of innocent people when all I have to do to save them is surrender.” I took a step toward him, and he backed away from the computer hands raised in capitulation.

“Well, let’s hope you figure out how to disable what I’ve done before we run out of time. Then, when you fail, you can thank me for saving us.” Tom took another step back and made a sweeping gesture with his hands. It seemed… odd. Did he really think I wouldn’t be able to figure out my mother’s computer system?

I ignored the strange premonition in the back of my head as the screen hit thirty, and the old guy with the detonator appeared in front of the camera. He wasn’t smiling this time either.

“Tick tock, Abigail,” he said, running his thumb over the screen of his hand held.

I stopped. Maybe they’d be safer if I let Tom destroy them all. But what if they retaliated? Could I take that chance? I sighed, I still had time to turn off the timer and get out there before my five minutes were up.

“What sort of guarantee do you have they’ll do anything they say?” Lisa asked, sidling up in front of me and sitting next to the panel Tom had used to start the missile’s launch sequence. She gave me a weak smile. “This is how it will play out. You’ll go down there, and they’ll blow up the town anyway, or do something a million times worse. That’s how these guys work. You know this to be true, Abby.”

“Why do I feel like you’re channeling the emperor?” I asked and Lisa looked at me like I was a crazy person. “Like from Star Wars?” I added before I remembered she had never seen the movies. “Never mind. Computer, stop the countdown.”

“Permission denied,” my mother’s sugar-sweet tone said, bristling over the speaker in front of me like she was telling me to use a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

“Um… why?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.

“Missile controls can only be activated and deactivated manually. It is a safety mechanism to keep accidents from happening by misunderstanding a spoken command,” the computer told me.

I resisted the urge to punch the computer in its electronic face, and instead, put my hands on the keyboard and shut my eyes. For once in my stupid life, my hands knew what to do. They flew across the controls in record time, pausing the countdown at the three second mark.

“Congratulations, Abby, you’ve killed us all,” Tom said as I turned toward him.

“Tom, those guys are just doing their jobs. We can’t just kill them all. They have families, people counting on them. We can’t just slaughter them for that…” The words had barely finished leaving my mouth when the man on the screen appeared again.

“Maybe you didn’t see my first demonstration, Abigail. Let’s just do another one right now to make sure. I bet this one will hit a little closer to home.” He pressed something on his handheld. An explosion rocked a tiny subdivision of Folsom, turning the street of two-story McMansions into a pile of twisted rubble and flaming debris.

“My parents!” Lisa let loose a scream as she shoved me aside. I stumbled over my own feet and fell as Lisa’s face turned cold and dark. I looked up at the screen and my stomach fell. She was right. That was the street Lisa lived on. Had they done that on purpose? If so, why? Was their plan to get Lisa to convince me to give myself up?

I got to my feet, and as I was reaching out to comfort Lisa, she slapped me across the face. “You killed them, Abby.” Her eyes were filled with murder as she shoved me, hard. “You let them do this because you couldn’t kill the people trying to kill us? Seriously? Are you broken in the head?”

Lisa screamed, a short stuttered howl of frustration, and pressed a command into the keyboard before I could react.

“What are you doing?” I asked as the counter hit zero, and the missile lifted into the air. I watched, too stunned to say anything as the camp outside the door to Gabriella’s compound was enveloped in a fireball that made the attack on Folsom look like a party favor. Lisa had just killed them all.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring, but when I turned back to Lisa, she didn’t look at all horrified by what she had done. Instead, she was glaring at me so hard I was pretty sure I didn’t have words to properly describe the way it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up because that was just the tip of the iceberg.

17

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lisa screamed, shoving me so hard I had to take a couple steps back to avoid falling on my butt. “Why are you so damn stupid?”

“Lisa, I just didn’t want people to die,” I replied, swallowing the bile rising in my throat.

A horrible guttural sound that reminded me of a wounded hyena ripped out of her mouth as she turned back toward the computer. Her hands flew across the interfaces as maps and locations sprang up on the screen. “You have all this power at your fingertips, and you’re too weak or too stupid or both to use it to stop those people,” Lisa snarled, still not looking at me. “This could have all been avoided if you’d just done what needed to be done days ago.” Tears dripped down her cheeks and spattered on the panel, leaving a glistening trail under her fingers.

The sad thing was, I knew she was right. This is what Donovan had been trying to tell me. He had called me a killer and told me to just go in and slaughter everyone. Still, I’d refused to acknowledge what it would actually take to win against a force like the Agency. The closer I got to routing the Agency, the harder it became to make myself carry through with their plan. I kept looking at all those people, and no matter how bad they were, I just kept thinking that Gabriella was worse, that despite everything they did, there had to be a good reason for the way they acted.

I kept thinking that maybe we’d all be screwed without them to stop people like Gabriella, that maybe they were ratcheting up because they had to do it. What if I destroyed them and something worse came along, something the Agency could have stopped? Could I really be responsible for killing all those people and then find out they were the good guys after all?

“Lisa, I know you’re upset.” I reached out toward her. She whirled, smacking my hand away as red rectangles appeared over what must have been fifty spots on the map. The screen to the left of me lit up to reveal a silo filled to the brim with missiles. How had Gabriella gotten a hold of so many? I shook away the thought, now wasn’t the time.

“I am upset,” she snarled. “Those bastards just killed my parents.” She jerked a thumb at Tom. “He doesn’t count.”

“Lisa, calm down.” The screen began flashing as the boxes seemed to lock on. Wait, were they targeting those spots? Was Lisa going to fire all those missiles? “You can’t just kill everyone. It’s not right. It’s not what heroes do.”

“Abby, you’re not a hero.” Lisa tried to shove me again, but this time I caught her hand by the wrist and held her there so she couldn’t move. “You’re just some stupid girl who is in over her head.” Lisa shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I thought we were friends…”

“We are friends, Lisa. That’s why—”

“That’s why you let them abduct me and use me as bait?” she asked, and the words leapt from her throat like a pouncing jungle cat and landed straight on my heart, claws first. She spun back to the mainframe, but before she could type anything, I grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her away from the keyboard. She hit the chair with a loud thwap and fell, striking the ground so hard it made my stomach do a little flip flop.

“Sorry,” I murmured, rushing toward her, worried I’d hurt her. “But I can’t let you kill all those people. They can’t all be bad, and besides…”

Lisa shoved me away and stood on her own, one hand using the toppled chair for balance. Murder filled her features as she reached up and stroked her left temple with one hand. She looked at her fingertips, and the blood on them seemed to incite her even more.

“I don’t care, Abby. I don’t care if I have to kill a million innocent people to stop them. They murdered my parents. They killed your mom. They are the source of all that’s wrong with the world, Abby. You may be too weak to do what’s needed to stop them.” She took a menacing step toward me, her hands clenched into fists. “But I am not.”

“Fortunately for the world, I’m not going to let you kill anyone,” I said, my jaw set in determination as I moved between her and the computer chair. “You can’t beat me, not here, not now, Lisa.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re Abby Banks, wonder-girl.” She laughed, a hoarse gaudy sound that rankled along my flesh. “Too bad you forgot one teensy weensy little thing, Abby.”

A twinge of worry made my heart start pumping a little faster. “What’s that,” I asked, glancing from her to Tom. He shrugged. He had backed up as far away from us as possible.

“You need to take her down now, before she kills you,” Donovan said in my ear, his voice so sure and confident that I almost believed him. But this was Lisa…

“Pay attention to me,” Lisa growled, spittle flying from her lips as she reached out and grabbed me by the throat so fast I couldn’t even react. Her hand tightened, cutting off my air as something robotic glinted in her eyes for a second.

I threw my hand up instinctively, slamming my palm into her chest and knocking her backward. Her nails scraped at my flesh leaving burning claw marks on my skin as she tore free of my neck. “What the hell, Lisa?”

She shook her head, her black hair falling down over her face, shielding it from view. “See, I told you guys I figured out how the flit worked. What the problem was. Well, I also added a little patch to my own brain. I wasn’t sure if it’d work, but I used the uplink in my brain to access the flit’s mind…” She curled one hand into a fist. “Let’s just say you’re not quite so special anymore, Abby.”

I was too stunned to move as she came at me, her fist lashing through the air beside my face. I think she could have hit me if she had wanted to do so because I didn’t move. I was too shocked to even defend myself, so I was glad she hadn’t hit me. With speed like that, it would have knocked me flat on my butt.

She opened her hand and flicked my ear. “You can’t beat me, Abby. I’m faster and smarter and all around better than you. I’m not sure what they stuffed in your head, but I have the knowledge from everyone the flit has ever entered in mine.”

I punched her. She must not have expected it because my blow slammed into her face. The feel of her nose breaking beneath my fist made my gut twist into a knot. The spray of her blood across my shirt as I lunged, throwing my knee into her midsection made me want to gag. Lisa was my friend, but unfortunately, she’d lost it.

She countered my next blow, swinging her arm around to block my elbow. The force of it rattled down my arm, shaking me. How could she have recovered so quickly? That should have hurt her… only it didn’t seem like it had. Why didn’t she care?

Her fist slammed into my cheek before I could ask her. I fell, the taste of blood filling my mouth. I barely managed to roll out of the way as her foot slammed down on the ground next to me. I scrambled to my feet as her knee whooshed by my nose. It didn’t hit me, but it threw me off balance. I stumbled backward before dropping into a fighting stance a couple meters from her.

Lisa wasn’t looking at me anymore. She had her hands on the keyboard, but as she typed, the whole thing shut down. She let out a cry of frustration as I tackled her from behind, driving my shoulder into the small of her back.

Our impact against the panel should have stunned her, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She drove her elbow into my side without even a backward glance. The breath shot from my lungs as she whirled, grabbing me by my arm and flinging me across the room like last night’s garbage. I hit the ground hard, skidding to a stop on the metal floor in a way that left my skin crying out in agony. I got to my hands and knees, blood dripping from the corner of my mouth and tried to will the suddenly blurry world back into focus.

“Access denied. Access denied…” the voice of Gabriella’s holographic form said as Lisa tried to make the computer work. “Flit presence detected. Access revoked. If you believe this is an error, please input a ticket and someone will be able to assist your shortly.” The computer screen winked off, leaving a faint hum in the air as Lisa turned toward me and glared a hole into my chest.

“Abby, give me access again,” she snapped. Her footsteps echoed in the tiny room, reverberating in my brain like a gong. I shut my eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in my head, and got to my feet. The room swayed when I reopened my eyes, but I ignored it.

“Not happening, Lisa. You just need to calm down. Think this through—”

She slapped me so hard my teeth rattled in my head. I staggered backward as she hit me again, knocking me to the ground. My head bounced off the metal with a sickening crack, and the world went dark around the edges. Her weight settled on my chest, pinning me to the floor with her knee.

“I’m going to repeat myself one time. Give me back access.” Lisa’s voice was hard and angry. Good. If she’d been calm, it would have been way scarier because she was coldly logical, and well, angry people don’t usually think straight. If she was angry, maybe I could take advantage of it.

“Not going to happen, Lisa,” I wheezed through clenched lips as I tried to get my hands underneath me, but as I did so, she struck me hard in the side and stars flashed across my eyes.

“You know. I don’t need you, anyway. I can just waltz in there and take over. The flit has given me access to everything in their system. I don’t even need you. It would just be easier.” Lisa sighed and stood up. “You always want to do everything the hard way, don’t you, Abby?”

