“No.” She pushed against his chest.
“Shhh,” he told her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He carried her out. Her wet skin was ice-cold against his.
She fought him even as he climbed into the tub and lowered her onto the shelf, sinking her up to her chin in the hot water. “Let me go . . .”
Afraid to agitate her any further, he put the full width of the tub between them, giving her room. No need to strain her. If she passed out, the chances of her survival would drop to almost nothing.
It took a full three minutes before her teeth stopped chattering. She looked at him. “Everything hurts.”
“Your body is reacting to the venom,” he said. “Hot water will help. It soothes the muscles. It’s normal.” Technically everything he said was true. He just didn’t go into the rest of the details. Not yet.
A short bitter laugh slipped from her lips. “Normal? Nothing about this is normal.”
True. Not for her anyway. For him, it was business as usual. “Thirsty?”
“Yes.”
He waded through the tub, reached for the small fridge beside it, and extracted a bottle of water.
She took the bottle, clamped the plastic cap in her teeth, twisted it off, and drank, draining nearly a third in a single long draft. That’s it . . . Drink, Karina.
He recalled Galatea’s first time. She’d known exactly what would happen. She had been raised for precisely this purpose: to support him. And she loathed him for it. Hate would’ve been too personal of a word; he didn’t rank that high in her mental roster. Galatea hated the family; she hated Arthur because he was in charge; but Lucas she merely despised, disgusted by his touch. The older he got, the more he realized that sex with him was her way of revenge. In feeding he dominated her and she had no choice but to submit. In bed, for a few fleeting moments Galatea dominated him. That first time, when she cried and screamed as her body struggled with its initial dose of his venom, he had tried to hold her. She was so pretty, so fragile . . . He didn’t want to break her. She had sensed that small spark of compassion in him, clutched on to it, and twisted it, used it against him again and again, until finally he could stand it no longer. Living with Galatea meant fighting a constant war. Living with Karina so far was like sparring with an honest fighter. She defied him, but she would never stick a knife in his back. She would try to stab him in plain view.
Lucas sank down into the water and closed his eyes. Thinking about Galatea left a foul taste in his mind. His ribs ached again. Drowsiness came, threatening to smother his mind like a heavy blanket.
Karina’s voice tugged on him before he passed out. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“‘Nice’ isn’t in my vocabulary. I’m just tired.”
“Your ribs are bruised.”
“Daniel.”
“I didn’t see him hit you.”
“He doesn’t have to. I’m a Demon, and he’s an Acoustic. He can mimic voices and wrench the bones from my body with a focused sound wave.” He raised his arms and stood up, showing her the long angry welts outlining his ribs. “If he really pushed, you’d see bone shards puncturing the skin.”
She stared at him in horrified silence. He sank back down and closed his eyes.
“Why do you fight like that?” she asked.
“There’s no single reason. Sometimes he doesn’t like something I’ve done. Sometimes I do it because he annoys me.”
“What about today?”
Lucas sighed. She wouldn’t let him be. “Today we fought because Daniel argued with Arthur. Daniel wants to evacuate. Arthur doesn’t. Daniel insisted and Arthur bruised his pride. I took Arthur’s side. Evacuating the base is costly. One scout isn’t reason enough to do it. It’s a bad sign—we had seen scouts before in the neighboring fragments, but never this close. But we can’t just run at the first hint of trouble.”
She frowned. “So twisting bones out of your sockets is the way he demonstrates his displeasure at being pushed around?”
“Pretty much. Daniel wants to be taken seriously. So I treated him as a serious threat and made a big production of it. I was a substitute fight. What he really wanted was a shot at Arthur, which I can’t let him take, because Arthur will kill him.” Lucas thought of leaving it at that, but something nagged him to explain. “It’s complicated. We live by different rules. In your other life, people undergo strict social conditioning that evolved over hundreds of years. They grow up in relative safety and under constant supervision. Parents, schools, peers—all of their interactions fine-tune their behavior until they are . . .”
“Safe?” she suggested.
