Sister of Shadows Read online

  Sister of Shadows

  Eric Kent Edstrom

  To J

  Contents

  1. The Wonders of Andleprixen

  2. Your True Enemy

  3. As You Say

  4. Abominable Boy

  5. What’s Georgia?

  6. A Lever Long Enough

  7. Our Beloved Headmaster

  8. Aphrodite

  9. Zero Remorse

  10. I’m a Spider

  11. The Unmistakable Shape

  12. More or Less Twitchy

  13. Blood Blossoming

  14. Blades Still Blurring

  15. Leverage

  16. Cough and Shudder

  17. The Luckier the Man

  18. Butterfly Wings

  19. A Dark Swell

  20. It Looked Like Rage

  21. Expedient

  22. People as Tools

  23. About to Fly

  24. Who is Marilyn Monroe?

  25. French for Beautiful

  26. An Uncanny Creature

  27. Metallic Thump Bonged

  28. One Big, Pounding Throb

  29. If Madam President Only Knew

  30. You’re All Carbos

  31. Do. Not. Use. Our. Old. Names.

  32. None of Woman Born

  33. Chain Reaction

  34. An Unreachable Itch

  35. Turkey Float

  36. We’re All Small

  37. I Know My Children

  38. In a Bar, Mac

  39. Nawk Fleet Command Ship

  40. Transfiguration Bentilius

  41. If Madam President Only Knew

  42. Too Stupid to Hide

  43. It Wasn’t Just Panic

  44. Vinyl Green

  45. Não compreendo

  46. Hairline to Cheekbone

  47. Like the Fighter

  48. The Bruise Helps

  49. Stay With Me

  50. New and Painful Punishments

  51. Pooooor Little Kitty

  52. You Caught Me

  53. A Special Hatred

  54. The Roll Downhill

  55. Residence in Your Liver

  56. This Rust Bucket

  57. Scenes She Could Never Forget

  58. Target Practice

  59. Where to Put the Pill

  60. Lock Me Up

  61. The Whole Jacqueline Buchanan Thing

  62. Silence Made Her Squirm

  63. Like a Kick in the Chest

  64. Sharp and Hollow

  65. Repulsion Ignited

  66. The Idea of Freedom

  67. Let’s Go, Darlings

  68. Make a Big Mess

  69. Wet and Crimson

  70. Double Famous

  71. The Two Remaining Sharks

  72. Silky Flames

  73. El Tiburón

  74. High-Pitched and Full of Fear

  Scions of Sacrifice: The Dreamless

  Scions of Sacrifice: Paid for in Chips

  Scions of Sacrifice: Par Excellence

  Untitled

  1

  The Wonders of Andleprixen

  Trapped again.

  Dr. Carlhagen stalked from one side of the small holding room to the other. The blessings of his new young body—which had once belonged to a Scion named Vaughan—had become a curse.

  It took just a few paces to cross cold white tile from the locked door to the plain cement block wall. The room was little more than an examination room one would find in any doctor’s office, a relatively private place intended for him to hold consultations with Progenitors prior to transferring them to their Scions.

  But more recently it had been used as a holding cell. The faux-wood cabinets had been emptied, the bodyweight scale removed, the rubber gloves and wipes and sterilizer all carried out. All that remained was the gurney bed with its wad of sheets and blanket from his restless tossing and turning. And him.

  A ninety-three-year-old man in a seventeen-year-old body.

  So much energy, so little room to move.

  The last time he’d been stuck in this little room he’d been strapped to the gurney with an IV dripping brain-numbing sedatives into his blood. Not for the first time he wondered if that might not be better. At least he wouldn’t have to suffer such torturous monotony.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been in there. At least a day. Maybe more. And already he was about to lose his mind. If he had still inhabited his ninety-three-year-old body, he wouldn’t have minded it so much.

  If he could get some andleprixen, he wouldn’t mind it at all. Hell, if he could get enough he could blot out everything. He clenched his fists to stop them shaking. The Scions had not allowed him a dose since locking him in here.

  No, not the Scions, he thought. Jacey had not allowed him a dose.

  He bellowed a curse. The word snapped back at him in the tiny space. “That girl!” he fumed. “That conniving, sneaking, beautiful girl!”

  He’d had her strapped down and in the transfer machine, ready for Senator Bentilius to overwrite her mind. But inexplicably, Belle—a Scion who hated Jacey with every cell of her flesh—had taken Jacey’s place.

  Dr. Carlhagen wrinkled his nose and spun on his heels, adding more force as he stomped across the room. He stopped at the steel door and tried to peer out the narrow window into the corridor. The hall was dark, so all he could see was the trapezoid of light his window cast onto the floor. His own head made a slanted blob of shadow inside it.

  He turned his back to the door and leaned against it, suddenly weary.

