Chimera (The Korsak Brothers #1)(21)

Stripping off my glove, I tried again. Palm up, I let it lie unthreateningly between us with an inner patience I was far from feeling. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” I assured her softly. “Come with me. I’ll take you home.” She didn’t blink at the words or move, but continued to study me with an assessment that was anything but childlike. It almost seemed to hold the cunning of an adult or . . . a wary animal. My hand began to grow cool, then cold, far colder than the temperature warranted. Confused, I pulled it back and turned it over. My nails were dark blue, the skin of my fingers blanched an unnatural white. What the f*ck? When I looked back up, the door was shut once again. The girl was gone. Not much to my credit, I wasn’t completely sorry.

Shaking my hand hard, I put the glove back on and gritted my teeth as the blood began to tingle fiercely back into my fingers. I had no idea what had happened and less time to think about it. Resolutely, I moved on to the next door.

I don’t remember opening it.

I don’t remember walking into the room. I only remember facing the boy sitting on the edge of his bed. Boy, young man, whatever you wanted to call him, he sat there wearing the same style unisex white pajamas and a face that bore only the faintest traces of curiosity. Without instruction from my conscious brain, my hand switched on a tiny penlight to see him more clearly. I stood, paralyzed, and looked—just looked. The line of the jaw and the slope of the nose were blurred by time. Ten years would change the map of anyone’s face. But the eyes—they were the same. The colors, yes, but more than that; it was what lay behind the blue and green. It was Lukas, completely and utterly; the amazing directness, the clarity of spirit, the look of which I’d never forgotten.

They were my brother’s eyes.

He had brown hair, I noticed dazedly. I hadn’t expected that. I thought it would stay blond like our mother’s. Medium length, it was a light chestnut with the occasional pale streak. He looked a little younger than the seventeen Saul had described and with a face as pale and tranquil as a snow-covered pond. He looked—my God—he looked like salvation.

“Lukas?” Raw and shaking, his name came out more a fractured sound than an actual word. It was less recognizable as letters strung together and more like a visceral grunt of pain. I tried again. “Lukas?”

His head tilted slightly and he corrected politely, “Michael.” He didn’t raise his hand to shield against my light but instead stared into it without hesitation as he repeated, “My name is Michael.” Like the little girl, he didn’t show any sign that he found any of this out of the ordinary. There was a man dressed all in black, armed and masked, and no one found that worth comment.

His voice was as his face, changed. The light tenor of childhood was gone, replaced by an adult’s deeper tone. “Is this a test?”

I was still struggling to process the different name. It made comprehending his question difficult, perhaps impossible. I didn’t even try. “Test? Lukas, it’s me, Stefan. Your brother.” It had been ten years, more than half of his life. In the back of my mind the realization that he might not know me had been present, but present and acceptable were two entirely different beasts. Emotional trauma or the physical trauma of his head injury when he had been kidnapped, the reasons for his memory loss were something I didn’t have the time for now. “I’m your brother,” I repeated.

I saw his confusion. It was suppressed and muted, but it was there. He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. I used the opportunity to push on and say to crushingly familiar eyes, “I’m here to take you home.”

As I talked, I shook like Vasily had when he had begged for his life. It was appropriate, because now I was begging for mine. It was easy to forgive myself the adrenaline and long-buried emotions wreaking havoc within, and when the moment of truth came, the shaking stopped. That moment happened when the alarm went off.

“Shit.”

It was a silent alarm, at least in this section of the building. The only evidence that our breakin had been noticed was the sudden blinking of the security lights. It was enough to chill my blood; I didn’t need a wailing siren or rotating red beacon. The simple strobing of the strips of fluorescence near the floor brought the catastrophe home clearly enough. Swearing again, I lunged over to the bed and circled my fingers around Lukas’s wrist.

“Lukas, we have to go.” I yanked at his arm, pulling him to his feet.

“Go?” he echoed with eerie calm. “Go where?”

“Right now out of here is good enough for me.” Towing him along unresisting behind me, I ran into the hall and scanned it hurriedly for Saul. Even in the midst of it, the running and the alarms, I marveled at the solid feel of his flesh within my grip. For so long he had been a ghost that I could barely believe he was real and true to the touch.

“Smirnoff, haul ass!”

I whipped my head around to see Saul waving frantically by the same door through which we’d made our entrance, not using my real name, which I appreciated. Seeing that I’d spotted him, he wasted no time in beginning his escape. Obviously devil take the hindmost wasn’t a phrase he took lightly. Following his lead, I ran toward the door. Lukas had been keeping up without difficulty until he saw our destination. He didn’t stop or try to pull away, but he definitely slowed. Considering what lay below, I didn’t blame him. “It’s all right,” I reassured him quickly as I fumbled at my belt. “We’re just passing through that medical torture chamber downstairs. We’re not sticking around.”