The scientists, a corps made up of anthropologists, sociologists, and physicians, couldn’t revive the half-dead men. Instead of prolonging their situation there in the jungle, they loaded them into the beds of several trucks to cart them off to spot where they could be medevaced to a hospital.
Staying hidden, Merc hopped into one of the trucks and rode out of town with it, curious to see how far his curse reached. The only road out was through town. Kids, dogs, and curious adults crowded around, slowing the trucks. Several villagers crossed themselves and mumbled prayers of protection from the terror in the woods.
The half-dead thugs in the truck bed started to convulse as soon as it passed the town’s borders. The doctor sitting across from Merc banged on the cab window, ordering the driver to stop.
He and another doctor started working on the men, but it was a futile effort. When the convulsions stopped, the men were dead. Maggots spilled from a man’s eye.
Huh. So that was what happened. Merc jumped off the truck and waited for the next one to stop. It did. Same thing happened with their living victims.
The last truck in their short convoy carrying living patients neared the border, but the doctors shouted at it to stop before it could leave town. The cursed in that truck remained alive, but barely responsive.
The trucks with their loads of now-dead pit victims turned around and drove back into the area inside the town’s border. Doctors were doing everything they could to resuscitate the victims, but to no avail. One doctor jumped back from a spider that climbed out of a man’s mouth.
There was much discussion among the aid workers as to what was the best course of action to take. The living victims all needed urgent medical attention, which wasn’t available in the little village. None of the residents wanted the cursed to be treated in their homes, so a field hospital was set up in the town square.
Despite their valiant efforts, the medical crews could not save the dying. And Merc knew that in the morning, more bodies would be removed from the trenches that had been emptied the day before.
Eventually, the town’s priest came out of the jungle. Merc knew he had himself well hidden, but it seemed the padre looked right at him. His eyes were somber but not full of judgment. Awe, maybe. Like a witness observing a spiritual event.
Merc wanted to consult him about how to end a curse. He didn’t, however—he couldn’t risk being drawn back in to the drama he’d set in motion.
“God will end it, when it’s time,” the priest said, to no one in particular, but in a quiet voice that only Merc would hear. “It would help to pray on it and ask for guidance.”
Merc left the pit cleanup crews, keeping himself hidden from the padre and everyone else. The man was so tuned in to the energy of his village that he must unconsciously be aware of Merc.
Maybe he was right. Maybe the curse had its own life span and would wind down in time. While Merc waited for that to happen, he still had to get himself into the mine.
He settled on the futon in his rented room. His first step was to find a host. As best as he could tell, besides the guards on the perimeter, Flynn had a few dozen workers inside the mine. Merc was going to have to dip into the minds of each one to find a suitable host. That was going to take time—not because the work was hard. It wasn’t. It was a matter of logistics. He couldn’t get close to them, even in astral form, anywhere inside Flynn’s dome of protection. He was going to have to wait for the workers to come into town on their off-hours.
Merc sent his astral spirit into the village. He focused on the men—as far as he knew, there were no female workers at the mine. Merc could go through the houses in town and find where they stayed on their days off, but it was more likely he’d find them while they interacted with the villagers—they needed food, drink, and women.
Moving around in astral form was a lot like having a lucid dream. He could go where he wanted, moving at the speed of his mind, as he had no physical constraints. He could walk through walls, jump across town, follow one person, then another.
The one thing he couldn’t speed up was the time his discovery was going to take.
Regulars did nothing to hide themselves. It had been easy for Brett to find Ashlyn DeWinter. He let himself into her house, then wandered through it. Ash was in the bathroom, showering, when Brett found her. He looked her naked body over, trying to stir some reaction within himself. Of course, none came. His life was wrecked. And now he was going to wreck hers. He smiled.
He didn’t yet understand the connection between her and the Legion, but that was why he’d tracked her down. He leaned against the counter and closed his eyes, pouring his focus into his exploration of her mind.
He took a walk through her mind, feeling all her worries, wants, and bruises. He moved through the noise in her head, pushing through it to the cause of the pain she was feeling.
She wanted Merc, who did not want her.
Brett grinned, seeing the image that Ashlyn held in her mind of Merc in agony in that pit. Aw, such a sad thing. Who knew the Legionnaire was so encumbered with remorse?
This woman was friendly with Liege’s daughter and his woman as well. A twofer. Sometimes, life just presented Brett with an easy gift. Ending Ashlyn would hurt a whole bunch of people. And though it was a pity that it would bring no sorrow to Merc, perhaps it would rack up more guilt in his already troubled mind.
Even better news was Brett’s discovery, through Ash, of the bloodied robe the church was keeping as a relic. No wonder he’d been blocked from entering the hallowed premises.
The next few days would be delicious. He would follow Ashlyn around, learning all that he could. Most likely, he’d get her back down to Valle de Lágrimas so he could use her to retrieve Merc’s bloody robe. After that, he’d feed her to his pets in a horrible death that he would make certain the Legion learned of.
