Toxic Read online

  Normally he wouldn’t have had an issue holding on—those muscles weren’t all for show—but with the brief rain and my insistent squirming, his right hand slipped past my wrist, over my thumb, and then free. Instantly, the fire in my limbs cooled a little. Not enough to stifle the pain but enough to be noticeable.

  Enough to confirm the unthinkable.

  “Kale, let go!”

  A flash of lightning darted across the sky. Close. The hair on the back of my neck sprang up like I’d jammed my finger into an electrical socket.

  Another surge of pain. The humming grew louder. The wind went quiet, and the raindrops lost their tiny plinking noise as they pelted the metal. Our friends below quieted, and distant traffic seemed to come to a standstill. Even Kale, whose lips were moving frantically, was silent.

  Desperate, I tried again to brace my feet against the metal, but it was useless. My sneakers kept sliding off.

  “Please,” I begged, wondering if he could even hear my voice above the strange hum. “Let go.”

  When he didn’t, I let my fingers go slack.

  Another inch.

  Horrified, he readjusted his hold and made a swipe with his free hand, but the rain made it impossible. Without my help, his fingers glided past my wrist. He managed to grab my other hand with both of his, but they were already slipping. His lips began moving again, and I thought I saw him say my name.

  I forced a deep breath. The pain was worse than anything I could have imagined. Like trying to breathe through broken glass. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Kale, you’re killing me. LET GO!”

  He did.

  2

  Part of me was relieved, while another part couldn’t believe he’d let me fall. No way was I walking away from something like this. Crap. What was the first rule of taking a fall? Relax! Relax your muscles, and go limp. It wasn’t unheard of for people to survive a major fall. Off buildings and out of planes. It’d happened before. I closed my eyes, braced for impact, and—

  The air stilled. My hair, seconds ago a mass of tangles lashing all around, fell to frame my face. I held my breath and twisted to see the ground—it was only a few feet away—but I wasn’t rushing at warp speed to meet it anymore. A few moments of weightlessness ticked by, and then I was falling again, only the sudden, bone-crushing stop you’d expect after a thirty-foot free fall never came. Instead, I landed with a barely there jar into strong, warm arms.

  “I have to say, Dez, this is taking the adrenaline high to a whole ’nother level…” Alex set me down as the others crowded close.

  I couldn’t respond. My mouth was dry, and every nerve ending was singing and hopping spastically like my celebrity crush, Spider One, onstage.

  A boom of thunder, then seconds later, a bright flash. All the tiny hairs along my arms and at the back of my neck shot up again. The lightning silhouetted Kale’s bobbing form as he hopped down from the crane and darted forward to close the distance between us—thankfully with his shirt back on.

  Someone poked my shoulder. Alex. “Dez? You okay?”

  “You—what are you doing—”

  He looked at me funny. “Why would you jump off the crane, Dez?”

  “I didn’t—”

  Kale’s scream cut me off. “Dez!” Carelessly he ran at the crowd, people clearing a narrow path just in time for him to crash through. He stopped a few feet away and neither of us moved.

  “What happened?” Kiernan demanded, pushing to the front. She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring from Kale to me.

  Alex answered. From the corner of my eye, I saw him point up. “For some reason, Dez decided it’d be a good idea to jump off the top of the crane.”

  Everyone started talking at once, but I couldn’t hear them. Not really. It was gibberish. A mishmash of background noise. Whistles of approval and whispers of insanity all faded into white noise. The universe had finally stomped in and taken payment. I knew it was coming. Daun, the Six that had saved Kale after the battle at Sumrun, warned us over and over again. Don’t get complacent, she said. It will show up when you least expect it. She’d been right.

  Kale stepped forward.

  So did I.

  We stopped inches apart, neither reaching for the other. I could see it in his eyes. Anguish. Guilt.

  Understanding.

  “Dez—” He made a move to lift his hand but stopped, fist clenched tight.

