Chapter 22
JAX
Bam!
I land with a jolt.
It takes me a moment to get my breath back, but luckily I’m not too shaken around. Immediately, I can see through the cape’s folds as clearly as if I’m looking through a glass pane. Seems the new runes are doing their job.
And what’s more, we’ve hit the bullseye—Devine Tower.
Hidden in the folds of the cape, I start to move swiftly along ornately decorated corridors lined with gilt-framed paintings of self-important looking humans.
Soon, I reach a set of grand double doors, and the cape just glides right through them like a hot knife through butter.
I know this room.
Although I’ve never been in here, I remember it from the weekly broadcasts the mayor made when I was a kid.
We’re in the Opal Office.
Now I understand how it got its name. Every wall is shimmering opal stone. Precious opal from the Labyrinth, pulled out of the ground on our lower levels and shipped up here to be made into fine jewelry for Sparkle residents, sold at DeVines department store.
Or, as here, turned into wallpaper.
What a fucking waste.
Everything else in the high-ceilinged room is equally ostentatious.
A huge painting of Ronald DeVine, with a gold crown on his head, a scepter in his hand, and his signature smug smile, takes up most of the wall behind an equally huge desk and a throne-like chair.
My lip curls with disdain. I guess that’s Ronald’s ultimate aim: to be crowned king of all the domes.
Ever since I was a kid, we’ve been subjected to billboards of his fake smile, his tan skin and dyed black hair. To endless broadcasts of him rambling about how he loves every single resident of Sparkle like his own children.
What a crock of shit.
When Mom disappeared, I wrote to him, brought the letter right here to Devine Tower. I got told to leave. On my second attempt, I got thrown out onto the street. I tried several more times after that, to no avail.
So much for our caring benefactor.
Soon we will know the real story behind all that Sparkles. What DV Medical and Biotech are up to, the fertility programs using minotaur sperm to increase human births, and the research they are doing into breathing Earth air, which is why they want our younglings to experiment on.
What—and who—is behind the demand for more munitions, more guns, more armored cars?
That is what we have to find out. And quickly.
We timed this mission carefully. Ronald is at a golf tournament today. He won’t be back for hours.
I glide toward the desk. Take out the first tiny bug from my pocket and quickly fix it under the desk.
If there are cameras in here, they will detect no movement.
Nothing. Even when my arm reaches outside the cape, nothing will show.
Now that the cape has an aura, I know I have a few feet of invisibility outside of its parameters.
I focus. Move from room to room. The majestic dining rooms and boudoirs. The drawing rooms and ballrooms. Everywhere I go, I place those little bugs.
And then I stand still and press the direction rune in the lining.
Whoosh!
A second later I find myself in DeVines department store. The cape has landed me in the cosmetic department, but that’s good enough. It will be a quick ride to the top floor, where Marsha has her plush offices.
It’s just before opening, so there are only shop assistants milling around, chatting and drinking their early morning cinnamon and hazelnut lattes from SparkleBucks before the doors open and the customers stream in.
One of them looks in my direction with a little frown, and I freeze.
“Did you feel that gust of air?”
The other girl shrugs. “They probably just turned on the air-conditioning.” She picks something off the counter. “Have you seen this new shade of black lipstick? Kinda funky, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, you could wear it to that new club that’s opening.”
“Oh, you mean Black Magic?”
“Yeah. I’m liking this new dark edgy theme that’s happening around Sparkle.”
“Wouldn’t mind picking up a dark edgy guy instead of all those preppie boys.” The other girl giggles.
I don’t have time to hang around and listen to their gossip. Already the cape is re-orienting itself.
And suddenly… POW!
I find myself on the top floor in Marsha Winters’ office with its sweeping views over Sparkle, the towers and spires lit up by the fake morning sunshine.
She’s not here yet. Our research tells us she never arrives before 9 am.
I take a moment to get my bearings. It’s a huge space with dark wood and plush carpets.
There are photos of Marsha all over the walls, dressed in smart suits and kickass heels at awards nights.
Standing next to Mayor DeVine on Sparkle Day.
At the opening of the new menswear department.
At the cosmetics counter, holding up that new brand of black lipstick the assistants were just talking about.
She’s a good-looking woman, there’s no denying it, but when you look behind the smile, her eyes are piercing cold slits of grey ice. Her bright red smile holds no warmth. The glamor she wears is obvious, once you know what to look for.
The memory of staring into those eyes before she programmed me makes me shudder.
Her words…
You’re bad…through and through Jax Summers… Just like your mother.
I startle. I don’t recall that last sentence from my session with Traggar. Is that a false memory, or is it a detail I couldn’t access in hypnosis?
Just—like—your—mother.
Did Marsha know Mom?
Did I come out of hypnosis because my subconscious couldn’t deal with those words?
But if so, why the fuck am I remembering them now?
I start to tremble, my resolve weakening
Suddenly, my wolf takes charge. Pull yourself together and get on with the fucking job.
I snap to. My wolf has been quiet of late. But now it’s back with a vengeance, kicking my ass.
Yeah, you’re right, I telepath.
I shake the memory off. It’s probably just a glitch.
I move stealthily over to the desk and attach a bug to the underside. I move around the room, placing them in the allocated spots. Another goes inside the phone receiver, a third inside a vase on the shelf. I feel the cape readying itself to leave when I hear voices.
Male and female. The sharp pitch of Marsha Winters’ voice is like ice running down my spine.
