If they hoped to have any type of future, he was going to have to give up this game he was playing.
But if he was in as deep as it appeared, she doubted he would.
When Ash woke next, she realized she’d slept the entire night and well into the next day. Light filled her room. Merc had shifted away from her to lie on his side, his back to her. She looked over his wounds, expecting the worst, but that wasn’t what she saw. The gashes were half the size they’d been last night. There was very little swelling and no active bleeding. How was it possible he’d healed so quickly?
Were the cuts real? Was this all part of his role playing? She tried to touch his back, but her hand couldn’t get close to it. A wave of heat hit her palm, like a force field. She reached around him to touch his forehead, checking him for fever. His temperature felt normal.
Ash got up and dressed. This wasn’t a normal day, and she didn’t want to meet it in her pjs. She took a bottle of water from the fridge then dug around in the kitchen drawers for a straw. Merc needed water for sure. He was sleeping too hard to be very hungry—she’d get them something later.
Ash knelt beside the bed. “Merc, you need some water.”
He looked at her. Took him a moment to focus. Man, when he shut down—either for meditating or sleeping—he went deep.
She smiled at him. “Hi.”
He pushed himself up to a sitting position and took the bottled water, draining it before lying back down.
The rest of the day went like that. She got him up to use the restroom—which he insisted on doing by himself—gave him water, then he slept. And as the day progressed, she could see his wounds improving. She still couldn’t touch his back, but the heat emanating from him was less intense.
When Merc had slept for nearly fifteen hours, Ash decided she’d better venture out for food, if either of them was going to eat that day. She stuffed her passport and some cash into her pants pocket. She locked Merc inside their shared room, then walked down the narrow road and turned toward the main plaza. There were plenty of late-afternoon diners filling up the outside seating at the many cafés.
The first restaurant she came to was the one they’d eaten at last night. Merc had seemed to enjoy it, but for some reason, she didn’t feel inclined to order takeout from there. The next two were new additions to the food scene, having popped up in the days since her arrival. They weren’t busy, but neither seemed appealing. She kept walking, making her way around the plaza, searching for…something.
She finally stopped at a small restaurant on the opposite side of the plaza. The waiter pointed to a chalkboard with a short list of choices.
Among the many tables filled with people, a white man with straight brown hair sat alone at his small bistro table.
“I can recommend the fried fish. Just had it and will do so again before I leave.”
Ash smiled. “Thanks.” She ordered two of those.
“You’re welcome to have a seat with me while you wait,” he offered.
He spoke American English, but looked Scandinavian. Big-boned, angular features, icy-blue eyes. He was a gorgeous guy, if your tastes ran to the brutal side. “You’re from the States,” she said.
“I am. Colorado.”
“What are the odds? Me too.”
“Huh.”
One thing Ash had learned in her years of traveling alone was that interesting things often came from random conversations with other travelers. She sat across from the guy. “Ashlyn.”
The guy didn’t offer his hand. “Jack Newsom.”
“What brings you to Valle de Lágrimas, Jack?” Ash asked.
“Miracles. Curses.” He shrugged and grinned. “Same for you?”
Ash nodded. “I was here not too long ago, shortly after everything happened. It just stuck with me. I wanted to come back and see how what happened had affected the town.”
“And your thoughts now?”
Ash stared at the man a moment, wondering how much to say about Merc’s game. Was this man another gamer? She decided to ignore what she knew and pretend everything was normal as she sent an approving look around the flourishing plaza. “I think it’s done wonders for the village.”
Jack didn’t look pleased at her approving stance. “For everything, there is a cost.”
The man’s intense eyes made Ash uncomfortable. Best to just keep things casual until her food came and she could cut out. “Have you been here before?”
Jack ignored that question. “How is your friend feeling?”
“My friend?”
“I’ve seen you around town with him. Usually, he doesn’t let you out of his sight.”
Merc had only been with her in the evening yesterday. “Oh, he’s napping. Said he’d meet me here.”
“You’re lying.”
And just like that, Jack flipped from an interesting stranger to a likely predator. Ash took her phone from her pocket. “I have to make a phone call. Excuse me.”
Jack grabbed her wrist. Ash’s eyes shot to his face. He didn’t have dark hair but blond. And he was missing half his cheek, leaving his teeth exposed. She gasped. As soon as she blinked, the vision was over. Her free hand covered the section of her own cheek, mirroring the spot where she’d seen his facial deformity.
Jack jumped to his feet, a look of shock and horror on his face. He gave her a narrow-eyed glare, then walked out of the café.
Shaken, Ash went over to stand close to the café’s entrance, in sight of plenty of other people. She hoped Jack wouldn’t follow her back to her room.
You are safe. Sam’s voice flitted through her mind.
Great. Now she was channeling Summer’s fiancé. Listen, Sam. I don’t want any part of whatever game you guys are playing. Leave me out of it. Your role-player friend was creepy with his half-face.
Sam didn’t respond, or if he did, Ash was distracted by the waiter bringing her food out. She paid for it then left the café. On her way across the plaza, she ran into two boys she recognized: Pablo and his little friend. Their eyes were alight with excitement.