  Daun’s voice raged inside my head. Unwelcomed but persistent. A side effect. An exchange. There is no telling what it will be.

  Along with my response. I’ll give anything for him.

  I took a step back and nearly tripped over thin air despite the fact that I was suddenly, painfully sober. “Don’t. We knew it would happen. Fair is fair. I got something—I knew I’d lose something in return.”

  Kale’s jaw tightened, and he took a single step back. “Nothing is lost. This is temporary. We can fix it. I can learn to control it—Ginger said so.” His voice wavered a bit, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me—or himself.

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. It was a bitter sound—so unlike me. That kind of maniacal cackle that rides along with madness. The one that comes right before you lose it in line at the post office. Everyone had gathered in a semicircle around us—watching. Staring. None of them understood what was going on. They didn’t know what I did. I skimmed their faces. The full gamut of emotion was there. Everything from genuine concern to irritation, all aimed my way. The weight of it all was too much.

  Without a word, I turned and ran.

  For a few moments, there were footsteps sloshing in the mud, trying to keep up. They were too heavy to be Kale’s—if it’d been him, I wouldn’t have heard them—so I guessed it was Kiernan. Luckily, she gave up when I made it to the edge of the lot.

  I crossed the street and hesitated at the corner. Where the hell was I going to go?

  The hotel—but that was probably the first place Kale would look. I couldn’t see him right now. The look of guilt in his eyes had been like a steel knife jammed into my windpipe.

  I could wander around for a while—but that seemed like a bad idea. My name was at the top of Dad’s bag-and-tag list. I’d never made things easy on him. No reason to start now.

  It was the last official night of summer. School started up again in the morning and that meant the party scene would be hopping. There would be at least three major raves—one at Curd’s, since his parents were in Paris again, one in the woods by Putnam Mountain, and one in the fields behind Brandt’s old place.

  Normally any one of those would have suited me, but being around people didn’t seem like the best bet at that moment. I wanted to be by myself.

  So where did I end up? The one place I’d always been alone.

  Home.

  The key was still duct taped to the underside of the loose siding panel at the corner of the house. I was betting the only reason it survived there was because Dad never knew about it. I’d hidden it last year during my lose everything phase. Somewhere in Parkview, there were four house keys just waiting to be found. Well, three. One ended up at the bottom of Milford Lake after a tire swing stunt went horribly wrong.

  The door opened with ease—for once it didn’t stick—and I stepped inside. Part of me wondered why it’d taken so long to come back here, while another part wanted to back away and never return. So much had happened, but the truth was, no matter how bad things got between me and Dad, this was—or had been—home. A part of me missed it.

  Memories were memories regardless of the good or bad.

  I closed the door, frowning. The place had been completely cleaned out. The big leather couch Dad was always telling me to get my feet off, the fluffy beige armchair I’d spilled rum punch on the night I threw my first party—even the carpet in the hallway had been pulled up. All that remained were the dirty wooden tack strips around the edges of the room and some dust.

  The air smelled funky. Not like mold, really, but st
ale. Like it’d been closed up for months—which it probably had. With me out of the picture, Dad had no reason to keep up the charade. His domestic life had been nothing but bullshit from the beginning. He and Mom had never been married. Hell, I was nothing more than an experiment. Part of the new generation of Denazen’s Supremacy project. An operation with the sole purpose of producing stronger, more gifted flunkies for Denazen to pull the puppet strings on.

  I’d mimicked—changed one thing into another—my first thing at the age of seven. Even then, I knew I was different. Not right. At least by society’s standards. So I kept it hidden.

  As it turned out, that’d been a good plan. A few months ago, on top of finding out Dad was an assassin monger who used people like me, Sixes—called that due to an abnormality in our sixth chromosome—to do some really bad shit, I’d also learned he’d dosed my mom with some funky chemical while she was pregnant to enhance my gift. I wasn’t the only one, either. Somewhere out there, there were a handful of kids my age on the verge of turning eighteen—and possibly going nutzo—with über powers.

