His host was still full of fear. Merc asked him what it was causing that.
The cages.
Show me, Merc ordered him.
I cannot. I do not have access. I only clean up after them.
Let us go everywhere we do have access.
The man went back for his mop and bucket, then walked to the end of the corridor and made a turn. A few more turns brought them closer to an awful scent Merc was far too familiar with.
The stench of ghouls.
Not surprising that ghouls were there, given the need to guard the minerals the mine produced. But this was nothing like any mine Merc had ever seen.
His host paused for a moment over a biometric reader that scanned his eye. The steel door slid back in its pocket track. The man entered a sterile white corridor with rooms on either side encased in half-glass walls so that the work being done inside the rooms could be observed.
The sight of the lab-coated scientists, the operating tables, and the humans and mutants being worked on spun Merc’s mind all the way back to his mutant beginnings. Was this where it had happened? It wasn’t that far from the camp he and the others had been sent to for recovery and training.
Merc made his host look at everything so that it could be communicated back to Liege.
One of the room’s occupants hurried to bang on the window and gesture angrily to Juan to move along. Merc kept his host from responding. Someone from an empty lab they passed did come out into the hallway and berate Juan for accessing the lab from the door they’d used.
From inside his host’s body, Merc sent the lab worker a compulsion to ignore Juan and let them pass.
They made their way to an elevator. The doors opened. Juan pushed the down button. Merc could feel the man’s fear response building. Where they were headed had to do with his normal job activities, but no matter how often he’d seen to his tasks, he still hated this part of his job.
If it didn’t pay as well as it did, he would quit on the spot, probably would anyway if his family didn’t need him to do the job.
He kept repeating that statement like a silent mantra.
The space the elevator opened onto was nothing like the space above. The stink here was nearly suffocating, even for a regular’s sense of smell. It was like a butcher shop that featured putrid meat.
As on the floor above, there was a central corridor intersecting secure workrooms, but these rooms were not sterile or glass-walled. The floor was polished concrete that sloped down to drains outside each heavily barred door. The walls were made of steel bars that looked like something a circus would use to cage elephants or big cats.
The stink here wasn’t just animal waste, but blood too. Beyond the stench were the screams of broken things hurting.
Merc forced his host to walk the length of the corridors so that he could observe everything happening, everything his eyes and soul would never be able to unsee.
This was Flynn’s ghoul factory. Lautaro had said it was nearby.
Juan told him the ghouls who died became food for those that lived. And the humans from above who failed in their transitions to mutants also became food for the ghouls, giving them a taste for human flesh.
At the end of the corridor were the cages that housed individual ghouls. Juan called them the Tundas. They were set loose at night to patrol the whole compound.
Who controls them when they are loose? Merc asked. It had been his understanding that only Flynn and a handful of his deputies could manage the monsters.
Their keepers are up on the third floor of this building. I am never allowed up there, Juan said.
So there’s more than one.
There’s a whole dorm of them.
Merc. Liege’s voice entered Merc’s mind. It’s time for you to leave Juan. Flynn has Ash up by the pits.
Instantly, Merc was back in his own body. He left the Jeep in a rush, running across town to get to Ash. It was faster to navigate the crowded streets on foot.
You saw what I saw, Liege? Merc asked as he ran.
I did. I’m as stunned as you are. We need to bring that place down, but we must make a plan. Get Ash and come home.
I still have to see Santo, then we’ll come back.
Agreed. Stay aware.
Ash watched Merc leave their room, feeling their separation like a sharp pain. It had been like this since they first connected. When he was with her, either physically or just in her mind, she had a sense of completeness that was wholly missing when they were apart. She kept her devastation under wraps as she made sure the door was locked.
He said he’d be gone hours. She leaned against the door, letting her mind replay the day’s events. Something was very off with that Jack guy. There was so much she didn’t understand. She had no way of packaging it up neatly so she could get advice from her friends. Everything she thought she knew, things she’d actually experienced, would sound insane when she told Kiera and Summer what was happening here. And being so far away from each other meant they couldn’t offer substantive help—and that would just torture them.
She sighed. She would be home soon, back to her normal, average, boring, wonderful life, where reality was a hardened thing, not fluid, as it seemed here.
An end to all this craziness was in sight. And then she could put this all behind her. Next year, she would abandon the sultry heat of the jungle for a cool summer in Iceland. Or Greenland.
That must be what was messing with her mind—the heat. She probably wasn’t drinking enough water.
She opened her backpack and filled it with her clothes. Then she went into the bathroom and gathered her toiletries, packing them in a clear bag so she could go through security.
That took all of five minutes. She still had hours and hours to wait for Merc to come back. What would she do if he didn’t?
Since when did she ever pin her options on the behavior of a man? Never. Especially a man as hard to understand as Merc.
If he didn’t come back, she’d get herself the hell out of here. She could hire a ride back to Medellín and wait there for her flight. Or she could call Lautaro. No biggie. She had this.