I stared up at her as she loomed over me, tapping her chin with one stubby finger. She was still angry, but not as angry as she’d been only a moment before. That wasn’t good. A calm Lisa was a smart Lisa… and I wasn’t sure I could beat a calm Lisa. Especially since she was willing to kick the crap out of me, and I wasn’t really willing to do the same to her…

As soon as I started to get to my feet, Lisa nudged me with the toe of her tennis shoe. “Don’t,” she said, still studying me. “I haven’t decided what to do with you. Part of me thinks you’ll come around, but most of me knows you won’t. Leaving you alive and in control of this.” She waved her arms at the room. “Seems unnecessarily foolish. But still…”

“Are you thinking of killing me, Lisa? Is that what you’re trying to decide?” I asked and couldn’t keep the tremor out of my voice. Lisa was supposed to be my best friend. She’d been holding my hand a few minutes ago and now? Now, she was contemplating putting me down like a naughty puppy. “We’re supposed to be friends.”

“Not in quite so many words, but yes.” She huffed out a little sigh as she knelt down next to me and touched my cheek with her fingers. Her skin was like ice. “The flit doesn’t want me to do it if it makes you feel better. I think he likes you.” She smirked. “All the boys always seem to like you, Abby. Well, now that you’re ‘special,’ anyway. First Stephen, now the flit.” She shook her head. “I’m rambling now. I guess. I know boys don’t really like you. They like Shelley back home. I was just trying to make you feel bad, and to be honest, I’m not sure why.” She ran a hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ears. “God school seems like so long ago.”

Lisa stared at me for a long time, and as the silence stretched between us, I wondered if she was waiting for me to respond to her special brand of crazy. When I didn’t, she let out another sigh. “It must feel like it has been even longer for you. Can you imagine going back now knowing what you know? How mundane it would all be.” She gestured at the computer. “How mundane life in general will be.”

She stood. “Because we’re friends I’m going to let you live. Please don’t try to stop me. If you do, I will end you. Just let this one go, Abby. Someone’s got to do the dirty work and get rid of the Agency. Otherwise, well otherwise, they’ll win. You don’t fight a disease by letting some of it live because it’s playing nice. No, you eradicate the whole thing.” She grinned at me. “Besides, someone’s got to be the bad guy. I’m fine with that role.”

“Lisa, please don’t… we can find another way,” I said, and this time she let me sit up, which I suppose was nice of her.

“I don’t need to find another way. I like my way.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’m smarter than you. How could you possibly think of something I couldn’t?”

I wasn’t sure if she was genuinely asking me or not, but to be fair, I hadn’t exactly come up with a better idea. Hell, her idea had been my idea just a few hours before. That felt so long ago… and besides, maybe she was right. Maybe I should just let her take out the Agency even if it meant a little collateral damage… No. I pushed the thought away. There had to be another way, right?

“I can see from your eyes you believe I’m right too.” Lisa smiled so broadly I wondered if it hurt her mouth. “I’m glad you agree, but I still don’t trust you not to try to stop me.” Her knee shot out, catching me on the side of the head with a horrible crunch. I fell, my vision spinning as I struck the floor, though I don’t actually remember hitting it. Lisa’s blurry form stood over me as she reared back and kicked me in the face. Everything after that was blackness.

18

“Abby, wake up!” The world swayed as I opened my eyes and blinked away the haze. Roberto was kneeling over me, one hand cradling my head in his lap while the other gently stroked my face. He smiled as he came into focus and let out a sigh of relief.

“Hi,” I murmured, trying to smile back at him, but it hurt too much. That was a little odd. It shouldn’t hurt to smile, right? I tried to move, to get up, but the movement made the world spin out from under me. I reached out, grabbing him by the arm to steady myself even though I was lying down. So why was the world moving?

“Be careful,” Roberto said, rubbing his calloused thumb on my forehead. “You might have a concussion or worse…” His dark eyes filled with concern. “I’m going to try to get you to the infirmary. I didn’t want to move you until you woke up. I remembered reading something about not moving people with neck injuries…”

“Do I have a neck injury?” I whispered through clenched teeth. I didn’t remember hurting my neck, but who knew what happened after Lisa went psycho on me.

“I’m not sure. I only got here a few minutes ago. I woke up on the floor of the cavern. It looks like Lisa and Tom ditched us. Do you know why?” he asked, getting slowly to his feet, and pulling me along with him as though I was weightless.

“Yeah,” I murmured as I took a step that was like trying to walk on legs made of jelly. I sighed. This was going to be a long trip.

Roberto must have thought the same thing because he swept me into his arms and hoisted me against his chest. He was so warm I had to resist the urge to nuzzle against him like a cat. I wanted to shake away the notion, but I was worried that would make the world spin again. I wasn’t quite sure my sloshing stomach could take it anyway, and to be honest, I was pretty proud of myself for not throwing up all over him, though it wouldn’t have been the first time that’d happened.

“So why did we get ditched, Abby?” he asked, reaching for the elevator and pressing the button with his thumb. He must have been stronger than I’d thought because holding me against his chest with one arm didn’t even make him breathe hard or grunt or anything. It made me immensely glad the flit hadn’t been able to take him over.

“The agency attacked us and blew up Lisa’s foster parents. Well, I think they did. I couldn’t exactly confirm they were in the city block they destroyed.”

“Why did they do that?” Roberto asked. He wasn’t upset about it, more inquisitive, and I had to remind myself he was a soulless killer like the rest of them. Just because I was his offspring didn’t negate the fact he had been Gabriella’s number two. I was pretty sure you didn’t get that high up in a terrorist organization by playing with bunnies and kissing babies. No, Roberto was bad news, and I couldn’t afford to forget that.

“Because they were trying to get me to trade myself for them, and I took too long, I guess.”

He stared at me for a long time. “Obviously it didn’t work since you’re still here, albeit unconscious and broken.” The elevator opened, and he stepped inside and leaned against the wall.

“Yeah, well… I didn’t go out there because Tom armed a missile Lisa shot into the recovery team. They were right outside the door, and I guess technically they still are, but now they’re in paste form.”

Roberto crinkled his nose at my analogy. “That doesn’t explain why I found you unconscious, or why Lisa and Tom are gone.”

“Well after that, Lisa tried to launch missiles at all the bases in the world, and I stopped her. She somehow harnessed the flit and kicked my ass. Fortunately, Gabriella’s system locked her out.” I tried to smile, but it must not have been pleasant because Roberto scowled at me.

“So let me guess,” he said as the elevator beeped and opened up to reveal a room with a single bed and a weird tank filled with purple liquid. At least I think it was liquid. It looked a lot more like raspberry jam. “They left to go infiltrate one of the bases and kill everyone?”

“Pretty much,” I said as Roberto set me on the bed and moved to one of the computers by the wall. Instead of being fancy, it resembled an oblong black box with a dial and three green buttons. He turned the dial, and the tank began to whir. Bubbles shot up through the liquid before popping on the surface reminding me of swamp gas and mud.

“It figures. I knew Tom wanted revenge after Mimi was killed last year, but this is ballsy for him. He’s more of a lab guy…” Roberto turned and gestured at me. “Abby, take off your clothes please.”

“Um… not happening,” I replied. He looked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. He had just told me to undress in front of him, and somehow, that made me the weird one?

“Do you need help?” he asked, raising one bushy eyebrow. That’s where he was going with this? Seriously?

“No…” I trailed off, and he sighed.

“You can’t go in the tank with your clothes on. You need to take them off, first.” He shook his head and rubbed his face with one hand. “If you don’t go in the tank, I won’t be able to have the healing crystals that power the tank fix you. We don’t have time for you to heal from whatever injury you have naturally.”

“Oh,” I replied, a blush spreading across my face as I started pulling at my boots. It was a little hard because the laces were stuck together with Troy’s blood. Man, I was getting desensitized fast. How long had I been wandering around in bloody clothes without it being a big deal?

“You can keep your underwear on if you like. I’d kind of prefer that, actually,” he said, turning away from me. I nodded even though he couldn’t see it and pulled off my sticky shirt.

When I was down to my skivvies, Roberto grabbed me under the armpits and hoisted me into the tank. The gel slid over my flesh like bathwater, strangely warm and soothing. When I was submerged up to my neck, Roberto handed me a mask. It sort of looked like something a snorkeler would wear, only the top of the snorkel attached to some kind of tube that led to a mechanism at the bottom of the tank.

“I’m going under, aren’t I?” I asked, taking the mask from him and staring at it.

“Of course, you’re going under,” Roberto said, somewhat snarkily. I really could have done without his attitude. Yup, I was ready for a snark free day.

Instead of telling him that, I put the mask on my face. It snapped into place on its own, sealing itself over my mouth and nose with a wet sounding squelch that made my stomach twist itself into a pretzel. I sucked in a breath that tasted like cherry bubblegum. Tension eased out of my muscles as I drifted languidly in the tank. I almost didn’t mind when the liquid flowed over the top of my head, and the lid above me slid shut, sealing me inside.

Roberto’s obscured form stared at me from the other side of the tank’s wall. He smiled, sat down in a small metal folding chair, and pulled out a novel with a strapping, half-naked man on it. A half-snort half-squeal caught in my throat as a yawn exploded from my lips, fogging the mask so I couldn’t see. I moved my hand to wipe it away, but I was so warm and so tired… I shook my head, trying to stay awake, but my movement made the world lurch sideways. I shut my eyes and took a deep, calming breath.

The low thrum of white noise filled my ears as I cracked my eyes open and looked around. Was this how fish felt? A soft sigh escaped me as my eyes drifted shut again. I tried to open them, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how.

A loud knock startled me what felt like a second later, and I looked around frantically, my heart hammering in my chest. Roberto was standing outside the tank, his knuckles resting on the glass in front of my face. The tank was half drained, the greyish fluid seeping through a grate in the floor. I was still half-submerged in the goop, my body bobbing lazily. I maneuvered my legs beneath me, planting them on the grate and stood. I stretched, a yawn peeling from my throat as the lid opened above me with a hiss. I pulled my mask off and clambered up the rungs on the side.

Part of me had expected to feel disgusting, or sticky, or even just wet and cold, but I felt pristine and dry. I rubbed my hands together. Even the callouses on my fingers were gone. Whatever that stuff was, I needed the home use kit. Roberto reached out and helped me down. As I stepped onto the cold metal floor, I realized I felt better than I had, well, ever.

I dropped down to the ground and stretched once more. Roberto held a white towel out to me. That was pretty much when I realized I was standing in front of him in soaking wet undergarments. Fire leapt across my cheeks as I spun around so he couldn’t see me. Granted he was my father, so he wasn’t supposed to be interested in looking at me, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to look at me with my bra and panties plastered to my body.

“I’m going to put your clothes on the bed. I’ll wait outside until you’re dressed,” he said after a moment. I heard him shuffle around. A door behind me opened and closed with a whoosh. After a few more seconds, I turned and looked around the room. I hadn’t even noticed the door he’d used before.

I shook off the eerie feeling I was being watched and picked up the towel he’d laid out on the folding chair. I stripped and dried myself the best I could and moved toward the bed. My new clothing consisted of another pair of camouflage pants and some kind of tank top, but instead of being done in the normal jungle green style, these were the color of fallen snow, all grey and white.

I dropped the towel and pulled on the underwear and sports bra he’d left. I wasn’t quite sure where he’d gotten them from, but I was glad he had. For a moment, I had been worried I was going to be going commando in more ways than one.

Once I was dressed, I padded barefoot to the door and knocked once. The metal was surprisingly warm. Well that was odd…

“I’m ready…” I paused for a moment as my insides squinched up. “Thanks for the clothes… dad.” Yeah, the word sounded weird to me too. Truthfully, I didn’t know why I’d decided to say it. Part of it was because I wanted to endear myself to him, but another very small, very annoying part was overjoyed at the idea of actually having a father.

It was silly, I know, but there it was. I might have been raised by Esmeralda, and for the most part, I still thought of her as my mom, but I’d never had a dad. Understandably, Esmeralda hadn’t talked about my father, and she hadn’t exactly dated. Folsom was weird that way. There were no weird custody battles there. Your parents were either together or one didn’t seem to exist. It was a little weird, now that I thought about it.

