Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13) Read online

  Toxicity

  Out of the Box #13

  Robert J. Crane

  Toxicity

  Out of the Box #13

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2017 Ostiagard Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  1.

  “Romeo and Juliet. Bonnie and Clyde. That’s our kind of love story, baby. That’s who we are. That’s our destiny.” June Randall laughed as she said the words aloud, brushing her strawberry blond hair back over her shoulders and kicking the beach sand between her toes.

  Elliot Lefavre—she called him “Ell” because it was simpler than saying his whole name every time she wanted to get his attention, and because it was uniquely her way of calling him—brushed back his own hair in reaction to her motion. His was shaved on the sides and long on the top, slicked back usually, though not here, in beachfront paradise. Here it was the sheen of the Atlantic’s waters still shining in his hair from when they’d gone for a little swim just a few minutes earlier.

  The sea salt felt sticky on June’s freckled skin, drying as it was in the warm air. Florida in March felt a lot better than Ohio, where she was from. “How is this compared to Nevada?” she asked, moving the conversation along as her last comment hadn’t elicited the response she was looking for.

  “Hotter there,” Ell said, looking darkly pensive. “The air’s drier.” He sniffed, like he was taking stock of the environmental conditions around him. He probably was, she knew by experience.

  “I bet the nights are amazing,” June leaned in against his shoulder and found it satisfyingly sticky, her hair draping itself over his shoulder in wet ringlets as she crunched sand beneath her ass, snuggling in against his warmth. They were in a town called Melbourne, on the east coast of Florida, for the moment. It didn’t have the best beach she’d ever seen, but it was pretty decent. Growing up in Ohio, she hadn’t gotten to see ocean beaches, so this was a welcome change. “All bright and lit up and gorgeous.” The opposite of the way things had been in Westerville, where the only lights were the chain stores that kept their signs on all night, and the lamps that shone down on near-abandoned streets during the vampire hours she liked to be awake.

  “On the strip and in old downtown, sure,” Ell said, staring down at her where she rested on him. The skies above were abundantly blue, and the ocean stretched out over the horizon with only a few small boats to clutter it. The slow, dull roar of the tide coming in was soothing, almost lulling her to sleep. Sleep by day, live by night, that was her idea of life. But this wasn’t so bad, either.

  “Could we head that way, bae?” she asked, draping her arms around his shoulders. He had a few stray strands of hair sprouting out of his shoulder. It made him self-conscious when she twirled them, but it always made her giggle to do so.

  “It’s a long way from here.” Ell didn’t sound convinced.

  “Please.” She hugged him tighter. “I want to see the West.”

  “Not much to see in the middle of the country.” He felt rigid against her, his discomfort with being here now palpable.

  “Well, we can’t fly,” she said, giving him a Duh! kind of look coupled with a smile to offset the needle of scorn she added.

  “I think we should head south,” Ell said, scratching the back of his forearm. “Get to the Keys, head for Cuba—”

  “Ugh,” she said, breaking from him. “I don’t want to go to Cuba. Have you seen the cars? They’re so old. It’s like they don’t have anything made in this century. It’s pathetic.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” Ell said in that dry, infuriating way he had when he was lording it over her that he knew something she didn’t.

  “I don’t care,” she said, pursing her lips together. She might have to not speak to him for a while if he kept this up. He always got the point when she stopped talking for a while. Eventually. “I don’t want to go there.”

  “It’s not safe here anymore,” Ell said, scratching his forearm again.

  “For them, maybe.” She looked at the people with their towels and blankets spread up and down the shore, flecked across the beach like islands in the sand. Behind them lay a sea of green vegetation with a boardwalk path over it, and somewhere beyond that, their car waited. “We’re fine.”

  “For now,” Ell said, his head hunching over further, like he was trying to put his own head in his lap. “But June … the things we’ve done—”

  “Who cares?” Yeah, he was getting the silent treatment. And soon.

  “I–I car—”

  A ball smacked into the beach, showering them with a spray of sand. June’s mouth fell open in shock as grains dusted her cheek and chest, falling down the front of her soaked tank top where it bubbled and failed to cling to her skin. She felt the hot surge of rage and sought out the bastard who would have dared to do this to her, to her—

  “I’m sorry,” said a little girl, probably no older than eight, her eyes downcast and fixed on the soccer ball that was cratered into the sand between June and Ell’s feet. The girl sounded like she was steeling herself for a furious rage, the contrition as obvious as the little freckles on her nose.

