Chosen Read online

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, be careful, Nina.”

  I take a deep breath. I wanted my mother to be mine for so long. Now I have to be strong enough to let her be, to trust that this won’t go away. “I will be. Promise. You too.” I hang up. Cillian, Rhys, and Doug are all waiting for instructions. Tsip has wandered over too.

  “Can you teleport me?” I ask her.

  “Yes!” The fangs jutting from her lower jaw are showcased in an enthusiastic smile. “But I can only teleport short distances. And you have to be able to reconstitute yourself after being disintegrated on a molecular level while shifting through the void beyond reality. It hurts quite a bit, but you get used to it.”

  “I’ll drive then, yeah?” Cillian grabs the keys and starts the car.

  Doug looks scared but determined. “Sean?” The fact that he’s willing to come and face the man who held him captive for years speaks volumes about him.

  I put my hand on his arm and shake my head. “Mercenaries. With guns. I don’t think you’re going to be any use. Wake Jade up and make sure you’re all on alert while I’m gone, okay?”

  Doug nods, holding a hand up in farewell. Tsip waves energetically as we pull away.

  “The void beyond reality?” Cillian navigates the forest dirt road far faster than is safe. “Demons. Total nutters, the lot of them.”

  “I like Doug.” Rhys checks his crossbow.

  I bounce impatiently in the back. “Everyone likes Doug. He’s biologically impossible to dislike.” We always pick a destination with several roads in and out so we can’t be traced, so the warehouse is thirty minutes away. Thirty minutes is thirty minutes too far, though.

  “What are we going into here?” Cillian drives at double the speed limit. I’m grateful, and I wish he would go even faster. But we don’t have our get-out-of-tickets-free Doug in the car with us, so we’re risking a police encounter as it is.

  “Mercenaries. Two snipers. They have my mom pinned down in the warehouse.”

  “Plan?”

  “The plan is Cillian stops before we get there and stays in the car.”

  “Hey now, I can—”

  I cut him off. “I can only focus on saving so many people at a time. I can’t worry about you, too.” It comes out harsher than I intend it, but it’s true. Cillian is one of my favorite people in the world, and he almost died last fall because of it. His dark brown eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. He nods.

  Rhys turns back toward me. He forgot his glasses. His crossbow is going to be pretty useless if he can’t see to use it. I want to make him stay in the car with Cillian. But he’s a Watcher. This is his job too.

  No. It’s only my job. I’m the Slayer. “Rhys, you’ll take the alleys to cut around to the back of the warehouse. Get a high vantage point and make certain there aren’t any more waiting there for an ambush. I’ll find the snipers and take them out.”

  I’m confident I can get it done before Rhys ever gets to his position. I can keep them all safe. I can keep everyone safe.

  The image of Leo, unconscious on the floor, disappearing behind the ever-expanding remora demon to meet the same crushed-to-death fate as his mother flashes in my mind, contradicting me with brutal accuracy.

  I can, though. I have to. I’m never losing anyone again.

  Cillian slows down on the outskirts of the old fishing district where the warehouse is. I open my door and jump, hitting the ground running.

  The sound of a bullet pinging off metal is all the direction I need. I don’t worry about cover. I run as fast as I can, and, gods, it’s fast. My red-gold hair streams behind me, my emerald-green trench coat flapping in the wind like a cape. Another shot rings out. There’s a fire-escape ladder fifteen feet up on the side of a brick building. I leap, catch the bottom rung, and climb up, feeling a flash of surprise that I made that jump. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have made it when I first became a Slayer. And I haven’t exactly been training—going to the castle’s gym brings too many painful memories of Leo. But there’s no time to wonder at my skills.

  The roof is flat, rusted corrugated metal. At the far end of it, a figure is crouched, holding a rifle. A mercenary. Firing a rifle at my mother and a family.

  “Hey!” I shout. Anger burns in me with the same devouring intensity as the black-purple flames that nearly killed me as a child. I can feel them inside, eating away everything else, purifying me, leaving only rage. The mercenary stands and swings the rifle in my direction in the same amount of time it takes me to sprint across the roof and slam into him.

