Crucified: The Rise of an Urban Legend (Swann Series Book 9) Read online

  “You only have to do this once,” I tell him.

  “I know.”

  “Just let me start.”

  He looks at me, eyes squirming with desperation, his entire demeanor more representative of Brayden James than of Augustin Sandino. Sitting next to me is not an Adonis of a man but a screaming insecurity in need of that which we all crave so mercilessly: acceptance.

  I understand the feeling all too well. I understand the need, the obsession, the crippling, crippling nature of it.

  “Get out, be a man,” I tell him.

  He nods, opens the door, makes the death row march up the pathway leading to the front door. His arm weighs a thousand pounds, his finger this hesitant thing that can’t touch the doorbell, much less press it.

  Moving him aside, I push the button, listen to the doorbell chime and say, “If you shit yourself now, it’s coffin nails on your ego. Sack up.”

  His nostrils flare as they draw a sharp, confident breath; his entire state changes, and for a second, he feels like someone else. I glance at him and his color is back.

  “You’re an alpha,” I say. “No matter what your father thinks or says, you’re an alpha.”

  His chest puffs up the slightest bit.

  “You’re a man now, August. You’re my man. Be my alpha.”

  His father answers the door, and he’s bigger than I imagined. Uglier with that I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-much look on his face. If I told you he was imposing as hell, you’d probably roll your eyes and say, “Uh, yeah…no kidding.”

  “Can I help you kids?” he says.

  “Hi, Mr. James,” I say, “I’m Savannah Van Duyn, a friend of Brayden’s.”

  He looks at me, then at August, who is holding his eyes just fine, then back to me. “Where is my son?”

  “He’s on his way,” I say. “I guess there was a mix up with taxis.”

  “And who are you?” he asks, looking at August.

  He steps forward, extends a hand and says, “Augustin Sandino, sir.”

  Okay…

  “You are every bit as beautiful a young lady as Brayden claimed you were, but behind those eyes, I wonder the trouble you’ve gotten him in to.” He says this jovially, but there’s deep meaning in his words, a jagged edge you’d almost miss if you weren’t as intuitive as me.

  “Are you going to invite us in, or make us stand out here like a couple of Bible salesmen?” I say, exerting my own dose of awkward charm.

  Naturally, he invites us in.

  Before closing the door, he pokes his head back out to look down the street. You can see for miles because as flat landed as this place is, there’s nothing to obstruct the view but open fields, fences and cow turds.

  He closes the door and says, “Can I get you two something to drink?”

  We both shake our heads and I say, “I can only stay for a moment, but I wanted to meet you.”

  “After our last conversation…on the phone…I wouldn’t have imagined you’d foster such a desire. I’ve been wrong before, though, and I’ll be wrong again. I just didn’t think I’d be wrong about that. About you.”

  “Reality isn’t always what you hope it will be,” I tell him.

  Just then a gorgeous woman walks into the room with a couple of mineral waters and sets them down before us. Brayden’s father—a man of strength and size, but not good looks—has a natural ease about him around this younger, extremely good looking Southern woman.

  Now I see why Brayden might have had an uncomfortable crush on her.

  I look at him, and he’s looking at his step-mother, Lenore, and she’s looking at August thinking he’s flat out gorgeous, but that she can’t think things like that being a married woman.

  Her eyes tell me none of this, and her demeanor dares not whisper a word of her desire to her husband, or their guests (us), but it’s there, in the air, in her soul. It’s there and I can feel it and I want to tell her he’s mine, but I’m not going to be jealous.

  I’m entirely too dangerous an individual for an emotion as petty as jealousy.

  “Oh, boy,” I hear myself say, eyes on the wife, my eyes simmering with knowledge, almost like I’m drawing a line in the sand. Then, to Mr. James: “So, as you know, I’ve undergone some genetic modification at school.”

  “I’m not sure I feel comfortable discussing these kinds of things in front of my wife,” he starts.

  “It’s okay, honey—” she says, but he lifts his hand.

