Destiny Kills (Myth and Magic 1)

After several more deep breaths, I grabbed the guard’s hand and flattened it against the scanner. Again the scanner read his prints, and the light above the door changed color.

I dragged the guard inside the cell, then turned and looked around. The large room was shadowed and quiet. Water trickled softly to my right, the smell of it warm and familiar. Loch water.

So why hadn’t my mother called the loch? She could have, given time and patience.

To the immediate right lay a basic bed. A bedside lamp pooled yellow light across a sparse rug, and highlighted the dust on the cold stone floors. Beyond the bed lay the open bathroom facilities. My mother was in neither the bed nor the bathroom, but she was here somewhere.

“Mom?” I said softly. “It’s me.”

“No.” There was a long pause, as if she were searching for the right thing to say, then, “I told you not to.”

Her words were slurred, her voice filled with a deep sense of weariness and hopelessness. And pain, great, great pain.

It hurt to think that she’d come to such a point where nothing seemed worth fighting for. But it also hurt that she would think I could simply walk away, leaving her here for these monsters to continually prod, and poke, and sample.

I studied the shadows, trying to pin down her location. “I won’t let you die here, Mom. Come on, I’ve

found a way out for us.”

“There is no point. My time is too near.”

Fear clutched at my heart. She had given up on her life. Well and truly given up.

No, part of me wanted to shout. This isn’t like you. We need to fight them. We can’t let them win. Damn it, she’d always been a fighter. Even Dad had acknowledged that. I guess that was part of the reason I’d gone to find her when I was old enough. She hadn’t come, as Dad had promised she one day would, so I’d gone to find and free her. And in the foolishness of youth, had presumed I’d succeed where she had long failed.

What had the scientists done to her that it had come to this?

I finally spotted her silhouette. She was standing near the air-conditioning vent, not facing it but rather with her back to it, so that the slight breeze stirred her hair and flung the dark strands across her face.

For some reason, fear stirred all the more strongly.

“Mom, I won’t leave unless you do.”

“Destiny—”

“No,” I said, more violently than I intended. “There’s no debating this. You’re leaving this goddamn place. They’ve taken you from our lives, taken your life. I won’t let them take you in death as well.”

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “If you wish.”

“I damn well do wish.”

She hesitated, then stepped forward, and the lampshade’s pale light washed across her face. Or what remained of her face.

My mother had been blinded.

And not just blinded, but disfigured. It almost looked like acid had been splashed across part of her face and her eyes. The left side of her face had an almost melted look, reminding me of the way plastic held too close to a fire softened, then ran. And her eyes—oh God.

I gulped back bile and resisted the urge to look away. One socket had no eye at all. It was just a space filled with scarred and ravaged skin. The other, barely visible under her drooping eyelid, was white. Pure white.

“Not a pretty sight, is it?” she said softly.

There was no bitterness in her voice, no anger, and I think that was even more shocking than what had been done to her.

“Why?” It was all I could say, all I could think to say.

She smiled, though only half her mouth lifted. “They got sick of me trying to escape, so they decided to do something about it. I’ve had a long time to get used to the feel of it, Destiny.”

It certainly explained why they’d never let me see her. I was fiercely glad they hadn’t decided to blind me, as well, and suddenly wondered if Egan had been my savior in more ways than one. After all, I’d done more than my fair share of attempting to escape in the early years of my capture, and blinding me most certainly would have stopped that.