The Animal Under The Fur Read online

  Finally, something.

  Peering behind and in front of me, seeing no one, I dip my head low and enter the barren backstreet. No windows or doors mark this path, as if the two buildings were once jutted together before being pried apart, leaving a thin stone space for absolutely nothing.

  My fingers twitch at my side as a steady heartbeat reaches out to me from the shadows, the sound of an inhale, then long exhale, smoke being blown away. I lick my lips at what I know I will soon find, soon overpower, for I’m in no mood for any more games. Wigs, disguises, and a wallflower college girl no longer have room here. This assignment has dragged on for too long, and I’m going to end it, here, tonight.

  Cracking my neck from side to side, I can only see a few feet ahead as I keep an even pace, the walls bending in a constant curve. But that’s no matter. I work just as well in small spaces as large, and after only a minute more I see him.

  He leans casually against a worn wooden door that ends my path, a single orange bulb casting him in a dramatic draping of light. The red embers of his cigarette illuminate his dark face as he inhales again, shadows and angles, soot lashes and thick hair highlighted for a quick moment. He doesn’t look up, merely picks at his nails with one hand while holding his smoke with the other.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me.” Ramie’s deep Spanish words float forward, red wine in candlelight, before his dark eyes peer up to meet mine. The corner of his mouth tilts, taking me in. “Hello, 3.”

  My K-Op name barely escapes his lips as I launch myself at him, lightning escaping a bottle, and reach for the sharpened blade strapped to my spine, but my fingers barely graze the warm handle before he lashes out with speed that matches my own, snatching me from the air. Hard, unrelenting muscle surrounds me, and I hiss, barely getting an elbow to his rib cage before there’s a prick at my neck, cool, icy liquid to my veins. I blink, stunned, surprised, pissed, right before I go from every emotion to none as the walls of the alley collapse in, swallowing me whole.

  44

  3

  SOMEWHERE, HOPEFULLY, IN MEXICO

  Soft classical music pushes through the blackness, curling around my conscious, slowly stirring it awake.

  Open your eyes, it whispers. Come look.

  But as my mind floats back to me, a boat reaching land, I keep them closed.

  The first thing I notice is the smell—dirt, earth. I’m underground. The second, I absolutely cannot move. My ankles are bound to legs of a chair, hands tied by the wrists behind my back as a solid wire of some sort hugs my chest and arms to their sides. The material is strong, stronger than I, and my curiosity purrs, for there are few things in this world that are. A low whirring of a machine mixes with the sound of people moving about beyond whatever room I’m currently in, and I can feel a pinching at the inside elbow of my right arm, a Band-Aid over a cotton ball—blood drawn. My skin prickles at what this could mean, thoughts of what happened before I found myself here playing in my darkened mind.

  Ramie…his speed, his strength. There’s no doubting he’s an A+, but why couldn’t I smell it? A+ are even easier to detect than average humans. We have a scent completely distinct, floral with a metallic copper brushing. When we’re gazed upon, it’s like we have a halo of energy surrounding us, fireflies in the night. But not Ramie.

  A door opening and closing sounds at my back, churning of machinery louder for a hairsbreadth before it’s gone again, muffled with a locking of a bolt. Footsteps to my left, then in front, and the way they move, confidently, cleverly, I know it’s him. I can also taste him now. What he was able to keep dormant is now awake, and the metal tang of his A+ abilities twists along my nostrils. With the monster inside me stirring, I blink my eyes open, my equilibrium tilting for a quick second as the chloroform he most likely stuck me with wears off.

  Ramie half stands, half sits on a mahogany desk in front of me, his large form draped in the same black shirt, jeans, and boots he wore in the alley, while his arms rest on either side of him, gripping the ledge. His energy comes off him in waves now, a shimmering of gold that cages the internal beast he and I both share.

  “Have a nice nap?” he asks in slightly accented English, his gaze as unrelenting as my binds, and my wrists pull against them in habit.

  Ramie grins. “You might as well not try,” he says. “They are meant to hold such creatures as you.”