  I watch in slow motion as he flies backward into thin air.

  3

  IN THAT ETERNAL SPLIT SECOND, I consider letting the mercenary fall.

  We’re three stories up. It won’t definitely kill him. And he’s been up here, shooting at my mother and a family of werewolves with three small children. Hidden like a coward, sending death down to people who have already suffered and lost more than he can ever imagine.

  And a part of me, a dark burning tightness clenching around my heart, snarls that he’s my enemy and deserves whatever end he finds as he connects with the pavement.

  He’s human, I think at the snarling, hungry thing.

  So what? is the answer.

  The spike of fear I feel about that sentiment coming from inside of me is enough to pierce the anger. I reach out and snatch him from the air. The rifle clatters to the ground far beneath us. I hold him dangling as he struggles and swears. A scan of the neighboring rooflines doesn’t reveal the second sniper anywhere.

  Which means that this one was probably keeping my mother pinned down while the other one went in.

  There’s a jut of metal next to me. I hook him on it by his belt so he’s still dangling but won’t fall unless he struggles too much. Then I jump. I land hard in a crouch that a few months ago would have left me absolutely impressed with myself, and then I sprint for the warehouse. Sure enough, a side door has been pried open, crowbar left abandoned on the ground. I pick it up. The dim warehouse interior reeks with decades of lingering fish scuzz. The cold is a physical presence slamming into me.

  Up ahead, next to a concrete pillar, the second mercenary has his rifle lifted. I follow the sight line to my mother, silhouetted against the entrance door, gun raised as she looks outward for the threat. Behind her, sheltered by a huge refrigerator unit, a mother, father, and three children cower.

  There’s a soft release of breath as the mercenary gets ready for a kill shot. I throw the crowbar.

  It lands with a bone-snapping crack against the mercenary’s right leg. He—she, apparently—screams. I run to her, snatching the rifle and bending it in half. Then I grab her by her black bulletproof vest and drag her behind me as I walk toward my stunned mother and the terrified family.

  “Nina,” my mother says.

  She turns in my direction. The door behind her opens, and the first mercenary roars inside, holding a pistol I didn’t know he had, gun pointed at me.

  The look of absolute terror on my mother’s face reminds me of our phone conversation. Not bulletproof. I hold the woman mercenary in front of myself as a shield. One, two shots slam into her. I feel their concussive force like I would a fly bouncing off me. I toss her to the side and launch myself at the man. He doesn’t have time for another shot before I hit him, knocking him into the door so hard it swings wildly off one hinge.

  He’s on the ground. I lift a fist—

  “Nina!”

  I freeze. He’s unconscious. I don’t need to hit him anymore.

  But, gods, I want to.

  “Nina, the woman.” My mother’s voice is sharp. Chiding.

  Right. The woman. The one I used to shield myself. The one I let get shot. I was so angry, so focused. It felt right at the time. My stomach twists. I’m sick at what I’ve done. And, inexplicably, I’m angrier than ever. How can my mom get mad at me? It was the mercenary’s own partner who shot her. And she was ready to shoot my mother! Or the werewolves, who are sti
ll cowering, the children crying as the mother tries to comfort them and the father stares at me.

  No one gets to shoot my mother. I let go of the unconscious man, then walk as calmly as I can back to the woman. She’s moaning in pain. Her leg is obviously broken from where I hit it with the crowbar. It’s too dark to see whether she’s bleeding. “My ribs,” she gasps.

  I reach down and pick her up, hating that I have to be gentle when she deserves anything but. I bring her into the light next to her partner and set her down. No blood. The bullets both hit her in the vest.

  “Your ribs are probably broken,” I say. “Leg, too.” I know what I could do to set it, or to check that her lungs haven’t been punctured. I’ve studied and learned everything I can about the human body and how it breaks, so that I could help heal it. Not so I could do the breaking.

  Instead of checking her lungs, I check her for weapons. I find another pistol and snap it in half. Then I gather their rifles and other weapons and make a pile on the ground next to them.

