The Nine Lives of Chloe King (44 page)

“So the betrayal is complete,” Mr. Rezza said wonderingly. “Of the Order, your forefathers, your own father, your mother—”

“Don’t you
dare
bring Mom into this,” Brian yelled, aiming one of the shuriken at his dad.

“I cannot—will not—protect you from whatever action the Order takes against you,” his father said levelly, not looking at the weapon targeted on him. “Or random acts of revenge.” He said this to Brian, but his eyes flicked toward Richard.

“Will you
listen
to yourselves?” Chloe said, suddenly weary. She had watched the whole fight between father and son in silence and finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Kidnapping innocent people … hired assassins … revenge and protection and betrayal and weird secret societies that go from generation to generation. It’s insane! Both you
and
the Mai. This is America in the third millennium.
AD.
Leave all that other shit back in Europe and the Dark Ages where it belongs. You think of yourselves as self-appointed protectors of the human race, but you’re nothing but a group of barely restrained vigilantes waging a war on people who never did anything to you!”

“The Mai killed my wife,” Whit began, with great emotion.

“No, they didn’t. Brian told me. She was killed on a raid that
you
sent her out on.”

Chloe’s mom turned to look at Whit. “You lied even about that? That’s
sick!”

“She wouldn’t have
been
killed if a human hadn’t been attacked and killed by the Mai, forcing us to call the raid—”

“Okay, just stop,” Chloe said, throwing up her hand. “Each side can claim a million random violences done back and forth on them—”

“Since the Slaughter five thousand years ago, when you wiped out an entire country of humans,” Whit interrupted. “And I will
not
be talked to by a teenage girl, Mai
or
human, like that. As for ’random violences,’ Miss King …” He stepped forward as he spoke, glaring at her. “While luring you out of hiding was important, we’ve done this to
protect your mother
—who was as good as dead the moment you took up with Sergei.”

Chloe’s eyes widened.

“Oh yes,” Whit chuckled, “I know Sergei. And his habits … Did you know that male lions, when they take over a pride, often kill all the cubs fathered by other cats?”

That gave Chloe pause.

“We kidnapped your mother for her
own
sake. To keep her safe.”

“It’s amazing the lies you continue to tell.” Sergei came tapping up the previously empty road, his expensive shoes echoing against the pavement. Behind him were seven deadly looking Mai, all trained kizekh. Unlike a troop of humans, they didn’t march in unison: they prowled and sniffed the wind and kept their unblinking slit eyes on the enemy.

“There are four more hidden behind the house and two over there,” one of them hissed to Sergei. “They reek of machine oil. … They must all have weapons, guns, except for the two behind that bush.”

“I suppose this was inevitable, wasn’t it, Sergei?” Whit said easily, turning from Chloe as if she were dismissed. Richard tightened his grip on Mrs. King.

“Nothing is inevitable,” Sergei replied crisply. He cocked his head, and two of the Mai disappeared into the shadows to take care of whoever they found there. “Since when has the Order stooped to kidnapping innocent women?”

“As soon as you sent out assassins to kill her, you murdering animal!” Brian’s dad began to lose his cool; black anger shone in his eyes.

A gunshot went off, muffled, somewhere among the houses. No one jumped except for Chloe. There was a thump and a growl somewhere else—like they were in the middle of a horror movie, with horrible things happening all around them in the dark.

“Um, was this little secret meeting of mine secret to
anyone
?” Chloe asked, partly of the world, partly of Brian. Mostly it was a failing attempt to lighten the situation. She had tried to fix everything herself and avoid a fight—and what she’d done was bring the opposing parties together, armed, at an out-of-the-way place where no one would have any idea what was going on.

Young, feminine screaming—and a not-so-feminine male shriek—came from the bushes.

“Wait! We’re not sworders—uh, Bladers—don’t hurt us!”

“Amy?” Chloe said, recognizing the confused voice. Two of the kizekh slunk into the open, one with an iron grip around Amy and Paul.

“They’re with me,” Kim said, stepping out of the darkness. Alyec was next to her, cursing in Russian and wiping blood off his arm.

