Prologue
If you fight fire with fire everybody burns
William Ogden 10/28/1927-7/7/1998
Click.
Every breath in Eli’s body stilled. He didn’t even have the time to take a last one.
Scrape.
The door never opened soundlessly. There was a small whimper of wood as if the hinges in the old house were as mind-numbingly terrified as he was.
Creak.
The first stair. He didn’t bother to hide the sound. Eli could. He knew if you put your foot to the right, you could tread with no noise. Become a ghost. Flit from room to room praying you weren’t noticed. Weren’t seen.
Whoosh.
The whisper of air. More deafening than the tread of each step as he climbed to the attic. Nearer. Closer. Then bitter. The noise tasted acrid on his tongue as if inhaling the sound brought the poison. But then it was. He was. A poison so suffocating it crept inside him until it leaked from his body. The last time he had been made to sleep on sheets so wet he never thought he would ever be dry again.
Thud.
Was that his foot on the stair or the last flailing echo of his heart knowing he was trapped? Another and another. Each one the sick sound of finality. And tonight it would be, one way or another. Eli’s fingers tightened around the tiny blade. So small to fight such a huge monster. Either way he didn’t care. If the monster didn’t die, then he would. Eli pressed his lips together, and the sting in his fingers reminded him it would be over tonight whichever way. He hoped for one outcome simply to save the others. The smaller ones that would be brought to the house after he was gone. The one where children were forgotten. The one where the monster lived. The one where you lay in the sickened sweat from your body night after night and listened to the sound of the door downstairs.
Shrill. The scream in his mind as the door opened and the half-light that shadowed the size fourteens that forever were the start of his waking nightmare. The pulsating in his chest was silenced. Only the pain in his fingers from a grip so tight kept him conscious. Awake when he craved for oblivion.
Hatred. It burned so bright. Kept him alive when he hungered after death. And of every raucous sound he knew, some so vile they were only ever whispered, hate thundered on.
Tonight, it would be deafening.
Chapter One
Daniel looked around the room. They were all there with one important exception. My new partner. And he had a feeling he wasn’t the only one in the room that was wondering where the hell he was. He’d noticed Sawyer shoot a couple of puzzled looks to Gael, and Finn had checked his phone a few times. In five weeks he had seen more of Jared who worked in personnel sorting out his transfer than he had seen of Eli. It was a joke. He walked into a room and you could guarantee that pretty much as soon as he could, Eli would leave it. He knew it would take some adjustment, and he had been about as thrilled as Eli when Gregory had announced their partnership at Jacob’s barbecue, but he really felt that in over a very frustrating month they would have at least managed to grab a cup of coffee together.
At least Vance and Sam were making progress. Vance had wasted no time moving into Sam’s new apartment with him and Luis, and all three of them were thriving. He was thrilled for his “not so little” brother.
And it had been a quiet month. Gregory had immediately ordered Vance and Sam to report to Lieutenant Jameson from district two. All the Tampa districts wanted to see if they should have their own team in addition to the normal specialty teams including Hostage Negotiation, Tactical Response, K9 Squad etcetera, but Talon and Gregory thought not. There weren’t enough enhanced agents for starters, and Talon wanted agent pairs incorporated into the regular teams.
And no one could say Gregory wasn’t a smart man. Vance’s popularity—their family’s reputation—had caused Tampa PD to disband the Enhanced Unit, or ENu as they called it. The SWAT team that simply existed to control enhanced. Gregory needed to ride that wave now.
Eli had been there—for once—as Talon explained their plans last month. “This wasn’t the arrangement we were going with initially, but replicating what we have here is going to be impossible. We also are wondering if there is some way we can steer enhanced into specialties based on what their ability is.”
Gael had nudged Eli. “Pyromania?” But Eli had barely smiled, and this morning there was no sign of him.
“Where’s Eli?”
Daniel fired Adam a grateful glance. Glad he didn’t have to ask himself. Their partnership might be only five weeks old, but it didn’t look good that he had lost him already.
Talon sighed. “I don’t know.” He looked at Sawyer, who shrugged.
“I haven’t seen him since we left work on Friday.”
“You mean he didn’t go home?” Daniel interrupted.
“No.” Sawyer shook his head. “He’d been there when I got home, but he’d already left. When I got up on Saturday morning, he’d texted me to say he was going to call on Bo and didn’t know when he’d be back, but he never said he wouldn’t be in today.” Which wasn’t unusual according to Vance. Or Eli visiting Bo anyway. Bo was an enhanced teenager who literally burned everything he touched. Eli had wondered if their ability was linked, and even though it had been a huge risk at the time, Eli had picked the unconscious boy up and held him so the paramedics could treat him. Bo was currently fostered successfully with his younger brother and sister, but the challenges of caring for him were huge, and Eli sometimes answered emergency summons.
“Did you try to call?” Daniel asked, but he heard Finn suddenly mention Eli’s name to whomever he was speaking to on his cell.
“Yes, ma’am,” Finn chuckled. “I would never have thought about baby powder.”
Daniel didn’t react. He’d stopped being surprised about anything he heard about the people in this room a few years ago after his brother transformed.
Enhanced—the official name for the group of individuals who had started developing enhanced abilities usually around adolescence. The only other things they knew were that each enhanced was unique, male, and sterile, and so far the incidence was limited to the United States, and probably linked to a couple of doctors called Cathy and Damien Miller, who experimented for years on human DNA. Their son, Christopher—currently settled in his new job as their own medical assistant—at fifty-three years old was the oldest enhanced they knew of and likely the original one. The only identifying mark was a jagged scar on their left cheek that formed at the same time as they got their abilities.
Except things were changing. Talon certainly, and for all they knew, other people, were developing the abilities of the rest of the team. Some weird DNA shit that scientists and his clever partner, Finn, were exploring and theorizing about.
The main hope the team had was that their presence was softening the attitude—human fear and bigotry—to the rest of the enhanced. Daniel had seen it work firsthand, but it was still an uphill battle.
“That was Molly Landring,” Finn said as he hung up. “Eli came to see Bo on Saturday because Bo was having issues with his suit. He wasn’t there yesterday.”
“The fit?” Gael frowned, and Finn nodded. Daniel hadn’t ever seen Bo—the kids were currently fostered by a brother and his wife of a cop Talon and the team had met when they were investigating the boarding school Alan Swann set up for enhanced children that was a cover for other things. Daniel knew about the case. He also knew Eli had helped Molly when Bo struggled with his ability.