  I pull out my phone. “Call the police,” I tell Cillian. “Say you heard gunshots by the old fish warehouse.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine.” I hang up. We have—had—procedures for dealing with demons. But these two are humans. Which means they’re subject to human laws, and Irish law doesn’t look kindly on illegal guns.

  “Who sent you?” I ask.

  The woman’s face is drenched in sweat. She grits her teeth and glares at me. From the sound of her breathing, neither of her lungs is punctured. But her ribs are definitely broken. I need this information; my mother doesn’t think it’s Sean, but it could be. Thinking of Sean makes me think of Honora, which makes me think of Artemis. What would she do if getting the truth meant keeping her family safe? I put one hand gently on the mercenary’s vest. And then I push down ever so slightly.

  She screams. “No one! No one sent us! There’s a bloke, rich as sin. Pays extra for exotics. He does a big werewolf hunt for the first full moon of the new year. We’ll cut you in! Introduce you!”

  “Give me his name.” I increase pressure.

  “Ian! Ian Von Alston! Just outside London!”

  I remove my hand. “If I ever see either of you again, it won’t end this well for you.”

  I stand and turn around. It’s taking everything in me to leave them there. My mother is safe, and so is the family. The mercenaries are unarmed, injured, no longer threats. But they had my mother in their gun sights. All so they could sell a family to be hunted. My fist clenches, twitching.

  The werewolf mother, a plain woman in mom jeans and a bulky sweater, stares at me with wide, watery eyes. “Thank you. We’ll make our own way.”

  “You’ll be safe with us. They can’t hurt you.” I smile reassuringly. But the look of horror on her face isn’t directed at them. She’s scared … of me.

  “We’ll take our chances elsewhere.” The father gathers two children in his arms, and the mother takes the smallest. They hurry away into the darkness of the warehouse toward the back door.

  “Nina.” My mother’s voice is so even and careful, it chills me more than the building.

  I didn’t do anything wrong! I did what my instincts told me to. Less than they told me to, even. I acted like a Slayer. If I can’t use my Slayer abilities to protect the people I love, what the bloody hellmouths are they for?

  “Nina?” Rhys steps around the two mercenaries with a puzzled look. “We should find Cillian, yeah? Don’t want to be here when the police arrive.”

  “You go ahead.” I don’t meet my mother’s eyes. “I’m gonna run home. Got some energy to get rid of.”

  “But it’s thirty miles!”

  Thirty miles I’d have to spend with the weight of unanswered and unasked questions. I’d rather run. I sprint out of the building and into the winter afternoon, burning so hot I wonder that nothing catches fire in my wake.

  ARTEMIS

  HONORA IS LYING ON THE edge of the bed, head hanging over, her long dark hair draping down like shiny curtains, obscuring the light of her face. She’s paging idly through a selection of brochures spread out on the floor.

  “… kind of a creep, but aren’t they all? He pays well. We could make enough in a couple months for tuition for at least a year. Ooh, this is a proper campus—just look at that ivy. I know it’s not practical, but I always kind of wanted to go into communications. PR. Isn’t that daft?” She turns her head to look at Artemis, making a face to hide her vulnerability.

  Artemis smiles so Honora knows she’s not teasing. “I don’t think that’s daft. You’d kick ass at a PR firm. And if things didn’t go your way, you’d also kick ass, just literally.”

  Honora laughs and goes back to the brochures. The plan is to do some demon-hunting jobs—Honora still has plenty of connections, even though she doesn’t work with Sean anymore—and earn enough to put themselves through college. Artemis isn’t old enough, technically, but Honora also knows someone who can fake documents to give Artemis all the A levels and identity requirements she needs to apply. Artemis didn’t exactly take time to grab her birth certificate before running out on the castle, the Watchers, her mother, her sister, and everything she’d ever known and worked toward.

  “Hey, Moon, what’s wrong?”

  Artemis forces a smile. She stands, stretching. “Just tired.” The flat they’re crashing in belonged to a vampire, and the décor is like someone spent way too much time studying vampire films of the eighties. The walls are painted black and plastered with neon posters. The headboard is black leather, and Artemis tries very hard not to think about what might have gone down in this room. They vacuumed the carpet very thoroughly after dusting the vampire, but she still insisted on new bedding before she’d sleep here. And even after that, she doesn’t sleep well. She constantly wakes in a panic, heart racing with the knowledge that she’s supposed to be doing something.

