“You’re hurting,” he said.
“I’m an experiment,” I countered. “What did you call that thing at the ice rink? ‘Unnatural’? And what does that make me?”
Cooked up in a test tube. Manufactured so my parents could run tests on my blood. A thing.
“That makes you special,” Zev said, bringing his free hand to the other side of my cheek and cupping my face. “It makes you unique.”
He meant the words. I knew he did, but that didn’t make me believe them. It didn’t make them true.
“You’re my other self,” Zev said, sensing my refusal, pushing harder. “We’re two halves of the same whole.”
His hand trailed down my face, my neck. He lifted it off my skin, and my back arched, longing for the contact. His palm landed on my stomach, and I felt a burst of warmth under his touch. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of the parasite inside of me: I could feel it, like a tiny ball of light, and for the first time, I felt something from it other than thirst.
On instinct, I reached out my own hand, rested my palm on Zev’s chest, just over his heart. Another burst of warmth, a realignment of the world, a yes overtook my body, my mind.
“Nibblers come in pairs,” Zev said. “The one inside of you, the one inside of me—they’re matched.”
I thought through what Zev was saying and realized that it was his bad luck that the chupacabra matched to his had chosen someone like me. Not natural. Not normal. Not real.
“If given a choice,” Zev said, “believe me, I’d choose you.”
I closed my eyes, laid my head on his chest, listened to his beating heart.
“This isn’t real,” I murmured.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s all in my head. It’s all in yours.”
It didn’t feel imaginary. It didn’t feel fake. It felt safe and warm and like here, in our minds, we could make the world anything we wanted it to be.
“Now you know,” Zev said, “why two years is nothing.”
Two years. That was the amount of time he’d spent in Chimera’s possession. I wondered if he came here, to this place in his mind, whenever they took their pound of flesh.
People like us couldn’t feel pain.
We couldn’t feel fear.
And once we’d been bitten, we were connected.
Brrrriiiinnggggg!
I came out of the trance suddenly, and it took me a moment to pinpoint the sound that had brought me back—the ringing of a phone. I spent one second wondering who could possibly be calling a number I didn’t even know myself, but the answer became readily apparent the second I answered the phone.
“I have an address,” Skylar said. “According to Reid, it’s an old military base that hasn’t belonged to the government since the fifties. It’s supposed to be abandoned—something about radiation—but satellite scans suggest there’s geothermal activity.” She paused. “This is Kali, right?”
I made a face at the phone. “Did you just dial a number at random?”
I could practically hear her smiling. “Maybe?”
I glanced down at my watch. Twelve hours and two minutes.
I wanted to see Zev—see him for real. I wanted to save him, and I didn’t have much time.
“Hey, Skylar?” I said. “Can you send me that address?”
If I can’t break out of here, what makes you think that you can break in?
Zev’s question may have been rhetorical, but I did him the favor of answering, anyway.
Easy, I replied, slipping my cell into my pocket. The bad guys want me in.
For the first time since I’d recognized my mother, I smiled without feeling nauseous. I could do this.
I would do this.
I had to.
Shutting my mind against Zev’s voice—velvet and smooth inside my head—I set to work. The moment I turned my mind to what needed to be done, I felt a slight vibration in the air, a song singing me closer, luring me in. The palms of my hands itched as I scanned the house for weapons.
I could do this.
I would do this.
I had to.
I started in my bedroom and worked my way quickly through the rest of the second floor. I didn’t have as many weapons as another person might have had in my position, but I’d been hunting for five years, and during that time, the weapons I did have had been stashed all over the house. A knife here, a dagger there, the occasional sword.
My dad had a gun.
One by one, I tracked each of them down and tucked them into my clothing, heightened awareness of each blade bringing what I was about to do fully into focus. I saved the gun for last and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans, nestled against the small of my back.
Ready.
Armed to the teeth, I slipped out of the house, the way I had a thousand times before. This time, there was a chance my dad might actually miss me before I returned.