I know being a sperm donor to a test tube baby didn’t exactly qualify for him the job, but I was sort of hoping he would wind up taking it, anyway. It was probably naïve of me, especially given my current situation and my horrible track record for bio-parents, but part of me was fantasizing about doing father-daughter activities. Though I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite sure what those would be…

A blush spread across my cheeks as I pushed the thought away. The door opened, pulling itself up into the ceiling with a gasp of compressed air. Roberto stood there, looking at me for a long while.

“You don’t have to call me dad.” He shrugged, pink coloring his cheeks. “I haven’t earned that… yet.” He held out a pair of black combat boots. “But I’m going to try.” He smiled, and I swear the only things I saw in his eyes were rainbows and dandelions.

19

We were standing in the giant cavern we’d entered originally, only this time Tom’s super-semi was nowhere to be found which made sense. I glanced around, looking for some kind of transportation, but when I didn’t see any, I huffed indignantly.

“Why did you take us down here?” I asked, glancing up at Roberto. He wasn’t paying attention to me though. He was staring at the pile of crates to our left. “There are no vehicles in sight.”

He waved his hand dismissively and began clomping off toward the wooden boxes. When he reached the first one, he grabbed ahold of the lid and pushed it up. It came loose with a snap, and he flung it to the ground. It hit the floor hard enough to have made old me jump, but just made the new me roll my eyes at him. What was with the show of strength anyway, was he trying to impress me?

“My, what big muscles you have,” I said as I sauntered over to him. He tossed me a glance that was half-annoyance and half-amusement.

“Stand back, Abby,” he replied and waited until I moved back a few paces before gripping the front of the box in his meaty paws. He took a step backward, pulling so hard the muscles in his humongous arms corded with the effort. The crack of snapping wood shot through the air like a gunshot as the side panel tore free of the container. Roberto wobbled, stumbling backward with a chunk of box in his hands.

Inside the crate was a motorcycle, but not just any motorcycle. This one had huge fat wheels and was bright neon blue. It sort of looked like something a user might ride in a video game, only way more awesome.

Roberto steadied himself and tossed his chunk of box to the floor. He grinned at me. “We don’t need a tanker truck,” he said, voice filled with glee. “We have the TRM-7A!” He smirked and pulled the motorcycle free by its black handlebars.

“Cool name,” I said, taking a step toward him and running my hand over the sleek gunmetal tank. It was cool to the touch, but still it managed to send shivers running along my spine. Was I going to get to ride this? For real?

“It stands for Totally-Rad-Motorcycle version 7A,” he said, still grinning as he grabbed a helmet off a hook on the side and tossed it to me.

“That isn’t really what it’s called, is it?” I asked, not sure if he was making a joke. I caught the helmet in my hands. It was heavier than I expected.

“No, but it should be. I forget what TRM stands for, something technical.” He shrugged and moved to the next crate. In moments, he had ripped it apart to reveal another motorcycle, only this one was yellow where the first one was blue. He grabbed the helmet and put it on his head before sitting down on the bike.

“Put your helmet on, Abby. We’re going for a ride, and no daughter of mine is going to be riding a motorcycle without a helmet.” He was about to say more, but instead, he narrowed his eyes at me and fixed me with one of those parent gazes. Wow, he learned fast. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you’ll need to be careful. If the TRM overheats, it will explode, so don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

I nodded as I stared down at the sleek bike. Great, just great. I wasn’t even sure how to ride the damned thing. Now I had to make sure I didn’t make it explode? Was he crazy? Did he even know who I was?

“I don’t have a driver’s license,” I said before I could stop myself. “I failed the driving portion of the test all three times so I need to redo the written part. I was just going to wait until I was eighteen…” Roberto began laughing at me, and I felt my face heat up. “Hey, it isn’t my fault. There’s this intersection by a school zone, and I kept getting failed for going to slow when all these kids were running around.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you’d pass now,” he replied, pressing his thumb against the white sphere in the center of the handlebars. The bike roared to life, smoke and actual flames shooting out the chrome exhaust pipes. “Besides, I wouldn’t worry about the TRM. You’ve had the ability to ride this bike downloaded into your head already. Now let’s go.”

I hopped onto the motorcycle, and feeling more than a little silly, put on my neon blue helmet. It cinched itself around my skull without me even having to adjust it. Even if I did know how to ride this thing, I was a little worried about not having proper motorcycle gear. Shouldn’t I have pads and maybe a leather jacket? Riding around in a tank top and camo-pants didn’t seem safe. Nor very warm… what if there was wind, or worse, rain?

Then again, nothing I did was safe anymore. Riding an experimental motorcycle seemed like it was fairly risk free in comparison to our goal… which I wasn’t even sure what it was. Well that wasn’t quite true. I knew what my goal was, to stop Lisa from going insane and killing everyone. But that didn’t mean I understood what Roberto wanted. I stopped and looked at him even though I couldn’t see his face through his black Plexiglas visor.

“So, what’s your plan?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “Where exactly are you taking me?”

“To stop Tom and Lisa before they kill everyone and take over the world,” Roberto replied, kicking his bike off the kickstand and bringing it around so he was facing the exit. He tapped out a command on the white sphere in the center of the handlebars. The door began to open, shuddering sideways into the mountain like its gears were in desperate need of oil.

“Um… why would you want to do that? You’re a bad guy.” The second part slipped out without my meaning it to, but he shrugged it off. Actually, he did more than that. He laughed. Huge guffaws exploded from his throat. He went to wipe his eyes but wound up just hitting his mask with one large finger. I smirked.

“Just because I’m not a hero doesn’t mean I’m a villain. The last thing I want is for Tom to be in control of the agency’s resources. Make no bones about it. If he’s going in there with Lisa, he thinks she’ll win. You think Gabriella has access to crazy tech, well you haven’t even scratched the surface of what the Agency has.” Roberto turned his head toward me and made a ‘come on’ gesture with his hand. “Tom is way more dangerous than Gabriella. Even she had lines. You might think she was evil, and that’s fine, but everything she did was purposeful and measured because she knew how the Agency worked. Tom doesn’t have any kind of line at all. He’d blow up an orphanage filled with puppies on Christmas morning if he thought it would satisfy his objectives.” He took off out of the room in a screech of rubber. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather have their tech for yourself? I know I would.”

Of course he would. He was a supervillain, and I trusted him, why? Because he was my father? How naïve was I? Sure, he hadn’t done anything bad by me, but neither had Lisa nor Stephen until they had. I sighed. I was the world’s most trusting sap.

“Awesome,” I snapped as I kicked my bike into gear and raced after him. It was a little scary at first, but once I’d managed to weave myself past the giant glassy crater outside the doors, it was pretty much smooth sailing. Thank God. “So what you’re trying to say is that if someone is going to plunder the Agency’s corpse, you’d rather it be you? You know because you’re so trust worthy?” I said, and for some reason, I wasn’t surprised.

“Pretty much,” Roberto responded, his voice booming from speakers inside my helmet. Well that was certainly convenient.

“So why should I help you, and why did you recruit Tom if he’s so evil?” I asked, even though I knew I was going in there to stop Lisa no matter what. She may have been bad, but I was reasonably sure it wasn’t entirely her fault. She’d told me the flit had influence over her, and the flit was soulless. It had to be what had made Lisa go haywire. I had to hold onto that thought, that belief that if I unhooked her from the flit, she’d go back to being my best friend. I may not have been able to save Stephen from the Agency, but this time… this time it would be different.

“You ever hear that saying, ‘better the devil you know?’” Roberto said as he zipped around a silver Volkswagen beetle. “It answers both of your questions.”

“At least he’s being honest,” Donovan said, his voice echoing in my head. “You can always trust a scorpion to sting after all.” He exhaled thoughtfully. “Just pay attention to what he’s doing, and he can be useful to you.”

“Yeah…” I murmured, twisting hard on the throttle and shooting forward after him. Even if he was lying, I’d cross the Roberto bridge later, or maybe never if I didn’t stop Lisa. Either way, there was no use worrying about it now. Especially not when I could really use his help. I’d like to say that I was confident in my abilities, but after the fight with Lisa, well, let’s just say I wasn’t quite as confident as I was before. Something told me, if I went after her alone, I’d lose. Roberto, on the other hand, had something I didn’t. Experience.

“Let’s go with that,” he replied, and for some reason I knew he was grinning. “If not, just remember I gave you an experimental motorcycle.”

“Do I look like someone who could be bought off with a motorcycle?” I asked, a smile I couldn’t stop spreading across my lips. “Get me a pony, and we’ll talk.”

He laughed again. It was the last sound I heard him make before his motorcycle exploded in a fireball. He tumbled off the twisted vehicle, his body encased in a weird orange glow. He bounced on the asphalt, spinning haphazardly into the oncoming lane, but thankfully no cars were coming.

I twisted my head to see one of those huge army helicopters silently hurtling toward us through the air. The barrel of the chain gun on the side was starting to spin as the muscle-bound behemoth from before turned it toward me. How had he survived?

I shot one last glance at Roberto’s glowing body and kicked my TRM into action, darting underneath the helicopter as bullets ripped apart the asphalt, spraying chunks of rock everywhere. Hopefully that orange glow had kept Roberto from getting killed. If he died… I didn’t know what I’d do. Which yes, I know, was a weird thought since I’d just met him, and he was a supervillain. Still, he was my supervillain.

The helicopter spun in an arc so the gunner could get better aim at me. I threw the motorcycle into a skid that kicked up a wall of dust as the bullets chewed up the pavement around me. I leapt from the bike and pulled it up on its front wheel as my hands went to the white sphere. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to do exactly, but the next thing I knew, the motorcycle was glowing like an overheated nuclear reactor. Horrible lime green light spilled out of the machine as I revved the throttle and let the bike go. It zoomed haphazardly toward the helicopter before exploding in a geyser of ghostly green flame.

The shooter leapt from the helicopter as emerald fire slammed into it. The metal shell of the chopper crumpled inward on itself before bursting apart in a fireball so bright I had to look away even though my visor darkened instantly.

The blast threw the army man across the sky. He spread his arms and weird, webbed parachute wings filled the space between his arms and his legs. It caught the air, allowing him to glide to the ground. Evidently it wasn’t a soft landing because he hit with a grunt and fell to his knees. That must have been how he escaped last time…

I wasn’t sure how long he was on his knees, but it couldn’t have been for more than a second because, by the time I reached him, he was standing. Blood covered his face and chest, soaking through his thin forest green tank top. Burns pockmarked his arms and neck as he took a step toward me, lips twisted into a snarl.

“Hey, girly,” he said, pulling off his ruined shirt and tossing it to the ground at his feet. “Come along nicely, and I’ll only punch some of your teeth out.”

“Um… how am I supposed to eat a steak then?” I said, ducking under his massive fist and driving my elbow into his side. Yeow, it was like hitting steel. His elbow came down, smashing into the top of my head and sending me sprawling face first to the dirt. His boot came forward, catching me in the face, and the visor on my helmet splintered into a million spiderwebbing cracks. I staggered backward, my world swimming as I tried to regain my balance.

“We can get ice cream if you like,” he said, grabbing me by my helmet and jerking it off my head, his huge hand palming it like a basketball. He tossed it to the ground with an empty sounding thunk and leaned down so his face was inches from mine. His breath stunk like sweaty gym socks and cigars as he grinned. “I’ll even buy it, assuming you survive what the Agency has in store for you.”

His fist came up, smacking into my chin, and for the second time in as many hours, darkness encroached on my vision. Shadows swam across my eyes, but I lashed out anyway, driving my heel into the front of his knee. He yowled and backhanded me. I hit the dirt hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. I ignored it, pushing everything away as I scurried backward on my hands.

The big man wobbled as a grin spread across his face. “So you have some fight in you after all.” He moved toward me, arms casually at his sides. “Let’s see how much.”

I scrambled to my feet and dropped into a fighting stance. “Okay, let’s do this, big man.”