  Creatures like us, I want to reply, but in these situations it’s best to stay back, to take in, so I continue to keep quiet while moving my gaze around the room. I’m in some sort of office, the walls covered end to end with brown worn bookshelves, while antique rugs of various styles drape the ground, no doubt hiding a dirt or cement floor. Warm yellow tracking lights run along the ceiling’s edge, illuminating this caved enclosure for the hiding place that it is, a fortress not meant to be found. The desk Ramie rests on looks old, passed down, and there’s a leather maroon writing cover resting across the center, where a white folder lies. Three gold pens sit in a neat row on the left, while two picture frames stand, backs to me, on the right. A record player, the source of the music, turns behind it in one corner, while a rhythmic ticking has me peering over to a grandfather clock tucked into the other, the hands at nine and twenty. I’ve been unconscious for two hours, which means I can’t be far from Cuetzalan. I gather this into the rest of the information. How many times have we walked past this hideout unknowingly? Were we ever close? I inhale a sweet vanillin scent that wafts from my clothes, a flower that holds onto me from the outside, and I file this away too, my attention moving on to the sandalwood aroma that fills the air, pushing against the dustiness of the earth, which stirs something distant in my memory, something forgotten. But before I can dig for what that might be, the door behind me opens and closes again. Ramie pushes to his feet and steps respectfully to one side as an older gentleman files past to sit behind the desk, that familiar sandalwood fragrance now stronger. Lowering himself, his white button-down stretches across broad shoulders and shifts as he leans back in his leather chair, interlocking his fingers across his stomach. His thick black hair is swept purposefully from his face, with a brush of gray by the ears, highlighting the icy-blue eyes that meet mine and distract from the mangled scar on his neck. It takes all my effort to remain composed and not charge the man with gnashing teeth.

  Manuel Mendoza, the leader of the Oculto, keeper of our biochemical weapon, and whom I have been sent to kill, sits seven feet away, studying me.

  My calm fissures.

  “I’m sorry we have to keep you like this.” He nods to my binds, speaking in Spanish, his voice gruff, tired, as if he’s had to say, and see, many things in his lifetime. It swirls a strangeness in my chest, a…longing. “But I’m sure you understand why.”

  I glance to Ramie, who shoots me a wink, and my fingers curl into fists at my back.

  “He’s tested them himself,” Mendoza explains, seeing where my attention drifts. “Ramie and his gifts have helped me with a great many things, actually.”

  So Mendoza knows of our kind, yet it’s not this that has my brows pinching in, but in the way he speaks to my mutated brethren, with an affection, a…fondness.

  Who are they to one another?

  The record player switches to a new song, something I recognize, Impromptus D.899, by Franz Schubert. I have no idea why I know this. I have no affinity for classical music, yet there it is.

  My skin begins to crawl, a clamminess breaking across the surface as Mendoza leans forward, head tilting to one side as he drinks in my appearance. His heartbeat is a bit quick but healthy, while his features are hard in their weathered skin with more wrinkles between his brows than creasing his eyes. A man that experiences few reasons to smile, and Carter’s words on our drive to Viento del Este come back in a wave of understanding. What would stop us from becoming the monsters we seek to kill if we can no longer find or appreciate the joy in the things we are trying to protect? Mendoza is such a creature, with a twisted, tar-filled soul. Be
ing on the other side of his scrutiny is a cowering thing, yet I don’t whither into myself, but keep shoulders back, jaw tight, my gaze glued to his. Predators such as he, even with his normal human abilities, feed from a person’s fear, and I’m only in the mood for him to starve.

  After a moment longer of us staring at one another, a small grunt—maybe even a laugh—escapes him, and he slouches back in his chair, his eyes flickering to one of the pictures on his desk before returning to me.

  “There’s so much of her in you,” he says.

  Her?

  A shiver runs down my spine, but I remain mute, motionless.

  “Same hair, same skin, but those eyes…so blue.” He holds my gaze. “You didn’t get those from her.”

  Her.

  Her.

  I take the bait.

  “Who?”

  His face lights up, pleased, upon hearing my voice. “Why, your mother, of course.”

