Grim Resentment Read online

  I was left to watch the remnants of the building smash into the alley, with an intense surge of déjà vu that only happened after Mari had frozen and released time.

  They’d escaped.

  And Emma had been in that alley.

  So close to me, and now she could be anywhere.

  But I had no time to deal with that.

  Jaxon rounded the corner. In the air.

  He floated, hovering in a dark cloud of fog, his wraiths present and swirling around his body. His arms were outstretched, fingers curled into claws that pointed up to the sky.

  Then the howling started.

  Oh, fuck.

  Jaxon’s wrath continued as I threw my hands over my head and ran the other way.

  People screamed.

  Another force, stronger than the first two that tripped me earlier, buckled the street.

  I barely made it out.

  The eerie howling of Jaxon’s wraiths followed me for many blocks. I was too terrified to turn around, to glance over my shoulder. I just kept running, anticipating death with every step.

  Soon the sounds subsided.

  Maybe I should have kept running, but I stopped and finally looked back.

  Less than a block away, chaos had torn the city and it had crumpled to its knees.

  Smoke drifted here and there.

  Fire hydrants spurted fountains of water.

  Slowly, carefully, I made my way back.

  Jaxon had to have either worn himself out or given up.

  But either way, that meant I had little time to find him once more.

  Climbing over rubble, I rounded a corner and saw him. His back was to me. He was lowering down from the air. Moments before his feet touched the ground, his wraiths vanished.

  I was terrified, but I had only one chance. This was it.

  Jaxon began to pick his way through the rubble as I struggled to do the same.

  I called out his name.

  The moment he whirled and saw me I felt an intense pressure at the back of my neck.

  “Stop, or I’ll kill you.”

  He wasn’t lying. With his telekinetic powers, he could snap me in half with barely a thought.

  So I said the first thing I could think of that would get his attention. “Jaxon, they’re not dead.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Isaac and Emma.”

  He asked who I was, irritation and confusion all over his face.

  How could he not remember me?

  I quelled my irritation, told him I was a friend and that I wanted to help. Help him take them out, to kill the Synths.

  “What the hell for?”

  I told him the Synths had something I wanted. I told him I had powers, just like he did, that I was a Synth like him. “You don’t remember me?”

  With a snort, Jaxon told me his father had wiped his memory after the incident at the lab.

  Of course.

  Bruce.

  That was who he and Shawn escaped with. Jaxon’s father.

  Chuckling, I told him I had been released the moment he’d gone postal at Lab 14.

  He let me show him my power. All I did was touch him, and I was able to call his wraiths.

  It freaked him out, but I hurriedly explained my gift.

  My plan.

  He quickly realized the benefit of having me as a partner. But he still did not give in.

  Even after I told him all I wanted was Emma.

  He refused at first. Said she wronged him, she was his to kill.

  I convinced him that a life chained up was a better punishment. That I could make her suffer more than she could possibly imagine.

  He still didn’t seem swayed.

  Until I made an even better offer.

  FEBRUARY 6, 2016

  Bill’s about to die.

  I don’t care.

  I don’t need him much longer. I know where the Synths are taking my Emma.

  All I need is to keep my word to Jaxon, and she’ll be mine.

  I slapped the dying man across the face, then gripped his wrist with one hand, the map in the other.

  “One more time, Bill. Show me one more person.”

  I concentrated on Ivan Vance.