“Señorita!” Pablo said. “Did you hear the news?”
Ash shook her head. She’d been with Merc the whole day.
“The bodies,” Pablo’s friend said. “They fell apart. People have taken the bones.”
“They’re gone?”
“Yes. Gone.” He swiped one hand across the other.
“And that’s not the only thing,” Pablo said, exchanging a dark look with his friend. “At the pits, there are no new bodies, but there were some before. What was there was…was…massacred. You know they weren’t dead when they went into the pits. Something got them last night.”
“La Tunda,” his little friend whispered.
Pablo shook his head. “We don’t know. There was nothing left of the ones dying, but their blood, shredded clothes, and some bones.”
“Oh. God. That’s horrible,” Ash said, briefly taken in by their story…until she remembered none of this was real. She looked around the plaza at the crush of people. Talk about a massive live-action role-playing game. Was it possible the adults running this alternate reality had pulled these boys into their game?
Ash frowned at them. “I’m sorry, boys. You made a good go of it, but I’m not an easy mark. I’m not in the game, so you’re wasting your efforts on me.” She started to walk away.
“Wait, señorita,” Pablo called after her. They both caught up with her. “You don’t understand. It’s done. It’s over. We are no longer protected.”
Ash looked from one earnest face to the other. “Okaay.” Damn. These two were in as deep as Merc and his creeper friend Jack. Seemed there was no way to get dinner back to Merc without playing along briefly. “How do you know the protection’s gone?”
“The mayor had some men take one of the old gang members up to the pits. They had to drag him because he didn’t want to get anywhere near there,” Pablo said. “They stood the man at the edge of the pit and nothing happened. He was n
ot sucked into it to die.”
“Maybe he wasn’t a bad guy?” Ugh. Ash couldn’t believe how easy it was to play along.
“He was very bad,” the little friend said, “but he did not die. Pablo’s right. It is over.”
“Maybe, but look around you. Look at all the people who have come here to play this game. What happened has saved the town.” She gestured toward the church. “People are still lined up to see the robe. This is far from over.”
Pablo and his friend still looked crestfallen. “It was better when we had the saint’s protection,” Pablo said.
Ash smiled and nodded. “But perhaps it isn’t needed anymore.”
Merc’s waking, Sam said, speaking into her mind.
Dammit all. She needed to find that app on her phone and delete it so Merc and his friends couldn’t speak directly into her mind.
“I have to go, boys. Thanks for telling me the news.”
She checked around to make sure no one was following her. For all she knew, the crowd might suddenly turn on her like a bunch of zombies. That was why she hated role-playing games—the threat of something horrible was ever-present.
It wasn’t until she’d reached her room that something the boys had said clicked. The bloodbath in the pits. That happened around the same time Merc had been so terribly wounded—if his wounds were real, that was.
What had really happened last night?
21
The door to their room opened without her unlocking it. She stepped inside. Warm afternoon light slashed across the floor. Lights were on in the little closet area and the bathroom.
Merc walked out, shirtless, wearing jeans, using a towel to mop at his newly shaved face. He smiled at her.
So many emotions tore into her heart that she had to put her hand on her chest to calm the rampage. Fear, relief, lust. Love. Oh, and anger, for sure.
Ash didn’t move into the room. “How are things in the realm of Mutants and Monsters?”
His grin widened. “Fantastic. I’m starving. Tell me you brought food.”
She set the bag on the kitchen counter. “I picked a new café. Your friend Jack recommended the fish.”
“Jack?”
Ash faced him so she would see his expression. “You know, the guy missing half his face.”
All warmth left his eyes and his jaw tightened.
Ash couldn’t hide her anger. “I admit to being very curious as to how you guys manage your special effects. It’s very impressive. It’s like going to a movie but getting sucked into it instead of simply observing it.”
“Stay away from him.”
“Oh, believe me, I want to stay away from all of you.” She opened the bag and pulled out their meals. Whole trout—head, tail, skin and everything—fried crispy, with sides of fried plantains and a salad.
Merc grabbed a white tee and was about to pull it on when she stopped him. “Wait.” She’d checked him before she left earlier, but it seemed every time she looked at his wounds, they’d changed. Now, only discolored pink stripes showed where the gouges had been last night.
She smoothed her hands over his back. His muscles tightened as her hands moved across his back. She wanted to lean forward and kiss him, but it seemed an intimacy she hadn’t been granted.
“Seriously. How do you make these special effects? Last night I couldn’t even touch your back. And last night there was a glow coming off you that had no source.”
Merc finished pulling his shirt on as he faced her. “That’s not info I can share with the uninitiated.”
Right. Always in the game. She wondered if they were being monitored somehow. Someone was watching them from some control room, issuing points and penalties for staying in or deviating from the game plan.
“I don’t want to be watched.”
Heat softened his eyes. He stepped closer. “Watched how?”
“Like on a reality TV show.”
“That would be unpleasant.”
She stared into his tawny eyes so long that she almost forgot what else she wanted to tell him. “I have other news.”