  June felt the tension bleed out of her shoulders. How could she be mad at that? “It’s all right,” she said, almost laughing. “It was an accident.” Ell’s hand was anchored on her wrist, an
d she looked at him and patted his cheek. “It’s all right,” she said again, this time to reassure him. He unclenched his fingers slowly.

  The ball was just sitting there, the girl making no move to retrieve it, so June leaned down and grabbed it. “What’s your name?” she asked the girl, spinning the patchwork on her finger. It spun at high velocity, making a singing noise against the tip of her finger. June had played volleyball in high school all the way up to her senior year—last year—and she’d gotten pretty good at this, even before her powers had manifested.

  Now she could serve a volleyball hard enough to kill a man. Not that she’d killed a man that way. Or at all.

  Yet.

  “Sara,” the little girl demurred, still fixated on the ball. She didn’t show much amazement at the blur of white and black spinning on June’s finger.

  Crunching of feet against sand caused June to look up. A man approached from behind little Sara, looking cross. A dutiful father, she figured, here to warn his little munchkin about the rudeness of pelting strangers with a ball.

  He opened his mouth, and she assumed an apology was forthcoming. “Why don’t you just give her back her ball?” he asked instead.

  “Excuse me?” June said, feeling that flare of anger return.

  “You’re excused. Now give her back her ball.” The man’s accent was northern, a little like Boston or New York. Way out of place here.

  “Make—” June started.

  “June.” Ell’s hand found her wrist again, but not hard enough to jar loose the ball that she now clutched between her fingers.

  “—me,” June finished.

  The man almost seemed like he might pass on the challenge. She could see the gears turn, spinning as he tried to decide how best to handle the challenge thrown down in front of him. She could feel the heat under her collar, her freckled skin warm, and not just from the sun now. She felt like she might have boiled the ocean if she’d gone for a swim now, cheeks burning as she stared him down. There was, too, this little thread of worry in the back of her mind, and it sounded like Ell—Are you sure you should be doing this?

  She ignored it.

  The man’s shoulders dipped and he strode toward her, swiping out a long, ungainly arm for the ball—

  “Dick!” June said, and sprayed him, a cloud of purple toxin billowing out of her hand. He didn’t stop in time, didn’t see it until his head was engulfed, and his swarthy face disappeared into the plum-colored cloud, emerging a moment later with his eyes squinted shut, coughing and sputtering wetly.

  “June!” Ell lifted his own hand and blew the cloud out to sea, dispelling the toxin in a thousand different directions. He was on his feet, trying to grab hold of the guy who’d come at them—at her. “You can’t—”

  “I just did,” she said, as Mr. New York sank to his knees, coughing, his eyes already bloodshot when he opened them briefly between fits. He would have been fine if he’d kept his distance, but the dumbass had come right at her, gotten too close, and she’d given him a snootful of her own personal toxin. It was only a fraction of what she could make, but he’d run right into it. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she figured it was fifty/fifty whether he lived or died.

  Her hand shook as she let it drop, that feeling like she might have pushed a little too far diminishing. What did it matter, anyway? He was asking for it, coming at her like that.

  “Daddy!” Little Sara wasn’t so dumb as to think that nothing was wrong. Seeing her father cough and choke and drop to his knees wasn’t the sort of thing even a kid could easily ignore.

  “Here,” June said, responding to Ell’s panicked pressure on her arm. She tossed the soccer ball next to Sara’s feet, but the girl ignored it, too focused on her father, who was now turning a lighter shade of lavender himself, his tongue swollen and hanging out of his mouth unnaturally.

  “We can’t just—” Ell said, lifting his own hand.

  She grabbed his arm and started to drag him away. “Yes, we can.” She didn’t care about the blanket, the towels they were leaving behind. They were all stolen anyway. “This is a good lesson for him.”

  “If he dies, he’s not going to learn anything!” Ell pushed back against her and broke free, dropping into the sand next to the downed man. With a raised hand, he shoved his palm into the man’s face. The air stirred around them and Ell drove oxygen into the man’s lungs, his power over wind being used, once again, to counteract what June had done.

  She stared at him for a second, feeling stricken, watching Sara with wide eyes, over her father. What could she do, though? Best to leave. June turned and started stalking off over the dunes toward the boardwalk. This was Ell’s thing now, not hers. She shook the sand out of her tank top and wrung out the bottom of it. She could see her nipples through the wet, wrinkled fabric, and she giggled a little to herself at the mere sight. She didn’t care.

