Page 21 of Sloth
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No.”
“So, if he hates you, why come back?”
That question again. It burned in Sloan’s stomach like the effects of sin. She couldn’t ignore it. Misha was right, Sloan was missing something.
“You know,” Misha continued. “Having someone you love by your side could be good. How much better have you felt these past two months, and that’s only with Max walking around your proximity. When Wyatt and I touch—wow. And the sex… next level. That pheromone business you guys have going on… wow.”
“You said ‘wow’ two times.” Sloan frowned at her brother’s girlfriend. The pheromones were a reaction programmed into their biological systems, supposedly to help entice their mate to their side… and keep them there. That’s how important it was to have your mate close by.
“All I’m saying is that, if you want Max, he’ll have a hard time saying no to you. The ball is in your court.”
Sloan didn’t know what to think.
The phone pinged again. While Misha checked, Sloan chewed her new red nails.
“Wyatt. Again. Wants to know how long. What should I tell him?” Misha asked.
“Not ready yet. Can we, I don’t know, do something else?”
“Yeah, I’m not ready to have him looming over me again.” After thinking about it for a moment, Misha jumped up and clapped her hands. “I know. We still need to get you a dress for tonight, right? Let’s sneak out the back and give Wyatt the slip. I know a store just a few streets away.”
“Wyatt will be pissed.”
“He’d let us go on our own if he knew about your new power. We’ll be fine. If someone attacks us, you can make them—”
“Cry?” Sloan said wryly.
“Sure. Let’s go with that.” Misha tugged Sloan out of her seat, whining. “Come on. Nothing will happen. He’s an overprotective father-to-be, that’s all.”
There was definitely something wrong with her brain, because Sloan nodded. “Fine. Let’s go.”
She did kick Max’s ass, after all.
“Yes!”
But before she left, Sloan swiped a pointy metal nail file. Just in case.
Five
In the backof an unmarked van parked somewhere on the streets of Cardinal City, Barry Pinkerton sat under the watchful eye of a member of the Faithful, and Despair—the Syndicate’s enforcer and the boss’s right-hand woman. Most others called her Falcon, because of the birdlike battle mask she wore to hide her identity. But lucky Barry had been privy to her secret for many years. She was the boss’s daughter, the only one of the eight experimented on children who survived the fire at Biolum Tech almost thirty years ago.
The Faithful was a white robed and masked man holding a semi-automatic. Barry was more afraid of Despair, even though she had no weapon. She only needed to watch him with those unblinking violet eyes, and he trembled inside.
Like it had almost thirty years ago, the feeling of wrongness festered in his gut. He’d started this genetic engineering project thinking he was helping humanity become better. He could regrow arms and limbs in a petri dish. What better way to help the victims of war or disease?
Give him two years, and he could replace your broken limb with a new, tank grown one out of your own cells. But a few years ago, he’d learned his research wasn’t going to save humanity, not in the way he’d hoped. The Syndicate had lied to him. And now he was here, in a van with a caged rabid beast he’d created from a few cloned cells. A beast that had no other purpose in life but to hunt down sin and eliminate it.
He felt sick.
“I’m not sure this is the right thing to do,” he said to Despair.
The white-robed man with the white faceless Halloween mask lifted his weapon and pointed it at Barry’s head.
Despair lifted her hand, and the Faithful lowered his gun. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” she said.
“But we’ve only tested the beasts against other animals with deadly sin.” Not around chaos like a city park. Not around children. What if it was his daughter out there? What if they were testing in another neighborhood? Or at her school? This wasn’t what he signed up for.