Keeping himself hidden from her, he spread his arms and gripped the top of the shower door. Mashing his face up against the glass, he smiled. Admit it. You miss your Merc. You felt everything for him, and he felt nothing. His words were a compulsion. He felt the pain slice through her mind. She bowed her head and wept into her hands.
Easier than taking candy from a child. This was his first strike. He had to be careful he didn’t overdo it—Merc’s friends would check in with her, no doubt. He didn’t want her so despondent that they’d butt in to his business.
No, little by little, he would simply crush her mind until the only thing she could do to reclaim her sanity was exactly what he told her to do.
Brett turned away from the shower. Lying on the counter was the ugliest necklace he’d ever seen, a strange, flat glob of colored glass with a dark center. He picked it up, but as soon as he held it, it singed his palm. He released it fast, dropping it on the cold tile floor, where it shattered.
Looking at the broken glass, Brett chuckled. Yes. Beautiful. Sweet Ashlyn would know bad times were coming.
16
Ash reached for her towel when she finished her shower. It wasn’t where she thought she’d hung it—it was still on the counter. She stepped barefoot out of the stall and sliced her toe on something sharp. Crying out, she grabbed her towel, then hobbled across the room to sit on the toilet seat. A jagged piece of glass was sticking out of her toe.
What the heck?
She pulled it out and pressed a corner of the towel against the bloody wound. The glass shard was a piece of her necklace. She gasped as she realized it had fallen off the counter and shattered.
Great. Not only had she just had to acknowledge to herself that Merc was not and would never be hers, now the secret connection she’d had to him was also lost.
She cleaned up her wound and put a Band-Aid on it. Then, carefully avoiding other sharp little shards, she left to dress so she could sweep the mess up.
Maybe it was just as well. Every time she handled that medallion, she got a jolt of comfort—comfort she had no right to claim from him.
She’d tried to throw t
he necklace away the night she’d met him at the fort, but somehow she must have sleepwalked and gotten it out of the trash. It had been in her hand the next morning when she woke. She’d kept it with her ever since…until now.
She swept the sharp pieces into a dustpan and dumped them in the trash, then took it to the big bin outside.
The thing that tormented her since she first held it was gone, and with it, her tie to Merc. She was free. And so was he.
And now life could be normal again.
She hoped.
Ash slept restlessly that night. Every time she dozed off, some thought would whisper through her mind. Terrible things that weren’t her normal fear topics. Things that reminded her of what happened in Colombia. Things that had to do with Merc—him in agony in the pit or at the height of passion during sex or lost, standing at that seaside cliff.
He needed her; she was certain of it.
It was raining when she woke. The cold spring storm and night of torturous dreams made her sluggish. She dragged herself to the office. Weather didn’t usually bother her, but the dark day made it feel as if things were returning to winter, something entirely possible in a cold Colorado spring. At least it was raining and not snowing.
She didn’t have the energy for the gym after work, so she went straight home. She made a sandwich and opened her laptop. A photo from Valle de Lágrimas was her background image—a brilliant blue sky over the central plaza with its white stucco walls and red tile roofs.
Staring at the image, she realized how badly she missed that odd little town. All of her recent troubles had started there. She wondered…if she were to go back and try to unravel the reality behind what she’d seen and experienced, would she get her mind back?
Maybe Merc and the town had colluded on a plan to bring visitors in. She did a search for the village on her laptop and found a ton more hits than before she’d gone. Several of the articles and blogs referenced material the person had seen in the travel vloggers’ posts about the miracles of Valle de Lágrimas.
Ash was happy the group was getting such great attention. She called up their site and re-watched all the segments they’d posted so far. They were doling them out in short increments, making them go farther. She noticed that in the time since they were all in the village, newer vids of the three seated dead men posted by later visitors to the town showed further decay, but the bodies still sat guard over the mural walls that artists were covering with new stories.
Ash fetched Larry’s business card and called him. “Hey, Larry. It’s Ash in Colorado.”
“Hey, you! Celia and I were just talking about you.”
“Huh. I’ve been watching your videos. They look great. And creepy.”
“It was creepy,” Celia said.
“I see you’re getting a lot of people interested in what happened.”
“We are,” Larry agreed. “It’s been phenomenal. Our best series so far.”
“Did it really happen?” Ash asked. “I mean, the miracles. They weren’t real.”
The line was silent a moment. “There were a lot of witnesses,” Celia said.
“Maybe the town concocted the whole thing,” Ash said.
“We’ve heard from some of our followers there were government officials back in town to remove the new bodies in the pits,” Larry said. “And you know what? Some of those people weren’t dead. I knew that. I told you guys that when we were there.”
“The locals said the ones that weren’t dead died when the crews tried to remove them from town,” Celia added.
Ash was stunned. “Oh. God. That’s awful. Both the dying during the rescue and the not being dead while in the pits. It’s all just awful.”
“I’m hearing many of them were on different lists of wanted criminals,” Larry continued. “There’s an investigation being opened about whether the government is just offing people and dumping them rather than giving them due process.”
