That he was Victor, Logan's older brother, wasn't much of a surprise to me. There was a way of moving, a tilt of the head, a frown between the eyes that they shared. Certainly they were both feral but Victor was more feline to Logan's wolfish nature.

Their sexual inclinations were just as similar and disparate. Both had a tendency to roughness but where Logan had a sort of underlying tenderness, Victor seemed more selfish and single-minded. Yet he'd made me come before...

I snapped myself out of that line of thought, though chances were he'd already picked up on it judging by his soft chuckle. I ignored him, focusing instead on my battered copy of Watership Down now that he'd taken over driving. Or at least I was trying to focus.

I've never been a sexual creature. I enjoy it but the nature of my powers and the fact that I've spent so much time controlled by others means I don't get the chance to indulge it. Now I realized that Victor managed to stir the same something in me that Logan had been able to; both were so vital, so full of life and energy that I felt drawn to them. I was like a vampire craving their very essence, the sharp contrast to my own cold existence.

I'm not dead, but I'm not alive, not in any easily recognized way. It's my ability to walk the line between and bring others across that makes me so valuable to those who seek to control me. Left to my own devices I actually help souls cross over. Of course, that's not very useful to those who want to keep their experiments alive.

I'm very human in some ways. I feel both emotions and physical sensations, I breathe and I bleed. But as I'd told Victor, I don't need to sleep or eat. And I don't die.

Maybe that's why I like pain. It means I'm alive. Logan had been the same way and, again, apparently Victor also was.

"Is there porn in that book I missed the half-dozen times I've read it?"

I looked over at him, trying not to appear flustered. I knew I'd failed because he was smirking. "There are rabbits in the book."

That got a chuckle from him. "What's the plan when we get there?"

I closed the book. "A bit of a hike, for starters. We can't exactly drive in like we belong there." Turning my body slightly to look at him, I leaned up against the window. "I considered pretending you were returning me but there would be no conceivable way you would know of this post so that is out."

"How far?"

"Just a couple miles, it's out in the middle of BFE. I have enough power left I can fool the locks on the back entrance and I know the way to where we need to go. We get my inhibitor off and then I will look up what we want to know."

He was silent for a few beats, long fingers tapping on the steering wheel in time to ZZ Top. "Once you're free what's to keep you from skipping out? I came after you on a contract, you got no reason to help me."

There was truth in his words and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered doing just what he'd said. It would be simple to literally disappear once the inhibitor was removed.

"Even on you I can smell a lie."

Well, then. "I do not want the synthesizer available any more than you do. I have seen it destroy too many lives, your brother was nearly one of them and I am not entirely sure he got off lucky as it is. The FOH does not need another weapon in their arsenal." He didn't need to know that I already felt the tiniest bit bound to him; Logan had been quite candid when he'd spoken of his brother, enough that it was like having known Victor myself in some respects. And knowing what I did of his temperament, telling him so would likely just piss him off and make him change his mind about helping me. He was a fickle cat.

"He's still alive, you know." He said it so quietly that I wasn't sure I'd heard him. He kept his gaze forward, on the road ahead. "I ran into him a few years ago. Didn't remember me." There was something, an undercurrent of loss, in his voice. I didn't think he even realized it.

"Carbonadium can cause memory loss," I offered. "I think he was also involved in some kind of programming where they wiped his mind after missions."

Victor shrugged. "We got much farther to drive?" he asked, changing topics.

I let him. "Two hours, give or take. I'll let you know where to stop."

Snow covered the ground and I could smell the promise of more on the air, not quite the ozone of rain but similar, a clean scent. I'd spent the last couple of hours in a sort of meditative state, focusing and gathering what little power I had left. It would be just enough, as I'd told Victor, to get us inside.

The facility was basically just an outpost, set up for training agents and occasional testing. I'd spent enough time here that I knew the layout, knew what kind of security force would be in place. The trickiest part was getting inside and getting my inhibitor off. After that, I could mask our presence while I accessed the server for info on the synthesizer we wanted.

The snow helped muffle our approach towards the back entrance. I placed my hand about an inch away from the palm reader, which showed a small red light, and I closed my eyes as I pushed just so with the energy I generated. The sensor beeped, clicked, beeped again and then the little red light went green.

"Straight ahead," I directed quietly, opening the door. No one was guarding it and they were paranoid about surveillance in case footage of what they were up to got leaked, so we had no cameras to contend with. I shut the door again and gestured for him to follow.

We made it a few hallways in before he grabbed me and pulled me back around the corner, holding me there. I heard two voices, both male, pass by before Victor let me go and nodded.

"Thanks," I whispered as I moved on again.

There were a couple more quick stops like that, both times he heard them and hid us. I still half-expected him to go back on our deal; I guess I was just as skeptical as he was.

But finally we reached our first destination: a small room with a bank of computers and supply closets along one wall. From inside one I retrieved two small, slim black wands, showing them to Victor. "You know how to use these?" I asked. "I cannot do it one-handed."

He took them, pulling my wrist close so he could work. "Yeah, done this a few times." One wand attached to one side of the bracelet; the other one pressed against the opposite side and, together, they generated a frequency that shut off the inhibitor. I unclasped it and flung it as if it had literally burned me.

"Move back," I warned him. "I don't want to hurt you."

He quirked an eyebrow but did as I asked, retreating to lean his butt against the computer bank.

Having full control over my power was like being able to relax a cramped muscle and, like releasing a cramp can be painful, it hurt more for a few moments. I felt my physical body lose cohesion, the room around me thrown into stark blacks and whites and greys, cold except for the warmth of my companion. He was yellows and oranges, shifting to red at his core.

I heard him inhale, saying "Holy shit," on the exhale. It made me laugh.

I knew what he was reacting to and somehow understood that he wasn't the type given to overreaction.