  Everything disappears. The room, the music, the constant churning of the machines outside, the two men and their beating hearts, it all fades away, gets blown into the void of white-hot flames erupting around me.

  “I don’t have a mother.” I keep my voice flat.

  Mendoza’s lips press together, grim. “We all have a mother.”

  Tick, tick, tick of the clock.

  “Okay…” I begin slowly, shuffling the cards I’ve been dealt and carefully choosing the next to play. “Let’s say I do. How would you have known her?”

  A sad smile barely touches his lips. “Because, mi pequeña rosa, I’m your father.”

  45

  Nashville

  Someone is laughing, a loud, bone-shaking laugh as the room tilts left and then right, a Mad Hatter come to tea. This person sounds deranged, unhinged, and it causes a giggle of my own to bubble up in my chest, until I realize it mixes with the rest streaming from my mouth.

  For I’m the one with the dipped head, chuckling into my chest. “Oh, you can do better than that,” I gasp.

  Mendoza watches me from under hooded brows, fingers steepled in front of him, elbows on his armrest. Ramie frowns beside him, a guard dog displeased with my blatant disrespect for his master.

  “I understand your skepticism,” Mendoza says after a moment. “I was similarly shocked, though didn’t quite react as you have.” He pinches his lips together as he nods to the folder on his desk.

  Ramie scoops it up and rounds the corner to flip it open in front of me.

  A duo DNA test is clipped inside. Two columns with numbers running its length, one with CHILD written on the top, the other with FATHER.

  “Do you know how to read one of these?” Mendoza asks, causing my gaze to snap to his, offended by his gentle tone.

  “Of course.”

  He nods. “While you were…asleep, we took it upon ourselves to run a DNA test, to confirm. These are the results.”

  The Band-Aid across my inner elbow pinches again as my eyes dart back to the DNA alleles, seeing the matching numbers from CHILD to FATHER, the confirmation.

  I tumble out of my seat as I stay firmly rooted to it, strapped to this shit storm of a moment. No. No. NO! My breaths come out uneven, the creature in my blood straining against its cage as my body begins to shake. “No,” I say in a burst, pressing against my binds. “No, this is faked.”

  “And why would I do such a thing?” Mendoza asks, leaning back. “Risk bringing you here”—he gestures to his office and what lies beyond—“all for a silly head game?”

  My mind races for an answer, gaze darting about before it returns to the paper still held in front of me. The alleles numbers—fourteen matching another fourteen, sixteen with sixteen, so forth and so on. The disputable facts.

  No. It’s not real. This isn’t real!

  “How the fuck should I know why your kind does any of the things it does?” I bite out.

  “My kind.” Mendoza almost smiles at that, while Ramie snaps the file closed.

  “Can’t you smell it?” The guard dog demands, his dark eyes pressing me into my chair. He inhales deeply, lids fluttering close for a moment. “It’s so obvious when you know what to look for. Your energies are even similar.”

  “Shut up,” I sneer. “We are nothing alike because we are not—”

  “Do it.” Ramie grips me by the root of my hair, whipping my head back, my neck aching at the severe angle.

  I gnash my teeth at him. “Try it,” he says again, still holding me tight. “And then you can deny. Try it. Unless”—his gaze rakes over my face—“you’re too scared.”

  “Ramie.” Mendoza’s words come out firm yet soft. “That’s enough.”

  Slowly his mutt lets go, the front of my chair tipping back to the ground, wooden legs creaking.

  I glare death into the two men, the blood that will soon pool from their necks once I slit their throats manifesting vividly in my mind. I’d cut deep enough to be fatal, but shallow enough for their lives to drip from them like painful molasses.

  “So wild,” Mendoza purrs, fascinated, taking in my ragged breathing and wide, flashing eyes.

  I know I appear more monster than woman in this moment, but his features only alight with a sick pride.

  “She’s so like you were in the beginning.” He glances to Ramie, and I swear my heart is about to punch out of my chest.

  What the fuck is going on?