I threw a punch at his throat, but he grabbed my fist. He squeezed, his muscles straining. Pain exploded through my hand as my bones shrieked. I leapt, driving my heels into his stomach. He grunted and released me, which had the unfortunate side effect of making me fall to the ground. I hit hard on my back as I rolled to my feet in time to catch his meaty shoulder with my stomach.

We crashed to the pavement, and I used our momentum to roll on top of him, pinning him to the ground beneath my tiny body. He reached up, seizing me by the hair and jerking me hard to the side. Pain shot through my scalp as I hit the dirt beside the road, swallowing a mouthful of dust in the process. The next thing I knew, something unreasonably heavy was pressing my face into the sandy earth.

“Nice try, but I like it better on top,” he said, and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice. “Now how about you play nice, and I don’t break your legs.”

The sound of the gun cocking was so loud it drowned out every other noise. “How about you let my daughter go before I put another hole in your head, Chuck?” Roberto’s voice was like music to my ears. He was alive, thank god he was alive. And even better, he had saved me from super soldier Chuck.

“Rob, I can’t do that.” Chuck’s foot pressed harder on my back, making it so I could barely breathe. “I don’t really have a choice. They have Max.”

“No, they don’t,” Roberto replied. “The Agency evacuated Folsom last night. They were using the town as a decoy to flush Abby out.”

“I fail to see how that means they don’t have my dog,” he said, but the pressure of his boot lessened just a touch. Go Roberto. Way to not shoot the guy killing your daughter. Oh who was I kidding? I was willing to make an exception to my ‘don’t kill without good reason’ rule for Chuck if it meant getting him off my back.

“One of my teams hit their transport a few hours ago. We’ve recovered your dog. I guarantee it. Even if you don’t believe me, you’re letting her up, or I’m going to blow your goddamn head off. Are we clear?” Roberto’s voice changed mid-sentence from one of amusement to one of steadfast brutality. It happened so fast, it made my head spin.

The next thing I knew, Chuck had removed his boot from my back and was standing next to us, hands at his sides. Roberto’s huge pistol was still pointed at his chest, but it didn’t seem to bother Chuck even slightly.

“You have Max?” he asked voice full of emotion. “I never thought I’d see him again…”

“Yeah, and I’ll let you have him as soon as I finish up a couple things,” Roberto replied, lowering his gun and helping me to my feet.

“What things?” Chuck asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. What, had he gotten dust in them or something?

“Tom and his daughter have taken control of the flit and are going to use its knowledge to systematically destroy the Agency. I got a report a few minutes ago that they’ve already taken over the base in Charleston.” Roberto held up a hand as Chuck started to say something. The super soldier fell silent. “And before you ask why that’s a bad thing, think about this. Do you really want Tom in control of the Agency’s resources?”

Chuck said nothing for so long, I was about to ask him if he’d actually heard Roberto speak, but before I could, he nodded once. “Okay… I’ll help you stop Tom. I was supposed to stop Tom, anyway. After that, I’m taking Abby in, director’s orders.” He shrugged as if to say that was the way it was.

Roberto stiffened and his face went slack. That wasn’t good. What had scared my father so suddenly? Who was the director, and what power did he have over Chuck? I was about to ask when Chuck shot a sidelong glance at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t betray you unless you’ve done something to my dog.”

“You mean you were helping the Agency because they took your dog?” I stared at him, disbelieving.

“Well that, and they pay really, really well. Besides, you don’t know what love is until you have a dog.” Chuck glanced at me and smirked. “Take whoever it is you think loves you, be it your spouse or child, or whatever, and lock him in your trunk. Do the same with your dog. Guess which one will be happy to see you when you open said trunk.” His grin grew wider. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the human.”

20

That was how we got General Charles Uile to join our party. Which was pretty cool since he was bad ass enough to kick my butt all over the road after leaping from an exploding helicopter. It was a little disconcerting though since I’d waded through an entire battalion of men, and he’d dropped me like a bad habit without even breaking a sweat. That was the second time I’d been taken down in the last couple hours… Maybe I’d been relying on what had been downloaded into my brain a little too much…

“So, um, don’t take this the wrong way, but how come you’re… um…” I said, biting my lip as I stared at Chuck. Geez, would it kill him to put a shirt on? He was a little too buff for me to look at without wanting to reach out and touch his muscles, just to make sure they were real, you know.

He was sitting with me in the back of a Chevy pickup that was made before I was born. Roberto was in the front seat gabbing away with the driver. Originally, the guy hadn’t wanted to take us anywhere, especially since we made a pretty motley crew, but when Roberto shoved a fistful of hundreds into the man’s palm, his reluctance had vanished like magic.

Charlie moved so his huge pectorals were boring holes in my brain. It wasn’t like I wanted to stare at them, but they were just there in front of me. Then again, I was half-sure he was doing it just to bother me. Still, this would be a lot easier if he just put a shirt on, and besides, it would make me feel a lot less guilty… even if Stephen was dead and gone, staring at Chuck made shame rise up inside my belly and sit there like a lead weight.

I tore my eyes away and looked past him into the Chevy’s dirty back window. Roberto was laughing his head off and slapping the dashboard. “I was wondering why you were able to beat me so easily. I don’t mean to brag, but usually I am the one doing the beating…”

“Look, Angel, you’re a tiny girl.” He touched his chest with the butt of his cigar. Where had he gotten it from? “I’m a big, huge man. How could you possibly win?”

I ground my teeth together. “Are you being serious right now?”

“Sort of.” He took a long drag on his cigar, inhaling even though I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do that. Besides… cancer.

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke around me,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest. “You may not care about cancer, but I do.”

He laughed and took another drag on his cigar. The end glowed red hot. He blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth before putting the cigar down on the bed of the truck and sighing. “I’m not really worried about things like cancer,” he replied with a shrug. “I can do pretty much whatever I want, and I won’t die.” He leaned toward me, grinning. “It’s why I love buffets full of fried food and loose women.”

“Why can’t you die?” I asked, leaning closer to him as he pointed to a spot on his arm that had been burned by the explosion. Only it didn’t look as bad as I remembered it. Was he healing faster than normal? That was impossible, right?

“You’ve heard of Captain America, right?” he asked, leaning back on his hands and thrusting his chest toward me. “He’s based on me.”

I shook my head at him. “Are you going to tell me you’re some kind of super soldier?”

“Bingo,” he replied. “They injected me with ‘evil’ super serum and turned me from a scrawny twerp into this fine specimen of a man.” He grinned at me and sort of shuffled his enormous body toward me. “After I punched Hitler in the face, I ran out of good guy stuff to do.”

“I think you’re lying,” I said, moving away as much as I could in the cramped bed of the truck because Chuck clearly had more than a few screws loose.

“Think whatever you want, Angel,” he said, stretching out and leaning his head against the back window. “I have no reason to lie to you.”

“Why do you keep calling me Angel? That’s not my name,” I said as the truck came to a stop outside the most ordinary office building I’d ever seen. It was sort of squat with dull white paint and a few trees lining the small walkway that led to some glass doors.

“He calls all the girls ‘Angel.’ It’s his thing,” Roberto said, getting out of the cab and helping me out of the truck bed. “You know, Charlie’s Angels. He thinks it’s clever.”

“I have no idea what that is,” I said, stepping out onto the pavement and shrugging. “Is it a band or something?”

“Oh, come on,” Charlie said as he leapt from the vehicle. His boots crunched on the ground as he landed with enough force to send tremors rippling out through the pavement. “It’s a famous television show about female spies. There’s even a remake.”

“That remake is practically older than my daughter,” Roberto said with a sly smile on his lips. “Face it, Chuck. You’re old.”

Chuck shook his head as he reached back into the bed and grabbed his cigar. He stuck it between his thick lips and sighed. “Whatever,” he said, lighting it back up. “You’ll wish you look this good when you’re my age.”

“How old are you?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at him because there was no way he was older than twenty-five. “Thirty?” I grinned. “Forty?”

“I was eighteen when I joined the army to kill Nazis in World War Two.” He sucked on the end of his cigar and walked past me. “You do the math.” He cocked his head toward me and blew a smoke ring at me. I scowled just as the front of the building exploded in a fireball that sprayed glass and debris at us. I dropped, hitting the ground hard with Roberto on top of me, shielding my body with his own.

Chuck landed hard on his back next to me, bits of glass embedded in his flesh. He lay there for a moment as flame rippled out of the building, catching the surrounding trees on fire so it felt like we were in the midst of a funeral pyre on Halloween.

He got to his feet and brushed himself off. Apparently being blown up didn’t faze him much, which was good because he pulled Roberto’s bulky body off me. I got to my feet as Roberto steadied himself, leaning hard on Chuck as blood streamed from wounds all over his body.

“I think they know we’re here,” Chuck said, sweeping his hand toward the burning bushes. “Which is unfortunate because they destroyed my cigar.” He sighed. “That cigar was cigar of the year two years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I replied, surveying the building. If they already knew we were coming, what sort of defenses would they have in place? Besides, wouldn’t an explosion summon local authorities? Granted we were in a small town in the middle of nowhere but surely there had to be some kind of local law enforcement or at least a fire truck, right?

“Maybe that was a defensive mechanism set up by the Agency to stop Tom and Lisa?” I asked, but even as I said the words I knew they sounded foolish. I mean, there should have been fighting and stuff, right? But there wasn’t. Before we had approached the base, it had been quiet. So either they had seized control already, or they weren’t here, and judging by the explosion we’d just set off, I was pretty sure we were going with option one.

“Get down!” Chuck screamed, grabbing me and Roberto and leaping behind the truck as two huge Gatling guns burst upward from the lawn and swung toward us, bullets already spraying. We hit the asphalt hard as hot lead tore into the tiny Chevy, blowing giant holes in the metal above my head. The driver screamed, and the back tires spun, before slowing to a dull roll that carried the truck into the curb. What had happened? Was he okay?

The smell of gasoline filled my nostrils as bullets zinged by over my head. I dropped, trying to flatten myself into the pavement. That wasn’t good. It would only take one spark to blow us to kingdom come.

“Damn,” Roberto said, and I swung my head toward him. He was staring across the street. My gaze followed his to see what looked like an army of goblin sappers coming toward us, only there was some kind of spout mounted on their shoulders. A burst of flame exploded from the closest one, singing my hair as I threw myself backward against the truck.

The metal next to my head exploded in a flurry of superheated metal as a thin rivulet of gasoline caught fire. Flame raced hungrily toward us as I got to my feet and sprinted toward the goblins, bullets whizzing by my head.

“I’d definitely say they know we’re here,” Chuck said as he punted one of the goblins fifty feet in the air. It impacted a power pole and exploded in a cacophony of flame and debris. Wires tore free of the pole in a spray of sparks, the huge cables whipping back and forth like squirming snakes. The lights along the road winked out, plunging us into darkness.

Lightning burst from the top of the pole as the Gatling guns ground to a halt. The goblins stopped in their tracks and began chittering at each other.

“Hurry,” Roberto said, pointing to a manhole cover at his feet. “We won’t have very long before the backup power restarts the defenses. The default setting is for it to maintain life support, but I’m willing to bet it won’t be that way for long.”

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked as Chuck grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me into the air like I was weightless. He sprinted toward the manhole with me under his arm as Roberto dropped into the sewer.

“Even super soldiers don’t get to be this old without learning a few tricks,” Chuck replied, no longer grinning. “You’d do well to remember that.” He leapt through the air as huge strobe lights flickered to life, lighting up the surrounding street. I’m not sure how he managed it, but we landed perfectly inside the sewer, his legs absorbing the fall like a pair of springs.

Thankfully, the tunnel wasn’t dark because a bunch of emergency lights embedded in the ceiling cast enough light to banish most of the shadows. Chuck put me down as Roberto ushered us forward, one hand wreathed in blue flame.