The male, I don’t recognize. Certainly, it’s not Ronald DeVine.
The cape whisks me into a corner of the room and I watch.
Marsha enters, tap-tapping on impossibly high black patent heels.
She throws herself down in the chair at her desk.
The man with her is impeccably dressed in a dark suit.
He has salt and pepper hair and an intelligent, lean face.
His brows are pleated into a deep frown as he stands opposite Marsha, rubbing at his jaw.
“You’re telling me there were signs of life this morning. After all these years?”
“Yes, ma’am. A pulse was picked up just an hour ago. It seems to be erratic, but it was recorded on our system.”
“What about brain function? What is the EEG showing?”
“Nothing. As yet.”
“The heart?”
“Flatlining as usual.”
“Bah. This is nonsense. You can’t have a pulse without heart or brain function. The life-support system must be malfunctioning.” She throws herself back in the chair and starts drumming long red fingernails on the desk.
“Ma’am, we have checked all the equipment. It’s working perfectly.”
Marsha curses.
She bounces back up, struts around the desk and eyeballs the guy. To give him credit, he stands his ground, but his throat bobs as he swallows. “Tell me, Petrovis, since you’ve got all the medical know-how, and a string of letters after your fucking name. How could this be possible?”
“Maybe it’s from another energy force—outside of the brain.”
Marsha laughs harshly. “We’re talking about the deepest coma ever recorded in a human. And you’re trying to tell me something outside of the body is doing this? Frankly, I wonder, Doctor, if you’re up to the job I’ve entrusted you with.”
He stands stiffly, arms at his sides. “I remain confident that I am the most qualified person to be in charge of Project Earth Air, ma’am.”
Her lip curls. “After the past few months, I’m beginning to wonder.
First, you mislay Samantha Buggins. She was in your charge, and she slipped out from under your fucking nose.
Now the other little bitch, Clem Summers, is gone, and the plan to bring her back failed miserably.
If she happens to mate down there, like her monster whoring best buddy, we need the offspring.
So that’s two potential hybrids lost. And to top it off, you can’t get a word of sense out of that spy, or the soldiers who got attacked a few weeks back—you know, the ones who were tied up by an orc and terrorized by a fucking werewolf.
Which is cause for serious concern, is it not? ”
“There do seem to have been a few glitches of late, yes ma’am.”
“We have monsters leaking into Sparkle,” she’s scowling now, “and you haven’t found out how or why?”
“Could Jax Summers be behind it, ma’am? I mean, he’s in charge of the peripherals. Could he be our weak link?”
I freeze.
Marsha waves a dismissive hand.
“Jax Summers is doing his job, we have him monitored on camera night and day. No glitch there, no changes to munitions supply, either. So it doesn’t look like a mutiny. Yet. But something is amiss, and now this… this pulse you’re talking about.”
“Modern medicine can only do so much, ma’am…”
“Bah.” She flicks her hand at him as if he’s an insect she would love to crush. “Guess I’ll have to come and check out this mess.” She picks up the phone and barks into it. “Bring the car round to the entrance, NOW.”
She turns to him with a withering look and mimics his words in a high-pitched voice. “Modern medicine can only do so much. You’re right, Doctor.” Then she snarls, “We’re going to have to pull a fucking rabbit out of the hat to fix this one.”
I try to stay motionless, but the cape has started to behave erratically. It’s vibrating, shaking me up and down, like an engine revving, ready for take-off.
Shit. If it decides to go completely off into left field, I won’t be able to follow these two.
And then, suddenly, I’m being tumbled around so fast that all I can do is hang onto the cape’s lining and fucking pray that this isn’t going to end badly.
A second later we land. HARD. It’s the roughest ride by far today, and I can’t stop myself from letting out a few choice expletives as I hit the ground. Even my wolf whines.
And then I hear a sound. A kind of soft chittering, and I realize it’s coming from within the cape itself.
What the hell is going on?
I stagger up and peer out through the cape’s folds.
We are in a simple room, clinical like a hospital, with a linoleum floor and plain whitewashed walls. The lighting is dim, but I can see that there’s a plinth in the center of the room.
A body lies on the bed, in a white hospital gown. Covered in wires. There are drips going into one limp arm. There are more wires attached to the head and chest, connected to monitors that suddenly start to flash and beep loudly.
Meanwhile, the energy within the cape is thrumming, and the strange chittering sound gets louder.
My pulse speeds up, my breath tightens in my throat.
As the cape skims closer, I see that it’s a woman lying there. Her hair is dark, streaked with silver. Her skin is translucent white, her thin cheekbones protruding…
I realize the chittering is some kind of jumbled words, a language I don’t understand. It sounds almost like an incantation. The vibrations get stronger—now the cape is literally jumping and juddering.
My body jumps with it, and my heart lurches as a sudden zap of energy bursts out of the cape and shoots straight into the center of the woman’s chest.
With a whoosh of cold air, the cape is no longer around my shoulders. It’s spread itself over the woman like a blanket, radiating an energy force around her body.
And then something miraculous happens.
The woman’s skin turns from ashen white to pink. She inhales a huge breath that makes her chest heave.
With a sharp gasp, she arcs backward and her eyes spring wide.
Green and luminescent.
And stare straight into mine.
Her body relaxes, her face breaks into a smile and she reaches a thin hand toward me.
“Hello Jax, my darling.”
“Mom,” I croak.