  Nausea swarms me, and I inhale deeply, trying to calm myself, but as I do, everything Ramie mentioned slaps me in the face. Now that I’m looking for it, aware, it’s indeed there, clear as day, more validating than any DNA test, any birth certificate, and my eyes roll back in my head as the information drowns me, takes over. The smell of citrus, summer, and earth, the vibrating energy of a mirrored reflection and gooseflesh-inducing pheromones that scream familiar, shout that we are one and the same. It’s a subtle musk that sends my mind diving backward to a small living room, sun streaming through floral curtains as a young woman sits reading on a couch. Red hair, the same shade as my own, playing in wisps around her fair features. Features that no longer remain blurred, covered, but finally come into focus. Green eyes and a dusting of freckles play along her pert upturned nose, a wide smile as a man comes to her side, sandalwood, and kisses her cheek. Her light laughter as he whispers something into her ear. Where the woman is morning, daylight, the man is dark, midnight, and as he leans back, I take in his face, olive skin, a rough beard, and blue eyes, the same blue eyes as mine. The same as a man’s picture in a file handed to me at SI6. Citrus, summer, and earth, my kin, my family, my parents.

  The room snaps back into focus as my head droops, exhausted, and it’s not until something wet hits my jean-clad knee that I realize I’m crying. My breaths come out raspy, uneven. I am everywhere in the room, pounding for a way out, a way backward, while gazing down at my body strapped in the chair. I have a father. He’s alive and he’s…I rush back to myself, slam into my shattering soul as I peer up to the man who once had meant so much to me, so very long ago, and now…

  Now…

  I pop to my tiptoes and then slam down, splintering the legs and seat of my wooden chair before barreling toward the desk. My arms remain cemented to my side, but I can move now, and that’s all I’ve ever needed. With a blood-tinged shriek, I launch myself over the ledge, aiming my teeth to the man’s jugular, when a vice grip wrenches me back, throwing me to the floor.

  I let out an oof as my wind is knocked from me, the back of my head smacking against the ground as my tied arms twist painfully under my body’s weight.

  I see stars from the impact, but I still manage to thrash out, growl, and kick before there’s another prick, this time at the base of my spine, and everything slows, becoming heavy.

  I internally curse. My own methods thrown into my face.

  Ramie grasps my shoulders and hefts me against him, his touch now careful compared to the storm of force it was a second ago, and I wonder if it’s from his own desire or for that of the man who watches on.

&
nbsp; He lowers my useless body into another chair that he drags from the side of the room, forcing me to face Mendoza again. My form hunches, slack, as I stare up at him, and I would spit in his face if it wouldn’t end up dribbling down my chin instead.

  “Why?” I croak out, slurred. “Why now?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Mendoza says, straightening his shirt before returning his attention to me. If he’s angry about my attempt to maim him, he doesn’t show it. “Fate has brought us back together. Or was I misinformed that you were sent here for the very reason of finding me?” His brows rise. “Yes, I know exactly what you do for a living, mi pequeña rosa, and I must say, I’m rather proud.”

  My monster erupts again, momentarily fighting the paralysis. “I am not your little rose!”

  “But of course you are,” Mendoza says, a placating father undisturbed by his child’s outburst. “Don’t you remember your own na—”

  “Stop.” It comes out in a panting plea, which only makes me hate myself more. I feel reduced to dust. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”

  As long as I live, I will never know that girl. I already have a name, more names than I need, and whether he’s dead or alive, this man will never be my father. I am still the orphan, still alone.

  Blue eyes set in darkness tether to mine. “Okay,” he says. “We have plenty of time to get to all that.”

  Time.

  My chest pulls and twists, my heart a bloody mess on the carpet. “You…you abandoned me.” It’s not what I meant to say, but some broken piece of me, the little girl left in an alley, forces her way through.

  “No,” Mendoza snaps, face hardening. “Never. I thought you had died, or I would have never stopped looking for you.”

  My eyebrows pinch in, and I can’t seem to get enough oxygen to my lungs. “What happened?”

  The leader of the Oculto lets out a large breath, settling into his chair. “Your file said you have amnesia from your earlier years, from before…Bell Buckle. Is this true?”