“So who knows what really happened,” Celia said. “Maybe it was a conspiracy by the town to piggyback on what the government was doing up in the pits.”
Ash seized on that as a plausible explanation. It was certainly more believable than the miracle option. “Do you believe that?”
“It’s as possible as anything, I guess,” Larry said. He paused. “We’ve gotten some big interest in our work from this. A producer from a cable travel and science channel came out to look at our content.”
“Wow. That’s huge news! I’m happy for you.”
“He was very interested in you,” Celia said.
“Why?” That sent a shiver of foreboding through Ash.
“Don’t know,” Larry answered. “Look, Ash, you aren’t gonna sell us out, are you? I mean, if he’s only interested in you?”
“God no. Larry, I was just a tag-along. The videos are your guys’ thing. I’m just still off my game. I can’t get the village out of my mind. I wanted to talk to someone who experienced what I did. I’m perfectly happy if you leave me out of it completely.”
He didn’t like that. “We can’t—we need you for the explosive finale. What happened to you in there, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I had some kind of a vision. Or I thought I had one.” She didn’t tell them she’d met the saint of Valle de Lágrimas. That was a weird twist she couldn’t process. “While I was in there, what happened to you guys? Why did you leave?”
The pause seemed lengthy before Larry answered. “We saw something in the woods.”
“Something…what?” Ash asked.
“It was big, and dark, but we couldn’t get a good look at it. You didn’t hear the howl it made?”
“No. I was a little preoccupied just then.”
“We got it on video,” Larry said. “Well, not a visual, but its howl.”
Ash shivered. She couldn’t believe she’d been contemplating heading back to the village. They chatted for a few more minutes before hanging up.
That night, Ash had the same set of dreams, all of them about something awful happening to Merc.
She wanted to not care. Really she did. Merc was a freaking saint, apparently. He certainly did not need her. And he’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want her.
She had to move on.
And as soon as she made that resolution, a red glow poured into her room around her blackout curtains. She didn’t get up. She was still too wrecked from her dreams to face that weird guy again.
He is yours. You cannot move on.
Okay. She had to still be dreaming. No way could that guy know what she’d just told herself. No way.
Desperate to get her mind off Merc and Colombia, Ash went into her boss’s office the next morning. Business was booming at their construction supply company. She hoped taking on a few more accounts would keep her too busy to think about anything but work.
He happily loaded her up, so much so that she had to work the weekend getting the new accounts cleaned up in the system.
Over the next week, between the hefty workload and her long workouts, she had an excuse to ditch her friends. She knew it was rotten of her, and she felt guilty as hell, but she was doing everything in her power to get her head on straight. She didn’t want to face them until she felt more grounded.
A little more work, a little more time, she’d get there. She could laugh with them when they teased her about the miracles of Valle de Lágrimas.
God, she just hoped neither of them brought up Merc when they did finally get together next.
A text buzzed Ashlyn’s phone. It was Kiera, wondering if Ash could sneak out for a quick coffee.
What time and where? Ash texted back.
Hodah’s. 10:30, Kiera answered.
See you there!
Hodah’s was a coffee shop favored by the college set just a couple of blocks down from Ash’s office. Coffee was good there and sandwiches were cheap. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too crowded this morning. When Kiera interrupted work for a social call, something serious was about to go
down; those calls were never something Ash ignored—even when she’d been practicing avoidance.
The weather that April had so far been mercurial, brilliant sun then deep gray clouds, both with a persistent stiff breeze. The clouds broke just then. Ash lifted her face to feel the sun’s warmth…and pretended Merc was walking beside her.
She couldn’t help it. He just slipped into her mind. The truth was that she’d never been able to get him fully out of her there.
What a ridiculous thing, having an imaginary lover now, at her age, but the illusion provided a small bit of comfort. It didn’t hurt him, since he wasn’t ever going to know, and she wasn’t ever going to see him again. And if it eased her mind, what was the harm?
Concentrating on her imaginary friend as she walked, she could almost feel him there, right next to her. She looked up at the space she pretended he occupied. He seemed so real, on the public sidewalk, in the brilliant sun and fleeting shadows. She felt a little less alone calling him to her, the hero of the village, the vanquisher of evil.
She felt his imaginary hand take hers, his palm warm, his grip strong. She looked down at her empty hand, almost seeing the heavy veining of his hand.
She was losing her ever-loving mind.
When she reached the café, she pushed away all thoughts of Merc as she looked around for Kiera. Her friend was waving from a corner table. Two cardboard cups sat in front of her. Kiera stood to hug her. Ash couldn’t help but hold her too long—really just seconds too much, but enough to be noticed.
Kiera gave her a searching look when they parted. “I’m glad you could come.”
“Better now than later today. Things are still crazy at work, so I’ll probably be tied up for a while.”
Kiera nodded at the cup in front of Ash. “I ordered your regular.”
“Thanks.”
O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Page 15
