“Spencer is expecting you for supper,” Jax said. “He’s been setting a place at the table every night since I told him you’ll no longer be dining in your room.”
“Uh-huh. Why don’t they eat with us?” Selena asked.
“The staff?” Jax looked taken aback.
“They’re your fucking crew, Jax.”
“They have their jobs and we have ours,” Jax said.
“Addy must hate it at our house,” Selena said, thinking of her boss’s wife—Jax’s sister—who owned the gilded cage they were in.
“She loves it there,” Jax said.
“We’re a lot more casual. Russ and Jim eat with us. We wear civvies to dinner. Hell, we have dinner instead of supper.”
“Addy hated dressing for her husband, but not doing so netted her a beating—or worse, one for the boys. Her bastard ex had cameras all over the house. He knew when she was noncompliant. So no—she loves her new digs and the freedoms she has.”
Selena blinked and lowered her gaze to the bottom step. The wind outside got louder. Being here, in this remote and hostile location, she wondered how Addy had survived as well as she had, alone except for her cruel husband until her divorce a couple of years ago.
“Selena,” Nick said into the thick quiet, “Balcones will warm your soul.”
Selena looked from Nick to Jax. “I’ll take a beer.” She went down the rest of the long staircase and into the blue salon.
Nick fetched a beer from the bar, took the cap off, then handed it to her. “Does this drink choice mean you like your soul cold?” He grinned at her.
Selena ignored the humor in Nick’s eyes as she took a long swallow. He was so different from his uptight son. She settled on the blue sofa. “I’m getting used to it, with everything that’s going on.” In this room, too, there were spaces on the walls where artwork didn’t fit the discolored spaces on the wall.
“Did something change recently in Addy’s art collection?” Selena asked.
Jax looked at the walls around them. “Spencer is mixing things up, trying to keep the collection fresh. We need to repaint, but that’s been low on the priority list.”
Selena doubted that was the whole story, but Jax, like Owen and everyone else she’d met in this Omni war, held his secrets close to his chest.
She should have stayed in her room. She felt rangy and quarrelsome, not fit for human company. But she wasn’t exactly in the company of humans, was she? Nick, her bosses’ dad, was a mutant, just like her stalker.
She looked at Nick. “What’s it like being changed?”
Nick sat in an armchair next to the sofa. “Different.” He waved a hand over his body, which had reversed its age to the point where he and Owen looked more like brothers than parent and child. “It’s odd getting your youth back, rewinding from my sixties to my forties.”
“Do you think you’re finished growing younger?” Selena couldn’t suppress a sideways grin as a thought hit her. “What if it doesn’t stop?”
“What if I regress to nothing? An infant, maybe?” He took a deep swallow of his Balcones. “If that’s the case, I hope my caretakers use cloth diapers on me.”
Selena laughed.
“I don’t know the answer to your question, honestly,” Nick continued. “I can’t tell you how many times in my regular life that I’d thought about what I would do if I were young again and could bring with me the lessons I’d already learned. That’s exactly what happened. Except I’m a better me than I ever was, mentally and emotionally. Physically, too. My vision is stronger than a regular human’s. I can see details and distances like a machine. I can hear to the point of sensory overload. I can distinguish between thousands of similar scents in infinitesimally small amounts. And there are other things, things that I sense but don’t understand. I’m stronger than I ever was. I have more endurance. My memory is nearly perfect. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Would you do it again, knowing what you know now?” Selena asked. “Even knowing you might outlive your son and grandkids?”
“Yes.” Nick nodded. That certainty in his eyes reminded her of Owen. “We need more fighters highly tuned to the challenges we’re facing. We have to be able to fight the Omnis on their level.”
Selena asked Jax, “What about you? Are you going to take the changes?”
Jax plopped into the armchair opposite Nick and glared at the glass in his hand. “Probably. Nick’s right that we need more enhanced fighters. I’m neck-deep in this fight already. My only family—Addy, the boys, and Owen—are in this dark fight as well. I’m not married. I have no kids. I’m a good candidate for the modifications. The only thing that would miss me, if the changes destroy me, is the war itself.” He sipped his whisky. “What about you, Sel?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to live forever.”
“The upper limit of a mutant life span hasn’t been established,” Nick said. “We may just live out our hundred-year lifetime as forty-year-olds, then croak as usual. Who knows?”
“That’s what gets me,” Selena said. “We understand so little of how these modifications work. We already saw what can happen when the mods are used against the modified—Addy’s modifications nearly killed her. Changing oneself requires a level of trust in the science and the practitioners that I don’t have. At least not yet.”
Nick swirled the ice in his glass. “I wished my trainer hadn’t backed out. I’m anxious to get started.”
Selena felt a little whirl of excitement as she thought about Bastion’s volunteering to help with that. “Bastion said he would train you.”
Nick’s brows went up. “I thought you weren’t talking to him.”
“He got through when you guys were in the closet with me.”
“That’s a hell no,” Jax said. “We know nothing about him and little about his abilities. Nick’s mind is fragile.”
Nick choked on a sip of Balcones. “Thanks, bro. So’s your dick.”
