Truths Unspoken Read online

  Truths Unspoken

  K.J. McPike

  Contents

  Other Books by K.J. McPike

  Please Note

  Truths Unspoken

  Pronunciation Guide

  Dear Lali Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Dear Lali Part 2

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Dear Lali Part 3

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dear Lali Part 4

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Dear Lali Part 5

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Dear Lali Part 6

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Dear Lali Part 7

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Dear Lali Part 8

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Dear Lali Part 9

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Dear Lali Part 10

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Dear Lali Part 11

  Fates Unsparing Sneak Peek

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by K.J. McPike

  The Souls Untethered Saga

  Souls Untethered (Book 1)

  Fates Unsparing (Book 2)

  Please Note

  Truths Unspoken was previously published as:

  Nemesis (The Astralis Series Book 1.5).

  This is the same story, only slightly re-edited and rebranded with a different title.

  Truths Unspoken

  Book 1.5

  For all the heroes of their own stories.

  Pronunciation Guide

  CHARACTERS

  Xitlali = seet-lah-lee

  (Lali = lah-lee)

  Oxanna = ok-sah-nuh

  (Oxie = ok-see)

  Dixon = dik-suh n

  (Dix = diks)

  Ulyxses = yoo-lik-sees

  (Lyx = liks)

  Salaxia = sah-lah k-see-uh

  (Sal = sahl)

  Xiomara = see-oh-mah r-uh

  (Mara = mah r- uh)

  Kala = kah-luh

  PLACES

  Alea = ah-lee-uh

  Lanai = lah-nah-ee

  OTHERS

  XODUS = ek-suh-duh s

  Astralis = as-tra-lis

  Astralii = as-tra-lahy

  Semmie = se-mee

  Yavari = yah-vah r-ee

  Awana = a-wah-nuh

  Dear Lali,

  I miss you.

  I get that you hate me right now. Honestly, I hate myself for what I did, too. Looking back, I can’t believe I ever thought lying to you was the best option. I guess that’s why they say hindsight is 20/20.

  But that’s why I’m writing you this letter. I want you to know everything that happened—all of it, from beginning to end. Maybe then you’ll see why I felt I had to do what I did. I know that doesn’t change the outcome, but at least you’ll understand my intentions.

  In my twisted brain, lying was my way of protecting you, or trying to anyway. I didn’t know what else to do, how else to deal with the damage I’d already done. I swear I never wanted to hurt you, but the whole situation was so messed up that I had already started hurting you before we even met…

  Chapter 1

  Abduction

  This was such bull.

  I swore under my breath as I squinted at my target through the slatted closet door. She stood at her bathroom mirror, oblivious, and taking her sweet time smothering herself with every kind of lotion known to man while some pasty green mask dried over her face. At this rate, she was never going to sleep.

  Meanwhile, I was about to keel over. My legs threatened to give out after what felt like an eternity crouching between the plastic covers of dry-cleaned slacks and dresses, and I was slowly suffocating in mothball funk. Because, of course, she’d chosen to go through an elaborate beauty ritual tonight of all nights—right when I planned to strike.

  The sad part was, I really had planned it. Obviously not well, but then, I’d never kidnapped anyone before. And it wasn’t like there was a semmie handbook for those pesky times when you needed to snatch an ex-Astralis out of her home with your warped astral projection ability.

  Trust me, I looked.

  It was tempting to shoot out of the closet and run at her. She had left the bathroom door wide open, and her husband was snoring in their oversized bed. I only needed two seconds to get across the darkened room and grab her. We’d be gone an instant later. The problem was that she would see me coming, which meant she would have time to get out at least one good scream. After the hours I’d wasted to avoid involving her family, I wasn’t about to have her wake them up now.

  The hiss of running water made me perk up. Finally, she was rinsing off the Yoda facial. I shook the dark wisps of hair out of my eyes and shifted, ready to spring as soon as she got into bed. The closet was just a few feet from where an upturned comforter invited her to climb between the flannel sheets. But instead of stepping out of the bathroom after she dried her face, she opened the drawer beside the sink and pulled out yet another bottle of moisturizer.

  I wanted to punch the wall. There was no way her skin could absorb anything else. How was it that dry in the first place? This wasn’t the Sahara.

  Desperate to ease the burden on my legs, I pressed my hands against the door frame in front of me. The molding creaked loudly in response.

