The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) by Rob Blackwell

questions if you’re the expert,” Ken said. “How many pretenders are there?”
    “Let’s go sit down,” Sara said.
    She took them into the break room, a small area with a leather sofa and vending machines.
    “I don’t know the answer,” Soren said when they were settled. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, not that many. But a single one is incredibly dangerous. They’re fast, strong, can take any person’s form, and we don’t know how to kill them. They don’t have any obvious weaknesses.”
    “How do we know they aren’t running the world?” Ken asked. “Couldn’t one of them just become the president or something?”
    “I guess,” Soren said. “Only from what I’ve seen, they never seem to work together. I’ve never come across two at a time, or even heard of that happening.”
    Sara couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. Most of what she knew of pretenders came from Soren, and her own research had turned up little. She thought again of whether the pretender tonight was working with Soren. Was he trying to throw her off? But why would he be if he didn’t know that she knew his actual identity? If she let her thoughts keep spinning in that direction, she’d never get anywhere.
    “They seem very rare,” Soren said. “I worked like hell to track down the first three I found. The fourth was delivered on a silver platter by Meredith. If they were everywhere, I don’t think it would have been that hard to find one.”
    “Couldn’t they just be really good at hiding?” Ken asked.
    Soren appeared to entertain that thought.
    “Maybe,” he said. “I just don’t think so. The biggest flaw they seem to have is a certain mental instability. They look and sound just like the targets they assume, but friends and close family usually start to see differences. That’s what happened in Yong’s case. Based on her file, the pretender replaced the real Audrey two weeks ago. That’s when several friends said she became moody and withdrawn. There was also an incident at school around then. Audrey shoved another girl into a locker and had to be pulled off of her. School officials were bewildered because Audrey had never acted that way previously. That’s consistent with how pretenders behave. Those I’ve met were also . . . odd. I think stealing all those identities and memories has a price.”
    “But where do they come from?” Ken asked.
    “Nobody knows. Their origin story is a German legend, but it’s contradictory and unhelpful. According to myth, they used to rule the planet. Then—somehow—humans uncovered and defeated them.”
    “Here’s the big question—what do they want?” Sara asked.
    She tried to keep her tone casual, but she was dying to know his answer.
    “Nothing,” Soren replied. “They’re vicious and cruel. They have no agenda that I know of. They enjoy death and destruction. They’re monsters.”
    Sara kept her expression carefully neutral as the hate welled up inside her, threatening to overflow. She involuntarily glanced at Ken’s gun.
    “So what the pretender did to Audrey’s family? What the pretender did to John Townes and your friends . . . that was just for fun?” Ken asked, sounding incredulous.
    Soren looked away, a frown on his face.
    “Yeah,” he said finally. “As far as I know, that’s exactly what it was about.”
    Advoy walked into the break room holding a folder in his hand. “Well, the full results won’t be clear until tomorrow, but I have some preliminary ones now,” he said. “The blood looks like it was taken from a human female.”
    “What?” Soren asked. “That can’t be right.”
    “Are you sure?” Sara asked, confused. This wasn’t what she’d expected.
    Advoy stiffened, clearly unused to being questioned. “I’m afraid it’s quite correct.”
    Sara looked over at Soren, arching an eyebrow. “But you said pretenders don’t have human blood,” she said.
    “They don’t,” Soren responded. “I’m