“Should have known I was adopted,” she told her image in the mirror. “Anna and Mom and Dad are all tall and thin and perfect…and I’m the exact opposite.”
Her sister Anna was thirty-three, a size six and a successful attorney. She was married to a heart surgeon who was both handsome and kind and they had just produced a perfectly beautiful set of twins with big blue eyes that Emily adored. She loved her sister too, despite the fact that it seemed like Anna had gone down the “success checklist” of life and checked off every single box in her relentless march to perfection.
“You’ll find a guy, Ems,” her sister had told her, when Emily confessed that the way her parents had revealed her adoption had hurt almost as much as the adoption itself. “You just have to get out there and get over what happened in college. People do go on, you know. There are support groups for—”
“Stop it!” Emily pressed her fingertips to her temples, rubbing fiercely. Damn it—why did everything come back to that? She hadn’t thought of it in ages but lately, since she’d found out that her family wasn’t really her family, it had been coming back. The memories…the flashes of heat…the dreams…
Oh God, the dreams.
Emily closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The dreams were horrible. One in particular…
I wake in the night. I am thirsty. I go to the bathroom and run some water from the sink into my favorite blue mug. As I raise it to my lips, I look in the mirror and see that I am naked. Naked and pale in the moonlight streaming through the window. My belly ripples—ripples like a white pond with some unseen predator just below the surface of the water. And then the pains start—the sharp, blinding agony right behind my naval.
I start to scream and that’s when I see the claws…long, black claws, poking out of me on either side of my belly button. They tear outward and blood gushes in a wave—I am being torn apart. Annihilated. The other is taking over… ripping me open from the inside out…
Emily shuddered and tried to push the nightmarish image away.
“Don’t be stupid.” Her voice echoed again in the tiled room, making her jump but she went on, lecturing herself in the mirror anyway. “Don’t be stupid there’s not really any other. It’s all in your head just like it was in college when—”
But the words died in her throat.
The eyes staring back at her from the bathroom mirror were no longer nothing-colored. Instead they were a pure, clear gold. Not amber or light brown—brilliant, burnished gold. And her hair—it was changing color too. From dishwater blonde it went to bible black. The change was sudden and complete—as though someone had dumped a bucket of midnight over her head. A stranger stared back at her from the mirror. A stranger…an alien…the other.
Emily gave a soft, breathless scream and backed away from her radically altered reflection. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and dug her fingernails into her palms.
No…nonono…I’m not seeing this. It’s an illusion—a hallucination brought on by stress. I’m fine. I’ll be fine…finefinefinefinefine!
With a low moan, she forced herself to open her eyes.
They were no-color again. And her hair was the same limp, dishwater blonde it had always been, no matter how many products she used to give it body.
“I’m Emily,” she whispered to herself. “Emily Brooks and I’m fine. There is no other. There is no other.”
If only she could make herself believe it.
She backed away, never taking her eyes off the mirror, fearful lest she see herself change again. But the image stayed the same as she fumbled behind her for the doorknob and let herself out.
Emily took a deep, sobbing breath and leaned against the bathroom door, letting the chilly wind dry her tears. Everything was all right. She was fine.
For now.
* * * * *
Rivin Tragar of the Verrak stared at his target through narrowed eyes.
She appeared to be crying.
Why—he had no idea. It wasn’t really his business. His business was to kill her. And that had been his business since he had first agreed to take this contract from the strange Dark Kindred who called himself “Two.”
So why hadn’t he done it yet?
Tragar had no answer to the question.
Well no—that wasn’t exactly true, he corrected himself. He hadn’t killed her yet because he wanted to know what she was capable of. When Two have convinced him to take the contract, he had hinted darkly of a female with hidden depths—a monster buried just below the surface that might burst through her mild exterior and leave a trail of blood and destruction in her path at any moment.
A monster like that was right up Tragar’s alley. He preferred to take targets who were dangerous and could give him a good fight. Even better if innocent lives might be at stake. In fact, when he’d seen that this female—this Emily Brooks—worked with younglings, he’d almost taken her out from a distance at once, even though it wasn’t his usual way. Better to break his personal protocol that than risk young, innocent lives.
But he’d delayed—stilling the itchy trigger finger on his sonic rifle for two reasons. The first was he preferred a fair fight. Unlike some of the other Verrak, he didn’t take targets at a distance. He took them somewhere safe and secure and let them choose their weapon and fight him face to face—let them die with honor. No matter what heinous crimes they had committed, everyone deserved dignity in death. That was Tragar’s belief, anyway.
The second reason he didn’t shoot, was that he saw the way Emily interacted with the younglings. During his first observation one of them had fallen, scraping a chubby knee on the hard walkway that ran between the school buildings. The young one had run crying to Emily, her knee seeping blood, her eyes awash with tears.
Here we go… Tragar’s finger had tightened on the trigger. Surely the sight of blood would bring out the ravening monster Two had sworn lurked in the innocent looking girl’s breast. He was ready to shoot her down the moment she went for the youngling’s throat.
But instead of going feral—becoming a thing of teeth and claws and appetite—the girl he had been sent to kill gathered the youngling into her arms. She dried the little female’s tears and said some words of consolation—too low for Tragar to understand though he had been studying her language for days now.
The little female had quieted, obviously feeling safe and comforted in the arms of Tragar’s target, who still showed no signs of attacking. Gradually, his finger had loosened on the trigger and then he had put down the rifle altogether and just watched.
Gods, it reminded him of Kallah…the way she was with Jalex when he hurt himself…
No! Tragar had pushed the memory away. He took a deep breath. I do not allow my past to dictate my present or my future. There is no then. There is only here and now. There is only the target.
It a Verrak saying—a necessary reminder since most of those in his elite brotherhood came from a background of loss and sorrow. But though he repeated it to himself over and over, he still hadn’t been able to kill Emily Brooks. Not then and not now, ten days later.
He studied her—watching her wipe at her eyes with a hand that trembled. Why was she crying? What had agitated her so? For a moment he imagined holding her against him and asking her what was wrong. It was foolish of course—a fantasy that could never come true. But there was no denying she would be pleasant to hold.
She had a lush body hidden beneath her shapeless garments—he could tell. It was a shame she didn’t wear clothing that showed her shape but just the outline of her curves was tantalizing. Not that he was supposed to be looking at her that way—she was only another target, after all. Still, those full breasts and rounded hips…
A burning sensation in his left arm brought him back to reality. It was the narsh—the mark of the Verrak—given to him when he first passed the trials and took the oath. Tragar looked down at the thick black lines criss-crossing his muscular arm from shoulder to wrist. The narsh burned to remind him that he had a job outstanding—a commission as yet undone.