Page 70 of Lust
Even though she saw red, Liza unclipped her firearm from her holster, and removed her badge from her belt.
“Liza,” Joe said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “There will be an investigation. We can use it to find him. Investigate him back.”
Joe looked like he was going to complain but thought better of it. “I’ll drive you home.”
22
In the basementlevel of Lazarus House, Despair submitted herself to tests of all sorts. She’d had her blood drawn, brainwaves monitored, mobility checks, a lie detector test, and more. Pride completed a thorough study of her, and just when she thought he was done, he came up with another test. Right now she submitted to the dreary task of a heart rate monitor taking incremental readings. She wasn’t sure what purpose it served, but it kept him complacent while he studied biological samples down a microscope on the workshop table.
Nuts, bolts, and oil spilled across the beat-up wooden table surface. Flint and Sloth tinkered with something with wires and occasionally crossed to a room the supercomputer server was in. They pretended not to watch Pride’s progress with Despair, but now and then, Sloth would cast her eyes Despair’s way, assess, and then flit back.
She held a grudge for what Despair had done to her fiancé, even though she’d then saved his life. Perhaps they’d sent her down to monitor Despair’s emotions, but Sloth’s empathy powers would sense no red flags. Despair felt nothing. Was nothing. Only one light existed at the end of her tunnel, and it existed inside a tiny locket hanging around Julius Allcott’s neck. If all was going according to plan, Julius and his top scientist had completed most of their trials on regular human stem cells. Once Despair delivered the life giving cells from Wrath’s child’s umbilical cord, they would know exactly what to do. Nothing would go to waste. It was their only immediate hope of getting the data they required to extend the shelf-life of replicates beyond a few months.
Despair looked across the table at Pride looming over his microscope, contemplating samples of her blood. From what she knew of her younger brother, he was one of those “can-do” geniuses who learned anything he was curious about. If the information was there, he found it. And then he broke new barriers, turning that information inside out. But he wasn’t self-aware. She’d been watching him. He thought he had a handle on his sin, but it handled him in ways he was yet to comprehend.
His DNA was still locked, which meant he had no powers, nor could he procreate until he met his mate. Despair was the only other sibling left in the same boat. The two of them had no future, but which one would go first?
In the lab that raised them, Parker would compete with Despair. Sit taller, walk faster, be better. But she’d only ever sing in his face. It had been fun ruffling his fur.
She shifted her gaze back to a blank spot on the floor before her.
Keeping them impotent had been Gloria’s best idea. It was the only thing that saved Despair from being used and impregnated as a test subject by the Syndicate. She had other stem cells in her body they could use, but they wanted to exhaust embryonic cells first, or the next best thing, umbilical cord cells. If they decided Despair’s worth had expired, then... No. Her father loved her. He’d placed a strand of her hair, along with the strands from his first family, in his precious locket. He wanted Despair with him in the new world, as much as them.
“I’m not sure what you’re looking for, Pride,” she murmured.
He lifted his golden gaze to meet hers. “You don’t need to know. And it’s Parker.”
Back to the blank spot on the floor. Despair let herself become one with it. Finding something mundane to focus on, explore, and turn marvelous, had been her only source of entertainment on many lonely nights during her youth after the fire at the lab. At first, Julius hadn’t been kind to her. He also hadn’t been mean. He’d just been the one who rescued her from the flames and healed her. They all thought he was a cruel man, but she’d sensed his despair, and how it lessened when he visited her. Sometimes a person’s true colors showed from the dark cages of their body.
Eventually, she’d been moved to a facility where she was the only person in a room, watched and studied much like she had been in the lab with her siblings. Only this time, there were no carers. There were no friends. Only her, four walls, and a bed and toilet.
The walls became her friends.
The bed, her solace.
The toilet, a place to drown.
“He’s just making sure you’re healthy,” Flint said, his deep voice piercing her reverie.
She slid her gaze to him. A vague memory of him existed somewhere in her psyche. She knew because she felt something tug deep inside her chest when she looked at him. But apart from that, he was no one to her. He helped stage the rescue that sent Gloria into a kamikaze state. He was a father to Despair’s siblings. And it was either he, or Mary, who kept a constant, yet compassionate, eye on her while she lived in this building.
Despair often watched him to ascertain what Mary saw in him. A quiet, yet sturdy presence. He was attractive for an older man, but he wasn’t a leader like Mary. He existed only to support his makeshift family, spending his time in the workshop, making weapons, playing with computers, and fixing tech gear. Despair couldn’t understand. Each of the mated Lazarus siblings was drawn to their partners through the biological urge programmed into their DNA, the one that pushed them toward a person embodying their sin’s opposing virtue.
She might not understand why they loved each other, but she did know love was a weakness. Mary would do anything to save Flint’s life, and he would die for her. Despair counted on it.
“How’s the tatt going?”
Despair lifted her head and found Envy looking down at her. The youngest of the Seven had been the most blasé about her reemergence. Even now he stood in casual torn jeans. Nothing about his appearance said he took this business seriously. Tattoos crawled up his arms, twining in patterns that accentuated his physique. An odd beanie covered his unruly medium length hair.
When Despair didn’t respond, he took her hand, and gently checked the freshly scored skin on her inner wrist. He tilted it to catch the light and squinted at the Yin-Yang symbol.
“Looks almost healed,” he noted, then met her eyes and held. “And almost in the black. You need to find yourself some hope, sister, or you’ll blackout.”
She shrugged.
His brows puckered, but he let go of her hand and then strolled over to Pride where they spoke in hushed tones. Despair went back to studying the floor. She knew they spoke about her. She knew no one trusted her. But she didn’t need trust. She only needed for them to keep her in this building until her plan came to fruition. She would find trust in her next life… or rather, her replicate would. That’s all she wanted—an end to this misery and a rebirth of her old self. She wanted it so badly, it consumed her.