  Now his eyes are on August. If I bounce off his mind, I’m afraid I’ll pick up thoughts of him starting to understand the situation. He’s not a stupid man. He’s not imperceptive.

  “What about you, good lookin’?” he says to August, his mouth turned down, his fingers gripping the arm of the chair he’s sitting on, almost like his conduct belies calm—if only a touch manic—but inside dams are breaking and the floods are about to usher in a cold rush of anger. “You been modified, too?”

  My skin prickles, all the little hairs on my arms standing. Something in the air changes. He’s seeing it, fearing it, convincing himself August is really Brayden, and Brayden is now August. If I don’t do something, all hell’s going to break loose, present company be damned.

  “Look at him, sir,” I cut in. “Of course he’s been modified. Just about everyone at Astor Academy has had some procedure or another. It’s why they pay off the teachers and the staff. It’s how the secrets don’t leak, although, with social media being what it is these days, the shelf life on a secret will soon be measured by minutes rather than years.”

  “What’s your name?” he all but growls at August.

  “You know his gosh damn name,” I say, standing before him. I may be small in form, but what I lack in mass I make up for in ferocity. “You know who he is and why he’s here. Why he looks like this, and not like you. You know this, and it’s time to accept it. It’s time to accept him.”

  Standing ramrod stiff, the second wife stifles a cry with her hand.

  Now she knows, too.

  “Get out of my house!” Lloyd screams, the devil in his eyes, the heat of his rage blowing out everywhere.

  August stands to leave.

  “Not you!” he hisses. Looking at me, he points in my face and says, “Her.” Then back to August, he says, “You sit your ass in that chair and stay there until you can tell me why in God’s name you would undo everything me and your mother did.”

  “You know why,” he says, low, looking up at his father beneath hooded eyelids and a held down head. There is fire in his voice for the first time. Flashing back, I heard it in him the day I landed in that lab in New Mexico, that day just before the bombs went off and killed us, that day when he’d killed all those people guarding the lab just to get to me. I heard a strength in him that I’d never heard before in Brayden James. But I hear it now. Perhaps this is ground zero. Perhaps this is where he gets his balls.

  “Get out!” he roars at me, the chords straining in his neck, his hands gripping the arms of the chair he’s sitting on so tight the wood is beginning to whine and splinter.

  My own temper flares. I begged Brayden not to change. I didn’t want him to become August, but I knew he would because I’m me—a mind reader, a traveler, a justice junkie who can’t leave well enough alone.

  But Brayden was none of these things. In my book, Brayden James was good enough.

  I lift a hand toward the door and it swings open. Silence suffuses the room. Stalking through the open door, knowing August’s father is freaking out about what I just did, I don’t look back. Part of me wants to pull the door shut behind me, close it like a civilized girl meeting her future father-in-law for the first time and being rejected, but I don’t. I walk through it and with my mind I slam the door shut so hard the door frame stress cracks down the middle like a gunshot, the glass breaking loose of the frame completely.

  Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that. In fact, I’m kind of embarrassed that I’ve done that, but in my mind, no one talks to me like th
at. No. One.

  The cab is waiting as instructed. August rushes out the front door and calls to me. I don’t turn to look at him, I just get in the cab and tell the driver to take me back to the airport. Seeing what happened, he’s quick to comply.

  Not half a mile down the road, my cell phone chirps.

  It’s a text.

  August is wanting to know if I’m okay. I text him YES. He says he’ll head back to Palo Alto if his father doesn’t kill him first. I send him a smiley face then try to put it all past me. Whatever issues those two need to work out, August’s father saw that I’m much larger than him, but I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. Still, he has to know the old way of doing things no longer works.

  This is a bold new era, and we’re in the driver’s seat. Either that or I’ve seriously become a world class butthole.

  Yeah, that’s probably it.

  By the time I get to the airport, my ego deflates and I realize I handled everything all wrong. I came on too fast, too heated. I’m about to board when I decide something important. I make the call. August answers right away.