She spent a little time straightening the small room, washing the dishes in the sink. She considered stripping the bed, but made it instead, just in case they stayed one more night.
The dresser snagged her attention; had Merc packed his things? She stood in front of the stumpy piece of furniture, afraid of what it would tell her. If his things were gone, maybe he wasn’t coming back. But if his stuff was still there, then he probably would.
She fought with herself for a couple of long minutes, then yanked his drawer open. It was empty. That was a kick in the chest. She shoved the door closed, then yanked the bottom one open. There was only one thing in it—a balled-up white sheet, filthy, stained with dirt and something that looked like it might be old blood.
God, it stunk.
She pulled it out of the drawer and held it up. The cloth fell from her hands into the shape of a robe. A priest’s alb.
Ash cried out and dropped the thing on the ground. She scurried back to the nearest wall to turn and stare at it.
Merc had stolen the robe that was in the church. Why? Why would he have done that? She had to return it. Father Eduardo would be heartbroken when he found it missing. How awful that Merc had done this.
It occurred to her that it might have been one of the last challenges in the game Merc was playing.
She rummaged around in the kitchen for a bag, finding one in a drawer from one of their meals, then went back to the robe, hating the thought of touching it again. She didn’t want to feel the mood of the thing, the energy left over on it…but then, she hadn’t gotten a hit off of it when she’d first touched it. That was odd.
Ash knelt beside the robe. Gingerly, she reached out to press a finger to one of the stained areas, prepared for a bolt of energy. Nothing. The stain was dried and stiff. She touched her whole hand to part of it. Again nothing.
That w
as not what she’d expected. No matter. It still had to go back to the church—and now, before Merc returned…if he returned.
She folded the robe neatly, not wanting to disrespect it more than it had already been. She put it into the bag, then grabbed her keys, left the room, and locked the door behind her.
She hurried down her narrow road to the main plaza. It was night now, but the plaza’s lights had come on. There weren’t very many people there—not as many as she’d become accustomed to. Maybe they were still wrapped up in the horrible discovery of the body.
She walked right up to the church’s main door and tried to open it, but it was locked. She frowned and looked around, then knocked a few times on the huge, old wooden door. She could hear the reverberations echo inside the church. No one came to admit her.
She went around to the side of the building, where visitors to the holy robe were let out. That too was locked. Frustrated, she turned around, thinking to ask the villagers where Father Eduardo was, but instead of villagers, she came face to face with Jack.
Not the person she wanted to see.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked. She could almost believe the concern she saw in his eyes.
“I was looking for Father Eduardo.”
“I thought I saw him heading up to the pits, but he might be over with everyone else, dealing with the body that came out of the woods.” He looked in the bag she held, then grabbed it before she could stop him. She was mortified when he pulled the robe out of the bag and held it up.
“You got it.” He laughed. “You did it! Thank you!” He shoved it back into the bag.
She tried to pull it from him, but he kept it from her. What had he meant by thanking her? “That robe belongs to the church,” she said. “You can’t take it.”
“You already took it. And now I have it, so I won! And now I can make the trade.”
“What trade?”
Jack shook his head. “Knowledge is healing, don’t you think?”
She didn’t know what to make of that. “I want to give it back to Father Eduardo.” She held her hand out. “Give it to me.”
“No.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her toward the path out of town that led to the mass graves.
She pulled free, freaked out by the way his energy felt. “I’m not going with you.”
“Too late. You think you love Merc, but you don’t even know him. Everything has a cost. I told you that before.” He rubbed his scarred cheek. “It’s a lesson I learned long ago.”
“Just give me the robe back, and we’ll call it good.”
“There’s no going back.”
Ash stopped walking. She tried to pivot, intending to run back to the church or the plaza, back where there were people. She was alarmed at how far they’d already come from town. But the weird thing was that there was only one direction she could go, and that was forward.
Jack smiled at her—not an encouraging smile but a victorious one. She quit resisting, figuring if she pretended to go with the flow, she’d be able to break free when he wasn’t paying attention.
It didn’t work. All her surrender did was bring her closer to the edge of the jungle.
Government men were up there, perhaps in response to the man attacked by the jungle monster. Had that man really been dead? Did the government know about the role-playing game happening in town?
Whatever their reason for being in town, it was a relief to see them. She knew for a fact they would help her and stop Jack.
But that wasn’t what happened. Jack took hold of her arm and pulled her around their barricades. No one even questioned them. It was as if they were invisible to the officials.
Ash shouted at them as Jack dragged her through the area, but none of them even blinked.
They had to be in on the game. And why wouldn’t they be? It was a big moneymaker for the town.
Jack let go of her arm and led the way into the jungle, toward the pits. He didn’t need to physically restrain her when she was somehow incapable of changing her direction.
