Page 32 of Awry
I’m staring.Going from coldly enraged to numb …
Because the gun I expected.It’s a lightweight, untraceable piece I slipped into the room myself ages ago.
But … Zaya Gage — a slightly older version of Zaya, and looking like death warmed over — is sitting on a motel bed in Outcast territory.
Alive.
And glaring fucking daggers at me.
Glaring at me as if she doesn’t know me at all.
As if she’s seriously considering shooting me.
The numbness holding me in place cracks, splintering like a skiff of ice over a dark well of vicious despair.
Her eyes, vibrant and utterly beguiling, are the wrong color.
Bright, soul-fucking-searing violet.
Not the warm, deep purplish-blue I gazed into summer after summer.Not the deadened, darkened purple that stared up into the storm-blackened sky, unseeing.The eyes that still haunt my nightmares, for almost thirteen years now.
My Zaya would be a month away from her thirtieth birthday.This woman, with her slight frame, her dusky pink lips, and her cheekbones and collarbone looking like carved white stone or the age-bleached fucking bones of some prehistoric creature, is too young.
Rage threads through me, and I have to fight against the actual prehistoric creature raging inside me, threatening to tear through my skin.
Because my beast can smell her.
Because despite the eyes being wrong, she smells the same … muted vanilla tones, with that under-layer of wild —
It’s a fucking spell.
I know it.
Just like whatever dire allure or glamour she’s using to mask her true appearance.
“Rath!”Presh cries, up on her feet and running toward me.
Fuck.Less than a second has passed.How could I feel so much in such a short period of time?It’s as if I’m the one who’s been dead for thirteen years, and suddenly … suddenly … everything is different.Again.
Presh flings her arms around me, and I hug her to me automatically without taking my eyes off the impostor.The fake Zaya sighs, leaning way over to set the gun down on the side table, putting it out of reach.Her hand is shaking.It hadn’t been a moment ago.
I squeeze Presh tight.
The impostor — I refuse to even refer to her as Zaya — closes her eyes, swaying slightly like she’s exhausted.
Presh peels back from my embrace, blinking up at me and smiling.Her eyes are reddened.She’s got an expensive-as-fuck healing patch on her face.A patch I know wasn’t in the first-aid kit that the motel had on hand.I inhale, and I can smell more of that emollient under the vanilla tones that have smoothed over Presh’s natural scent.
As if she’s cloaked in it.That has to be intentional.Does the impostor think that’ll confuse me, if she masks my sister’s scent along with her own?
The impostor is watching us.
No.She’s watching Presh.Her gaze is far softer than it was when she was looking at me.
My little sister peels away from me, tugging at my hand and pulling me farther into the room.“This is Zaya, she … she’s like me.”Presh looks up at me, chewing her lower lip.
Frowning, I look at my sister.Really look at her.I can’t sense what she means until she tilts her head, and I catch the purple undertone in her dark-blue eyes.
“Zaya,” she says, “this is my half-brother Rath.”