  That chemical they used? Yeah. It had some seriously bad side effects.

  I shook off a chill and rounded the corner. One at a time, up the stairs to my old room. Even though I knew Dad and his endless dickhead potential, I still hoped some of my things had been left behind. A shirt or book—hell, even a shoe. Anything that had been mine.

  Should’ve known better.

  All my memories, all the sentimental things I’d collected and saved over the years, gone. There wasn’t a hanger left in the closet or a dust bunny hiding in the corner. The antique dresser Brandt helped me drag home from a garage sale several years ago, the headboard Alex and I carved our names into, even the Powerman 5000 bumper stickers I’d plastered to the wall just to piss Dad off—all gone.

  It was like my entire life had been erased.

  “This blows camel ass.” I kicked the corner of the door. It bounced away and slammed against the wall with an echoing thud.

  The whole thing shouldn’t have bothered me. It was just stuff, after all, but it made my stomach turn and caused a sick lump to rise in my throat. It’d been my stuff. Pieces of my life. I let out a hair-curling scream. “Bastard!”

  I might have started smashing something—something being the window, since that’s all there was—but a noise downstairs stopped me.

  Not a loud crash or a thundering boom, but something small. The tiniest creak. Like someone trying to be sneaky and channeling the fail whale. I’d done enough sneaking in this house over the years to know all its groans and whines by heart. This particular one came from the kitchen door.

  Someone else was in the house.

  For a second, I wondered if maybe Kiernan had followed me, after all. But I dismissed that pretty fast. She would have called out. No way would she be skulking in the dark. Three weeks ago she’d surprised me from behind, and I’d given her a fat lip. Lesson learned.

  Flattening myself against the wall, I peered around the corner and into the hallway to listen. Nothing. I started to relax and chalk it all up to paranoia when, on the landing below, two figures drifted past the stairs, casting distorted shadows against the wall.

  I slipped back into the room, heart thundering against my ribs. Of course Dad would have someone watching the house. What kind of an idiot wouldn’t realize that?

  Me, obviously.

  Bile rose in my throat, and a wave of icy fear barreled through the room. Where to hide? The closet was out. Even if Dad hadn’t removed the locks several years ago when he’d caught Alex hiding in there, they’d still just bust the door down if they wanted in.

  Bolting for the front door was out of the question. There was no way I’d chance sneaking down the stairs. For all I knew, there were more than two of them. Even I wasn’t that good. I scanned the room and decided there was only one viable option.

  The window.

  I crept across the floor and unlatched the lock. Sliding the glass up slowly, I cringed when it squeaked in protest. A high-pitched whine and subtle creaking noise. I sucked in a breath and held it, listening for signs I’d been discovered. No screaming or footsteps pounded the stairs.

  Swinging one leg over the sill, I let it dangle over the edge—and hesitated. It would be easy to drop to the ground below and take off, but that wouldn’t tell me anything. I wanted to know who these people were—to know for sure that they were working for Dad. The house had obviously been empty for a while. They could be squatters or something. Or party scouts. My friend Curd sent people to check on abandoned locations for upcoming raves all the time.

  The other leg over, I grabbed the edge of the oak tree for balance, scrunching down and closing the window almost all the way before they walked into the room. The branch was thick enough to allow me to slide sideways and move past the window. If they peered out, they wouldn’t see me.

  I hoped.

  “Are you sure you saw—” a guy’s voice started. He sounded young, but it was hard to tell without getting a look. I pressed my ear closer to the sill.

  “Her come in? Yeah,” another finished. At least, I thought it was the other. They sounded almost the same.

  The window was still open a few inches. I could hear their voices getting closer. A moment later, one of them tapped on the glass several times. “Cross knew she’d come back—”

  “Eventually? Yeah. But where is she?”

  “Doesn’t look like she went out the window. It’s possible—”

  “She slipped past us? Yeah. Doubt it, but let’s check out front to be sure. Cross will kick our asses if he finds out she was here and we let her get away.”

