The Chosen Read online

  Chloe’s stomach sank into a little ball. Amy wasn’t actually saying anything bad about her, but hearing about herself and her recent life put that way was … cold. Kim looked away, pretending not to have heard.

  “And if there’s a problem between us, it’s between us,” Amy went on to say. “Leave Chloe out of it.”

  There was another moment’s silence that must have been horribly awkward between her two friends. When Amy spoke again, there were tears in her voice.

  “I—I’ve been pretty happy recently/’ she said weakly, talking in quick sips, the way you do when you’re trying not to cry. “I know I’ve been busy….What’s wrong?”

  Chloe moved her head away from the vent, not wanting to hear any more. She felt a little disgusted with herself for having heard that much. If it had been anyone else in the world or just one of her friends with someone else, she wouldn’t have minded at all. She probably would have kept listening. But this was way, way too close.

  “They’re breaking up,” she said tonelessly, crawling back over to Kim. “Or Paul’s dumping her, I guess.”

  Kim didn’t say anything, just watched her with large, unblinking green cat eyes.

  “I should have realized something was going on,” Chloe continued. “I should have noticed—they haven’t been spending as much time together lately, and Paul doesn’t seem to want her around much.”

  “What was her big news?” Kim asked, then suddenly remembered she had been pretending not to listen. She looked around herself uncertainly but didn’t blush. Just like a cat, Chloe thought, smiling inside a little.

  “She’s graduating from high school a year early. It did freak me out.” She sighed. “She never talked about this before—I don’t know, it was just kind of sudden.”

  “It seems that the three of you are each beginning to head down very different paths,” Kim said slowly.

  “I hope you’re not going to start talking to me about this whole being-the-One crap again,” Chloe said, more harshly than she meant.

  Kim lowered her eyes back to the French textbook. “I meant exactly what I said. But you will find it more difficult to escape your … heritage than you think.” Chloe was glad that she hadn’t used the word destiny, but she still didn’t like it.

  “I’m sick of people telling me that!” Chloe stood up. “I am sixteen. I have spent my entire life as a ‘normal human.’ It can’t all suddenly change. I want to get good grades, go out and party, go to the dance, go to college. Which is hard enough with the weeks I lost! I don’t have time for this, or Amy and Paul suddenly calling it quits, or my mom acting all weird around me….”

  “You want to go back to the old days.”

  “Yes, I… Shut up.”

  “What do you intend to do after we finish here?” Kim asked her.

  That threw Chloe off. “What?”

  “When we finish your French lesson here, what will you do?”

  “I’m going to, uh …” Go home, read some, and go to sleep. These words had been well prepared, rehearsed, and used many times since she had returned from Firebird. But she couldn’t lie into Kirn’s big cat eyes. Chloe thought about what Amy had said about her and wondered if she was actually fooling anyone. “Go running,” she finished lamely, sure that Kim would know what she meant.

  Kim leaned over and, in a rare move, actually touched Chloe, wrapping her hand with her clawed paw.

  “Whatever you decide to do,” she said levelly, “don’t lie to yourself, Chloe.”

  Chloe thought about Kim’s words as she raced across the skyline, leaping and tumbling over rooftops and electric poles. She couldn’t ignore the fact that she was cheating by coming out here at night, that she was stealing time from schoolwork and lying to people. Before—weeks ago—she had been able to ignore all that and just enjoy the freedom of the night. And now she couldn’t.

  Chloe.

  She stopped suddenly. There was a whisper, an almost-voice that sounded like it was calling her name. The wind had picked up and was whistling through the old dead antennas that still decorated some rooftops like cactus spines. Chloe put her nose to the air and turned her head, trying to focus her ears on the sound.

  “Mirao.”

  Without thinking, she turned and followed the sound, leaping across a gap to the roof of the house beyond. There, sitting primly in front of the round chimney of an oil furnace, was a little black cat. Its whiskers and chest were white, matched by little white socks. A dairy cat, her mom would have called him. The kind that hung around dairy barns, catching rats and in return being given bowls of fresh milk.