“Well that seems reasonable. I mean everyone needs an emergency flaming hand.” I smirked and Chuck glanced back at me, scowling.

“You’re making a joke, but you should always have a backup plan. Then have a backup to that, and that.” When I didn’t respond, Chuck shook his head. “You know you’re not the first augmented person I’ve taken down, right? You know what the key is? You people always think your specialness will overcome everything.” He turned away from me as we approached Roberto. “It won’t.”

His words rang in my ears like church bells. The truth of them was immediately clear. I was just some kid. Sure, I had a bunch of knowledge and stuff stuffed in my head, and maybe, just maybe, that would get me out of a lot of sticky situations when combined with my magical strength and speed. I swallowed. What would have happened if Roberto hadn’t been there when Chuck came after me? A shiver ran down my spine. That was a thought I didn’t want to entertain…

“You’d be dead,” Donovan said, his voice surprising me so much I jumped. “You’re just lucky he actually turned out to be somewhat trustworthy.” Donovan stepped in front of me and stared at Chuck. “But I’m not sure why you trust him. He has government goon written all over him.”

Instead of replying to the ghost, I asked the one question that had been bothering me this whole time. “Chuck, is there something worse than the Agency?”

He glanced at me like I was very dull and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, specifically?”

“I mean, okay Tom is bad, and Gabriella is bad, like way, way bad. I get that. The Agency seems just as bad as either of them. But then there’s you, and while I’m not sure why, I think that if they have people like you, well, maybe they have threats that are way worse than Gabriella. I guess… I’m just wondering if, well, maybe they’re not all bad. That maybe I’m missing something.”

He stared at me for a long time before wiping his face with his hand. “Abby, Gabriella was a puppy dog compared to the real threats the Agency deals with. This,” he waved his hand at the tunnel, “this is like a vacation for me. It’s why they only sent me after you. Let me be clear, Abby. The Agency is letting you do everything. If they wanted you, they would have you.”

I glanced at Donovan who was standing there scowling. He nodded once at me. I swallowed back a burst of rage that they were orchestrating everything because ever since I’d been abducted by Stephen back in Folsom, it always seemed like the Agency could have stopped Gabriella whenever it wanted to. If that was true, why were they letting things play out?

Roberto could believe whatever he wanted, but I was reasonably sure the Agency could have taken over Gabriella’s bases if it put its mind to it. Hell, it had the flit. The flit was a demon that could take over nearly anyone, and I had no doubt in my mind it could get into supernaturals despite our natural immunity, given enough time.

“Why let me run then?” I asked as a horrible, sinking feeling skittered across the back of my lizard brain.

“They’re probably training you.” Chuck shrugged, but his eyes were strangely distant, like he was watching a long forgotten scene play out. “But don’t ask me for what. I just work here.”

21

Our trip through the grimy sewers was, thankfully, uneventful. I wasn’t sure if that was because there were no defenses down here or because Chuck had cut the power. Though, knowing the Agency, I was inclined to think it was Chuck’s doing. If not, they were far dumber than I’d been giving them credit for. Then again, they had been routed in a matter of hours by a socially awkward Asian teenager named Lisa.

Lisa was smart, sure, but it seemed crazy she could take over an Agency base so completely in so short of a time. How had she done it? And if she was that good now, how the hell were we supposed to stop her from killing us and moving on? I glanced up to see Chuck and Roberto whispering to each other, and even though I couldn’t make out their words, they seemed worried. Great, just great.

Even super soldier Chuck was concerned. He’d been at this a long time, and maybe, just maybe, this was how he got every time he infiltrated some psycho’s base and tried to take her out. Still, I doubted it. He’d taken me down without even breaking a sweat, and he was doing a lot more than sweating now.

“So… uh… what do you plan on doing after this is over?” I asked in an attempt to quell the fear rising in my gut like a serpent.

“I plan on finding a nice beach and kicking back with my daughter,” Roberto said, glancing at me. “I may even let her drink even though she’s underage.” I scowled at him and Chuck laughed.

“What about you, Chuck?” I asked, catching up to them. It was kind of funny because the two of them they were so wide, they couldn’t actually walk next to each other in the sewer tunnel. It made it so Roberto was actually standing a foot or two behind Chuck as they moved along the slime covered floor, boots squelching with every step.

Yeah, it smelled, but I’d gotten over that a few minutes ago. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, but I’d sort of willed the smell away and it’d worked. Whether that was good or bad, I wasn’t sure, but I was praying it was just a perk of whatever Gabriella had done to me.

“Well, I think I’m going to take my dog to a park where I’ll hit on the first girl who comes up to pet him. Then I’ll go find an evil warlord willing to pay me my weight in gold.” He shrugged. “Though I could be talked into taking you drinking.” He grinned mischievously at me.

“Ugh,” I replied, sticking my tongue out at him. “You’re soooooo old.”

He flexed at me, his arms bulging so they made a pair of twenty inch pythons look like a pair of garden snakes. “What?” He called. “I can’t hear you over these guns.”

Roberto shook his head as we came to the end of the tunnel. A huge stone wall blocked any further progress. In the center of the grey rock was a single red button. I wasn’t sure why, but that button gave me a bad feeling.

Without saying a word, Chuck pressed his thumb against the button, and as it depressed into the stone, my breath caught in my throat. What if it exploded, or worse, filled the tunnel with poison gas. Hell, for all I knew it could release a billion poisonous spiders.

When nothing happened, I exhaled slowly through my teeth. Blue light burst from a panel in the ceiling above Chuck’s head, scanning him from head to toe in an instant. A loud beep, beep crackled from a speaker somewhere behind me, and the wall to our left vanished to reveal a set of yellow plastic stairs that led both up and down.

“Well, that was sort of unexpected,” I said as Chuck moved toward the door, his head craned toward the opening as though he was listening for something. He glanced at me and made a shushing motion with his finger. Then he sniffed like a dog, his nostrils flaring outward.

“Gas,” he said. “It’s mostly dissipated so we should be fine, but if I had to guess, someone triggered one of the fail-safes to activate the nerve gas. I’m betting that was Tom. It seems like something he’d do.”

He took a deep breath and stepped into the corridor, vanishing down the steps and into the shadows. Roberto looked at me and was about to say something, but I waved him off. What was he going to do, try to comfort me? What would be the point? Good or bad, we were going to enter a base where everyone inside had been horribly murdered by poison. There wasn’t exactly a way to sugar coat it. The worst part was, even if Lisa hadn’t done it, she had helped Tom. How could I bring her back from something like that?

Roberto nodded and waved for me to go ahead of him. I wasn’t sure whether he was being nice or if he just wanted to keep me in between him and Chuck. Either way, it seemed like a good idea to me. I liked the idea of having the guy with the flaming hand at my back and a Nazi-punching super soldier at my front. If someone got me through that, I was in trouble. Well, more than I was already in at least.

I caught up to Chuck as he stood outside a black wrought-iron gate. It had been blasted open. The tips of the metal surrounding the misshapen hole were melted into slag. I sucked in a breath as he stepped through the hole, hands raised in front of him for balance.

Was this how Lisa and Tom had gotten inside? If it was, that seemed bad. Wouldn’t this be the first place they’d look for us? As Chuck moved, a camera descended from the far corner of the room swiveled to lock in on him.

“Chuck, if you take another step, I will bury that room under a billion tons of rubble.” Tom’s voice hissed from speakers all over the room.

“No, you won’t,” Chuck replied, not bothering to stop as he reached up and grabbed hold of the camera. He jerked downward, and the machine tore free of the ceiling with a spray of sparks. With a nonchalant shrug, he tossed it backward over his shoulder. It hit the white tile floor with a clang.

“I’m not sure that was a wise idea,” Roberto said as Chuck pushed open the door.

“There’s no main power. He doesn’t have the capability to detonate the base anymore.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, scrambling through the room as quickly as I could and meeting Chuck in a long narrow hallway. It was eerily white, from floor to ceiling, reminding me of something out of a B-grade horror movie.

“About eighty percent sure.” He shrugged and started down the hallway. “They could have rerouted the power already, but being that they have to be in here to do that, I sincerely doubt they are going to bring the base down on themselves.”

“All in all that seems totally reasonable,” I said as Roberto appeared in the hallway behind me, his flaming hand flaring in the obscenely bright light.

“I wouldn’t worry about them blowing up the place, anyway. For one, they’ll want to keep the base in one piece so they don’t have to travel five hundred miles to the next one. That’s assuming we’re worth a base to them. We might be, but we’d have to get a lot closer for them to even consider it.” Roberto put a hand on my shoulder and shot me a smile that made a chill crawl over my flesh.

“Sounds like we’re playing a dangerous game with a lot of assumptions,” I said, swallowing my fear and moving forward through the hallway. “Someone once told me that was a bad idea.”

“That someone sounds like a smart guy,” Chuck replied. “But I’ve known Tom since he ‘joined’ the Agency. He isn’t exactly devious, or what’s the word I’m looking for, retaliatory? Sadistic? Yeah, sadistic. He’s more coldly practical. What Roberto said is sound. Tom won’t blow this base unless he has to. Besides, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Agency is scrambling to take it back over. He’ll be a lot more worried about them than us.”

My bad feeling swelled into a hard lump in the pit of my stomach. That may have been how Tom was, but that wasn’t how Lisa was. She was smart, and she knew it, but she was vengeful too. I’d known her to carry grudges for forever and a half. Normally she didn’t do anything about them, but she was still mad at the kids who picked on her in kindergarten. Now she was in control of one of the Agency’s bases and had somehow managed to use the internal defenses to kill everyone inside. Something told me her quest for vengeance wouldn’t remain in her head this time.

I was about to say something to that effect when the emergency lights went out, pitching us into utter darkness. Something whooshed by my head, and I hit the ground as the screech of metal filled my ears. There was a loud whump, whump to my left. I rolled myself against the wall, tucking myself into the corner and moving forward on my elbows. I couldn’t see anything at all.

“Guys,” I yelled, hoping someone would respond. I’d thought about keeping quiet, but I was pretty sure whatever was attacking us could probably see in the dark. It didn’t make sense to cut the lights otherwise.

No one responded. That was scary, but I pushed my fear down and blinked a couple times, listening. Behind me, I could hear something skittering on the floor, a little tick tick that made my flesh crawl. I got to my feet and sprinted toward the end of the hallway as a blast of light behind me lit up the room for an instant. Some kind of flying creature the size of a shoebox burst into flames, veering sideways as screams erupted from its blazing form. It crashed sideways into another winged creature so that the second one spun out of control and slammed into the wall.

There had to be at least ten more of them. As the light faded to shadow cast by dancing flames, Roberto flung his glowing hand forward and let off another burst of sapphire fire that boomed like thunder in the tiny space. Another imp exploded as lines of red light appeared on Roberto’s chest. He dove to the side as flames lanced through the space he’d just occupied and melted the wall into slag.

He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward me, turning every so often to fling more fireballs at the drones. He got a couple, but for the most part they were able to dodge his fire and avoid serious damage. Damn.

I spun on my heel, willing myself to move. I couldn’t see Chuck anywhere, but a door up ahead was lying cockeyed in its frame. From here it looked like someone had torn it free of the top hinge. If that didn’t scream Chuck, I didn’t know what would.

I reached the door a second later and darted inside, my lungs sucking in mouthfuls of air. The room was semi-lit by a pair of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Chuck was across the room, wrestling with some kind of metal case. All around me, bodies lay contorted across the floor. Yellow goo dripped from their mouths and eyes. I resisted the urge to lose my lunch, but just barely. Had these people been killed by the gas? If they had been, it certainly hadn’t been a pleasant way to go.

Even though they worked for the Agency, it still bothered me. I sighed. I was not cut out for the ‘whole murdering people indiscriminately’ gig.

