Penumbra (Spook Squad 3)

God, that was so not the result she’d been expecting.

It was finally confirmed. She wasn’t human. She was something else. Something created in a lab somewhere and brought up in clinical surroundings. But to what end? That was the question she had to seek an answer to, though her last dream was perhaps an indicator. Hopeworth had been playing in the genetic and psychic sandbox for some time, trying to create the perfect soldier, the perfect weapon. And her dreams indicated that she’d begun training to control her abilities at a very young age.

But if her walker genes were the strongest, did that mean she wasn’t a product of Hopeworth? Her birth certificate—her real one, not the fake one that had been placed into the system the day she’d appeared on the steps of the State Care center for orphaned kids—gave the names of the eight people who were her “parents.” None of them were walkers, but shifters and psychics.

So if she was a product of the Penumbra project, as they were all presuming, where in hell did the walker strain come from?

The “real” certificate could be a fake, of course. But she had confirmation of both the project and the people involved from a man and a woman who were at Hopeworth at the time of Penumbra. She even had confirmation, albeit from a woman with memory problems, about her presence there. But that same project had been totally—and perhaps a little conveniently—destroyed by fire, so there were no records available to confirm anything they were told.

The one person who might be able to shed some light on her confusion was the mysterious Joe. Every discussion she’d ever had with him had taken her just a little bit further along her path of remembering. But how much could she really trust him? She knew even less about him than she did about herself.

As she stood there, contemplating whether she should try and contact him, the heavens opened up. Big, fat, heavy drops of rain began to splatter across the pavement, quickly darkening the concrete inches away from her feet. Thunder rumbled, the sound so loud it seemed to rattle the air itself. Two seconds later, lightning split the sky, briefly turning the night as bright as day. The energy of that flash burned across her senses, as warm as the sun and as sharp as glass.

A tremor ran through her, but it wasn’t fear. It was something far worse.

Excitement.

Pleasure.

As if part of her soul rejoiced in the storm’s energy.

She rubbed her arms and warily stared at the skies. Maybe Karl was right. Maybe she should have an escort to Wetherton’s…

Damn it, no. She’d been touched by the power of the storms before and had drawn it deep into her body. This storm was no fiercer than the one she’d used to help find Gabriel, and she’d walked away from that with nothing more than a brief bout of shakiness and exhaustion. If it hadn’t affected her then, why was she acting like a Nervous Nelly now?

She wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just Karl’s warning. Or maybe it was the growing sensation—or rather, the expectation—that something was about to happen.

Something that needed to happen. Which made no sense at all.

She stared into the storm-locked night for a few seconds longer, then resolutely dashed out into the thickness of it. The wind tore at her as she ran, making her stagger like a drunkard, and the rain fell so heavily that visibility was almost impossible. Her pants became plastered to her legs in an instant and her shirt clung like a second skin. Only in Melbourne could a day whose weather had started off so nice do a complete one-eighty and become a bitch.

And, of course, the closest parking spot she’d been able to find near O’Hearn’s office was a block and a half down the street. Wetherton’s office wasn’t that much farther beyond that. She might as well run all the way, because by the time she got to her car, she’d be soaked anyway. Besides, she wasn’t likely to find parking any closer to Wetherton’s office at this hour. There was too much traffic.

She ran down the street, jumping over puddles and barely avoiding the other madly dashing pedestrians. Another flash of lightning lit across the stormy evening, and the power within it skipped across her skin, crackling like slivers of fire between her fingertips. Every breath she took sucked that energy inside her, until it felt as if it were surging through every pore, every fiber. Her whole body seemed more alive than it ever had been before.

It scared her. Terrified her.

And the fact that it felt so right made her fear it even more.

Overhead, thunder rumbled again. The power of it echoed through her, a force that filled her to breaking, completing her in a way she couldn’t even begin to understand.

Then the lightning hit.

It felt like a gigantic hammer, smashing into her head, driving through her body, snatching her breath, her strength, even as it knocked her to the pavement. Her knees hit the concrete with a sickening crunch, but she felt no pain, had no awareness of anything going on around her, because everything had become white. It was as if she’d stepped beyond this world into a place of fierce brightness, in which nothing else existed but that light and the power within it—and within her. The air itself burned with the intensity of that light, but not half as much as her skin.

And it felt good.

So very good.

Without thinking, she flung her arms wide, accepting the power burning around her, drawing it in even more. Flesh and bone seemed to burn away, until she was nothing more than a creature of energy, a being at one with the storm and the night and the intense heat of the lightning. And it called to her, that energy, wanted her, reaching for her like a lover might welcome a much-missed partner.

She raised her face to the skies she couldn’t see, torn by the need to answer that call and the growing knowledge that something was wrong, that this wasn’t good, no matter h

ow good it actually felt.

“Samantha!”

The call ran around her—through her mind and past her ears. Yet it wasn’t one voice, but two.