Destiny Kills (Myth and Magic 1)

“How did he contact you?”

“If you knew anything at all about Egan, then you’d know how he contacted me.” He gave me another one of those cold glances. “Unless, of course, you really are a thief, and the police are after you because you stole Egan’s ring.”

Again the shock rolled through me, but this time it was accompanied by a sick churning in my stomach. “What makes you think this is Egan’s ring?”

He smiled, and this time it was a cold, harsh thing to behold. “Egan had that ring on his hand the last time I saw him.”

“You know, I find it very strange that Egan never mentioned having siblings, let alone a half brother, in the ten years I was with him.”

Even as I said the words, sadness washed through me. Ten years was a long time to be with someone you could never love. But it wasn’t as if we’d had any other choice. We’d been locked up, caged like animals. The two of us, my mom, and the little ones—some of them barely more than toddlers who had never really known the freedom of the skies. . . .

The memories faded yet again. I flexed my fingers and resisted the urge to scream.

“That’s the second time you’ve used past tense,” he said softly. “Why?”

I briefly closed my eyes. God, I was an idiot. Yet now that he’d picked up on the mistake, part of me desperately wanted to blurt it all out—all the confusion, all the pain. I needed someone to talk to, someone to confide in. Someone to be what Egan had been to me.

Someone to end up dead just like him?

Besides, no matter how good it would feel to confide in someone—anyone—about the stuff I could remember and the stuff I couldn’t, the truth was that I didn’t know if I could even trust this man. His sudden appearance seemed a little too convenient. And hell, trusting a stranger was what had landed me in this whole mess in the first place. I’d lost eleven years of my life thanks to that mistake, and I wasn’t about to repeat it.

Maybe I was being a little paranoid, but without the benefit of memories, I was working blind, and the urge for caution was humming through my bloodstream.

I couldn’t end up caged again.

I wouldn’t end up caged again.

“Slip of the tongue,” I said, twisting around to look behind us rather than facing the stranger’s knowing gaze. “The cop car is getting closer.”

“I’ll worry about it when it’s ramming our tail.”

“Worrying about it before it sends us flying into the trees might be a better idea.”

“They won’t ram. They’re probably arranging a road-block up ahead as we speak.”

I studied him for a minute. “What do they really want you for?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do they want you for? I doubt they’d be so intent on chasing someone over a pair of sweatpants.”

“Well, apparently you’re wrong.” I hesitated, but had to ask the question that came instantly to mind. “Have you killed anyone?”

“Have you?” he shot back.

“No,” I said, but somewhere in the back of my mind, screams mingled with the splatter of blood and white matter across stark white walls. No, I thought. No.

But the memories would not be denied.

It wasn’t Egan’s death. The responsibility for that might be mine—if only because he’d died trying to protect me—but he’d been shot through the heart, not the head. The death I remembered was another one entirely.

I had killed. I just didn’t know how or why. And that was a scary thought.

Maybe the stranger should be scared of me, and what I might do, not the other way around.

He didn’t say anything and I looked behind us again. The cop car was catching up. No matter how powerful the engine in this car sounded, we weren’t gaining any ground. I glanced back at the stranger and studied his profile. His lips were like Egan’s—same shape, same lush kissability. I pushed the annoying thought away, and said, “Do you have a name?”

“Trae Wilson.” He glanced at me. “And I find it hard to believe that Egan never talked about any of us.”

“The only thing he ever said was that the past no longer mattered.”