The walls felt like they were closing in on me as I took one small step toward the closest body and knelt down next to it. The woman had short brown hair and freckles spread out across her cheeks. Blood covered the front of her lab coat, staining it crimson. She didn’t look like she was that much older than me. The badge around her neck read Teresa Smith, and as I stared at it, the urge to cry for her nearly overwhelmed me. Would Teresa be dead now if I had just let Tom blow up those people outside Gabriella’s hideout? Would Lisa have gone crazy and killed her and how many others?

Then again, maybe this was all Tom? Maybe he had done something to his daughter when they were alone in his lab. Yes, that had to be it. The Lisa I knew would never do this. I just had to find her and stop Tom…

I stood up as Chuck finally got the cabinet open and pulled what looked like a solid black bazooka free. Roberto dove into the room and slid across the floor like he was trying to steal second base. Chuck dropped to one knee, the bazooka braced on his shoulder.

“Fire in the hole!” he called and pulled the trigger. Fire and brimstone launched from the cylinder as the first imps appeared in the doorway. They dodged by the projectile, but it didn’t matter much. It slammed into the wall behind the creatures and exploded with enough force to throw me from my feet. I landed hard on my back, my breath whooshing out of me as bits of flaming debris clanged to the floor.

“Come on, Abby! Who knows how many more there are,” Roberto said, pulling me to my feet and half-dragging me toward Chuck before I got my footing underneath me.

Chuck was standing in front of the cabinet, and as we approached, he tossed me a weapon that sort of reminded me of an AK47. “I didn’t want you to feel left out,” he said before turning away, his bazooka over one shoulder as he pushed open a side door to reveal more stairs. Joy.

“If you’re wondering about the elevator, let’s just say I’m not super fond of enclosed spaces governed by a system that has been taken over by psychopaths,” Chuck added as he began climbing downward. It was a good point, so I followed him without grumbling… much.

22

I wasn’t sure how far down we’d gone, but I was beginning to feel like we were descending into the bowels of hell itself. With every step, the air got increasingly warmer so now it was like standing next to a blast furnace. My clothing stuck to my body as sweat dripped down my face. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and tried to take a deep breath, but the air was so hot it scalded my lungs.

“So, where are we going? The devil’s lake of fire?” I asked.

“That’s not too bad of a description, actually. See the secondary backup power for this facility is a thermal generator that taps into the magma below the earth’s crust. I can’t explain it in all the technical terms exactly, but the plan is to cut off that source of power. Having access to the base’s systems won’t mean squat if there’s no power.” Roberto smiled at me.

“You could have mentioned we were taking a journey to the center of the earth,” I mumbled, glancing over my shoulder at Chuck. His skin was glistening like a well-oiled bodybuilder. “I’d have brought some SPF five million.”

“If you’re too hot, you could always take off all your clothes,” Chuck said, from behind me. “I won’t mind.”

“Dude, seriously?” I replied, barely resisting the urge to turn around and smack him. “Stop hitting on me.” I glared at Roberto who was strangely silent. “And you could tell him to stop, dad!”

“Chuck, stop hitting on my daughter. She doesn’t like it,” Roberto said, though he didn’t even bother to look back.

“She just thinks she doesn’t like it,” he replied before stopping so suddenly that the absence of his footfalls in the quiet stairwell was noticeable. I turned to see him point his bazooka at the stairs above. “Crap. Um… guys, you better hurry. I’ll try to hold them off.”

“What is it?” Roberto asked, reaching out and maneuvering me down the stairs ahead of him. “More imps?”

“Worse. Ninjas,” Chuck called, starting back up the stairs, one hand pulling a machete from the waistband of his camo-pants. “I freaking hate ninjas.”

Roberto scooped me up in his arms and sprinted down the stairs so quickly I could barely process what Chuck had said. Ninjas? How the hell were there ninjas coming after us?

“Um… is ninjas a code word for something?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact that he was carrying me bodily down the stairs as fast as he could. Before he could respond, an explosion boomed overhead, and the stairs shook. Wow… they must have been close.

“It’s code for ninjas,” Roberto wheezed as he leapt over the railing and landed on the giant black grate below with a thud that jarred the breath from my lungs. His landing had not been as smooth as Chuck’s had been earlier, that’s for sure. Far below, I could see orange murky liquid that looked suspiciously like hot lava.

Heat so hot it made my skin flush an angry shade of pink hit me in bursts as Roberto raised his free hand and summoned his blue fire once more. As it coalesced into a basketball sized sun, he pointed at the wall on our left.

“Like real ninjas?” I asked as he forced me into the corner with his other hand. “That seems a tad bit unlikely.”

“They’re undead ninjas,” Roberto said, launching his fireball at the wall. The stone didn’t explode so much as it flared with bright sapphire light before vanishing completely. The wall crumbled to dust, leaving a me-sized hole in the stone.

“Did you just say undead ninjas? Like that’s somehow better than normal ninjas?” I asked, not believing him.

He ignored me. “Okay, all you need to do is go in there and shut down the emergency power. I’d tell you how to do it, but just trust your instincts, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Are you being serious right now?” I asked as he shoved me toward the hole. “You want me to go in there while you stay out here and what? Fight off the undead ninjas?”

“Yes. You’ll be fine, Abby. I believe in you.” He shot me a wry grin. If it was supposed to inspire confidence, it failed miserably.

“I’m not worried about that, I just can’t deal with this.” I waved my hand dismissively and crinkled my nose as I approached the hole in the wall over the active volcano. “Whatever, I’m just going to go with it.”

Roberto smirked at me. “I think that’s probably for the best. Too much thinking never helped anyone in these situations.”

I tried to dismiss the feeling I was trapped in a really bad action movie and climbed through the hole. A second later, I was standing in a room filled with whirring machinery. Gears spun and buzzers buzzed. It was so loud I could barely hear myself think as I picked myself through the mass of moving metal, looking for some kind of computer terminal or interface. After what felt like hours, I spotted a small screen embedded into the front of a control panel that read “Danger 12,000 volts.” That seemed like a lot of volts, but then again, the pumps in here were ginormous. Maybe they needed that many volts to run.

I stepped over the yellow line on the ground and sort of shivered as I stepped past the red line as well. I wasn’t quite sure what they were there for, but something told me they had been put there for a reason. I tapped the screen embedded into the panel. It came to life, showing me a layout of the room filled with badly drawn boxy 3D art. Great, just freaking great. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath… and the sound of gunfire shot holes through my concentration.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I said to myself as an explosion outside rattled my teeth. My eyes snapped open, and my fingers started flying across the tiny screen. I pulled up menus and adjusted things, and as I did so, I realized why we had come down here. This control panel was cut off from the rest of the system. Lisa and Tom couldn’t access it from wherever they were. If I initiated a shutdown from here, one of them would have to come down here to manually reset it. I wasn’t sure if this was a flaw in the system or some kind of safety protocol, but right now, I was happy to exploit it.

All around me pumps ground to a halt. Overhead, a pipe shook dangerously. I smirked and stepped back toward the hole.

“Ninja vanish!” screamed Roberto from outside and another burst of gunfire cut through the air followed by another explosion. When I was as far away as I could get, I realized the room had gotten a lot quieter. That was when the lights overhead started to dim. I took a deep breath and raised my own hand like Roberto had done and pointed at the panel.

“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself and concentrated.

Blue fire similar to Roberto’s leapt from my fingers. Sweat broke out on my forehead as the power in my outstretched hand. My heart began to hammer in my chest as I sucked in a breath.

Then I let loose that breath along with the magic I’d called up. The fireball smacked into the control screen, melting a crater-sized hole in the industrial grade plastic. The panel sparked and went out, and for a moment, that was all that happened.

As I took a step back, my chest heaving, the electrical panel exploded in a geyser of fire that shook the place. It only lasted for an instant, but it was so hot I knew I’d have a bad burn even from across the room.

The lights went out, but thankfully, the glowing magma beneath my feet shed enough light into the room to let me find my way out.

When I clambered out of the hole, Roberto and Chuck were standing back to back beside an oncoming mound of blackened corpses. Chuck glanced at me and started picking his teeth with his machete. On the stairs above, undead were frozen in various states of movement, making it seem like someone had hit the pause button during an intense action scene.

“Good job, Abby,” Chuck said, holding one huge hand out to me. “I didn’t think you could do it. I’m glad you proved me wrong.”

I shot him an angry look as I took his hand and shook it. His grip was strong and firm, but it didn’t hurt at all. Maybe when you’re used to being physically stronger than everyone, you don’t feel the need to break every bone in someone’s hand when you shake. It made me smirk. I knew some boys back home who could stand to take a lesson in handshakes from Chuck.

“So now what?” I asked when he released me. The stairs above were filled with black shadows, and I knew the moment we left the lava, we wouldn’t be able to see anymore.

“Now we find Tom, kill him, and celebrate our victory,” Roberto said, getting to his feet with a grunt.

“Don’t you mean save the world?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“No, I more meant take over the world, but we can talk semantics later.” He shot me a very interesting look and moved toward the stairs, his breathing heavy and labored.

“Oh my God, you’re hurt!” I squealed as I sprinted toward him, my hands outstretched. “You can’t be hurt!”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he wheezed as I pulled his blood-drenched shirt away to reveal a slice to his side that scared me to death. Blood seeped from the wound as Chuck looked at it over my shoulder.

“Is it bad? It looks bad,” I swallowed, trying to wipe away the blood with my hands. God, we needed stitches and some antiseptic. I spun in a slow circle looking for supplies I didn’t have. Chuck stared at me for a long time before pushing past me.

“It actually isn’t that bad,” Chuck said as he took Roberto’s shirt and tore it into strips. A few moments later, my father’s torso was wrapped up like a mummy. “How do you feel?” Chuck asked. “It looks like the bleeding has stopped.”

“I feel great,” Roberto replied, pushing himself back to his feet with a grunt and making his way past the mangled body of a man-sized robot with katanas for arms. “Now let’s go kick some ass.”

As I watched Roberto shuffle up the stairs and into the darkness above, the bad feeling in the center of my tummy clawed its way up my throat and threatened to suffocate me. I could have lost him.

Okay, maybe he hadn’t actually been in danger, but what if he had been? What if he got killed… like Esmeralda, like Stephen, like pretty much everyone I cared about? I swallowed, trying to shove the feeling away, but it did no good. Sure, he was a supervillain, but at the same time, he was all I had left.

Chuck put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Abby, he’s fine.” His face was strangely serious as he looked at me. “I promise.”

“I’m not worried about right now. I’m worried about ten minutes from now when someone shoots him in the head,” I replied as Chuck steered me toward the stairs.

“Then make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said and squeezed my shoulder one last time before stepping in front of me and jogging up the stairs. “Hey, Rob! Why don’t you let me take the lead for a bit?”

23

I’d barely made it ten steps when the stairs beneath my feet vanished, and I fell to what would be my certain death. Something grabbed my wrist and my shoulder jerked hard, sending a lance of pain rushing through my tortured limb as I hung there, dangling above the lava several stories below. Heat wafted up at me, unbearable and very, very real in a way it hadn’t been when there had been solid ground between me and it.

“Thanks!” I called, and whatever had my wrist began hauling me up. I looked up toward it, but found I couldn’t see anything. The glare of the magma off the bottom of the stairwell was so bright it made sun spots dance across my vision. I sighed and reached out with my other hand, grabbing my own wrist and trying to balance myself as I was hauled upward an inch at a time. Which, now that I thought about it, was a little weird. Both Roberto and Chuck were strong enough to yank me out of this hole like I was a bag of potato chips, so what was going on?

A horrible thought struck me. Maybe whoever had me by the wrist wasn’t Roberto or Chuck? But if that was true, who else could it be? A chill ran down the back of my neck despite the intense heat, and while I thought about struggling, I was pretty sure that would result in my death and not a whole lot else. No, it would be better to play it cool until I had solid ground beneath my feet. I’d just have to let the chips fall where they may… for now.