Forget sixty reverting to forty—Nick had the mind of a twelve-year-old.
Jax brushed that off. “Your neurological pathways are, at this moment, being rewired. You’re like a molting crab. My point—”
“Yes, what is it again?” Nick said.
“—Is that who knows what Bastion might do to you? Download some hidden instructions. Reconfigure your new wiring. Who knows? No. We are not having Bastion here.”
Selena made the mistake of sleeping deeply that night—a luxury she’d resisted since she’d been here. She dreamed about a wedding. Hers. But for some reason, she was late to the ceremony. When she tried to get into the venue, all the doors were locked. She knocked and knocked, but no one came to let her in. She went around the side of the building and looked in a window. There was Bastion, dancing with another woman.
She woke abruptly, angry and sad and shaking.
The thing she feared the most had come to pass—she was alone, because of him.
Where are you? Bastion whispered through her mind. He sounded angry.
She was tired of blocking him, tired of the pain it caused. I don’t know, she answered.
Talk to me. I will find you.
I don’t want you to. But she did want that. Terribly. In part so that she could stop fighting herself. And in part because she’d missed having him just a thought away.
Yes, you do. I can feel your pain.
Can you feel everyone’s pain?
Only yours…and my brothers’.
Do you have a lot of them?
Yes. Please, let me come to you.
You can’t use me anymore, Selena said.
I never did use you.
You asked me to get info on the Ratcliffs.
A favor. For a friend. They have information we desperately need, but I don’t care about any of that. Tell me where you are.
I don’t know. It hurts, Bastion, keeping you out.
It’s because we are carved from the same soul, and having found our other half, we can
not exist apart.
I don’t believe in souls.
I do.
Selena tried to block a sob, but it broke free. She covered her face with a pillow, but it was no match for Bastion, since he was already in her head…and maybe in her heart. I wish you were here.
Don’t block me. I will find you.
How sick was it to crave her stalker?
This wasn’t going to end well.
18
One evening, a few days later, Selena walked into the blue salon and came to an abrupt stop. The Ratcliffs were there, sitting on the long blue sofa.
Noooo. Not them. She had to get out of there before Bastion felt them near her. She sent a look over her shoulder, wishing she could just backtrack to her room.
“Selena,” Jax said, “you remember the Ratcliffs—Joyce and Nathan.”
She nodded. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous for you. Bastion could find you through me.”
“We wanted to come,” Joyce said. “We’ve been doing some research on the Legion. We want to meet Liege and Bastion. They may be able to help us.”
A chill slipped through Selena. “Or they could kill you.”
“Possibly, but we’ve learned a few defensive tricks along the ways through our own modifications,” Nathan said.
“Bastion does want to meet you,” Selena said, “but I don’t know why. I don’t any of the whys about him at all. I think someone so powerful has to be dangerous. I’ve been waiting for Owen to figure out a plan of attack, but nothing’s happened yet.” She looked at Jax. “If the Ratcliffs want a meetup with Bastion, you need to run that past Owen.”
“Agreed.” Jax nodded.
Nick handed her a beer. She moved back a few steps, then a few more. She should leave. It wasn’t safe for anyone in the room if she was there.
Before she could make her escape, something outside caught her attention. An orange glow. It was well past sunset, so it wasn’t sunlight reflecting off a boulder. It looked like there might be a fire out there. She held the gauzy curtain aside as she turned to Jax and Nick. “You guys see that orange glow over there? What is that?”
Jax came over to the window. He narrowed his eyes, then leaned closer to the window. “What orange glow?”
Selena looked again. “It’s gone. It was right over that ridge.”
She stood at the window another minute, trying not to feel like a fool for pointing out some phantom light. Maybe there was a hiker over there, someone doing some winter camping. It was out on National Forest land, not on Addy’s property. But it was only fifteen degrees Fahrenheit outside. No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this, except maybe hunters, but what game was in season at the moment?
Maybe tomorrow she’d go out to look for footprints or other signs that someone was camping so near Addy’s house.
Another thought struck her. Bastion had been able to camouflage his footprints as those of random animals common in the area. Was he here? Had he found them?
Selena dropped the curtain and folded her arms. Was it someone other than Bastion? An Omni mutant? Was she certain Bastion wasn’t an Omni?
“Sel, you okay?” Nick asked.
She nodded. Joyce smiled at her, catching her attention. “What did you see out there?”
“I’m not sure,” Selena said. “Jax didn’t see it. I guess it was nothing.”
“But what did you see?” Nathan asked. “You mustn’t doubt yourself.”
“I saw an orange glow. I thought it might be a bonfire or something, but it disappeared.”
“Orange?” Nathan and his wife exchanged intense glances. Selena wondered if they were communicating mentally, as she and Bastion could do.
“We’ve heard stories of a mutant being called the Matchmaker,” Joyce said. “He stalks mutants and pairs them with their one true mate.”
“It’s just an urban legend, as far as we know,” Nathan said.
“That could be said of everything about mutants,” Nick replied.
“True.” Joyce came over to look out the window. “Like a campfire horror story, the legend says that if the mutant refuses the Matchmaker’s match, he’ll die. And if he accepts it, his human mate will be the one to die.”