“How did you … ?” Chloe looked at them in wonderment.
Everyone
really was here.

“I am the best tracker in the Pride,” Kim said, drawing herself up straight.

“And the walkie-talkie I gave you?” Amy said, stepping carefully away from the scary-looking soldier with his mouth open and canines bared. “It’s got GPS.”

“We knew where you were every minute. We tracked you on it.” Paul was camo-chic, in army pants and a tight-fitting camouflage windbreaker.

Chloe had a thousand questions: How had they all gotten to know each other? How had they gotten together? How had Amy and Paul reacted to Kim? How were Kim and Alyec getting along?

But most of all, she felt like sobbing in relief. All of her closest friends had come to help her out. To save her.

“Paul, Amy, go
home!”
Mrs. King ordered. “You too, Chloe. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you need to get out of here.”

“The deal was Chloe for you,” Whit said, pulling his attention away from the four new teenagers and back to Sergei. “We are prepared to let that deal continue, no questions asked, no blood, everyone goes home safely.”

“You’re trading a woman’s life for that of her own
daughter?”
Brian said bitterly. “I guess I should have seen that coming. After Mom … I should have known.”

“You shut up, Brian. I’ve had just about enough of your lip about your mother for this lifetime,” his dad growled. “You’re unworthy to even speak her name.”

“Ah, father and son.” Sergei sighed. “I do so love the warmth in human families.”

“What would you know about that?” Richard demanded, jamming his gun into the side of Anna’s face for emphasis. “Don’t cats screw anything that moves and then move on?”

“You’d better muzzle the child, Whitney. Don’t let him start what you can’t finish,” Sergei said, waving his hand in the air. It was clawed. Chloe wasn’t sure if Brian’s dad understood what that meant: that he was just about ready to attack.

“Finish?
Like when you
finished off
entire villages—”

“That was five thousand years ago,” Kim pointed out as calmly as possible. She and Alyec had slowly put themselves in between Amy and Paul and the rest of the people there. Amy bobbed her head around so she could watch what was going on; Paul just looked confused.

“Um, yeah.” Chloe cleared her throat and spoke up. Just to let people know that she was still there. Wasn’t
she
the reason everyone was here tonight?
No, I’m just an excuse,
she realized, looking at the fanatical faces around her. Both sides were itching for a fight, a real one, after years of uneasy sort-of truce in this country. Led by two middle-aged leaders who felt they had something to prove.

“Maybe we can talk about this,” Chloe’s mother suggested, also as calmly as she could. “There seems to be a long-standing dispute between your two groups here.”

Chloe was horrified to see tears running down her mother’s cheeks—of fear or pain as the gun was jabbed into her temple, she wasn’t sure.
My mother.
Something inside Chloe finally snapped.

“Sir! Ramirez is down!” A young man wearing an outfit similar to Richard’s came running forward with a gun, four neat lines of blood across his face. “We were attacked from behind—he’s bleeding badly, sir. But we got one of them
good.”

“A preemptive strike, Sergei?” Whit demanded, pulling a short, curved sword out of his coat.

With a snarl, the female kizekh who had been arguing with Kim leapt at the soldier.

Ellen, her name is Ellen.
Chloe had watched
Star Wars
with her just a few evenings before. She was completely Mai now, eyes slit and fangs bared and tearing into the young man like he was paper.

From then on everything happened in slow motion.

Silently, Richard took the gun from the side of Chloe’s mom’s head and pointed it at the lion woman. Almost in aftereffect, muffled blasts afflicted Chloe’s ears, three bangs, one after the other.

Brian immediately made for Richard, a look of raw hatred on his face.

Amy and Paul looked at each other, confused, then Amy screamed ever so slowly; Chloe couldn’t make out the words, but she and Paul began to run.

More Tenth Bladers came out of the night. Chloe was stunned by their numbers—at least a dozen; far more than the kizekh had thought. They must have been hiding downwind. Why had Brian’s dad brought them all? It was just supposed to be her and him. Even the dickhead holding the gun to her mom’s head was a surprise….