  Even now, all these hours after the senator’s transfer, his skin chilled at the horror of seeing Belle rise from the transfer machine and cross the room toward him. He’d expected Jacey. His final plan to possess her had been to let Senator Bentilius overwrite her. And because Senator Bentilius loved him—or, at least, lusted for him—he would finally consummate his own unending need for the woman he had loved and pined for his entire life: Jacqueline Buchanan, Jacey’s Progenitor.

  He’d nearly had her once before, though it shamed him to think of it. He was thankful he’d been stopped that time. To have taken her by brute force would have been . . . distasteful.

  Maybe it’s better this way, he thought. Jacey’s still out there, still intact. Possessing her body, as enjoyable as that would have been, would be a far sight less rewarding than to have her in his arms with her mind in place. He would much rather have those aqua eyes looking into his with submission than with the pure hatred she lasered at him these days.

  If he could get out of this room, maybe he could charm her. If only she could see his brilliance, she might appreciate him.

  He laughed, hot and scornful at the thought. Jacqueline had never appreciated his mind. Which is why she had married that idiot, Charles Buchanan.

  Dr. Carlhagen let himself slide down the door and onto the floor. Putting his hands over his face, he forced his thoughts to the situation at hand. He needed to escape.

  And he absolutely needed to get Senator Bentilius out, too. If he waited long enough, her own people would come to the island. A woman of her political power surely had military force ready to swoop in if they didn’t hear from her or her guards soon.

  Her bodyguards were all either dead or strapped to cots in the medical ward—that much he’d picked up from Scion conversations on the occasions he’d been taken to the bathroom. Unfortunately, Senator Bentilius had not revealed the size or timing of any contingency military invasion to him.

  It was time to do what he’d been putting off.

  It hadn’t taken a man of his intellect long to figure out how Belle had gotten into the transfer room. After all, she’d been locked in this very room when he’d last seen her before the transfer
.

  He got to his feet and looked at the ceiling. She had removed one of the ceiling tiles and climbed above, which allowed her to crawl through the ceiling support beams and then descend into the transfer room. She’d probably gotten down through the storage closet.

  That made sense. Jacey would have taken the same route to get out. The shelving in that closet would have made climbing down or up as easy as climbing a ladder.

  Jacey must have come down in one of the other holding rooms along the corridor outside. One that was unlocked. Then she’d simply walked out.

  Of course, the Scions knew that trick, so all those rooms would be locked now, too. He wouldn’t be able to escape using the ceiling. But he could get to the room across the hall where Senator Bentilius was being held.

  He would have done so earlier, but she was so aggressively affectionate he was still sore from their first bout of lovemaking. The tile on the transfer room floor was hard and cold.

  He’d tried to resist her, tried to remember that she inhabited the pale and morose Belle, a Scion he’d given less than two minutes thought to her entire life. But somehow Senator Bentilius’s innate sensuality had transformed Belle into something else. Beautiful, yes. But also frightening.

  Dr. Carlhagen worried she’d try to ravish him again if he appeared in her holding room. No. He knew she would.

  But there was no alternative. He had to know what her contingency plan was.

  With the slothful pace of a man walking to his own execution, he climbed onto the gurney and stood. His new body was tall, so he easily reached the ceiling and pushed a tile up and out of the way. The space above was dark as a midnight shadow.

  He probed a hand into the darkness until he found a cool steel beam. He started to pull himself up, and had just lifted his head into the blackness when he heard a rapping on the door to his room.

  Letting go of the beam, he plopped onto the gurney, heart racing. If a Scion spotted him climbing into the ceiling, they’d take measures to prevent it. His eyes scanned the window in his door, but it was dark and no face peered in.

  A flash of movement at the base of the door caught his eye. Dr. Carlhagen gasped and leapt from the gurney. In two strides he knelt and swept up a slip of paper that someone had slipped under the door.

  A bit of scratch paper, exactly the kind Nurse Smith had kept on her desk. He unfolded it.

  “That traitor,” he breathed, recognizing Mr. Justin’s handwriting. “What is he up to?”

  The note read: Do you want to escape on Senator Bentilius’s chopper? Knock once for no, twice for yes.

  Dr. Carlhagen’s eyes narrowed and he pressed his face to the window. He couldn’t see anything or anyone out there. Muttering to himself, he resumed his pacing.

  Mr. Justin had gone in with Jacey and the Scions when they’d taken over the school. A betrayal of the worst kind, as far as Dr. Carlhagen was concerned. He’d given that man everything, had even incubated a Scion for the man.

  “What’s your game, Mr. Justin?” he asked the room.

  He crumpled the paper and shoved it into a front pocket of his black Scion uniform pants. He had a decision to make. And it was the worst kind, because every option was bad. The first was to refuse Mr. Justin’s offer, which was probably a trick anyway. But that left him with his original plan, to question Senator Bentilius about her contingency force and when they might arrive.