“That’s absolutely horrible.” Selena wondered if Bastion knew about the legend. Of course it wasn’t real. And anyway, how could a mutant and a human hook up? Well, Owen and Addy had, she reminded herself. Joyce and Nathan were mutants and were married. Neither of them had perished as a result of their union, but perhaps it had skipped them because they’d been married before their change.
Selena shut down that line of thinking. It was merely an urban legend, like the wendigo that the kids liked to make up stories about back at the team’s house.
“What’s the purpose of that legend?” Selena wondered aloud. “To keep mutants and humans apart? Can they be together?”
“They can,” Joyce said. “However, a side effect of most of the modifications is a complication in the mutant’s libido. They lose it, almost entirely. So while they can have intimate encounters, they are, let’s just say, less than satisfying to the mutant.”
“That modification, we believe, was an intentional outcome,” Nathan said. “Operatives who aren’t distracted by the needs of their sex drive would naturally be more focused on their mission objectives.”
Selena’s gaze moved between both scientists as she considered that. “You think the Matchmaker is real?”
“Legends and myths generally have a kernel of truth in them,” Joyce said.
Nathan added, “Or maybe it’s just something to keep hope alive in the modified warriors—a path to love or death. Either, I think, would be an acceptable outcome to the changed.”
“We’ve heard rumors that some mutants only regain their libido when they find the human who is their perfect match.” Joyce’s gaze softened in a way that showed she felt sorry for Selena, as if she knew Selena was being targeted.
Selena looked at Nick and Jax, checking their reaction to all of this. Everyone seemed to have already arrived at the conclusion she just getting to herself. “And the humans chosen in these matches? Have they no say in the matter?”
Joyce looked saddened. “It appears not.”
“Then it’s death or surrender, and if the human surrenders, they die. So it’s death or death. Great options.” Everyone’s gaze stuck to her in a silent moment that stretched awkwardly into seconds. “I don’t care for those options. I refuse. No one is going to force me to love someone.” She sipped her beer, trying to break the room’s tension.
She was going to need a lot more beer.
Selena slept restlessly that night. She’d left her curtain open, wanting to see if that strange glow would show up again. It couldn’t have been a fire—fires don’t extinguish themselves as they jumped around from hotspot to hotspot. Nor was there ever any scent of woodsmoke. Maybe it was a reconnaissance drone—or one with more lethal intent, like the armed one that had sliced into Addy’s house when Owen was here.
The light was out there now, on the hill, bright enough to cast a warm glow in her room. She sighed and threw the covers off, unable to sleep now until she put her worries to rest. She’d bundled up in her warmest gear, then made a quick pass through the main level of the house. No one else was, so she didn’t tell anyone where she was going.
Stepping outside of the main door into the cool winter moonlight, she could absolutely make out the orange-red glow on the first hill to the west. It wasn’t far, maybe a fifteen-minute jog. The moon lit her way. She kept alternating her focus between the bright light and loose rocks scattered across the hill.
When she was about twenty feet from the top, the glow moved beyond the ridge, down the other side of the hill. Damn, but she wished she’d brought a pair of night vision-goggles or binoculars, something—anything—that would let her get a better look at what she was chasing.
She felt certain it was aware of her. It had to be. It had only been
appearing to her, and now it moved in response to her presence. That thought brought her up short. Was this some new Omni technology? Were they trying to lure her far enough from the house to kidnap her?
The word “matchmaker” flitted through her mind, but she dismissed it. She was a firm believer in science, logic, and rational thinking, not glowing specters delivering a curse. Or a promise of love. Or whatever the hell the urban legend was.
Selena made it to the top of the ridge, but the glowing orb had jumped to the top of the next hill over. No way a human could move that fast. Had to be something technological—which in itself was as terrifying as a forest fire.
Someone or something was observing Addy’s house and its occupants. Selena knew it wasn’t from her team. It had to be the Omnis. This was not good. And she’d had no luck convincing Jax or Nick what she’d been seeing.
Who would believe it, anyway, if they hadn’t seen it themselves?
Flynn was near. Bastion could feel his energy beating a summons. He got in his Jeep and drove into town, following Flynn’s sticky feel. It led him right to the coffee shop by the diner.
Selena said she’d had an experience there. She’d asked if there was another mutant like him nearby. Dieu, he hadn’t put the two things together until just now. Had it been Flynn touching her that day? Bastion had a protection on her, but it might not have stopped an astral projection from getting through, which would have freaked the hell out of her, as she wouldn’t have known who or what was attacking her.
Bastion went into the shop and sat at Flynn’s booth. The guy was looking as ghastly as ever. He presented a smooth persona to the regulars, but Bastion and the rest of the Legion could always see beneath it.
“Ah. You came,” Flynn said in a cheerful voice.
“Why am I here?” Bastion asked.
“In honor of our recent partnership, I wanted to give you fair warning that I know you’ve violated the terms of our agreement.”
“We never had an agreement.”
“One of Owen Tremaine’s team is missing. Selena Irving. Bring her back.”
Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion Page 16