  I froze. Way to go, idiot. After all my preparation for this moment, I was going to screw it up by leaning on a rickety piece of wood.

  Perfect.

  “Yoseph?” The Lotion Queen poked her head out of the bathroom, the edges of her gold nightgown glowing in the light behind her. She looked toward her still-snoring husband like she wanted to wake him, and a string of profanities chorused in my mind. So much for keeping her family out of it.

  You should have listened to Cade. I pressed my lips together to keep from exhaling my frustration. My Uncle Cade wanted me to snatch her from the dinner table last night and be done with it. We already had a makeshift cell inside an abandoned shipping container ready to hold her until she gave us the information we needed.

  But I couldn’t do it, not with her kids right there. Instead, I’d squandered most of the day memorizing the layout of this house so I could nab her when everyone was asleep.

  Watching her step into the bedroom, I heard Cade’s voice ring out in my head: Compassion is only going to get in the way of finding your sister. He was right—trying to keep her family out of this was a waste of time. So what if her children h
eard her scream and didn’t know where she was for a few days? Both of my parents had been dead for nearly fourteen years. Her kids could suck it up. I had to do this.

  Now.

  I stood so fast my shoulders bumped the hangers above me. My target’s head whipped in my direction, freeing a strand of short brown hair from her frilly pink headband. Frowning, she stepped around the bed and inched toward my hiding place like a lamb approaching a lion.

  My breathing sped up. If I waited until she was a lunge away, maybe she wouldn’t have time to make a fuss. Even if she did, I was sure I could muffle her scream. Then I wouldn’t lose sleep tonight from knowing I traumatized her kids the way the Eyes and Ears had traumatized me.

  Her silhouette crept closer, and I turned my palm outward, holding my hand at the same level as her mouth. She reached to open the closet, and I smelled a mix of jasmine and mint through the gaps in the door.

  Adrenaline rushed through my veins. My pulse pounded until I couldn’t hear anything else.

  Come on. Open it.

  She hesitated at the last moment, glancing back at her husband, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I burst out of my hiding place. Terror ripped through her features as I looped my arm around her shoulders and smashed my fingers over her mouth. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pictured the inside of the shipping container just as she inhaled to scream.

  We were gone before the sound came out.

  Chapter 2

  Cage

  My target’s legs buckled as soon as we appeared. I managed to catch her at an awkward angle with my arm pressed into her lower back, but her head nearly hit one of the ridges in the metal wall. I winced. That was all I needed, for her to crack her skull and get amnesia or something. Then I’d never find the rest of them, and I needed all five members of XODUS intact if this was going to work.

  Rain pelted against the roof, a constant pounding that made the dim, hand-cranked light flicker as I strained to keep my struggling prisoner upright. She cried out, the sound little more than a puff of warm air against my fingers. Realizing I didn’t have to muffle her voice anymore, I moved my hand off her face and hooked both arms under hers.

  “Let go of me!” she shrieked. Her voice echoed loudly in the small space, but I wasn’t worried about anyone hearing. I’d taken her from her home in Virginia to a locked shipping container in an old junkyard on the outskirts of Miami. No one would be around to help her.

  She fought against my hold as I maneuvered her toward the mat in the corner. I intended to set her down gently, but she twisted out of my grip and fell into it face-first.

  “Who are you?” she whimpered, barely able to lift her head from the butter-colored foam. She blinked hard and gasped. “Why can’t I see?”

  Oh, yeah. I’d almost forgotten about the temporary blindness. It happened to Cade the first time he projected with me, too. He was a full-blooded Astralis like her, and it had taken him a while to get used to the way my ability worked. Instead of separating my spirit from my body like the two of them were used to, I projected my entire body, along with people and objects I touched. Just like all semmies—those of us with only one Astralis parent instead of two—my power came out differently.

  “Why can’t I see?” she repeated, trying and failing to push herself up. The gold satin of her nightgown had nearly ridden up over her butt, and I diverted my gaze to the wall above her. Rivulets of water trickled through the holes I’d drilled into the metal and formed small puddles along the plywood floor. The mat was probably getting wet, too, but I pushed away any trace of sympathy for the woman trembling on top of it. She deserved a lot worse than a soggy piece of foam after what she and her friends did to my uncle.