The whole thing felt like a nightmare that she couldn’t wake from.
There was another barricade at the edge of the forest. Here again, Jack just sauntered past it unchallenged, and she was helpless to do anything but follow him.
Okay. Stay calm, she told herself. This was just part of the game. This wasn’t real. It was all some kind of make-believe.
Men in hazard suits were inside the first pit. She watched them work a moment, and realized they were collecting soil samples. The human remains were long gone.
She remembered Pablo and his friend telling her about the slaughter that had happened to those in the pit the night Merc had been injured, and she felt sickened at the thought.
“Yes, that’s right,” Jack said. “Your lover did this. Not only did he condemn those in the pit to a slow and torturous death, but when that was too slow, he made sure they were killed in the most brutal way possible.”
Ash shook her head. This wasn’t real. It was just a game. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
“You don’t believe me? Then you should see for yourself.” Jack shoved her into the pit.
She screamed as she fell, landing in a slush of blood, mud, and human bodies. Just a moment ago, the pit had been nothing like it was now. A little muddy, maybe. But not like this hell. This was a vision. It wasn’t real.
But the stories her visions told her were always real.
The beasts from the mural that looked like werewolves were in the pit with her, destroying the people stuck there.
“And see your beloved Merc,” Jack told her from somewhere outside the pit. “He did this.”
Ash looked to where Jack pointed, seeing Merc standing with his arms spread, a look of pure joy on his face.
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real.
Something brushed up against her hip. She realized she was on her knees in the muck. The thing moving near her was a man, dying from his wounds.
Ash screamed, and her world, her vision, her entire sense of self, went black.
Merc cleared the woods in time to hear Ash’s scream. He broke through Flynn’s spell on her, wrapping her in his own blanket of protection.
“Enough!” he roared at Flynn, but that only made his nemesis laugh.
“You think you ended the curse here, but you didn’t,” Flynn said. “It’s taken on a life of its own. A thing has the meaning people give it. After what happened last night, this spot will always be considered damned. You have yourself to thank for that.”
Merc waved that aside, unfazed by Flynn’s crazed words. He wished they could fight it out, but there was no point. Neither of them would let the other get through their own protective shields. Merc had the beginnings of a plan for getting Flynn when he was most vulnerable, but now was not that moment.
“Leave my woman alone. Your fight is with me.”
“So you’ve decided to claim her, have you?”
“Not your business. You already took my family. You can’t have her too.”
Flynn grinned. “I already am taking her, bit by bit. I will eat her soul, as I ate your family’s. Oh, how your little girls screamed there at the end.”
Merc turned away before Flynn could see how deep his words cut. He went into the pit and lifted Ash from the mud. Leaving her in a trance that numbed her senses, he carried her out of the woods and all the way back to the steps of the church.
Flynn’s words reminded him why he couldn’t claim Ash. He was going to have to wipe her memory of him when they got back to Colorado.
There was no way he could lose more of his heart and have enough left to live with.
22
The dark paralysis eased, lifting its crushing weight from Ash. She was confused. She wasn’t in the muddy pit in the jungle, but sitting on the steps at the front of the town’s church in the soft glow of a streetlight.
How had she gotten there?
Merc was kneeling in front of her, one big
hand on her face, the other squeezing her knee. Damn, the man had two expressions: boredom and anger. His brows were angled sharply over his eyes. A wrinkle marred the bridge of his nose. She smiled at him and used her fingertips to ease the hard lines of his face. “Why do you frown so?” she whispered.
His eyes drilled into hers. “How are you?”
“Better than you, apparently.”
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. Why would he ask that? As quick as a blink, blurry impressions came back to her. The jungle. The pits and Jack’s glee at the suffering Merc had caused. Merc’s expression as he stood over the pit. There was more, but she couldn’t quite reach it.
Ash lurched to her feet. God. She had to get away from him. From Jack. From this whole stupid game. It was spiraling out of control fast. She wanted to cry and vomit and scream.
Merc slowly got to his feet. Those brows stayed as sharp points over his eyes. He looked at her like someone he hated. She turned and walked, then ran across the plaza, rushing for the cover of her room…the room she shared with him. When she neared her door, she patted her pockets for her key and caught sight of her hands, covered in drying mud. It was then she realized she was soaked with the stuff. She sent a panicked look over her shoulder. Merc was only feet away. She fumbled about for her key ever more frantically, but the door opened on its own.
She stepped inside, almost without intending to, as if a wave of energy moved her forward. Merc followed right behind her and the door closed.
Why was everything so fuzzy in her mind? There were thoughts she wanted to work through, but she couldn’t reach them. Her mind and heart were numb, so close to shattering.
The dirt that was on her covered Merc as well. They both stunk like a leaking cesspit.
She remembered a bit of what had happened, but it was like trying to capture a dream after waking. She hoped it had been a dream, because whatever it was, it was awful.
O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Page 22