  She can never figure out what, though.

  Honora’s excited about their plans, and Artemis wants to be. But trying to imagine a life where she goes to college and majors in, what, accounting? And then gets a job in an office and wears low heels and goes to work every day like a normal person? She’s not a normal person, she’s never been a normal person, she doesn’t want to be a normal person. The whole thing would feel too absurd, knowing the evil that’s out there, lurking.

  Artemis, an accountant, while Nina is a Slayer.

  Her phone rings with the castle cell number and she wonders if her bitterness has summoned her twin. They haven’t spoken. Artemis wasn’t going to be the first to call. Not this time. Let Nina try to fix what was broken for once. Or it might be their mother. Taking a deep breath, annoyed for how her hopes flutter fragile and pathetic in her heart, Artemis answers. “Yeah?”

  “Artemis?”

  It takes her a few moments to place the voice. “Imogen?” Not who she had expected. She’s winded with disappointment. She wants her mother to call, to demand Artemis come back so she can refuse. She wants Nina to call and talk about how bad things are, how much they need her. She doesn’t know what she’d say in that case. But Imogen?

  “Hey,” Imogen says. “Thank God. I was worried you’d change your number. Are you in contact with Sean?”

  “No.” Artemis shrugs at Honora’s curious look, then mouths Imogen. Honora sits up and leans close. “We haven’t talked to Sean since my sister destroyed his whole setup. Wait. Is the castle in trouble? Did he attack to get Doug back?” Artemis’s pulse speeds up. She knew it. She knew they were making the wrong choice, that they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves. Honora gestures and Artemis puts the phone on speaker.

  “What? No. This is about something else. Bigger. I can’t take it to Nina—she won’t be able to handle it. And we both know she won’t play nice with Honora, which is absurd. You and Honora are the best we ever had, even if the decrepit old guard were too far up their asses to see it. So this call is secret, okay?”

  Ar
temis and Honora share a look. They’ve never heard Imogen talk this way. Artemis is intrigued in spite of herself. “I’m not in contact with anyone from the castle anyway.”

  “Good. I’ve done some research and there’s a major new player surfacing. We’re talking hellgod level. Maybe. I can’t be certain. But I think Sean is connected. You remember his tea?”

  They have a supply of some of his more potent drugs, but it’s dwindling. Artemis counts it every day, watching as her only access to the type of power she needs disappears. It fills her with as much terror as anticipating a life as an accountant. She wants the strength to help, to protect Honora, to fight evil, to be more than herself. And without Sean’s drugs, she’s back to the Artemis who wasn’t good enough. “Yeah, I remember his tea.”

  “There was a symbol on it. You know the one?”

  Artemis does. She glances over at the nightstand where one of his branded packages sits. Now that she thinks about it, she’s seen it before. Somewhere. Where?

  Imogen keeps talking. “I thought it was just his brand, but it’s been bugging me. I think it’s connected to something bigger. And I …” She pauses, and the phone is muffled as her tone changes and she answers someone in chipper tones. “Sorry. Gotta go. Nice talking to you, Liesa. I’m definitely interested in keeping chickens. I’ll be in touch with more questions.” The line goes dead.

  Artemis holds the phone, staring down at it as she tries to process the conversation. Imogen was always on the sidelines. But they had been united by being shuffled by the Watchers to the worst jobs in the castle, Imogen tainted by her mother’s choices and Artemis apparently deemed simply not good enough.

  She was better than everyone in that whole damn castle. Even if the Watchers were still at full force, she’d be better than all of them.

  The library! She’d seen the symbol in the library, when she had to label and catalog every single book instead of studying them like Rhys, all because she’d failed a single test.

  Screw stability. Screw accounting. Artemis is a Watcher, the only real one left, and if there’s a new creeping menace out there, she’ll figure it out and deal with it herself. “Call Sean.” She tosses the phone to a surprised Honora. “Tell him we want to come work for him.”