  Okay, so that confirmed the Dad theory. And that back and forth? Seriously irritating.

  After a few moments of blessed silence, I took a chance and moved closer to the window, daring a peek over the sill. The room was empty again. Since I didn’t know where they’d gone, I decided to get the hell out of Dodge. Dad had sent them. Sticking around any longer might give me a personal account of what they wanted—and I wasn’t interested.

  Leaning forward, I held my breath and scanned the yard to make sure the coast was clear. So far, so good. Gripping the tree, I eased myself to the grass below. The sturdy oak had aided my social activities and secret nightlife for the last several years. Its spindly branches and woodsy smell were comforting in a way I wouldn’t forget.

  My feet hit the wet grass with a slight slosh, sending tiny prickles up my legs. I gave the tree one last look, running my fingers over the uneven bark. I’d probably never come back here again. No reason to. This place was nothing more than a shell. An empty dust jacket that had once contained a complicated work of fiction.

  As I turned to leave, a strong breeze blew through the yard. Goose bumps skittered up my bare arms, and I tried not to shiver. As if saying good-bye, the oak tree’s branches shimmied and shook, several leaves fluttering to the ground. I picked one up and twirled it between my fingers, sending droplets of rain flicking off in every direction.

  Something crackled, like shoes crushing dead leaves, and I froze. A set of strong arms clamped on my shoulders before I could turn. There was no thinking. Only the reaction of a brain sent into panicked overdrive. I jammed my foot back with perfect aim and spun around.

  A string of curses and spiky, bleached-blond hair. “Dez—what the fuck?”

  The sight of Alex caused me to fumble. He’d caught me when I fell from the crane, and even though I should have felt grateful, anger bubbled in my stomach. Now that my head had cleared—a little at least—I wanted to bash his face in.

  We hadn’t seen each other since the night of Sumrun. He’d been standing over Kale. The bloody blade slipping from his fingers…the noise it made as it hit the ground…the look on his face…the rage…the betrayal—all came flooding back. It hit me like a semi falling out of the sky.

  “You have serious nerve coming within two feet of me.” I shoved him hard. He stumbled but didn’t try
to stop me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He opened his mouth to answer but instead pointed over my head toward the house. Two identical guys glared at us from my window. “There’s a more important question. What the hell are they doing here?”

  3

  “Shit!” Heart kicking into high gear, I sprinted across the lawn and rounded the corner of the house, skidding sideways as my left leg slipped out from beneath me. Balance gone, I went down on one hand as my Vans slid in the mud and wet grass. After several frantic attempts, I managed to right myself and keep going without wiping completely, but it’d slowed me down.

  Footsteps hammered the ground at my heels.

  Close. Much too close.

  I dared a look over my shoulder. It took a second—not even, more like a fraction of a second. A huffing and puffing blur of blond and black—Alex—then back to the front. But that fraction of a second cost me the head start.

  With a brain-jarring stop, I collided with something big and dark. One of the guys from the house.

  “Silly thing. She was trying to—”

  Alex crashed into the other. “Get away? Yeah.”

  Backing up, I forced a smile and hoped to hell it hid the piss-yourself-stupid terror I felt. Normally I didn’t scare easy, but after getting a first-person look into the hell that was Denazen? Let’s just say I wasn’t looking to take another tour.

  Swathed in black from head to toe and blocking every inch of our path were the creepy Wonder Twins from the window. Goth carbon copies, down to the smudgy eye liner and scratchy black nail polish. They were both odd-eyed—one iris blue and the other brown—in opposite order.

  I gestured between them. “Do you get many dates that way? ’Cause seriously, I wanna rip my ears off.”

  The first one flashed me a tight-lipped smile and tipped an imaginary hat. “I’m Aubrey, and this is my brother—”

  “Able. Yeah, that’s me,” the second finished. Up close, I could hear the slight difference in their voices. Able had an odd, almost accent. He didn’t quite pronounce his Ss right. They almost sounded like Zs.