If you've ever seen a real ghost, or the pictures in those godforsaken Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, then you've got a good idea what I really look like. The shape of my body becomes hazy and transparent, my hair goes dead white and my eyes are just ragged black holes. I'm terrifying, really, but that's why I have a physical, corporeal form. No one wants to see me coming to take them into death.

With my transition, all of the injuries and fatigue I'd sustained suddenly disappeared. All the aches and pains were gone. For the first time in longer than I cared to remember I felt whole again and I very nearly wept.

"I've seen you before." Victor's voice, the tone somewhere between unnerved and curious, pulled me back.

I coalesced, stepping back onto the earthly plane with a small amount of regret. "If you did, I don't recall. It may have been another of my kind."

"Your 'kind'?"'

I nodded, reaching up to smooth my hair back. "Reapers, Valkyries, psychopomps. Pick your favorite term. You have been closer to death more often than most ever get without crossing the veil." I took a deep breath and let it out, then concentrated on extending my ability to mask our presence.

Victor shivered. Cats were known for being particularly sensitive to my kind. "The fuck was that?"

"Me hiding us. Let's go." Without waiting for a reply I strode out of the room, deeper into the complex. Almost immediately we came upon a human male and I heard Victor inhale sharply. "He cannot see us," I assured him.

"That's creepy as hell."

The man may not have been able to see us but he did shudder at the cool touch of my presence as we passed him by. "Some are more sensitive than others, but the only way to get past my veil is with magic. Nulls tend to find that sort of thing ridiculous and superstitious."

"More ridiculous than mutants?"

I shrugged. "'There are more things in heaven and earth'," I replied. "Humans do not want to believe that they are not the biggest, baddest things prowling the world. They sleep better at night in their ignorance."

"Ain't that the fuckin' truth."

I glanced back as we passed another guard to find Victor waving his hand in front of the man's face. It shocked a laugh out of me which in turn startled the feral mutant. He turned amber eyes to me, one brow quirked.

"What?"

"Curiosity problems?"

That got a snarl and he stalked away from the human.

"Lucky for me," I said, gesturing at another doorway, "we are here." The room was similar to the other one we'd gone to but with more advanced computers, higher security because they connected to the secure server. "Park your very nice ass while I break through the firewall."

I heard him huff in amusement and then he started pacing. "What happens if you can't find anything?"

I parked my own ass in front of one terminal and went to work, fingers flying over the keyboard. I'd had to pull back some on my power or I'd fry the tech. "Trust me, there's no way it is not there. They may be paranoid dicks, but they are paranoid dicks with a paperwork fetish. I might not be able to figure out why the FOH is after you but that is not my highest priority at the moment."

"I'm hurt." I could hear the smirk in his voice but he let me work, which I did with the tip of my tongue caught between my teeth.

There were firewalls aplenty, redundancies and blind corners and encryptions that would keep even the most dedicated hacker at bay. Unfortunately for them, the idiots had trained me for this kind of infiltration and done it on their own system. I knew most of the weak points and could work my way past the rest, it just took time.

"Might wanna work faster," Victor said suddenly, his voice pitched low. "We're gonna have company in a minute."

"Shit." I reached for a nearby drawer and opened it, hoping for luck and getting it in the form of a flash drive. I stuck the drive into a port and copied the pertinent info, having to consciously stop myself from jogging my leg in impatience, as if doing so would make the damn machine go faster. I was pretty sure there was some kind of universal law that dictated the opposite would happen; that or some capricious god.

"Come on," I muttered, watching the stupid little file folders fly across the screen, the percentage bar creeping closer to finished. Luck must have still been with us because the files finished copying; I yanked the drive out, shoving it in my pocket as I thumbed the monitor off.

"Give me your hand," I said, already reaching for him. "And don't freak out on me." I could hear voices coming closer, recognized one of them and knew that I didn't want to be caught by its owner.

"What-"

I didn't give Victor time to finish his sentence. I could have turned us both invisible but there were ways of seeing past that. Instead, I moved us. All the way back to his truck.

Victor tore his hand away from mine, dropping to his knees and retching. I caught myself against the side of the truck and tried to remember how to exist in this body.

What I did wasn't quite teleportation, insofar as I understand that ability and how it operates. It's almost a form of astral projection, I suppose, but it doesn't hurt me at all to go from one point to another.

Victor was losing his lunch because he only had a corporeal form. It was also the reason I felt like I'd just drained my entire reserve of strength and energy, I wasn't used to dragging someone else along.

"Son of a bitch," he exclaimed, sitting down hard on his ass. "What the fuck did you just do?"

"I got us out of there the only way I could," I said. "I am sorry, if I'd had time to warn you, I would have. One of the men coming our way, I recognized his voice, and it would not have been good if he had caught us." I straightened, finally, ignoring the ache in my head. "As it was, he may find out I was there anyway."

He coughed, clearing his throat. "How the hell would he do that?"

I looked away, off into the trees in the direction of the complex, my vision blurring as I tried to see with a different kind of sight. We were safe, for now. "He and I... we have a history. We have worked together but he has never trusted me, for good reason, so he has figured out ways to tell when I have been around."

My hair blew back from my face and I breathed deep, letting the cold wind settle me. "We need to go. They are not actively searching, but if I know him at all he is going to suspect, and we need to be away from here."

Victor didn't answer. He just got to his feet with most of his usual grace intact and went for the driver's side. I could have argued with him, pushed the issue of him being disoriented from my power, but it would have been more trouble than it was worth.

"I've got a laptop," he said when I'd buckled in. "Any idea where to go?"

"Not back to where we were. Would be too easy for the FOH to find us if they were trying." I drummed my fingers against my leg a moment. "There is a truckstop an hour from here, and a motel. Head east."