  What’s it doing up here? Chloe wondered. As she looked around for a door or skylight that was left open, the cat demurely picked up a paw and began licking it, like it had all the time in the world. Like it wasn’t a little tiny cat on a cold rooftop in a big city with winter coming on.

  “Hey, little guy.” Chloe figured that being Mai, she should be able to speak cat or something—but apparently not. It paused, its licking for a moment, then went back to work.

  “You shouldn’t be up here. Are you lost?”

  Chloe crept closer to it, making the tchk tchk noises that Amy’s cat always came running to. She crouched down and started to extend her hand, but the little cat leapt up to the top of the chimney, out of her reach.

  “Mirao!” it said again, louder.

  “Come on, easy now.” Chloe dug her toe claws into the brick and prepared to push herself up. “You might be able to outrun a normal human, but I’m afraid—” She swiped her hand up, but the little cat jumped down and ran faster than Chloe’s claws could come out, scrabbling its feet like a cartoon. “Kitty!” Chloe called, beginning to get annoyed.

  She ran across the roof after it, but it leapt over the side of the building.

  “No!” Chloe looked down to the street. She couldn’t see into the darkness below, even with her cat eyesight.

  “Mirao!”

  Chloe looked up: the cat was on the roof of the far building, patiently waiting for her. It must have dived down to a window ledge and then climbed back up again. “Mir-ao!”

  “I get it now. You want to play, is that it? We’re playing tag?” It wasn’t a lost little kitty—it was an alley cat, or a sky cat, more like. This was its world, and it just wanted to play with a newcomer. “Okay!”

  Chloe grinned and leapt. The cat waited a moment, as if giving her a fair start, then took off—pausing now and then to make sure she was following.

  This is great. I should totally get a cat, Chloe decided. And it wasn’t as if her mom could really object to having one in the house anymore.

  Whenever she got too close, Chloe made herself slow down; neither she nor her playmate wanted the game to end too soon. She smiled, wondering what they might look like to a random bystander: a witch and her familiar flying across the upper stories of the city? A large cat hunting a smaller one? Maybe they would just dismiss it. Halloween was just around the corner; anything supernatural seemed possible.

  Suddenly the dairy cat veered to the left, down to the top of a fire escape.

  “Ha! Getting tired?” Chloe taunted.

  The cat gave her what she could have sworn was a nasty look.

  “Okay, but I can’t play too much on the streets with you,” she warned. “I can’t let other people see me.”

  “Mirao!” The cat turned and slipped down the metal stairs like a black Slinky.

  “Is this your home? Are you showing me your—?” Suddenly Chloe stopped, forgetting the cat entirely. The fire escape led down into a dark dead-end alley, apparently unused except for garbage collection. Most of the pavement was pocked and puddled with slick black flats of shiny city water.

  There was an ominous outline that cut into the oily reflections, large and organic and shaped suspiciously like a body.

  And there was a smell … a familiar smell…

  Chloe leapt straight down the last two floors, landing in a crouch just inches away from the edge
of the shape. She crawled over closer and as her eyes adjusted saw what was indeed a human body, unmoving and broken looking.

  It was Brian.

  Five

  “Oh my God—”

  Chloe put a hand to his neck, carefully retracting her claws. There was a pulse—but it was sluggish. His skin was cold and clammy, as if his body could no longer fight the chilly environment around him.

  “Chloe?” Brian croaked.

  Chloe ran her hands over his body, trying to see and feel what was wrong. He moaned and struggled a little—it didn’t look like his neck or back were broken.

  He held his hands over the top of his stomach, just under his chest. When Chloe pushed them aside, warm, syrupy blood seeped out. His entire shirt was soaked, and slow rivers of it ran down his sides and congealed in the water. A knife wound. Of course it was a knife wound. While the Order of the Tenth Blade used nine daggers to kill all nine lives of a Pride Leader, it took only one dagger to kill a member of the Order who betrayed them.

