Thirteen

Thirteen

One

I led my half brother Bryce away from the rubble of the exploded lab, ignoring his protests, and ignoring Adam, who was sticking close and wincing every time Bryce coughed. I couldn’t blame Adam for worrying. The Supernatural Liberation Movement had injected Bryce with something called a “vaccine against mortality,” which sounded lovely, until you figured out that meant it contained DNA from vampires, zombies, and god only knows what other creatures the gang had rounded up for their experiments.
So I really didn’t want to catch whatever he had either. Before we’d escaped, the woman who’d injected him had suggested it was transmittable. I had to trust they weren’t crazy enough to make it easily transmittable. And if they were? Well, then, I was already screwed. The only way out of the lab had been to drop into a pit of water connected to an underground sewer. Bryce was so weak he’d almost drowned and I’d had to help him. I’d stopped short of giving him mouth-to-mouth when he woke on his own, but we’d had plenty of contact. So I could be infected. But that was a concern for later. Right now, I was just happy to have survived, especially when the whole place had come down on our heads as the liberation movement blew up their own lab.
I’d never been so glad to be tramping—wet, smelly and dirty—down a New Orleans alleyway. Or to see Jeremy Danvers, the werewolf Alpha, or Jaime Vegas, his necromancer girlfriend. Or Adam. Most of all Adam.
Bryce might be my half brother, but I’ve known Adam since I was twelve. Bryce? Well, let’s just say we aren’t close.
“We’ll turn onto the road up here,” Jeremy said. He was scouting the way, limping from the blast. “We should be far enough from—”
He stopped and tilted his head, werewolf hearing picking up something we couldn’t. When he frowned, Adam moved up beside him and whispered, “Trouble?”
“I can hear a police radio. They’re looking for two men and a woman seen leaving the blast site.” “Two guys covered in dust and bruises?” Adam said. “And a girl who looks like she went swimming in a sewer?”
Jeremy nodded.
I looked down at my soaked clothing. The only unscathed one was Jaime, who’d been blocks away when the building went up.
Jeremy said, “Anita Barrington set off an alarm, meaning there will be members of the reveal movement looking for all of us. We going to need to hole up until Jaime finds us clean clothing. I’ll go with her while she does.”
“I’ll be—” Jaime began, then cut herself short. As a necromancer, she had no innate defensive skills. As a forty-seven-year-old on the celebrity circuit, she didn’t have any acquired ones either: All she usually had to deal with were hecklers. “I need backup, but I don’t think it should be you,” she finally said to Jeremy. “Bryce needs a guard with superhearing and superstrength. I just need someone to watch my back. Savannah can do that. She isn’t battered and bruised. Her jeans are black and won’t look wet from a distance.”
Jaime gave me her jacket—a cute leather one that we’d bought on a trip to Milan. It was a little short—she’s five-five and I’m nearly seven inches taller—so on me it looked fashionably cropped. With the help of her brush and scarf, we tied my wet hair back and I stopped looking like a drowned rat, even if my sneakers sloshed with every step.
We found the guys a quiet spot to wait. Then we set off.

The Supernatural Liberation Movement. I gave them a vowel and called them SLAM. Their mission was to reveal the existence of supernaturals to the human world. There was a very good reason we hadn’t done this already—because it was stupid. Every time the world found out about us, heads rolled—our heads. Even if we could argue that this wasn’t the middle ages anymore, we weren’t just different in gender, skin color, religion, sexual orientation, or any other equality issue. We had powers. Often deadly powers that gave us an advantage over humans. You can bet your ass we wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms . . . except maybe by military research facilities.
So why was this movement gaining traction? First, the majority of supernaturals are not as tuned in to our world as I am. Through the Cabals and my connection to the interracial council, I had the advantage of seeing things from a global and historical perspective. Second, there are a lot of disaffected supernaturals out there, especially young ones who don’t understand why the hell they shouldn’t flaunt their abilities. For most of my twenty-one years, I’d have agreed with them—I had power, so I used it.

From THIRTEEN by Kelley Armstrong. Published by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Kelley Armstrong, 2012.