Chapter 30: The Voice Beneath the Skin
Night didn’t fall gently that evening. It didn’t slip in soft like dusk sometimes did, with golden light melting into the city and stars slowly blinking awake in a lavender sky. No, this night came fast. Hard. Like a blade slicing through the air.
It dropped across New Orleans heavy and final, dragging a veil of darkness behind it that felt too thick to simply be night. The clouds above were dark purple and bruised, slow-moving and swollen with something the air hadn’t spoken aloud yet. The wind carried no scent. Not rain. Not smoke. Not even wolves.
Only the kind of silence that means something is coming.
Something dangerous.
Something final.
I stood at the edge of the Luna’s balcony, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, staring out beyond the stone walls of the estate. Just past the line of trees, where the forest grew deep and wild, something was watching. Not with eyes like yours or mine. But with eyes he had made. Eyes shaped by science and rage. Eyes that didn’t just see you—they judged you.
Gregory was out there. Somewhere in that darkness. Not in person. Not yet. But I could feel his presence like cold fingers brushing the back of my neck.
He wasn’t watching me through binoculars or drones or cameras.
He was watching through them.
The hybrids.
His creations.
His army.
They were the lens now.
And I knew that tonight, he would speak.
\---
They didn’t come the way I expected them to. There were no screams. No howls. No dramatic crashing of trees or breakneck speed. Instead, they came quietly, like shadows dripping down the trunks of the trees and forming bodies where there had been none a moment before.
Dozens of them.
They stepped out from the woods, one after another. Some were older. Some looked barely out of childhood. Male. Female. Dark-skinned, pale-skinned. Different builds, different faces—but all too perfect. Too symmetrical. Their eyes gleamed faintly in the moonlight. Their expressions blank. They weren’t snarling. They weren’t armed.
They were just… waiting.
Still.
Like statues carved by fear and placed at the edge of our world.
And in the center of them stood a girl.
She couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
She was barefoot, standing tall on the grass like the earth itself knew not to disturb her. Her hair was long and tangled. Her clothes were simple. But her eyes—those eyes—glowed with a deep golden hue that pulsed like it was alive.
She moved like someone in a dream, her steps too slow and smooth to be natural. The soil didn’t seem to touch her. She floated. Not literally, but in the way someone does when they aren’t truly there.
Elena was beside me before I could speak, crossbow raised and loaded. Her aim was steady. Deadly. She didn’t say a word.
I placed a hand on the weapon and slowly pushed it down.
“She’s not here to attack,” I said. “She’s a mouthpiece.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed. “A what?”
“A vessel,” I said. “Not a threat. Not right now.”
The girl came to a stop just outside the gate.
She didn’t blink.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t speak.
So I did.
“Who are you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm but firm.
The girl’s lips parted slowly.
And then he spoke.
Not her voice.
His.
\---
The sound that came out of her was all wrong. Too low for her small frame. Too smooth for someone so young. But I knew that voice better than I wanted to.
Gregory.
It echoed from her throat like a ghost using a marionette.
“Roxanne.”
Even behind me, I felt the shift in the air. Everyone froze. Elena’s finger twitched on the trigger. Aidan stepped forward. Echo turned completely still, her eyes locked on the girl like she was seeing a reflection of her own nightmares.
But I didn’t move.
I stepped forward instead, closing some of the distance between me and the gate. The cold air wrapped around my shoulders like a shroud. The girl didn’t back away. She just stared, eyes burning brighter with every second.
“I was wondering when you’d send a child,” I said, my voice calm but clipped.
The girl tilted her head slightly, and again the words came out in Gregory’s voice—completely calm, almost gentle.
“You’ve come far. Learned well. Survived.”
I kept my face blank.
“I learned despite you,” I replied.
She smiled. Or rather, he smiled through her. A quiet twitch of the lips, smug and slow.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps because of me.”
I didn’t take the bait.
“Get to the point,” I said.
The voice changed slightly—grew quieter. Intimate. Like he was whispering into my ear from a world away.
“This world is changing. I made it change. And now, I offer you a place in it.”
I felt my spine go rigid.
“What place?”
The girl stepped closer, just enough to press her hands gently on the iron bars of the gate.
“You were always my favorite,” he said.
I scoffed. “That’s because I’m the one who escaped.”
“No,” Gregory said. “You’re the one who evolved.”
\---
Behind me, I felt Aidan take a step forward. Elena glanced at me, waiting for a signal. Echo didn’t move. She looked like a statue—breathing, but barely. The hybrids standing behind the girl were silent. Still. Like they didn’t even need breath.
They just waited.
They weren’t a wall.
They were an audience.
\---
“You can’t win this war,” the girl said, her voice steady. But it wasn’t her speaking anymore. Gregory had taken full control. “Not with arrows. Not with wolves. You think these people are your allies? They’re your leash. They’re the same ones who looked away when your family burned.”
My jaw clenched.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” the girl replied, stepping even closer to the gate. Her gold-flecked eyes seemed to pulse brighter. “Jackson knew. The council knew. They used you. Polished your grief until it became a knife. I simply helped you aim it.”
I wanted to scream at her.
At him.
But the worst part? Some small part of me had always feared this. Always asked, deep in the quiet hours of the night, whether I had been used. Whether I’d been groomed to be a weapon from the beginning.
Because monsters don’t just appear.
They’re built.
\---
“You want me to join you?” I asked, voice tight with fury.
“No,” the girl said. “I want you to inherit me.”
I blinked.
The wind stilled.
Even the clouds above seemed to hold their breath.
“You were never just the key,” Gregory whispered. “You were the blueprint. The first. And now… the final. Take my place. Lead them. Or kill them. It makes no difference. They’ll follow you either way.”
I stared at the girl, feeling something shift inside me.
A weight.
A choice.
“And if I say no?” I asked.
The girl smiled, slow and chilling.
“Then New Orleans burns.”
\---
For a moment, everything stilled.
Time stretched out like elastic.
Even the birds had stopped singing.
Then I stepped forward, lifted my chin, and placed my hand against the gate.
My voice was steady.
“No.”
\---
The girl blinked slowly, as if the word didn’t make sense.
“You disappoint me,” Gregory said.
I leaned forward slightly.
“I’m not here to impress you,” I whispered. “I’m here to end you.”
For a second, her face twitched. Not a smirk. Not a command.
Fear.
And just like that, the control snapped.
She collapsed.
Right there in the dirt, her small body folding like a marionette with cut strings. Limp. Unmoving.
Just a girl again.
No voice inside her.
No power.
The other hybrids didn’t move.
They didn’t panic.
They didn’t charge.
They simply turned.
One by one.
And disappeared back into the forest.
\---
No one behind me spoke. Not Aidan. Not Elena. Not even Ethan, who had slipped outside during the exchange, wide-eyed and silent.
It was Echo who finally broke the silence.
She stepped beside me, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“They’re giving you time,” she said softly.
I turned to her. “Time for what?”
She looked at me, her eyes solemn.
“To choose who you want to become.”
\---
That night, I sat alone in the old cathedral ruins near the northern edge of the estate. The roof had collapsed decades ago, leaving the space open to the stars. Ivy clung to cracked stone pillars, and vines spilled over the benches like forgotten prayers.
It used to be a sacred place—before the last war.
Now it was a place for ghosts.
And I let them join me.
My mother, always reaching.
My father, always fighting.
My brother, always running.
Jackson, always watching.
Gregory, always whispering.
All the voices that had shaped the girl I’d been.
But none of them—none of them—would shape the woman I was about to become.