The Urban Supernatural Guy

Chapter 5: Family Reunion

Marcus ran through the hotel lobby like a man possessed, Elena close behind him. The doorman tried to stop them, but one look at Marcus's face and the man stepped aside. Whatever was happening to his supernatural abilities, the predatory aura was still there.

The cab ride back to the safe house took forever. Traffic, red lights, an elderly driver who seemed determined to observe every speed limit in the city. Marcus wanted to tear the steering wheel out of the man's hands and drive himself, but that would leave a trail the authorities could follow.

"It might not be what we think," Elena said, but her voice lacked conviction.

"Blood everywhere," Marcus repeated Rodriguez's words. "She said there was blood everywhere."

His phone had been ringing constantly. Rodriguez, then the building's front desk, then numbers he didn't recognize. Marcus ignored them all. Whatever was waiting for him at the safe house, he needed to see it with his own eyes.

They pulled up to the apartment building just as police cars were arriving. Blue and red lights painted the morning in chaos, and Marcus's enhanced hearing picked up radio chatter about a possible homicide.

"Shit." Elena grabbed his arm as he started to get out of the cab. "You can't go in there. If Rodriguez is dead—"

"She was supposed to protect Amanda."

"Amanda doesn't need protection anymore, Marcus. She's the threat now."

They watched from across the street as paramedics wheeled out a body bag. Then another. Marcus felt something die inside his chest. Rodriguez had been a good woman, a professional. She'd died because he'd trusted the wrong person.

Because he'd trusted his sister.

His phone buzzed. Text message from an unknown number: "Rooftop. Come alone. -A"

"It's her," Marcus said, showing Elena the message.

"Don't. It's obviously a trap."

"I know." Marcus was already walking toward the building. "But she's still my sister."

The building's emergency stairs led to the roof. Marcus climbed slowly, his supernatural senses reaching out for any sign of danger. He could smell blood—lots of it—and underneath that, Amanda's scent. But there was something else mixed in, something that made his enhanced instincts scream warnings.

The rooftop door was ajar. Marcus pushed it open and stepped into the afternoon sunlight.

Amanda sat on the ledge overlooking the street, her legs dangling over the side. She'd changed clothes—gone was the torn dress from the warehouse, replaced by dark jeans and a black t-shirt that made her look like any normal twenty-something. Except for the blood on her hands.

"Hello, brother."

Her voice was different now. Colder. The scared girl from last night was gone, replaced by something that wore his sister's face but felt wrong in every way that mattered.

"Amanda." Marcus kept his distance, staying near the door. "We need to talk."

"Do we?" She turned to look at him, and her eyes were completely black. Not glowing—black, like looking into an endless void. "About what? About how you abandoned me five years ago? About how you let them take me while you ran away to play superhero in some mystical realm?"

"I thought you were dead. We all did."

"Dead would have been kinder." Amanda stood up, moving with the same inhuman grace he'd seen from the creatures in the warehouse. "Do you know what they did to me, Marcus? For five years?"

Marcus felt his power stirring, responding to the threat. "Tell me."

"They broke me down piece by piece. Every memory, every feeling, every thing that made me human. They took it all apart and put it back together wrong." She smiled, and her teeth were too sharp now. "But they made a mistake. They let me remember you. They let me keep that one bright spot of anger to fuel what came next."

"I'm going to kill them all. Every last one."

"No, brother. You're going to join them."

Amanda moved faster than human eyes could track. One second she was standing by the ledge, the next she was right in front of him, her hand pressed against his chest. Marcus felt something cold and sharp pierce his skin.

He looked down to see her fingernails had become claws, and they were buried in his chest just above his heart.

"The conditioning they put me through—it wasn't just to make me a killer," she whispered. "It was to make me a catalyst. My touch will accelerate the transformation they started in you five years ago. In about thirty seconds, you'll be just like them."

Marcus tried to pull away, but her grip was impossibly strong. The cold was spreading through his chest, into his bloodstream, toward his heart.

"Amanda, fight this. I know you're still in there somewhere."

"I am in here." Her black eyes met his. "And I'm choosing this. Do you know what they made me do to survive? The things they forced me to become? I can never go back to being your innocent little sister. But I can make sure you understand what it feels like to lose everything."

The cold reached his heart. Marcus felt his supernatural abilities changing, twisting into something darker. The power he'd learned to control was becoming something else, something hungry and violent.

"There's just one problem with their plan," Amanda continued, leaning close enough that he could feel her breath on his ear. "They assumed I'd follow orders."

She yanked her claws out of his chest and stepped back. Instead of the spreading corruption Marcus expected, he felt warmth flooding the wound. His supernatural healing kicked in, sealing the punctures almost instantly.

"What—"

"Silver," Amanda said, showing him her fingernails. They gleamed with metallic light. "I've been coating my claws with pure silver for months, telling them it was to make me more effective against werewolves. But silver doesn't just hurt supernatural creatures—it can also purify corrupted supernatural energy."

Marcus stared at her. "You just—"

"Burned the conditioning right out of your system. Whatever they did to make you their weapon, it's gone now." Amanda's eyes were still black, but there was something else there now. Something that looked like his sister. "But I used up the last of my silver supply doing it. Which means I've got about ten minutes before their programming reasserts itself and I become their perfect little killer again."

"We can fix this. Elena said there are others, people who've found ways to fight back—"

"No, Marcus." Amanda was moving toward the ledge again. "There's no fixing what they did to me. But there is revenge."

She pulled out a tablet, swiped to a video file. On the screen, Marcus saw Victor Ashford in what looked like a basement laboratory. He was standing over a table where someone was strapped down, screaming.

Someone who looked exactly like Elena Sterling.

"That video was taken three hours ago," Amanda said. "The Elena you just met, the one who's been feeding you information and playing the reformed collaborator? She's been dead for months. The thing wearing her face is one of them, and she's been herding you exactly where they want you."

Marcus's world tilted. "That's impossible. I would have sensed—"

"Would you? When you're so desperate for allies that you'll trust anyone who claims to be fighting the same fight?" Amanda looked down at the street where police were still investigating the safe house. "They're very good at becoming what people need them to be."

The rooftop door exploded open. Elena—or the thing pretending to be Elena—burst through, her perfect composure finally cracking. When she saw Amanda standing by the ledge, her expression shifted into something inhuman and furious.

"You little bitch," she snarled in a voice like breaking glass. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Amanda smiled, and for the first time since he'd found her, she looked like the sister Marcus remembered.

"Yeah," she said, stepping backward off the ledge. "I just gave my brother the one thing he needs to win this war."

As she fell, she shouted one last thing over the wind:

"The real Elena Sterling is in Victor's basement! Save her, and she'll tell you where they're keeping the others!"

Marcus lunged for the ledge, but Amanda was already gone, disappearing into the crowd of police and paramedics below. He couldn't see where she landed, couldn't tell if she'd survived the fall or if his sister had just sacrificed herself to give him information.

Behind him, the Elena-thing was changing. Her perfect features melted like wax, revealing something pale and terrible underneath.

"Well," it said in that voice like breaking glass, "this is awkward."