  “Please put your father on the phone,” I say as gently as I can.

  At this point, I’m thinking I might miss the flight I just paid a small fortune for. This is more important, though.

  Finally he answers.

  “Mr. James, I owe you an apology. But I want you to hear me out. I didn’t want this for your son. I am in love with him, but I was in love with him the way he was. He did this. All on his own. I begged him to reconsider, but I saw it in his eyes there was no way back for him.”

  “He said as much,” the old man grumbled.

  “I shouldn’t have been so abrupt in your household. It wasn’t my place. Now that I’ve had some time to think about my actions, I realize you lost your son today, that in him changing his appearance, he was in fact rejecting you. Although he doesn’t see it like this, you do and I was insensitive to that, and so that’s why I needed to call you, to talk to you. Mr. James, I’m sorry.”

  His breathing changes and I refuse to speak before he does.

  “Thank you,” he finally replies, and I can tell by the tone of his voice he means it.

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t get a choice in my transformation, so I’m doing the best I can with what I have.”

  “We should all be so blessed,” he says, thinking I’m a gorgeous girl crying about how I’m so damn beautiful.

  “You see one blessing, Mr. James, but you do not see the thousand curses simmering just below the surface of my looks. Perhaps one day you’ll ask about that, and on that day, I will tell you exactly why I didn’t want Brayden changing the way I have.”

  “What you’re talking about, does that have anything to do with my front door being wrecked to all hell?” he asks. Rolling his brain, I realize his thoughts have just caught fire with a dozen questions, a dozen more fears, and worlds of concern for his son.

  “It does. And I’ll pay for the door. I’m sorry about that as well.”

  The overhead speaker is saying my flight is on its final boarding call and I’m walking to my gate, handing the man my pass, being one of those rude cell phone people I used to make nasty faces at.

  “It’s fine,” he says.

  “If there is one measure of comfort I can give you, it’s that with August at my side, you will never have to fear for his safety. I love your son. He’s about to become my entire world.”

  Again, a phone line full of silence. Then: “If I misjudged you, I’ll be the first to admit it, but if not, if something happens to my son—”

  “Something’s already happened to your son and I suggest you let him tell you what it is so that you can give him the one thing he wants so badly from you, and that is your approval as a father. In my eyes, and the eyes of his peers, your son is a big deal. A really big deal. I have to go, Mr. James. I pray that all my bad first impressions won’t have a lasting influence. Once you get to know me, you’ll see I’m as sweet as cherry pie.”

  He laughs and says, “Tell that to my front door.”

  Then I’m on the plane, trying not to fall asleep, unwilling to have the open vaults in my head draw out any more bad memories and slumbering f-bombs. We take off, heading toward San Francisco International Airport. Outside, the sky is growing dark, the earth below illuminated by the glittering cityscape and the red and white dots of the going-home traffic.

  Untethering my mind, reaching out into the black void, I find Holland. He’s not yet asleep, but Skye is, and when I get to her, she’s coming with me, even if Alice Jr. needs to lose her life in the process. Which she won’t because I’m nice. I’m reasonable. And above all else, I’m the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen.

  Yeah, right.

  Somewhere between trying not to fall asleep and feeling absolutely spent, I order a drink, then sit back and subconsciously reflect, not on Brayden’s transformation to August, or even on the showdown between me and his dad, but the past.

  The past where I went into the future.

  “What the hell is this?” I hear myself ask. This was days ago. This was me arriving in the future after leaving the lab and the start of August’s transformation.

  This was New York, circa 2147.

  So I landed on a sidewalk just outside my New York home not knowing what the hell was going on. The sky was grey, the air full of ash. All around me, cars lined the street, but no one moved. A cursory look around me had me thinking everything had been shelled to shit, disintegrated, all sharp edges and rust.

  Behind me, a door opens and a door closes. Footsteps walk through the inches of ash, making their way toward me. Two sets of feet. Two people.