“Socialized. But Daniel and I grew up as outcasts, with only the extremes of our behavior corrected—so we don’t murder someone whenever the urge strikes us. Our interactions are simpler than yours, less layered and closer to . . .” Lucas grappled for the right word. When it came to him, he didn’t like it. “Animals. Both of us reached sexual maturity a while ago. We have a strong urge to mate and have our own territory, our own families, and separate lives. Instead we’re stuck with each other, in this house, with an illusion of privacy and an excess of aggression. And now there is you. Daniel doesn’t really want you for your own sake. He wants you because he views me as competition and now I have something he doesn’t. I am the only consequence he fears. He’s hostile and defensive, and Arthur made him sit down and shut up today. Daniel had to vent and I’m the only one who would put up with it.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“Because he is my brother.”
There was a tiny pause. “But he is not a Demon like you.”
“Different fathers,” he told her. “All of us within the House of Daryon carry genes from many different subspecies. Our mother was a Demon. My father was a normal human. Daniel’s father was a powerful Acoustic. We both played the genetic lottery and got different prizes.”
He left out rape, imprisonment, and murder. It sounded much better this way.
“Did Daniel hoard food as a child?”
She was perceptive. He would have to remember that. “Yes.”
“And you took care of him?”
“Yes.” Because nobody else would.
“Why doesn’t he just leave?” she asked. “Why don’t you? You don’t seem to like living here.”
“Because we have a job to do. We guard you from genocide.” The mission overrode everything. A logical part of him assured Lucas that life outside of the original mandate existed. He just couldn’t picture himself living it. “As long as we exist, you survive.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed. This was another long explanation and he had no energy for it today. Nor did he want to shock her again. She’d been through enough. “Monsters exist. They call themselves Ordinators. They want to kill people like you. Normal ordinary people. We exist to keep them from succeeding. That’s all there is to it.”
“But what do they want?”
“They want you to die.”
“Why do they hate us so much?”
He sighed. “They don’t hate you. They simply want you not to be. It’s a genetic cleansing, a mass extermination. They view the current situation as a mistake, which they’re trying to correct. They feel that they are ordained to take your place. Subspecies 61, the ‘normal’ human, has no value to them, except maybe as an occasional food source in a pinch.”
“They’re cannibals?” Her voice spiked a little.
“Only some of them. I meant a food resource for their war animals. Do you know what a daeodon is?”
“No.”
“It’s a nasty breed of entelodon, a prehistoric boar. Picture a predatory pig, twelve feet long, seven feet tall at the shoulder, jaws like a crocodile. It eats anything, and once you mess with its genetics, it gets smart and breeds fast. They need a lot of meat.”
When he opened his eyes, he found her looking at him. Karina sat submerged so deeply, only her face floated above the water. Warm color had returned to her cheeks. Her hair, slicked by the shower, swirled in the roiling water.
Mmmmm. Mine.
Lucas could reach out and pull her to him and run his hands up and down her body, to feel the heavy fullness of her br**sts, the curve of her ass . . . If it wasn’t for fatigue, and the fact that she trusted him, anchoring him to the spot, he might have done it.
His thoughts must’ve reflected on his face, because she pulled as far from him as the tub would allow. A haunted look claimed her face, sharpening her features. Like a stray dog, he thought, shivering, scared, and ready to bite. He held the key to her: turn it one way and break her; turn it the other and the pressure would ease. He’d been just like that a few years ago. The memory of being scared of everyone was still fresh.
“You know I can’t stop you. What consequences do you fear?” Karina asked.
“Right now I just don’t want to fight with you,” Lucas said. “I fight with Arthur, with Daniel, with Henry. I’m tired.” And he wanted her to stop jerking back every time he looked at her. It made him feel like he was a monster and he had enough help with that already.
“If you want peace, let me have Emily.”
“No.”
She clenched her teeth.
“Maybe later. Down the road.”
“Why not now?”
Irritation flared in him. “Because I can’t watch the two of you every moment of every day and you are stealing knives.”
“The knife was for protection. I won’t take another one. I won’t try to stab you again . . .”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.”
She became utterly still. “Oh, my God.” Her eyes widened. “You think I would hurt my own daughter?”
“You wouldn’t be the first one.” Not by a long shot. “Shock is a bitch. Especially when mixed with venom f**king with your hormones.”