  “You were supposed to run away—to disappear!” Chloe cried, trying not to panic.

  Brian tried to say something, but nothing came out. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. For a moment he saw her clearly—or at least the shape of her, since it was too dark for human vision—and smiled. Then he passed out again.

  “Fuck,” Chloe swore. Where could she take him? If she brought him to a public hospital, he’d be a sitting duck for the Order to finish the job. She couldn’t protect him twenty-four/seven and had no idea how to go about hiring a bodyguard—especially one that didn’t work for Brian’s dad’s security company.

  There was home, where she had taken Alyec after Brian wounded him by the bridge. But as much as that thought appealed to her, Chloe had made a firm decision not to put her mom at risk again with her strange life. The Tenth Blade had already broken into their home once to kidnap Chloe’s mom; bringing a man there they wanted dead was just asking for trouble. Which left only one option: the Firebird mansion. The home base of the Mai.

  “Holy ironic justice, Batman,” she muttered as she knelt down to gather Brian up in her arms.

  Once again the similarities between Chloe and a real superhero ended when she realized that carrying him all the way to Sausalito would not only be impractical, it would be really slow. And there was no way she was going to be able to get a cab that would be willing to pick up a girl with her bloody, injured boyfriend. Of course, the bus was out, too.

  She resorted to the only superweapon she had: her cell phone. She punched the numbers quickly. Alyec had a car, but only when he stole it. Which left …

  “’Sup?” Amy’s cheery voice came over the other end.

  “Amy, I need you—it’s an emergency. I found Brian—bleeding to death in an alley. I need to get him help.”

  “Ohmygod. Where are you?”

  “Somewhere near Chinatown.” She looked around, but the alley had no name. “Track me on your phone.” Amy had the other matching GPS cell phone so they could track each other; the only downside was that its screen wasn’t very big, and Amy had to look at it while driving.

  “I’ll be there ASAP.”

  With the little bubble of normal conversation over, Chloe became more aware of the loneliness of the alley and the silence of Brian. She couldn’t remember much of junior high first aid and hoped she was doing the right thing by tearing off the sleeves of her shirt and tying them around his wound. Apart from that and trying to keep him from rolling through the puddles—though even the dry part of the cobblestone lane wasn’t a particularly sterile environment—there was little Chloe could do besides comfort him and wait.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Chloe turned to look at the owner of the new voice. A pair of boys, too healthy to be street people, too confident to be scared of a lonely alley. Both were muscled. Asian. All in black … gang members.

  “You got a problem?” the other asked, smiling. Take away the attitude and the tattoos and it was obvious they were barely twenty. And actually pretty good-looking.

  This could go two ways, Chloe realized. One of which was that they could turn out to be reasonably decent local guys who just wanted to help. But Chloe wasn’t going to wait around to see if it was the other—more likely—possibility.

  With a frightful hiss she leapt up, extending her hand and foot claws, making sure her slit eyes flashed in the light. In two springs she was a foot from them, yowling and swiping her claws.

  “Li Shou!” one of them cried. Then they turned around and fled.

  “Almost too easy,” Chloe murmured. She retracted her claws and walked back to Brian, who suddenly looked a little too still. She knelt beside him and began stroking his hair. “Stay awake—you’ve got to stay awake ….”

  He groaned in response, but his mouth was moving like he was trying to say something.

  “Leave me” he whispered. “They’ll be back. It’s over… . ”

  “Not on your life, sweetie,” she said with a forced grin. “Help’s on the way.”

  “Chloe …” His lips moved more, but nothing came out. Chloe leaned closer. Then he fell back, unconscious. “Brian, no,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

  Ten minutes later Amy arrived in her brother’s old black station wagon. Chloe took most of Brian’s weight because of her superior strength but needed Amy to hold him straight and steady in case there was actually something wrong with his back.

  “Holy shit,” was all her friend said. They carefully laid him down in the backseat and, completely unconscious, he didn’t even groan. His skin was deathly white.