  June was up on the boardwalk when Ell caught up with her, feet thumping against the planks. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said warningly, taking care to keep her back perfectly turned to him.

  “You can’t just do that, June,” he said, trying to catch up. Even when he made it to her side, she turned her face away, trying to give him her shoulder as much as possible. “That little girl—”

  “I don’t care,” June said as she descended the boardwalk steps on the other side. It was better this way; better to put up a wall, not think about what had happened back there. Hadn’t he seen? That man had forced her into a corner, coming at her like that.

  He deserved it.

  June’s feet were covered in white sand. When she stepped off the boardwalk ramp onto the hot asphalt, she cringed, but kept facing away from Ell so he couldn’t see her.

  Cold shouldering him always shut Ell up. This time was no exception, and she made for the car where she got into the passenger side as he climbed into the driver’s seat wordlessly. He was so damned weak, she wondered if he’d start crying on her again. That happened sometimes. This time, she’d be indifferent to it, because she was pissed as hell at him over everything that had just happened on the beach.

  And maybe, just a little, tiny bit that she wouldn’t have admitted even to herself … she was pissed at herself for letting her anger run away with her.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m gonna head south,” he said, starting the engine.

  “Fine.” That stung her even worse. She was already mad at him, and he was going to do this shit? He’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again.

  “It’s not fine,” he said gently.

  “Just do whatever you want,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. She felt the sting at the corner of her eyes, and her voice cracked a little.

  He backed the car out of the space, his shoulders slumped. She was almost positive she knew what he was going to do now, just by the bearing of his body. He sped the old Pontiac Parisienne out of the parking lot toward A1A, and she knew that the turn he took would tell the tale. If he went left, he’d be heading south, toward Cuba. And she wouldn’t speak to him again, maybe ever. At least not for a couple days.

  But if he headed north …

  He drove up to the stop sign and sighed, shoulders slumped. He lay his head on the steering wheel for a few seconds and she did not say anything, not a word, because she needed not to.

  The turn signal clicked on after a few seconds, and she knew the decision was made, one way or another. She held her breath, waiting to see which direction he’d choose.

  When the car turned north, she smiled, just slightly. She blinked against the sun shining in through her window, blinding, but kept facing it, and away from him. She’d start talking again in about five minutes.

  After all, how could she stay mad at him for long?

  2.

  Sienna

  The breakfast room in my resort in St. Thomas was wall-to-wall windows that overlooked the blue ocean. As a result, I had to eat with my su
nglasses on every morning.

  It seemed a fair trade-off on those mornings when I actually decided to go down to the breakfast room and brave possible human contact. The rest of the time, I just ordered room service and sat unsociably by my lonesome, watching the TV news and browsing the internet, as I tended to do when I had an abundance of time to kill. Which was every day.

  When I’d arrived in the Virgin Islands a couple months earlier, it had been right in the middle of the dead season post-Christmas. Within a few weeks, though, business at the resort had picked up, and now the breakfast room had gone from a few isolated, mostly old souls into a surplus of wealthy spring breakers and families, all enjoying their little slice of tropical paradise and oblivious to the dangerous fugitive who sat right in their midst.

  Yeah, that was me. Dangerous. Mostly because I hadn’t had my coffee yet.

  “Ms. Gracie,” said Hannah, my usual server, showing up with the blessing of coffee already steaming, cream and sugar neatly mixed within the wondrous bounds of the cup. “How you doing this morning?” She was a peach, that Hannah. It was always a struggle for me on the days when she didn’t work. Fortunately for me, they were few. Fortunately for her they were few, too, because she’d already told me I’d doubled her pay for the entire year since I’d been here.

  Because Ms. Gracie—my assumed identity while I was staying here—was as benevolent as she was blond. And Ms. Gracie was definitely blond, my long, faux locks ending just above my shoulders. Yikes. At least the color went with my new tan. Hard-working Sienna Nealon, always pale as snow from spending so much time indoors, would have looked like an albino with a blond wig. Fugitive Sienna had actually picked up some coloration, so I didn’t look quite so mismatched.

  “I’m lovely, Hannah,” I said from behind my immense, dark sunglasses, wrapped up in a cottony robe. I just showed up in a robe to breakfast. Not because it was comfortable, not because Sienna Nealon would have done it (I wouldn’t have; it’s kind of mortifying) but because Ms. Gracie was the sort of person who simply didn’t care. Rich heiress, spoiled all her life, never had a worry, never been in a fight.