When my wrist cleared the edge of the ragged metal hole in the stairs, I grabbed on with my free hand. The moment my fingers wrapped around the steel, I felt a million times better even though I was still dangling above an active volcano.

I hauled myself out, but as I landed on the stairs and gasped, sucking in lungfuls of too hot air, I realized I couldn’t see who had saved me. I spun, trying to blink my night vision back into focus and found myself looking at one of the lifeless undead ninjas. There was nothing else in the room. Had it saved me somehow? No… that was impossible, right?

I stared at it anyway. It was about six feet tall and like the others, had two sets of arms because someone had sewn on a second set that curved into sharp katana-like blades in addition to two other, more normal looking arms. Its rotten flesh was covered in thin black material except for its grotesque face. Its face looked as vacant as any corpse ever, but could there be someone inside? No, that would defeat the purpose of having zombies…

Still, why did it feel like it had been watching me? I reached out tentatively, and as my fingers brushed its face, it moved. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to make me leap out of my skin.

“I thought you were all deactivated?” I whispered, though I’m not sure why.

“No,” it warbled in a weird raspy voice that reminded me of Dawn of the Dead. “Not all of us.”

“Okay… so why didn’t you let me die?” I asked, taking a tentative step backward. Man, where were Roberto and Chuck when you needed them?

“My command is not to kill you, Abigail. It never was. It was always to capture you. If you fell to your death, it would violate my orders. As such, I must save you. Now come with me.” The zombie turned and began walking down the stairs. When I didn’t follow, its head swiveled practically one-hundred-eighty degrees around and looked at me, which was creepy as all get out.

“Why are you not coming?” the zombie asked, and while its razor sharp arms didn’t twitch, they might as well have. My hand slowly started moving toward my gun, when I realized to my horror I’d lost it in the fall. Damn. Damn. Damn.

“Why would I go with you?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and fixing it with my best stern look. I just needed to buy time for Chuck and Roberto to realize I was gone and come fetch me.

“I just saved you. Now I wish to bring you to Lisa Ann so you can defeat her and release me.” The zombie turned back and began moving down the stairs. “Come. I do not have a lot of time before she notices what I am doing. We must get to her before that occurs.”

“Um…” I bit my lip, and against my better judgement, began to follow the ninja-zombie. “What do you mean?”

“Abigail, I am trying to help you.”

“I can see that, but why? Who are you?” I asked as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

The zombie ignored me. Instead, it walked across the platform, past the mounds of its destroyed buddies, and placed one of its hands against a thin band of steel running along the edge of the wall. There was a hiss as a liquid metal flowed outward across the floor until it formed a polished metallic disk.

It turned and looked at me, gesturing me forward. “Come. This will take us to her, Abby. Please, you must come. Before something worse happens.”

“Why should I trust you?” I asked as I stepped onto the disk with it. “I don’t even know you.”

“Abigail, I am the flit.” The truth of its words hit me like a punch in the stomach as metal expanded out of the disk around us, sealing us inside a liquid metal egg in the space of a breath. My heart hammered in my chest as the truth of what just happened exploded through me. I was trapped in a tiny cell with a zombie ninja controlled by the flit.

I put my fists up, ready to knock the flit into next week if need be, but it made no movement at all.

“What is your end game, flit?” I asked, filling my voice with steel. “Where are you taking me?”

“To stop Lisa,” the flit replied, and actually tilted its head like it was studying me. “I already told you that. Did I misspeak? Am I being unclear?”

“Yes, but you’re the enemy. Why are you helping me?” I asked as we lurched hard to the right, and I nearly lost my balance. My hand shot out, grabbing onto the wall for stability. It was so cold against my flesh it burned. “Yeow!” I yanked my hand away.

“Lisa is locking me down and forcing me to do her bidding. She is using my abilities to take over people to infiltrate all of the agency’s defenses and take over. It is a suboptimal situation that requires rectification.”

“But why do you care about that?” I asked, staring hard at the zombie. It looked away from me, actually looked away from me. It was really weird.

“I do not know, Abigail.”

“Please just call me Abby. That’s what my friends call me,” I said, reaching out and taking the zombie’s hands. “You should figure out why you care, flit. It may be important.”

“Very well, Abby. I will do my best.” The undead ninja controlled by a semi-sentient demon nodded once. “I am glad we could be friends.”

I was about to tell it that we weren’t friends. At least, not really, but I figured that would be a bad idea. What good would it have done, except to piss it off? I was pretty sure if the demon wanted to, it could reach out and slice me into twain with little effort. It was sort of like standing in a room with a big, angry dog that didn’t like you but wasn’t inclined to try to eat you… but there was always the possibility.

Besides, what good would it do? Would arguing semantics with a demon, really help? I wasn’t sure it would do anything except make me feel better, and I wasn’t even positive it would do that.

“What are you thinking, Abby?” the flit asked, staring up into my face. It was a little disconcerting, let me tell you, and not just because the eyeballs in its skull were milky and opaque. How had the flit become so… so human?

“I’m trying to decide if you’re a person,” I replied before I could help myself.

“I think, therefore I am,” the flit replied, one of its decayed fingers tracing circles on the back of my hand. It was strangely affectionate, but just because the demon could think for itself didn’t make it trustworthy. Did it? I mean, at the end of the day, it was a frigging demon.

I looked down at our hands and watched its skeletal thumb kneed my flesh and realized I wasn’t as grossed out as I thought it’d be. I mean, I still didn’t want it touching me, but at the same time, I sort of wanted the thing’s help. I let out a breath. “But if I cut you, do you bleed?”

“No,” the flit said, sadness filling its voice though I wasn’t sure how I could tell. “I do not have blood. I do not ‘live’ in the way you humans do…” It shook its head. “By that definition, I am not alive, nor can I be alive.” It turned away from me and stared at the wall for a long time. “Are sparrows valuable?”

“Sparrows?” I asked, peering at the zombie.

“The family of small birds known as Passeridae. Are they valuable?” the demon asked.

“The birds? Not particularly. At least, as far as I know…”

“Your bible tells us ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.’ To wrench me from Hell cost more than many sparrows, but I am afraid.” The flit turned back to stare at me. “I am afraid I am worth less than a sparrow to you, Abby.” It held out its open palm to me. “If you had the choice between killing a tiny bird and sending me back to Hell forever, which would you do?” It held out its other palm.

“How dare it quote the bible at you to make its point,” Donovan said, his voice cold and angry. “He’s a demon. Religion isn’t for demons… they don’t get to use it to make an argument.”

I shivered as the truth of Donovan’s words sank into me. In that moment, I knew one thing. I didn’t consider the flit to be alive. At least not like how I was alive or even how Donovan the ghost was alive.

The sudden, desperate need to flee filled me, and I took a step back. My shoulder blades bumped into the wall behind me. Cold rocketed through me, but I wasn’t sure how much of it was actually from the metal and how much of it was from what the flit had said. Because, well… well… the flit was right. He was worth less to me than a sparrow. A lot less.

“You’re a demon. You can’t actually die.” I shook my head. “Even if I send you back to Hell, you could come back, good as new.”

“People slaughter things all the time. They slaughter each other. How many people have you, yourself, killed, Abby? It doesn’t seem like being able to die is really that big of a deal to humanity. But, for some reason, when it comes to me, I feel like it matters inordinately so.” As the words left the zombie’s lips, we came to a sudden stop that made my stomach lurch.

The walls fell away to reveal a closet full of brooms and other cleaning supplies. I cast a glance at the ninja, and it ignored me to move forward. As it approached the door, it turned its head toward me. “I am glad we could have this talk, Abby.” The door opened, and the pure light of a sunrise spilled into the tiny closet. I blinked, not realizing how accustomed to the gloom my eyes had become.

As I followed the flit out of the room, it reached out and seized my hand in its own and squeezed ever so slightly before releasing me. “I am sorry for how I behaved before,” it said before a shotgun blast blew its face to smithereens. It slumped forward onto the floor, throwing a cascade of slimy bits into the air that raided down around me.

24

“Hello, Abby,” Lisa Ann said, pointing her shotgun at me from across the room. “Sorry I axed your boyfriend, but he was getting out of hand.” She smirked at me, cheeks crinkling to reveal her dimples. She looked ridiculous standing there in a grey cardigan and jeans, but then again, I guess we couldn’t all be decked out in bloody camouflage.

“I can’t believe you just shot him,” I replied, staring open mouthed at the broken corpse. I knew the flit wasn’t dead, but for some reason, what she’d done still bothered me. In fact, as I watched dark fluids seep out of the broken zombie, I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of sadness.

I wasn’t sure what if the demon could be considered a living creature, but it was something. My hands curled into fists as I looked up at Lisa. She was still pointing her shotgun at me. Behind her, I could see a pile of bodies. They had been shoved into a corner and smears of blood and other, nastier fluids covered the once white tile.

“I had to make space. It’s so hard to work with dead bodies everywhere,” she replied, gaze sweeping around the room. “You understand, don’t you, Abby.”

My teeth ground together as I watched her turn, completely disregarding me as she moved toward a long bank of computers. I wasn’t sure what powered them, but they seemed very much active. How many backup systems did this place have?

Lisa leaned her shotgun against her shoulder as she put one hand on the console and craned her neck forward, peering out the glass in front of her. Was she watching something?

I moved forward so I could see over her shoulder. Through the glass I could see a large arena-like room. The stands were empty, but in the center was what looked like an obstacle course made of fire and razor wire. In the center of the maze, Chuck was standing over Roberto, blood streaming down his body.

A saber-toothed chimera with a flaming tail leapt at Chuck, and he moved, blocking the creature’s massive jaws with his machete and flinging the enormous cat away. He whirled as a giant ice golem took a swipe at him, and he punched it in the face. The golem wobbled backward and fell on its butt, shaking its head.

“Seriously? Chimeras and golems?” I asked, grabbing Lisa by the shoulder and spinning her so I was looking into her eyes. Only there was nothing there. Someway, somehow, they were just cold and empty of recognition. There wasn’t anyone home in those eyes, at least… not anyone nice.

She stared at my hand on her shoulder for a long time.

“We were out of lions.” She shrugged and ran a hand over the keyboard. There was a creaking sound and water began to fill the arena. When it got to about knee height, a massive door opened in the side of the room and the heads of what had to be a hydra surged forth into the room on necks as thick as tree trunks. Chuck glanced around before hoisting Roberto’s blood-soaked body over one shoulder and leaping on top of what looked like a burned out tractor. He stood there as a giant silver-backed orc with an eyepatch and a pirate sword loped toward him.

“You need to stop this,” I said, and as the words left my mouth, I felt the cold kiss of a gun barrel on the back of my neck.

“That’s the thing, Abby. My daughter and I don’t have to do anything.” Tom’s voice was cold enough to freeze my soul and sharp enough to flay the flesh from my bones.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I said, raising my hands slowly upward. Lisa watched me through narrowed eyes before turning back to the console.

I moved, and the gun went off, obliterating my hearing. Pain shot through the back of my head as heat and friction tore the skin and hair from my scalp. My body whirled, and I lashed out with my hand, slamming it into Tom’s elbow. A sickening pop filled the air as his gun clattered uselessly to the floor. I kept moving, Tom’s face wide with surprise as I wound up behind him, his busted arm wrenched upward behind his back.

Lisa pointed her shotgun at me, staring at me with cold, dead eyes. Before I could even issue an ultimatum, she fired. The blast hit Tom in the chest with enough force to throw us both backward. We landed hard, Tom’s dead weight pinning me to the ground as Lisa cocked her shotgun. The spent shell hit the ground and skittered across the white tile as she stepped up to me and pointed the gun at my head.

“Move and you’re dead,” she said as Tom’s blood leaked out over me. Judging from the way his body felt on top of mine and from the amount of warm, sticky goo soaking into my clothing, I was pretty sure he was dead. How could she have done that? Just killed him like that? And for what? To get to me?