  “Sorry,” Chloe said, taking the driver’s seat. “The hideout’s kind of a secret, and you’re going to have to blindfold yourself somehow….”

  Amy looked a little piqued, but only for an instant. “No problem. As the loyal sidekick, I should expect to be put into ridiculous situations.” She leapt into shotgun and pulled a jacket over her head.

  Chloe burned rubber pulling out, and as she turned onto the street, a man-shaped shadow hugged the wall near the entrance to the alley, watching the car go. But one person couldn’t have done this to Brian. … It looked like he had been beaten from all sides at once. And it wasn’t like the Tenth Blade to skulk in the shadows: if they knew a Mai was there, they would have come out and tried to kill Chloe, too.

  She didn’t begin breathing normally until they were going over the bridge, shooting past the National Guard, who had been on her ass after the big duke-out with the Rogue.

  Ignoring the niceties of road and right-of-way, Chloe took the car off road the moment they turned onto the street that led to Firebird.

  “My brother’s going to kill me … ,” Amy muttered from under the jacket.

  Chloe drove around to the back of the estate and honked the horn, shouting, “It’s me!” as she barreled up to the gate, which the guard opened just in time for the car not to crash into it. On the old TV show the Batmobile came roaring through a discreetly hidden tunnel into Wayne Manor; Batman didn’t need Alfred to let him in.

  Must do something about that.

  She pulled up to the kitchen, or back entrance, door and jumped out. By the time she had jumped out, someone was already opening the door, curious about the late-night intrusion. When she saw who it was, the female Mai bowed her head. “You have come back, Leader.”

  “I need to get him into a bed or something,” Chloe ordered. “Help me.”

  The woman opened her eyes and sniffed the air. “But he—and she—are human!”

  “Can I take this off yet?” Amy asked, still in the front seat under the jacket.

  “Please! I’m begging you!” Chloe cried, frustrated.

  “The One doesn’t need to beg,” the woman murmured. She called behind her in either Russian or Mai; Chloe wasn’t listening enough to be able to tell the difference.

  That’s Eleni, Chloe thought distractedly as the woman hurried back over to the car to help her with Brian
. Eleni was one of the Mai who had most recently come from Turkey, like Chloe’s biological family. “Just two more minutes,” Chloe told Amy.

  Among the other Mai who showed up—some blearyeyed, some wide awake—was Ellen, the kizekh who used to be Chloe’s sort-of bodyguard when she had lived with them full-time, just a short time ago. Her partner, Dmitry, wasn’t with her, which was unusual. She grinned at Chloe before giving a slight bow, genuinely glad to see her back. Everyone else bowed deeply and politely eased Chloe out of the way while carrying Brian in.

  “Where are you taking him?” Chloe asked.

  “The emergency ward, Honored One.” Ellen winked. “Don’t worry—we’ll have him fixed up good as new.” The Mai disappeared down the halls of the house at a trot.

  “Emergency ward? We have an emergency ward?” Chloe wondered as she took Amy by the hand and followed them. There really is a whole little world inside these walls.

  This was obviously one of the oldest parts of the mansion. She hadn’t been here before and was struck by the narrow stone hallways and cold, damp smell—like there was a well or a cellar nearby. Something caught inside Chloe: this was an old house, like right out of something on PBS, and she had full non-museum-pass access. She could even live here if she wanted.

  They wound up in a dark room whose lights came on a second after they got there, switched by a female Mai rubbing her eyes and pulling on a white lab coat. There were two hospital-style beds, what looked suspiciously like a gleaming, stainless-steel operating table in the middle of the floor, and antique metal cabinets full of medical equipment. The floor was old wood, completely clashing with the sterile nature of everything else.

  Ellen and the other Mai carrying Brian carefully put him on the operating table.

  “A human?” The doctor was a tiny woman with a body like Tinkerbell and huge, dark hazel—almost brown—eyes, a color unusual among the Mai. She was probably in her late thirties, but it was hard to tell.

  Ellen quietly jerked her head at Chloe.