in a pack or something.
“She loved to talk about the old ways. About how shifters were supposed to take care of each other, how we’d find mates and raise pups and all that shit no one does anymore. It was like, no matter what had happened to her, she still had all these dreams for what the world could be again, if someone was willing to try to make it happen. After she died, Pale decided to be that person. We decided to help him.”
“So it’s really real then? Resurrection?”
He nodded, solemn and still. “It’s home.”
Home. She’d had one once, a place of safety that made your heart warm just to see. To remember. “My home was in Iowa,” she whispered, thinking back. “At 218 Humboldt Lane. Can you believe I still remember the address? I haven’t seen it in years but I can still see the numbers on the side of the house. Horton wasn’t a much bigger town than this one. Everyone knew everyone else on our block. We had a neighborhood grandmother, and the kids had run of the entire street, especially in the summer. Most of all, I loved our house. It had brick all around the bottom and Mom’s roses were twined up the porch supports. And it was blue. The only blue house on the block. I used to love waking up to smell the roses peeking in the windows. Or Mom’s fresh bread…”
The corner of his mouth lifted and his eyes unfocused a little more. “My mother used to make fresh bread, too. She’d let the loaves cool on the window sill and we’d bet each other to try to steal one without her noticing.”
She could just imagine how tantalizing that smell must have been to a trio of young boys. Walking stomachs, all of them. “How’d that go for you?”
“Almost lost a couple of knuckles to her wooden spoon,” he replied with a laugh that sounded almost as rusted as her own. “She was a freakin’ sharpshooter with that thing. I got cracked in the back of the head with it once—” The present came crashing back to him, it seemed, because his stare fixed on her pointedly.
“You learn to be a good pebble thrower in the facility,” she replied, not in the least bit sorry about the rock she’d thrown. “Doesn’t look like sticks or stones have hurt you very much.”
“Funny.” The hot edge of his anger seemed averted, at least, despite the sarcasm. He wrapped his big hands around his coffee mug, looking down into the dark liquid. “So, you were in one of those kid camps?”
She almost had a bite of chop to her lips, her hand locking in place as she realized what she’d admitted. She pushed the meat into her mouth, searching him for some kind of reaction, but his expression was as calm as a pond in winter. “That what you all call them on the outside?”
His nod was slight. “Those of us who know about them. Didn’t think anyone came out of them alive.”
They don’t. Lia put her fork down, her appetite waning. How many kids had she seen taken from their dorms, never to come back? How often had they come from the test rooms, wishing they’d never returned? Too many, and most of them young. Too young to tempt a scientist with the promise of fertility to study. They’d been used for chemical warfare development. For anything that required spare parts or basic nervous systems. They’d been little more than lab rats, plentiful and expendable. “It’s not common, no.”
“How’d you manage it?”
“Very carefully.” She busied her hands by shoving the fork into as many pieces of vegetable as she could get to stay on and shoving them in her mouth. It had taken a year. Months of memorizing where the guards liked to stand, how long the cameras spent pointing in each direction…using her claws to sharpen the rods of her cot into blades capable of cutting through anything her claws couldn’t. It had been painstaking because she knew she’d have one chance—just one—to escape. After all this time, it still hurt that she’d ultimately failed. “A person can survive anything as
“She loved to talk about the old ways. About how shifters were supposed to take care of each other, how we’d find mates and raise pups and all that shit no one does anymore. It was like, no matter what had happened to her, she still had all these dreams for what the world could be again, if someone was willing to try to make it happen. After she died, Pale decided to be that person. We decided to help him.”
“So it’s really real then? Resurrection?”
He nodded, solemn and still. “It’s home.”
Home. She’d had one once, a place of safety that made your heart warm just to see. To remember. “My home was in Iowa,” she whispered, thinking back. “At 218 Humboldt Lane. Can you believe I still remember the address? I haven’t seen it in years but I can still see the numbers on the side of the house. Horton wasn’t a much bigger town than this one. Everyone knew everyone else on our block. We had a neighborhood grandmother, and the kids had run of the entire street, especially in the summer. Most of all, I loved our house. It had brick all around the bottom and Mom’s roses were twined up the porch supports. And it was blue. The only blue house on the block. I used to love waking up to smell the roses peeking in the windows. Or Mom’s fresh bread…”
The corner of his mouth lifted and his eyes unfocused a little more. “My mother used to make fresh bread, too. She’d let the loaves cool on the window sill and we’d bet each other to try to steal one without her noticing.”
She could just imagine how tantalizing that smell must have been to a trio of young boys. Walking stomachs, all of them. “How’d that go for you?”
“Almost lost a couple of knuckles to her wooden spoon,” he replied with a laugh that sounded almost as rusted as her own. “She was a freakin’ sharpshooter with that thing. I got cracked in the back of the head with it once—” The present came crashing back to him, it seemed, because his stare fixed on her pointedly.
“You learn to be a good pebble thrower in the facility,” she replied, not in the least bit sorry about the rock she’d thrown. “Doesn’t look like sticks or stones have hurt you very much.”
“Funny.” The hot edge of his anger seemed averted, at least, despite the sarcasm. He wrapped his big hands around his coffee mug, looking down into the dark liquid. “So, you were in one of those kid camps?”
She almost had a bite of chop to her lips, her hand locking in place as she realized what she’d admitted. She pushed the meat into her mouth, searching him for some kind of reaction, but his expression was as calm as a pond in winter. “That what you all call them on the outside?”
His nod was slight. “Those of us who know about them. Didn’t think anyone came out of them alive.”
They don’t. Lia put her fork down, her appetite waning. How many kids had she seen taken from their dorms, never to come back? How often had they come from the test rooms, wishing they’d never returned? Too many, and most of them young. Too young to tempt a scientist with the promise of fertility to study. They’d been used for chemical warfare development. For anything that required spare parts or basic nervous systems. They’d been little more than lab rats, plentiful and expendable. “It’s not common, no.”
“How’d you manage it?”
“Very carefully.” She busied her hands by shoving the fork into as many pieces of vegetable as she could get to stay on and shoving them in her mouth. It had taken a year. Months of memorizing where the guards liked to stand, how long the cameras spent pointing in each direction…using her claws to sharpen the rods of her cot into blades capable of cutting through anything her claws couldn’t. It had been painstaking because she knew she’d have one chance—just one—to escape. After all this time, it still hurt that she’d ultimately failed. “A person can survive anything as
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