  But even that option was mostly downside for him. After the inevitable rescue by the senator’s forces, he’d be in a much-diminished position. Senator Bentilius had always been power-hungry. Once her people controlled the island, only a fool would think she’d relinquish that control.

  Not that she’d have much choice in the long run. After all, Dr. Carlhagen had his own contingencies in place.

  He grunted with dissatisfaction at the lack of a real choice. The timing for this catastrophe couldn’t have been worse, as they were just about to start up the next phase of the Scion program. With the facilities on St. Lazarus nearing completion, it was time to scale up—and streamline—the production of Scions.

  He’d had much larger ambitions for the program. Plans Senator Bentilius knew nothing about. If he lost control of the schools, it would be harder to reach his loftier goals. So even if Mr. Justin’s offer was a trap, Dr. Carlhagen couldn’t see how it would work out worse than waiting for Senator Bentilius’s force to come to the rescue.

  Decision made, Dr. Carlhagen stopped in front of the door and gave it two sharp knocks. He stood there for several minutes, expecting a response of some sort, a knock in return or maybe another note. Maybe even the door to unlock and the butler to lead him out.

  But nothing happened. He resumed his pacing, crossing to the far side of the room, spinning and proceeding back to the door. He’d done a dozen laps before drawing to a stop and staring at the floor.

  Another slip of paper lay there, half of it still under the door. Eager as a boy on Christmas morning, Dr. Carlhagen snatched it up and unfolded it.

  One word was written in a hurried scrawl: Wait.

  But that wasn’t what drew Dr. Carlhagen’s attention. In the dead center of the paper was a small pill, secured by transparent tape.

  With shaking fingers he ripped it free and swallowed it, tape and all. It only took a few moments for the familiar heat to spread through Dr. Carlhagen’s limbs and the tightly wound coil of anxiety in his mind to unwind.

  Ah, the wonders of andleprixen.

  2

  Your True Enemy

  The morning sun already hovered above the spine of the green and brown hills to the east, and the Scions still hadn’t finished loading the bus. They came and went in twos and threes, bearing loads on their shoulders or in their arms, sweating and grunting, mouths open under the strain.

  Already the day was hot, the air full of moisture from the sea, breezes heavy with verdant odors of inland greenery. The white walled buildings reflected and magnified the sunlight. The quad—a great green space at the center of the Scion School campus—felt claustrophobic to Jacey.

  Maybe it was because of the debris left over from the hurricane a few days past. Maybe it was the pressure of time pushing in on her from all directions.

  It took all her will not to run to one of the buildings and grab a load and carry it herself. But she knew if she left the bus for more than two minutes, she’d return to find Scions loafing about. So it was better for her to pace alongside the long vehicle and stew.

  So much to do. It had become a refrain that repeated again and again in her mind, in conversations, in the dreams that filled the scant hours of sleep she’d stolen over the past couple days. So much to do.

  Horace, Constantine, and Kirk emerged from Boys’ Hall carrying more pieces of disassembled bunks. They would be reassembled aboard Aphrodite, the boat Mr. Justin and his idiot brother Orson had brought to the island of St. Vitus. They had schemed to steal the Scions from Dr. Carlhagen. Only the arrival of Senator Bentilius, and the drama that had come with her, had foiled the plan.

  But now, thanks to Mr. Justin’s failed scheme, the Scions were in possession of a boat and a bus, and they had Dr. Carlhagen and the senator as prisoners. So if they could just get going, they had a chance to get off the island and away from the Scion School for good.

  Jacey fought to control her impatience and not shout at the three boys to hurry up as they trudged past her.

  “How many are left, Horace?” she asked the oldest, a boy of fifteen. She felt that she was moderately successful in keeping the impatience out her voice.

  “I don’t know,” Horace said. “Five. Six.”

  Jacey bit back the impulse to yell. Instead, she put on a syrupy smile. “When you go back, please count.”

  Horace grunted and mumbled something she couldn’t make out.

  The boys shoved the wooden headboards and spring platforms of the bunk beds into the back of the long, boxy vehicle. The bus’s aqua paint was worn away in many places, revealing an older coat
of mustard yellow. According to Sensei, the machine was an antique school bus from North America.

  Two Scions inside the bus, the Spider Obu and Centipede Helen, stacked the pieces between the seats, making sure to use the space as efficiently as possible.

  Horace muttered under his breath again. Of all the Scions on the island, he was the only one Jacey actually hated. She’d never forget how he had relished holding her down so that Belle could whip her legs with a thornskipple branch. Even more chilling was the memory of his gleeful expression as he’d stabbed Alice, the senator’s huge bodyguard.

  But Horace was a Scion. And like herself, he hadn’t asked to be born a clone of some stranger, hadn’t asked to be grown like a farm animal for the sole purpose of being overwritten. Jacey shivered, wondering what Progenitor had given his DNA to create such a sadistic creature.

  “I know it’s hard work,” she said to him. “But you must move faster. We have to get off this island before the senator’s backup forces arrive.”