Like he was drawn on strings, the man in front of me turned his head too. I couldn’t stop myself from watching him when he realized what he was seeing—the blood on Marco’s chest, and Warren cuffed to the other bed, who made a point not to look at either of us.
And the third bed in the room.
His.
“Oh, god. Please… please…” He turned to me, and his eyes were huge, luminous, terrified.
Filled with tears.
“Please, what?”
I’d wanted to hear him beg—I wanted to hear him scream. I wanted him to tell mewhy. Thewhywas a pulsing question that burned just beneath my skin, ever present, making my blood pump and my heart beat.
But that was for later.
For now, I’d settle on a simple answer.
“I don’t know you,” he whispered. “My name is London Ellis. I don’t know anyone named Nikki. I just want to go…” His hand came up to his mouth as he spoke, brushing against the cut on his lip. I watched the wordhomedie on his tongue, but it didn’t stop his brows from coming together, didn’t stop the tears that spilled wetly from his eyes as he looked up at me.
“Once upon a time.” I leaned in as I spoke, and he had nowhere to go when I brought my hand up and brushed my thumb across his cheek, catching the tear that cut a line through the blood on his skin. “You told me I was your home. I believed you then.”
And look at where it had gotten us.
“I didn’t…” London—because I had to admit that’s who he was at the moment—pressed as far away from me as he could. “I don’t know you.”
My eyes swept across the tears on his cheeks, to his shaking frame and the hair sticking to the blood and wetness on his face. I brought my thumb to my lips and licked the taste of salt and copper from my skin as I stood.
“You’ll wish you never did before this is all over with. Don’t worry,London.” Saying the name made something just beneath my skin tingle, something in my chest feel odd. “You go last. You’re safe… for now.”
“Last?” He said it faintly, but I was already turning to leave. “What do you mean, last?” He was trying to stand, but the mixture of terror, adrenaline, and the drugs still pulsing through his body seemed to make it impossible. “I don’t even know who you are, I—”
“Otto.” I cut him off as I turned at the door. “Otto Blythe.” I paused to see if there was anything—any recognition, any spark of a memory… but no.
There was nothing.
“I don’t…”
“I’m the man you killed,London.”
His eyes went wide with shock. He sat on the floor and stared at me as I closed the door behind me.
I stopped as soon as I heard the lock click. My eyes flicked back to the glass that looked into the room. I watched him curl into a ball on the floor… watched his shoulders start to shake… and I didn’tfeelthe satisfaction that I thought I would.
Marco had fought.
Warren had actually landed a few blows when I’d taken him.
But…
Nikki…
London…
It was different with him. He…
“That was faster than you predicted, wasn’t it? I suppose catching a twenty-one-year-old is easier than the others, of course.” Nathaniel West’s cool voice came from behind me, and I jerked my attention from the man on the ground so I could look him over. His was the first face that I’d seen when I woke up—he was the one who’d explained what had happened.
It wasimpossible,really. A serum to bring people back from the dead—well, not exactly that. A drug that could wake memories from past lives… A drug that, if given in a high enoughdose, could completely replace the person in the present with who they’d beenbefore.