  Still, her weak attempts to move and panicked blinks made my stomach flop. I’d just plucked her from her home, like it was nothing. Like the Eyes and Ears did to Kala.

  My shoulders tensed. No. I wasn’t like them. I wouldn’t be doing this if I had a choice. And I wasn’t going to hurt anyone or run cruel experiments and tests like they were probably doing to my poor sister.

  Heat coursed through my body at the thought. The woman in front of me was the reason I couldn’t get to Kala in the first place. If she and her stupid little group hadn’t teamed up to suck Cade’s astral energy into a crystal, he and I could’ve gotten to Alea and rescued my sister a long time ago. Instead, we were stuck with no access to the Astralis realm.

  “Hello?” My prisoner groped at the air. “What do you want?”

  I only glared in response. Soon it would be Cade’s turn to demand answers from her. Now that she was our captive, she would have no choice but to help my uncle and me find the others and undo the energy sink that had claimed his power. It was time to get started with our plan.

  Closing my eyes, I projected to the house I shared with my uncle. He lay stretched across the leather sofa in the living room, his seven-foot tall body overtaking the couch so his feet dangled over the arm. He held a thick book in his left hand and a glass of red wine in his right. From where I stood, I couldn’t see his face, only the back of his dark, cropped hair.

  “Ah, the prodigal nephew returns,” he said evenly, not bothering to turn around.

  I ran my tongue along my teeth to stop the sarcastic response eager to fly out of my mouth. My uncle had a habit of saying things that didn’t quite make sense. In truth, he’d always seemed a little eccentric to me. He came into my life when I was thirteen—barely over a month before my Grandma Naida died—and I noticed right away that he was a bit off. But he was kind enough to take me in, so I tried not to be judgmental.

  Knowing he was waiting for me to come to him, I strode across the room until we faced each other. Only then did he lower the book. His light green eyes—just a few shades lighter than my own—assessed me. “You’ve finally finished the job?”

  “Yeah.” I forced down the tickle in my throat. “She’s locked in the shipping—er, the cage.” Cade preferred that term for where we planned to keep our hostages. According to him, they’d acted like animals, and they should be treated that way.

  A smile crept over his face, bunching the deep scar along his left cheek into a series of uneven ripples. “Brilliant.” He set down his wine, the tumbler clinking against the glass of the coffee table as he stood. I watched the folds in his slacks loosen, the hems spilling over his black dress shoes. Given his height, it was a miracle that any pants were long enough for him.

  “You got it done,” he said, walking over to slap a heavy hand down on my shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

  My head snapped up. “Really?”

  “Well…” He pursed his lips. “It took you far longer than it should have.” His words deflated me, but I hoped he didn’t notice. “Next time you’ll do better.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be encouragement or a command. Honestly, it didn’t matter. I had to do better next time, or we’d never get his ability back.

  “Are you ready to talk to her?” I asked.

  “Oh, nephew.” Cade’s grin grew to reveal boxy, oversized teeth. “I’ve been ready for twenty years.”

  Chapter 3

  Reunion

  When my uncle and I showed up in the shipping container, our captive was leaning against the wall, still looking shaky.

  “Xiomara,” Cade cooed in a falsely pleasant tone. “How lovely to see you again.”

  Even in the flickering light, I could tell her already pale skin had gone completely white. I guessed that meant her vision was back. “Cade,” she gasped, the sound barely audible over the rain pounding overhead.

  “Well, it’s good to know you remember me.” My uncle crossed his arms, the sleeves of his black dress shirt straining with the motion. “I had my doubts after you and your friends left me for dead.”

  “H-how did you find me?” Xiomara turned to me and swallowed. “And who are you?”

  “Don’t worry about him.” Cade stepped between us to block me from view. I knew he wanted to keep
the focus off me. Even in a situation like this where the person in question had no recourse, my uncle was trying to protect me, just like always. “This is between us,” he said, reaching out a hand like he was going to caress Xiomara’s face.

  “Don’t touch me!” She backed into the wall and sidestepped him, stumbling over the mat at her feet.

  Cade laughed, but it wasn’t his usual chuckle. It was a strange, maniacal sound. “Oh, Xiomara. You’re as feisty as ever.” He dropped his hand to his side and let out a long sigh, as if recalling a fond memory. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”