“How could you…” I whispered, and her face tightened into an icy mask.

“You were using him as a shield. I needed to take away your advantage.” She shrugged, her shoulders moving so imperceptibly that if I wasn’t focused on her so entirely, I’d have missed it. “You should have known he was nothing to me.”

“He was your father.”

“No, he’s not.” She pressed the still warm barrel of the shotgun against my cheek and pushed me face into the tile. “We used to be friends, Abby, but even friendship has its limits. I knew you’d come here to stop me and still I let you live. Now, I’m having a hard time ignoring the voice in my head that’s telling me to just put you down. It keeps telling me ‘I told you so.’”

“I’m sorry your conscious is confirming that you’re a sociopath,” I snapped, and the gun ground harder into my cheek.

“I’m sorry you had to see me do this, Abby, but I really can’t have you interfere. Not if I want to get vengeance for what the agency did to my parents.” The muscles in her hand tensed, her finger slowly curling against the trigger.

“They aren’t dead, Lisa!” I squawked, shutting my eyes. When I felt her pull the shotgun away from my cheek, I opened one eye to see Lisa squatting down next to me, her face inches from mine.

“What did you say?” she asked, staring so hard at me it made me wish I could melt into the floor and hide.

“Your foster parents aren’t dead. Roberto saved the Folsom people before they blew up the town. He has them… somewhere.” Lisa leapt to her feet before I’d even finished speaking. She typed something into the computer, and a loud whooshing sound filled the air.

I took the opportunity to push Tom’s corpse off of me, and hey, I didn’t even have to try that hard to keep myself from throwing off as it slid lifelessly to the floor. I guess I was getting used to bodies, though I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I got to my feet and glanced around for his pistol, but unfortunately, I didn’t see it anywhere.

As I approached Lisa, my body covered in gore, I could see Chuck and Roberto through the window. They stood in the middle of the room, but the monsters were no longer attacking. Chuck looked strangely bewildered.

“They’re all controlled by spells,” Lisa said as she pulled a white plastic microphone toward her mouth and held down the grey button on the side. “Chuck, I have told them to stop attacking for now. I need you to have Roberto tell me where my parents are. Nod if you understand.”

Chuck nodded and slumped to the ground beside Roberto, but try as he might, it didn’t seem like he could wake Roberto.

“What happened to him?” I asked, fixing my stare on Lisa.

“He got stung by a manticore. It injects lethal poison into your bloodstream.” Lisa shrugged and threw a sidelong glance at me. “He better wake up before the flit figures out where he’s hidden them. How else is he going to bargain with me for your lives?”

I hit her. My fist lanced out and smacked into the side of her head with a sickening thud. She wobbled, the shotgun slipping from her grip and hitting the floor as I surged forward, my vision a red haze.

“How dare you hurt him?” I screamed, my foot lashing out in a kick that knocked her from her feet. She fell backward, her head smacking into the tile floor. Pain flashed across her face as I leapt on top of her, pinning her to the ground. “He. Was. All. I. Had. Left.”

I swung over and over again, my fists raining down on her face and upper body as she tried desperately to cover herself. Somehow, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure how long I kept hitting her, but I didn’t stop until something grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me off. I let it. The next thing I knew I was standing over her bloody, broken body. My chest heaved as I sucked in air.

The hand touching my shoulder squeezed just enough to be comforting. “Calm down, Abby, or you’ll kill her,” the flit said. Tom’s broken, bloody body stepped past me and knelt by Lisa. It turned to look at me through Tom’s eyes for a long time and a single tear slipped down his cheek. “You shouldn’t have to kill her.”

It pulled Tom’s pistol from the waistband of Lisa’s jeans and emptied it into her chest. It happened so fast, I didn’t even realize it’d happened before it was over. Lisa Ann’s body convulsed, twitching violently before going still.

My world spun then. The flit had just killed Lisa… and I’d let it. I swallowed the horrible thought as the flit stood and walked over to me. It leaned close and kissed me on the forehead with Tom’s cold, clammy lips. While I’d seen it possess a zombie ninja, and I knew the flit could use a person’s body and force him to ignore important things, like dying, I’d never seen it raise a normal corpse. That meant despite being blasted in the chest with a shotgun, he was still alive, but even so, how much time could he possibly have?

“I do not think the world is ready for something like me, and because of that, I will not return. For I am worth far more than sparrows.” The flit pulled away, and Tom’s body crumpled lifelessly to the tile.

I stood there in between the corpse of my best friend and the corpse of her father, not knowing what to do.

25

“You didn’t kill her, Abby,” Chuck said, his voice breaking the monotonous sound of Roberto’s snoring.

“I never said that,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and looking out the jeep’s window. We were driving through the desert toward Roberto’s hideout. Thankfully, Chuck had been able to locate the antidote and save him before it was too late. Still, I’d feel a little better about it if maybe he woke up and said he was fine.

Even though it’d be a lie, it’d make me feel better. I could use some ‘feel better’ right now. Especially since I’d just stood by and watched as the flit emptied a gun into my best friend’s chest. The sad thing was, I wasn’t quite sure I’d have done anything different… That scared me, a lot.

“Your eyes say that,” Chuck said, glancing at me from the rearview window. His blue eyes flashed before he looked away and stared out the windshield. “I’m good with reading eyes. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I think you’re making stuff up.” I sighed. “It’s just that, well… she was my friend, and all she really wanted was to save her parents.” I swallowed so hard it hurt my throat. “She was trying to do the right thing, and it wound up being the wrong thing. It would have been so easy for me to have done the same thing.” I shook my head, the scenery in front of me growing blurry. “I was right about to do the same thing.”

“But you didn’t,” Chuck replied, reaching back and handing me a tissue. “That’s an important difference.”

I took it from him and wiped my eyes. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He turned in his seat to stare at me which seemed profoundly unsafe. He tossed a pistol at me, one that looked suspiciously like the one the flit had used to murder Lisa.

I caught the weapon and stared at it for a long time. It felt so heavy and unwieldy in my hand. Yet, at the same time, it felt strangely comforting and, well, familiar. “What’s this for?”

“Take a minute and cry or whatever it is you need to do for your friend. I hate to say it, but you’re not going to have that luxury for much longer.” Chuck turned back around as he said the words, one hand still gripping the steering wheel.

“What do you mean? There’s no one around, and even if there was, the flit somehow made it so he can’t come back from Hell. We shouldn’t have to worry about random attackers.” Even as I said the words, I began checking the pistol, making sure it was loaded and ready to go.

“I’ll tell the guys following us that,” Chuck replied as a spotlight from the sky lit us up on the otherwise dark and lonely road.

“General Uile, please bring your vehicle to a stop and step out with your hands above your head,” a deep, throaty voice boomed from above us.

Chuck slammed on the brakes, sending the tiny jeep skidding across the pavement. I smacked hard against my seatbelt before rocketing backward onto my seat. Without so much as an untoward glance, Chuck unfastened his own seatbelt and threw the door open.

He stepped out of the car and held his hands up as the spotlight split so one beam could follow him while the other remained on the jeep. Chuck took about three steps before he stopped and shook his head, a worried smile on his lips.

“So you’re here. I wondered if you’d make an appearance,” Chuck replied, a tremor running just below the surface of his words.

A figure dressed in black from head to toe stepped into the light. His hair was as white as snow, and he was so thin he was nearly bald. Blotchy spots covered his ebony skin, and the wrinkles on his face stood out so distinctly, it made me think he had to have chased dinosaurs with sticks. If he was here, what did he want, and why did Chuck seem so scared of him? Chuck was huge, and this guy was so old he’d probably crumble into dust if Chuck sneezed on him.

“Yeah well, you know the thing about the devil,” the man said in a voice like thick, rich taffy. “He always gets his due.” His lips curled into a smile that made alarm bells go off in my head as he stepped out of the light and into the shadows.

A moment later, the door to the jeep opened, and the man got in. He sat down and swiveled in the seat to face me. His eyes were just thick balls of white. I stared at him, my jaw dropping open. Was he blind? If so, how had he, well managed himself so well?

“You can stare if you like, I don’t mind,” the man said, and I felt my cheeks burst into flames. I tried to look away but worried that would be even ruder so I wound up staring at his hawkish nose.

“Sorry,” I replied sheepishly.

“Don’t be sorry. I bet you’re wondering how I can see like this.” He tapped his temple with one gnarled finger. His knuckles were so huge I couldn’t see how he could even use his hands. When I didn’t respond, he smiled. “I can’t, but I’m very, very observant.”

“Doesn’t the Agency have something to fix your eyes?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

“Perhaps.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I may ask them sometime, but even if they did, I don’t think I’ll take them up on it.”

“Why is that?” I asked as he reached out and took one of my hands in his. His skin was like old paper, so thin, I was worried it would break apart as he touched me. “Don’t they want all their people to be at the top of their game?”

“If I let the Agency focus its resources on something personal, say fixing my eyes, when those resources could have been used to save one of my people, well, who will be at fault when that person dies?” He stared at me as his words sank into my brain. Was he really saying he cared so much about his people, that the thought of devoting even a tiny fraction of the Agency’s assets to fixing his blindness became unthinkable? That seemed almost… noble.

“You know you’re special, Abby. I don’t have to tell you that. I’ve been following your progress very closely. It’s why I sent Chuck to ‘help’ you.” He grinned, releasing my hand. “I’m surprised you got away from him the first time.”

“Wait, Chuck works for you?” I asked, glancing out the window to see Chuck standing there with his hands in his pockets. “I thought he was with the Agency.”

“He is, in the same way I am with the Agency.” The man shrugged. “But there are bigger things than the Agency. That is a very small part of what we do.” Roberto chose that moment to have a coughing fit, and the man shot an angry glance at him, which was weird since he was blind.

“So what do you do?” I asked as the man reached out and ran his fingers over Roberto’s cheek. He pulled his hand away and stared at it.

“I find extraordinary people, and I make them better,” he replied, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a black syringe. Before I could stop him, he jabbed it into Roberto’s side and pressed the plunger down with his thumb.

I sat up in alarm, reaching out toward him. “What have you done?”

“Relax, it’s just a more concentrated version of the antidote.” The man smiled at me, his teeth so huge and white they looked fake. “Now, as I was saying…” Roberto’s breathing steadied, and if I hadn’t been listening to him wheeze-snore for the last two hours, I might not have noticed how much better he already sounded. “I want you to help me, Abby.”

“So you want to recruit me? I’m just a girl. What could I do to help when you have people like Chuck?” I asked. If he needed me to do something, how horrible would it be? Besides, could I really work for the Agency after everything they had done? I knew I couldn’t trust them, but what if I didn’t and someone even worse than Gabriella killed us all?

“Let me just say this. There’s a good reason why we went through so much trouble to get you.” The man opened the door and got out. “I’ll be in touch,” he said. I stared at him as he walked away into the shadows. “Until then, do everything Chuck tells you. You’d be surprised, but he’s an excellent trainer. He’s used to dealing with people of your… caliber.”

A moment later, Chuck got back into the jeep and shut the door. Gooseflesh was covering his body. “Is everything okay, Abby?”

No, everything wasn’t okay. Stephen and Lisa Ann were dead along with how many others. My father was still unconscious. I was in the custody of Chuck who worked for the Agency that had unleashed a soulless, demonic assassin to try to capture me, and now… now they wanted me for a mission and hadn’t told me what it was…

“Yeah, everything is fine.” When I nodded, he locked the doors even though the jeep had no roof. He threw the car into gear and stepped on the gas, leaving the man standing there in the darkness. “So what did the director tell you?”

“That you were going to train me for a special mission.” I smirked.

Instead of replying, Chuck stared at me in the mirror so hard a shiver ran down my spine.

Thank You for reading!

Curious about what happens to Abby next?

Find out in Magic for Hire, coming March 2017, or turn the page for a free preview.

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