He lifted his brows and waited.
“The curses over the dead gangsters and the pits have ended.”
Merc’s eyes widened. “Oh?”
“Apparently the bodies fell off their chairs. People stole the bones. And I guess there was a bloodbath up at the pits… Is that where you were injured?”
He nodded. “I’d tried many times before, but I did it this time. I ended my curses. It’s good to have confirmation it worked.”
“I want to go see the chairs after we eat.”
“Then let’s eat.”
The scene surrounding the chairs was nothing like it was just a day earlier. The throngs of people were gone. Now, at the site of each cursed chair, just a handful of curious people lingered. Only a thin ring of tchotchkes around each chair remained. The chairs were still there, but their ghoulish inhabitants were absent. There was no demand for the kids to give lectures on the town’s miracles, so they too were gone.
In some ways it was a relief, and in others a letdown. Perhaps this was evidence the game here was winding down. Ash wondered what would remain of the town when the gamers left.
Worse, she wondered what further challenges the end of the game would bring for Merc.
A tall man joined the small gathering. Ash knew who it was even before she looked over at him. Jack’s whole body somehow broadcast evil. Merc took her hand as he glared at his fellow gamer. The hostility between the two men made Ash nervous. That was far more venomous than what she’d expected for simple competitors.
The tense moment was broken by a shout as men ran toward them from the jungle.
“La Tunda!” the man said, waving his hands above his head. “La Tunda has come for us all!”
Ash looked to see what was following him. Two men were running awkwardly, holding a body between them, glancing back fearfully toward the woods, in the direction of the death pits.
Gooseflesh rose on Ash’s arms and the back of her neck. The people left the death chairs and rushed over to them. The man they carried was soaked in fresh blood.
Villagers swarmed the group. They began removing his clothes to get a better look at his wounds. The man had been mauled, his throat slashed. His wounds looked exactly like Merc’s.
A buzzing started in her head, numbing her, separating her from herself as if she was watching a movie, not living it. A heavy, warm arm slipped around her. She looked up to see Merc watching her with worried eyes. He checked out the crowd, then guided her away from the bloody heap that had once been a person.
She was shaking, and when she looked back, she saw Jack looking for her. When he didn’t find her, he smiled then made a spectacle of himself as he shouted into the terrified crowd about the devil coming for his due because the town had been calling the deeds that the devil’s agent had done miracles.
Merc shook his head. “Probably just got too close to a big cat in the jungle. Not the devil. Not God. Just nature.”
Ash shook her head. “No. It looked the same as what happened to you.”
“Like I said. A big cat.”
She looked back, but Merc was moving fast—it was all she could do to keep pace with him. “We were right next to Jack. Why didn’t he see us?”
“Too much chaos. And he was getting his rocks off scaring the crowd with his demon shit.”
They reached their room. Inside, he grabbed her backpack and dropped it on the bed. “Pack up and get ready to leave. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t go out. I have one thing I have to do, then I’ll be back for you.”
“How long will you be?”
“A couple of hours, at the most.”
“You’re going into the woods. Don’t do it.”
“Nothing’s coming out before nightfall. I have several hours. And if something’s lingering in there, better I find it than the villagers.”
Ash stared at him. “You know what it is.”
He gave
her a nod. “Like I said. Big cat. They mostly hunt at night.” He looked at her with concern, somehow communicating strength and a calmness she wouldn’t have otherwise felt. “After this, I’m going to take you home. Gather up your stuff so we can head out when I get back.”
She frowned. “Leave in the dark? We should leave in the morning.”
He smiled. “Nothing’s going to get us.”
Ash watched him walk out. She rushed after him. “Merc—I’m not staying here if you don’t come back.” She couldn’t stay here, waiting, if she didn’t know for a fact that he was coming back for her.
He pivoted and walked back to her. He caught her face in both hands. A flood of words gathered in his eyes, like water collecting at the top of a dam. “I will be back. For you. For us.”
“But you said you didn’t want me.” Ash could only whisper those words.
“I lied.” He stepped back, releasing her.
Merc compelled Ash’s mind to observe him getting into his Jeep and leaving, when in fact he never drove away. He put a protection over his car, hiding himself and it from view, while also protecting the space he was in so no one else tried to park there.
He needed to enter his meditative state uninterrupted.
His primary host was still on shift at the mine. Merc reconnected with him, his consciousness slipping from his own body into the worker’s. The man was a janitor. At the moment, he was mopping a hallway. The corridor was long, lit only by wall scones placed fifteen feet high, alternating on each wall. There were no windows, no transoms, nothing that let in natural light. The walls themselves were constructed from what looked like industrial landscaping bricks—two feet high and wide, three feet long. This place really was a fortress.
Given the situation unfolding in the village, Merc didn’t have the luxury of riding his host through the man’s normal routine. He had to force him to move around the place so Merc could see what was happening. He made his host set the mop aside and take a stroll down the hallway. No sound at all came from the rooms they passed. Each door was made of steel, with its own biometric control panel.
O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Page 21
