Her voice had risen without her intending it to do so, but at that, she inflated her chest and deliberately screamed at top of her lungs. “THERE ARE NO KIDNAPPERS! THERE’S JUST YOU AND YOUR MINIONS AND YOUR BABY DRAGON! YOU STAGED YOUR OWN KIDNAPPING AND NOW YOU STAGED MINE! I BET YOU SPENT HALF YOUR FORTUNE TO HAVE THIS DRAGON GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SO YOU COULD PLAY SOME FUCKED-UP GAME WITH ME IN THE SWAAAAAAMP!!!!”
Carter stepped forward, trying to clap a hand over her mouth. The golden dragon darted at his hands, delighted by this new game.
Fen dodged him and took a few steps back. Her foot landed on something hard, and she remembered the bit of plastic the dragon had dropped. She bent to pick it up, then ducked again, avoiding Carter’s grab for it. Fen read it aloud, her eyes flickering back and forth so she could glare at him at the same time.
“‘If you’re reading this, you have won a new phone of your choice, courtesy of Howe Enterprises and our latest viral marketing context! Contact Protection, Inc: Defenders in Refuge City and tell them you have a message from Carter Howe. Give them this. The code words are kidnap, swamp, pawpaw, wizard.’” She shook the bit of plastic at him. “And there’s your extremely famous signature at the bottom!”
Shaking it wasn’t good enough. She hurled the plastic at him. It bounced off his forehead.
“Hey!” Carter yelped.
The little dragon flapped its wings and hissed.
Fen took another deep breath. Yelling was surprisingly satisfying. “VIRAL MARKETING? IS THAT WHAT THIS IS?!”
“No! No, of course not!” He sounded sincere, but then he always sounded sincere. He probably sounded most honest when he was lying the hardest. “I was trying to get help, and I thought ‘Help, I’ve been kidnapped’ would sound like a prank.”
“TRYING TO GET HELP BY SENDING YOUR PET DRAGON?!”
“Will you please lower your voice?!” Carter hissed.
She was in no mood to do so. And besides, she had one more thing she wanted to shout. Inflating her lungs and raising her voice to the absolute maximum, she shouted, “AND YOU HAD THE NERVE TO KISS ME WHEN YOU WERE LYING TO ME ALL ALONG!!!!”
He made another try at putting his hand over her mouth, but was again hampered by the dragon.
Fen bared her teeth. “Do that and I’ll bite you!”
He lowered his hand, but kept it ready. “And we both know you could probably take off a finger. Look, Fen, I’ll explain every—I’ll explain. But there really are people after us—well, after me—so please don’t shout.”
The fire of righteous anger filled her, but she also felt oddly relaxed. It was as if she’d opened a gate that had long been under pressure, releasing a pent-up flood. “Fine. Explain. Start with the baby dragon.”
Chapter 8
Carter had always pridedhimself on honesty. If he couldn’t tell the truth, he at least tried to omit information rather than outright lie. He’d had to keep shifters a secret from non-shifters, of course, but it wasn’t as if non-shifters commonly asked questions like “Can you turn into a snow leopard?” He simply didn’t mention that he could, and that was that.
After he’d been kidnapped (the first time) and turned into a monster, he was confronted with keeping a different secret. He had to give the public someexplanation, but he was so unused to making things up that he resorted to a story which, in retrospect, could have been more plausible.
And then there was the matter of what exactly had happened to him when he’d been kidnapped. His family and teammates—the guys he contracted for sometimes—already knew he was a shifter. The Defenders additionally already knew, more or less, what had happened to him, because, more or less, it had happened to them too. And he could hardly lie to his family. So he’d simply refused to give any details other than that his captors had experimented on him and killed his snow leopard. His family, naturally, had been so horrified and sorry for him that they hadn’t tried to make him say more.
You should’ve told them about us,growled a monster.
Yes, yes,hissed another monster.
You should’veshownthem us,screeched a third.
Even the thought of revealing his monster self made Carter feel like he’d been punched in the gut. His snow leopard had been beautiful and sleek and dangerous, agile and lithe and quick. His leopard had beenhim—the truest, deepest, most primal part of him.
And now that truest, deepest part of him was a hideous, disgusting, destructive, unwanted, out of control, repulsive—
Hey!The monsters snarled and shrieked and hissed a chorus of disapproval.
Carter gritted his teeth so hard they felt like they might shatter. He’d lied to Fen that Precious was a helium balloon and a flying swamp lizard, but he wouldn’t lie any more than he had to. As far as he could manage, omission was the name of the game.
The monsters in his head broke into an uproar that threatened to split his head open.
STOP LYING!
TELL THE TRUTH!