  My senses tether out, find them, identify them. I don’t look behind me; I don’t feel threatened. Now that I know who they are, I’m actually relieved they’re there.

  Alice is an adult now. Beautiful. An angel with black, black eyes and skin so thin you can almost see the inner workings underneath: veins, musculature, the more detailed network of arteries. She wears a hooded cape, her face somewhat hidden from view; on her hands are metal type decorations, although they are not statement pieces as much as they look like survival tools. On her index finger is a silver claw, bloodstained and sharp. Beside this cloaked Alice, holding her hand like some rag-tag child, is Alice Jr., the Alice from my time.

  “Proud of your handiwork?” Alice Jr. asks, looking up at me. The child almost never speaks, so when she does, begrudgingly I listen. Part of me wants to know why she’s followed me here, since this is not her world, but then looking at the older Alice, I know it will be.

  Looking at older Alice, I say, “Are you from here, or did you follow me from Holland’s lab?”

  She doesn’t look at me.

  If the center of this version of Manhattan was anything but a wasteland, I’d swear by her lack of response she didn’t hear me. But I know different.

  The little bitch hears me just fine.

  “Take your pick,” she finally says, “and either answer will be right.”

  Her little black eyes are scanning the wasteland around us. Her attention finally falls to me and I bear the physical weight of her gaze. She is not that Alice. This Alice is the Alice from here. From now. This is the hardened, heartless version of the girl living in a nuclear bomb timeline.

  Alice Jr. lets go of her hand and walks off into the gloom. She has that stalking walk like she’s hunting, which is concerning, her being so small and not dressed for war.

  “The air isn’t right,” I finally admit. My lungs are searing hot, a condition of both the nasty air and the distinct lack of oxygen. I nearly clutch my chest, stopping short only because doing so might be construed as a sign of weakness.

  Still, I struggle to breathe.

  “Look around,” older Alice says. Beneath her dark cloak, she’s dressed head-to-toe in studded leather battle gear. Not battle gear that looks like something you’d wear to a club if you are into the Goth scene, or bloo
d drinking with wannabe vampires. No, this is more like a hardened cast you’d wear to save your ass in a knife fight, or survive a bombing, or recklessly charge into the hot center of an all-out war.

  The reality of this existence is crushing. This isn’t a game. And Alice’s outfit sure as hell isn’t some kind of fashion statement in response to some kind of misguided youth, or whatever.

  “I’ve been looking around,” I tell the older Alice. “And this place looks like Hell.”

  “It’s only barely inhabitable after the blast of 2134. Now this, a second bomb.”

  “Why would anyone stay?” I hear myself ask. Ash dusts my hair, flitters down my cheeks and nose, settles on the ledges of my shoulders. I brush my face, the tiny flakes causing me to itch.

  “Wait for it,” Alice says.

  “Wait for what?” I ask.

  “Not you.”

  There’s no one else around. Alice is watching the gloom. It lifts a little, not much, but enough. Families appear; they’re on the move, slinking through the park quickly, quietly as they can. I watch them hustle from one point to the next. It’s clear they’re terrified of someone.

  Or something.

  In the distance, the sounds of pain-filled shrieking put an end to the quiet. All around us, the snowy texture of the air thins out, becomes more white than smoky. A blot of fire cuts through the sky—which must be the sun—although for a second it seems much larger than I remember. Much brighter and considerably hotter.

  “It’s coming,” Alice says. “Can you feel it? The attack?”

  There’s a niggling in my soul, an ominous feeling I can’t describe.

  “Yes,” I tell her. “I can feel it.”

  Off to the right, standing in the middle of the gloomy street, Alice Jr.’s hands are at her sides, palms forward, ready to conjure fire and death if necessary.

  Looking at her, my eyes stinging, my lungs ablaze, I can feel her in my bones, in my psyche, in my soul. Her eyes bleed to black as her entire body bristles with energy, with an otherworldly glow. Plumes of smoke lift from her pores, small at first, then more pronounced. Like she’s heating up. Or about to blow.