Chapter 63

This project is the most important of my life. It will be my legacy.

—Marshall Hyde’s private notes (circa 2057)

“HE WOULD’VE KILLED you without a qualm if you hadn’t had a twin who he valued.”

Theo didn’t react to Keja’s barb—that truth was no surprise to her. “What did he make you do?”

“He made me a monster.” No tone, her eyes obsidian.

Sensing the rage in her aunt rising again, Theo shook her head and leaned on the truth. “If you were a monster, Aunt Keja, Janine and Santo would be dead.”

Keja looked at her, unblinking and unmoving.

“You mentioned Queenie, too,” Theo continued. “Did you get all the patients out?”

A blink, and Keja leaned back in her seat. “Of course I did, Theo.” That same chilling smile, of a marionette come to life. “I might be a monster, but I have standards.”

Theo’s blood ran cold. She knew without a single doubt that Keja hadn’t done that. Only a minority of the patients would’ve been like Santo and Janine—functional to the extent that they could live under a carer’s watch. The others would’ve needed to be institutionalized—and where would Keja have found an institution willing to take so many people without question?

“He was furious when you began to act out,” Keja said all at once. “He never put it that way, of course. But if he could’ve murdered you to wipe out the error, he would have.”

“He broke my brain,” Theo said flatly. “The rages didn’t come from nowhere.”

“It happens with Santo and Nene as well.” A raised eyebrow at Theo’s inhale. “Oh, Cissi didn’t tell you that? She is a loyal employee. But yes, all of the ‘successes’ suffer from the same unfortunate secondary effect.”

Theo couldn’t stop the question on her lips. “Did they ever work out a way to treat it?”

“Mood-altering drugs.” Keja named three. “They work, but turn us into zombies. No mind, no life.”

Her words snuffed out the tiny flicker of hope in Theo. It must’ve shown in her expression because Keja said, “It’s all right, Theo. You don’t have to worry about the rages anymore.” A blank mask slipping over her, the shift so visible that it made Theo shudder.

“If you hadn’t existed, if your twin hadn’t existed,” Keja said in a high, almost childlike voice, “he’d have taken me home. I was the first true success. So you see why I have to get rid of you. Then he’ll have no choice. He’ll take me home.”

It was a terrible, heartbreaking, and horrifying glimpse into Keja’s mutilated psyche. “You’re the Moscow Ripper, aren’t you?” she said, so stunned by the realization that she couldn’t even be afraid. “Why?”

“I thought it would be obvious.” The mask of . . . nothingness never shifted, never altered. “I thought they were you. Not rational, but I’m unfortunately not always rational. A red mist in my mind, and in that mist, they’re all you.”

Keja lifted her weapon. “But this time, I’ve got the right blonde. Father will come for me. I’m the only one left.”

Theo tipped herself sideways off her chair, slamming down hard, with one arm of the chair digging into her. Pain sunburst through her damaged nerves as Keja’s shot caught her a glancing blow on one hip, spreading numbness up and down along that side.

That pain awakened her simmering rage, a monstrous red beast with glowing eyes, so much anger to it that it hazed her brain. Before it could steal her mind, steal her ability to act with reason, Theo grabbed for the beads at her throat, ripped them off, and threw them at her aunt.

As Keja hissed at being blinded by the resulting shower of smoke and light, Theo managed to get out the tiny grenades, throw them at Keja’s feet. But even as shards of the wooden floor flew up to embed themselves in Keja’s skin, Theo saw the glitter of silver in Keja’s hand . . . the blade meant for Theo’s throat. And she realized she’d made a mistake in her shaking fury: the grenades had exploded a fraction too far from her aunt to do any substantial damage.

Screaming, her maddened aunt threw herself at Theo, both of them injured, both of them fighting for their lives. Only Theo couldn’t get to the blade in the pocket of her jeans, her brain a cauldron of black rage incapable of reason.

YAKOV stopped playing dead the instant Keja jumped on Theo.

His body remained mostly paralyzed from the blow he’d taken. The only reason he wasn’t dead was that he was a bear with the attendant muscle mass; he didn’t know if Keja had miscalculated and given him too strong a shot, or if she’d intended for him to die, and he didn’t care.

All he cared about was saving Theo.

The dream threatened to bleed into his consciousness, suffocate him in its grip. “Fuck that,” he said, and took deep gulps of the air in an effort to get as much oxygen into his system as possible. His arms still felt like lead, his eyes the only part of him that he could truly move. But he wasn’t about to give up.

His great-grandfather hadn’t left him with a drop of foresight in his blood so that he could watch Theo die. His chest rumbled with a growl as Keja landed a punch to Theo’s face that made something crunch. But Theo hit her as hard, her elbow taking out Keja’s nose in a spray of blood at the same time that she managed to use her other arm to make Keja drop the knife.

That’s my girl, he thought, man and bear in agreement.

His fingers flexed, sensation creeping back in razor-sharp pinpricks. Ignoring the agony, he began to crawl his hand back toward the holster positioned in the small of his back. It wasn’t his favored position when he had to wear a weapon—he far preferred the shoulder, but he’d put it there the instant he’d understood that he and Theo were on a collision course with Fate.

It was the same reason he’d chosen the sound-wave weapon while they were arming themselves today. The dream had warned him that he’d be all but immobile. So he’d chosen a weapon that could be activated with the simple push of an old-fashioned button. One push. Just one.

Keja screamed as Theo slammed a flat hand against her ear, possibly rupturing her eardrum. But though Theo had managed to roll on top of her, Keja was a brutal fighter and somehow got her hands around Theo’s throat.

Fight, Theo, fight!

They rolled out of his limited field of vision.

He heard Theo make a deep, wordless sound . . . then another crunch. Keja screamed again.

Followed by a grunt from Theo.

The two rolled back into view, Keja’s face a mask of red from her broken nose, one side of Theo’s face already slick red and swelling.

Yakov’s bear raged inside his skin—he directed all that energy into his hand, into the infinitesimal crawling movement that had him touching the spot below his T-shirt that held the holster he’d altered in the kitchen that morning, cutting away the part of it designed to cushion the button in order to avoid accidental detonation.

He nudged up the T-shirt just as Keja twisted away and when she came up in a crouch across from Theo, she had the knife once more in hand. “I didn’t want to do this to you,” she said, her voice bloody and wet. “I wanted to give you a gentler death. But this’ll do as well.”

She slashed out with the blade, and it became obvious that she had the advantage. Theo had managed to grab her own knife—but her hand was too bloody and it slipped out of her grasp.

Keja swiped at her again as Theo tried to retrieve it—and got Theo on the hand, scarlet dripping to the floor. Theo slipped while scrambling backward, and fell hard, hitting her head . . . just as Yakov’s fingers brushed the on button.

The sound bomb wasn’t a precision device and would knock them all out, but Yakov would fall last and recover the fastest. The weapon was designed to advantage changelings. Yakov pushed the button as an eerily silent Keja jumped on a dazed Theo, her blade aimed at Theo’s throat.

It should have worked. It should have dropped her then and there.

But Keja was a Tk in a blinding rage induced by an operation that had altered her neural structure. A Tk with just enough power to “throw” her weapon right before the sound wave reached her.

The blade sliced across Theo’s throat before it spun away.

Time seemed to move in slow motion, blood pulsing over Theo’s hands as her eyes met his.

No.

No one was going to hurt his Theo ever again!

He refused to let go.

Yakov reached and saw her lift one bloodred hand toward him as the sound wave crashed into all their brains with thunderous force. Theo! It was his last thought before the world went scarlet.

Then.

Nothing.