As in a bizarre instructional film about reproduction, each Tenth Blader found a Mai, each Mai found a Tenth Blader, and they all began throwing weapons or struggling in the dust. Even Kim and Alyec. The look on Kim’s face—white-eyed horror turning to rage as someone attacked her, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. Alyec tried to shove her out of the way….

Chloe didn’t know what to do.

She had come here to save her mother. And now what? What
could
she do?

No one was attacking her; the struggle was going on inches from her feet, the very one she’d been trying to prevent.

Sergei neatly avoided Whit’s attack with the knife, moving far more agilely than a man of his age should have been able to. Before Brian could reach Richard, Sergei brought his square hand full of claws down like it was a giant paw and cuffed him squarely on the side of the face; Richard fell down instantly, and Sergei neatly retrieved the gun as he did.

“Nobody move!” Sergei demanded, spinning around and leveling the gun at Mrs. King. “Call off your men, Whit, or I’ll shoot your captive.”

Chloe couldn’t quite believe what was happening. It made sense—the Tenth Bladers would do anything to protect a human, but still … was he serious?

Paul and Amy froze; Mrs. King did, too.

Suddenly Chloe had a path, a thing to do.

She ran, sprinting for her mom. That was why she was there.

“No!” Brian screamed, and made for Sergei. “Leave her alone!”

And Sergei fired.

It could have been meant for Brian, or it could have been meant for her mom. Chloe would never know. All she was sure of was that this was her fault, her doing. She dug a claw into the ground and pushed herself forward.

There was very little pain when the bullet first entered her flesh.

But when it hit her heart, it was like her entire body caught on fire.

“Chloe! No!”

She had no idea who was screaming: it could have been male, female, or a number of people.

She crumpled to the ground.

Her heart was very loud in her ears, and the ground was very cold under her head. The rest of her was on fire, as though she were being burned alive.

She listened interestedly to the muted sounds around her and the slow thumping of her heart.

After a few more beats, it stopped entirely.

Twenty-six

Blackness. Echoes.

The sounds of something distant that might have been water dropping, but thicker. Wind howled somewhere, but no breeze touched her face.

Chloe recognized where she was even before she opened her eyes.

She was farther back from the edge of the cliff than the first time, when she had come to this place after falling off Coit Tower. Far below was what looked like a pool of mercury that bubbled and rippled uncertainly.

She noticed things she hadn’t before: directly overhead there were millions and millions of stars and galaxies and strange planets she couldn’t have named, far more terrifying than the emptiness she had thought was there. It was like she was at the end of the universe, the end of everything.

Something screamed, low and insistent. When she squinted, Chloe could just make out shadowy forms flickering in and out of sight, just beyond her vision, impossible to hold for more than a second. Like they weren’t there—or like they were an optical illusion.

Chloe backed away to the edge of the cliff, putting as much distance between them and her as she could.

“Chloe.
Saht.”

It was a whisper, a purr, and a growl all combined.

One shadow hovered closer than the rest, lingering.

“Daughter.”

“M-mom?” Chloe asked, quavering. The shade had no recognizable form, slipping back and forth from something vaguely bestial to something upright.

“Now you know your destiny.
Go back.”

“But wait—what is this?” Chloe asked desperately, trying to grasp at things she knew in her heart were fleeting and impermanent. “Where am I? What happened to you?”

The shadow wavered and shifted, like there was extremely hot air between them.

“Return to your living mother. She is reality now—as I am, in your past.”

Chloe didn’t understand. She opened her mouth to ask something more, but a rush of hot air hit her on the chest like a fist. Chloe flew backward off the cliff, into the darkness below.

Life, when she returned to it, was pain. She reached into her chest with her claw and with an agonized groan pulled out the bullet that was lodged there. Blood poured down her front and slowed to a trickle as she watched. Soon it stopped entirely, and she felt an itching where the skin and sinew began to knit.

Sounds began to make sense around her, not that she cared. Murmurs of, “She is the One!” and, “Why isn’t she dead?” and just, “Chloe!” from the people who simply loved her. The fighting seemed to have stopped; several of the Mai were on their knees before her.